OCCASIONALLY, I’D SEE IT COMING. The grief. Not the constant version, which always hummed in the background, like white noise, but the gut-pummeling, breath-stealing kind. Sometimes I could see it rolling in toward me, growing larger, feeding on itself, like a wave hurtling toward the shore.
Once the grief was on the horizon, all I could do was wait for the worst of it to pass, wondering all the while if maybe this time it would pull me under long enough that I wouldn’t surface.
Today it happened in English class. A simple thing triggered it: the girl in front of me playing with her hair. She’d been twirling it around her hand and letting it fall back down to bounce over her shoulders. Finally, she’d picked up a pencil and twisted her hair with it, fixing it tidily into place with a last decisive thrust. Anna used to try to do that, biting her lip in concentration as she worked the pencil into her hair, only to have it all come tumbling back down. For one moment, the girl in front of me was Anna: Anna, who’d gotten the best of that stupid pencil. In the next moment, she wasn’t anything like her.
Blood rushed in my ears and the space around me contracted. The wave was coming, so close I could touch it, hear its roar.
I stood up and left the classroom, ignoring the protest of Mrs. Wristel, ignoring everything between me and the door.
I was aiming for the bathroom, but I didn’t make it that far down the hallway before I had to crumple down against one of the lockers. My head between my knees, I counted breaths, trying to force myself to calm down, to not let myself spiral out of control. I tried not to think about her, not to think of anything but the count of air going in and out of my lungs.
I was at over three hundred breaths when I heard footsteps coming in my direction. I kept my head down, hoping that whoever it was would ignore me and keep going. Nothing to see here, I thought. Please keep right on moving along. Instead, the footsteps slowed and then came to a stop.
Reluctantly, I looked up, expecting it to be one of the teachers, or maybe Mrs. Hayes—someone who felt morally obligated to intervene.
But it was Nick Anderson, towering above me.
“Hi,” he said. Almost like he expected to see me here, like it was completely normal for me to be sitting in the empty hallway with my arms wrapped tight around my legs as though practicing for an earthquake drill. “Mind if I sit?”
I gave a stiff shrug. “It’s not my hallway.”
While my tone was hardly welcoming, he smiled and eased down beside me, stretching out his legs.
“Shouldn’t you be in class?” I asked, irritated at how comfortable he was making himself. Which might have been hypocritical, given that I should have been in class myself. Then again, I had been crying; his excuse was less clear.
“Bathroom break,” he said. “I guess that’s what happens when you start off the day with a Big Gulp.”
“I didn’t think people actually bought those things.”
“Sure they do,” he said. “I mean—they’re so big. And so cheap. They’re like everything good about America.”
I made a sound that could be charitably described as a laugh. Then I leaned my head back and stared at the wall across from me. There was a big banner posted across the top of the lockers for a dance that had been held the weekend before. The lettering was done in metallic gold, and there was liberal use of glitter glue. Subtle it was not.
“Did you go?” Nick asked, tilting his chin toward the poster.
“No,” I said. “But not for lack of publicity—I have five flyers for it stuffed in my backpack.”
“Five?”
I nodded. “I counted. I keep meaning to throw them out, but I only remember when I get home.”
“Why don’t you throw them out at home?”
I shrugged. “I worry my mom might find them and get all wistful and hint-y about how maybe I should’ve gone.”
“Let me guess: was she the homecoming queen?” he asked with a laugh. “Trying to relive her glory days?”
That hadn’t occurred to me, honestly. I realized I didn’t actually know if my mom had been the homecoming queen—didn’t really know anything about her life at that time, about what she’d been like. It was a jarring thought.
“Maybe.” I paused. “I don’t think that’s most of it, though—it’s more her wanting me to be okay and, you know, involved. Like if I’m around other people enough, I’ll be all right, or at least I’ll be someone else’s problem for a while.”
His smile flagged.
Maybe that was too much. Then again, too much or nothing at all was all I had. Whatever. It was his own fault. He should have left me alone to begin with—just kept on walking. I didn’t understand why he hadn’t.
We sat there, staring at the poster’s gold lettering.
“I liked Anna,” Nick said quietly. “I always liked her.”
I turned my head, surprised into looking at him directly for the first time since he’d sat down.
“I’d thought about asking her out before…” He faltered.
Before she died, I filled in. You can say it, I wanted to tell him. It won’t make it any more real than it already is, can’t hurt me any more than it has.
He shook his head and continued. “I didn’t, though. I don’t know why. Maybe I was waiting for something, but I can’t remember what anymore.”
He stared at the ground and then rubbed his neck and sighed.
“I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to talk about that. It was stupid to bring it up.”
I opened my mouth to respond, not knowing what I was going to say, except that what he’d said wasn’t stupid. That it was, in a way, nice to hear someone talk about how they felt about her, instead of how sorry they were for my loss, instead of looking at me with big eyes as if waiting for me to come apart. That was too many words, though, and I didn’t trust myself to say them. So we just continued to sit there, the only sound between us the muffled noise of distant classroom discussions.
After a few minutes, he stood up, stretching his arms above his head as if to break some tension there. “I should probably head back to class before someone puts out an APB,” he said. “See you later, Jess.”
“See you later,” I echoed.
I WENT BACK TO ENGLISH a few minutes before the bell rang. I didn’t explain myself, didn’t mouth an apology to Ms. Wristel; I simply sat down at my desk and started taking notes. Not very good notes, not the kind of thorough, verbatim ones I used to take. Because in truth, I wasn’t paying close attention. I was thinking about Nick, about him sitting with Brian and Charlie at the funeral. About how before, I hadn’t understood why he’d come.
WHEN I GOT HOME, MOM was leaning against the kitchen wall, one hand holding her phone, the other gently pressed to her temple.
“Thank you,” I heard her say into the phone. “I appreciate that.”
She nodded and pressed her hand to her head a fraction harder, like she was trying to forestall a headache.
“Okay,” she said. “Well, I guess that’s what we expected. I guess it makes sense.”
I dropped my backpack on the couch and headed into the kitchen to get some water. Mom started when I walked in. “Hi, sweetheart,” she said, covering the receiver. “I’ll take this upstairs. Back in a minute.”
I shrugged and grabbed a glass from the cupboard.
“Yes, I’m still here,” I heard her say as she headed up the stairs.
The water came out of the tap incredibly cold, just how I liked it—the cold giving it almost a mineral flavor, the way I imagined granite might taste. Anna once wrote a story after I told her that, a story about a girl who turned to rock and ice after drinking from a mysterious well. I’d asked her if the girl was supposed to be me. She’d said no. She’d paused first.
I was reading in the living room when Mom came back downstairs. “Sorry about that,” she said.
“It’s fine,” I said as I flipped the page. “Who was it?”
“Hmmm?” she said, opening the fridge door and starting to poke around inside. “Oh, that was Stan’s Furniture. There was an issue with the table I picked out, so it’s going to take a bit longer than we expected.”
“That’s too bad,” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “It is.” Her voice held more emotion than I’d expected, given that we were talking about a kitchen table. Maybe, I thought, I wasn’t the only one who should be taking part in structured activities.