Not even a little.
He says the body of a girl was located in Gadwall River by two campers. He says they noticed something tangled in a tree’s low-hanging branches in the water, upstream from their camping site. The postmortem indicated the body was likely held under by those branches, likely submerged until the rainfall made the river wild and moved what was left of her just enough to be seen. The postmortem indicated that the deceased died from suspicious, nonnatural causes, but no further information regarding that will be released at this time, so as not to jeopardize the ongoing investigation—into the death of Penny Young.
Mom puts her arm around me and holds tight like she wants to be sure it isn’t a mistake, that they are definitely talking about some other girl that’s not me.
I listen as the man runs through every little thing they did to try to make this ending happier. Interviewing every student at the party—which I guess is what they call it when Sheriff Turner sits across from you at a table and tells you that you’re fine—the ground and air searches, following up on two hundred phone tips, volunteer searches. For all the good it did. When the world wants a girl gone, she’s gone.
“Jesus,” Todd says when the news conference ends. He turns the TV off. “Everything they did when the ground was dry and they couldn’t find her. Now all that night is completely washed away. I don’t know what they have to go on.”
I feel Mom looking at me. She moves a strand of hair from my face.
“You okay?” she asks.
I stare at the blank TV screen and everything feels far away.
“If it’s a suspicious death, what does that mean? Someone put her there? In the river?” My voice sounds stupid and my head feels that way too. Someone put her in the river after they—what? “I don’t understand what that means.”
Todd says, “It has to be bad if they don’t want to tell us.”
mom drives me to school.
We pass Leanne Howard, jogging in the rain, and I want a glimpse of her face, to see what all this looks like on her, but there’s not enough light for that. The sky is dark gray and the clouds are hung so low, it doesn’t even feel like it’s day.
Mom pulls up as close to the building as she can get. I stare at the front entrance. The FIND PENNY display is gone. I know it couldn’t stay, but it seems wrong there’s nothing in its place. She’s not here so she was never here.
I get out of the car, hurry through the rain. Inside, everything is so quiet, I have the fleeting thought it’s just me in this space, but I climb the stairs until I reach the mourners crowding the halls. Everyone in clusters, close to their lockers, heads bent together, whispering, bodies humming with grief. It all feels familiar and unfamiliar at once. That moment we discovered she was gone is here again, more real than it was before, and we can’t hope our way through our uselessness this time. She’s never coming back.
I get my books out of my locker, go to homeroom. I’m the first one there and McClelland sits at his desk, sorting through papers. He’s stone-faced, but his breathing gives him away: every breath a gasp, every gasp a failed attempt at regaining control. I sit at the back and try to make myself not hear it but it’s all I can hear. I watch the door, watch students file in one by one. Some of them come in messy and tearful and some of them look like they’ve just managed to stop crying and others are determinedly dry-eyed, just like McClelland.
The bell rings.
McClelland turns the television on. After a brief delay, the screen fades in on Penny’s photograph, nothing else, and now she’s too here. It’s the same photo they used on the MISSING posters, clearer on the monitor than it was on paper. Not blown-out black-and-white, but color and her eyes look—more alive than they did when I thought there was a chance she still might be.
McClelland stands, resting his hands against his desk.
“We have been advised to take a few moments this morning to talk with you about—” He runs his hand over his mouth, already overwhelmed. “About the death of Penny Young. Penny was—” He stops again. “A light … in the lives of all those who knew her. We were privileged to know her. This loss is unfathomable. This loss is cruel.”
I stare at the two empty seats at the front. What if her empty seat was mine?
What would they say about me?
“There are guest books in the library and you are encouraged to leave your memories of Penny and your condolences in them. At the end of the week, they will be sent to Penny’s family. A memorial assembly is being planned. We will keep you notified of when the funeral—” He can’t deal with this word, presses his lips together for a long moment. “Reporters have begun to arrive but we ask you to please honor our friend and classmate and her loved ones by not speaking with them.”
McClelland sits. Speech over. He stares at the clock. I follow his gaze and watch the second hand tremor forward until the bell rings. I tally the missing. Brock, Penny, Alek. But that seems to be it. Everyone else is here to share in the devastation. The bell rings again and again, and by the time it’s Phys Ed, there’s a little more life in the halls. The presence of the news vans outside have made this no less a tragedy, but—more of an event. It’s what Cat Kiley is talking about in the locker room.
“Are you going to speak to them?” she asks Yumi.
“No,” Tina says before Yumi can answer. “And neither are you.”
“Why not?” Cat asks. “Marie Sinclair went out there and said they only wanted a sound bite about how people were taking it—”
“Penny is not a fucking sound bite.” Tina takes her shirt off. Cat makes a face and turns away. Tina throws her shirt at Cat. It nails her square in the back. Cat whirls around, furious. “Do you hear me? You say anything, Cat—”
“Fine.”