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I don’t need to check for a pulse, or watch her faded Zombie Radio T-shirt to see if it moves with the rise and fall of someone alive and breathing. There is something in her face that tells me. She looks peaceful, at rest.
Dead.
I stand there for a long moment, Sasha’s phone in my hand, my feet cold on the wooden floor. I even think about going back to sleep, like that time I saw Dad putting Santa’s presents under the tree, forever shattering the illusion that magic was real. Pretend it never happened and maybe it never did.
“Sasha,” I whisper, then bite down hard on my lip. A desperate act in futility. Wake up.
I even hold my breath in anticipation, stupid as it is.
At the foot of her bed, Sasha’s golden lab, Sunny, is also awake. His head rests on top of her foot, and his eyes slide over to mine, holding my gaze for the longest moment. Dogs are intuitive. He’s known longer than I have. Probably from the second it happened. He’d fallen asleep on the floor because Sasha was in too much pain to cuddle with him last night, but now he’s up here on her bed.
I sit on the edge of her bed and touch her hand with my shaking fingers. It is cold as ice — no, colder. The lump in my throat sinks to my stomach and scorching hot tears of anger flood to my eyes. The back of my throat burns acidic, and — though my heart pounds — I swear I can’t breathe.
We all knew this was coming. For months now we’ve known the lymphoma would kill her. Sasha and I had planned her funeral down to the minute. The six hottest guys in school are her pallbearers and her white, glittery casket is already custom ordered and in stock at Hayes Funeral Home. I’ve written a beautiful eulogy that references not one but three of our favorite movies. We have known the outcome of this journey for months and knew it would happen soon.
So why do I feel so blindsided?
I pull my feet up on the bed and curl into myself, my hand still on top of Sasha’s frigid, lifeless flesh. Sunny lifts up and makes his way across the blankets, settling himself between his human and me. I rest my head on top of his fur and close my eyes. It hurts so bad, so much and for so long.
Movement in the hallway startles me out of my nearly catatonic state. I glance at the phone in my hand to see that only eleven minutes have passed since I woke up on the worst day of my life.
“Mrs. Cade?” That’s really all I have to say. There is no misinterpreting the tone of my voice.
The shuffling of her house shoes stops, starts and then stops again. “Raquel?”
All she says is my name, but I know she knows. The world suddenly feels so small. We are two people who loved this dead girl, and at this moment, we are the only two people on earth with this pain.
Mrs. Cade calls for her husband, and I hear her sobs before they walk into the library. Sunny rests his head on top of Sasha’s chest. I hold on to Sasha’s hand, somehow still seeking comfort from my best friend. I can’t face her parents alone. I don’t want to see their faces when they learn for certain what I already know to be true.
Sasha Cade has died, and no matter how much we prepared for it, the pain might kill us, too.
Chapter Two
It was a couple weeks ago, on one of Sasha’s bad days. Her parents had just moved in the hospital bed so that she could live out her remaining days at home with family and not in some sterile, chemical-smelling hospital with pitying nurses and doctors who all have frown lines on their upper lips from delivering bad news all day long.
I was eating a bag of pizza-flavored Combos and had just sucked all the filling out of one of them. That memory seems trivial at first, but after I recall it, every little detail comes back almost like it just happened. I can practically feel the empty pizza Combo in my fingers, Sunny sitting at my feet, eagerly hoping I’ll drop some on the floor.
Sasha grimaced at my snacking choice. Food was her enemy now that she felt sick all the time and only occasionally sipped on chocolate milk. “I wonder what they’ll do with my dead body,” she said, looking at the sparkles in her nail polish.
“What?” I nearly choked on my pretzel shell. “They’ll bury it, Sash. We’ve kind of spent the last few weeks planning the whole ordeal.”
She shook her head. “No, not that. Like, when Mom and Dad walk in and find me dead in here, surrounded by all these old law books and stuff —” She motioned toward the dark wood bookshelves of Mr. Cade’s library. “What happens to my body? Do they just pick it up and dump it in a bag or something?”
No longer hungry, I crumpled up the Combos and gave her a look. “You’re really morbid.”
She shrugged and tugged the blanket up to her shoulders, the fabric outlining the thin contours of her body. Before, she was curvy and dark skinned and beautiful. Now she was, well, dying.
“Your parents will call 9-1-1, probably,” I said, looking toward the high ceiling as I considered it. I’d never found anyone dead before, so it wasn’t like I had prior experience. “The paramedics will come and they’ll put you on a stretcher and roll you into the ambulance. Then I guess you’ll go to the morgue, or something.”
“And then you’ll get started on making my funeral awesome,” she said, her chapped lips stretching into a grin. Her bony finger pointed at me. “Don’t let Mom talk you into roses or carnations or some shit, okay? I want wildflowers and sunflowers. Lots of ’em.”
“I got you,” I said, glancing over at the binder on the nearby table. It had all of our funeral plans laid out with sticky notes and color-coded instructions. Sasha had even written her own obituary for the newspaper, but I hadn’t seen it yet. I stiffened my shoulders and pointed my nose up. “I’ll say, ‘Mrs. Cade, I know your daughter is dead but I’m in charge here. No fucking roses!’”
Sasha choked out a laugh. “See? You’re morbid, too.”
Now that Sasha is dead and we did wake up to find her body, I’m not sure if the 9-1-1, call-an-ambulance thing actually happened in that order. I don’t know how they plan to move her bod
y.
