Bex knew people were watching her as she walked out of the chapel, but she didn’t care. Her chest was tight and it hurt to breathe; her head thundered like a bass drum, and she thought she was going to pass out.
The fresh air just beyond the doors loosened the tension and she breathed deeply, greedily gulping air and coughing. She speed walked away, hearing the swell of the music from inside. She missed the click of the door opening and shutting behind her.
Bex wound her way through the garden but stopped at the edge of a little pathway. It opened to the part of the cemetery where the graves were, some with small stone rectangles set in the grass, others with monolithic headstones with carved angels or pictures set in corroded brass.
Death was with her at every turn.
What did you think? she scolded herself. You’re in a freaking cemetery!
“Excuse me.”
Bex turned, tried not to gape at the girl in the black suit. “I saw you in the… In there.” She gestured toward the chapel.
Bex took the girl in: the black skirt that ended just above knobby knees crosshatched with white scars, the way she rubbed her hands, then her skirt, then her hands again. This girl was nervous. “Did you… Did you know…her?”
Bex opened her mouth, to say what she wasn’t sure, but her eyes went over the girl’s head toward the chapel doors where Trevor’s head was poking out.
“I’ve got to go. I’ll see you.”
The girl looked like she wanted to stop her but thought better of it. “Uh, okay.”
“Hey,” Trevor said, sliding his arms around Bex’s waist when she reached him. “You okay? I was worried.”
Bex glanced over her shoulder to where the girl was still standing. She looked at her feet when she noticed Bex watching.
“Yeah, sorry. Just needed a little bit of fresh air.”
After the service, the mourners were invited to the graveside for a second ceremony. Bex’s dread mounted as they walked toward a black rectangle in the manicured lawn. It was still several yards off, but the smell of fresh earth caught on the wind.
“I can’t do this,” Chelsea said, her eyes starting to swell with tears again. “I can’t watch them put my friend in the ground.”
Laney squeezed her hand, and when she looked at Bex, her eyes were swimming with tears too. “I don’t want to watch it either. It’s just so…final.”
Trevor shuddered. “And real.”
The three started to back away. “Bex, you coming with?”
“In a second.”
The grave that terrified Bex also transfixed her, and she found herself wondering what dying would be like. Not the actual death, but the aftermath. Would it be blissful darkness where there would be no feeling, nothing to worry about, no one staring or judging? She remembered a horrible old song that a kid had sung a million years ago when she went to real school and her dad was just a dad. The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out. Into your stomach and out your mouth…
Her stomach churned and she wondered if she’d ever feel right again.
In front of her, Darla’s parents were throwing handfuls of dirt into the grave, clumps thudding, sounding hollow against the casket. When Bex turned, she nearly bumped chest to chest into the man behind her.
Sixteen
He was wearing a suit without a tie, and though his thick, peppery graying hair and square jaw seemed slightly familiar, something about him gave Bex the chills. She immediately stepped away.
“Excuse me,” she murmured to her shoes.
“That’s okay.”
The sound of his voice burned through her ears, searing its way to her brain. It was gruff but smooth and deep—and shot ice water through her veins. She didn’t know why, but adrenaline ricocheted through her and she started to run.
“Hey,” the man said, following behind her. “Wait!”
Bex ran toward the parking lot, toward Trevor’s red Mustang with its motor running. She slammed her hands over her ears as the man kept calling out to her and pressed her palms tighter so that when he said her name, she wasn’t sure if he said “Bex” or “Beth.” She vaulted into the front seat of Trevor’s car, slamming the door hard.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said breathlessly. “Please.”
? ? ?
The following morning, a small box sat beside Bex’s cereal bowl when she came downstairs.
“What’s this?”
Denise smiled. “Your new cell phone came.”
Michael swiped his tablet and, without looking up, said, “I thought you’d be glued to that thing already.”
Bex just looked at the box, phone nestled inside. It had the same number as her old, toilet-logged one, which meant that whomever that Raleigh area code number belonged to—and anyone else who had her number—could still find her. She poked at her cereal, the flakes turning into warm lumps of mush in the milk.
“I’m kind of a technophobe, I guess.”
“Maybe you could teach Michael,” Denise said, snatching the tablet from his hand and laying it on the table. “Make sure you turn it on today. We both have meetings, so we’re not sure who’ll be able to pick you up or when we’ll be home, okay?”