Absent (8 page)

I hadn’t planned on hiding what had happened with Usha from the other dead kids until I found myself
not
telling them. But it was the right choice, I reassured myself. Brooke would have pestered me with questions, and Evan would have worried himself sick about the ramifications of it. And for what? Who even knew if I could do it again? I decided that I’d keep it to myself for now.

“Let me get this straight,” Brooke says. “You think Usha is sitting around chanting your name?”

“She’s not
chanting
my name,” I explain. “It’s like—”

“Like she’s thinking it,” Evan finishes, “and you can hear her thoughts.”

“Yeah. Exactly. Like she’s thinking it,” I say. “You’ve never heard it?”

“Do I hear voices calling my name? No.” But she rises and stands by the edge of the net, staring off into the field as if what we’re saying has bothered her somehow.

The sun is almost gone now, its last few rays skating along the flat field. The soccer players amble off in twos and threes, balls kicked out ahead to chart their trajectory, the lines all meeting back at the school. The school building looks small from out here at the edge of the field, like you could jump off it and stand up on the ground with a
ta-da!

“Did she say anything else?” Evan breaks into my reverie.

“Who?”

“Kelsey Pope. Did she say anything else about you?”

“No. I . . .” Inhabiting Usha had made me clean forget about Kelsey and the suicide rumor. But then a thought punches through me, strong and quick as the soccer ball through Brooke’s gut: If I could mark Usha’s quiz score, what else could I do? Could I walk around as her? Could I say things as her? Could I use Usha to tell people that the rumor isn’t true?

I think of Evan’s words in the library:
We can’t talk to anyone, can’t touch anything, can’t change anything
. I smile because maybe now I can do all of those things.

THE NEXT MORNING
,
I MEET USHA IN THE STUDENT PARKING
lot, noting that her old station wagon has a new dent in it. She has a punky black lace dress on and red rubber rain boots, even though it’s far too chilly for rain. We head into the school, her breath a cloud in front of her face. I exhale nothing.

At the doors, one of the biblicals joins us, asking Usha how she’s doing about ten times. I roll my eyes. The biblicals took no interest in Usha until I died, and now they practically want to baptize her. They’re pleased, probably, that I supposedly killed myself; it gives them something to pray about. I’m so preoccupied with my thoughts that I’ve fallen back, so when Usha thinks my name and I lunge forward, my fingers just miss swiping her arm.

The next time Usha thinks of me doesn’t come until late morning in her first art class—sculpture and pottery with Mr. Fisk—which means I can’t take advantage of it then either. Since it’s Fisk’s class, that means Evan is perched on the low cupboard in the back of the
room, and I’m forced to sit next to him like I’ve stopped by merely for the day’s lesson.

The clock is a creeping sundial as Mr. Fisk spends most of the hour laboriously explaining glazing techniques. Even worse, he keeps dropping his marker, ducking to get it, then popping back up with a “Where was I?” before starting over at the beginning of the explanation.

“This is gripping,” I say.

Evan’s eyebrows shoot up. “You don’t think he’s a good teacher?”

“You sit in here day after day. I guess I thought he’d be amazing.”

“Come on. He’s not that bad.”

That’s when I hear it again—
Paige
—in Usha’s whisper. She’s doodling dragonflies on her notebook, their wings so huge that they spill over the margins, obscuring half her notes. I can’t go near her, though, or Evan will see it. Which is precisely when he says, “I get why you’re here.”

“What do you mean?” I say. “Maybe I just like learning about glazing techniques.”

He nods at Usha. “You want to know if she’s thinking about you.”

“Yeah, that’s it,” I say, and it sort of is.

“Well has she?” he asks.

“A couple of times.”

“See?” Evan says. “She didn’t forget you.”

At lunch, people turn to look as Usha enters the cafeteria in her ridiculous red boots, but she glares at them and their faces spin away like targets in a carnival shooting gallery. I’ve never seen Usha narrow her eyes at people, much less outright glare at them; that was always me. Usha bypasses the table of biblicals who are waving her over and takes a spot at an empty table, yanking an orange,
a sandwich, and chips out of her lunch sack. She sets them in a row, then goes straight for the chips, pulling apart the silvery lips of the bag. I stand directly behind her, hands at the ready, almost as if we were doing a trust fall.

“We saved you a seat,” a voice chirps over my shoulder.

Two of the biblicals have appeared; they step past me and hover on either side of Usha. An angel on each shoulder. And a devil at her back. “You don’t have to sit alone, you know.”

Usha looks from one to the other of them.
Paige
, she thinks. This time the whisper has an annoyed quality, and I know why. The biblicals only want her to be friends with them because she’s the school charity case, the girl whose only friend turned out to be a jumper. No wonder she wants everyone to forget me.

Sorry, Usha, but I won’t be forgotten. I step between the two biblicals, plunging my hands, past any resistance, straight into Usha’s back.

Salt.

Salt sharp on my tongue.

On Usha’s tongue.

I close my mouth and let the salt taste spread out. I’m vaguely aware of the biblicals on either side of me, and the rest of the milk-slurping, sandwich-crust-balling cafeteria around us.

But at first there’s nothing except for salt.

The taste is a shape: a prickly ball in my hands. The taste is a sound: a dozen taut wires plucked at once. The taste is a color: a gleaming silver. I bite down and feel the chips crunch, and that crunch is something else entirely. I chew, the bits of chip breaking apart on my teeth and tongue. It’s been almost a month since I’ve eaten. I’d forgotten how it feels, how it tastes. Actually I’d forgotten taste existed altogether.

Then I see the orange sitting here in front of me. I grab it like it’s a prize, which it is, bumpy and waxy and round and sour-sweet. I look down at my hands that are not my hands—light brown, knuckles whirled with charcoal, nails polished with picked-off green. I dig a painted finger into the orange peel and nearly laugh out loud at the feeling of pith caught under my nail. I dance my feet with a squeak, the rubber of the boots rubbing against each other. My squeak!

Then I remember that I’m in the middle of a crowded cafeteria. I’m Usha. So, as Usha, I should probably fight my impulse to run down the cafeteria line taking spoonfuls of all the foods. And maybe I shouldn’t pass behind the tables of eaters, running my hands over my classmates’ backs—the nubby flannels of the burners, the slick letterman leathers of the testos, and the careful cottons of the biblicals. I pull myself away from my salt and orange peel and squeaky boots. I am Usha. I have to act like Usha.

The biblicals have stopped hovering and have taken a seat on either side of me. Usha and I used to make fun of these girls, calling them by saints’ names, which she’d pulled from an app on her phone: Agnes and Humbeline and Bertilia. But their real names are perfectly normal: Jenny, Erin, and Rachel.

I peel a strip off my orange and decide that I’m ready to try talking.

“Hey,” I say. It works. The voice that comes out is Usha’s. “I need to ask you something. As friends,” I add for good measure.

“Of course you can,” Jenny says.

“You’ve heard the rumors about Paige’s death, right?” I ask. My question is accompanied by a faint stirring, a jostling inside me.
Is that you, Usha?
I wonder, setting my palms flat on the table.
I’m sorry, but I need you right now, just for a minute. Please don’t push me out
. The stirring comes again. It’s not nearly as strong as yesterday’s
shove, so I push back against it, focusing on being solid and still and here. It’s sort of like hovering, like holding yourself in place.

The biblicals share a look, their bangs clean lines across their foreheads.

“Have you? Heard them?” I prod.

“No, I don’t think so,” one says in a tone that makes it clear she has.

“Really? You haven’t heard that Paige committed—”

“We try not to gossip,” Rachel cuts in.

“Okay, fine. But you have ears. People say she jumped. You heard that, right?”

“We heard it,” Erin admits grimly. “Everyone’s heard it.”

“Well, I just want you to know—as a friend—that it’s not true.” Again comes the stirring feeling; this time, I ignore it.

The girls look at each other, then back at me.

“We hope it’s not true,” Rachel says.

“It’s not,” I say. “I was there. She fell.”

“We hope so,” Rachel repeats. “We pray for her.”

I stare at her. She blinks back at me placidly.

“You
what
?”

“Pray for her,” Rachel says uncertainly. She’s heard something in my voice, something sharp-nailed, quick-tempered, and trapped in a small space. She continues, “If she killed herself, she can’t go to heaven.”

“What if there is no heaven?” I say.

“Pardon?”

“You know: tra-la-la heaven? What if it doesn’t exist?”

The biblicals’ smiles disappear, then reappear like cards in a magic trick.

“It’s all right if you don’t believe right now,” Jenny says. “It takes time to—”

Enough of this. As if it isn’t painful enough to be stuck here, stuck here forever, without having to hear this. I cut Jenny’s sentence clean in half: “I don’t believe or not believe. I
know
. I know, and I’ll tell you so that you can know, too. Heaven doesn’t exist. It’s a story you’ve made up so that you can feel better about dying. But you know what? You die, and it’s not better. It’s just like it was before. Except worse because you’re dead.”

Suddenly I’m standing, with all of them staring up at me. The orange is squeezed in my palm, its sticky juice running down all the way to my wrist.

“It can be hard to understand His reasons—” Erin begins.

“You’re not listening to me. There are no reasons. There is no Him, no pillows stuffed with fluffy clouds, no free harps at the door. No door. There isn’t a heaven for you or for me. There’s just this.”

Their Chapsticked lips part in surprise. As I turn away from the table, I realize that half the cafeteria is staring at me. I stride past them and almost run smack into Kelsey Pope, who stands gawking at the recycling station with her empty tray. Her eyes widen, and she shuffles back, bumping into the bin.

“By the way,” I say, “we
never
would have been friends.” I drop the deflated orange at her feet and storm out of the cafeteria, my boots squeaking in anger with each step.

I end up in Brooke’s bathroom, washing juice off my hand and arm. My anger has left as quickly as it came, and now I just feel empty and tired. And sticky. I glance into the mirror above the sink and meet the brown eyes of Usha’s reflection. I make a face, feeling the skin and muscles pull into the shape I’ve told them to, but it’s my expression on Usha’s face, not her own.

That’s when I realize my mistake: I’ve become one of the only people I want to talk to. Now Usha is further away than ever.

I wrap my arms around myself, feeling Usha’s body, round arms, breasts, and stomach. It’s pleasant, this extra flesh, as if it were here to comfort me. I shake my head, and Usha’s bob swings against my cheeks and ears. I haven’t worn my hair this short since I was little. I feel young and then, suddenly, very, very old.

You’re only seventeen
, I tell myself.

You’re only seventeen forever
, my self answers back.

I exhale. I hadn’t expected to get so angry. I shouldn’t have yelled at those biblicals. They weren’t trying to hurt me. Maybe they’ll leave Usha alone now anyway. That seemed to be what she’d wanted.
But she hadn’t wanted it enough to yell at them
, I think guiltily.
That was you
.

Usha?
I think as loud as I can. No answer, no stirring inside me, no shove. I wonder where she is now, if she saw the whole thing, hidden back there behind my eyes. Or maybe she’s gone to sleep and will wake when I leave her. Forget that I don’t even know how to leave her. Yesterday in physics, I’d only inhabited her for a second before I’d been pushed out again. As an experiment, I try to welcome it, the shove, but it doesn’t come. My feet stay in Usha’s red boots, planted firmly on the dirty tile. And I have to admit, I’m a little relieved that it didn’t work, that I still have her body for at least a little while longer.

I flick water at my reflection in the mirror. It’s all getting complicated. I’d been so focused on getting into Usha’s body that I hadn’t thought about what would happen after I was in it. And now I’d ruined my opportunity to stop the suicide rumor by making a scene. People would hardly believe Usha if she told them that my death wasn’t a suicide, not now that she’d acted so crazy in front of the whole school.