Dad rips into the cemetery, driving so fast that Ruby doesn’t have time to warn me. Et tu, Dr. Folger?

So. Dr. Folger hadn’t been showing me kindness earlier when he let me leave school. He was just waiting for me to leave so he could turn around and call my dad.

Dad pulls up so the Jeep’s passenger side is next to us. He puts the window down; his face is hard and angry. There’s none of the usual softness of worry in his eyes. He looks one thing only: pissed off. Times infinity. He pushes the passenger door open.

“Sarah. Get in the car. Now.”

I’m dead. Most of my teachers have overlooked the occasional skipped class—either out of pity, laziness, or not wanting to upset the superintendent. Sure, Dad has had to sign a few detention slips for skipping gym. (Ms. Gliss never lets anything slide.) But this—this is multiple classes; this is being caught off school grounds. This is a big one. I’m in for it.

What is he going to do? Nix my driving permit? Forbid me from seeing Stenn? Take Ruby away? He wouldn’t really do that, would he?

“Get in the car,” he repeats.

“No.” It just comes out.

“Now, Sarah.”

“Come on, Rubes,” I say. With pounding heart, I start walking. Where am I going? What the hell is wrong with me?!

Dad drives beside me, the passenger door still open. To be honest, I’m scared out of my intestines. Not getting in the car is making it worse. My dad looks like he’s going to burst into rage flames. I’ve never, ever seen him this mad.

Ruby, panting happily, looks from me to Dad’s car and back at me. Then she hops through the open door into the Jeep. It’s her way of saving me from my own stupidity. I’m not about to let her go anywhere without me, so I open the back door (because I’m a stubborn jackass) and slide in. Ruby jumps over the front seat onto my lap.

Dad reaches over and pulls the door closed. You’d think he’d peel out, lay tracks, the way he’s fuming. But he just continues to drive slow. Really slow. Way too slow. In the kind of silence that can suffocate. I can’t survive it for long. So I say, “Where are you taking me?”

“Back to school.”

“I’ll just leave again.”

He eyes me in the rearview mirror. He stops the car. “Get out.”

“You just told me to get in!”

“Now I’m telling you to get out.”

This time I do what he says. I open the door and gently nudge Ruby out, then get out myself.

Dad gets out, too. He stands there staring at me and Ruby. “Just what…just what in the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Well, I heard there was the big party here in the cemetery,” replies my snark box. “It was supposedly a three kegger, and I just—”

“Enough! Enough with the sarcasm, Sarah. I have had it up to here with you.” He puts his hand to his forehead like some sort of salute. “Jesus. What am I supposed to do?”

I have no idea. I don’t know what I’m doing, and I just need you to be… I don’t even know what I need you to be! Patient? Understanding? Persistent? But none of those words come out, because that’s never what comes out SJD. Instead, the snark box strikes again: “You’re just upset because it looks bad. The superintendent’s daughter cutting school—”

“Oh, cut the crap! You have got to be kidding me. You think I give a… You honestly think that’s why I’m upset?”

No. “Isn’t it?”

He starts laughing. It’s a crazy, bitter laugh. He sits down on the ground. And then, somehow, he’s weeping. “Where have you gone? Where is the Sarah I knew?” He puts his head in his hands. “I just want her back.”

To see your dad cry like that. Because of you. Not just because of something you’ve done, but because of Who You Are, because the person you’ve become is so profoundly messed up and unreachable… It’s beyond sad. And it’s an entire marathon past guilt.

Shame. That’s what I feel. Ashamed. Not ashamed of him—although it is embarrassing to see him this destroyed. But no, I’m ashamed of myself. This strong, smart, capable man—my dad, for God’s sake—is blubbering on the ground because of me. Because I don’t know how to get rid of my snark box. I literally do not know how.

And so I stand there like a stupid idiot. And after a while, Ruby and I get back in the car.

Eventually, Dad stands up, gets back in the car, and starts driving, even more slowly this time. “I’m taking you back to school. And don’t think this is over. Not by a long shot. You understand me?”

Pretty sure it’s a rhetorical question, so I don’t bother answering. I just stare out the window at the rows of graves. Dad turns, following the twisty cemetery lane, and we pass a white van parked on the grass. Dad’s going so slow that it seems like I could be pulling the van toward me on a rope.

Past the van, a man is kneeling at one of those double graves, the kind with one headstone for two people. His head is bowed like he’s praying or deep in thought. As Dad curves the Jeep around the path, the man looks up. Dead on, straight at me, like he knew I was looking at him. He has gray hair, he’s wearing coveralls, and there is a small gray thing—a possum—curled up nearby.

It’s the man from the gym.

My stomach flips, my scalp prickles like birds are pecking at it. Captain Possum from the gym is here. Sure. Makes perfect sense. I live in a small town and I’ve seen him exactly never before in my life, so why wouldn’t I see him two times, back to back, first where Jamie died and then near where she’s buried?

He watches me pass, and there is no doubt that he recognizes me. He remembers me from this morning just as surely as I remember him.

The whooshing sound comes, like seashells clamped over my ears, and then the tidal wave. It’s happened before and I. Do. Not. Like. It. The sound is the Harbinger of Doom, along with the aluminum foil saliva taste in my mouth. And then the rush of memory—and the panic, the fear, the anxiety. No. I don’t want this. But inexorably, the light goes funny and the worn seat smell of Dad’s Jeep turns rancid. I try to fight it, squeezing my eyes shut and hugging Ruby close to my face. The seashell noise, this feeling, it means remembering. I will not think about it. Don’t think about it.

But it comes anyway.

That day.

Jamie and I had ducked into the gym after school. It was empty—away games, teams had left early—and she was panicked. She’d lost her locket. Maybe the necklace had broken during gym class?

First, we searched the locker room.

“It’s not here,” she’d said. “Let’s check the gym.”

It was crazy to think we’d find it. Needle, meet haystack. I would have given up after the first ten minutes, but Jamie had started to cry, and her drippy, bear-cub eyes were un-ignorable. So I kept looking.

Something caught my eye. “James! Come here!”

She ran over. I pointed to a thin gold chain pooling out from under the folded gym partition. The collapsible wall was pushed to one side of the gym, its large sections folded tight. I knelt down and tugged the necklace, but it wouldn’t budge. “It’s stuck.”

“Crap.” She sat down next to me. “Mr. D and Ms. Gliss had the wall open—wait, closed? Whatever. You know what I mean. To separate us from the boys. Because they’re so dangerous to our virtue.” She rolled her eyes. “My necklace must have caught while I was sitting against the wall.”

I thought a minute. “We could break the chain. Maybe the locket will slide off.”

“Nokay!”

“James. How else are we going to get it?”

She looked at me, pained, but she knew I was right.

I jerked the chain. It broke and more of it came out from under the wall, but it was still stuck. The locket didn’t appear. “Shoot. What is this made of? Titanium?”

Next to me, Jamie hugged her knees. “What if we open the door? The wall, I mean?”

“The controls are locked.”

She got a wide grin and pointed to the other side of the gym. Mr. D’s keys were hanging from the control box, next to the red power button.

“No,” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s important. We’ll just get my locket and fold it back up. Mr. D won’t mind.”

I wasn’t so sure about that.

James jogged across the gym.

“Wait,” I called, catching up. “I’ll do it.” Perks of being the superintendent’s daughter: I always got in less trouble than other kids.

She was grateful. We bumped hips. “Ninja bitches!”

She went back to the folded wall. “I’ll tell you when I’ve got it, and you close it back up quick.”

“10–4.” I studied the control box. It looked simple enough: there was a slot with the key in it, and one big red button. “Ready?”

“Affirmative!”

I pressed the button.

Nothing happened. “It’s like the hyperdrive on the Millenium Falcon,” I said.

James threw me one of her looks. “Don’t nerd out on me. Try it again.”

I fiddled with the key and pressed the button.

The motor whirred and the wall started spreading out along its track, opening like an accordion. As the wall sections pulled away from each other, Jamie stepped in and disappeared between two of them.

“Got it! Back her up!” She sounded happy.

I turned the key and pressed the button again. The motor made a grinding, ratchety sound, and the wall shuddered and reversed direction.

“That didn’t sound good!” I laughed, walking toward Jamie. She was still hidden between sections.

“Oh shit!” She was laughing, too. “I’m stuck!”

“You are high-larious.”

She was quiet a moment. The motor kept humming. “Not funny! My sweater’s caught in the hinge.” She sounded a little nervous. But not terrified. Yet. “Abort! Abort!”

I jogged back to the control box. “There!” I shouted as I twisted the key and pressed the button again. “I think I got it.”

But the sound of the motor didn’t change. The wall kept folding.

“Sarah!” Jamie shouted.

She sounded really scared now.

I pounded the red button and worked the key back and forth furiously. “It won’t stop!” I screamed. “Jamie! Get out of there!”

“I can’t!”

“Take your sweater off!”

“I’m stuck! Sarah! Help!”

I slammed the button again.

The wall kept collapsing.

This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be happening.

I ran toward Jamie. There must be a safety override. The wall would sense that it was blocked—

The motor made a sick, groaning sound.

Jamie screamed. Screamed. And then fell silent.

I stopped running.

I didn’t know what to do. What should I do?

I sleepwalked.

A rivulet of blood appeared under the folded wall.

I threw up.

You’d think I would have sprinted, run for help, but I couldn’t. I could barely balance.

I walked to the office.

It was all I could think to do.

But at what cost?

Jamie. My best friend.

Was she dead when I left? Or did she hear me walk away from her?

Did she die alone?

Jesus Christ. I still don’t know how it happened. I don’t know why I couldn’t make the door stop. I don’t know how it could be heavy enough to crush a person.

I’m so sorry, Jamie.

Please tell me you don’t blame me. Please tell me you know I tried to help you.

Please tell me you didn’t hear me walk away from you.

Please tell me you’re happy now. That you’re not lonely. That you are one with the universe, part of the Force or something.

Please tell me you’re not hanging around, hovering over your grave, waiting for some sort of resolution.

Maybe she is. What if she is?

Maybe I wish Jamie was haunting her grave. Because at least that would mean she’s still herself, and she’s still nearby. But I know I’m a selfish creep for wanting that. Maybe that’s why I can’t overcome the snark box. Because it’s too much. It’s too selfish and it’s too sad and it’s too much. All of this. I don’t want it anymore.