4.8.16

Friday

I never knew her, I think as I walk through the halls. Somehow I hold the purse in my hand, but I can't feel my fingers. I never knew her.

Tissues skitter across the tile floors like tumbleweeds, and around every corner there's a cluster of crying people. A few seniors cautiously push a cart past me, covered in cups of water and a few boxes of even more tissues.

The emergency counselors have arrived. I somehow wound up in the band room, hugging someone who ran track with her while he sobbed, "I don't understand," over and over and over. A little middle schooler comes to me, his eyes glazed with tears behind the glasses. I take him into my arms.

I can't cry. Not when everyone else is crying. Something in me says it's my job to help. My boyfriend takes the attention from me, talking with others by the instrument cubbies. Nobody is talking to me. Nobody looks at me. An unexplainable swell of anger seizes control of my body and I turn towards the wall, kicking it with the ball of my foot. The pain is delayed, and I'm already out the door and in the front flower bed by the time I feel it.

I don't cry. I try to breathe – it's the best I can do. All I can bring myself to do. Faces flash across my mind: my friend's tearstained face as she rested her hand on my knee, and I sobbed. Our dead classmate's former boyfriend and former friend of mine, looking like the world has simply dissolved and left a void in its place. Our third period teacher's face when she knew none of us were coming to class, because her empty desk would be there. All the boys who made fun of her views – she was more liberal than anyone else in Honors, except maybe me. But I never knew her.

Someone finally noticed my departure. My boyfriend finds me outside, my head between my knees as I try to get breath somewhere it isn't reaching that it needs to reach. I feel the tremors in his hand as he rests it on my back, trying to be strong for my sake. I want to tell him he doesn't have to be, but that'd make me a hypocrite.

The pine straw shifts and he sits next to me, his legs folded and bumping against mine. People wander past like the undead, because they may as well be. Nobody knows what to do. They don't want to go where they're supposed to be, but they don't know where else to go. The general idea is "away from here," but where is here? Where are we? Where do we go?

My head is spinning from dehydration, and I feel like my brain is shrinking and bumping around inside my skull. I need to drink, but my water is in my locker, and it's so far away. I lean into my boyfriend's embrace and curl up, but it doesn't provide the comfort it usually does. I'm not hiding from anything, so I'm not safe from it.

I'm walking again. I don't remember opening any doors, but I'm in the middle of the hallway, sliding to a seat in front of my locker. He's still with me. I can see inside the English classroom, but her empty seat doesn't seem so empty when none of the others are filled. It feels like she got sick, or went to a track meet, or on another cool vacation. But that seat will never be filled again. I leave.

We have a memorial for her in the gym. The sky is dark. The lights are dark. They play her favorite songs from our local Christian music station, and I know I'll never be able to listen to them again. They have a slide show. Oh lord, a slide show. She's alive again for a moment, laughing and smiling and playing with puppies at the pet store. But then the movie ends and she's gone all over again, and everyone's crying, crying, crying, because we'll never be the same again.

The school praise group leads songs, but the music is punctuated by the occasional choking sob from the crowd.

"You give and take away."

I lose my mind. She was taken away, but it's hard to think she was given. To us, she's always been ours. Now we see that God lent her to us, and we took her for granted. Her choice to leave us was wrong, but so was ours in believing she would always be with us.

"You give and take away."

He's crying too; loudly. No one cares. Nobody judges. It is, for once, the way she'd have wanted us to behave toward each other. But at so great a cost.

The Bible teacher reads a verse; something about God using this for good. Somewhere in my numbness I feel a tinge of anger. This man is telling us, on the day of our friend's death, that something good will come of this. And maybe something will. But right now, we just need to grieve. We need to miss her. We need to see that this is not good. This is wrong.

Funerals are for old people. Memorial services are for old people. They aren't for girls who were a month shy of turning sixteen, who stood up for the minorities and helped people with emotional problems and loved the beach and played with animals and had a little brother who's eight years old. It's clearer now more than ever that I never knew her.

Someone relates the story of her suicide, and I regret listening. I see it in my mind's eye, and I will never forget. I will never forget. I will never, ever forget.

I won't forget the sound of screams when the announcement was made. I won't forget the faces, swimming in a blur in my vision. I won't forget the deadened look on her little brother's face. I won't forget her favorite bracelet, hanging on the edge of a picture frame next to her urn. I will never forget.

I promise.