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I don’t stick around long enough to find out.
***
When I pull into my driveway, it’s almost as if everything is normal. I sit in my car, staring at the white bricks of our old ranch-style house, a world apart from the lakefront mansions in Sasha’s neighborhood. My hands shake on the steering wheel. Mom’s Corolla sits next to my car, meaning she hasn’t left for work yet. Dad is gone, like always. Truckers have weird schedules and I never know when I’ll see his semi parked on the gravel driveway off to the side of our garage.
If I sit here long enough, the engine idling, radio DJs rambling their morning show routine, I can almost pretend this is any other morning. I’m sitting here because I’m about to back out of the driveway and head to school. I’m just Raquel Clearwater, a senior at Peyton Colony High, and it’s the middle of August on a typical Monday.
I blink, and the vision fades away. My heart breaks through that momentary absence of emotion, and I am raw again. I don’t know what I expected to happen the day Sasha died. I guess I knew there would be tears, but part of me thought maybe I’d be a little optimistic about it all. Death would mean she wasn’t suffering anymore. She could be at peace. I guess I thought it wouldn’t hurt this bad.
I cut the engine and grip my keys so hard they dig painfully into my palms. The sun is rising and the school bus screeches to a stop in the distance. People are heading off to work and the planet is spinning just like it always does. Funny how your soul can be ripped in half and yet the world still looks exactly the same.
The front door opens before I get to it, and Mom steps out in a navy pencil skirt and a white blouse that’s not very good at hiding the stomach pudge she hates so much.
“Oh, honey,” she says, and I walk right into her open arms. She’s shorter than I am now, since I got Dad’s tall genes and she got Grandma’s miniature ones, but her hug is just as comforting as when I was a little girl.
I lean into her embrace, burying my face in her hair, inhaling the scent of her summery bodywash. For the first time since I woke up this morning, something other than sorrow wiggles its way into my soul.
“How did you know?” I whisper.
She pulls back, holding my shoulders. Tears fill her eyes, threatening to ruin her makeup. “Sue just called me. She wanted to make sure you would be taken care of today, so don’t worry, honey, I’m not going to work.”
I make this half-snort, half-sobbing noise somewhere deep in my throat. Mrs. Cade’s daughter is dead and she’s worried about me. Mom leads me into the living room and allows me to cry on her shoulder for I don’t know how long. The ache in my chest is deep, hollow and somehow powered with a fuel that never seems to run dry. I cry and cry, and it doesn’t go away. Nothing makes this easier.
Deep down I feel shame for wanting it to be easier. I keep thinking if I cry a little longer, maybe I’ll cry myself out and I’ll feel better. When my eyelids are so heavy they’re nearly swollen shut, I sit up and brush my choppy hair out of my eyes. Mom’s work shirt is soaked, the entire shoulder wet and clinging to her skin. I can see the anchor tattoo on her shoulder, visible through the white fabric. Little details like this seem to matter to me. They are all pieces of life that Sasha will never ever get to experience again.
“God, I’m sorry,” I mutter, wiping at my eyes. “You want to go and change?”
Mom’s hands slide to her knees and she peers at me with red eyes, tear lines of mascara running down her cheeks. “Don’t worry about me, Raquel.”
Each breath hurts. As much as I tell my brain to stop, it keeps drudging up some random memory of Sasha and me: playing Queens of the Playground at recess, flirting our way into free tokens at the arcade, the time some creepy guy wouldn’t stop hitting on me at the Fourth of July parade and she slapped him right across the face. Each new memory brings forth a tidal wave of tears and a pain in my chest that feels as though the Grim Reaper has shoved his staff right into me and is dragging it down, breaking each rib just for the thrill of it.
By noon, Mom feels comfortable enough to leave me alone while she makes lunch, not like I want to eat any of it. But when she sets a bowl of her famous tomato soup in front of me, along with a grilled cheese sandwich, I’m suddenly starving. Eating feels wrong, given that Sasha can’t eat anymore, but I can practically hear her sarcastic laugh, telling me to stop being stupid.
Rocki, Rocki, Rocki. Don’t be a drama queen — that’s my job.
“How are you doing?” Mom asks softly as she dips her spoon into her soup.
I shrug. “I thought I had prepared for dealing with this. I thought —” The bite of grilled cheese now feels like cardboard in my mouth. “I thought it wouldn’t hurt as bad if I planned ahead.”
“That’s not how death works, honey.” Mom’s lips form a flat line, then they curve upward. “I remember your first grade field day,” she says with a little laugh. “Remember when you and Sasha won the three-legged race? You’ve pretty much been inseparable since then.”
I smile as the knot in my stomach twists in on itself, making one more loop that tugs into place just above my belly button.
After lunch, I tell Mom I need some alone time and she reluctantly stays on the couch while I walk away. I can hear my phone blowing up from my backpack, but I ignore it. By now, surely the whole school knows.
I wander outside, curling my toes over the edge of our pool. My reflection peers up at me, and I sit on the ledge. The concrete is hot from the Texas heat and it burns my butt, even through my leggings. I dunk my feet into the water, soaking my leggings up to the knees. Too late, I bend down and scrunch up the fabric, revealing my pale knees. We didn’t spend much time outside this summer, so I am woefully lacking in the tan department.
Sasha had said on more than one occasion that when she was gone, she would try to reach out to me in this spiritual, metaphysical way. “Keep an eye out,” she had said. “And I don’t mean like a cold draft in the room or some dumb butterfly landing on your shoulder. When I reach out to you from beyond the grave, you’re gonna know it’s me.”
“What, like you’ll appear as a ghost?” I said, snorting.
“Maybe,” she mused. “But when I visit you, you’ll know it. You’ll be able to hold on to it.”
“Should we have some kind of sign?”
She thought it over for a moment. “No. I’ll make it so obvious that you won’t need a sign. You’ll just know it’s me, saying hi to you from the afterlife.”
“You have a lot of faith in me,” I said.
