Someone reads a sad poem. Someone sings a sad song. Jamie’s brother thanks everyone for remembering his sister.
“She had the funniest smile,” he says, “and when she laughed, you just wanted to laugh, too. That’s how she was. I wish she were here, laughing with us right now.”
Can she laugh, I wonder, wherever she is… In the ground? Skipping across clouds? Strolling down streets of gold?
The obituary said she was “welcomed to heaven by her grandfather and grandmother.”
So let’s say Jamie is up there, getting her heavenly reward for being kind to some a-hole who would (and did) bash her brains in. Let’s say she’s watching us. Would Heaven Jamie laugh at all the off-key singing? At the tissue on her brother’s cheek?
For a while after Jamie was killed, the world didn’t laugh. But the world got over it.
To everything there is a season. Turn, turn, turn.
And so we turned, too. Even the four of us who knew it could have been our faces on the memorial service poster. We all turned, though some of us took longer than others.
Taylor Avril was probably the worst. For months, she walked around like a backup singer for a metal band, hair tangled, eyes ringed with week-old eyeliner. She stopped eating, stopped sleeping. When she stopped showering, Lindsey showed up at her house and refused to leave until she used soap.
That’s Lindsey’s way. She wants to fix everyone—even those like Taylor, who would rather rot.
But now Taylor’s in her first year at Premiere Cosmetology in Roanoke. So I suppose Lindsey got her way.
She’s at the vigil, too. The crowd makes an arc around the stage, and I see Taylor on the other side, holding her candle inches away from her lips. The light casts tiny half-moons in her eyes. Her hair is a soft purple now—cut short, but with a few long beaded strands. I guess she’s been her own beauty school test case one too many times.
An Asian guy with saggy jeans and eyebrow piercings is hanging on her shoulders like a coat. He’s wearing a black T-shirt with a big red fish on it.
The stage people start in on another song, this time posting lyrics on the scoreboard.
You were our light, you were the one to make us smile, but you were only here, baby, for too short a while.
We’re supposed to sing, too, but my voice sucks so I just watch the crowd. A line of people sways in unison, like the Whos from Whoville. Or old drunks at a Zac Brown Band concert.
The wind has quieted down now, and the candles stretching across the field make a hopeful little galaxy. I glance up to see if the stars can match them, but all I see past the lights is an inky blue vastness. The stands are empty, a cup that holds nothing but dark sky.
Empty, except for… A woman sits halfway up one set of stands, entirely alone. She’s wearing a camel-colored coat and a black old-lady hat. Small, round-shouldered—not remarkable at all. Only, why is she there alone? Not singing. Holding an unlit candle in a gloved hand.
Maybe I’m paranoid, but it’s almost like she’s looking right at me. I lower my candle and turn to stare at the stage. When I take a quick glance back, the old lady’s head is angled toward the stage as well.
I nudge Lindsey and nod toward the woman. “Who’s that? In the stands?”
Lindsey glances over, shrugs, and launches into the chorus. After forever, the music rises and the voices around me wobble into an awkward silence. The screen goes dark for a second, then the slideshow of photos starts back up. Everyone stands there for a second, not sure what to do. The mayor takes the mic and waves us off. “Good night, everyone. Be safe!”
As the crowd breaks, Lindsey and I head over and talk with Taylor and her friend.
Taylor doesn’t introduce us to the guy, but Lindsey compliments his shirt. He tells us it was made with an actual dead fish that he rubbed paint on like a rubber stamp.
We talk about nothing that matters—beauty school, our school, the way the mayor stood too close to the mic and sang way out of tune. Everything but Jamie. Anything but Kyle.
I scan the stands, but there’s no old lady now. Even so, my neck prickles like I’m being watched.
“You guys should come by,” Taylor says. “I have a place set up in the basement. I could do your hair.”
“What do you want to do to it?” I say it like it’s a joke, but I’m serious. I don’t want purple hair.
“I’ll figure it out. The hair will speak to me,” she says.
“We totally should,” says Lindsey.
“Yeah, maybe,” I say, but I’m thinking, Not a chance.
It’s like a little reunion—the three of us, dead Jamie on the screen.
Blair Mattern, the other girl Kyle texted that day, isn’t here, but she was quoted in the newspaper last week. She is the oldest of us—the same age as Kyle—and she moved to Los Angeles late last year.
According to the article, the day of the murder, Kyle invited Blair to dinner at The Pink Envelope, which is the fanciest restaurant in town. When she refused, he told her he was going to be famous, that she’d see his picture on the front page of the newspaper. He even hinted that he might kill someone.
Blair said she’d written it off as his general weirdness. “I don’t want to think about it. I should have done something,” she told the newspaper guy. “Jamie was a beautiful girl. She shouldn’t have had to lose her life.”
Lose her life. It seemed an odd way to put it. Where did she lose her life, in Kyle’s crowbar?
It’s like everything is our fault. I should have done something.… She lost her life.
But Kyle killed her. He did it. It’s not Blair’s fault. It’s not Jamie’s.
And I know, no matter how much it feels that way when I’m alone late at night, it’s not my fault either. It’s not mine.
A Minor Point
The unfortunate difference between knowing something and believing it to be true.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
The Monday after the vigil, Charlie Hunt raises his hand in sixth-period English and volunteers to die.
Friday we’re reading Hamlet, and Mr. Campbell has this idea that we need to act some scenes out to really “wrap our minds around it” (his words, not mine). To be fair, Hamlet’s a bloodbath, so pretty much everyone has to be willing to die. Most of the girls are holding out for the part of Ophelia, since she’s young and pretty and her death is romantic, as far as deaths go. Plus, her lover-boy Hamlet is almost surely going to be Nick Richert, who has that whole hot-jock-who’s-too-smart-to-be-a-jock thing going.
“I’m taking orders. Who wants Rosencrantz and Guildenstern?” Mr. Campbell asks. “They don’t have too many lines, and they both die offstage.”
Charlie, who has been quiet to the point of nonexistence, puts out his arm, elbow bent, like he’s turning right on a bike.
A half-second later, I raise my hand. I’d rather have a boy role than be either the whacked-out Ophelia or the whacked-out queen. Plus, I like the idea of not so many lines. The momentum of Charlie’s hand causes some sort of sonic ripple in the air, because as soon as my hand goes up, Felix McKenzie’s hand follows suit. And then James Forrester’s. It’s like we’re doing the wave at a ball game.
“Hmm,” says Mr. Campbell, “I saw your hand first, Charlie. Who was next?” He is asking Charlie, not the rest of us.
Charlie shrugs, silent. Mr. Campbell waits, then goes on like he’d never asked.
“Sorry, James and Felix,” Mr. Campbell says. He points at Charlie, “Rosencrantz,” and then at me, “Guildenstern.”
After doling out the rest of the roles, Mr. Campbell tells us what scene he wants each group to prepare for. Charlie and I are supposed to work on the part where Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are first reunited with their old friend Hamlet.
At first, they’re joking around like frat boys. But then Hamlet asks them whether or not the king sent for them. They try to dodge the question. But Hamlet won’t drop it. It’s a test. Hamlet wants to know who he can trust.
/> I could have saved him some trouble.
No one. Trust no one. No testing required.
Charlie drags his desk over to mine and sits across from me. I tell him I can read for both Guildenstern and Hamlet while we practice since Nick, who has indeed been cast in the starring role, is busy with another group.
Charlie says nothing, so I start as Hamlet in a low voice: “‘Oh God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.’”
Then I raise my voice to do Guildenstern. “‘Which dreams indeed are ambition, for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.’”
I lower my voice to be Hamlet again. “‘A dream itself is but a shadow.’”
Charlie sighs and runs his hands through his hair. “‘Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that it is but a shadow’s shadow,’” he drones, looking himself like a shadow’s shadow.
“Hey, can I ask you something?” It’s not in the script, and he looks at me like he’s worried I have rabies.
“I wanted it to be different,” I say. I’m pretty sure we both know what I’m talking about, but I say her name anyway. “Jamie.” Someone has drawn the profile of a cartoon face with a red permanent marker on my desk, and I press into its outline with my thumb. “But that’s… that kind of wanting isn’t worth much. It doesn’t change anything. You know, since I haven’t learned how to warp time or whatever. Still, what happened… I don’t know how I’m supposed to be okay with—” All the good words are apparently busy in everyone else’s mouths. The ones I’m left with seem bald, awkward, wrong. I blurt them out. “I just get so angry. It makes me sick.” Too loud. I quiet my voice, but that’s wrong, too. It comes out like I’m whispering a dirty joke. “It’s like I can’t get over it. I mean, how are we just supposed to be okay with what happened?”
He looks at me a long second, his eyes full of some sad thing. Animal sad. Like those fish that have lived for so long in underground pools they’ve evolved to be born blind.
“I’m sorry.” I can’t believe I’m saying this, to Charlie Hunt of all people. Or at least the broken husk of Charlie Hunt. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“I just—” he says. “I gotta go.” He closes his book, grabs his backpack by the strap, and takes off down the aisle.
The room ripples in his wake. A blur.
“Charlie all right?” Mr. Campbell asks me a minute after the door swings shut.
“He was feeling sick,” I cover. “He needed to see the nurse.”
Stuck
Charlie isn’t in gym next period. And he isn’t in English or gym the next day. But Mark Lee gives me stink eye while we’re doing our laps Tuesday, so I’m guessing something was said. I keep running, though, and now I’m running against Mark. A stand-in for Charlie. But Mark is too slow, easy to beat.
The track spools out before me like a tired song. Above, clouds puddle in the sky.
I shouldn’t have asked Charlie anything. I should have read Hamlet’s next line and finished the scene and kept my mouth shut. It’s not like Charlie has the answers. Clearly.
But still, I want them. And not just for me. I want answers for Lindsey and Taylor Avril. For Jamie’s mom, her dad, her brother. Blair Mattern. For the silver-haired lady at the dentist’s office where Jamie worked. For Charlie himself. How are any of us supposed to get over something like this?
And of course every day I wake up, don’t I? I wash my face and put on clothes.
But it’s not normal yet. It’s not la-di-da, how it was before. Back when I believed I got to choose what to do with my life. When I believed I got to choose to keep living.
As my legs pump out the final lap, I think about that kid story. Can’t go over it, can’t go under it… Oh no, gotta go through it.
But there’s no way through that I see.
I try getting excited about my future. As if me wanting all the traditional teenager things makes it okay for me to want all the traditional teenager things. I try to focus on plans for graduation and college and meeting new people and living on my own and someday being an archaeologist or criminal profiler or whatever that woman who lived with the gorillas was. I try to appreciate the fact that I’m running outside under a cool blue sky.
I thank the ground for keeping me and I breathe.
Poem of the Week
English Wednesday, Charlie is back.
He doesn’t look at me, but I’m not sure if that’s his general he-never-looks-at-anyone thing or a specific he’s-not-looking-at-me-because-I-was-an-insensitive-jerk thing.
We are not doing Hamlet today because we have rough draft reviews for our college application essays. We’re supposed to research a real university’s question so we can use it when we submit to places this fall, but I haven’t gotten that far, so I’m just going with the generic “Describe a person you admire” and recycling an old Mother’s Day paper.
Mr. Campbell has told us to bring a book so we can read quietly on our own while he meets with one person at a time.
“But before we dig into our essay reviews—” Mr. Campbell rubs his hands excitedly. “Poetry waits for no man! That’s right, kids. Poem of the Week time. Who’s up?” Mr. Campbell consults his list. I am surprised when he calls Charlie’s name. “Front and center, Mr. Hunt.”
Charlie pulls his notebook from his backpack and walks to the front of the class.
Instead of handing out copies, he bends open the notebook and says out loud, “How to Get Over It.” And now he is looking straight at me. And there is nowhere for me to go but here and nothing for me to do but listen.
I’ve learned about the space
between a proton and a neutron.
And I can calculate the shape
of normal distribution.
But I’m not going to figure out,
not now, not ever,
how to get over it.
Not because it’s impossible,
improbable, unknowable—
not because I can’t,
but because I could.
I could, I might, forget.
The way she’d close her eyes
and go inside the music.
The cross-eyed smirk she’d give
when I said something stupid.
The curly red wig
she wore in the rain
that Halloween, singing loud as thunder
“The sun’ll come out tomorrow…”
And tomorrow, it did.
I won’t get over it.
I hold the burning loss of her
so tight
it sears a hole in my skin—
a place where I can go
to begin
to remember.
Where she can still be near
and I can go on, for her sake,
from this side of the divide.
Where I can talk to silence
and hear the silence talk back.
He looks for a second electric, like the old Charlie. Supernova Charlie.
“Damn.”
It’s a whispered damn, the damn of admiration. And I’m not the one who whispers it. Mr. Campbell does. I don’t think he realizes he spoke out loud. He forgets to ask Charlie for his question about the poem.
When Charlie passes me on the way to his seat, the hair on the back of my arms stands up. I sense my own skin, for maybe the first time ever, shimmering.
Matched
In gym next period, I don’t run against Charlie.
I run with him, beside him. And when we’re done, panting, our hands on our knees, I say between breaths, “Campbell was right. That poem. Damn, Charlie. Where’d that come from?”
He straightens, shrugs, and walks to the side of the field, where Coach Flanagan waits with tennis equipment. The coach sends us in groups of four to the courts. Charlie and I are paired with the next ones in, Mark Lee and another guy, Jared Hilley.
Jared, or JJ as he
tried to get everyone to call him when we hit ninth grade, crushed on me last year. He was always showing up in weird places, smelling of some tropical cologne. But of course I was all about Sander then. And when Sander and I broke up before he left for Virginia Tech, I was all about forgetting—a fact that Jared used to his advantage.
What did I want to forget?
Only everything.
Sander. Sander’s hand up Gemma Cook’s shirt.
Andie and Monica off in a distant solar system, orbiting their own little planets.
The way my dad clearly didn’t know what to do with his worry or his hands so he tried to pet my hair when I was at the breakfast table.
The way I flinched at his touch.
Jamie. And how much I hated myself for wanting to forget Jamie.
Kyle Paxson.
Seeing Kyle outside of Hardee’s. How normal and boring it was.
The nightmare where his fist hammers my jaw and teeth spill from my mouth like loose beans.
That I could feel so much like a blackbird. Oil-slick feathers. Hollow bones. Blunt, useless beak.
Knowing that Kyle Paxson is not the only Kyle Paxson.
So, yeah, getting wasted is awesome for forgetting, and I spent more than my share of weekend nights wasting away in someone’s basement or garage.
That lasted a month or two of weekends, and then Fridays and Saturdays melded into Sundays, and Thursdays, Wednesdays, and my grades tanked and my mom freaked and Lindsey staged an intervention. Lindsey hadn’t been that close of a friend before, but after Kyle, the way she kept standing between me and the brick wall I was trying to crash myself against—that made us close. Like she got what I was feeling, what I was trying not to feel. And even though she was feeling something different, she was there. Not judging, just there.
Jared was around during the wasted weeks, too; I was lucid enough to remember that I made out with him at least once. It was the sort of zero-to-sixty all-tongue assault that seems hotter when you see it in the movies than when you’re actually one of the participating tongues. Lindsey eventually pried us apart and drove me home—but not before I fell on top of the snack table on the way out the door.
How She Died, How I Lived Page 3