A week after meeting them at Harold’s, I haven’t talked to or hung out with Joel or Robyn at all. It’s normal to go this long with Robyn, but not really with Joel. Or maybe now it is. The weird thing is, I don’t know if I care. I wonder if it’s possible he forgot I existed. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced it’s plausible. Maybe I imagined our entire friendship. Maybe Joel has always wondered why I hang around him so much and he never told me to get lost because he feels sorry for me. Maybe in the end, we are all just nobody to each other.
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you—Nobody—Too?
“Here,” Mom says, interrupting my thoughts and handing me another red poppy that she’s planting in the garden. She insisted I help her.
At least they’re not roses.
It’s Saturday and a procession comes by while Mom and I are on our knees digging up dirt. I look away and refuse to look inside the cars that trail behind the hearse. I watch Mom instead, as she brushes the dirt from her gloves. She doesn’t quite watch, but she stops digging for a moment.
“Life is strange,” she says when the last car has made it past our house. “It is, then it isn’t. Just like these flowers.” She sighs and deposits the last plant into the hole she’s dug, then pats the earth around it.
“Well, that’s it,” she says.
I get up and take a look at the front garden. It seems ironic to me, how we can bury these little flowers, and they sprout with life.
Mom goes inside to get us some drinks and I wonder about the person who just went by. I wonder what his or her obituary said. I make a mental note of the date to see if I can search for it later.
I’ve actually tried to write my own obituary, but it’s hard. Not because imagining myself dead is heartbreaking, but probably because the idea of it is much different than the reality of it.
All my accomplishments thus far have been physiological. All I’ve really managed to do is stay alive for seventeen years, and really, that’s mostly due to my parents. They’re the ones who make sure I don’t get eaten by a wild animal or something. So all I’ve accomplished is managing to breathe in and out for seventeen years, which doesn’t even require conscious thought.
Francesca “Frenchie” Garcia breathed in and out for seventeen years.
That’s all I’ve ever come up with.
I’ve pictured my funeral more than once. Lots of times, actually. I don’t know why I do that either. I think Mom would put flowers in my hair, maybe ones like these red poppies. I think of the mourners, the quiet, the procession, and the formal black. If it weren’t so terrible, a funeral could almost be beautiful. If you let yourself forget that the eyes are sewn shut, that the skin is cold, that they’re putting someone in a hole forever to never see light again, it could almost be lovely.
Mom comes out with the drinks and I almost ask her what she would include in my obituary, but decide not to because she’d wonder why I think such things. And I don’t have a good answer for that. So we sit quietly and drink lemonade.
“You think that person was old?” I don’t quite realize I’ve said anything until Mom answers.
“Yeah,” she says quickly. But then she hesitates and looks down the street. “I sure hope so.”
That night I have trouble sleeping. I dream the same dream about Andy, the one where he’s my prom date.
I’m wearing horrendous layers of pink taffeta as he leads me out to the middle of the dance floor. But instead of dancing, we lie down and the floor opens up beneath us, and suddenly, we’re in this big hole. Mom and Dad and Joel and Robyn appear above us, talking to each other while looking down at me, but I can’t hear anything they’re saying. Then a priest appears, which doesn’t make sense because I’m not even Catholic, and a disco ball keeps twirling high above that reflects red and gold lights everywhere. I try to tell everyone I’m not dead, but my lips feel sewn shut and my arms and legs are stiff and heavy and impossible to move. And even though my eyes are wide open, they start throwing dirt on top of me. Right when I almost can’t see anything anymore, Andy’s mom appears above me, dressed in black. She peers in and asks, “Is that her? Is her name Frenchie?”
This is where I always wake up. Right when Andy’s mom makes eye contact with me. Right when I see the sudden realization in her face that, yes, I am Frenchie.