Stealing Pulse

Chapter 9

I died of the flu in the third grade. My best friend Maddi Jersek presided over my funeral.

Lying in the school soccer field, holding a bouquet of dandelions, my cheeks rubbed with pollen—yellow and sickly—I asked Maddi to give my eulogy.

"What?"

Neither of us had ever gone to a funeral, but somehow I knew more.

"My eulogy.  Say nice things about me.  Since I'm dead."

She hesitated. "Alexandra was really nice.  I wish she hadn't died.  And I hope she goes to Heaven."

I waited.

"Are you done?"

"Uhuh. Amen."

"Okay, now's when you bury me."

Maddi ripped grass from the field and poured it over me.  I smiled as it fell into my mouth.

"Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust,"

***

In kindergarten I learned about something so incredibly spectacular, that I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was nothing. At recess, on the playground, if I concentrated long enough on nothing I began to see nothing. I began to hear nothing.

In the first grade I discovered that nothing smelled exceedingly good. In attempting to describe that smell to my parents I always failed.  No, not a sweet smell, not a tender smell, not a smell like the sea at dawn or the forest in the night, but a smell like nothing I had encountered anywhere else.

In the second grade I spent recess alone, sitting on the edge of the playground, breathing in that smell.  I anticipated the taste of nothing the way I anticipated cookies baking in the oven.  That smell—the house was soaked in it by the time the cookies were baked, cooled, and ready to eat.

It was in the second grade that the recess lady introduced me to Maddi.  Breathing in the nothing smell of the blacktop, the nothing smell of the tire swing, I leaned against an old pine tree one afternoon and traced its bark with my fingers until the plump shadow of Mrs. Lawson loomed over me.

"What are you doing, Alexandra?" she asked.

"Nothing."

As if I had not just explained that I was otherwise occupied, Mrs. Lawson replied, "Well then, if you're not busy, I'd like to introduce you to someone."

Obviously I was already busy.  Mrs. Lawson was the type of teacher whom, even in second grade, you knew you were more intelligent than her.

Mrs. Lawson gestured to a pale, wiry girl fidgeting at her side.

"This is Maddi Jersek.  She's new here—moved to town just last week.  Her father is the pastor of the church down the street.  Maybe you could give Maddi a tour of the school, make her feel at home." She tossed us a limp smile before wandering away. Maddi wrung her hands and stared at a dandelion near my feet.

I leaned forward. "Do you like dandelions? Mrs. Lawson says they're just weeds, but I think they're really pretty."

"Oh, these are dandelions?"

"What? You've never heard of them?"

"Well, we didn't have a garden at home. Nothing grew there. Mom says the dirt was dead." Maddi knelt and bent forward, dipping her nose into the yellow blossom. She didn’t like it much.

***

Maddi invited me to dinner at her house that night, and for the next couple months I ate with the Jerseks at least once every week. The Jerseks played a weird game before dinner.  I didn't know its name, and no one ever taught me the rules.  Maddi and her family seemed to know them, though, so all I could do was pretend and try not to look stupid.  I watched them, and did what they did.