Maybe One Day (33 page)

They’d put up the gazebo in record time. I’d watched the construction from my physics classroom, the intricate white wood structure emerging from the pile of lumber that had been delivered and dumped in a pile one afternoon. The spot
they’d picked to erect it on was the only hill on campus, a small rise out beyond the fields near the woods that surrounded the school. Chairs had been set up in rows on Friday, and they were filled Saturday morning more than an hour before the ceremony started. Mrs. Greco had asked me to sit with the family, so I didn’t have to fight my way to get a seat.

It was sticky and overcast. Principal Handleman talked about how Olivia’s illness had brought the school together. He used the word
tragedy
three or four times, and I found my mind wandering. A group of birds flew overhead, and I wondered if they were ducks or geese. It occurred to me that they were probably called a flock. Or were they? A flock of ducks? A group of ducks? A gaggle of ducks? It was tempting to take out my phone and google it.

When Principal Handleman finished, there was a pause while Stacy Shaw slowly made her way up the steps of the gazebo to the podium. She was wearing a tight black dress, black stockings, and black heels. She’d blown her hair straight.

It was as if she’d chosen her wardrobe by downloading a funeral attire app.

“My name is Stacy Shaw,” she began. “A lot of you were at the car wash that the other cheerleaders and I organized. We hoped that it would be enough to keep Olivia alive, but we were wrong.”

Flock of ducks. All birds were flocks. I was positive.

Reasonably positive.

“. . . because during her illness, I really got to
know
Olivia Greco. She was an amazing friend. She was funny. She was smart. She was talented. Even when she was sick, she was always interested in other people. I emailed her every day, and when she responded, she always asked about
my
life. Even when she was in the hospital, she would want to know how I was feeling.”

I snorted. Luke was sitting next to me, and he glanced over. I lowered my head.

“The important thing is that we should not cry for Olivia.” Stacy’s voice was bold. She could have been calling a cheer. “Olivia has gone to a better place. And though we miss her, we must picture her there. Dancing with the angels.” Stacy’s voice broke.

Dancing
with the
angels?
Was she
fucking
kidding me?

And before I could stop myself, I looked around to roll my eyes at Olivia. Literally. I actually turned my head to the right and caught a glimpse of Mrs. Greco’s tear-stained face before I thought,
Wait. Olivia’s not here. Olivia is dead
.

Olivia is dead
.

It was as if I had just gotten the news, as if it hadn’t happened almost two months ago but had happened now, this instant.
Olivia is dead
. My lips began to tremble and my eyes filled. I wanted to tell Olivia what Stacy was saying about her, but I couldn’t because Stacy was talking at Olivia’s memorial service.

Just this one thing
, I thought, but it was more of a prayer than a thought.
Please let me tell her this one thing. Just the thing about dancing with the angels
.

Her number was still programmed into my cell phone. Surely if I sent her a text she would get it.
Surely in this modern world where everything is connected and wired and people can talk to China using satellites thousands of miles up in space, surely I can just send my dead friend one fucking text from her memorial service
.

And suddenly I started to cry. Serious sobs, the kind where your stomach hurts and you can’t breathe and there’s snot running down your face. I was crying so hard I couldn’t even mute the sounds I was making, and Luke put his hand on my back and I thought about how everyone would think that I was crying because of Stacy’s fucking speech and I wanted to kill someone. I wanted to kill someone and I wanted to die and I wanted to run as far and as fast as I could because she was never coming back. She had fallen off the face of the earth and she was never coming back.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

part 4

Summer

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

41

It is agony to thaw.

I’d failed to appreciate how the permafrost in which I was encased was protecting me, and now that it had melted, everything hurt. Sunlight. The walk to school. The cold metal of my lock as I jerked it open every morning. Lying in bed and watching the numbers on my alarm clock as they flipped, the minutes passing glacially as I failed to fall asleep for yet another night.

The astonishing thing, the truly shocking thing, was that life went on. There were finals. They didn’t cancel the prom. Stacy told me (and I am completely not joking here) that to honor Olivia’s memory, a lot of girls would be wearing black dresses that night. And then she told me (and I am
still
not joking) that she knew Calvin would want to go to the prom
with me, and she suggested (still not joking) that it would be
good
for me to get out.

To give credit where credit is due, Calvin found me at the end of that same day and told me he was not going to the prom. He and Jake were going to go to Jake’s house and just watch movies.

“Do you want to come?” he asked. “Not as . . . anything.”

We were standing in the hallway. I’d avoided looking at him when he’d come over, but now I looked. He was leaning against the locker next to mine, and he’d gotten his hair cut. It looked good. Really good. I remembered how I’d told Olivia that the reason Calvin was irresistible was because he was a vampire.

That was how life was now—all roads led to Olivia.

“I can’t, Calvin,” I said, turning away from him. I shut my locker and slipped the lock through it, glad to have something to do with my hands and my eyes.

“Okay,” he said. Then he said, “Zoe?”

“Yeah?” I could tell he was waiting for me to look at him, but I just studied the linoleum floor at my feet.

We stood there, not looking at each other and not talking, and then he finally said, “See you, Zoe.”

By the time I looked up, he’d disappeared into the crowded hallway.

June ended and then it was summer and I would sit in my
room and I would think,
A year ago, Olivia was alive. A year ago, we didn’t even know Olivia was sick
. And then my mom or my dad would come upstairs to see if I was doing the work I was supposed to be doing because I’d taken incompletes in four of my six classes. And when they saw that I
wasn’t
doing my work, that I wasn’t doing anything for that matter, they would hug me and tell me it was going to be okay. About once a week, they’d ask if I wanted to talk to someone. And I would think,
Yes I want to talk to someone
.

They meant a therapist.

I meant Olivia.

And then, the first week of August, Mrs. Greco called and asked if I would come over to the house.

I didn’t want to go, but you can’t say no to something like that. You can’t say,
I’m sorry, Mrs. Greco, but I can’t handle coming to your house. The house my best friend used to live in. The house you have to wake up in every morning even though your only daughter is dead
.

I said what you have to say when something like that happens.

I said yes.

The last of Mrs. Greco’s rosebushes were still in bloom on the afternoon that I made my way up the front walk. The lawn was the same perfect emerald green it always was. On the porch, the swing Olivia and I had never sat in even though
we were always saying how it was a really nice swing and we should sit in it was still there.

Everything was completely unchanged.

Mrs. Greco answered the bell. She was unchanged also. It was a ridiculously hot day, but her hair shaped her face gracefully, as groomed as ever. She was wearing a crisp blue cotton dress and a pair of dark brown sandals. Her nails were polished a pale coral. You could never have imagined that the coiffed woman standing in front of me had, on the day of her daughter’s funeral, clawed at her own suit so frantically she’d ripped the fabric.

She gave me a long, hard hug, and then I followed her into the kitchen.

“Would you like some water or lemonade?” she asked me.

It was her voice that gave her away. Even though she was only offering me something to drink, it shook ever so slightly, and I knew that no matter how polished she looked, inside she was still tearing at her clothing.

“Sure,” I said. “Lemonade would be great.” As soon as she took the carton out of the refrigerator, I saw that I’d made a mistake. Livvie’s family always stocked this amazing pink lemonade that my mother refused to buy because it wasn’t organic. For over a decade, I’d drunk it only at Olivia’s house. Mrs. Greco brought me the glass and I thanked her, but I didn’t so much as put my lips to it. One taste of the familiar drink would, I knew, push me over the edge.

“I called because . . .” Mrs. Greco went over to the table and took a sip of her iced coffee. “I think Jake might have told you that we’ve put the house on the market.”

I shook my head. The things grown-ups think kids talk about shouldn’t have surprised me, but it always did.

She stroked the side of the glass, almost as if she were cleaning the beads of water from it. “Yes. It’s just . . . well, you can probably imagine.”

“Not really,” I admitted. “I mean, I can’t imagine living here.”

Her eyes met mine, and there was so much grief there that I could hardly bear to see it. “Neither can I.”

We stood in silence. Mrs. Greco’s nose got reddish, and she sniffled, but she didn’t cry. “I have so much
stuff
.” Now she did begin to cry a little, but she kept talking. “There’s so much stuff. My sister is going to help me pack it up and donate it, but before I do, I don’t know if there’s anything you want. Of Olivia’s. I thought you could go upstairs and see.”

It was yet another request I couldn’t see refusing. “Um, sure,” I said. I put my glass on the table, and even though the last place in the world I wanted to be was Olivia’s room, I went upstairs anyway. I’d assumed Mrs. Greco would follow me, but she didn’t.

Maybe she didn’t want to be up there either.

Slowly I made my way up the Grecos’ staircase. I had done this every day of my life, it seemed, sometimes several times a
day. It was so familiar—the smooth banister under my hand, the creak of the loose step that we’d learned to hop when we were little so we could sneak downstairs for treats late at night when her parents thought we were asleep. I started to get butterflies in my stomach, and I actually ran the last few steps to Olivia’s room. It wasn’t until I pushed open her door that I realized why I’d been excited. It was like my dream all over again. Olivia should have been sitting on her bed.
I’m so glad to see you! I thought you were dead
.

I’m not dead, silly. I’m right here
.

But of course she
was
dead. Which was why she wasn’t in her room when I pushed open the door.

I looked around. Nothing, as far as I could see, had been touched. Her books were on the shelf. The photos of her were on the walls. Her bed was made with the comforter that had come home from the hospital with her; her bedside lamp sat on her bedside table. Even the schedule for the first day of school was still tacked to the corkboard. It fluttered slightly in the breeze from my opening the door.

What did Mrs. Greco think I was going to take? Olivia’s clock radio? Her statue of an elephant that one of her cousins had sent her when he was in India? Her poster of the five ballet positions? How could I possibly take any of it? It was all Livvie’s.

Still, I walked inside, my footsteps muffled by the plush carpet I’d helped Olivia pick. I didn’t want to touch anything.
I didn’t want to change anything. I understood now why people created shrines to the dead, and I wished the Grecos wouldn’t sell the house, that they would never sell the house, that I would be able—someday—to bring my daughter here so she could see Olivia’s room exactly as it was now, exactly as it had been when she was alive. It would be a museum of Olivia, and whenever I wanted to, I could come back and be surrounded by her.

I pulled open her closet door, the light automatically going on when the little button was released. Was there one article of clothing in it I didn’t recognize? I stroked the dress she’d worn the night we went out for my birthday. I could still see her sitting across the table from me.
One day our lives are going to be amazing, Zoe. Totally amazing
.

It was hard for me to see through my tears, but as I turned to walk out of her closet, I spotted, high up on a shelf, Olivia’s memory box.

I stared up at it, studying its intricate blue-and-white pattern. Inside was Olivia’s whole history. The whole history of our life together. It was the closest thing to a shrine I was going to get, and I pulled her desk chair into the closet, climbed up on it, and grabbed the box.

Downstairs, Mrs. Greco said she was glad I’d found something to take. Then she hugged me tightly. “You’ll always be a part of this family.”

I nodded, but I didn’t see how what she was saying could be true. It seemed to me that what bound us together wasn’t love or blood but a kind of infinite grief. Being together didn’t soothe that grief for me; it intensified it, as if grief expanded exponentially. My grief alone was
almost
unbearable. My grief plus Mrs. Greco’s
was
unbearable.

I was tempted to ask her if it helped to believe in God, but I kind of knew the answer already. Nothing helped. Not God. Not picturing Olivia in a better place. Not telling yourself you should be grateful for all the good times you had together.