Coward.
I wasn’t as strong as Ari. Win always said she was tough, that she could handle anything, and I guess he was right. I couldn’t do it. Not even for my best friend.
I sat in the row behind my best friends near the front of the church. Ari stared blankly as people hugged her over and over, and Diana cried too hard to talk to anyone. I kept close and waited for someone to need me.
I had liked Win. He was quiet and sweet and would nod to me in the hall or ask how’s it going. When we all hung out in a group, which was rarely, he included me in conversation. Nothing huge, but it meant something.
Plus there was the fact that I wouldn’t have friends at all if it weren’t for him. If Ari hadn’t been busy with Win, Diana never would’ve been lonely enough to call me. I’d always been grateful for that.
In the past week, his death had loomed over me, the idea that he was gone forever and never coming back, the great big black wings of fear bearing down on me. I hadn’t felt that clutching in my heart since before my sister Mina left for her world tour, and I didn’t miss it. This was what was supposed to happen to Mina for so many years when she was sick: the huge dark bird would scoop her up in his talons and she’d disappear. I’d pictured sitting at Mina’s funeral many times; I’d pictured it so well that when I sat behind Diana and Ari in the church for Win’s, I felt I’d been there before.
But in actuality this was the first funeral I’d ever attended. Mina got better and went away. She was back for the summer now, but I could no longer stand the sight of her.
In the row in front of me, Diana put her arm around Ari’s shoulder, and I felt a stab of jealousy. I reached out to rest my hand on top of Diana’s, but Ari shook off Diana’s arm and I let my hand drop back into my lap. Ari didn’t look at Diana, but Diana watched her intently through her tears, looking for some clue as to what she should do and how she could help. I watched them both, wondering the same thing.
The pastor talked, there were long, horrible silences, and then Ari made it to the top of the steps to the podium before turning back around and sitting down without saying anything. She tripped on the way down the steps, and the entire church gasped. Ari, whose feet did exactly every impossible thing she wanted them to do, nearly fell. She stumbled back to her seat, her hair over her face.
An uncle talked, or maybe a neighbor—I was starting to lose track. Pockets of crying kept erupting from the back and the sides of the church. The coffin sat up on the stage, a shiny white brick. I felt the dark wings flapping closer. I wished the coffin had been open so I could be sure who was in it.
I couldn’t think about death or that great giant bird would get too near, so I thought of what I wished I could tell Ari and Diana instead, what the weakest, softest, most useless part of me felt. Stuff I’d never told them, because you don’t talk about depressing stuff like your sister’s near-death experiences, hanging out in the hospital every day after school, watching her waste away. No one would want a bummer like that around. And I wanted them to want me around, not only put up with me because my spell made them. The spell, at least, gave me the opportunity. I had to take advantage of it.
But still, I was full of weakness.
When my sister Mina first got sick, four years ago, we went to a hekamist. Well, first we went to the doctor, had all the tests done, cried, got a second opinion, went back to the first doctor, had more tests, started chemo—and then we went to the hekamist. Back then Mina insisted I come with her when she had big appointments. “Katelyn’s old enough. She deserves to be there,” she said, but I could tell in her eyes—because we were that close—that she was afraid to go alone.
So I went with them the day they had the appointment. It wasn’t the townie hekamist who lived in the neighborhood behind the high school; this one had been highly recommended by the best of the best—my dad wouldn’t go to anything less. She had a real office next to a hospital in Boston. Money had never been a consideration for my parents. Or perhaps it was the only consideration—the only thing they knew to do when tragedy struck was to spend.