My brothers got me to the church for Win’s funeral. They sat me in a pew. They surrounded me like linebackers. Like goddamn secret service in black suits. I didn’t remember my dad’s funeral, but I could see all of them remembering it, comparing it, sharing sad, knowing glances. Their shared tragedy. The thing that bonded them together. Their stupid club I could never join. Fuck them. This was my friend. This was Win’s day, not Dad’s. This was my torture, not theirs.
I looked straight up at the ceiling. Wood beams. Sunlight. A white banner tucked into a corner. I looked at my feet. Black shoes. Black laces. Gray carpet. I looked at my hands. Cut up. Splintered. Bleeding around the half dozen Band-Aids my mom had stuck on them before I snapped at her to stop. I’d ripped down the rotting treehouse in the backyard the night before. My hands closed into fists, over nothing.
Up at the front of the room there was a white casket. I didn’t have to look to know it was there.
I heard the pastor clear his throat and I knew if I listened to a single word this man said—this self-important dick who’d never even talked to Win, who only knew him from the pictures that lined the aisles and looked up at the bottom of our chins from Xeroxed programs on every lap—I would start screaming and never stop.
I pushed past Cal, who didn’t try to stop me, and my mom, who made a lunge for my arm but missed. I ran away from the coffin into the entryway, but there were more people coming in, streams and streams of them, and outside it was sunny and summery and unbearable, a beautiful June weekend, the first weekend of the summer, what a stunning fucking miracle, so I turned before I reached the outer door and stepped into a closet filled with bunting and banners. In the dark, I leaned into the fabric until I could only see black, and I talked to myself.
—Coward.
—I’m not afraid.
—Then why hide?
—I don’t want to be a part of this phony bullshit.
—You’re hiding. You don’t want anyone to see you. Boo-hoo, poor Markos. You think they haven’t noticed that you’ve left?
—I don’t care what they think.
—Even your brothers? They’re out there. They’re wondering what the hell’s wrong with you.
—They don’t care about Win.
—But you do. Stop being a coward and get out there.
—Why?
—It’s up to you. You have to.
—Why me?
—Because you’re a Waters. Suck it up.
I took a couple more breaths into the fabric and was about to head back out when the door opened. I lunged for the handle to close it and practically ran face-first into Ari Madrigal.
“Hi,” I said.
She stared at me. Her eyes were red-rimmed. But her sadness didn’t make me angry like the rest of the crowd’s did. She had earned it. She, like me, had loved Win well enough to be entitled to this pain.
“What are you doing in here?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Why did you open the door?”
“To get away for a minute.”
“Yeah.”
She glanced from side to side and let go of the door. “Sorry to bother you,” she said.
“Wait!” I grabbed her arm. She looked at my hand, and I let go. “Are you—will you be at the house later?”
“Yeah, probably.”
“We should talk,” I said.
Her eyes grew big and she swallowed. Almost like she was afraid.
Coward.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said.
“Why not?”
“I . . . want to be alone.”
I remembered a flash of the night Win died, the sand and rain and sky, how happy and how awful it was. Then I lurched forward, extended my arms, and hugged her.
She didn’t hug back. Her entire body tensed. When I leaned back to see her face even her teeth were clenched.
“Sorry,” I said, and let go.
She backed away, shuffled into the church with the last of the stragglers. The pastor had begun his bland speech but I couldn’t hear the words from out in the entryway.
Ari wasn’t someone I would’ve ever chosen to be friends with. She came with Win. At first she seemed like any other girl, but you spend enough time with someone, and they surprise you—they do something unexpected or unusual that gives them three dimensions. Ari had made me laugh, and that made her real.
She was probably my closest friend now. Not my best friend—not the way Win was my best friend. Just that she was the only person who knew me for real.
She went out there and sat and listened. She knew Win. If she could do it, so could I.
I took a step into the church.
Black jackets.
Bowed heads.
White coffin.
Win’s sister Kara sitting in the front row breathing little-kid breaths, trying to keep it together.
I took a step back out into the entry. Then another step, and another, until I was running out to my mom’s car in the parking lot. I didn’t have the keys, so I sat on the ground with my back against a wheel and tried to breathe.