Lessons from a Dead Girl

by Jo Knowles

  Leah Greene is dead.

  Before my mother even answers the ringing telephone downstairs, I know.

  “Hello?” I hear my mother say politely. “Yes? Yes, this is Laine’s mother.”

  There is a long, quiet pause.

  “Yes? A party? Drinking? Oh . . . well —”

  Another pause.

  “Leah Greene? What? Oh, my God! Are you sure? How?”

  As I listen to her panicked voice, I feel the tiny bricks that have walled away certain memories continue to crumble. I squeeze my eyes shut and cover my ears. But the sound of my mother’s cries downstairs pushes against the wall and loosens the mortar. All I see behind my eyelids is Leah. Leah with her red-glossed lips. Leah standing above me. Leah telling our secret to a crowded room of strangers and my only friends in the world. Leah walking away, leaving me in the rubble of my ruined life.

  I hate you! I wish you were dead!

  I had screamed the words inside my head, as if I were seven and not seventeen. Somehow, I think she must have heard me.

  Through my bedroom window, the sky is clear blue and the sun shines a warm spot on my bed, already taken by my cat, Jack. He calmly cleans his belly, his back paw bent behind his head. As he licks, I see a flash of him dressed in baby-doll clothes. Leah is holding him under his front legs and making him dance. And I see me, laughing, even though I want her to stop.

  Jack closes his eyes when he finishes licking and settles his head against my foot through the covers. The fur around his eyes looks gray, and his coat is full of dandruff where he can’t reach anymore.

  “Good kitty,” I whisper, rubbing his head through the covers with my toe. He purrs back.

  My bedroom door is open. I watch it, waiting for my mother to appear.

  Her steps are slow and heavy on the stairs, as if she’s carrying something large inside her. She hesitates in the doorway, looking in at me safe in my bed.

  “Something’s happened,” she says, carefully stepping into my room. Her voice is quiet. I don’t move. The cat shifts and starts licking again.

  My mother sits on the bed next to me and touches my shoulder. “There was an accident,” she says.

  I turn my head away from her.

  She moves closer and tries again. “There was a”— she pauses —“a terrible accident.”

  She doesn’t tell me what kind of accident. Maybe she doesn’t want me to know the details. But it’s too late for that.

  Her hand presses hard against my shoulder. “Lainey?”

  I should be crying or asking what happened. I should look more surprised. But all I feel is this overwhelming sense of guilt and fear, and they’re fighting each other inside my chest.

  It can’t be true. But it is. It’s over. And it’s my fault.

  My mother waits for me to reply, but I stay silent. I look away from her and wait for her to go.

  When she finally gets up to leave, she asks if I’ll be OK. I nod and roll over.

  She goes back downstairs and gets on the phone again. She talks in a low, nervous voice. Terrible accident. Terrible. Terrible.

  The thoughts in my head echo her words. It’s over. Over.

  Each time she says Leah’s name, I get pulled back there, to the time when Leah and I were still best friends. The feelings come rushing into my chest. I try to shake my head. Swallow. Push them back down. Strengthen the mortar and rebuild my wall. But I see us anyway. One scene after another. Leah, always the leader, teaching me the complicated rules about trust and secrets and what it means to be her best friend. There were so many hard lessons. But what good are they now? What good are lessons from a dead girl?

  Leah and I are in the fifth grade. We’re at recess when Leah motions me to the far side of the playground, where the boys usually play kickball, only this day it’s too muddy even for them. I look around to make sure it’s really me she’s pointing to.

  “Come on, Lainey!” she calls. Until this moment, we’ve only been “outside of school” friends, if you could call it that. Our sisters are friends, so they’re convinced we should be, too. Every so often they try to get us to spend time together. But whenever Leah comes over or I go to her house, I can tell she wishes I was more like my sister, Christi. Or more like herself.

  Christi pretends not to notice the obvious reasons Leah and I don’t become close, but you would have to be blind not to see them. Leah is popular and I’m not. Leah is also beautiful. Everyone wants to be Leah’s best friend. But me? Most people don’t even know who I am. Christi doesn’t get that people like Leah don’t want to be friends with people like me.

  “Lai-ney,” Leah sings to me from across the playground. She gestures at me with her hand again.

  I run to her obediently. Who wouldn’t want to be seen hanging out with Leah Greene? She’s smart, so the teachers love her. She’s beautiful, so the boys love her. Even the boys who still say they don’t like girls. And because all the boys and all the teachers love her, all the girls want to be her friend — and learn how to be just like her.

  As we trudge along toward the field, our shoes sink into the mud and make a slurping sound with each step. The teacher on recess duty calls to us to stay out of the mud. Leah sings back in her sweet voice, “We wi-ill!” But we’re already well into it. I keep following her until we’re far enough out to be alone, even though we’re in the open.

  “I have a secret,” she tells me, grinning. She pulls a marker in the shape of a mouse out of her jacket pocket. The cap is the mouse’s head, and when she pulls it off, there’s a marker tip inside. She gives me the head to hold in one hand and takes my other hand in hers, turning it over palm up. Then I watch, amazed, as she carefully writes L.G. + L.M. = F.F. along the crease in my hand that she says is my lifeline. When she’s done, she writes the same thing on her own palm.

  “There,” she says, smiling as if she’s won a game. “Know what it means?”

  I think I do, but I shake my head no anyway. Us? F.F.? I try not to smile too eagerly.

  “Leah Greene plus Laine McCarthy equals Friends Forever,” she says. Her lips part to show her white teeth as she grins at me.

  My whole body smiles at her soft words. They don’t make any sense, but at the moment I don’t want to think about that.

  Leah takes my hand again and pushes our palms together just as the bell rings. I look around to make sure no one sees us holding hands, but Leah doesn’t seem to care. Her hand is warm and dry, and I feel a strange, thrilling tingle shoot right up my arm when we touch, as if she has magic inside.

  Friends forever. But why?

  “Don’t show anyone,” she says as we race side by side to the students already lined up to go inside. Some of the girls eye us curiously.

  I squeeze my hand shut and hold our secret in it. Any time I start to wonder why on earth Leah Greene wants to be my best friend, I tell myself not to think about it.

  All that day, each time we see each other, we wave our closed fists and grin. I feel so deliriously happy, I think my lips will crack from smiling so hard. I sneak peeks at the purple letters on my hand to remind myself it isn’t a dream. I feel taller. Better than the girls around me. I feel a difference in how I walk. How I answer Mrs. Faughnan’s questions. I’m not no one anymore. I’m friends with Leah Greene. Friends forever.

  F.F. with Leah Greene means I sit next to her at the popular table at lunch. It means I get invited to birthday parties. I have friends, even if they are second friends, the way you have second cousins. They’re distant and it’s not quite clear how you are connected, but the connection means you’re invited to all the big events out of obligation, even if they don’t speak to you or acknowledge that you’re there.

  Just before school gets out that
year, Leah pulls me from our group during recess and leads me out to the field again, just like she did that first time she declared our friendship. She pulls a marker out of her coat pocket. This one is red. It’s the thick kind my mom uses to make sale posters at the antique store my parents run.

  Leah carefully holds my hand still while she writes F.F. on my palm. Then she writes the same on hers and presses our hands together, just like the first time. Like before, my hand tingles when she touches me. I smile when I feel it, that magic spark between us. I check her face to see if she felt something, too. She smiles back at me.

  “It’s permanent,” she says, putting the marker in her pocket. “Like us.”

  We grin at each other so our teeth show. My insides dance.

  Some other girls come over and plead with us to come play Leah’s version of tag, which involves the girls chasing the boys until the last boy gets caught and has to pick a girl to kiss. I’ve never been picked. The girls smile at Leah but seem to sneer at me when she isn’t looking, as if they know I hate this game and why. No boy would ever kiss me.

  Last year, someone left a note on my desk that said, Are you a boy or a girl? I put it in my pocket and waited to reread it when I got home. Alone in my room, I carefully unfolded the note, trying to touch it as little as possible. It was written in messy pencil on yellow lined paper. I stared at the words and cried.

  Christi walked in on me and made me show her the note. I tried to crumple it up in my fist, but she pried it out of my fingers.

  “People are jerks,” she told me. “Ignore them.” Then she took the note and threw it in the woodstove.

  Leah gives me her special half-smile before running away from us. Her long hair whips back and dances behind her, and we all run to keep up.

  After school, my mother picks us up in our old, beat-up minivan. Leah’s mom asked my mom to take Leah for the afternoon so she could bring Brooke to a doctor’s appointment. Christi is at piano lessons, so when we get home, it’s just Leah and me.

  We race up the stairs side by side, but when we get to the top, Leah pushes past me and runs down the hall to my room. I chase after her, and we leap onto my bed so the headboard thuds against the wall.

  “Let’s play in the doll closet,” Leah says.

  The doll closet is a crouch-in closet in the upstairs bathroom that Christi and I share. It has a child-size table and chairs to sit at and a wooden play stove and refrigerator my father made for us when we were little. It also has lots of our old dolls and stuffed animals and the plastic cups and plates we used to play with for pretend tea.

  “Come on,” Leah says, opening the closet door and motioning for me to go in first. I click on the night-light by the door and sit at the little table.

  Leah comes in after me and closes the door behind her. It’s late spring, but it’s cold in the closet. It smells like dust and plastic toys. The dolls seem to watch us suspiciously. Sometimes Leah and I come in here and pretend we’re husband and wife and all the dolls are our babies. We make a joke out of it since we’re way too old to play with dolls. Leah gets to be the wife because she has long hair and mine is short. Once we put our hands over our mouths and pressed our faces together, pretending to kiss. Leah said only real friends like us could practice like that because we would never tell anyone. It’s our special secret. It makes me feel special to have it with her.

  “Let’s practice again,” Leah says, as if reading my mind. She moves closer to me. “I’ll be the husband this time. You’re my wife, and you have to do what I say.”

  I start to say “OK” but Leah stops me, putting her pointer finger on my lips.

  “Don’t talk,” she says. “I didn’t say you could.”

  I stop smiling.

  “Close your eyes,” she whispers a little more gently.

  I close them and feel her move closer to me. Her breath is warm on my face. When she puts her hands on my knees, her electricity goes right through me. I get a tingly feeling low in my stomach.

  She slides her hands slowly up my thighs.

  I open my eyes for a split second. Her face is so close to mine, I can see the tiny blue veins in her eyelids. My heart thumps wildly against my chest.

  She puts both hands around my waist. I still don’t move or dare open my eyes again.

  Then she kisses me. This time, she doesn’t put her hand between our lips. Her mouth pushes against mine. She moans. I’m too scared to move. But I’m excited, too. Girls don’t do this. Leah must love me. Why? What does this mean?

  A strange, prickly warmth spreads through my body. I sit perfectly still and let her kiss me. I let her hands pull me toward her until my chest presses up against hers and our hearts pound against each other. I keep my eyes closed tight and let her do what she wants.

  When we step out of the closet, we don’t talk. I still feel her lips on me, her chest against mine. I wonder if she feels the same way.

  I follow Leah downstairs and out to the backyard, where my dog, Seal, runs up to us, holding a stick in his mouth and wagging his tail. Leah tries to take the stick from him, but he steps back and runs. We chase him, but he darts between us.

  I finally get close enough to touch his tail when Leah grabs my shoulders from behind. She pulls me backward and to the ground. I land with a hard thud. Before I can get up, Leah straddles me and pins my hands to the ground. She looks down at me and makes a face like she’s going to kiss me again. She looks like she wants to hurt me.

  “Get off!” I say.

  She laughs without opening her mouth. She pushes my wrists against the ground so hard I cry out, but she holds tighter. I try to pull my hands away, to wiggle my body out from under hers.

  Then I feel it. Something warm and wet landing on my forehead. It rolls down my temple and into my ear, warm and cold at the same time.

  Leah laughs out loud and climbs off me.

  “You liked it,” she says.

  I roll away and sit up, quickly rubbing her spit off my face.

  “I did not!” I lie, trying not to cry. I get up and run to the back door.

  “You know you did!” Leah calls after me.

  I don’t turn around. I don’t argue with her again. I know it’s true. But what does it mean?

  Later, after Leah’s mother picks her up, I go to my room. Christi and my mom and dad are all home, but they’re busy and don’t notice me. I listen to their usual sounds — my sister in her room singing to a CD, my parents downstairs listening to the news and arguing with the TV. My room feels different. Leah has touched everything in here. I can even smell her.

  When I turn, I see my reflection in my dresser mirror. My hair is like a boy’s, short and brown and messy. My striped shirt is too small and has a grass stain on the front. Even my face is dirty. I look like a boy. An ugly boy. And I feel like one, too. Why would Leah be my friend? Why would she do those things to me? Was it all just a joke?

  I grab my old Curious George and hide in my bedroom closet, where there’s only space for me. I press George’s face against mine.

  Why did she do it? Why did I let her? What’s wrong with me?

  My tears soak George’s fur, but he just smiles at me in the dim light, no matter how hard I cry.

  That night, when Christi and I are in the bathroom getting ready for bed, she asks me what’s on my hand. I look at the slightly faded Fs.

  “Nothing,” I say. I scrub the letters with soap as hard as I can, but they won’t come off.

  “Must be permanent marker,” Christi says. “Way to go, Brain.”

  “It will come off,” I say, scrubbing harder. But even when my hand is almost raw, I still see some of the red marker.

  I go back to my room and hug George again.

  “We won’t be friends forever,” I whisper into his fur. “We won’t.”

  But he keeps smiling, like he knows better.

  The next day at school, Leah waits for me on the playground. I try to go the other way, but she chases after me.

&
nbsp; “What’s wrong?” she asks innocently.

  I don’t say anything. She knows the answer.

  “Oh, Laine, it was just a silly game. You need to toughen up,” she says.

  “It didn’t feel like a game,” I tell her. I look at my feet, remembering her lips on mine, her chest pressed against mine, her spit on my face.

  “OK, I’ll tell you the truth,” she says. “I was testing you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She steps closer. “You know. To see if you trusted me. We have to practice for when we get older, remember? It’s what best friends do.”

  “Then why did you spit on me?”

  “I was afraid you’d tell our secret.”

  “I would never!”

  She sighs heavily, like she’s talking to a stupid five-year-old. “You’re right,” she says. “I should have trusted you. I know you’re not the type to break a promise. That’s why we’re friends.”

  She reaches for my hand and squeezes it, then quickly lets go before anyone sees. “Come on,” she says, ending the conversation. She heads for the swings. I hesitate, wondering what she’d do if I didn’t follow.

  She turns back and motions to me to come with her. I don’t move. She smiles, then looks around for someone else to call. I’m sure every girl in my class would die to have Leah call her name, and I panic at the thought of being replaced. I follow her.

  A few weeks go by before Leah comes over again. As soon as we’re alone, she takes my hand. “We need to practice,” she tells me. She pulls me forward before I can answer. As her fingers lace tightly through mine, I feel her magic and let her lead me into the closet. She closes the door and we kiss. Then she rubs her hands over my body.

  I’m scared and excited all over again, but I don’t want her to accuse me of liking it the way she did the last time, as if something was wrong with me. So I close my eyes and try not to feel her hands on me, her lips on me, the way my stomach tightens at her touch.

  We’re just practicing, I tell myself. That’s all.

  By the summer after sixth grade, Leah and I have had lots of practice. It’s always the same. Always at my house, in front of the lifeless dolls. Leah says this is the year — when we start seventh grade, we’ll start practicing with boys. Each time we go into the closet, I wonder if it will be our last, and each time we step out, I’m filled with shame over the small part of me that doesn’t want it to be.