by E. E. Cooper
The church was decorated with fluffy white tulle bows on each pew, like at a wedding. Maybe Brit’s parents figured since she’d never get to take a walk down the aisle, this would have to be the next best thing. There was a huge framed picture of her at the front of the church and a giant display of white roses with a single bloodred rose in the center.
The casket hadn’t arrived yet, but I knew it would be closed, since there was no corpse to show. The reporters had said it was likely that Brit’s body had been swept out by the tides and might never be found. But one of her strappy Manolos had been discovered washed up on the beach. Apparently Brit had dressed up for the occasion. That was like her. She would have wanted to look good to the end.
I wasn’t sure why Brit’s parents were bothering with a casket at all. Maybe the party planners had told them no memorial service was complete without one. Might as well have a birthday party without a cake. I wondered what they were going to do with the empty casket when it was over. Keep it in their garage until Britney was found? Or were they going to bury it?
Brit had already been dead for nine days, but still nothing about this felt real to me.
I kept thinking of all the firsts there would be without her: the first summer, the first birthday, the first Christmas. I wondered if I would ever stop slamming into the realization that she was gone.
I turned and glanced behind me for what felt like the thousandth time in the past ten minutes, looking for Beth. Even though she’d never replied to my texts, I was certain that she would show up. She wouldn’t miss her best friend’s memorial service, even if the two of them had been on the outs. Even if she was avoiding me. No matter where she was, I was sure she would come back today.
I closed my eyes and told myself that if I kept them closed and counted to sixty, when I opened them Beth would be there. But she wasn’t.
My parents were seated across the aisle. They’d wanted me to sit next to them, but I preferred to be with Zach. I held on to his hand like it was the only thing keeping me tethered to the earth. Nadir had offered to come home, but I’d told him not to. I had to do this without my big brother.
I heard the doors at the back of the church being shut, and felt my hope shut down too. Beth really wasn’t coming. The realization sat in my stomach like an ice-cold boulder. I let out a slow breath.
“You okay?” Zach whispered. His thumb rubbed over my knuckles.
I nodded and squeezed his hand, and as if that were the cue, “Over the Rainbow” started playing over the church’s sound system. Showtime. I barely managed to avoid rolling my eyes. Brit would not be impressed by the music selection.
The minister led the way down the aisle. Brit’s coffin followed on the shoulders of six solemn pallbearers. I recognized her cousin Ryan in front. Brit had told me Ryan once tried to feel her up when she fell asleep on his mom’s couch after Thanksgiving. She’d called him Randy Ryan the Creeper Cousin.
Jason was bearing the coffin at the rear. I’d heard that he’d called Brit’s parents and begged to be included. He looked horrible—eyes red, face full of pain—and I worried he might not make it through the service. Brit would have been glad for that, at least. I could picture her watching with her arms crossed over her chest, thinking he deserved to suffer.
The coffin was a highly polished dark wood. As it glided past I had the absurd urge to reach out and touch it, to prove to myself that what was happening was real. Maybe that’s why her parents had gotten it. It pulled everything into sharp relief. You can’t pretend someone isn’t dead once they bring out a coffin.
I bit my lip to keep myself from crying. Britney was larger than life. The idea that she was just gone seemed impossible. I let my head rest on Zach’s shoulder.
Brit’s parents walked right behind the casket. Her dad kept looking around almost stunned, like he couldn’t figure out what we were all doing there. Her mom was more composed. She looked like those photos you see of Jackie Kennedy at the president’s funeral, poised and elegant. But Dr. Ryerson’s eyes were blank and empty. She was like a shell of a person.
A girl from my history class casually lifted her phone and took a picture of the casket. I looked away.
Tons of people had shown up from school. Even now that she was dead, people still wanted to be part of whatever Brit was doing. Or maybe that wasn’t fair. Maybe they were sad and shocked and genuinely felt like they had lost something. I didn’t know what other people were feeling. I just knew I was jealous they could feel at all.
Brit’s suicide was all anyone had been talking about all week. Like any other disaster, people wanted to share where they had been when they’d heard and how they’d first reacted. They all had stories about her—how she’d once told them how much she liked their sweater, or borrowed a pencil from them for a test, or stood behind them in line once for fro-yo. That time she’d charmed a teacher out of giving the whole class a pop quiz, an amazing play she’d made in field hockey, a boring party she’d turned into the best event of the year. Every time I turned around Melissa was crying about how she’d talked to Britney just hours before it all happened. She acted like she and Brit had been the closest of friends. That Brit had poured her heart out to Melissa in the bathroom. She’d told the same story to all the cable news cameras too. I’d been avoiding the reporters at all costs.
The yearbook crowd was talking about the page they would dedicate to her and the student council was trying to get a local twenty-four-hour suicide help line started. I’d even heard that some senior had Brit’s name tattooed on his arm so he could always remember how fragile life could be. I guess he didn’t realize Brit hated tattoos. “Future regrets,” she’d called them.
I tried to focus as the minister started the service. I suppose there really isn’t anything good to say when someone has killed herself, but it felt like he’d Googled “what to say when a young person dies” and was reading a generic script. He talked about how she was a “bright light that burned out too quickly” and how we could “take comfort that she is in the bosom of our Lord.” None of it had anything to do with Brit. When he got to the part about how some people are so kind that God can’t wait to call them home to heaven, someone in the crowd actually snorted. They covered it up a split second later with a cough, but everyone still heard it. Zach put his arm around me and pulled me closer.
I imagined Brit standing off to the side, evaluating her own funeral. She would think roses were too common; she would have preferred something more exotic. She would have spotted from across the sanctuary that Randy Ryan the Creeper Cousin was wearing brown socks with his black suit and shoes. She’d know at a glance if the coffin was real mahogany or just a veneer. She’d sniff at the choice of recorded music over having live musicians. If Britney had known this would be her funeral when she was walking into the lake, she would have turned right around and walked back out.
The minister paused and called Jason up to speak. Jason dragged his feet to the pulpit as if he were on his way to the gallows. He gripped the sides of the lectern, and I could see his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. There was an awkward stretch of silence. I wondered if he’d be able to speak.
“I’ve tried to figure out what to say at least a dozen times,” he started. “I don’t know how to find the words to express what’s in my heart. Brit’s a challenging person to describe, to give justice to. I know I let her down in the past, and I don’t want to do that now. I want to say the right thing.” Jason’s voice cracked and he looked down to pull himself together.
“Most of you know I wasn’t always the best boyfriend, but I did love her. Britney was difficult. Sometimes she had a temper. If she didn’t like you, she was really bad about hiding it. She wasn’t patient with people when things didn’t go her way. She picked out all the cashews in the mixed nuts container and would leave everyone else the plain peanuts. She could look you in the eye and lie if she felt she needed to.” Jason’s lip twitched into a smile. “If you didn’t watch her like a
hawk, she would cheat at Monopoly. She used to steal hundreds out of the bank.”
Brit’s mom shifted. I could see this wasn’t the eulogy she had counted on. But whether she liked it or not, that was the real Britney. She deserved to be remembered as she was.
“Brit was also the kind of person we all invited to our parties because she lit up a room. She made it a party. When she laughed, we all felt like laughing. She was a great athlete with a competitive spirit, and she could organize anything and anybody. She had a fierce sense of loyalty, and if you were part of her circle there was nothing she wouldn’t do for you. No lengths she wouldn’t go to for a friend. I’m not perfect and neither is anyone in this room. Brit wasn’t perfect either, but she should have had a chance to keep trying to be. She deserved a life.” Jason choked back a sob.
“None of this feels real. If there’s anyone that I would have described as invincible, it would have been Brit. I don’t know what to say, but for me, there will always be something missing because she isn’t here. I don’t know what would have happened between Brit and me in the future. Heck, I don’t know if any of us will stay in touch when this school year ends, but even if we never came across each other again, I am certain that the world is incomplete because she isn’t in it. She will always be the first girl I loved. The first girl who loved me back. And I was so lucky we had that.” Jason started crying.
I didn’t even realize I was crying too until Zach passed me a pack of Kleenex. He pulled one from the package and gently blotted my face as if I were a small child.
The minister reached over to guide Jason back to his seat, but he was still gripping the sides of the podium like he had more he wanted to say. In the end, the minister had to tug on Jason’s suit jacket before he let go.
Jason stumbled back to his pew. I noticed he wasn’t sitting with Sara, and I wondered if they were still together. I wondered if she’d dared to come.
The minister looked at me and nodded. There was a split second when I thought I wasn’t going to be able to stand, but then my legs went on autopilot and I walked to the front. Brit’s parents had asked me to read something for the funeral. I’d picked a poem we’d learned in English class.
I cleared my throat and looked out over the congregation. I knew people were waiting to see if I’d fall apart like Jason. Strangely, now that I was standing in front of everyone, I felt calm. I’d been paranoid that my anxiety would kick in and I’d be tapping away on the pulpit, but my breath actually came smoothly.
I searched the crowd for Beth once more, but no matter how badly I wanted her there, she refused to materialize. My eyes fell on Zach. He smiled and I realized I wasn’t completely alone.
“‘Remember,’” I said. “A poem by Christina Rossetti.
“Remember me when I am gone away.
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann’d:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.”
When I finished, Brit’s dad was crying full force and I could tell Brit’s mom was barely holding it together. For her, falling apart would have made everything worse. All she had left were appearances.
From the pulpit I saw teary eyes all over the church. Emotion moved like a wave through the crowd. Brit would have loved to see it.
That’s the problem with being dead. You miss everything.
My dad nodded when I glanced at him, and I knew I’d accomplished what I wanted for Britney, as best I could do without Beth.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” I whispered to myself, but the microphone picked up the words and carried them out over the sanctuary. I snapped my mouth shut. I didn’t wait for the minister to reach for me; I scurried back to my seat.
“What was the last bit?” Zach whispered as I sat down, his words warm on my neck.
“Just something Beth might have said,” I explained. “Sort of an inside joke.”
Zach reached over and took my hand again. Now that my part was over I wanted to slip off my uncomfortable shoes and curl up on the pew next to him and go to sleep. For the past few days, Zach had been my safe place. I would smell the woodsy soap he used and feel the soft worn cotton of his jeans and have the sense that I could breathe again. He was my own personal life support system. I didn’t like him to be beyond my touch.
I felt impossibly tired. The minister said a few more things and the music started again. I winced; the volume was up too loud. Someone should have told the party planners it was a funeral, not a nightclub. At this volume I half expected a mirrored disco ball to drop from the ceiling.
Brit’s parents led the way out. When I turned I could see a hearse parked right outside the front doors.
“Is that it?” I asked Zach.
Zach shrugged. “I think so. There’s usually something at the graveside, but since they don’t have anything to bury, there’s no point.” Zach was a pro at funerals since he’d lost two grandparents, so he could be counted on to know what to expect. Before today, the only funeral I’d been to was when Nadir buried his hamster, Thor, in the backyard when I was ten.
Zach glanced down at his program. “There’s a reception at the country club. That starts in half an hour.”
My shoulders slumped. “Why throw an after-party for a funeral? The last thing I feel like doing is eating egg salad sandwiches and making small talk over cake.”
“Do you want to skip it?”
I wanted to. I longed to make a run for the door and have Zach take me somewhere else. Somewhere where I could pretend none of this was happening. But I knew it was impossible. “I can’t,” I admitted. I owed it to Brit to be there. One of her best friends should make the effort.
Besides, Brit had made plenty of effort for me. She’d plucked me out of a pile of no ones, welcomed me into her fold, and been a true friend. She’d led me to Beth. Beth had given me a glimpse of who I could be. What I wanted right now didn’t matter. I needed to be there.
“Okay,” Zach said. “I’ll stick with you the whole time. You just have to be strong a little longer. I know you can do it.”
I hoped he was right.
“Hey, sweetie.” My parents had crossed the aisle to join us. My mom hugged me and my dad patted my back. I could tell my mom had been crying. “Your poem was beautiful,” she said.
“Do you want us to take you home?” Dad offered.
All week, my parents had been hovering over me. Checking to make sure I was okay. Afraid I was going to fall apart. If I went home with them now, they would follow me around the house, driving me crazy. “We’re going to go to the reception for a bit,” I said.
“Okay,” Dad said. “We’ll see you there.”
Zach placed his palm on my lower back as we filed out of the pew and followed the crowd into the parking lot. Outside it was bright and sunny. I squinted and turned away from the group of journalists and cameramen across the street, taking pictures and filming as the hearse pulled away.
As we walked up to Zach’s car, I saw something stuck in the passenger-side window. A playing card. I picked it up and flipped it over. It was the Queen of Hearts. I whipped around, searching the parking lot.
“Jeez, someone’s trash is blowing all around.” Zach bent and picked up a few more cards, along with an empty takeout container and Pepsi bottle. He held out his hand to take the card from me, but I held on to it. The Queen of Hearts was one of Beth’s favorite characters. Was it just trash, or was it a message from Beth? Za
ch jogged over to the trash can to throw the rest of the junk away.
A woman walked over to me and it took me a second to realize it was Officer Siegel. I hadn’t recognized her out of uniform. She was wearing a plain black suit that made her look more like a lawyer than a cop. Or a giant crow.
I backed up a step closer to Zach’s car. I didn’t want her touching me, even by accident. I slid the card into my pocket so she couldn’t see it.
“That line, what you said after the poem, it was from Alice in Wonderland, wasn’t it?” Officer Siegel asked.
I looked over, surprised. She laughed. “Did you think the only things I know are how to take fingerprints and tap phones? I assure you I’ve read more than Sherlock Holmes.”
I didn’t answer.
Officer Siegel leaned against the car parked next to Zach’s. “So, Beth didn’t come today,” she said.
“Nope.” The bright sunshine poked out from a cloud and blinded me for a second. I held my hand up to my eyes.
“Sad, don’t you think? She and Britney had been friends since they were kids.”
I tried to act casual. “Maybe she didn’t hear about it in time.”
“Maybe she didn’t feel she should come.” Officer Siegel pulled on a pair of sunglasses, which made it even harder to read her expression.
The wind blew my hair into my eyes, and I pushed it away. Zach walked up and gave a bit of a start when he realized who Officer Siegel was. “I don’t know what you want me to say,” I said to her. I kept my voice cool and calm, channeling Britney. She’d never let someone like Siegel push her around.
Officer Siegel held up her hands. “All I’m trying to do is understand what’s happened.”
“That’s all I want too,” I said. Zach put his arm around me and I stood a bit straighter, pulling strength from him.
Officer Siegel shrugged. “You might think so, but it’s my experience that when people are hiding things, it’s because they don’t want the whole truth to come out.”