“Oh my God,” I said. “How should I know? And weren’t you just saying that I couldn’t get involved with him because it’d be totally lame? Not to mention inappropriate?”
Gretchen ignored my question. “He was at Beth’s funeral. How does he know her? Were they friends?”
“I don’t know.” I grabbed a tissue from the nightstand and blew my nose.
“Gross. Pull the phone away from your face when you do that,” Gretchen said.
I laughed in spite of my pain.
And then I heard the familiar whine. It was the same whine Gretchen used on her father whenever she wanted new clothes. It was annoying but sweet.
“Brookey, get better!”
I laughed again. I couldn’t help it. Gretchen was the silliest friend I had. And deluded, too. She thought she could will things to happen by just saying them. She discounted effort being a factor in achieving goals.
“I will get an A on this history exam today!” she exclaimed last year. But she didn’t study and earned a D instead. The most frustrating part of it all was her inability to understand why claiming something out loud didn’t make it so.
“Gretchen, you didn’t study,” I explained to her.
“But I said it,” she replied. “I claimed it.”
I wanted to tell her real life wasn’t a motivational seminar where you’re brainwashed into believing that writing down daily affirmations and chanting them over and over made them come true.
“Are you listening to me?” Gretchen asked, and I was yanked back to the present. “I said get better!”
“And how do you propose I do that?” I asked.
“Go fuck that guy from the funeral,” Gretchen suggested. “Even if it is totally messed up.”
“Oh my God. You’re sick,” I replied.
“I’m not sick. I’m helping you. You need to move on. Move on from Finn and Beth and the whole mess,” Gretchen said.
“First off, don’t—”
“—say his name again. Yeah yeah. I got it,” Gretchen replied.
“Second, I am not interested in getting involved with anyone this year. Especially not with a guy I met at a funeral. Number One—”
“Wait, I’m confused. First, second, number one?” Gretchen teased. She liked to make fun of the way I listed things out loud in outline form. Headings and subheadings. Sometimes it got a little confusing, especially when I threw in the lowercase letters. It was my thing, though, and it helped me keep my thoughts organized.
“Shut up and just listen.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Okay, so Number One, I’m a senior in high school who’s planning on attending a very prestigious university when I graduate. I don’t have time for boys.”
“Right. Are we talking about UNC-Asheville?”
“What is your beef with artists?” I asked.
“I’m just saying that it’s no Princeton. And I don’t really dig scenes with hippies or hipsters or any other groups of people with ‘hip’ in their names. It’s like, girl, go shave your armpits already. Know what I’m saying?”
“Whatever. Number Two. I think it’d be really weird to date a guy that I did, in fact, literally run into at a funeral. I could never admit to people how we actually met.”
“True,” came Gretchen’s reply.
“Furthermore—”
“No, Brooke. There’s no ‘furthermore’. That’s not even a label for an outline anyway, and I don’t care,” Gretchen said. “This conversation is getting boring.”
“Oh my God, and I’m the bitch?” I asked.
She laughed. “I want you to tell me all about class registration. Scope out the hotties. I want to know, damnit!”
“Did you not just hear a word I said?”
“Whatever. You may not want to be in a relationship, but that’s not going to keep you from looking. I know you, Brooklyn.”
I giggled into the phone, and it felt delicious and wrong. I suppose Gretchen was right that I couldn’t be depressed forever. I just wasn’t expecting to laugh so soon after Beth’s passing, or flirt, however unsuccessfully, with a guy at her funeral. The flirting was definitely wrong, but maybe laughing with my friend wasn’t. What was the psychology behind it? What would doctors say about my behavior? Gretchen thought it was normal, and I instantly recalled Scott Peterson shown on camera laughing during his missing wife’s candlelight vigil. The wife he was later found guilty of killing. He was a fucking sociopath. Oh my God. Was I a sociopath, too?
“Are you listening to me?” Gretchen huffed.
I shook my head to rid the thought. “Never,” I teased. “I never listen to a word you say.”