Keep Me in Your Heart (20 page)

By Monday, the swelling on Trisha’s face had gone down and she could cover the ugly bruising around her eye with makeup. With little fanfare, she’d chopped off her hair. She found a knit hat she liked, which she wore brim down. Struggling into jeans and a sweater, she prepared to go to school.

“I really wish you’d take another few days off,” her mother said, helping Trisha down the stairs and into the kitchen.

Charlie looked up from where he sat at the kitchen table and jumped to his feet. “Here,
take my chair.” He pulled it out so that she could sit. “Want my cereal? I only took a couple of bites.”

“No thanks.” She tried to smile at him, but her lip throbbed too much.

“You must eat something,” their mother said. “I won’t let you leave until you eat breakfast.”

Food was the last thing Trisha wanted, but she didn’t want to give her mother an excuse to keep her home. “Can I have toast with peanut butter? And maybe some milk.”

As her mother set to work, Trisha let Charlie prop her crutches against the wall. “You going to school?” he asked. “You can stay home if you want. If it was me, I’d stay home.”

“I’m not you.”

The morning paper was spread across the table, open to the local news section. Christina’s pretty face smiled from a photo and the headline read:
Mooresville Teen Dies in Crash; Three Injured
. Trisha all but stopped breathing when she read the word
dies
.

“I told you to put that paper away!” Her mother barked at Charlie.

He looked panic-stricken and reached for
the paper. Trisha stopped him. “Don’t. Please. I—I want to read it.”

“I’m sorry,” Charlie mumbled.

“It’s not your fault,” she told him.

She picked up the paper. At the bottom was a photograph of rescue personnel and police standing around a car resting on its squashed roof. Had a news reporter been at the scene? Trisha didn’t remember. With difficulty, she read the article:

Trisha stopped reading. Her hands shook so hard that she couldn’t hold the paper steady. “Would you turn it to page seven?” she asked Charlie.

He glanced up at their mother, who gave a resigned nod.

In the obituary section, Christina smiled from her senior picture. Trisha noted the particulars about Christina’s funeral listed beside the photo. “The visitation’s tonight,” she said with a start, looking hard at her mother. “Weren’t you going to tell me? Were you going to let me miss it?”

“Of course not.”

Trisha didn’t believe her. “And the funeral’s Tuesday. Were you going to let me skip that too?”

“There’s time—”

“Time? Time for what? She’s dead, Mother. My best friend’s dead and you weren’t even going to let me go to her funeral.”

“That’s not true—”

Trisha cried out and swept the paper from the table. She struggled to her feet. “I hate you! I hate all of you!”

Charlie looked dumbstruck. Their mother rushed over to Trisha and caught her by the arms. “Stop it! We would have never let you miss the funeral. We only wanted to protect you. Now get ahold of yourself.”

Trisha dissolved into heartrending sobs. Her mother cradled her. “She’s gone, Mama. She’s gone forever. What am I going to do? What am I going to do?”

Her mother didn’t answer, and Trisha knew there was no answer. Christina was dead. In two days she’d be buried. She’d be put into the hard cold ground, never to see the world again.

“Why don’t you lie down?” her mother said.

Trisha pulled away. “I’m going to school,”
she said. “Someone has to be there for Christina today. And if you won’t take me, I swear, I’ll walk every step of the way.”

She didn’t have to walk. Her mother got her to the front entrance; as Trisha slowly made her way through the halls, groups of kids parted like field grass to let her pass. They stared. Ordinarily, the stares and whispers would have made her feel self-conscious. Today she didn’t. Because today, it wasn’t about her. It was about Christina. She heard the name spoken as she passed, from voices filled with tears. She didn’t say a word to anyone because she didn’t trust her voice.

Heading toward her locker, she rounded a corner. A teacher stepped in front of her. “Trisha, you’re back so soon?”

No, Mrs. Dodge, I’m only a figment of your imagination
. “Yes, Mrs. Dodge. I couldn’t stay home. Not today.”

“It’s all so tragic. I’m glad you weren’t hurt any worse.”

Any worse than my heart being ripped in half?

“Thank you, Mrs. Dodge.”

“And Cody? How’s he doing?”

He could have died too, Mrs. Dodge. We were
all just a heartbeat away from dying in the accident like Christina
.

“His doctors don’t know yet.” Trisha wished the woman would go away.

“We’re going to have a memorial service in the gym on Friday,” Mrs. Dodge said. “We decided at an emergency faculty meeting this morning. We think it will give the school a chance to pay their respects to Christina and gain closure. Since you knew her best, we thought you might like to say a few words. Can we count on you, Trisha?”

A service? A rally? A send-off? Are you joking?
Trisha felt numb. “I—I guess I could.”

“I told the staff it would be all right to ask you.” Mrs. Dodge turned. “We’re all sorry, Trisha. She was a wonderful girl.” Mrs. Dodge patted Trisha’s shoulder and walked off.

Was. Used to be. Once upon a time
. Christina was past tense. Trisha’s chest felt as if a heavy weight were pressing into it. She went light-headed. The floor began to spin. She dropped her crutches. A hand grabbed her. She looked up into Tucker’s grief-stricken face.

“Let me help you,” he said.

She had no choice—her knees had started to cave in. Without warning, a wail rose from
her throat. Tucker put his arms around her, and they stood in the hall clinging to one another, crying. A group of students held hands and closed ranks around them, as if to shield them from the tentacles of a monster they could not escape.

Eight
 

T
risha and Tucker were taken to the guidance counselor’s office by a teacher who found them crying together and believed they should “take it easy” and that perhaps they had returned to school too soon after their “ordeal.” And that maybe meeting with Mr. Chambers might help them “get a handle” on their emotions. Trisha wanted none of it. She felt bad about breaking down so publicly, but she didn’t want her mother called. And she didn’t want to talk to Mr. Chambers about it either.

To Mr. Chambers’s credit, he didn’t push either Trisha or Tucker to talk. He brought them both colas from the drink machine and, after a
few minutes of making sure neither Trisha nor Tucker was hysterical or totally undone, he left them alone. Trisha hadn’t seen Tucker since the night of the accident. He wore a large, flesh-colored bandage on his right temple where his head had struck the windshield. There was another bandage on his forearm; Trisha saw it under the edge of his sleeve. His eyes were red-rimmed. He had cried. She had seen Charlie cry, but he was a kid and Tucker wasn’t. She thought better of Tucker because he had cried instead of clinging to some stoic macho code.

“How are you doing?” Tucker spoke first.

“Not so good. How about you?”

“The same. My parents didn’t want me to come to school today.”

“My mom wanted me to stay home too.”

“My dad thinks everyone’s going to blame me. Do you blame me, Trisha?”

She didn’t know how to answer him. His expression was one of pure torture, but truth was, he had been driving the car. She thought hard before saying, “I don’t remember much about the accident, you know. It’s mostly just impressions—a flash here and there, pictures that keep rolling around inside my head that I can’t quite pin down.”

“ ’Cause I couldn’t stand it if you thought it was my fault. I wouldn’t blame you, but I couldn’t stand it.”

“The paper didn’t say much about the accident. Did you read the story?”

“I read it. The police told us there’ll be a coroner’s inquest into the accident. That’s where they’ll decide if it was an accident or a reckless homicide.” His voice broke. “What if it’s ruled a reckless homicide, Trisha? What if they say it was my fault? That Christina’s dead and Cody’s in a coma because I was driving recklessly?”

She heard his pain and his fear. She couldn’t believe how life had changed so quickly for them. She wanted to tell him it would be all right, but she couldn’t. Something kept nibbling at the edges of her mind, some memory about the night of the accident that couldn’t get out. She hated the blank spaces in her head. They gave her a headache. “I guess you’ll have to go with whatever they say,” she told him. And thought,
and deal with the consequences
.

“I guess so.” He buried his face in his hands, rubbed his eyes, and groaned. “Why did this have to happen? She didn’t deserve to die. Maybe I am guilty. Maybe it was all my fault.”

She couldn’t console him. She had never cared for Tucker, but now he was the only person in the world who understood what she was going through. He was part of the situation—but was he responsible? Other people might say they understood, but how could they? Had they been in the car? Had they lain in the wet snow, or heard sirens coming for them, or seen their best friend covered with a sheet in a hospital?

She and Tucker had survived. “How do you suppose God decides who lives and who dies?” she asked, not because she expected an answer, but simply because the question had popped into her mind. “Why did we live and Christina die? I’m not so special. She was very special.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “God didn’t play fair.”

“I’m scared for Cody,” she said. “I’m scared he might die too.” She voiced her deepest fear, because she and Tucker were in this together and she
had
to tell someone what was eating her alive.

“I talked to his mother. She was nice to me. I thought she might hate me, but she doesn’t,” Tucker said.

Trisha couldn’t grant him absolution, no matter how many times or ways he asked her for it. “I’m scared about tonight too,” she said. “About the viewing and all.”

“Do you think—” he stopped, then started again. “They’ll make her look pretty, won’t they? I mean, isn’t that their job? To make people look good even after an accident?”

She hadn’t thought about it, but the idea that Christina might look mangled and battered made her stomach feel queasy. “I—I guess so.” Her friend was so pretty in life. Shouldn’t she look the same in death?

“You’ll be there, won’t you?” He looked apprehensive.

“I’ll be there.”

“Can I hang with you? I don’t want to be there by myself.”

“But your parents will come, won’t they?” She didn’t think she could be responsible for Tucker and herself.

“Sure. But so will hers.”

His message hit her like stones. She had yet to face Christina’s parents. In her mind’s eye, she saw Christina’s pretty blond mother, Julia. She saw the years of afternoons she had spent
at Christina’s house, with Julia more like a third girlfriend than a mother. Christina was her parents’ only child and they adored her. They were alone now. Devastated.

Trisha said, “If you get there first, wait for us in the parking lot. If I get there first, come inside and find me.”

He looked grateful. Tears shimmered in his eyes. “Thanks.”

It struck her that in all the years she’d known him, she’d never heard him say that word to her. “It’s what Christina would have wanted,” she said. “She would want us to stick together.”

Trisha heard the bell ring, glanced at the clock, and was shocked to see that it was almost noon. The morning was gone. The afternoon would be gone soon too. All that remained was the night—the long, dark night at the funeral home where Christina lay, waiting for family and friends to tell her goodbye.

Fine, dry snow spit against the windshield of their van as Trisha and her family drove to the funeral home. The weatherman had predicted cold, clear, snowless skies for the next morning,
the day of the funeral. Trisha sat tight-lipped during the trip, unable to get warm, even though the heater was going full blast.