The End or Something Like That Read online

  “Oh. Bummer. Who died?”

  Why was Skeeter taking so long?

  “Who died?” he said again.

  “My teacher.”

  “Your teacher?”

  “My earth science teacher,” I said.

  He nodded. “You loved her?”

  “No.”

  “You liked her?”

  “No.”

  “Oh,” he said.

  Then he said, “Do you like burritos?”

  “Uh,” I said, trying to figure out how to get out of this conversation and maybe he was mentally disturbed and this was how he made human connections. “Uh, yeah. I like burritos.”

  He nodded. “I thought you might.”

  If Kim were here, she’d love this boy. She’d love how weird he was.

  Skeeter started walking over then.

  “I have to go,” I told the kid.

  He said, “As you should.”

  And that was it.

  • 13 •

  Kim and I, we used to ride our bikes up and down the street in my neighborhood. We’d wear her mom’s costume wigs, and we’d ride with no hands and we’d yell things.

  If a blue car drove by we’d yell, “Hey, morons! Go back to the sea!”

  If a minivan drove by, we’d yell, “Babies ruin the world.”

  If a truck came by we’d yell, “Little Man Disease.”

  The whole thing was Kim’s idea and at first I was like, “What?”

  And she said, “Come on, Em. Please. I’m so bored.”

  “I don’t think we should,” I said, and she said, “Come on. It’s not that big a deal.” I was scared we were going to get arrested but I did what I always did. I took a big breath and said, “Okay.”

  We got our bikes, and she made me wear the clown Afro and she wore the Elvira wig. And then we put on these scarves so that no one would be able to identify us, Kim said. Which was a really good plan.

  We rode our bikes, and trucks went by.

  Cars went by, too, and we screamed our faces off.

  At first, I was scared but then it started to feel good. It felt good to scream. To yell whatever came into my head and not care.

  Once when a Pinto went by I yelled, “You’re a bean!”

  Kim was laughing so hard and so was I and it was stupid, but we both couldn’t stop laughing and she said, “I told you,” she said. “I told you, you’d like it.”

  Then . . .

  This lowrider Cadillac drove by real slow, the window was down and there was base pounding, and the man filled up the whole seat. Like an overflowing bag of potato chips, and I got brave. I got too brave and shouted. I said, “Hey, fatbutt!”

  The car braked in the middle of the road.

  How could he have heard me? His rap music was up so loud, no way he heard me.

  But he stopped. In the middle of the road.

  And I panicked and stopped, too.

  Kim said, “Crap,” and I said, “Crap.” And she said, “Ride away.”

  She rode her bike one way and I was trying to ride the other way, but I tripped on my shoes and I was trying to get back on and he was opening his door and I was sweating and I could hear Kim yelling, “Ride away, Em!” And right when I was almost riding away, I was almost riding away, the man, he was huge, a huge man with a belly and a long dark beard, he said, “Hey, you. Stop.”

  I tried to not stop. I tried to ride away and he said, “Stop or I’ll beat your skull in.”

  So I stopped.

  My heart was thumping and I stopped.

  He said, “Turn around.”

  I turned around. He had on sunglasses, and he looked like a gang murderer and I was going to be murdered.

  He walked right up to me. Right up to my face.

  He said, “Did you just yell fatbutt at me?”

  I started coughing and he said it louder, “Did you just yell fatbutt at me?” His breath smelled like soy sauce.

  I said, “No, sir.”

  “Really? Because I heard you yell fatbutt at me.”

  I swallowed.

  “Did you?” he said.

  My stomach started to ache and I had to go pee and it was just him and me in the middle of the road.

  “No,” I said.

  “You’re lying.”

  I shook my head. “No. No, I’m not lying. I wouldn’t yell something like that.”

  He cocked his head and I prayed. I prayed and prayed and prayed. I was going to be on Dateline, and he was going to kidnap me and put me in a cage.

  He took a step closer to me, “You call me a fatbutt?”

  I didn’t know what to do and I was for sure going to die.

  •

  “Leave her alone.”

  Kim was back. She was on her bike and she still had on her wig and her oversized hot sunglasses that we bought two of at Claire’s and she was holding a toy rake.

  I almost started laughing because she was so tiny and he was so huge, but then I was about to be murdered so I didn’t.

  She rode right up to us and stopped beside me. My heart started to slow.

  The guy looked at her. “What did you say?”

  “I said to leave her alone.” Kim held the rake up.

  “You gonna hit me with that?”

  She said, “Maybe. You gonna make me hit you with it?”

  He rubbed his face.

  “You girls got problems.”

  “You got problems,” Kim said, and I stood there. She was crazy.

  The guy sighed. Then he walked over to his car and said, “This your lucky day, girlies. This is your lucky day.”

  Then he drove off.

  Kim looked at me. I was soaked with sweat, trembling.

  “I was so scared,” I said, and Kim said, “So was I,” and then we both started laughing.

  • 14 •

  The inside of the mortuary was a big minty green foyer with bad silk flowers, organ music, and a book that said, In Remembrance.

  My sequin dress felt tight.

  Skeeter was quiet. We both sort of stood there.

  I looked back through the glass doors at the kid in the tank top. He was watching us.

  I turned back around and tried to be a normal person. I am a normal person. Everything is fine and I am a normal person. That kid out there is a normal person. Skeeter is a normal person.

  And Ms. Dead Homeyer is dead.

  She is dead and I was tired. And maybe I hadn’t seen her at the 7-Eleven. Maybe it was just my mind playing tricks on me.

  But I also took a step away from Skeeter for no reason.

  A guy in a plaid jacket with glasses said, “You can sign your names here.”

  He pointed to the book. “Go ahead,” he said, and he had a long fingernail on his pinkie. This made me think he probably picked his nose.

  Skeeter wrote his name.

  I wrote mine.

  There were only three other names in the book.

  John Hardy.

  Sharlene West.

  And Al Au.

  Al Au taught geography at our school, and I guess he was Ms. Homeyer’s friend. He was from Hawaii and one time made me say Aloha into the microphone during an assembly.

  My hands started to sweat.

  “Why are there only three names,” I whispered to Skeeter.

  He shrugged.

  “Are there only three people here?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  I felt panic. I felt panic all over. I thought there’d be a lot of people. I don’t know why but I just thought, I thought that old ladies would have lots of people at their funeral. There were lots of people at Kim’s. People from our neighborhood. From school. Her mom’s friends. My parents’ friends. And Kim was only four
teen.

  I thought there’d be a lot of people at Ms. Homeyer’s funeral, and no one would notice us.

  Now. It was just me and Skeeter. And three other people. And one of them was Mr. Aloha.

  It suddenly felt hard to breathe.

  The man with the coat stared at us.

  “Let’s leave,” I whispered.

  Skeeter looked at me. It was my idea in the first place. I knew he was thinking that. I found the obituary. I googled the address. I got the bus route.

  It was me. All of this was me.

  “You want to leave?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I feel sick,” I said.

  The man with the nose-picker fingernail said something to us, he said, “They’re waiting for you.”

  We both turned and looked at him. “What?”

  “I told them you were here. They’re waiting for you.”

  “What are you talking about? Who is waiting for us?” Skeeter said.

  The man smiled. Then he said, “They won’t move the body into the chapel until you’ve had time to pay your respects.”

  • 15 •

  Trish decided to cremate Kim.

  Kim did not want to be cremated. She even told Trish that. She said, “No matter what you do, Mom. Don’t cremate me.”

  Don’t.

  “But it was cheaper and then I could keep her with me all the time,” Trish said, and she even offered to give me a Baggie full of ashes, but I said no thanks.

  Trish put some of Kim’s dead ashes in an Altoids tin and keeps Kim with her all the time.

  I wondered if Trish planned the whole time to cremate her.

  One time Kim and I found a bunch of pictures on the Internet of dead people put in interesting poses.

  “What if they made me into a mannequin at Macy’s?”

  “What?”

  “Like a dead mannequin. They’d get a lot of media coverage,” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “They would but no one would shop there.”

  “I’d shop there,” she said.

  And she probably would but she can’t because she’s dead.

  And when Mom told me Trish was going to burn Kim up, I thought I was going to puke. I sat in the bathroom for forty-five minutes and none of this was happening how it was supposed to happen. Nothing happened how it was supposed to happen and I had made a big mistake, and Kim was dead, and I couldn’t tell her I was sorry. I’m sorry for everything. I’m sorry your mom is going to burn you up, and I’m sorry nothing happened the way it was supposed to happen, and I’m sorry I’m the worst friend ever.

  When I finally came out of the bathroom, I got my copy of Crossing the Veil.

  Dr. Ted Farnsworth said cremation, embalmation, lost at sea, no matter what happens to your body, you can still come back to see your loved ones. It was on page thirty-five. Kim had circled it, which made me feel better.

  So Trish cremated Kim.

  • 16 •

  Skeeter and I followed the mortuary man into a room that had swaths of material stapled onto the wall. There was a white wicker archway, like at a wedding, but instead of a priest under it, there was a yellow casket with the lid up. We could barely see her nose. Her gray hair. Her hands on her chest.

  We both stopped and stood there.

  “Take your time,” the man said.

  Skeeter nodded and I thought I was going to really pass out now. I had just seen Ms. Homeyer in the parking lot and now she was in a box.

  We walked up to her.

  She was white and plastic and there was a teddy bear by her hip.

  “This is weird,” Skeeter whispered.

  I nodded. “Uh-huh.”

  I couldn’t stop looking at her face. Her face. She was sort of smiling, and one time I’d read that morticians sew their mouths that way. In a smile.

  What if you didn’t want to smile while you lay dead in a box? What if you didn’t want them to sew you up or stuff you with jelly? Or like Kim, what if you didn’t want them to burn you to dust?

  “Come on,” Skeeter said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  He started to walk toward the door, but I couldn’t leave.

  “Wait,” I whispered.

  “What?” Skeeter said.

  The guy was watching us from the doorway, his hands clasped, and I felt sick to my stomach but I also felt like touching her face.

  My fingers started to tremble, and I knew that maybe I shouldn’t touch her. I knew that maybe I’d get split personalities or something might happen. Something could happen. But I wanted to see what it felt like to be dead.

  “What are you doing?” Skeeter said, his voice wobbly because he was a wimp sometimes.

  “I just have to see.”

  “See what?”

  My stomach churned.

  I reached into the box. The man took a step forward; Skeeter took a step backward. I put my hand in the box, and right before I made contact, a chill ran through my body, a sharp, distinct chill. I took a breath and ran my finger over her cold dry lips.

  • 17 •

  The day before she died, in earth science, Ms. Homeyer started crying.

  Me and Skeeter were sitting at our desks watching the Egypt video and doing word searches when it happened.

  And Ms. Homeyer was crying.

  Soft at first. Like a puppy.

  Then it got louder.

  Skeeter looked at me.

  I looked at him.

  “What should we do?” I whispered.

  “We don’t do anything,” he said. Skeeter was smart like me. He stayed out of things.

  “We don’t do anything?”

  “No. What would we do?”

  We both looked at her.

  She had her head on her desk, and her shoulders were slumped.

  Everyone else in the class was texting or playing games on their phones or sleeping.

  “She wouldn’t want us to do anything anyway,” he said.

  And I nodded. If I were mean and old and crying on my desk at school, I wouldn’t want someone like me to do something.

  I sat there and tried not to listen.

  Even when her crying turned to sobs, small hiccupy sobs, no one turned to look.

  I knew that something was wrong. Something was really wrong because Ms. Homeyer was not the type of lady to bawl at school. She usually just sat and watched soap operas on her computer.

  I didn’t want to do anything. I didn’t want to do anything at all, but I couldn’t not do anything.

  “I’m going to see if she’s okay,” I whispered.

  He looked up from his word search. If we did twenty word searches a week we got an A.

  “Are you serious?” Skeeter said.

  I swallowed. Was I serious? I turned and looked at her. I thought I was serious.

  “She’s probably fine,” he said.

  I knew why he was saying it. I knew why I shouldn’t go over there.

  It was a bad idea.

  There are some teachers who you were supposed to talk to. Like Ms. Jensen, who has big boobs and used to be in Wicked in New York. Or Mr. Rencher, who brings pizza on Fridays and took his entire fifth period to Mission Impossible. There were teachers like that. Teachers I didn’t talk to but I should talk to.

  Then there were teachers like Ms. Homeyer.

  “I’ll just see,” I said.

  Skeeter nodded. “Okay.”

  The man on the video said, they put the brains and innards in small containers called blah blahs.

  Someone yelled, “What about the balls!”

  Everyone started laughing.

  Homeyer didn’t move, but the sobbing died down.

  Skeeter looked at me.

  I stoo
d up. I had avoided things like talking to a teacher or getting out of my desk during class the entire year. I didn’t like people looking at me. Or hearing me. Or seeing me.

  But . . .

  I walked to her desk and stood there for a minute.

  She didn’t move.

  I looked at Skeeter. He shook his head.

  I turned back to her and whispered, “Ms. Homeyer?”

  She still didn’t move.

  I said it a little loud. “Ms. Homeyer?”

  Nothing.

  So I reached out, I reached out to touch her, even though I prefer not to touch anyone and especially not Ms. Homeyer. I reached out and poked her head.

  She jumped and yelled, “What?”

  The whole class turned.

  “What?” she said again. Why was I standing there? Why was I doing this?

  “Uh,” I said. “Can I go to the bathroom?”

  She waved me off and put her head back on the desk.

  •

  The next day she died.

  • 18 •

  After I touched Ms. Dead Homeyer, the whole world was moving and everything went black and I saw angels and they gave me some lip gloss.

  Not really.

  What happened was we went into the chapel for the funeral.

  There were pews like at a church, but it felt different. The room was smaller and the walls were painted in the same mint color. And it was cramped. Like a mortuary dollhouse.

  There were two old men sitting in the back. A little old lady in the front row and a man wearing a plaid jacket like the nose-picker guy.

  In a corner sat a large woman in a muumuu with yellow hair. She was knitting something.

  She turned and smiled at me like she knew me. Was she from school? Was she Au’s wife? In any case, she was strange.

  Music was playing from a CD player.

  Skeeter said, “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  And I said, “Yeah.”

  And he looked at me and said, “Really?”

  •

  Right after Kim died, Skeeter brought me over a huge burned sugar cookie in the shape of a kangaroo. In the card it said, KEEP ON HOPPIN!

  “My mom made it,” he told me.

  Our families had known each other for years, and Mom and Dad were always talking about Skeeter’s deliquent brother.