by Denise Jaden
There’s fear in her eyes, and I try to force her face into a smile in my mind. But it won’t budge. The longer I focus on her image, the more petrified she appears. I whisper not to worry, that I’ll take the blame for the carpet, but her face doesn’t change. If anything, it becomes more panicked.
She looks down at her feet and so do I, but it’s not the living room carpet I see. Instead, her feet stand on bits of rock and gravel. And there’s an edge, so close, and one foot starts to slip. A look of horror crosses her face when she looks up at me, and then she’s gone. My eyes dart down and she’s falling, past jagged rocks into what appears to be a bottomless pit.
“No!” When the word bursts from my mouth, everything goes black, and suddenly I feel the rush of wind past my eyes, my face. And it’s not Faith who’s falling, it’s me. I can’t see the ground, I can’t see anything, and my cheeks suck upward. I scream, but barely hear my voice.
“Brie!” someone calls out to me, but I can’t tell if it’s from above or below.
“Help!” I try to gasp, but nothing comes out. My ears echo with the loud rumble of rushing wind.
“Brie!” I feel a jerk to my shoulder. “Brie, wake up.” A shake to my arms. “It’s just a dream. Wake up!”
I stare up into Dad’s face, but I don’t know where I am or how I got here.
“Are you okay, sweetie?”
Glancing around, I see the couch under me, the love seat across the room, the paint splotch above the window. I nod, but I can’t find my voice.
“It was just a bad dream,” Dad repeats.
And I want to tell him it wasn’t. It seemed so real. But he pats my knee with a shaky hand, gives it a squeeze, and suggests I go find something to eat. It’ll make me feel better.
After he leaves the room, I take a deep breath and sit up. I’m still tired, but the last thing I want to do is accidentally fall asleep here again. And the second-to-last thing I want to do is eat.
I tiptoe to the front door and ease it open just enough to slide through. Fresh air will help me get my bearings. But the first thing I see is Faith’s Toyota.
I’m drawn to it. The driver’s door is unlocked, which isn’t surprising, since Faith trusted everyone. But I’ve never sat on the driver’s side, so it takes me a few seconds to work myself up to get in.
When I click the door shut beside me, the space feels much smaller than it ever did before, like there’s barely enough room for me. Maybe it’s because I’m huddled in by the steering wheel. I reach my hands up and run them over it. Then over her gearshift and her dash. My hand circles the yellow sticker with the scribbly-looking cross. I slide my finger up the cross and then sideways, wondering why God would take someone so good. Someone who loved him so much. Then I trace the tiny black dots arching along the top and bottom. Looking closer, they appear to be letters and not just dots. I lean forward and try to make out the words.
Live 4 Him.
Sounds like something Faith would have pasted in her car. I peer even closer to read the minuscule bottom text.
Die 4 Him.
I suck in a breath and my thumb quickly covers the words, as if I could take back reading them.
chapter FIVE
Plan D: Greet some mourners. Read a poem. Go home.
Five days after the barn party, I hunch on a pew in the front row of the church, hiding behind my notebook while I wait for the dreaded service. My parents’ church doesn’t feel the same way I remember it. The decor seems so outdated. So orange. It smells different too, like the old people my grandma lives with. I don’t remember the congregation having more than five or six people with white hair, but those few must be leaving their scent.
I used to call it our church, back when all four of us attended weekly services come sickness, tiredness, or even major catastrophe. But then I started spending more time with Amy, who wouldn’t get out of bed before noon on a Sunday if her eternal soul depended on it—which, according to my family, it did—and eventually I reasoned my own way out of Sunday mornings.
Mom and Dad huddle in a corner. Mom’s been crying since we got here, but not the normal kind of crying. More like a constant huffing that builds to a wail every five minutes or so.
Faith’s coffin sits less than ten feet away from me, but thankfully it’s closed. Whatever she looks like now, I don’t want to know. Even the thought of having her body so close gives me this creepy feeling, like having a dead animal carcass in the room. I’ve heard that funerals often have open caskets to give the family some measure of peace, but how could it?
As the church fills up, I recognize some faces from the parking lot the other night. The dark-haired girl who tried to include me mingles with a few distraught-looking youth group types. Some others from Sharon High, Faith’s school friends, avert their eyes, which is fine with me. If one of them died, I wouldn’t know what to say to their siblings either. I haven’t been in school all week and the appearance of all these people out of their natural habitat only adds to the hallucinatory feeling of this whole day.
My eyes stop dead on my silent-yet-intimidating locker neighbor, Tessa Lockbaum, leaning against the back wall.
What is she doing here? She wears her usual death garb: black turtleneck, dark baggy jeans, silver belt buckle in the shape of a skull. Rumors permeate the hallways at school about how many kids she’s beaten up over the years. Students give her a wide berth whenever she makes her way to classes.
Being my age and the antithesis of holy, Tessa definitely wouldn’t have been one of Faith’s friends. With stray empty seats all around, I wonder why she just stands there, her arms crossed as though she’s judging the world.
All of a sudden, she glares right back at me and I realize how long I’ve been staring. I turn away, but feel holes burning into my back. Not only am I confused about her presence, but what’s with that look, as if she blames me for something?
A stab of guilt hits me, and my mind rebounds to that night. All I could think of was Dustin. The last time I saw my sister, I lied to her, used her, barely said thanks for the ride.
“Hey, babe. You okay?”
Dustin’s voice jolts me back to the moment. I slap my journal shut, swallow hard, and take my time looking up. He had texted me back to tell me he was sorry and that he’d be here, but that was the last I’d heard from him. In a way I’m glad. I wasn’t ready to talk to anyone earlier. Still may not be. Amy sidles up beside him. Dustin wraps an arm around my shoulder and gives me a squeeze and Amy mimics him on the other side.
“I’m so sorry,” they both say at the same time. Even though they don’t laugh, I feel like I’ve missed out on some private joke.
Amy called me right after she got my text, asking if I wanted her to come over, but I let it ring and then e-mailed her back using the excuse that I didn’t think my parents were ready for outsiders. The truth is, I was waiting for the whole idea of what had happened to hit me. I didn’t really want anyone around when that happened. Of course I’m still waiting.
“What’s she doing here?” I ask, changing the subject and trying not to focus directly on Tessa. But when I speak, I realize how long it’s been since I’ve really talked to anyone. My voice feels strange. Echoey.
“Holy shit!” Amy says. “Did you invite Tessa Lockbaum?”
I stare at Amy, eyebrows raised, until she realizes the idiocy of her question.
“Maybe she’s paying her respects or something,” Dustin says.
That doesn’t make sense, but I’m not about to argue, especially with Dustin. I motion to the pew behind me. “I saved this row if you guys want to sit here.”
He shifts uneasily. “Actually, I left my jacket at the back.”
Sure enough, his brown leather jacket hangs over the pew of the very back row. I’m disappointed, but turn to Amy.
“I’ll be right back,” she says, before I can speak. “You know, the bathroom.”
With the church nearly full, the pastor ambles up onto the stage and rustles his
papers at the podium. The way he spreads the papers out, stares at them, then shuffles them back together, I wonder if he’s at all prepared for this. Then again, am I prepared for this? I haven’t faced people all week and now I have to give a speech about my dead sister. How could I be prepared?
When the pastor taps on the microphone, Mom and Dad slip into their seats beside me.
This disorganized Pastor dude looks like he’s barely out of high school. He wears a sweater that I saw on a mannequin at American Eagle last month, which probably adds to his pubescent appearance. He must have started pastoring in kindergarten, because he’s been Faith’s youth leader for, like, ever. For all Faith used to prattle on about him, “Pastor Scott says this and Pastor Scott says that”—she never mentioned he was hot. No wonder Faith spent so much time at youth group.
“I’m Scott MacDonald,” the guy says in a much deeper voice than I expect. “For those of you who don’t know me …” He scans the crowd for several seconds and the earring in his left ear gleams across the room like a neon sign reading I miss the nineties. “I’m the Youth Pastor here at Crestview Church. Or, as some of my crew like to call me, Captain Scotty.” He clears his throat and crinkles his brow, apparently just now remembering he’s leading a funeral. “We are gathered here today to celebrate the life of Faith Jenkins.”
Mom lets out a whimper at my sister’s name. I slide my hand over hers on the bench and leave it there, even though I’m tempted to pull away from her cold clamminess. I wish Dustin and Amy would have stuck close by. Someone to hold me up while I hold up Mom.
The pastor launches into the Bible, and since Mom’s breathing seems almost normal, I open my notebook low on the bench beside me. I finally wrote a poem this morning, but looking over it now, it’s way too embarrassing. When my turn comes, I’m going to give my head a little shake, and hope that Junior up there gets the picture. Surely somebody with a little more distance can start off the tributes.
The pastor goes into his philosophical take on the accident. He keeps repeating, “She wasn’t alone,” which gets redundant real fast, since Faith was never really alone. She hung out constantly with her friends from youth or, at the very least, Celeste.
I crane my neck to look for Celeste in the crowd, but can’t see her anywhere.
I’m thinking about how whacked it is that Tessa Lockbaum lurks in the back while Celeste isn’t even here, when Pastor Scott motions to the sound-tech guy and a song starts playing through the speakers at the back. A picture of Faith at her full-immersion baptism comes up on the screen at the front. Age twelve, her hair hangs straight and straggly from the water. Her glasses are covered in so many droplets I doubt she could see a thing.
Of course Celeste must be upset, but she, more than anyone, should be here.
I bite my tongue when Faith’s clear voice bursts through the speakers behind me. I didn’t know they’d be playing her music today. I ball a fist at my side to keep my strength, my balance. It’s not really her, I tell myself. She’s gone.
The picture fades into another, now with Faith propped on a girl’s shoulders at youth camp. Her smile seems to take up the whole screen.
“Hallelujah, praise to my Lord,” my sister’s voice resounds through the back speakers. Not an actual song, but one of the improvised tangents the worship team used to attempt on Sunday mornings. They did that regularly back when Faith sang with them, because she could sing to anything.
I glance back to find Dustin and Amy, figuring they’ll help me get some equilibrium. But all I see is the top of Dustin’s head. The way his hair jitters every few seconds, he must be playing games on his cell phone.
I’m not mad. Jealous, if anything. I wish that could be me, that I could find a distraction that takes me anywhere but here. Amy, nowhere in sight, is likely giving herself a makeover in the bathroom.
I almost scream when Mom grasps my leg. But the picture of Faith in church shocks me, too. She stands up on that same stage in front of us now, with arms outstretched in abandonment. She’d been part of the worship team for years, so it isn’t an unusual sight, but because she’ll never stand there again, it makes me catch my breath. Makes everyone in the whole room catch their breath.
Pastor Scott rests a hand on the podium, but doesn’t say anything when the picture fades. The silence is eerie. I fight the image of Faith in my dream with the same outstretched arms.
Even with the music stopped, Faith’s voice echoes in my head. Not any particular words, just a humming melody. Finally, the pastor flips through papers, clears his throat, and uses his forced professional voice to read an excerpt from the Bible. It ends in, “These three remain: faith, hope, and love.”
My stomach lurches at the words. No, they don’t remain. They don’t! Gripping the pew on either side of me, I suck in through my nose. I can hold it together if only her voice in my head would shut up.
Pastor Scott rustles through his stack of notes again, the congregation silently watching. Waiting. At last he pushes the papers aside, and without any notes, leans toward the microphone ready to ad-lib. “I don’t mean any disrespect,” he says, using a different tone now, like he’s ready to cheer us all up, “but there is a great side to all of this.”
A murmur covers the congregation. Mom’s choked cries intensify and Dad moves closer to comfort her.
“Of course we’ll miss Faith, but let’s think of the glory she’s enjoying now. She gets to be with her Lord! This is what she wanted!”
There’s a bustle around me. I want to check on Mom, see how she’s taking this, but I can’t seem to turn my head. Deep breaths, Brie.
“I hadn’t spoken to Faith much lately,” he goes on. “Last year, when she was more active in my group, she was a real welcoming force for the new kids. Everyone really loved her.”
Last year? More active? How could she possibly have been more active? Faith was a youth group junkie since the day she turned twelve.
Mom’s breathing becomes quick, like she’s hyperventilating, so I place my hand back over hers. I glance at Dad, but he’s busy stroking Mom’s hair.
“So we thank you, God,” the youth pastor bellows, “for the time we did have with Faith.”
I feel a jerk to my hand as Mom pulls away and stands in one quick motion.
“The time we had with her?” Mom laughs a loud, cynical laugh, almost choking on her tears. “We didn’t spend any time with her!” She drops back to her seat, as though she can’t hold herself up any longer.
I get Mom’s point, though. Even the years we did have with Faith, she was either in school, or at some youth event. The youth group at Crestview surged in the last couple of years, and they have their own church services at the old fire hall, so Mom and Dad stopped seeing her Sundays, too. Still, I don’t think it’s really fair for her to blame Pastor Scott for that.
Dad stares straight ahead, like Mom’s outburst didn’t happen. And no one else steps in. When I glance around, people look away as if they aren’t really watching us. Mom folds over, almost in half, sobbing so loud I want to cover my ears.
Dad puts his arm over her, but keeps his eyes straight ahead. Apparently, the wall in front gives him strength. With his face scrunched tight, Pastor Scott stands behind the podium. He blinks, clears his throat, and attempts to recover.
“I’m, um, terribly sorry.” He runs a hand through his shaggy hair. “Perhaps now would be a good time to open it up for those who would like to help us remember Faith.” His words are so quiet, he sounds like a different person. He backs away from the microphone. Now is the time when he’s supposed to give me the nod (so I can give him the corresponding no way shake) but he doesn’t angle even slightly in my direction. He probably doesn’t want to look at Mom.
I scan the room for an aunt or uncle, for someone who I can give my most pleading puppy-dog look to, but everyone avoids my eyes. Gripping my notebook with both hands, I totter up on shaky legs. Dad wants me to say something? Well, here goes, I guess. The people in the pews
around me are still like a photograph while I inch my way up to the podium.
Everyone’s eyes fix on me at the microphone. Hopeful eyes. Like I’m going to say something that will make it all better.
“I can’t,” I blurt.
Pastor Scott immediately steps beside me and places his hand on my shoulder. He thinks I can’t bring myself to say anything. I scan the crowd again. That’s what they all think.
Flipping open my journal, I decide to just read the stupid poem. People will be grateful for whatever I say at this point.
“I wrote this poem,” I say into the mic. The pastor’s hand falls off me and he backs away. “I’ve never read my poetry for anyone, not even Faith. But somehow I think she would want me to read this today.” I glance around the upper part of the room to catch my breath, but then realize how stupid I look.
I drop my head and race through the first lines.
“I wish I could talk about things from our lives
Faith would have retained it all, had she survived.”
I look up and smile a little to make it clear that I know it’s pretty lame, but then with all the somber faces staring back at me, I clue in to how inappropriate I look. I stare down at my journal.
I scan over the next lines and they’re all about me and my struggle to get through this. That suddenly seems inappropriate too. Shouldn’t this be about Faith? I run my finger halfway down my page looking for something about my sister. I swallow down my nerves and start again.
“That time with the tuba and breaking her arm
Will no longer conjure our whimsical charm.”
I can’t stop the flashes of memories in my head. The tuba that was bigger than she was. The coat hanger she used to shove down her cast to scratch with. It’s hard to clear the images. Part of me wants to keep concentrating on her face. But everyone is waiting for my next words and I can barely feel my tongue now from nerves.
“Disneyland seems like forever in the past.