SHAYNA IS ON THE couch, texting with It’s Just Ray again. I can tell because her face is scrunched up and she’s swearing under her breath. She hasn’t said much since finding me drunk two days ago. We’ve been quiet in the Jellymobile. She did call someone last night and talked to them for a long time in the bedroom. I wondered if it was my dad.
I spent yesterday afternoon in the shed, looking things up on my phone like:
What happens when you die?
Help me my mom died
How to live without your mom
My mom died
The most popular searches for the last one are:
My mom died today
My mom died of cancer
My mom died now what
I wish I had that on a T-shirt: My Mom Died Now What.
Maybe if I wore it long enough, someone would give me the answer.
There are apps and crisis lines and places to leave notes about your grief and to find people you don’t even know to talk about your dead person. There’s a whole world of dying out there that I didn’t know existed. A whole world of crying and hearts with Grand Canyon–sized holes. A whole world of people teetering on the edges of black holes.
I finish putting my books in my backpack. My sister looks up, her eyes red.
“Are you crying?” I ask softly. “Is he being mean?”
She wipes her face. “Just forget about it. You have too much to deal with, anyway. You don’t need all my crap, too. You ready to go? I have an appointment after I drop you off.”
When we pass by the table, she looks down at the manila envelope and swears under her breath.
“Maybe you should open that,” I say tentatively. “It looks important.”
She grabs it and stuffs it in her bag. “Yeah. Just one more thing, right? Like I don’t have enough on my plate.”
Mae-Lynn pokes me in Grief Group. Walrus Jackson isn’t here yet. Taran and Alif are on their phones and Lupe is at a game.
“Where’s my bottle?” she whispers.
I grimace. “About that. It’s kind of…gone. I kind of…drank it.”
“You drank the whole thing?” Her voice is loud and Taran looks up.
“There wasn’t that much, I mean, but yeah. And then I passed out and my sister found me and I threw up. My mom’s…the death certificates came.”
Mae-Lynn says, “Oh. That’s hard. Really final. A lot of medical jumbo, but what it really means is: yep, still dead.”
“Yeah.”
Alif pipes up. “Hey, did you guys keep their clothes? I did. Is that weird? I have one of Dad’s sweaters, from this time we went camping, and it still smells like the campfire smoke. And him.”
Mae-Lynn says, “I burned a lot of his sick stuff. I was so…you know. My mom keeps his dresser full of his clothes, though.”
“My mom’s clothes are in our closet,” I say. “I feel weird giving them away. Like if I do, she didn’t matter or something. But her clothes meant something to her.”
Mae-Lynn says, “The person is gone, though. The clothes aren’t the person.”
Taran shakes his head. “But they smell like them. And they have memories, like the campfire sweater. You can’t just give those up. They are…” He pauses.
“Last little bits of them. Last little bits of their lives with you,” Alif says. “Like if you keep giving away their stuff, eventually you won’t have anything left of them.”
Alif rubs his chin. He’s trying to grow a goatee, and it doesn’t look like much is happening. “You know, Tiger girl, I gotta ask. The dress. What’s going on there? I mean, you used to wear funky shit, but now you’re just wearing the same funky shit like every single day. Plus a funky hat.”
They all look at me. Outside the classroom, the janitor is running the mop up and down the hallway. There’s a leak in a ceiling pipe. I can hear the wheels of the yellow bucket clanking on the tiled floor.
“My mom bought it for Memorial Days. The dance. Without telling me. And we had a fight. And then she died. And I’m never taking it off.”
Taran looks like he might cry.
“That’s hardcore love, Tiger.”
His brother nods. Mae-Lynn smiles.
I was afraid they’d tell me I was crazy, that I should get rid of it, stop wearing it, but they don’t.
“Thank you,” I say.
Mr. Jackson lumbers in with a stack of folders in his hands. Sometimes I forget now that he’s a counselor for all kids, not just us, and that he has a real job here at the school.
“Folks, we have a development.”
He plops his folders down on the desk and slides into a chair. “We have to find a new meeting place for next week. This is our last day of school, after all, and then they’re going to be doing some renovations. I thought we could meet at the county library, or maybe drive into Sierra Vista as a group, but then a wonderful opportunity presented itself.”
He gives us a big grin.
“How would you like to spend a week with horses?”
Alif says, “What?”
Taran says, “Like, horse-horses? The big kind? No way. No way. I don’t even know how to ride a horse.”
“I don’t have money for that,” I say. “Camps cost money.”
“Now, hear me out,” Mr. Jackson says. “I ran into Randy Gonzalez the other day at the coffee shop and I was telling him about you all, and our little group, and he says he often has sick kids out there to stay, kids who have disadvantages and the like. They stay in a little house, visit with the horses and other animals—oh Lord, he’s got ducks and turtles, goats, the works—they learn to ride, and how to take care of horses.”
“Wait,” I say. “Like, the ranch ranch? Caballo Dorado?” That’s where Thaddeus works. I could see him for a whole week, practically.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen Mr. Jackson, well, beam. “Yes, that one.”
“I’m afraid of horses. And what do you mean, we’d be in a house together?” Mae-Lynn says. “Like, with them?” She points to the boys.
“There are two guesthouses on the property. You two could be in one, the boys in the other. Lupe will be at a U orientation event, so she wouldn’t be joining us. I go back home every evening. No one has to pay. Mr. Gonzalez is going to put you to work. Mucking stables, feeding the horses. You’ll learn how to care for one of God’s greatest creatures. We’ll have sessions, too. But I think being somewhere else might prove beneficial. Rejuvenating. Animals are therapeutic, you know. Even chickens, or so I’ve heard.”
I think of the stony silence between me and my sister. The way the house seems so empty and cold and different. She’ll probably be glad to be rid of me for a while.
And I could see Thaddeus. Like, every day. Because I miss him. Not in that way, but in a he-knows-how-this-feels way.
“I’m in,” I say. “I’ll do it.”
Mae-Lynn sighs. “I’ll try to convince my mom. But I’m not getting on a horse.”
Taran and Alif look at each other. “Okay, we’ll ask our mom,” Alif says. “But is it okay if we leave a little early today? We’ve gotta get ready for the dance.”
Mr. Jackson nods. “I’m thrilled. And yes, you can leave early. Now let’s get started.”
Mae-Lynn has her mom’s car, so we drive to Cucaracha after the meeting to get blue Icees and then drive back to Eugene Field and park at the far end of the lot.
We watch as kids hang pretty golden string lights up in the mesquite trees out front, place luminarias along the front steps and sidewalks and light them up.
It’s the Memorial Days dance.
Mae-Lynn slurps her Icee thoughtfully as we watch the van with the band arrive. They unload their equipment, hustle up the steps, arms full.
“Have you ever been to a dance?” she asks.
“No.”
“We could go in together,” she says hesitantly. “I mean, if you wanted to. No one would even notice us. We could just watch, inside. You are dressed for it.”
She gives me a weak smile and pats my dress.
I think about that. There are some kids arriving in nice cars, probably rented, stepping out in pretty dresses, well-pressed suits, corsages pinned just so. In the fading light, the luminaria lanterns on the walkway look beautiful and magical.
“I think you have to have tickets, maybe?” I say. I was supposed to be one of these kids, though it seems like a long time ago now. “I don’t know. But…no.”
Cake is inside, I know that. The school band is going to play some songs first. We’ve still been quiet around each other. I feel like things are changing.
I pull out my phone.
I know you probably got into the music camp. I’m really happy for you. I can’t wait to hear all about it. It’s okay to tell me.
It takes a long time for her to answer.
I don’t want to leave you. I’m not going.
You are. It would make me feel horrible if you missed out just to stay with me.
I pause. Mae-Lynn is watching me.
And I already feel horrible. Right? Nothing is going to change that. So go. Because that would make me a tiny bit happy.
Cake writes, I hate you and I love you.
I slide my phone into my backpack, breathe deeply.
More cars pull up, kids spilling out. The glossy dresses, the swinging hair. Girls in makeup, girls in tuxes.
Mae-Lynn says, “Those girls look really pretty. I like girls. I like boys, too, I guess. Does that weird you out?”
I look at her. She looks scared, like maybe I’m the first person she’s ever told, and I probably am, since she’s lower than me on the Eugene Field Ladder of Desolation.
“No,” I say. “Just love who you want, you know? Life is so much shit. We should just be able to love who we want.”
“I’m too confused to even do anything about it. But I keep thinking that’s a thing about me my dad will never know. The biggest thing.” Her voice gets very quiet. “I think he would have loved me just the same.”
Her hand finds mine across the front seat.
“There’s so much about me he’ll never know,” she says softly. “That’s the hardest.”
Even though I don’t look at her, I know she’s crying, and I am, too. I scoop her fingers tighter.
Music starts to pump out the school windows. Laughter.
Mae-Lynn and I sit in the car, not saying anything, watching everyone else have the best years of their lives.
Someday, when people ask us about high school, and dances, and kisses, and all that stuff, I know that what we’ll remember most of all is how normal was stolen from us.