Fiction
You died in a car wreck. Your boyfriend was driving. And when I sat in the church, my pleated plaid skirt laid over my knees, one drop in a sea of burgundy and gold, I could still hear your vitriol spitting in my ear.
The girls of Mother Seton High School moved on much quicker than you’d have liked. When the bell rang the next Monday and your seat remained empty, they let out a collective breath, as if the closed casket had been a test. I tried to do the same. I was your favorite target, after all. But you wouldn’t leave me alone, Alicia.
They say a person’s voice is the first thing you forget after they die, but I still heard yours in the middle of class, squealing that I was looking at your tits in the locker room; stomping on my lunch in the courtyard, telling me I could go without it anyway; digging your nails into my thigh beneath the lab table, and me smiling as I tell the teacher no, there’s no problem, this is just how we joke with each other.
Two months after we put you in the ground, and your voice is still there.
I looked it up, what two months does to a body. Right now, your organs are liquifying, revealing your skeleton. Whatever injuries your family didn’t want us to see are being erased. Does that make you happy? We never got to see you as anything less than perfect, and nature is ensuring that any evidence to the contrary is gone.
I go to her at lunch. The super-super senior. Only higher in the hierarchy than me because she supplies the overachievers with Adderall, the underachievers with weed, and the rich bitches like you with the coke that wrapped your boyfriend’s car around a tree.
Taylor sees me and there’s no recognition even though we’ve shared an English class all year. She hangs out in the overgrown grotto dedicated to the Virgin Mary near the back of school. She sits at the statue’s feet and takes girls’ orders. I can’t look at Mary. I can’t look at Taylor either when I’m like, I know you sell. And she’s like, Yeah, how many ounces? And I’m like, No, I know you sell, you know—other stuff. And she’s like, … Like? And I’m like, You know. And she’s like, What do you need? And I’m like, I don’t know. Because I don’t, you know?
You know. You loved to make fun of me for it. Sheltered. Coward. Meek little mouse.
But then I’m like, I guess I need to not be here, or maybe I just need some quiet but in my head. I think she gets that part because then she looks at me all appraising and says, “Give me a few days.”
The air in her bedroom is choked with weed and synthetic Island Breeze. Her room shows the dissonance of a teenager trying to plaster over their middle school tastes: stickered furniture, band posters on lime green walls, and a red bra tossed artfully over a sequined lamp shade. I sit at the edge of her rumpled polka-dot bed, hands bunched inside the sleeves of my senior sweater while she kneels in her closet, her Nike shorts peeking from under the edge of her school skirt as she roots for her hidden stash.
“It took a lot of asking but I knew you needed something special.” She gets up and slaps a tiny bag of white powder against her fingers. For a second I’m scared she got me coke. “You ever heard of K?”
I haven’t, but I trade a summer camp paycheck for it and wait patiently as she pours some on a tray collaged with Hello Kitties and cuts out a small pile. She sits on the bed next to me, planting her hand behind my back and leaning against my side. No one’s been this close to me since you died.
“I’ll babysit. First-time special,” she says, bringing the tray to my face. “Start with a bump. See how you feel.” And even though she gave me my instructions, she arranges my limbs like a game of Barbie. It’s easier to do it than not, and I really, really need a break from you, so I let her cup the nape of my neck and guide my head down. I close my eyes, hold my nostril, and suck in as hard as I can.
It burns worse than Sprite up my nose. Over the blood rush and panic, I hear Taylor congratulating me as she guides me to lie on my back. She squeezes my hand and tells me to hang on.
And here’s the kicker. Here’s the real funny part. I do leave here. My soul climbs out of my body, probably like yours did, and I swirl up and away. I swear to God, I do.
I can feel Taylor beside me. I can see her scrolling through her phone. I can see me lying next to her, gazing blearily at the ceiling.
I’m on the bed.
I’m at the edge of the bed.
I’m nowhere at all.
I’m nothing at all.
And here you are. Of course you are.
You look as perfect as the day you died, with your uniform skirt rolled three times and your face full of makeup that you never got a demerit for. You followed me here.
I think I say I have to go. I know I get up because Taylor grabs me and corrals me back to the bed. “Girl, you’re gonna get me in trouble if you walk through the house like this.”
But you’re getting away, and I can’t let you go. “The window,” I say as you crawl out of the window above her bed.
“Just chill, you’ve got like half an hour left.”
“I gotta talk to someone.” It feels as if I’m talking around a ball of bubblegum.
“They can wait.”
“I promise they can’t.” I stand on her mattress and throw open her window. It keeps changing sizes, so I wait for it to expand before folding myself in half and climbing through. Taylor curses behind me, but I run through her yard, tripping over toys and garden supplies until I find the gate. I know where you’re going, and I know I have to follow.
Taylor doesn’t live far from you now. And the spring sunset still lingers over the horizon, bleeding pink everywhere and making my path clear. I make it about three houses down before Taylor catches up. “Where are you going?”
“You don’t have to follow me.”
“Yeah I do.”
“What, are you scared of another customer dying?”
Taylor’s footsteps stop—there and then not. And mine do, too—there and then. In the quiet, I feel the rush all around us: grown-ups driving home from work, families on their front porches, joggers and dog walkers and kids on bikes. People with lives and friends and things to live for. You.
I arrange myself into an approximation of a sober person but I can’t take it seriously. I turn slowly, aware of every place my limbs are attached to my body—it’s like when you’re daydreaming, and all of a sudden your limbs stretch out like putty and your brain won’t let you snap them back to regular size.
Taylor is the tightest I’ve ever seen her. I swear, she looked more relaxed at your funeral—her legs spread wide and propped up on the kneeler with her arms hooked on the back of the pew, trying to take up as much space as possible. But now she’s hunched over on herself, her arms crossed around her front like she’s just decided she’s a little too big for her own skin. You’re welcome. I’m sure you’ve been waiting for this moment.
“That wasn’t me,” she says.
It wasn’t her. And yet.
“You still feel guilty, though, don’t you?”
“Listen, I didn’t feed them the coke and put them behind the wheel.”
She didn’t. And yet.
“Am I the only person who cares that she’s gone?”
Because somehow. Somehow. The world keeps going without you in it.
I don’t know what I want to do with my life. I’m not very good at school and the thought of college makes me sick. The thought of any future makes me sick. You were the only thing I could count on. Wake up, go to school, survive you. So, now what?
I turn around without waiting for Taylor’s answer. You’re still waiting for me. Of course you are. I follow you. What else is there to do? You lead me to the main road lined with live oaks that burn in the dying sun. Taylor twists her fingers into the hem of my sweater, but she doesn’t stop me, just hangs on like I’m some kid who needs a leash.
“Didn’t she tell everyone you’re a massive lesbian?” Taylor says after a while. “She was a nightmare.”
You wheel around, and I stop. Taylor bumps into me, grabbing my arms to keep us both from falling. You look between the two of us, and then you flicker and fade with the setting sun, dimming from pink to ash with a scowl on your face, leaving me with nothing but a massive headache and an itchy nose.
“No,” I whisper and wrench myself from Taylor’s hold. “No!”
“What the fuck!”
You’re gone, but I know where to find you. My saddle shoes slap on the ground as I hurdle over cracked concrete and gnarled tree roots. The main cemetery gates are closed, stately and strong, right across the street from our school. I can never find you from our homeroom window. I’ve looked, a lot, as much as I hate myself for it.
I know there’s a way in—enough girls have bragged about getting high or having sex in the hidden corners of this cemetery. I follow the gate where it wraps behind the Mexican restaurant that twinkles with Christmas lights all year long. I’d assumed that would shake Taylor, but she stays at my side, her hand back on the hem of my sweater. “Why are we here?”
Roaches skitter out of my pathway and hide beneath the shrubbery and dumpster.
Past the restaurant, where the cemetery bumps against the backyard of a double shotgun, I find the entrance—a break in the fence where undergrowth and grass has been tamped to dirt from years of teenage thrills. I fit through and shuffle between two weathered marble tombs.
“Are you possessed?” Taylor hisses, squeezing after me.
Probably.
“You tell me.”
“Girl, that’s been out your system.”
I know. But this has gone on for too long, and it ends tonight.
I retrace my steps from that balmy morning when our PE teacher thought it would be a good idea to take us out here to “mourn.” You aren’t difficult to find. Someone has made sure your grave is as flashy as you were.
The stone angel wrapped around the base of your family tomb is painted with your signature makeup style—complete with false eyelashes—clownish against her gray face. And on the face of your tomb, taped over the long line of family members who left before you, is a poster board with glitter pink puffy paint proclaiming:
Here Lies Alicia LeBlanc, Patron Saint of Cunts.
You were such a bitch they vandalized your family’s grave. I don’t know if you would have gotten better. Maybe that’s why God took you when He did.
Taylor sucks in a breath and reaches for the poster. I rip it off and stomp my muddied saddle shoes on it before she can touch it. I pull my sweater sleeve over my hand and scrub at the angel’s face, but it only smears the mess into a muddied mask of tan and pink. An eyelash sticks to my grimed sweater and I beat at the angel’s face, but all that does is bruise the side of my hand. Taylor tries to grab me—“Girl, stop. It’s not going to work. Stop!”—but I can’t. I need to fix this. I hate you. I hate you and I need to fix this.
“I don’t have flowers,” I say, stumbling back and pushing Taylor along with me. “God, why don’t I have flowers?”
“What?”
“Flowers—she doesn’t have flowers.”
“Why do you care if she has flowers?”
I turn in a circle, frenzied and sweaty, hardly seeing the wall of tombs that crept up on either side of the grassy road as the sun fell without my notice, looking for anything to make your grave right. Three tombs down, there’s a vase with a peckish display of wilting flowers, their petals dyed garish purples and blues and greens. I stumble. I snatch them. Their stems crunch in my fist.
Taylor is on me again. She tries to hold my arms at my sides, like I’m an animal that needs subduing. “You can’t just steal flowers!” I push her away and plead that I can, I can, I can because you need them. Just leave me alone because you need them more. But that just makes Taylor step even closer, and I step back, but she steps closer, and: “You’re freaking me out.”
And: “Shut up! Oh my God, do you ever shut up? Why do you care? Why do you care about the flowers? It’s not like that guy needs them. They’re shitty grocery store flowers—let me just put them on her grave.”
My hands shake as I place the flowers in the little vase your angel holds.
“You know she wouldn’t give you a second thought if it was you who died,” Taylor says.
“Neither would you,” I say.
Taylor looks offended. “That’s not true.”
“You don’t even know my name.”
I turn back to you and sit on the cool grass. Taylor shuffles behind me. I sit. I’ll sit as long as you need.
It hurts too much to miss you, more than anything you ever did to me. I don’t want to miss you anymore. You owe me that. It won’t be bad I promise. I’ll be right here with you, okay? Just let me go, okay?
Okay?
Oh. Taylor left.
Daphne Armbruster is an emerging writer native to New Orleans. Her work revolves around girlhood and gayhood—the glamour, grit, guilt, and joy of queer life. Along with writing, she is an actress involved in the local theater and film scenes. She volunteers as the director of community outreach for the local nonprofit writing collective Third Lantern Lit. You can find her online at www.daphnearmbruster.com.