by Karen Rivers
Like Piper.
I squeeze my eyes shut tight. In my mind, the evening when she died replays itself.
Right before I kissed Sloane and everything fell apart, I broke up with Piper Sullivan.
“It’s not working,” I remember saying to her. “I think we should break up.”
“Are you kidding me?” she said. Then she threw her drink in my face. My eyelashes were dripping with it, blue and sweet. I licked it off my lips, wiped my eyes with my hands.
“Grow up,” I said.
Then I walked away. I left her there, crying.
I drank more.
I drank and I drank.
Then Sloane found me.
Everyone knows what happened after that. Our feet dancing on the sticky floor, our bodies pressed together like we were going to do it, right then and there.
I’m an idiot.
It’s my fault.
Is there a difference between the truth and a lie if everyone believes the lie? I wasn’t Piper’s boyfriend. I was Piper’s ex-boyfriend.
I get up from my chair and shove open the screen door and step outside. It’s like a wave of heat that wants to push me back in, but I don’t let it. I take a few steps, grass crunchy under my feet. The air is hot as dust. I cough.
I go inside.
Mom goes, “Ready?”
“In a minute,” I say, sitting down, sipping from my sweating glass of water, wearing my slightly too small, slightly itchy black wool suit. “I’ll be ready in one more minute.”
I will never be ready, though. That’s the truth.
* * *
My dad’s band is called the Asteroids. They play locally. They once went on tour with Aerosmith as the opening act. I think that was the pinnacle of their success. It was downhill after that.
On the telephone pole beside the meter where we park—the lot is full already—there’s a poster, tattered and half covered by a missing-cat ad, for a gig he did two months ago. I watch Mom and see if she pauses on it, but her eyes don’t land there at all.
I want to shake her.
Come on, Mom! TELL me!
I have a right to know!
But she doesn’t. Maybe she won’t ever.
I’m at my girlfriend’s funeral.
My dad should be here, shouldn’t he?
Why am I making Piper’s death about my dad?
The two things are locked together in my head and I can’t snap them apart.
The sidewalk is so hot, you could fry an egg on it. Our feet distort in the shimmering heat like we’re wading in the sea. People are slowly streaming in the doors of the church. The kids from school look awkward in their grown-up suits, in high heels and black dresses. Everyone looks like they are performing in a movie, but not quite getting it right. It’s either too sincere or not sincere enough or I don’t know what, but it’s weird. It makes my skin crawl. Everything is wrong.
Car doors slam. Someone’s alarm goes off. From the green-turning-gold maple tree that shades the entrance, a flock of crows lifts off and scatters up into the sky like noisy black confetti.
I follow Mom into the church, my head down, looking at nothing but the back of her heels in her high shoes, the steady way that they strike the floor.
The funeral is crowded, a party that isn’t fun. Everyone is here, looking like they spent a bunch of time doing their hair and makeup, the phonies. I hate them. Funerals should be ugly and bare. There are piles of bouquets and stuffed toys out front, actual stacks. Piper would have laughed about that. What do people think is going to happen to those? All that plastic wrapping would have made her go nuts. And the teddy bears and dolls are flat-out creepy.
The pew is uncomfortable. People are squeezed too tight. My legs are too long. I can’t look beside me because I don’t want to know who is there.
I see the back of Charlie’s head. He hasn’t called me even once since Piper died. That jerk. I want to jump over the backs of the pews between me and him. I want to yell things at him. I want to beat him up. Again.
Without Piper, I’m pretty sure I don’t have any friends left. Only Sloane. And are we even real friends?
I see Piper’s mom, her face covered with a black veil. Her head is bent forward like the effort of keeping it up is too much. I don’t blame her. It is too much.
Charlie turns around but I can’t tell if he’s looking at me or not. He’s wearing aviator sunglasses, like a movie star. I wish I’d done that. I wish I’d brought something to hide behind.
Then I see her.
Sloane.
Her white-blond hair shimmers silvery in the light. It’s not lying flat or straight; it looks more like she washed it and left it to dry its own way, bits sticking up and out, as though maybe she just woke up and found herself here.
Maybe she did.
She looks kind of high or maybe drunk.
She is swaying slightly. I know the feeling. Her hands keep going up to her hair and touching, touching.
She can’t keep still, can’t sit there, but can’t leave either.
I get it. I want so bad to squeeze out of this seat, to climb over everyone like I’m crowd-surfing at a concert, hands reaching up to pass me toward her. When I got to her, I’d say, Me too, but I don’t. I can’t.
I will.
When this is over.
The priest starts talking, his voice a low hum, like my inner narrator, soothing and grating at the same time. Around me, I hear people crying, full-on sobbing, coughing on their own phlegmy pain. It’s contagious because pretty soon even Mom is doing it on one side of me, the school’s shop teacher on the other. I’m not crying. I’m swallowing and swallowing and swallowing all the blood and bile inside me that threatens to come out.
Amen, says the priest. Amen, amen, amen, everyone murmurs, waves of Amen all around me.
If she were here, she’d be rolling her eyes. If she were here, she’d be giggling inappropriately.
If she were here, we wouldn’t be here.
If she were here, this wouldn’t be happening.
* * *
An old lady starts to make her way up to the front, to say a few words about Piper. Her voice is as thin as a glass breaking. “I met Piper when she was merely a wisp of a girl,” she starts. “She’d come to my door like a stray cat, seeking cookies, the kind with icing. She liked the pink the best, even though they were really the same flavor…”
In my head, I’m replaying the party. The fight. The breakup. The look on Piper’s face when she saw me and Sloane. Sloane. Oh God, Sloane.
The lady finishes, and someone else goes up. A man. Then someone else. And another. A girl who Piper hated. Fatty.
“She was one of the good ones,” he intones. “Piper will always live in our, um, hearts.” He smirks. I want to punch him so bad. I want to punch everyone.
Ms. Featherstone, who teaches physics, approaches the microphone. “She had a brilliant mind. There was something about Piper Sullivan that was special. She was able to…” She stops. “She could…” She starts crying, blubbering. There’s a silence. It’s taking everything in me to not burst out into heaving, little-kid sobs. “I’m sorry. I just can’t.”
Sloane’s dad starts to tell a story in his strong, confident voice, about Sloane and Piper in ballet class when they were six. I can’t listen. I won’t listen. The Piper who is dead is not the Piper dressed up as a lamb for a recital. The Piper who is dead is my Piper. They didn’t know her as well as they think they did. Piper hadn’t been a lamb for a long time.
Who knew so many people had so much to say about Piper?
I swallow and swallow. The lump in my throat is strangling me.
The priest asks if anyone else has anything to say. People are restless. The place smells like body odor and wet wool. The funeral has gone on too long, a party that should have ended an hour ago. Eyes swivel and look at me.
I shake my head. Not me. No.
I bet people are disappointed, but I won’t give them the pleasure
of hearing my voice crack, watching me fall crying to the floor, needing to be helped up. No way.
There are four screens at the front of the room, which start showing a slideshow of photos of Piper. Baby Piper. Toddler Piper. Piper and Sloane. Sloane and Piper. A song plays through big speakers, a shot of feedback making everyone gasp.
Then it’s over.
There are six people carrying her coffin. Even. Why didn’t they ask me? I’m the boyfriend! The ex-boyfriend.
I’m no one. Forget it.
I manage to not cry, which is actually kind of a miracle.
People start to file out, stopping to hug one another.
No one hugs me.
The no ones who are hugging me make me look extra visible. Everyone is hugging! Even my mom is hugging people.
I am unhuggable.
I’d hug myself, but that would look stupid. Now is not the time for jokes.
I try not to notice them staring at me, all of them, judging me, keeping away from me as far as they can, like they might catch what I have, which is a dead girlfriend.
It’s not contagious, I want to say. I want to raise my hands and show them that there is no blood. It wasn’t me, it wasn’t me, it wasn’t me.
Anyway, we’d broken up.
Mom stops to talk to Piper’s mom. They hug, cheeks against each other’s. I can’t. I can’t say anything. I can’t do anything. I look at Piper’s mom’s shoes, shiny and black, high and pointed.
Then, suddenly, I feel Sloane beside me. She’s put on sunglasses and I can’t see her eyes and I want to see them so bad. I want to touch her arm. I want to grab her and hold on so tight. But her dad is next to her, holding her up. Through her sleeve and my sleeve, I can feel her arm shaking, a tiny tremor that I recognize. I want to say something. I want to. But I can’t.
I want to hug her.
Hug me, I will her silently.
She doesn’t. But I can tell she wants me to hug her.
But I can’t.
It’s weird, both of us like we’re holding our breath.
What did we do?
Then I grab her hand and then we’re walking.
We’re walking fast, shimmying around people who are like immovable objects that make me think of chess pieces or topiary. We dart through the crowd, shiny as fish.
Me and Sloane.
We get outside and I stop. She goes, “Keep going,” so we run for real, even though no one is chasing us. Fact is that I’m not a good runner. I hardly ever exercise or anything. Exercise is for the Charlies of the world, not the Soups. That’s how I’ve felt ever since I was a little kid.
I’m skinny, but that doesn’t mean I’m in good shape, which is pretty apparent by the way my chest is heaving.
Sloane is hardly even panting.
“Don’t stop,” she calls over her shoulder. She’s way ahead of me now, her shoes in her hand, and so I start trying to run again, even though the pain in my side is killing me.
Well, not really killing me.
And the whole time we are doing this, Piper’s body is lying in that box, dead. And my breath is coming hard and fast and I’m exhaling the last of her from my lungs outside into the shimmering heat of the day. And even while everyone is listening to a Beatles song and hugging one another and Piper’s face is watching the crowd that is now missing me and Sloane, she’s still dead.
She’s trapped there in a loop on the screen, indifferent to everything happening in the present, in the now, in this tiny moment balanced on the line between the past and the future that she doesn’t have.
I start running hard again, I pass Sloane, I’m flying now, my feet hardly even touching the sidewalk, barely making any contact with the ground.
SLOANE
I don’t ask him where we are going. It’s enough that we’re going away from Piper is dead.
No, I hear her say.
Then, Stop.
“Piper?” I whisper.
I’m on the front steps of Soup’s house. There are a bunch of flyers and some mail sticking out of the mailbox. YOU MIGHT HAVE ALREADY WON $1,000,000!, the writing on a yellow envelope reads.
Soup goes into his house through the open kitchen window. I don’t watch because he falls the first time he tries to hoist himself up. I don’t want him to feel as awkward as he looks, finally going in face-first, his legs wiggling for a second like something funny. I laugh. I forget that nothing is funny.
Not now.
Maybe not ever again.
I don’t deserve funny.
I swallow it down.
Soup comes out with keys in his hand. His car looks like it might disintegrate on contact. There is rust on the doors and around the wheels. One door is a flat pink color, even though the rest of the car is painted matte green, like camouflage.
Inside, the seats are vinyl. It smells like cigarettes and plastic and fast food and peppermint gum. I take a piece from the packet that’s sitting in the drink holder. It’s spicy and soft from the heat. It’s so hot in here. It’s hard to breathe. I crank the window down with a handle that turns.
“It’s okay,” he says, even though nothing is okay. I don’t know what he is talking about specifically, but I nod.
Piper is dead.
Stop, she says. Stop saying it.
It takes a few tries for the car to start, the engine trying to catch. It coughs like Grandma used to, thick and spluttering.
I put my bare feet up on the dashboard and then take them down. The black plastic is hot, but also, I can picture Piper sitting here, doing that.
This is Piper’s seat.
You have no idea what’s important, she says.
I sit up straighter, put on my seat belt. I scratch my ear, like I can get the sound of her voice to leave, which I know I can’t. A bus goes by. Through the windows, I can see people looking at their phones, wearing headphones. PIPER IS DEAD! I want to scream at them. But they don’t know her. They are having an ordinary day in their ordinary lives. They aren’t in their dead best friend’s boyfriend’s car, having run away from her funeral before the end.
They aren’t terrible.
The engine finally catches and Soup exhales and that’s when I realize he’d been holding his breath. Sweat is trickling down his forehead and he wipes it on the sleeve of his suit, then contorts to get the suit jacket off. His shirt is soaked through with sweat. That should be gross, but it isn’t. I take a lungful of the smell of him in, pretend that I’m yawning.
The silence is huge. It fills up the car. It spills out the windows and onto the street.
“Does your radio work?” I go.
He shakes his head. Then, “Sorry.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I say.
But it does matter, because it’s too quiet. I wait a beat too long to say anything else and then it feels like what I say next should be something important, but I can’t think of what that could be, so I don’t say anything. I’m really tired. This is the most I’ve been out of bed in a week since she died. I lean my head back on the seat. It’s a bench seat, like in the front of a truck, so I can’t recline my seat.
I stare at him. His jaw is grinding. He looks younger in his dress shirt, like a kid who is dressing up. It’s too big around the neck. His ear stretchers look like they don’t belong on the ears of someone who is wearing a blue dress shirt that is soaked through with sweat.
He keeps his eyes fixed on the road.
I want to ask him where we are going, but I don’t really care.
I put my feet up on the dash.
Piper isn’t here now. Just me.
And Soup.
My toenails are dark blue and chipped.
Piper painted them.
I painted hers.
She died with dark blue toenails.
My feet are on the dash.
My toes are the same as her toes.
I close my eyes.
It’s the only thing that I can do. It’s all I can think of to do. I’m so tired of the
heat and the blue sky and the crows, which seem to be in all the trees that we pass, lining the telephone wires, screaming into the sun.
* * *
When I open my eyes, Soup is holding my hand. I freeze. I stare at our hands, locked together on the bench. We’re on a highway. I don’t know where we are.
We’re holding hands.
I want to smoke.
I want to take a long drink of a cold blue Slurpee that is cough-medicine thick with vodka.
I want to scratch my face, which is suddenly so itchy.
“What?” he says.
“Nothing,” I say. My hand feels weird, like a piece of meat that is only slightly something to do with me, lying on the hot vinyl of the seat. I feel like I’m holding it too still, like it’s dead, or at least in a coma.
“I can’t hold hands with you!” I burst out, and I snatch it back.
“What?” he says again.
“Come on, Soup,” I say. “Come on.”
“I hate having vague conversations,” he says quietly. “I hate not knowing what you’re thinking. I hate not knowing how to talk to you.”
“It’s my fault that she’s dead,” I say flatly. “So we don’t get to do this; I don’t ever get to be happy again. I have to pay, don’t you get it? I have to pay.” Until I say it out loud, I don’t realize how true it is. Soup swerves to miss the body of an animal in the road, a flattened rat or a squirrel, a flash of fur and blood.
“I don’t know what that means! We can’t talk? We can’t hold hands? We can’t know each other? It’s vague! That’s so annoying, Sloane.”
“Yeah, well, sorry to be so annoying.” I curl my legs up under me, hiding my toenails from view.
“Give me a break,” he says. “You know what I mean. This is crazy enough without—”
“Without what? Without me being annoying?”
He sighs. “Sorry I said that. Look, what do you want me to say?”
“Nothing,” I lie. “I want you to say nothing.”
