The teachers are having an emergency faculty meeting, where they receive hastily photocopied sheets of “Things to Say to Distraught Students.” The principal breaks down when she tells everyone that the only reason Liz is still alive is because a machine is moving her lungs.
But I think at least a few of the teachers must be relieved, just a little, that Liz Emerson is no longer going to be attending their classes. Spanish, because Liz blatantly texted every single day and never participated in class. English, because Liz deliberately formed opinions directly opposite those of the teacher’s. Definitely study hall, because Liz Emerson’s very presence inspired everyone else to do stupid things.
It isn’t that Liz minds authority, exactly. It’s just that she once liked being Liz Emerson and she liked showing it, and that meant challenging teachers and daring them to challenge her back. And it doesn’t matter that she grew to hate it—she couldn’t stop.
The teachers who cry: Ms. Hamilton, who teaches psychology and cries at everything; Mrs. Haas, who teaches world history and was actually worried out of her mind; and Mr. Eliezer, Liz’s physics teacher.
He scratches his jaw, and no one notices the tears in his eyes. It seems unlikely that Liz will ever get her physics grade back up.
Liz Emerson had failed physics so utterly that she couldn’t even crash her car right.
Upstairs, Kennie’s sobbing fills the hallway—it’s louder, perhaps, than strictly necessary. Everyone is watching her, and a small and despicable part of Kennie enjoys the attention. She doesn’t bother feeling guilty about it. Her best friend is dying, and her other best friend didn’t even call her with the news.
Kennie finds comfort in not being alone; Julia finds it in the quiet. So Julia is skipping school and is still at the hospital, where Monica has finally found her, and Kennie is a mess of running mascara.
Liz, though, found her brand of comfort—numbness, forgetting—in throwing things and watching them shatter. She found it in taking her Mercedes out and driving thirty, forty above the speed limit, with the sunroof open so that the wind whipped her hair all around her. She found it in being reckless, careless, stupid.
Once, Liz found comfort in me. Once, she found it in holding my hand and dreaming until our dreams came true. Once, she found it in simply being alive. Eventually, she could no longer find comfort in anything. By the end, she was just another girl stuffed full of forgotten dreams, until she crashed her car and she wasn’t even that.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Empty Seat
Liz has photography first hour, and nothing gets done without her. Kennie and Julia are supposed to be in this class too, but they don’t make it. The majority of the class—the girls, at least—sits in tears, and Mr. Dempsey, the art teacher, is more than willing to let them take it easy. He is terrified that he might actually have to use the “Things to Say to Distraught Students” handout.
He goes to his office and pulls Liz’s portfolio out of his filing cabinet; he flips through her photos, black-and-white prints, colored and edited ones, and tries to remember the girl behind the camera. Most of the shots have hasty Bs dashed across the backs.
Mr. Dempsey is the kind of teacher who gets so caught up with a piece of canvas that he often fails to notice when students walk in and out of class. He ignores bells and schedules, fails to hear fire drills (though, admittedly, that’s only happened once so far), and he typically grades haphazardly, at the last minute. It’s not that he doesn’t care. It’s just that he usually forgets.
Liz has never made much of an impression on him. He knows Julia much better, because she’s the most talented student he’s ever had, and they have had long discussions about aperture and different lighting techniques and the best brand of Earl Grey tea. And he has no choice but to know Kennie, because he’s always telling her to shut up or sit down or not to spill that particular caustic chemical. Liz, though—this was perhaps the one class that Liz Emerson sat through quietly. This class appealed to the little girl she wasn’t anymore, the part of her that was still amazed every time she clicked the shutter and captured a moment.
And her photos. Mr. Dempsey’s vision blurs slightly as he sifts through them. There are close-ups of gravel strewn across a lawn. Tire tracks in the parking lot. Flowers too close to the road. Trampled, frost-choked grass. A cloudy sky through bare branches.
The emotion disarms him. He has never noticed the rawness of Liz Emerson’s photos before, and now he sits guilt-stricken as he realizes that this is the first time he has really looked at them.
The photos slide off his lap and onto the floor. He makes a halfhearted attempt to catch them, but then lets them fall, watching as they drift down around him.
He leans back in his chair and just looks at it all, the final diary of a dying girl.