Mom says at breakfast, “The service for Swanee is Saturday at ten. There’s no burial, since she’s been cremated, but after the service Jewell and Asher are having an open house.”
Cremated. I can’t get past that word.
If her body was burned to a crisp, how will her heart ever be restarted? Can they even find your heart in soot?
Ethan slaps his high chair with both hands and Mom resumes feeding him baby slop.
I head up to my room.
“Alix?”
I ignore her.
“Alix!”
“What?” I swivel my head.
“I know this is hard for you,” Mom says. “Jewell wanted me to tell you that this will be a celebration of Swanee’s life, for as long as they had her.”
That sounds like she won’t be mourned. Or missed. How can anyone celebrate?
A volcano of hurt erupts in my gut and I sprint up the stairs to hurl.
The service is like no funeral I’ve ever been to, but then I’ve only attended one: my grandfather’s, when I was six. I remember the organ music was sad. People murmured condolences to Dad and said what a pretty girl I was. I wasn’t pretty because I’d been sobbing the whole morning. Grandpa was Dad’s dad and my favorite grandpa. I cried so hard during the service, Mom asked if I needed to leave. I shook my head no; I didn’t want to leave my grandpa. Dad gave the eulogy and not once did his voice even crack. Later, at the burial, he told us he wanted to stay a while, that he’d call Mom when he was ready. I looked over my shoulder on our way to the car and saw Dad with his head bent and his shoulders shaking. I wanted to run to him and squeeze him tight.
Swanee’s service has a carnival atmosphere about it. There are balloon bouquets and teddy bears. A flowered arch. A banner with the words RIP, SWANEE that looks like everyone from school signed it, or attached a card to it.
The Durbins have hired a mariachi band, and they’re playing “Livin’ la Vida Loca,” of all things.
We’re late because Mom worked the night shift in the preemie ward. That, and I kept changing clothes, trying to decide. Or forestall. Not go. Not accept.
Mom finally had to come in and tell me, “We need to leave now, Alix.”
I almost locked myself in the bathroom and told her to go without me. But I knew Swanee would want me there.
On the way to the service, we passed the Safeway, and my vacant stare wandered to our parking spot in back. What the hell…? Swan and I had discovered this gravel driveway that meandered into a copse of trees and then just ended. We’d park in her little pink Smart car and make out for an hour or so after school. Now the entire area’s being razed. A bulldozer sat there, empty, but it had done its job of clearing the trees. Making way for apartments, or offices. Building the future.
I have no future.
Why didn’t I just succumb to my desire for her? Every time I made her stop, I’d have to apologize. Over and over. Once, she asked, “Why won’t you just let yourself go? I know you want me.”
I said, “I do. But I need to feel this is forever.”
“Alix, you can’t be sure anything is forever.” She drew a circle on my forehead with a slash through it, and then traced a heart on my chest. Like, Follow your heart and not your head. Stop thinking so much.
She was right about forever being meaningless.
At the church I can’t help noticing all the red and white uniforms and letter jackets. Support from Swanee’s teammates. I recognize faces of students, teachers, coaches, admins. Up front are the Durbins—Jewell, Asher, Genjko, Joss. Joss is sitting apart from the family, at the very end of the pew.
The band finishes “Livin’ la Vida Loca” and the minister asks everyone to stand and pray. I can’t believe Jewell and Asher are having a religious ceremony. They know Swan was anti-religion. Genjko’s a Buddhist. He’s shaved his head and taken a vow of silence. One time I walked by his bedroom door and caught sight of this shrine he’d set up with a gold-painted Buddha. He was kneeling in front of it, burning incense. When he saw me, he shot to his feet and slammed the door in my face. I asked Swanee what Genjko meant and she said, “Buddha’s bitch.” It cracked me up. I Googled the word and found out the real meaning is “original silence.” Every time Swanee ran into Genjko, she’d make a thumbs-up sign and say, “Free Tibet, dude.”
Swanee was a sworn atheist. So is Joss. I doubt Jewell and Asher go to church. I remember we did when I was young. And it got harder and harder for Mom and Dad to make me go. Early intuition? When I came out to myself, I realized how unwelcome I’d be in any Christian institution.
Where do atheists spend the afterlife? I want her to be… somewhere. I want to meet her there.
People get up and read or recite testimonials about Swanee. Jewell tells how Swanee was walking by the time she was seven months old, and could really book it. Jewell was forever chasing her down. “She was destined to be a runner,” Jewell says. Her voice breaks and I feel my eyes welling. Jewell swallows down her tears. “She died doing what she loved most.”
That was true. Every day she had to get her mileage in.
Asher talks about Swanee growing up, how she took to sports. She could totally kick his and Derek’s butts at basketball. He doesn’t say out loud that she is—was—gay. Swanee wouldn’t be happy about that, either. She embraced her sexuality. I don’t want to say she flaunted it, but she was never shy about showing me affection in the halls. Or anywhere. Except my house.
Asher has a surprise. He videotaped Swanee’s last track meet, where she won the state title in the girls’ 800 meter.
Joss jumps to her feet and races down the aisle.
I can’t watch it, either. I get up and trip over people’s feet all the way to the end of the row, and then head toward the exit. Joss is outside, leaning against the brick wall, lighting up a joint. Breathing hard, she takes a hit and offers the joint to me. I decline. If Mom or Dad smelled pot on me, they’d ground me for life.
Like it’d matter now.
The crowd at the Durbins’ overflows into the backyard. It’s a cold day, this ninth day of February. Gray clouds threaten snow. The Durbins have a long enclosed patio, and they’ve plugged in space heaters so people won’t freeze. Still, I’m cold to the core. People sit or stand with paper plates of food, talking and laughing together. I don’t think anyone should be laughing.
Mom and Dad are inside paying their respects, I suppose.
“Hey, Alix.” A hand grasps mine. “We’re all really sorry about Swanee.” It’s a guy from the GSA. A group of them have come together, dressed in their rainbow regalia. If they start to throw glitter, I’m out of here.
You know what? I’m out anyway. As I head for the gate, I almost collide with Betheny. She opens her mouth to speak and so do I. But I can’t. I whirl and hurry inside to escape out the front door.
She has every right to despise me. It was my decision to drop out of ski club and mathletes. When you’re in love, you naturally spend less time with your friends. But that’s no excuse. I understood when Swanee asked me—or, rather, told me—I couldn’t go to Betheny’s birthday party last month. She didn’t put it that way, but I could tell she was mad I was even considering it. Betheny should’ve known Swanee wouldn’t be keen on the idea of me sleeping over, the way I always did. I’d be jealous, too, if Swanee was staying overnight with a girlfriend. Even a straight one, especially if everybody assumed…
“You don’t need her,” Swanee said. “You have me now. Anyway, cheers are all stuck-up sluts.”
I wanted to say, Not Betheny. She’s great.
But I didn’t.
I should’ve called or texted Betheny to tell her I was sick or something. All I did was not show up. After her birthday, she stopped calling. Which was kind of a relief because it gave me an excuse not to call or talk to her. At lunch she wouldn’t even look at me. But then she had her clique and I had Swan. So I guess all was right with the world.
On the Durbins’ kitchen table and counters are casserole dishes and sandwich trays, potato salad, veggies and dip, tortilla rolls, shrimp rounds, mini quiches.
A voice sounds behind me. “I was hoping you’d get up at the service and talk about Swanee,” Jewell says. “Maybe share some special memory?”
I try to smile at her. I want to explain that in our short time together we made so few memories that I don’t have any I want to share.
“Eat,” Jewell says. “Asher ordered enough food for an army.”
“Jewell, the Zarlengos are here,” Asher calls from the living room, and Jewell hustles off.
As I’m meandering through the crowd to let Mom and Dad know we can leave now, I sense movement behind me. Glancing over my shoulder, I see Betheny coming toward me. I duck into the back hallway. Damn. Someone’s in the bathroom.
At the end of the hall is Swanee’s room. The door is closed, but I feel her presence. She’s waiting for me. I know when I open the door, she’ll jump out and shout, “Surprise!”
She’s such a prankster.
I twist the handle, push, and… nothing.
She is here, though. Her essence. I know this room so well: the clothes and shoes on the floor; the bed, dresser, desk, closet; the cacophony of colors on the walls. Smears of blue and green and purple over a bloodred base. We were going to repaint her room and she couldn’t decide what color, so we were trying different samples. She never did decide. All her movie posters are still up. She was a Johnny Depp fangirl. She has pictures of him everywhere, movie posters from Edward Scissorhands, Pirates of the Caribbean, Finding Neverland, Alice in Wonderland. She even got newsletters from his online fan club. Joss is a member, too.
Netflixing Johnny Depp movies was one thing we could do at my house. She was so mesmerized by him it was like I wasn’t even there. Except that one time both Mom and Dad had to leave for a while and asked if I’d watch Ethan. “Sure,” Swanee said before I could object. Why did she choose that day to forget about her obsession with Johnny Depp and focus on me?
Her bookcase is filled with trinkets, toys, old dolls. Next to the bookcase are stacks of books. The first time she brought me here, I remember saying, “Did you know you were supposed to put your books in the bookcase?”
She gasped. “Seriously?”
Her track trophies are displayed on every available surface—dresser, desk, nightstand, windowsill, floor. One time I tried to count all her trophies. I got to sixty-five before giving up. She has Arvada High Bulldog paraphernalia everywhere—pins and banners and caps. How does someone in her shape just drop dead?
I want to feel her, smell her, see her one last time. I want to taste—
I’m startled by the pinging of her cell. It’s on her bed inside an oversize plastic envelope. I walk over and read the envelope. Hospital issued. Swanee’s clothes and shoes are in it, too. This must’ve been what she was wearing.
Why hasn’t Jewell unpacked the bag? Unless she just couldn’t bear to.
I unzip it and pull out the shirt, lift it to my face. Swanee’s scent is so strong, it steals my breath away. When I close my eyes to inhale her, the phone pings again. I know that ringtone. A text message.
Who would be calling? Surely everyone knows by now. The phone stops before I find it, and I pull out Swan’s sweatpants. They’re folded, like the shirt was. If I unfold everything, will Jewell get mad? I’ll make sure to replace the contents exactly as I found them. The cell pings again and I dig to the bottom of the envelope. It’s inside her shoe, so maybe Jewell didn’t see or hear it. Maybe a nurse packed Swanee’s belongings. Her cell is so distinctive, with its glittery purple cover and bejeweled S W A N on the back. It glows in the dark.
Only Swan would have a glow-in-the-dark phone.
I slide to unlock the cell and see numerous texts and voice mails. I can’t answer her voice mails because I don’t know her password. I can read her text messages, though. There are 108 unanswered ones. Who in the world…?
The first was sent the day Swanee died, at 5:10 AM.
Buenos dias cariño. Hope you had a good run. Call me when you get home
Who sent this? I was still asleep, still oblivious. Happy. Whole. The caller is LT.
LT. I don’t know anyone with those initials.
“What are you doing in here?”
I spin around. “Nothing.”
“It doesn’t look like nothing,” Joss says from the doorway. She’s eyeing the bag on the bed, the emptied contents. I hide the cell behind my back.
I say, “I just wanted to…” What? Find Swanee alive?
“Joss.” Jewell appears behind her. “Why don’t you go entertain your cousins?”
“Those fucking morons?” Joss says.
“Watch your mouth.”
“Why? You don’t.”
Jewell turns her around bodily and swats her butt. Joss gives her mom the finger behind her back.
Jewell says to me, “I can’t even bring myself to set foot in here.” Her eyes travel around the perimeter. “You don’t see any mice or roaches, do you?”
I smile slightly and shake my head. Exhaling the breath I was holding, I say, “I didn’t mean to go through her bag.”
Jewell stares at the open bag as if it doesn’t even register on her reality scale. She blinks and looks up at me. “Does your room look like this?”
“Pretty much,” I lie. I’m a slob, too, but Mom forces me to clean once or twice a month.
Jewell points to the window and says, “Would you mind closing that?”
Swanee always liked her window open a crack. She never got cold. Unlike me. I’m always cold.
I see the snow is really coming down. I pull the window shut and lock it. As I’m turning around, Swan’s cell pings again and I panic. It’s still in my hand. Jewell must not hear, though, because she’s leaning against the doorjamb, tears streaming down her face.
I put the phone on vibrate and stick it in my back pocket.
Jewell opens her arms to me and I go to her. “We didn’t even get to say good-bye, did we?”
Her tears revive my own.
“Life is so precious,” Jewell says in a sob. “So short.”
We hold on to each other until the wave recedes. Jewell’s smoothing my hair back when I see Mom turn the corner. “Your father and I are ready to go,” she says. “If you are.”
I want to stay here now. Be close to Swan.
Jewell backs off, wiping her eyes. I ease Swanee’s door shut behind us, but for the life of me, I can’t release the handle. Can’t let her go.
I say to Mom or Jewell, “Swanee borrowed some things from me.”
Jewell asks, “Do you need them today?”
“No. I can come back.” I need to come back.
“Come tomorrow,” Jewell says. “Call first.” She walks over to Mom, who’s balancing Ethan on her hip, and tenderly touches his chubby cheek with the undersides of her fingers. “Hey there, sweet cakes,” she coos.
Ethan whines a little, and then winds up to let loose. “He’s tired,” Mom says.
Jewell twists her head to meet my eyes over her shoulder. “You’re always welcome here, Alix. Don’t be a stranger.”