Remembering Raquel (6 page)

Kind of unsettling in a spooky sort of way.

Finally, somebody said something, and Mrs. Bellanca erased it. But you can still see the smudge mark where it was.

Kind of like Raquel.

Raquel's life as a smudge mark on the earth.

Did she see the car coming? Did her life flash in front of her like it does in cartoons? How badly did it hurt, and for how long? The newspaper said she was pronounced dead at the hospital. Does that mean she didn't die right away? And if she didn't, was she conscious? Did she know she was dying?

It gives me the creeps to think that one instant she was laughing and talking and probably thinking about what she was going to eat for her next meal, or maybe thinking about that birthday coming up in another two weeks, and then—
pow!
—all of a sudden she's a smudge.

It's gotten me to thinking: In the movies, you always know something like that is going to happen. You can tell by the dramatic music, or you can tell because the character has just said how happy and complete she is.

And then I started thinking about all those people who are killed in terrorist attacks. No eerie music foreshadowed that they were in some creepy terrorists version of a movie.

I made the mistake of mentioning all this to my grandmother. Instead of saying something to make me feel better, she said I was right! She said that it was kind of funny how some people are concerned with the end of the world, when for any one of us the end of the world could be seconds from now.

Gee, thanks, Gramma.

So, all of a sudden I'm thinking: How will I know? What if my life is about to end—
bam!-—
NOW?

Or now?

Or now?

Being the most popular girl in school isn't as easy as you might think.

A school takes its whole personality from the attitude set by the "in crowd," and that's quite a responsibility. Sometimes girls let the power go to their heads. They take as an example the catty, toxic girls in movies, because
there
it's funny—even though, in the movies, the popular girls are almost always the villains, and they get their comeuppance by either being one of the first victims of the crazed serial killer stalking the halls, or by being publicly brought down and humiliated by, of course, kids from the "out crowd."

Newsflash: There is no such thing as the "out crowd." That is a Hollywood construct.

You can be
in
(which is a select few), or you can be
not in
(which is the vast majority), or you can be
out
(but then you're not part of any crowd, because that's what "out" means).

But those popular girls who take Hollywood too much to heart and specialize in snide meanness—they can taint the entire school. (Are you listening, Zoe Kanisky?) The whole student body becomes disgruntled. The discontent spreads to the teachers and the administration, and then bounces back down on the students, intensifying the misery for all.

So I do my best to set a good standard, to be civil to all, and to talk behind the backs of only the outest of the out.

I didn't talk about Raquel, because there really wasn't anything to say. I thought that she was pathetic because she so obviously didn't even
try—
I mean how hard is it to lose
a few
pounds? And she wore her hair exactly the same every single day. Never tried anything new to see what would have been more flattering.

The worst part—for me—was that she was always doodling. I was sure she was making fun of me, because a lot of times she was drawing what appeared to be a caricature of me: this thin-waisted. perky-boobed girl with big green eyes, and half or her body weight had to be that mound of blond hair that seemed to have a personality of its own. Since I have admittedly good blond hair, green eyes, and a figure I'm not ashamed of—I thought these drawings were supposed to be me. Maybe I'm a bit oversensitive, but the thing that settled it in my mind was that this girl in the drawings was always carrying—or waving—a big knife. Before she married my dad, my mother's name was Metzger, which is German for "butcher," and that's exactly what her father was—a butcher in a meat market. Which is not a sexy occupation at all. I thought Raquel had found out about that and was pointing out that my mother comes from a decidedly working-class family.

It was only when I saw Raquel's sketchbook at the funeral parlor, with pictures of this character—labeled
Gylindrielle,
which was apparently Raquel's alter ego—rescuing kittens and in other heroic poses, and with other characters drawn in the same style, that I finally realized she was not poking fun at me. She was, in fact, revealing a desire to look like me.

Now I feel terrible.

And I wonder: What would have happened if I had gone out of my way to be nice to her? If I hadn't just refrained from bashing her, but had tried talking to her—about hair and clothes and diet and stuff? Not enough contact with her to jeopardize my own standing, which I've worked so hard to attain, but enough to help her improve herself so she wouldn't be so sad and hopeless.

Would she not have stepped off that curb?

Because I have to think: Being her while wanting to be me—surely she stepped into the path of that car on purpose.

T
HOMAS
Y
EAGER
, student at MCC: It was so sad. One minute we were all standing on the curb, waiting for the chance to cross the street. Me and Diego, we had parked in the lot of that bicycle repair shop, Crawford's. It was after hours, so we figured we'd be okay even though the signs are all, like,
VIOLATORS WILL BE TOWED
, as if it makes any difference whether anyone parks there when the place isn't even open. The parking lot for the theater holds, like, about three cars, but in this case that woulda been okay 'cause nobody came, 'cause the movie was kind of lame, which was why it was in the second-run theater, anyway, but it was better than the movie that was playing at the student center. So that's what I was thinking about: How come the student center always plays such crappy movies that we gotta go to a second-run theater for entertainment? And wouldn't it make more sense to forget the movie entirely and just go get some pizza? But Diego, he's all into that cartoon stuff, and he's talking to this high school girl about how great it was, and there was this old couple there, too, waiting to cross the street, but I don't know where their car was 'cause it wasn't at Crawford's, and the girl—Raquel, they said her name was—she's talking to Diego a mile a minute about this one scene in the movie, waving her arms, and making moves like she's Xena, Warrior Princess, and the next thing I know, she's flailing her arms and falling off the curb, right in front of that car. That driver never had a chance to miss her.

D
IEGO
M
ANNILLO
, student at MCC: No,
I
don't think she fell. I think she never saw that car and she just stepped off the curb. Thomas was being kind of pissy because he didn't want to be there at all. He thought we shoulda gone for pizza or burgers. Food, not film. But the old guy, the girl, and me—we were talking about this one feature, this parody of
The Lord of the Rings
that was the best part of the festival. And we're repeating the funny lines to each other, and the girl, she's holding one arm out like she's brandishing a sword, and she's holding the other arm limp-wristed and she goes in this fruity kind of voice like the Legolas character had, "Stepping off into battle, now," which is what he kept saying, and that's when she stepped off the curb. So I gotta think she did it on purpose. But she never saw that car.

E
DWARD
S
ELBY
, 583 Clarkson Road: My wife and I didn't know any of the others. We just ended up together at the curb waiting to cross the street. Our car was behind the theater, but we were going to have some hot chocolate at that Greek restaurant next
to the bike place before going home. My wife, she hadn't liked the movie and wasn't feeling well, which is why she didn't see what happened, and she was on my right-hand side. The one boy was standing off to the left, then the other boy—the one who was a pretty good mimic—then the girl, then me, then my wife, except that we were all kind of clustered—you know?—it's not like we were all standing in a row. The boy who was so good with doing different voices, he and the girl and I were having a good time pretending to be the various characters in the movie while we walked out of the theater and waited to cross. Then I think it's just like he said to the people from the restaurant: I think the girl just got overexcited and wasn't watching what she was doing. Such a pity. Such a terrible, terrible pity. It was awful to see. Terrible for the driver, too—she kept crying and saying, "It's not my fault." And it wasn't. The girl just stepped right in front of her. It was someone from the restaurant who called 911. They came running out when it happened. Awful. It's going to haunt all of us for a long time. It'll be so hard for the girl's parents. Must be terrible to lose a child. Just seems to be backward: Parents expect their kids to bury them. My wife's real shook up.

M
ARILYN
S
ELBY
, 583 Clarkson Road: I didn't really see anything. I'm sorry. I wasn't paying attention.

I'm afraid I killed that girl.

Does Edward suspect?

I heard him describe to the police how we were standing, and he said I was to his right. But I wasn't. I was to his left. I was between him and the girl. It isn't like Edward to misremember. I think he suspects, and he's lying to protect me.

The movie was too loud, and—at ninety minutes—it was at least forty-five minutes too long. I don't know if that
gave
me the headache, or if it just made my headache worse. As we were walking through the lobby, Edward suggested we go to the coffee shop across the street for a cup of hot chocolate so I could sit down and take some aspirin.

I don't know what was the matter with me that night. Edward was talking and laughing with the young people, and normally that's something I love about him, his youthful exuberance. But that night I was thinking he was prancing around like Errol Flynn in one of those old pirate movies, and I was thinking this was making my head hurt even worse. I went rummaging through my purse to look for the aspirin, so I could have it handy to pop into my mouth as soon as we got to the restaurant.

While I had my head down, the girl, also prancing, bumped into my purse. I was annoyed at all their foolishness—the endless movie, my headache, Edward acting like a teenager, me acting like a grumpy old woman—and I bumped back. Not hard. Not a great shove. Certainly with no intention of harm.

I'm trying to reconstruct in my head what happened. I never looked up, and it seemed as though several seconds passed while I continued to look for that aspirin bottle. And if that's true, then I didn't cause her to lose her balance and fall. If that's true, she bounced off me, continued to play, and then—nothing to do with me—she either fell or stepped off the curb on her own, as the two boys have said.

But I keep going back over it. Maybe only a heartbeat passed before that awful
thud.

Maybe it wasn't
and then...
Maybe it was
and so...

I watch Edward to see if he acts differently toward me.

There's nothing I can put my finger on.

I want to ask him: "Did you really think you were the one standing next to the girl who died?"

But if in the confusion he
did
remember incorrectly, my asking will make him wonder why I'm asking. It will make him wonder why—if I remember things differently from him—I didn't say so to the police.

And if he lied, then it's because he saw what I did, and he knows I killed her.

And I'm not sure I can deal with knowing that.

I always thought Raquel was so lucky. I mean, she's an only child, and I have four sisters. Four. I'd trade all or any one of them for Raquel.

People are always looking at my four sisters—Amorette, who's nineteen; Gina, who's sixteen; Corinne and Sophia, the twins, who are fourteen; and me, eleven—and then they ask my parents, "So you kept on trying till you had a boy?"

Mom and Dad always smile, like whoever's asking is the first person in the world to ever come up with that, and they say, "No, that's just the way it worked out."

My sisters smile, too—while people are watching. In private, they pinch me—especially Corinne and Sophia. They have a way of working in tandem, one distracting me while the other zeros in with those fingers of iron. Gina generally prefers smacking me upside the head. Amorette goes, like, "So, what are we—chopped liver?" As if I'm the one responsible for tactless questions.

When girls grow up in a swarm, they grow up mean.

But I don't think Raquel would have been. She hardly ever got tired of playing Go Fish with me and never looked at my cards if I forgot to hold them up straight. Amorette has always claimed her cheating is a life lesson for me, like she's doing it for my own good rather than just to win.

Sure, Raquel was sort of fat, but we're Italian. Italians are
not
carb watchers. Meals have lots of pasta and bread, and everybody's mother makes about ten different kinds of cookies for any special occasion. Once they reach a certain age, Italian women take it as a personal insult if you don't eat. In our family, most of the aunts and uncles and the majority of the cousins older than twenty-five are what you could call hefty. My sisters, alarmed by the family photo albums, think they can fight their genealogy, and they're always on diets. Maybe that's why they're so mean.

Mom and Dad weren't sure if we kids should go to the funeral parlor.

"They went last year when Uncle Sal died," Mom pointed out.

"That was different," Dad said, by which I took him to mean Uncle Sal was practically in the
Guinness Book of World Records,
he was so old. They flew his ashes back from the retirement community in St. Petersburg, Florida, so that he could be buried next to Aunt Imogene, who had died so long ago even Amorette hadn't been born yet. So it wasn't like it was a surprise Uncle Sal had died. And it wasn't like we knew him.