“Are you going to go to her funeral?”
“It was yesterday.” I was nearly breathless. I didn’t want to tell her that we walked out of Mrs. Patel’s service. I didn’t want to tell her about driving around and looking for Dad. I didn’t want to tell her that we didn’t find him. “Look, I’m really sorry. I have to get going.”
“Already?”
I nodded quickly. “I have to look after my little brothers.”
“Oh.” Salix stood up. “Uh. Okay. Maybe we could—”
But I had already stuffed my sketchbook into my bag and was gone, stuttering a goodbye over my shoulder as I resisted the urge to run down the sidewalk. I paused after a few steps. I should say something. I should make it less weird. I should let her know that it had nothing to do with her. It was all me. All the weird was all me. I turned, and there was Salix staring at me, and she looked so confused, and I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I turned again and bumped into a spinner of books. It tipped over, scattering cheap paperbacks onto the sidewalk. I tripped on one and then broke my fall by reaching for the produce display in front of the Persian market. A cascade of oranges fell, rolling into the street. The next car ran over them, bright little explosions against the hot black asphalt.
“Maeve!” It was Salix, coming to help. Of course she would come to help. But I didn’t want her to. I leapt up and took off at a run. I kept running. “Maeve! Stop!” But I didn’t stop, and I didn’t look back. I ran all the way to the park and turned the corner and caught my toe on a split in the sidewalk. There was nothing to break my fall this time, and so I ended up on my hands and knees.
Whatever Hope died suddenly today, surprising no one in particular. Survived by Salix Unknown-Last-Name-Because-It-Didn’t-Even-Get-That-Far, who narrowly escaped the mess that is Maeve “Stupidity” Glover. Donations can be made to Whatever Hope’s future that wasn’t: “Two Girls in Love.” There will be no service, because there wasn’t anything in the first place to have a service about.
Salix texted seven times from when I got back onto my feet to when I stumbled through the courtyard.
Hey.
Are you okay?
What happened?
You didn’t finish your half of the cookie. It’s very sad about that.
Then a picture of the cookie sitting on the paper bag, with a sad face drawn on with marker.
I’ll save it for you.
Hello?
As if we’d see each other again. Because I’d genuinely blown it this time, no mistaking. She was just being nice. I did not text back. I sat on the curb and cried, so thankful that no one was in the courtyard. Why are you crying, Maeve? Oh, I don’t know. No reason. I just found my lovely neighbor’s dead body. That’s all. And I messed up a date with a girl I really liked. Or I was crying about all the other things. It’s not always obvious, Nancy said about crying. Sometimes you’re sure it’s one thing, but it’s something else. I didn’t want to think of all the things it could be. I wanted it to be about the date. This was about screwing up with a really cute girl. A girl who helped little old ladies off the bus. A girl who could make an entire city block of people stop what they were doing to listen to her play her violin. The girl I wanted to hold hands with. The girl I wanted to kiss.
Which would not be happening now.
I rooted in my bag for my keys but couldn’t find them. I tipped my bag out and sifted through the pencils and sketchbook and erasers and coins and there was my wallet, jammed under a water bottle. It had been there all along. And my keys, too.
I let myself in with an enormous sigh. I flopped onto my back and lay splayed on the dingy carpet, staring at the dust motes in the sunshine, the silence echoing with all the wrong and the stupid and the regret. I tried to see each particle, forcing my eyes to focus on the impossible, if only to distract me from thinking about anything else that had happened. Or hadn’t happened. Or was happening, even now. A hierarchy of happenings.
A game of rummy that never happened A date that only halfway happened.
Mom and Raymond happening and happening and happening.
Whatever was happening with Dad.
The baby who was happening, at a home birth that shouldn’t be happening.
Mrs. Patel’s place so empty next door, and the images of her dead body that just kept happening.
Ruthie and Jessica and everything that happened. And didn’t happen.
Ruthie, and the friendship, not happening.
Ruthie translated the world through Doctor Who episodes and intricate plotlines from obscure Japanese video games. She saw numbers and formulas in the same way that I could see lines and shapes of objects and draw them to life. Ruthie, who lumbered up and down the locker-lined hallways at school, awkward in her broad-shouldered body, her big feet shoved into gigantic sneakers with Daleks on the sides, her Tardis-shaped backpack snugged to her back with both straps. Nobody used both straps. No one at all. All the other students hung their backpacks on one shoulder, with one strap. Not two. I tried to explain this to Ruthie once, but she only shrugged and said what did it matter how she carried her backpack. But it did matter. These little things mattered a lot.
I met Ruthie at social-skills class when we were in fifth grade. I was pulled out of Mrs. Henshaw’s class, and Ruthie was pulled out of Mr. Randhawa’s class at the other end of the hall. We were brought together with three other kids once a week and made to do things like practice looking each other in the eye and then not looking each other in the eye. Or ordering a meal and remembering to say thank you. Or excusing ourselves politely when our tics or our anxiety or our wild rage or pre-psychotic disposition dictated that we should.
Ruthie was just weird, maybe too smart to be normal. And I was just worried. The two of us seemed pretty harmless compared to the other three, all boys who’d been suspended for various acts of violence, and in one case for having set the school on fire. A small fire, but still.