People laugh nervously, unsure if they’re allowed to be even kind of happy on such a sad day. Xander pauses with a wince, cheeks flushing. He’s doubting the joke, too. His cool blue eyes flutter closed. He has two sets of eyelashes, the same genetic mutation that Elizabeth Taylor had. Tears slide between them now.
My crush on Xander predates his painfully handsome phase. When we first met, he wasn’t much taller than me and his knees and elbows stuck out like doorknobs from his pale skin. But it was unrequited love at first sight. Mortification stabs my guts as I remember talking endlessly about him over dinner back in middle school. My sisters have never let me forget this. I had to start paying Izzy five bucks any time Riley was over just so she wouldn’t start blabbing about it in front of her.
Should I have told Riley about my crush? It wouldn’t have saved her life, but it’s weird to have secrets from her now. I always figured I would tell her about it someday—when it was funny instead of pathetic. But I always figured that someday was coming, and, God, it sucks to be wrong.
“The world sucks without Riley,” Xander finishes heavily, echoing my thoughts. My heart beats faster. “The world is darker without her. My life will be worse off for not having my little sister to share it with. And I’ll never—” His voice breaks. He was so poised when he spoke at June and Dayton’s service. Sad, but recognizably himself. But today he’s unraveling. His spine curves and his shoulders pitch forward as his sobs echo around the room. One of his graceful hands comes up to his face, and he presses the heel of his palm to his wet eye. Even from the back of the room, I can see his fingers shaking. “I don’t know why she’s gone. I’ll never understand why . . .”
He turns away from the microphone, almost boneless. His father appears beside him, wrapping his son in a steadying hug as they weep on each other. I wonder when the last time was that Mr. Greenway cried at one of his own funerals. He’s usually so unflappable, full of dad jokes and rarely seen without a can of sparkling water in his hand. But he can’t even lead the service. He steers Xander back to their seats. Mrs. Greenway joins their group hug as Ms. Chu reappears at the podium, reclaiming her position as the emcee.
“And now,” Ms. Chu says, firmly redirecting the audience’s focus to her steady voice, “Fairmont Academy’s award-winning show choir will perform a final tribute to Riley’s memory.”
Wait, what?
I scramble a little, looking for the program I shoved under my butt when I sat down. The picture of Riley on the front is less than a week old. The last picture she’ll ever post to Instagram. And it’s a bathroom selfie, heaven help us all. I flip open the paper, scanning down the itinerary. Sure enough, the Fairmont show choir is scheduled as the penultimate presentation. They performed at June and Dayton’s service, too, but at least Dayton had been in the show choir. Riley didn’t give a shit about their a cappella shenanigans.
Out of the standing mourners, the members of the show choir file toward the front of the room. I should have recognized them in the crowd. They’re noticeably less upset than everyone else, their shoulders squared, their eyes shining with the thrill of performing. Soulless freaks.
As they shuffle themselves into rows in front of the podium, I flip over the program. On the back, there’s a quote from the Bible—nice try, Greenways, but Riley was pagan—and a poem that Aniyah Dorsey wrote about her feelings. Riley would laugh until she cried if she could read this poem. It rhymes. Riley. Shyly. Wryly.
The show choir warms up, a series of menacing oohs. The soloist standing at the center of the group aggressively taps out a four count on her leg. There’s a collective intake of breath, and they start the same damn song they sang at June and Dayton’s funeral. “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows.” They must be competing with it this year. They should rethink that. It’s terrible. A public domain rip-off of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” that’s somehow even more of a bummer. The soloist—a senior girl who is rail-thin and short-haired—starts the song.
“I'm always chasing rainbows. Watching clouds drifting by. My schemes are just like all my dreams. Ending in the sky.”
God. So nasal. It’s physically painful to my ears.
I won’t give them the satisfaction of looking at them. I turn back to the program. Riley smirks up at me, blond and effortless, with the kind of athletic build that everyone subconsciously registers as healthy. She should have been the queen of Fairmont. Considering she was Xander’s sister, she could have been. But she was happy—seemed happy—to hide in the background with me.
In the picture on the program, she’s wearing a beanie with round bear ears on top pulled down almost to her dark eyebrows. Her roots were growing out. It was only just starting to feel like real autumn, but she swore she was going to hide her hair under a hat until she got a chance to buy a box of bleach this weekend. And now she’ll never have the chance. She’ll have half an inch of dark brown growth on display until it decomposes from her scalp. If she knew, she’d be pissed.
Fuck a duck, she’d say in her raspy voice. She didn’t smoke, but she always sounded like she was getting over bronchitis. I can hear it so clearly in my head, it’s like she’s with me, making commentary in my ear.
Where she should be.
Where she never will be again.
My head spins. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t be here. My body is too exhausted to cry, but if I stay I might start screaming over the show choir. And while I don’t care if I ruin this garbage performance, I don’t think it’ll disprove my parents’ theory that I’ve lost my mind.
“Some fellows look and find the sunshine.”
I stagger to my feet, turning my back to the performance and the crowd. It’s not like I can blend in. I can’t pretend like my body doesn’t take up space. The only thing to do is lean into it, to do what Riley would do and not give a fuck that people can see me leaving. The sounds of my boots are muffled against the carpet as I stride down the aisle. I keep my head up, letting everyone I pass see my makeup untouched by tears, letting it confirm their worst fears about the fat witch of the junior class.
I see Aniyah Dorsey, amateur poet and school newspaper reporter, standing near the door. She’s in plus-size leggings and a black flannel. Tears fog the silver glasses perched on her dark brown nose. She whispers after me, “Mila?”
“Your poem fucking sucks,” I growl at her.
Her chin snaps back. I can’t tell if she’s offended or indignant, and I honestly couldn’t give half a shit to stick around long enough to find out. I don’t need fat-girl solidarity right now. I don’t need anyone’s solidarity. Ever.
“I always look and find the rain.”
I pop the collar of my jacket, stuff my hands into the pockets, and step out into the friendless world.
TWO
I’M NOT READY to be back at school, but here I am, balanced on a stool at the center table in third-period chemistry while Mr. Cavanagh wipes last period’s notes from the whiteboard. People filter into the room, their voices like mosquitos buzzing. I can’t seem to stop myself from flinching when they pass too close to me.
According to the internet, only 20 percent of homicides are committed by strangers. Which means there is an 80 percent chance that the last thing Riley saw was the face of someone she knew, staring down at her through the murky water of the creek. There is an 80 percent chance that it was someone like Dawn Mathy of the Nouns clique, who is sitting daintily in front of me, smoothing her short bangs. She gets belligerent whenever someone questions the need for a speech and debate team. Or Dan Calalang, a senior stuck in junior-level chem. His forearms are scary beefy from CrossFit, the better to drag you to your death with.
It could be one of the janitors or Ms. Chu or someone whose name I’ve never bothered to learn. Someone who took my best friend from me and is still going to class and taking notes and looking forward to cafeteria chicken nuggets.
I feel sick to my stomach. I’m not ready to be here. Everyone seems so normal, but they can’t all be—normal people don’t drown girls in the creek.