The After Girls (5 page)

Jake didn’t say anything else. He just bowed his head and started shuffling bills in the register again.

She knew that he didn’t get it. That he couldn’t get it.

Because the only one who could have really explained it to him wasn’t here to speak.

• • •

The shop was surprisingly busy. It almost felt like Astrid’s funeral, round two. Everyone was looking at her with understanding eyes, like they wanted to somehow show their support. But, “I’m sorry your best friend killed herself,” didn’t really jibe with, “Can I have an iced latte?” So they just left her really big tips.

A part of her kept expecting Astrid to pop out of the back office, to hop on the register and take care of a few customers, to show her exactly how she got the foam on her lattes so perfect.

The big pot of house blend was out in a few hours. Jake was on the register and there was a slight lull in customers, so Ella headed to the back room where they stocked extra beans.

As soon as she stepped inside, the sight of Grace and Claire made her tense up. Grace faced the wall, slumped over her desk in a corner of the stock room, papers spread out in front of her, hands on top of them as if they were holding her up. Ella felt like an intruder. She hadn’t meant to interrupt — she hadn’t known there was anything
to
interrupt. She just wanted to stock the coffee, damn it, but she was already inside. She couldn’t turn around now.

Claire leaned over Grace. “Come on,” she said quietly, tugging on Grace’s arm. “It will be good to go out there. Just for a minute.”

Ella moved quietly, grabbing a big bag of the house blend off the first shelf. Their backs were to her, and they still hadn’t seemed to notice.

They were quiet for a moment as Ella tip-toed out, but then there was a flash of movement, a yell. “Get away from me,” Grace said, jerking her arm from her sister’s grasp. “It won’t be good,” she said, her voice rising. “It can’t help me. You can’t help me. He can’t help me. No one can.” And she began to sob.

Ella heard a rattle on the floor. The two women whipped around. Grace stared right at her. Angry.

It took her a second to realize that she’d dropped the bag of coffee. “I’m sorry,” she said, kneeling down, the coffee beans pressing into her bare kneecaps. She started to scoop them up with her hands. “I’m really sorry.”

“Just get out,” Grace said. And then she looked to her sister. “Both of you, just leave me alone,” she said. “Please.”

And Claire walked towards Ella quickly, the coffee beans crunching beneath her feet. She grabbed Ella by the shoulder, pulling her upright. Beans were still stuck to her shin. Claire pushed her back to the front. Grace’s eyes stayed pinned on her until she couldn’t see them anymore. Claire closed the door behind her with a thud.

“I’m sorry,” Ella said, brushing the coffee beans off her legs. “I was just getting coffee. We ran out. I didn’t mean to — ”

“Shh,” Claire said, putting her finger to her lips in a move that was super patronizing but just the slightest bit comforting. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll get the coffee. I think I saw some more in the cabinet.”

Without a pause, she grabbed a rag from the counter and pushed it into Ella’s hands. “Here,” she said. “Why don’t you wipe down the counters?” she asked. “They look dirty.”

Ella took the rag obediently. Jake looked at her and gave her a shrug. He must have heard everything, but he didn’t look all that surprised. She followed Claire’s suggestion on autopilot, sliding the rag across the counter in big even arcs. Claire had swooped in after the storm and she was in charge now. Which was weird because it used to be her and Grace and Astrid who were in charge. She and Astrid used to decide what pots needed brewing. Which counters needed to be cleaned.

She stared back at Jake, standing at the register, ringing up an old woman and handing her a paper cup. She had gray-blue hair you couldn’t forget, and she and Astrid had probably helped her a hundred times.

The door continued to jingle and more people walked inside, and Ella walked back towards the espresso machine because Jake was going to need a lot of help.

Even though the place was packed, she’d never felt more alone.

• • •

Ben and Sydney picked her up at six. They were headed to Johnny’s. It was really called Jumping Johnny’s, but the only people who ever called it that were the ones who didn’t live in Falling Rock or who were very, very new. Astrid had corrected her when they were younger.

A line of cars sputtered in front of them. Sydney was sprawled across the backseat, leaning against the window, her hair pulled into short pigtails. Ben leaned one arm on the window, cute as ever. Ella sat in the front, hands folded in her lap, waiting for their turn. There was a hole in the back where Astrid would have sat. Right behind her. Ella tried not to look in the side view mirror, but she couldn’t help it. She glanced over and emptiness met her, and she knew that this wasn’t a dream. This was real.

“What do you girls want?” Ben turned in his seat, looking from her to Sydney. A twangy country act crooned on the radio and Ella turned it down. It was making her nervous.

“The usual,” Sydney said. Large fries. Diet Coke.

Ben looked at her, like,
your turn
, but she couldn’t seem to think. She couldn’t get that damn empty seat out of her mind. She looked away from Ben and back to the side mirror, and for a second, for an infinitesimal second, she wanted to so bad that it was like she could see Astrid right there, and she couldn’t help it, she drew her breath in, and the vision was gone.

“Hello, love,” Ben said, waving his hand in front of her. “You okay?”

Ella closed her eyes. Opened them again. Stole a quick glance in the side view. Nothing.

“Ellllla,” Ben said.

“Sorry,” she said. “I got distracted. I’m not hungry.”

He looked at her all sad and parent-like. “Come on, Ella,” he said. “Just get a little something.”

The cars pulled forward, and Ella scanned her eyes across the menu without really reading it. “Just get me a vanilla shake,” she said.

“That’s my girl.” And he rolled down the window, rattling off their orders, getting the super extra value special for himself.

Ben paid for their food, shoved a few greasy bags onto her lap, and they pulled away. They never went inside — anyone who really knew the place knew that if you headed out of the parking lot and just to the left, you’d hit a winding dirt road and a half-mile drive that led to one of the most beautiful lookout points in town. On summer nights with greasy fries and thick milkshakes, it never got old. At least it hadn’t until now.

There were a few cars parked when they got there, and Ben backed up to the ledge. It always made Ella nervous when he did this, like they could just roll right over and everything would turn into crushed metal and smushed bodies. She couldn’t believe that Astrid was actually dead.

Ben turned off the car, and they got out, opened the hatch in the back, and crawled inside. They fit easier now that it was just the three of them, side by side, Ella in the middle. She passed out the items. She wished that there was a strawberry shake and a thing of chicken tenders with honey mustard in there, too, but there wasn’t.

Sydney immediately started chomping and Ben ravaged his cheeseburger but Ella just sipped slowly. The sky was nice. Not gray. And the sun was just going down and splashing everything with pink and purple hues. Ella could see the valley below and the mountains behind, covered in mist, even though the sky was clear. There was a crescent moon, a really pretty one. Damn, it was beautiful out. The world could be so good sometimes. How could Astrid leave it?

Ben and Sydney still had yet to breach the subject of her first day back at work. It was like they were trying to protect her or something. But she wanted to talk about it. God, she wanted to talk about it. More than that, she wanted them to ask. Astrid would have asked.

“So I guess you’re not going to ask about work?” she said, looking straight at Sydney. The shake was turning her hand icy, but she didn’t sip it. Not yet.

Ben took another bite so he wouldn’t have to say anything. He wanted to stay out of this. Clearly.

“Well you obviously want to talk about it,” Sydney said. “If you want to talk, talk.”

“I want you to want to hear about it.” She was looking at both of them now.

“El,” Sydney said, brushing her off. “Can we just have a moment — one freaking moment — that’s not about Astrid?”

“Well I just spent a day that was all about her, so maybe you could show me a little understanding.”

“What do you want me to do?” Sydney asked. “You chose to do that.” She looked to Ben for confirmation. “She’s the one who wanted to do it.”

Ben held his hands up. “You two leave me out of it.”

An anger started then, deep in her stomach. Ben was always such a diplomat. It wasn’t fair. “You know,” she said, staring right at him. “You really should take my side on this.”

“Oh, lovely,” Sydney said, sarcasm oozing out of every word. “There are
sides
now.”

“Yeah,” Ella snapped. “There are.”

“I told you last night you should go to the party instead,” Sydney said. “I knew that going there would make things worse.”

“Well I went,” Ella said. “And I’m going to go back. And you have to be there for me and listen to me, no matter what. That’s your job, Syd. You’re the only best friend I have left.”

And she jumped out of the car and walked up to the trash can and threw her shake in as hard as she could, but it didn’t work like she wanted it to. The lid popped off, and little drops of the cool white goop sprayed her across the face. She whipped around, avoiding Ben and Sydney’s eyes, and she opened the passenger door and climbed in, slamming it shut behind her. She opened the glove box and began to ruffle through. There had to be some napkins in there somewhere.

“Ella,” Sydney said, but she didn’t turn. “Ella.”

She just kept looking, but it was already hard to see. The tears made her vision wavy. They came on strong and fast. In a moment, she was full-on crying. Not because of Sydney. Not because of Ben. Not even because of the look Grace gave her or the way every moment in the café had made Astrid’s absence feel even more real. She cried for all of it. She cried because things weren’t supposed to be this way. She cried because she had vanilla milkshake all over her face.

She felt the car lift up and in a minute, Ben and Sydney had surrounded her.

“Here,” Sydney said, pushing a wad of paper napkins in front of her. But Ella couldn’t stop. Her body shook now, and she felt Sydney’s arms tighten around her and Ben’s warm hand on her shoulder. And she shook and she shook until she couldn’t shake anymore and then her breath came in gasps, and she looked up and they were still there, still right there for her, and it felt so good to have them. Ella tried to calm her breathing as Sydney took her chin in her hand. Her eyes were intent on her face, and she patted the napkin underneath her eyes and then down her cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” Sydney said. “I’m really sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Ella said, her voice coming out so shaky it barely sounded like her.

Sydney let her go, and Ben wrapped his arm around her shoulder. “I’m sorry too, babe,” he whispered in her ear. “Let me see,” he said, turning her face towards his. “Geez you’re a wreck.”

“She always was a messy eater,” Sydney piped in from behind.

“You still got a little, right there,” he said, and he leaned in and kissed the bottom of her lip. He felt warm and safe.

Ben pulled back and made a face, scrunching up his nose. “Next time you get, uhh,
rightfully
pissed at us,” he said, “could you please make your point with a chocolate shake?”

She heard Sydney laugh, and she couldn’t help it. She did, too.

And for a moment — a small one — the world felt okay again.

• • •

Ella couldn’t sleep that night. She kept waking, wide-eyed, dreams too fuzzy to remember, but with dark colors, tones that meant they’d been bad. On the third or fourth time, she sat up and pulled her computer onto her lap. She couldn’t imagine going back to sleep but reading felt impossible, like the words would blur together if she even tried to look at a page, so she opened the screen, and on impulse, logged onto Facebook. She hadn’t been on since Astrid died — seeing a public reaction to everything had felt like way too much. But now she didn’t care — she knew that Astrid would be there, words and pictures on a screen. In a pixel world, in the cloud and the data centers far away, it was almost like she was still alive.

Nothing much was new. Her music-obsessed friends were posting links to YouTube videos and reviews, a lonely girl from her English class had put up a sad quote about finding romance at the right time, and it looked like it was the official day for posting your doppelganger. Ella might have done it herself a few weeks ago — everyone said she looked just like the brown-haired girl from that TV show that she didn’t really watch — but it all felt so pointless now. How could she really have spent hours on this site before? It was meaningless. It wasn’t even real. Just a bunch of people trying to make other people think that they were a certain way. If she’d learned anything lately it was that you couldn’t really know people from the outside — and especially not from the Internet.

Ella went to her own profile. Her wall was filled with messages, but her eyes froze on the side of her screen. There she was, like an apparition. The first face in the list of all of her friends. Smiling back at her like nothing in the world was wrong. Like she still
existed
.

Astrid.

Ella couldn’t help it — she clicked. She was instantly taken to her profile. Her friends, her activities, her high school, her hometown, listed out as if she were still around. As if she might respond if you sent her a message or invited her to your birthday party.

Ella took a deep breath as she took in the pseudo-memorial — posted photos, goodbye notes, declarations that she was in a happier place. All of a sudden it didn’t seem right. Astrid wasn’t around anymore. You couldn’t touch her. You couldn’t hug her. You couldn’t make her any better. It wasn’t fair.