“That’s what I mean,” Brian says. “He should know what people are saying. He should know that it wasn’t his fault.”
“Maybe it was his fault,” Lucas says softly.
The boys shift and look at each other nervously. I watch Lucas. The usual confidence is gone from his eyes. Today, he doesn’t look like the world is his birthday present; he doesn’t look like he even has a birthday.
“But, Luke, if that girl wanted to jump, what could he have done?”
“I don’t know.” Lucas scratches the back of his neck, studying the floor tiles. “But he was the teacher. Maybe he should have done something. Maybe he shouldn’t have walked away.”
Then there’s a pause. I take a breath, take a chance. “What if she didn’t jump?”
They all look at me with vague surprise. I wonder, belatedly, how often Joe speaks, much less speaks about gossip. He doesn’t seem like much of a presence; in fact, he didn’t offer any push-back when I inhabited him.
“Naw, dude. She jumped.” Brian slaps his hand flat on the locker for emphasis. “It’s all around the entire school.”
“But that’s just gossip,” I say.
“I heard that people saw her jump,” Chad says.
“Exactly.” Brian slaps the locker again. “There was a whole roof full of people.”
“You were there on the roof,” I say to Lucas, Joe’s heart suddenly pounding in his chest as I wait for Lucas’s answer. “Did you see it?”
“I was talking to Coach C,” he says, looking away.
“So you didn’t see it, then?” I press, half hopeful that he did, so that he can tell these guys how I didn’t jump, half relieved that he didn’t, because how awful to see someone die, someone you knew, someone you’d kissed. I touch a thumb to my lips. Joe’s lips. They’re chapped, my thumb rubbing against little flakes of peeling skin.
“I didn’t see it,” Lucas confirms, pulling the hood of his sweatshirt up around his neck. “Greg O. threw me his egg thing, that project they were doing, and it splattered. I was looking at that, everyone was. Then some girl screamed. And when I looked up again, the ledge was empty. She’d been right there a second ago, then she . . . wasn’t.”
His voice is thin, guarded. The same voice as when I’d said he’d practically saved a girl’s life. Don’t say that. I didn’t save her. And it strikes me that Lucas was there for both Brooke’s death and mine, and both times a second too late.
“That’s rough,” one of the guys says.
“First Brooke Lee, then Paige Wheeler,” someone adds, giving voice to my exact thoughts.
“Yeah, Hayes, why you gotta go around killing all the girls at our school?” another says, and the guys laugh darkly at this, until they realize that Lucas and I aren’t laughing along with them.
“You knew her, right?” I ask.
Lucas looks up at me, eyes flashing. “What?”
“Paige Wheeler. I heard . . . you knew her.”
Lucas presses his lips together, for a moment, the fear plain on his face. He drops his head, and when he looks up again, the fear is gone and his confidence is back.
“Not really,” he says smoothly.
I suddenly feel more solid than ever, solider than Joe, solider than flesh and bone. I feel like I’m made of stone and will never move again, not even a twitch.
“Not even a little bit?” I ask.
“Naw. She was just some girl,” Lucas says. “Some girl who died.”
I get away from the testos as quickly as I can. I want to stop this inhabitation; I wait for Joe to push me out, but he doesn’t. I’m stuck. Finally, I tell the hall monitor that I left my homework in my car, then I walk out all the way to the property line, stepping across it. From the edge of the roof, I look down to see what Joe will do. He stands there for a moment, like he’s walked into a room but forgotten what he meant to get there, then he shakes his head and turns back to the school.
Me, I feel like the object that’s been forgotten. I feel like the act of forgetting. When I felt this way before, I would go to Usha, who’d drag me out to her car, where she would play the right music (screamy) at the right volume (loud) and drive the right speed (fast). We would fly down those roads. Just fly.
Now I have no music, no car, no roads. No Usha. No flying.
But I do have Evan.
I take a seat next to him on the cupboards in the back of Fisk’s room. Evan must sense that something is wrong, but he doesn’t ask me anything. I know that I’ve only lived a short life and an even shorter afterlife, but I think I can say that this is a rare quality. Usha had it. Lucas, too, actually. The bastard.
Evan and I sit in silence until the class break, when I turn to him and say, “Apparently, I’m just some girl who died.”
“Who made that lovely remark?”
“Lucas Hayes.”
Evan squints. “And you care what Lucas Hayes says since . . . ?”
“Since I was hooking up with him.” I throw my hands up. “Now you know.”
Evan raises his eyebrows. “Oh. When were—?”
“From December until dead. Just a few months.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
“Of course you didn’t know. No one knew. Because it was no big deal. Just a thing. A weird thing. So that’s it. So there.” I brush my hands together, done with it. Done with Lucas. I eye Evan. “So, Brooke didn’t tell you about Lucas and me?”
“She knew?”
“She was the only one who knew. She saw us.”
“No, she didn’t tell me.”
“But you don’t seem that surprised.”
He smiles briefly and unhappily. “It’s a familiar situation.”
“Is it? Not for me. Not that it matters. I mean, technically, he’s right. Technically that’s who I am: some girl who died.”
“That’s not who you are.”
We sit in silence again.
“Did you like him?” Evan asks.
“No. A little. He was nice. When we were alone, he was nice.”
“He’s a coward, though,” Evan says.
“Do you know him?”
“I know cowards.”
“Yeah, I guess he is.” I sigh.
I look to Evan, but he isn’t looking at me anymore. His gaze is at the front of the room, where Mr. Fisk sweeps a long arm, erasing the board.
13: I AM EVERYONE
OVER THE NEXT COUPLE OF WEEKS, I LURK BY THE MURAL, covered in a sheet like old furniture, waiting for someone to pass and think of me, which someone always eventually does. Then, quick as a whisper, I’m in their skin. I am everyone. I’m a burner, a testo, a biblical, a well-rounder, a nobody. Most of all, I am alive.
With every new inhabitation, I hang around the person’s group of friends. I say as little as possible so that I don’t give myself away, and even still sometimes I say the wrong thing, and they all turn and look at me funny. But it’s not like they could ever guess the truth. It’s not like they could know who I really am. And when I can, I guide the conversation to poor Paige Wheeler’s suicide, poor dead Paige.
