hug or two. All those things I was once so sure I wanted.
Now all I want is for them to stop, for Mom and Dad to be like they were, happy and in love and me in orbit around them.
They still haven’t said a word about what I told them about Julia the other night. They still won’t say what I did. What I am.
“I want to . . . I need to go to the cemetery,” I said to Mom as she pulled into the driveway. She looked over at me, and I knew I had to say more.
“Laurie said I should.” I thought that would be enough, the magic words, but she just kept looking at me.
“You can call and ask her, if you want,” I added, and thought about how I used to dream of Mom looking at me like she was now, listening to me. Wanting to hear more. Wanting to hear me.
I never wanted it like this, though.
Mom bit her lip. “Do you want to go?”
“I’ve never been to see her. I . . . I haven’t even seen her grave. The day of the funeral I couldn’t—”
“Amy,” my mother said gently, so gently, like those three letters were fragile, lovable. I stared down at my hands. They were balled into fists on my lap, and I knew 177
if I moved they would too. Once upon a time I would have given anything—and I mean anything, even nights out partying with Julia—to hear her talk to me like that.
“You don’t have to do this to yourself,” she said.
I knew if I moved something would happen. I could feel it inside me, in my fists still clenched in my lap. I had to push down a surge of something bitter clawing at my throat and burning behind my eyes.
“Laurie really did say I should do it.”
“I believe you, and I’m sure she has her reasons. But Laurie wasn’t there the day of the funeral. She didn’t see . . . she didn’t see your face. She didn’t see you in the car, in the church. When your father and I came back to the car after, I thought . . . I thought, ‘That’s what a ghost looks like.’ You were so—” She broke off suddenly, breath shuddering.
I looked over at her. She was staring straight ahead, blinking hard and fast. The edges of her eyes were red.
“Please take me,” I said, loving and hating how upset she was, loving and hating that I’d caused it.
She did.
When we got there, she agreed to let me go in alone but wouldn’t let me walk back home by myself. “I know it’s not that far, but I’m waiting for you. I won’t leave you.”
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I didn’t want those words from her, not like that, not there, but at the same time I wanted them so badly that if I could have plucked them from the air, swallowed them down, and let them swim inside me, I would have.
I got out of the car and walked toward Julia.
I was the only person around, my footsteps the only sound. And then I was there, I saw where Julia was. Is.
It was so . . . it was so bare. It was just ground and a stone, and there were others just like it right next to it, all around it. All around me, everywhere I looked, there was grass and stones and I—
I couldn’t look at it. I couldn’t bear to see the piece of ground that was hers, the stone with her name on it. I turned away and walked through the cemetery, pretended I couldn’t see all those stones or the too neatly trimmed grass. I came out at the other end of the parking lot, Mom’s car out of sight.
I wanted to cry but the tears wouldn’t come. I could feel them, a hot burn stinging my eyes again, but something else, memories of that last night, Julia’s last night, were clawing at me, leaving me standing there frozen.
I don’t know how long I stood there, but after a while a car pulled into the lot. It was bright yellow, driven by an older man. When he got out, he looked as out of place as his car did, stood hesitating like he was waiting for 179
something. Hoping for something. When he realized I was looking at him, he walked into the cemetery.
Another car pulled into the lot, but I didn’t look. I just kept watching the man. His shoulders slumped and his head bowed as soon as he started walking among the graves. He looked like he belonged then.
“Amy?”
I turned around.
Julia’s mother was there, staring at me like I was a bad dream. It was a weekday, almost evening, and she was supposed to be at work, her hair shellacked into place and her Assistant Store Manager tag clipped onto her smock. I knew her schedule like I knew Julia’s. CostRite Pharmacy owned her now. She wasn’t supposed to be standing just a few feet away from me.
But she was, leaning against her car like it was the only thing holding her up. There was a bunch of plastic- wrapped yellow flowers in her other hand. They had to be for Julia, but they were so wrong.
“Julia hates yellow,” I said.
It’s true—she was convinced it made her look terrible (it didn’t)—but it wasn’t the right thing to say. It wasn’t even what I wanted to say. I hadn’t talked to Julia’s mother since the night I’d taken Julia’s hand and said everything 180
would be okay. Why didn’t I say what I’d been trying to for so long, what I’d tried to say every time I called
