PRINCIPAL CAPP makes an announcement that we can go to the funeral on Friday as long as we sign up with our homeroom teachers in advance. I ask Mr. Denby to put me on the list; most of our class is on the list already. Even the Whisperers are going.
“It’s the right thing to do,” one of them says.
“Why?” I ask.
“Why what?”
“Why is it the right thing to do?”
She just looks at me.
I sit with them on the bus. They’re all wearing floral dresses under their coats, but they make pretty lame flowers. I think of the talking flowers in Alice in Wonderland. Then I think of the garden that I hid in the morning that Jonah found the body and how, even though it was a garden, none of the flowers had bloomed yet.
Jonah was in the news on Thursday night, but not his name—just “local man,” as in “the body was discovered by a local man.” The number at Jefferson Wildlife Control still rings through to the answering machine. I keep thinking about last Sunday, when I ran away from Jonah and he yelled out my name. I replay it a lot in my head, the way it sounded when he said it. Evie. That it—my name—was there in his mouth. But after thinking about it a few dozen times, it’s like I’ve worn the memory out, and the voice yelling my name isn’t his anymore, but my own.
The bus to the funeral smells like sack lunches and teacher perfume. Everyone is dressed up, but I’m one of the only ones wearing all black. I thought that was what you were supposed to wear to a funeral—black. I chose my clothes the night before. I laid them on my bed, placing the sweater above the skirt, the skirt over the tights. There was something orderly about the way they looked set out like that. When I was done, I didn’t want to put the clothes away, so I slid in under them and slept there, making sure not to move too much so that they wouldn’t get wrinkled.
“Have you ever been to a funeral before?” one of the Whisperers asks the others.
A few of them nod. I don’t because I haven’t been to a funeral. In fact, I’ve only been to church half a dozen times in my life—only when Mom’s upset about something. So I’ve always thought of going to church as something you do when you’re in a pinch, like eating at a restaurant because you forgot to go to the grocery store. Afterward, when we walk out with the crowd of real churchgoers, with their brunch plans and khaki pants, Mom always stops on the front steps and looks up at the sky for a second, like she’s going to see something up there.
“I went to my great-uncle’s funeral,” one Whisperer says. “A year ago. They’d plucked out all his nose hairs. His face looked funny without nose hairs.”
“Ew,” the other Whisperers say.
I pinch my nose to feel my own nose hairs bend against my skin.
“Do you think we’ll see her? Zabet?” I ask. I picture Zabet’s body zipped up in the bag, draped with the sheet.
“Like open face?” one of them asks.
“You mean open casket,” another says. “Open face is a sandwich.”
“Gross,” says a third.
“Stop. Don’t make me laugh.”
“It won’t be open.”
“Open face?”
“Shut up. Open casket. It won’t be.”
“No way.”
“No.”
The Whisperers shudder and shake their heads. The bus stops and Mr. Denby tells us to rise and walk in twos. We follow him across the parking lot and into the church, which has the green piled carpet and beige popcorn ceilings of the rec rooms in the old houses Mom and I rent. The main chapel is nicer than the hall is. It has slanted ceilings and a big, plain, blond-wood cross. I’ve always liked crosses better when they have a Jesus on them. I like to see what people thought his face looked like.
The bus got us there early, so we’re some of the only ones in the chapel. Mr. Denby has us slide into the pews in the back. Up at the front of the chapel, under the cross, is a raised area packed with as many flowers as Mr. Denby’s classroom windowsill. There’s a platform up there, too, draped and pinned with cloth. I guess that’s where the casket will go. I look over and spot Hadley sitting in the second row, watching me watch the platform. Since our talk in the lunchroom, she’s avoided me, changing direction if she sees me in the hall, ducking into a crowd or a classroom door, which is funny because usually Hadley’s the one people avoid. Now in the church we lock eyes, but she looks away, and then I do, too.
That’s when I start to feel a little funny, cold and sweaty both. My stomach twists and burbles. The Whisperer next to me giggles at it. “I’m hungry,” I say, but I don’t really feel hungry. I feel sick. I wonder what will happen if my stomach growls during the service. Will everyone pretend that they haven’t heard it? Will they turn and look? If my stomach growls, is that disrespectful? I press my hands to my middle, but it gurgles again. I can hear my pulse in my ears, and as my stomach turns, its lining seems to pull away from its walls, and I realize that I actually might throw up.
“How do I look?” I say to the Whisperer next to me.
“Good,” she says absently.
“No. Do I look sick?”
She turns and peers at me. “Do you feel sick?”
“I feel like I might throw up.”
“You might throw up?” She says it loud, and the other Whis perers lean forward along the pew to look at me, each one bending a little farther than the last like they’re taking part in some sort of ridiculous choreography. I let out a wild laugh, and they all narrow their eyes in unison. This makes me laugh again. One of them reaches out a hand and puts it on my forehead.
“Uck.” She yanks it back and wipes it off on her skirt. “You’re, like, wet.”
All of us Chippewa students are seated now. Older people—relatives, neighbors—are filling in the front rows, wrinkles around their somber mouths. I can still see Hadley. The back of her hair has been pinned into a complicated twist. She sits next to two tall, color less adults who lean into each other like elm trees. Hadley sits up straight, the kind of straight you have to think about. Her neck is rigid. Just in front of her is the platform.
“Do you want some water?” a Whisperer asks. “How do you feel?”
“I think I should—”
“Should you go?”
“Yeah. I think.” I look to my right and left. We’re in the center of the pew. I get up, pressing a hand against my stomach. The Whisperers get up, too. She needs out! Excuse us! They wave their hands, and I feel grateful, so grateful to them as I trip over feet and push aside knees, until I’m finally into the aisle and then out of the chapel.
Someone points me to a bathroom, which is down a dark hallway. By the time I reach it, I’m already retching. I put a hand over my mouth, not sure that I’ll make it. The bathroom is empty, and I’m grateful for that, too, as I scramble down onto the pink tiles and bend over the toilet bowl. I gasp and retch, and my breath creates ripples in the water of the toilet. I spit into the bowl, and spit again, but nothing comes up—no vomit, no bile. I try for a while longer, and then the feeling passes and my breathing slows. I sit back, pressing my cheek against the cold side of the stall. The inside of my mouth tastes metallic, like I’ve been hiding pennies under my tongue. I wipe my lips over with toilet paper, rubbing away the last smudges of my lip gloss. Once I’m sure I can, I stand up. In the mirror, I look gray and ghost-like, but I feel better. I swish water in my mouth and go back out.
The hallway I’ve come down is lined with doors. I glance into each room as I pass it. There’s a Sunday school room, painted yellow. There’s an office. There’s a room with a chipped and dinged piano. There’s a room with nothing in it but rows of folding chairs and, in one chair, a man.
I stop. He’s sitting in the first row, and even though his head is bowed, for some reason it doesn’t look like he’s praying. It’s his hands, I realize. They aren’t clasped in his lap, but instead are curled around his chair, gripping the seat. He’s in a dark suit. I wonder if he’s here for Zabet’s funeral, which must have already started by now.
I step into the room. “Hello?”
He takes a minute to look around, as if I’ve woken him up, and I think that maybe he was praying after all. His face is the sort that looks beaten up even though it isn’t: low-slung jaw, watery eyes—a bulldog face. There’s something familiar to it.
“Are you here for the funeral?” I say. “Because I think it’s probably started already.”
He nods. “It started a minute ago. And you?”
“Me? I was . . .”Sick, I was going to say, but then I realize that I wasn’t. “Yes. I’m here for it.”
He releases the bottom of the chair and plays with his shirt cuff. “You should go back in, then.”
“Did you want to . . . ? You could . . .” I indicate the hall.
He studies me for a second, long enough for me to get self-conscious and drop my arm. He shakes his head. “I don’t want to disrupt the service.”
“Me neither,” I say and take a chair in the back row. It’s an impulsive decision, to sit down, and he watches me as I do it.
“I’m Ray,” he says.
“I’m Evie.”
“Evie.” He inclines his head.
As soon as I give him my name, a thought crosses my mind: This man could be Zabet’s killer. In the movies, they say that killers like to return to the crime scene to watch events unfold. I think that I would be one of those kind of killers, too, coming back to watch people react to what I’d done. Otherwise, what would be the point? But I’m not a killer. This man might be, though, here alone, at the funeral but not at the funeral. I look around. The room is nearly bare except for the chairs, with their feet sinking into the carpeting. A copy of the Ten Commandments curls on one wall, its tape gone dry. There are three rows of chairs between the man and me. The door to the hallway is just behind me. I could run if I needed to.
The man looks up at me then. “How did you know Elizabeth?” And so he knows her name. Would he know her name if he’d killed her? I decide that he might. It’s been in all of the papers and on the programs at the door. And besides, maybe she told it to him before he killed her.
“She was my friend,” I say. “My best friend.” I don’t even think about the lie before I tell it, so does that make it a lie?
“Are you Hadley?” he says.
“No. Evie.”
“That’s right. You told me that.” He nods. “I’m afraid that I didn’t get to meet too many of Elizabeth’s friends.”
This stops me, when he says this, and all of a sudden I know why he seems familiar. “Are you her—”
“Her dad.” He wipes a hand over his forehead. “Did I not say that?”
“You’re Mr. McCabe.” I can see him now, in the photo on the sideboard in the McCabe dining room in a suit with a green tie. In all those afternoons there at Zabet’s house, I’d never met him; he had always stayed late at work, never came home early, not even once. My heart starts to pound, more than it did when I thought he might be the killer. I lied to him about being his daughter’s friend, and since he’s her father, he must know I lied. “When I said that I was Zabet’s friend—”
“I’m very sorry that I never got to meet you. There was a Hadley she talked about a lot, and”—he presses his lips together, nods—“I think an Evie, too.”
“Sure,” I say, wondering if he really thinks this or if he is lying in return to try to spare my feelings.
“I should have met you, both you and Hadley. You think about things after the fact, sometimes, and you . . .” He shrugs. It’s a sad shrug, his shoulders ending up a notch lower than they were before.
“We’ve met now,” I say. “I mean, here, just now, we met. You and me.”
“Yes.”
“And you could meet Hadley. She’s right over there in the . . . she has blonde hair and a scar here. I could point her out to you, if you want.”
“No. I’m going to stay here. You should go back in, though. I’m sure there are people waiting for you.”
“Okay. If you want . . . ,” I offer, not knowing the end of my sentence.
“I want to be alone, if . . . if you don’t mind.”
“Okay.” I stand up and brush the wrinkles out of my skirt. I still feel like maybe I should stay, but he’s an adult and he’s told me to go.
“It was nice to meet you, Evie,” he says. “You be good to your parents, even if—” He waves a hand in the air, and I’m not sure what he intends it to mean.
I stop in the doorway for a second, twisting my feet. “She thought that you were a good dad. Zabet did.”
His hand moves to his chin, then to his lap. He looks at his lap. “You don’t have to say that.”
“I’m not just saying it. I’m not.” I probably should listen to him and stop talking, but I don’t. “She said that you guys fought sometimes, but that you were a good dad anyway.”
“She said that?” He doesn’t look up from his lap.
“Yeah.”
“She said that to you?”
“Yeah, to me.”
“She—”
“She said it, Mr. McCabe. Of course she did.”
I walk back down the dark hall and pause outside the chapel next to a stack of programs and extra flower arrangements that didn’t make it onto the dais. Through the doors, I can hear a man’s voice, the lilt of a Bible passage being read. I can’t make myself go back in, though. I’m afraid that if I open the doors, everyone will turn to stare at me, that Hadley will narrow her eyes, the Whisperers will whisper, and the minister tsk his disapproval into the microphone. So even though I’d left my coat in the church, I go out to the empty bus and shiver in the back until everyone files on, and the Whisperers bring me my coat and pat my arm and ask if I’m okay now, and I say that I am.