15
I was a senior and hadn’t missed more than a week of school ever. I knew every hallway and how to make my way from the gym to the parking lot without having to pass by the office or cafeteria. I knew the exact number of steps it took to get from Josh’s locker to mine and could navigate his combination as easily as my own. I knew the gym floor had been replaced last year and that there was a small hole above the mirror in the boys’ locker room, one that looked directly into the girls’ showers. There wasn’t a thing about this school that should have surprised me, and yet, today, standing in the parking lot, staring up at the front doors, it seemed foreign.
I reached out, my hand falling short of the door handle. I felt like a freshman—not knowing who I’d meet or what I was walking into, hoping people would accept me, terrified that they wouldn’t. But unlike that first day of school our freshman year, I didn’t have my sister as a buffer. Today, I was truly on my own.
You can do this, I said to myself as I willed my hand to rise and demanded that my feet shuffle those few paces into the school. I had friends here. Maddy had friends here. And Maddy had Alex. I wasn’t on my own. I just wasn’t me.
Who knows what I expected to be waiting for me inside, but silence wasn’t it. Quiet, hushed whispers followed me down the hall. My eyes caught the pitiful stares of two girls waiting outside the front office. I nodded and gave them a small wave. They quickly looked away, pretending to be interested in the notices hanging on the student info board. I think I preferred the hushed whispers to the pity I could feel pouring off them.
I picked up the pace and kept my eyes trained straight ahead as I tried to pretend they didn’t exist. It was no use trying to insulate myself. No matter what way I looked, regardless of which hallway I turned down, they were still there—hundreds of eyes watching me, waiting for me to crack.
With my head down I shuffled along faster, but that didn’t stop the sickening feeling from overtaking me. There was nowhere to hide. Ignoring my classmates didn’t mean they weren’t there, whispering about how I was doing.
I let my feet guide me, not once stopping to think where I was going. I rounded the corner and climbed two flights of stairs, my feet propelled by rote memory. I came to a stop in front of locker number 159 and reached for the combination lock. It wasn’t until I had it open, until I saw Josh’s most recent drawing taped to the inside of the door, that I realized where I was. My locker. Ella’s locker.
The hall fell deadly silent, the muffled chatter that had followed me now gone. I dropped my backpack to the floor and searched my mind for something to say, some excuse … some justification for why I was here, for why I was standing in front of what everybody assumed was my dead sister’s locker.
Alex broke the silence. I couldn’t make out what he was saying: it was stifled and not intended for my ears. But I knew the inflection of his voice—the way it rasped when he was struggling to contain some emotion, how it ground deep when he was angry. Instinctively, I turned and sought him out. He’d help me—help Maddy—through this.
Josh was standing there, three lockers down, like he used to every morning before the accident. His dark, haunted eyes met mine, his gaze burrowing through me as if searching for the truth. I saw a flash of recognition, brief and full of forsaken hope before it faded away.
“Maddy?” Alex said.