The End or Something Like That Page 6

  I stared at the box of ashes on the table in front.

  The man spoke for forty-five minutes.

  Then we sang a hymn about the beauty of the earth, and then it was over.

  There was no chocolate fountain. No Snickers. No live bands. And no balloons.

  •

  Sometimes, I close my eyes and try to be nowhere. To feel what it would be like to disappear into the darkness.

  What would it be like to be nowhere?

  To be nothing?

  It’s easier to imagine than I want it to be.

  • 25 •

  There are points in my life where I do things that I shouldn’t do or don’t do things that I should.

  Most days I don’t do them, like when I saw Carlisle Peterson in my fifth period get Coke dumped on his head, and Mr. Bates looked up and said is anything wrong, and no one said anything, and Carlisle had soda all over his hair and face, and I knew I should say something, I knew I should, but I didn’t.

  Most days I’m like that.

  But some days, even though I know it will turn out bad for me, like when Ms. Homeyer was crying or the time my dad got called a butthead at Joe’s basketball game, there are times I can’t sit still. Something inside me, or something outside of me, won’t let me ignore what is happening.

  At Ms. Dead Homeyer’s funeral, after Gabby sat down, despite everything in my body telling me not to, at Ms. Dead Homeyer’s funeral, I stood up.

  I stood up.

  Skeeter said, “Emmy, what are you doing?”

  I tripped over his legs so I could get by, and people laughed and the yellow-haired lady was smiling so big her face was about to fall off.

  I could do this. I could do this. I could do this.

  I walked up to the podium and right when I got there I started to feel woozy.

  I had something I wanted to say.

  For twelve months, I’d been quiet. Almost every day since Kim died.

  Now, at Ms. Homeyer’s funeral, I wanted to say so many things.

  I wanted to say, you guys are jerks.

  I wanted to say, someone died. Did you know someone died? Someone is dead. You can’t talk like that.

  I wanted to say, don’t you get bored? Don’t you get tired? Doesn’t it get old, making fun of people? Laughing at people?

  I wanted to say, my best friend is gone and she told me she was going to come back. She promised me she would come back and visit me. You all have each other. You all have your stupid lives and I have nothing.

  I wanted to say, I am so sad.

  And finally I wanted to say, this is my mom’s dress and I would never wear it in real life.

  I stood there.

  They were all were watching me. Gabby had that face on her face.

  I swallowed and I was sweating, drips running down my back. Gabby leaned over and said something to one of her halter-top friends. The girl smiled.

  They were doing it right in front of me and I stood there and I prayed.

  I prayed to Kim. My best friend who saved me. She always saved me. I said: Dear Kim. Please. Please save me.

  That’s when Ms. Dead Homeyer walked in the door.

  • 26 •

  A week after Kim’s funeral, Gabby came over.

  She rang our doorbell and I was under my bed.

  Mom let her come up to my room, which was about two feet high with clothes and old dishes.

  Mom said, “Emmy?”

  I didn’t move.

  “Em?”

  They walked in. I watched Mom’s feet, her Nike running shoes. Gabby was wearing flip-flops and her toenails were glitter pink. Because Gabby loves glitter.

  I decided to see how long I could hold my breath but then I changed my mind and said, “I’m under here.”

  Mom squatted down. “What are you doing?”

  “Lying under my bed.”

  “Come out from under there,” Mom said. And I could tell she was embarrassed. My mom gets embarrassed about things like me lying under my bed.

  I closed my eyes for three seconds.

  Then I crawled out.

  “Are you okay?” Mom asked.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Mom moved my hair out of my face. Then she said, “Your good friend Gabby is here.”

  Gabby stood against the wall, blending into the white paint almost. I’d never seen her look so bad and it sort of made me feel good. Which is mean.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “I’ll leave you two alone.”

  I sat on my bed.

  I had worn the same clothes five days in a row, my hair was a knot, and I smelled like potato chips.

  Gabby stood there and I sat there.

  Then she said, “I brought you something.” She handed me a box wrapped in polka-dot-pink paper with a silver bow.

  “It’s nothing really,” she said. “It’s not really anything. It’s just, I just, I just thought . . . I don’t know.”

  I held it in my hands and her voice thinned out to nothing.

  Finally she said, “You can open it.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Yeah.”

  The air felt hot and stale, and she kept playing with her T-shirt with a tiger on it that she got at Forever 21 because I was there sitting in the dressing room with her and Kim and she’d said, do you think I should get the tiger or the lion and Kim said tiger and I said lion.

  She kept playing with her tiger shirt. Wadding it up and then letting it go. Her bones were small. Like a bird. I hadn’t noticed before. I hadn’t noticed a lot of things before.

  I pulled the ribbon off and then opened the box.

  Inside was a pillowcase with a deer in a cluster of trees embroidered on it.

  “It’s the deer from the story,” she said.

  I stared at it

  “You know,” she said, “from the funeral?

  The deer from the funeral.

  “Oh,” I said.

  “I made it myself,” she said. “I mean, my mom helped me. But I did most of it. That’s why his nose is sort of screwed up.”

  I looked at her.

  “It’s stupid,” she said.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “It’s pretty stupid,” she said.

  The deer had a halo on it.

  “Anyway,” she said, “you can just throw it away.”

  I still didn’t say anything because I didn’t know what to say.

  So then she said, “Are you going to that party Samantha is having?”

  “What?”

  “That party,” she said.

  “What party?”

  She said, “You know. We were all going to go.”

  •

  Once upon a time me and Kim and Gabby were going to go to some party at Samantha Ryland’s house that she had every year, and I didn’t want to go but it was always so huge and tons of high school people would probably be there and it was going to be A Mazzzzzzing.

  I said, “No.”

  Kim said, “Maybe we should.”

  Gabby said, “Everyone’s going to be there.”

  Kim looked at me.

  “We’ll do makeovers and look really hot and it’s going to be so fun,” Gabby said.

  “We should go,” Kim said again.

  And I said, “Okay.”

  •

  But that was five thousand years ago but really a month and Kim was in an Altoids box now and Gabby said, “I think we should still go.”

  •

  I felt everything inside me tense up.

  “You want to go to a party?” I said.

  “No,” she said. “I am going to a party and I think you should go with me.”

  I sat there.

  She stood ther
e.

  “Emmy. Do you want to go?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No.”

  “You should.”

  “No.”

  She stared at me. “Everyone is sad, Emmy.”

  I said, “Good one.”

  She bit her lip and then turned around and left.

  • 27 •

  There were a lot of things I could do. There were a lot of choices I could make.

  And then there were some I couldn’t make.

  Like when I was standing at the podium at Ms. Dead Homeyer’s funeral and she walked across the room, past her dead body and right up to my face where she almost kissed my cheek but instead said, “Hi, Sugar.”

  “Hi,” I whispered.

  She had never called me Sugar in real life. Not in a million years times a thousand. She seemed much more cheery now that she was dead.

  She smelled like Mountain Dew and stale perfume, which might be how death smells or maybe just Ms. Dead Homeyer. I couldn’t be sure.

  She smiled. Then she said, “They can’t see me.”

  “What?” I said.

  “They can’t see me. You’re looking at nothing right now.”

  And then I realized, I realized what she was saying, and it was true everyone was staring at me like I was crazy. I was crazy.

  She said, “Just perk up and say what I say.”

  My heart was thumping. Just perk up and say what I say?

  She cleared her throat and then she started speaking into my ear.

  “Tell them I used to dance on the weekends,” she said.

  I looked at her. “What?”

  “Don’t talk to me, honey.” She nodded toward the pews.

  I looked out and people were snickering.

  “Say it,” she said. “Tell them I was the best dancer when I was your age.”

  I swallowed. Then I put my mouth on the microphone. “When Ms. Homeyer was our age, she used to dance on the weekends.”

  Skeeter gripped the pew in front of him. I should not be doing this. I should not be doing this.

  Ms. Dead Homeyer kept going.

  “Tell them I used to be beautiful. I got my hair done in fancy salons, and my dad was the mayor and everyone used to want to be with me.”

  I took a breath and said it, “She used to be beautiful. She got her hair done in salons, and her dad was the mayor and everyone wanted to be with her.”

  Tony yelled, “Yeah right!”

  Laughing now.

  Gabby was staring straight at me.

  Ms. Dead Homeyer whispered some more. “Tell them one time, I was dancing at Saltair Dance Club and I met the love of my life named Ed, and he was quite a looker.”

  I knew. I knew I could not say that. I knew I could not say anything I was saying but at the same time, I had no choice. A dead lady was talking to me.

  My voice rang in the microphone, the feedback coming on as I told them about Ed.

  “Ed was tall, had dark hair, wore wing-tip shoes and he said, ‘Hey, I’m Ed.’ And Ms. Homeyer said, ‘I’m Carla,’ and he said, ‘Carla, how about you and me dance for the rest of our lives.’”

  Suddenly no one was giggling or whispering. They were all fixed on me, and this was a huge mistake. If they made fun of me before, they were really going to go for it now.

  But Ms. Homeyer bounced on her toes.

  “See? They didn’t know that. No one here knew that. No one here knew me. Tell them he thought I was pretty and intelligent and we would laugh for hours.”

  She was talking fast, her voice light.

  My heart pounded and I told them. I told them stories about the two of them. The time they went bowling and Ed lost his shirt in a bet. I told them about when they used to go to the drive-in and kiss for hours. “Hours and hours,” she said.

  I told them about the day they got married. She wore a white mermaid dress with pearl flowers hand stitched into the fabric, and he wore his best army clothes, and it was magical with chocolate cake and a twenty-five-piece brass band.

  I told them everything about her love, Ed.

  As I spoke, people listened. They laughed at places and they gasped at places and when there was a wedding, I felt like I was there and so was everyone else. Ms. Dead Homeyer as a young beautiful girl. Her hair in real curls. Her dress swirling and her husband, Ed. I could see her and she was laughing and she was happy.

  Then she said, “Tell them Ed died.”

  I looked at her.

  “Look forward,” she said. “Don’t look at me.”

  I looked forward and she said, “Tell them . . .” she stopped, her voice catching. Then she said, “Tell them he was hit by a truck when we were newlyweds.”

  My hands started to shake.

  “Go on,” she said.

  “Uh, he died,” I said. “He died. Her husband, Ed, died.”

  A girl in the back said, ”What?”

  “By a truck,” Ms. Dead Homeyer said. “Tell them it was an Associated Foods truck.”

  “He got hit by an Associated Foods truck.”

  Tony laughed out loud. His voice echoing and bouncing against the minty green walls.

  Ms. Dead Homeyer had tears in her eyes.

  Tony said, “This is so weird. Emmy is a freak.”

  Now Ms. Dead Homeyer was crying. Wiped her nose on her sleeve.

  She sat down on the carpet and I wanted to say, Get up. Please get up and tell me what to say but she put her dead head in her hands.

  I looked out and the spell was broken. People were laughing and whispering and the lady with the yellow hair and the muumuu gave me a thumbs-up, which made me feel even worse.

  • 28 •

  When I was ten I had a dream I was floating in the ocean. The sun was overhead and there was no one around and I felt good.

  Light.

  I wasn’t scared. I didn’t feel lonely.

  Then I saw a shark.

  The shark came up to me and started to circle.

  I watched its fin go around and around and around.

  I still wasn’t scared.

  I remember that well.

  I wasn’t scared. I was almost happy.

  And then it bit my leg off.

  Just like that. He swam right up and bit it off.

  I watched him do it and he watched me watch him do it, and after he did it, he said, “You taste disgusting.”

  Then he swam away.

  •

  Ever since then I have the dream again.

  And again.

  And again.

  And again.

  “You taste disgusting.”

  Then he swims away.

  • 29 •

  When we got on the bus to go home from Ms. Dead Homeyer’s funeral, Skeeter said, “That was weird.”

  My whole body was tingling. On fire. I felt confused and tired and jumpy.

  “Yeah,” I said. “It was weird.”

  I sat down next to the window again and tried to settle my nerves.

  He sat next to me and said, “Really, why did you say all that? How did you know that stuff? I didn’t even know Ms. Homeyer was married.”

  “I didn’t know either,” I said.

  “Was it true?”

  I shrugged.

  I didn’t want to think about it. Not right then, so I looked out the window and waited for him to begin talking about something else.

  Waited. And waited.

  It took him a while but then he started.

  The bus drove slowly through town and Skeeter’s voice was actually nice, like a warm blanket. We passed the spot where the kid had been holding the Dr. Ted Farnsworth sign.

  That was tomorrow. Tomorrow a hundred people were goin
g to sit through his seminar and tomorrow a hundred people were going to be convinced you could talk to dead people.

  •

  Like Kim.

  People who were dying were going to think they weren’t going to be dead dead. They were going to think they could still talk to their friends.

  I used to think it was a lie.

  But . . .

  I was wrong.

  You could talk to dead people, just not the ones you wanted.

  I put my hand in my bag and touched Dr. Ted Farnsworth’s book. What did it mean? Why was this happening?

  When we got to our stop, Skeeter said, “Do you want me to walk you home?”

  I looked at him.

  After Kim died, I was alone. And then the first day of ninth grade, he was in five of my classes. Five. Skeeter and his headphones and his stories. I’d known him forever but never really thought about him or noticed him. Now we ate lunch together and sat together and did nothing together. I wondered when he’d start hanging out with other people and leave me behind like Kim did.

  Every day I thought it might happen but so far I’d been lucky.

  I sort of did want him to walk me home.

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  “Are you sure?” he said.

  And I said, “Yeah. It’s okay.”

  “Are you really sure?” he said.

  “I’ll be okay,” I said.

  He nodded.

  Then I said, “I might get murdered.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No. What did you say?”

  “Nothing.” I tucked my hair behind my ear because I’m a weirdo.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said.

  And that was it.

  • 30 •