Weightless

by Sarah Bannan

  They showed another actress then, meant to be Abby Lessing, and we actually thought she looked a lot like her, although the camera never really focused on her face. The woman put a key in the front door and walked in the fake Lessing house, put her blazer on the coat rack in the front hall, and walked up the stairs. She called out: “Honey, I’m home.” And then, more urgently, she called out Carolyn’s name. Again and again, until she reached the bathroom, turned the handle and opened the door. That’s when the piece finished. The screen went straight to Ann Curry sitting on a sofa, looking sad and concerned and unsure how to make the transition to the psychologist sitting in the armchair next to her.

  We talked later about The Today Show, how wrong it all seemed, how it was different than almost everything we’d heard, almost everything we knew was true. We’d heard Carolyn had been wearing her bathing suit – her teal and black drag suit – and that she’d done it with her Burberry scarf. We heard this from Blake Wyatt, whose aunt volunteered twice a week at the hospital, helping with paperwork and stuff like that. She’d seen Abby come in with Carolyn, and she told Blake that she thought Carolyn had had some kind of accident at the pool, on account of the bathing suit. The thing about her scarf – that came from Taylor Lyon, who went around telling everyone she would boycott Burberry from this day forward, that’s how traumatized she was by the whole event.

  We heard from some seniors that she’d weighed herself a final time before tying the scarf around her neck, and we weren’t sure how they could know this, but we thought it seemed true and we almost laughed about it later, but we knew that that was wrong.

  We wondered how long she’d planned it, how many pills she’d taken to give her the courage. There hadn’t been any note, Carolyn’s mother was quoted as saying so later, but we were sure that if somebody looked hard enough, they would find something: a draft in recovered documents, an unsent email, an undelivered text. A note would have helped things, we thought, would have helped us, and everybody else, to understand.

  We knew so much, we thought, and everybody else seemed to keep getting it wrong and this frustrated us, scared us. Somehow a note would have clarified everything, we thought. Would have put the record straight. Provided closure. Or something.

  The funeral wasn’t in Adamsville. Her body was flown to New Jersey, and the funeral was there. The school organized a service, though, on our last day, so that we could “have a chance to grieve.” Carolyn’s mother wasn’t there, obviously. She had gone to New Jersey. Nobody was sure whether she’d come back to Adamsville at all.

  The service was held in the gym – the theater was being refurbished; plus, there wouldn’t be enough room for all of us. The newspapers said that this was in bad taste, that it should have been held somewhere more “solemn,” more “appropriate.” The gym was where every assembly was held, though, and it didn’t seem weird to us. Or we just didn’t admit it at the time.

  Miss Simpson led the service and students were invited to give a speech. Nobody volunteered, so Andrew Wright was selected.

  We watched him approach the podium, his head down, his shoulders folding into themselves – his spine looked like it had been bent like a pipe-cleaner. He wore a suit that must have been his dad’s – the shoulders were too broad, the sleeves too long, the pants too short. His face had broken out on his chin – cystic acne we hadn’t seen since he’d been on Accutane, and even from the back row of the bleachers, you could see red and purple spots coming up around his jawline. His eyes were bloodshot, tired, weak, watery. He read from pieces of lined paper, the edges torn from a spiral notebook. The pages were folded and worn and his hands shook as he read – he had five or six pages, at least.

  “I met Carolyn in the summer before she started at Adams. The first thing I noticed about her was how beautiful she was – really beautiful. I’d heard it from other people already, but she really, really was. And when you got to know her better, she was even more beautiful. Which is hard to believe.”

  He took a drink of water. His voice was cracking; it looked as if he might cry. Probably would.

  “On her first day at school, I helped her get her locker open – I don’t know what she was doin’ wrong, but I guess the lockers and stuff were different at her old school.”

  Some people in the back started giggling or crying. It was hard to tell which.

  “Carolyn was a friend.” He looked up from his paper for the first time. He stared out into the crowd, into our eyes, and then lifted his to the ceiling. A balloon from three or four assemblies ago was hanging, deflated, from the rafters. Purple, with a white ribbon, it blew with the air-conditioner.

  Andrew went on, mumbling, saying things about her background, her childhood in New Jersey, her swimming, her art. Stuff they had put in the papers. Stuff everybody knew. We zoned him out. Just a little.

  The gym was cold. Brooke and Shane were in the back row, along with Gemma. Their faces were expressionless. Brooke’s face was chalky and her lips were caked with foundation – from a distance, you couldn’t make out any of her features: her big eyes, her high cheekbones, her dimples. Gemma was a red version of Brooke – red eyes, red cheeks, red mouth. She looked wind-burned, like after a ski trip or a day on the boat. And Shane’s face was only barely visible: his baseball cap – Auburn, worn in – was curved around his heart-shaped face. You could see rim and shadow and the glint of his teeth.

  “I got to know her better after Christmas, and she was always tellin’ me about stuff up north, and what stuff was like in New Jersey. We were gonna go together, in the summer, for a trip, or at least we talked about it. She had planned out a bunch of days for us, a bunch of things to do.”

  He took another breath. A cough. Noses blowing, sniffing. The girls in the front row, girls Carolyn didn’t even know, had their arms around one another, bodies shaking. The guys looked toward the far wall, or the small window over the emergency exit. Taylor Lyon’s hair covered her face, we couldn’t see what she looked like. Her shoulders moved, so we figured she was crying, but we couldn’t have been sure.

  Silence. Andrew stared at the pages. A minute passed. A bell rang. The teachers whispered to one another. We sat and waited. He began again.

  “I thought I’d be able to give a speech here today, and talk about all the things Carolyn was, all the things she said, what she meant to me, and to the rest of us. But I can’t.” He paused. He looked straight into the bleachers again. “I don’t know what y’all want me to say.”

  He rubbed his eyes, breathing in so hard there was feedback from the microphone, a screeching howl.

  “Carolyn was good, you know? And it’s, like, like . . .” He was looking for something in the ceiling. His eyes were darting back and forth.

  “It’s like there’s something fucked up about us, you know? Like something really, really fucked up.” He was spitting into the microphone, he was crying. “Y’all are gonna say this is lame, now or after. Aren’t y’all?

  “But I don’t give a shit anymore, you know? I don’t give a shit.”

  Mrs Matthew had risen to her feet and was approaching him, her eyes crinkled – she had been crying too. He put his hand out in front of him.

  “Nah, nah. I’m done. Sorry, ma’am. Sorry.”

  He walked away from the microphone. Somebody yelled: “Andrew.” He looked up and pivoted back, standing in front of the mic.

  “All I wanted to say is I’m real sorry for what happened. I’m real sorry. I really am.” His voice was shaking, and he fell to his knees, crumpled. The nurse came over. Mr Overton took over the mic. The service was over. He told us to enjoy our summers.

  Two Sundays after Carolyn Lessing hung herself, we didn’t linger around the parking lot at church – our parents wouldn’t let us, it was too fucking hot and, plus, we didn’t want to talk to anybody. We filed in and sat where we always sat and we were quieter than usual – anybody could have noticed this – and even though the air-conditioning was breathing out a heavy noise, we said lat
er that we could have heard a pin drop. People weren’t in the mood for small talk. That’s what we guessed.

  Miss Simpson led the choir as Reverend Davies came in – there was no accompaniment, just us singing on our own, in four-part harmony.

  Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,

  That saved a wretch like me.

  I once was lost but now am found,

  Was blind, but now I see.

  ’Twas Grace that taught my heart to fear.

  And Grace, my fears relieved.

  How precious did that Grace appear

  The hour I first believed.

  Through many dangers, toils and snares

  I have already come;

  ’Tis Grace that brought me safe thus far

  and Grace will lead me home.

  The Lord has promised good to me.

  His word my hope secures.

  He will my shield and portion be,

  As long as life endures.

  Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail,

  And mortal life shall cease,

  I shall possess within the veil,

  A life of joy and peace.

  When we’ve been there ten thousand years,

  Bright shining as the sun,

  We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise

  Than when we’ve first begun.

  We had heard the lyrics before, had sung it a million times, and we knew it was overplayed. But it was different now, and everybody knew it. It made our eyes fill up and we looked toward the ceiling to keep from blinking, to keep our mascara from running down our faces. We didn’t even know Carolyn properly and we didn’t want to look like the poser freshmen who were all sobbing in the bathroom on Monday. But we were amazed and horrified and frightened when we felt the lump in the back of our throats, the heat rise to our cheeks, the tears start to form behind our eyes. This couldn’t happen. Not here. Not now. Not about her.

  We finished the song and we pulled ourselves together.

  The sermon was standard, run of the mill, all about the evils of drink and sex and impure thoughts. We had thought Reverend Davies might talk about suicide, about dealing with grief, about how to cope with loss. But he didn’t. We overheard our mothers, months later, saying that this was “appalling,” that the suicide should have been “addressed, at least superficially.” We weren’t sure what that meant but we were relieved that none of those things had been raised, that we were just carrying on as normal. Looking back, we wondered if Reverend Davies felt in some way responsible – if he was already aware that Gemma had played a part, however small. At the time, we didn’t really think about it, and we smiled and waved at Gemma when we left the building. She looked tired, we said. Her hair was greasy, scraped back into a ponytail. It didn’t even look that blonde. She needed a shower.

  Brooke was there with her mother and they both looked pretty and pulled together: Brooke was wearing a cream cotton dress we had seen in the window at Parisian’s, with turquoise jewelry we knew belonged to her mother. She looked fresh and bright-eyed and her skin was so sparkling we said later she’d probably had a peel. She looked a million times better than she had on the Friday – she was over the whole thing, we guessed. She had already moved on.

  Nobody saw Shane or Andrew. Shane’s parents or Andrew’s father either. We looked around for them for forever – especially for Andrew – people were still talking about what a weird speech he’d made at the service. It was sweet and all that he cared about her, they said, but it was all a little bit much. Dylan Hall said he thought Andrew was faking. Blake Wyatt agreed. We didn’t think this was true, no way, but we had nothing to go on but our feelings, and that wasn’t enough to make you want to speak up, not in the beginning. Maybe in the end.

  We remembered Andrew at the Homecoming Parade, his phone full of pictures, of Carolyn smiling, of Carolyn in the back of the Mustang, of Carolyn fixing her dress. He couldn’t have been faking: he had loved her for real.

  We went to the country club after service, as usual, and we ate our food on the golf course, on the fourteenth hole, like we always did. We talked about the day that Carolyn had come with us, the day she’d run across the course and jumped the fence and gotten onto the diving board. We talked about watching her dive, watching her glide underwater, perfect and pretty and silent. And then we remembered Andrew again. Him standing and watching her. We wished we had recorded that day, we said. We would have liked to have watched it, over and over and over again.

  They called us back into school for questioning, sent an email to parents, urged them to “show complete cooperation with the police and their investigation.” The junior and senior class, every last one of us, they asked us to come in on a Saturday in June. The questions would be “routine.” They wouldn’t have asked if it wasn’t “completely necessary.” There were a couple of kids in every class who didn’t come. Their parents or grandparents were lawyers and when we men­­­ti­oned this to our parents after the fact, we watched their pupils dilate, their bodies stiffen, afraid they – or we – had done something wrong.

  Our parents drove us. Didn’t want us out of their sight, we figured, and, plus, they were curious too, our parents. We arrived at 7.45 a.m. and as we pulled into the parking lot, we saw them: the reporters, cameras, vans, lights, all of them stationed outside. We wondered how long they’d been there. Wondered if they had catering trucks, like we’d heard they did for movies, like we saw on Making the Video. What a weird job.

  We filed into the auditorium, kept our hands in our pockets, tried to keep our eyes on the ground. We didn’t know how to act. Taylor Lyon and Tiffany Port were standing by the bathrooms at the back of the theater, Taylor’s face all red and blotchy, her eyes bloodshot. “I’m still, like, so shocked.” Tiffany put her arm around her, put her head on Taylor’s shoulder. “You are so sweet,” Tiffany said. “She was so lucky to have you.” Lauren coughed: “Fake.” We rolled our eyes and made our way to the middle of the auditorium, took our seats.

  Mr Overton was on the stage with a couple of cops, not local ones, not ones we’d seen around before, but the ones we’d seen on TV. There were two butch-looking women, holding clipboards, writing things down. They had the lights up like they were gonna do a show choir number. Mr Overton was like literally standing in a spotlight.

  “I wonder how long this will take.” Jessica looked at her watch, then over at Lauren and Nicole. “What? I have a haircut at three.” She examined her split ends.

  We watched as the student body poured in, saw Brooke and Gemma walking close together, everybody keeping their distance from them. Tiffany and Taylor walked by us, getting seats near the front. “They’ve a lot of nerve showing up here,” Taylor said, looking around to make sure she’d been heard. We thought about telling her to shut up, that she’d a lot of nerve herself, but we kept quiet, looked at our phones, passed around a nail file, a copy of US Weekly that Lauren had brought with her.

  Mr Overton called us one by one, alphabetical order. They must have had ten cops asking questions, ’cause they went through everybody real quick. When Lauren came out, she told us what she’d been asked.

  They wanted to know who Carolyn was friends with. Who Lauren was friends with, too. They had a copy of Lauren’s schedule, had drawn circles around classes she had in common with Carolyn. They asked if Lauren had seen Carolyn in the bathroom on 13 December and if in May she had heard about a plan “to attack Ms Lessing in the parking lot.” If Shane had posted the YouTube video himself, or if it was believed that he’d put somebody up to it. They asked if she’d heard Brooke and Gemma conspiring to slash Carolyn’s tires and/or destroy her art project. If Andrew and Shane had talked about having sex with Carolyn Lessing and on how many occasions. Lauren said she tried to tell them about the cutting, the stuff Carolyn did with her protractor, but they didn’t want to know about that, that they shut her right down. They asked her to try to remember the names that people called Carolyn. Was she called “Yankee slut”
? Lauren answered things as well as she could, she said, but there were things she couldn’t remember and there were things she thought they wanted to hear. She did her best. And we answered like Lauren did, mostly, though we didn’t know what any of it meant.

  Later, when we heard all of the charges, we were sorry we hadn’t prepared more. Sorry we hadn’t tried to give a longer version. We didn’t want to protect Brooke or Gemma, or even Shane and Andrew, but we didn’t think what they ended up saying about them was true. Not entirely.

  We waited for each other. Watched Gemma go in, waited to see how long they’d keep her. Same with Shane, Brooke and Andrew. When Nicole Willis was finished, none of those four was out yet. Or else they’d gone, left through the back, some way we didn’t know. Blake Wyatt told people later that they all four of them left in plastic handcuffs; the police decided to take them down to the station. We didn’t think this could be true, not really, especially since there weren’t any pictures of that on the web. Blake never stopped running his mouth.

  Everybody knew the charges were extreme. Or at least that’s what we thought, and it was what everybody thought in the beginning. A week after the thing at the school, the District Attorney read out her statement on the front steps of the Old Courthouse – a building that, up until then, was no longer used for legal proceedings of any kind.