Minnesota Goodbyes

Entry #61

It's hard to look back at the beginning of a f t e r. She'd scattered my world like ash, and I can only remember brief, specific moments where everything swirls back together. That time takes on a grainy, jolted feel, as though I was in the dark until something dragged me into the next moment. Until something dragged me into the next moment. Until something— again and again.

The world after her: a series of snapshots in black and white, bleached bone-pale or deep as shadow. Even now, they're hard to remember, and you thumb through these events as though they actually are photographs, until something stands out livid against the blur of grey.

(Flowers against the snow. A jade necklace. The line of a hymn, ringing clear through the church.)

(The shine of your heels. A wavering smudge of eyeliner. The clink of jet earrings.)

But it's hard to tell which moment is which. Because you wore those earrings and heels and made up your face days before, the night of the party—

You'd worn them and been guided by Jay's hand on your elbow to your room, and then everything had collapsed. You've worked through those things; you can sort them out through the haze of mismemory. But there were days between the party and funeral, and those jumble when you try and sift through them.

Because you'd held onto this idea: If you stay the course and refuse to move on, she cannot be dead. If everything freezes, remains the same, she must as well. Right?

So: the shine of your heels, a smudge of eyeliner, the clink of your earrings.

You cannot say how long you spend curled on your futon before Lacy guides you from it and into the bathroom. Days maybe. When Lacy'd tried to get you to eat earlier, to go to Sam and Jay's room so you wouldn't be alone, you didn't move. Your limbs hung heavy, and you think maybe she tried to hoist you up a few times (or steal things from the dining hall for you), but it's blurry and foggy and being with them would be a lie.

Because you are alone.

She helps you wash your face that morning. You know that much. You'd left your makeup on from the party. And your dress. And your heels. Like a walk of shame that burns more brutally than any embarrassment, that sticks to your skin. But if you don't change, then how can time move forward?

On the day of the funeral, Lacy coaxes you to the bathroom and washes your face for you and switches the shower on before nudging you in. You think of nothing as the water drips from the tap, nothing as you scrub your skin raw, nothing as your flesh rages red under your nails, under the heat of the water.

So you turn the water blisteringly cold, like she was and the sobs wrack your chest and when did you start crying? Because you can't remember when you started feeling enough to cry again, and you wish you could go back to the numbness of before.

(Lacy pulls you out of the shower and you grapple for a towel and somehow you're in a black dress and sleek boots and then in a pew in some church and bloody light tumbles in through the stained-glass windows and you can't remember how you got here or how you ended up next to Lacy and Sam and Jay and Nick.)

When her dad gets up to the pulpit and tries to speak, he can't. His face twists into a watery smile, and you know he's trying to pretend his daughter isn't dead and he blinks away tears and swipes them away and pinches the bridge of his nose and he's trying to tell a story about how Clair liked her Macaroni and Cheese when she was little and how they bought her a telescope for Christmas one year and—

You've stumbled down the aisle and out the back, and you've collapsed outside the doors of the sanctuary, forehead resting on your knees as you bite your lips. The sobs escape anyway, raw in your throat, and you can't dislodge them. And outside the open doors of the sanctuary, curled inside yourself, you can hear Amazing Grace drift through the stale air and hear how they're commending her spirit into some hands and your eyes blur and—

She's dead. No one comes out to put their hand on your shoulder, and you are so profoundly grateful because you've created this dead girl and you deserve to live every bit of this misery and you deserve to shrink into yourself right outside the entrance and you deserve to be separated from her and from everyone because this is the only way you can pay for what you've done.

When they carry her out, the six of them, you pull yourself to your feet. Lacy tries to wrap her arm around you, tries to squeeze your shoulder and rest her head in the crook of your neck, but you shrug her off and stagger out the front steps of the church while they pack her into the back of a hearse.

The car glitters blackly against the snow.

You've never hated a car before. Your dad has always had a pet project of them, old Impalas or a brown T-Bird or salvaged parts stowed in the last stall of the garage, and he'd taught you some of the basics of fixing them up and patching up your bike. You've always liked cars, liked picking them apart and putting them back together.

But this. Scarab-sleek and beetle-black and you hate it.

Your reflection shines down the length of the car, and it reminds you of the time on your bike when you were both so alive, when you mirrored each other. (But you do now. Dead this time, instead of bright. Dead.)

When it pulls away, so does your future. A gloss of black against the starkness of winter, the only thing bright against the grey skies and bleached snow. And you and Lacy follow it in her car. You follow a dead star, until the light fades until it swallows you whole, until you reach the black hole of an end. Until the procession pulls into a boneyard, a place that would be beautiful (the footstones are flush with the snow, to the point where you almost can't see them. Just gentle hills sparkling with snow. Any other day it would be peaceful.)

The cemetery is quiet. Quiet as the grave and quiet as death and a hiccup of laughter wells in your chest and you choke it down because it's hysteria and this is what happened when you lose everything. And you double over, choking on snot and shock and letting the pain tumble out of your chest thickly, until Lacy lays her palm on your back and you straighten yourself up and stagger from her car to the—

Her mom says some words. Her dad says some words. Lacy and Jay and Sam and some of her high school friends and her cousins say some words.

Nick is the only one as quiet as you, the only one who's peeled away from the group and is staring out at the endless footstones. And when you catch his eye, you can see your shared failure reflected back at you.

And then it is even more quiet. No one picks up a shovel to cover her, but you know they will as soon as everyone leaves. (So don't leave. But Lacy guides you gently by the elbow when the service is over and you're trapped in her warm car and when you rest your forehead against the cool glass, your tears feel like they will freeze on your skin.)

Maybe they should. Because she'd died cold, and now she always would be, laid beneath a blanket of frozen earth.