Oh God. I’m going to hurl. I just know it.
Glancing down at the note cards I’ve stacked on the podium, I shake my head. I can’t do this. I can’t. Why can’t I just chase down Reverend Mark and kick him in the back a few times? It would be so much easier.
“Hi,” I say, into the microphone. My voice echoes disconcertingly throughout the gym. Hi… hi… hi. “Um… The day I met Dr. Owen Veatch, the first thing he unpacked in his new office at Fischer Hall was a Garfield Month-at- a-Glance calendar.”
I look out at the audience to see how they’re receiving this information. They all look back at me stonily. Except Tom. He’s buried his face in his hands. And Tad. He’s smiling encouragingly. Cooper just looks confused.
That’s when I notice my dad, in a chair next to Cooper’s. Oh God. My dad is here, too? Seriously, this is proof there is no God.
“Dr. Veatch,” I go on, “loved Garfield—more, it turned out, than I ever knew. So much, in fact, that he adopted a big orange cat that looked just like him, and named him Garfield. And when that cat developed thyroid disease, what did Dr. Veatch do? He didn’t worry about the expense of caring for a sick animal, or put him down. He gave Garfield pills for it. That’s the kind of man Dr. Veatch was. The kind who loved his cat, Garfield.”
I glance at Pam Don’t-Call-Me-Mrs. Veatch. She’s crying, and gazing up at me happily. Well, good. That’s who this is for, after all. The people who’d really cared about Dr. Veatch. And Garfield. I’m doing the right thing. I know it.
Even if I can see that Tom is currently sticking his finger down his throat and making gagging motions.
“The last time I saw Owen,” I go on, “he was sitting at his desk, writing the speech he was going to give the senior RAs at their graduation dinner at the end of the month. Commencement was Owen’s favorite school function, he told me, because it was a celebration, he said, of accomplishment. Not just the accomplishments of the students, but the accomplishments of the staff of New York College. Commencement was one of the few concrete proofs Owen had that our efforts were a success. Every senior who graduated from New York College was a personal victory not just for us administrators, but all of the staff of the college.” I look directly at President Allington as I say this. “Everyone who pulled together to help the students pass their classes and get their degrees, from the teaching assistants who graded their exams to the custodians who kept their classrooms clean.”
I’d like to say that at this moment, President Allington stood up, said he realized I was right, and declared that he was ending the strike and capitulating to all the demands of the GSC.
But he just keeps his head down, obviously still playing Fantasy Football.
“I don’t know much,” I go on, “about what happens to us when we die. I don’t know anything about the afterlife. But I do know this. And that’s this year, Owen will be sorely missed at New York College’s commencement ceremony. But I can’t help feeling that he’ll be there in spirit… just as he’ll always be here, in our hearts.”
There is a moment of total silence following this last part of my speech. Then there is some applause, polite at first. Then, thanks to Cooper standing up and thundering, “YEAH!” and making very loud noises with his palms, followed very shortly by Tad, after first throwing a startled look over his shoulder, then leaping to his feet and doing the same thing, the applause becomes more heartfelt, until soon the entire audience is on its feet, everyone applauding warmly.
A few seconds later, Brian—the same Brian who’d shown up earlier that morning with Mr. Rosetti at Fischer Hall—hurries up to replace me at the microphone, murmuring nervously, “Uh, thank you? Thank you, Heather. Uh, thank you, everyone. Like, Dr., uh, Jessup said, if you want, there will be refreshments in front of the fitness office upstairs. So. That’s all. Good-bye.”
The youth choir, perhaps inspired by this news, bursts into song. Their choice?
“Kumbaya,” of course.
18
All the money in the world
Can’t buy this heart or ruin this girl
’Cause I know where I’m going and where I’ve been
And that’s a road I won’t take again
“Can’t Buy Me”
Written by Heather Wells
“You know,” Pam Don’t-Call-Me-Mrs. Veatch says, her eyes pink from tears. “Owen spoke very fondly of you. I believe that you and Garfield were probably the two people he was closest to in the world at the… end.”
“Wow,” I reply. Which seems inadequate. But what else are you supposed to say when someone tells you something like this? “Thank you, Pam.”
The thing is, if this is true, it’s completely unsettling. Until he’d been killed, I’d rarely, if ever, given Owen Veatch a thought outside of working hours.
But I smile at the Mrs. Veatches, who’d gathered around me as soon as the memorial service was over like a couple of hungry lionesses around a wounded gazelle. I tried not to look too desperate to escape.
“Owen once told me that you were the fastest typist he’d ever seen,” Mrs. Veatch Number One (Owen’s mom) says, with a watery smile.
Pam nods. “He did,” she confirms.
“Well,” I say. “Thank you, Mrs. Veatch. And… Pam.” Owen was obviously talking about someone else. I type like twenty words a minute.
I look around the atrium we’re standing in—the main floor of the student athletic center, which has been transformed into a temporary wake, with long tables set up for punch and cookies. Of course, no one has bothered to close the sports center off to the students, so there are still people in sweats walking through the mourners, showing IDs to the temporary security officers (provided by Mr. Rosetti, and looking quite unlike our own security officers, in that they are considerably larger and more menacing in appearance) in order to get in, then glancing curiously at the floral wreaths and asking, “Is this some kind of ice cream social?”
I am doing my best to avoid certain parties who have shown up, but I don’t seem to be having much success. This is made more than clear when Dad touches my arm.
“Um,” I say. “Hi, Dad.”
“Hi, honey,” he says. “Can I steal you for a minute?”
Great. I need this like I need… well, a bullet in the head.
“Sure. Pam—Dad, this is Pam, Owen’s former wife.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Dad says, pumping Pam’s hand. She’s changed from the creepy rag doll sweatshirt to a subdued black suit. I introduce him to Mrs. Veatch Number One, as well, then walk with him toward a large potted palm sitting by a huge glass wall, part of the atrium that overlooks the school’s indoor Olympic-sized swimming pool, below. The air smells pleasantly of chlorine. I have a feeling the scent is the only thing about this conversation that’s going to be pleasant.
“Thanks for coming, Dad,” I say. “You didn’t have to. It means a lot that you did. You didn’t even know Owen.”
“Well, he was your boss,” Dad says. “I know how much this job means to you. I don’t exactly understand why it means so much. But I understand that you love it.”
“Yeah,” I say. “About that—”
He holds up a single hand, palm out. “Say no more.”
“I’m really sorry, Dad,” I say.
I mean it, too. I am sorry. Well, for Mandy Moore.
“I have to say, if I hadn’t heard that speech you just gave down there about your boss,” he tells me, “I’d
