A body in the water rots. Her body in the water, rotted. Those beautiful blond strands of hair would have separated from her, drifted away with the current, and all that tight skin would have come loose. All her healthy colors would have faded into a pallet of green and gray and wrong. Insides spilling themselves out, everything unable to hold itself together, a final coming apart. It’s why they turned what was left to ashes.
I pull my nightshirt off and stare at myself in the mirror. My hair is matted and tangled, just skimming my sloped shoulders. My skin is pale, too easily marked. I drag my nails across my collarbone and watch red streaks appear there almost instantly. My chest, small and flat, is more a suggestion than anything else. I tilt the mirror down to my stomach, all soft, no definition, a tiny belly I inherited from my mother’s side. On my grandmother, it came with child-bearing hips and the kind of breasts that cause back pain. On my mother, it fit nicely with the rest of her curves. I’d look at pictures of them both and stare at my stomach, thought maybe it hinted at my potential, but it only turned out to be fat I don’t think I’ll ever get rid of. There’s more of my father in me than there isn’t, and of course the way I wear him would only suggest what could have been. I take my underwear off and glance over my dark and wiry pubic hair, and then I study my hips. They’re bony, remind me of how middle school dances made me so uncomfortable. Boy hands feeling my edges. It seemed more personal than a kiss.
It feels wrong to have all this.
It always feels wrong to have all this, but especially today.
I pick clothes that cover all the places of me that seem like an insult. I wear dark colors, ones to blend into the background with. Long sleeves and pants. Hair down. My nails are fine, no chips, so I only do my lips and then I’m ready. When I get downstairs, Mom is in the kitchen, staring out the window and sipping a coffee.
“Where’s Todd?” I ask.
“Still in bed. You’re up early.”
“Then so are you. The assembly for Penny is today.”
“You need to go this early for that?”
“Yeah.”
I want to see the setup before anyone else. I want the shock of the display to be something I don’t have to share.
“I should drive you—”
“Nothing’s going to happen today.”
It’s not a promise I can really make, but she thinks it over and must decide it seems more unlikely than not, that anything bad would happen to me. “Okay. I’m going to send some flowers to the funeral home. Do you want me to put your name on the card?”
I swallow. “Sure.”
“Come here.”
She holds her arms out. I step into them. She pulls me so close, I can hear the beat of her heart and I wonder if she’s thinking this is a day that could have just as easily been mine and hers. I could be dust. She could be waiting to put me into the ground. But I was the one that came back. And there’s no why to it. I’m not here because I’m special, because I’m meant to be. It just worked out that way.
“I love you more than life,” she says.
The sky is overcast. In the school parking lot, there are reporters. Again. Back for this. They don’t ask me anything when I pass, so maybe they’re just here for visuals. Get a shot of devastated faces to round out some segment.
The school is cold and empty. I don’t see anyone, but I hear voices, noises coming from the auditorium. If I didn’t know better, I could pretend it was setup for a dance, anything else. I follow the sounds. There’s a picture mounted next to the auditorium door and it stops me because it’s not the one they used on the MISSING poster. It’s from last year’s yearbook and Penny’s shining in it because so much hadn’t happened yet, when that photo was taken. I could look at my yearbook photo then and see myself like I see her now, still new.
I try to keep hold of that feeling long enough for it to fold itself into me because I will never be that new again and I want to remember. I want that memory but it’s hard because I don’t think it wants me.
Mr. Talbot comes out of the auditorium at the same time someone steps through the door behind me. I stay where I am, my eyes on her, while he says, “Oh—thank you for bringing these and thank your mom for donating them. They’ll be beautiful next to her picture…”
The sickly sweet smell of roses is in the air.
“Yeah, they will.”
A voice like a song you never want to hear again. A voice I want to shut my eyes to, but I’m afraid to shut my eyes to. A voice that makes me want to run and makes me forget how. I can’t move. A wreath of red roses moves past me, and the boy who is carrying it comes to a stop when he notices me, his eyes lingering on my nails, first, and then my mouth before he opens his own and says—
“romy.”
I can barely hear Leon over my heart, its erratic beat.
I watch his mouth move.
“Romy,” he says again, but it’s not enough. It’s just a name, anyone can say it.
I need him to show me who it belongs to.
“I couldn’t be there,” I tell him, and he lets me in. “I didn’t want to be there.”
“Okay. All right.” He walks me through his small apartment and I look around, but I can’t process his place beyond its walls. He tries to get me to sit but I shake my head. I stand behind a chair at his tiny kitchen table instead.
“Did you walk?”
He’s wearing an undershirt. Pajama pants hang off his hips. He wasn’t expecting anyone, but now I’m here.
He asks again, “Romy, did you walk?”
“Does it matter?”
He opens a cupboard door, pulls out a glass. He fills it with water from the sink and sets it in front of me. I don’t want it, but I take it, clumsily clacking it against my teeth. It tastes like nothing going down, but I drink it all and when I’m finished, I wipe my mouth and realize, too late, what that might have done to my lips. I check the back of my hand for red but there’s none. Leon watches uncertainly.
“I wanted to be here,” I say. “I wanted to be here with you.”
He tries to parse the meaning behind the words because he knows there’s more to them than that. This is what they mean, Leon: I need to see myself.
“Okay,” he says.