Chapter Eight

There were as many eyes staring at me at the funeral as there were staring at the red oak casket in front of the altar. It seemed every student at Brookline Academy attended, even most of the teachers and administrators. It was like my high school reunion, only I was still in high school. Technically.

The service was being held in a massive, historic Episcopal church on Tremont Street. The sweeping gilded altar was surrounded by so many colorful frescos and stained-glass windows that I felt I’d been magically transported back to European soil. Maybe they weren’t as ancient, but it seemed American cathedrals could still be impressive.

I sat in a carved walnut pew in the rear of the church. Regina and her enormous Filipino Catholic family encompassed several rows in front. Tyson’s mother was in the first pew. It was painful to watch her hobble down the aisle, doubled over and sobbing, her somber black dress wrinkled and sagging like a child playing dress up. She appeared to be hemorrhaging weight; her cheeks were too sharp and her eyes sunken as if her chocolate skin had dissolved into a thin layer of tissue that was now slipping from her bones. A man, who I recognized to be her brother, Tyson’s Uncle Donovan, was physically supporting her weight. She was the grieving mother, the surviving member who warranted sympathy, yet I had to wonder if she was sober right now. I had to wonder if she felt guilty. Responsible.

Charlotte sat beside me. The scene was all too reminiscent of Keira’s memorial, my parents’ memorial. We were doing this again. Beside Charlotte were her parents—my legal family. Recently, they’d helped me sell my family’s brownstone. They even worked with a contractor to demolish the master bathroom and the ominous claw-foot tub before it went on the market. The last place I lived with my family sold in less than a week. I told them the money would be used to pay for college. Really, I planned to use it to run away with Keira. I wasn’t sure what our plans were now.

The pastor finished his remarks, commenting on Tyson’s “love of life,” his “courage” after the loss of his father, his “unyielding dedication to his mother,” and his “bravery” as he protected Regina from a violent mugger. While this was all true, it was also oversimplified. Tyson wasn’t given a choice in forming those characteristics. His father was murdered, much like his son, on a street in Boston. His mother fell apart and never put the pieces back together. Tyson became the head of his household at the age of ten, and by seventeen, he was caring for an alcoholic parent and financially supporting her by working at a convenience store. Given a choice, he would have been a reckless, carefree teenager playing too many video games and worrying if he could afford a tux for prom. But that wasn’t an option for him.

Or me.

Regina stepped up to the podium, her hands visibly shaking as she held a tablet.

“I can’t believe she’s speaking,” Charlotte whispered in my ear.

Neither could I. Regina hadn’t mentioned giving a eulogy when we’d met yesterday, and she didn’t look to be in an emotional place to comfort anyone. But she was his closest friend and his biggest love, and Tyson would want to hear what she had to say. Maybe this would help her.

“Thank you for coming,” Regina said into the microphone at the podium, her voice a whisper, yet still amplified beneath the sloping arched ceilings. “It’s so remarkable to look out and see all of these faces. Principal Jaworski, teachers, classmates. You all came…for Tyson Westbrook’s funeral.” The tone of her voice made me uncomfortable. I could almost feel the rage from last night simmering under the surface. “Not many of you knew Tyson, not many of you spoke to him. Not even his teachers. Not really. No one asked why he was missing so much school lately. No one asked what was wrong at home.” She looked at his mother, who sluggishly lifted her head, as if Regina’s words were just now cutting through her inebriated fog.

“Tyson was another black kid failing out of school, failing to make friends, failing at life. But you all showed up today to pay your respects. If only that respect had been there for him while he was alive.” A murmur started to grow among the crowd, collective whispers of, “Did she just say that?”

“Make no mistake, Tyson’s death is a tragedy, but it was a preventable tragedy. The failure here wasn’t from the kid who worked forty hours a week to keep a roof over his head on top of going to high school, yet who still got put on probation when he couldn’t miraculously get all of his homework done fast enough. The failure wasn’t from the son who took care of his mother, who cleaned up her puke every day since his father died, every day since he was ten years old, completely ignoring his own grief. The failure wasn’t from the friend who desperately worried about the girl cloaked in tragedy, the one who ran away and who we probably never really knew.” I stiffened in my pew, blinking in shock as her words reached in and pulled a chunk out of my soul. My hands quivered. I knew she was angry with me for leaving, I could sense it last night, but to hear her announce her rage from a podium at a funeral for our friend added a new layer of humiliation and grief. Charlotte gripped my thigh, squeezing in consolation.

“The failure was from a bunch of people, an entire community, a school administration, his own family, who didn’t care enough to ask ‘what can we do to help you, a kid, get through the day? How can we put your needs first for once? How can we make sure you don’t become so desperate, so alone, that you’d die for the thirty-seven dollars in your wallet?’” She spat out the words as she glared heatedly at his mother, who appeared so stunned she’d actually stopped sobbing. “I don’t believe in God. I don’t believe in Heaven. I don’t believe Tyson is floating on a cloud somewhere in a ‘better place.’ But I do believe the love he and I shared was real. It may be the only real thing in this room. And if that’s true, then at least I was able to give him that during his way-too-short time on this Earth. I was able to give Tyson something real. And I hope it was enough for him. But it definitely wasn’t enough for me.”

Regina looked up from her tablet, observing the sea of open mouths in the chapel, and her face stayed blank. She turned to Tyson’s casket, rested her hand briefly on the shiny wood, then marched out a side exit near the altar. She didn’t look back.

…

“Can’t say I’ve ever seen someone drop a mike at a funeral before,” Charlotte said as we stood outside of the church. Its towering exterior with pitched roof turrets and rows of slender stained-glass windows almost looked reminiscent of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. In a different life, I was in France right now with my sister, starting over. In this one, I was burying another person I loved.

I shivered in the shadow of the structure. It felt like such a massive place to mark the end of such a short life. Cars honked on the busy street as city buses whizzed by, only not loud enough to submerge the nearby conversations.

How could she say that? At a funeral? His poor mother. She’s in bad shape. And to accuse us! Who the hell does Regina think she is?

Sadly, I knew the answer from experience: She was someone who loved that boy so deeply and then had to put his body in the ground. There’s only one way to feel about that.

“She’s pissed,” I said in her defense.

“You think? If someone recorded that In Memorium screw you, it would go viral,” said Charlotte.

“Let’s hope cell phone usage at a funeral would exceed anyone’s standard of bad taste.”

“In this group? Who knows?” Charlotte glanced around at my classmates as I squeezed the tense muscles in my neck. Regina blamed me. She knew I was lying. I wasn’t sure how much she knew, but I could see it in her eyes yesterday, and I could hear her accusations ringing in my head with the church bells. You never cared about us! Bong! You never looked back! Bong! You’re a liar! Bong! We never knew you! Bong, bong, bong!

“You okay?” Charlotte peered at me, her tone sounding more nervous than sympathetic.

“I deserved it,” I said.

“No. You absolutely did not.” She grabbed my forearm like she could squeeze her point of view into me.

“I ran away. I left them with a two-line text message.”

“Because your sister was, you know…” Charlotte didn’t want to finish her sentence in a crowd of gossipers or Keira’s survival would be trending online within minutes.

“I know, but still. It’s true. They don’t know me. And I am lying to her. She can feel it.”

“All she feels is grief.”

“Tyson died for thirty-seven dollars.” That reality blackened the last minuscule piece inside of me that still wanted to believe in hope and kittens. How could his life be worth so little?

“It’s horrible. It’s unfair. It’s completely messed up, but so is what happened to you and Keira.” Charlotte’s voice was thick with sadness. “You can’t save everybody. And if Regina knew what really happened, what you’ve been going through, she never would have said those things. Besides, I don’t remember her or Tyson banging down your door when Keira disappeared.”

This was true. Tyson and Regina both avoided me after my sister’s memorial, as if my tragedy was not only devastating but awkward. They didn’t know what to say, how to be there for me, so they simply weren’t. I understood that better now that I was on the other side, and it made me appreciate the people who were there for me—like Charlotte.

I stared at the white puffy clouds overhead. It would be nice to believe Tyson was floating around up there somewhere, but unfortunately, I agreed with Regina. Endings were never that clean and sparkly. I turned my head and spied Tyson’s uncle guiding Mrs. Westbrook into a black stretch limo. She was blamed for her son’s death in front of a church full of people. If she wasn’t on the brink of an overdose before, she might be now.

“I hope someone’s staying with her.” I imagined how worried Tyson would be. “She shouldn’t be left alone.”

“It’s hard to feel sorry for her given everything,” Charlotte whispered in my ear so low even the pigeons couldn’t hear. “It’s terrible to say, but it’s true.”

“I know. When it comes to parents, Tyson and I pulled some shitty cards.”

Being in Boston had me thinking of my mom and dad a lot. It had me thinking of Randolph Urban. It had me imagining all of those unwitting “family” get-togethers now warped by funhouse mirrors—twisted and stretched in ways that were hard to look at or even recognize.

“We should head home. I don’t think the post-funeral brunch will be highly attended.” Charlotte nodded to her parents, who were waiting in the car to avoid the cold November air of New England. After insisting I “didn’t deserve that” and asking several times if I was okay, Charlotte’s parents released a diatribe on why Catholics rarely give eulogies. Instead, their people stuck to a historic script, and maybe this was why. Grieving people shouldn’t be given microphones.

“Sorry, I don’t think I can go back to your house yet.” I gave her a don’t hate me look. I didn’t want to insult her family, but her home required us to maintain a constant stream of lies that was not only exhausting but very guilt-inducing. Regina had already seen through me, seen something. How long before Charlotte’s parents did, too?

“Okay, but I wouldn’t stand around here too long. You’re turning into a sideshow.” Charlotte gestured to my former classmates huddled and whispering in the granite courtyard, their eyes on me. I was “the girl cloaked in tragedy,” as Regina said, and it was so true I might as well have it tattooed on my lower back.

“I still can’t believe they came,” I grumbled, agreeing with Regina. She, Tyson, and I had been exiled by these peers years ago, too poor, too brown, and too depressing to be worthy of their time. Now, they showed up acting all grief-stricken and concerned. It was as fake as a reality show.

“The funeral details were posted online.”

“Of course they were. This is probably the social event of the fall season.”

Charlotte’s green eyes pulled wide as a cough rose up from behind me.

“Ahem.”

I shifted to see Julianna Gold, a girl from my ninth grade English class. A pack of her fellow field hockey players, and their equally athletic boyfriends, stood beside her. Among them was Wyatt Burns, the boy who gave me a wonderful send off to Europe by way of a chicken wing to the forehead after my sister disappeared. It was so nice to catch up.

“I just wanted to say I’m sorry.” Julianna tilted her head in sympathy as she looked at me, her blond hair dripping to her elbows, perfectly straightened. “I know Tyson was a good friend of yours.”

I glanced at our classmates, all listening, and waited for the punch line. None came.

“Um, thanks,” I said in a hesitant tone.

“And I’m sorry about your sister. I never had a chance to tell you that. You know, before you left.” Julianna’s freckled nose continued to scrunch with empathy.

Is she being sincere? Ironic?

I blinked in response. Julianna and I had completed an English project together on Miss Havisham’s ill-fated wedding during a Great Expectations unit in ninth grade. We made a two-tiered vanilla cake, which wasn’t fully cooked in the middle, and a playlist for the imaginary wedding reception. Julianna was nice. We got an A, and then she never spoke to me again.

“Are you coming back to school?” she asked. Everyone stepped closer, as if not wanting to miss a syllable of my answer. I was surprised their thumbs weren’t poised over their cell phones ready to blast out my reply like social media stenographers.

“I don’t think so.” I eyed them curiously.

“Are you staying in Boston?”

“No, um, we’re going back to Europe in a couple days.” I nodded to Charlotte.

“You know, that’s, like, so cool,” Julianna said. “I think it’s awesome you’re taking time off, traveling.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Have you been to Paris?” blurted a girl from behind her, Darlene Sproles. Her dark hair was pulled into a bun, accenting her high cheekbones, and she wore a fitted black dress with a tight string of pearls around her neck, like she was styled for the funeral by the Condolences line at Nordstrom.

“No, not recently,” I said, thinking of how Keira and I had recently missed our chance to go to France. “We were in Italy, London, and Amsterdam…”

“Did you smoke pot?” asked Wyatt Burns, like the question made him cool.

My lip curled, not wanting to acknowledge his stupidity, but also not wanting to cause a scene by saying what I really thought of him. “That wasn’t why we were there.”

“How about London? Did you go to the theater?” asked Chris Wentz.

“Um, not yet.” I didn’t know how to respond to these questions, or why they were asking them, or why they were speaking to me at all.

“You totally should. I hear the shows are even better than in New York,” he continued, his dream of seeing his name in a Playbill practically blinking above his head.

“Yeah, I’ll do that.” I nodded awkwardly.

Then the lightning round began:

“What’s the beer like?”

“Did you go to a bar?”

“Do they card over there?”

“How’s the shopping?”

“What are people wearing?”

Charlotte leaned toward my ear. “Looks like you’re finally popular.”

“I guess tragedy is in this season,” I whispered back.

“Well, don’t let the press conference go on too long,” she retorted. “My parents will freak if you get back late.”

“Don’t worry.” I nodded.

But the questions kept flying as I stood there, puzzled:

“Did you go to a beach?”

“I hear they go topless.”

“Did you see Big Ben?”

“Or William and Kate?”

I’d spent my whole life as a freak—either as the new girl who wasn’t staying long enough to bother fitting in or as the orphan with the dead parents. Never in all that time did my freak status lend itself to popularity. Only now, I was a girl traveling without a chaperone, on a seemingly endless backpacking adventure. Or so they thought.

I watched Charlotte climb into a sedan with her parents as I lied through a series of questions desperate for a way out.

Then I heard the heavy thud of footsteps thundering from behind me.

Before even turning around, I knew it was her.