I know she wanted to tell her parents, I know how her lips felt against mine and how easy it was to get my fingers tangled in her hair when we kissed and how she looked when she told me she loved me, I know I knew—
But I can’t tell Julia that. Any of it.
“I mean,” I say, because I have to say something, “I knew her from running, and I’d seen her around, but—”
She’s looking at me, staring at me hard, because Julia would have known Maggie from running, too, and it doesn’t mean anything to her because she clearly isn’t upset—
“I didn’t know her,” I say, and pick myself up and walk away before she can stop me.
My phone doesn’t buzz as I get in my car. There’s no text from Maggie asking if we can meet after practice, nothing asking if I have work this weekend because she wants to hang out. Nothing but a silence that stretches as empty as I feel on the inside.
I turn my phone off. Julia won’t text me, and if my phone is off I won’t be tempted to scroll through all of my conversations with Maggie, the photos of us I have saved in a secret app; I can ignore the fact that it won’t chime with a new text from her. If I turn it off I won’t spend all night replaying her voice mails over and over, looking up the gruesome facts of her death that I know must be out there. If my phone is off I won’t have to think about how no one is going to call and console me, because no one knew we were dating.
Fuck.
Blue light from the TV flickers behind the curtains as I pull up, our cat Bysshe’s fat frame silhouetted in the window, jumping down when my headlights catch him. I know the second I open the front door he’ll try to make a break for the crawl space even though now he’s too fat to fit under there.
I hoist my backpack over one shoulder and my gym bag over the other, open the door, and immediately bend down to scoop Bysshe up and kiss the top of his head.
I can’t believe Dad named the cat after Percy Shelley. But that’s my dad. IT guy by day, reading Lord Byron by night. I grew up listening to Shelley’s poetry and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein instead of bedtime stories, the desire to take things apart to see how they worked already sprouting.
“I’m home,” I say, stepping into the living room where my dad is sitting with a TV tray and a plate full of pasta. Like nothing’s changed, like this is a normal weekday night. Like my world hasn’t shifted off its axis.
I clutch Bysshe tighter to me and he squirms in protest before I set him down along with my bags, heading to the kitchen.
“How was practice?” Dad asks.
“Fine,” I say. “What’s for dinner?”
“Chicken alfredo,” he says. “So practice was fine? Think it’ll be a good season? How’re you feeling about it? It’s a big year, Corey.”
I wince at the barrage of questions, grateful he can’t see. “I know,” I say. “But it’s too early to tell right now anyway.”
My runner’s nutrition sheet is taped to the fridge, where it’s been since I started running. Dad takes it more seriously than I thought he would—the running. When I told him Julia had asked me to join the team, he immediately drove both of us to the local sporting goods store to buy spikes and gear and even sports bras, because Julia knew what we needed and neither my dad nor I did. He printed out my nutrition sheet and made me all the meals and timed me running around the neighborhood and watched me train, and I want to think it’s because he’s proud of me, but part of me knows it’s because he’s dreaming of athletic scholarships, dreaming of the day I’ll get out of here.
It’s not like we wanted to come to North Carolina. Dad’s parents are from here and he always talked about hating it, hating how everyone knew everyone’s business, so when he met Mom, all the way from the Colorado mountains, he jumped at the chance to leave.
But we moved back here two years ago because Nana got sick, and then Mom’s drinking got worse and the divorce happened and Nana died and now we’re all stuck here, ten miles and a tense phone call away from Mom.
I know why he wants me to leave. I get it. It’s the same feeling I always get, that I do not belong no matter how much I pretend to. Dad may be able to slip into his accent when he needs to charm someone, but more often than not he doesn’t. We don’t go to church. We don’t like NASCAR, or football, or have a pig pickin’ for our Christmas party like Maggie’s family does. Dad left our small town behind when he finished college and he fully expects me to do the same. To my dad, running is my ticket out of here.
Running was our ticket out, mine and Maggie’s, but I can’t think about that right now.
I scoop some chicken and pasta out of the pot on the stove, don’t even bother to heat it, and drift back into the living room just as Dad switches to the news.
And there she is.
I almost drop my bowl because I can’t believe it but there is Maggie’s senior portrait and there is her car wrapped around a tree and there is her name on the screen and on this news anchor’s lips, another pretty high school girl gone too soon.
Dad turns up the volume and with it the knife of grief twists a little further in my gut.
“They’re saying she was a runner. Did you know her?” he asks, not knowing what this question is doing to me.
I swallow, turn and walk into the kitchen, pretend I didn’t hear him as I open the fridge and stick my head in.
Maybe if I stay here, I’ll freeze so much my heart will stop and I’ll be able to pretend Maggie isn’t dead.
“Corinne?”
“No,” I say, for the second time that day. “No, I didn’t.”
Bysshe follows me up the stairs, purring loudly as he jumps onto my bed and curls up at the foot. I give him a treat from the bag I keep under the bed and flop down next to him.
I should have told. I should have come out, I should have—
I pick up my phone and turn it on, contemplate calling Dylan, because he’s the only person I have left now, the only one who knew about me and his sister.
I should call him. I should tell him I’m sorry for his loss, I should talk to someone who loves (loved) her, who knows I love her, too, but I can’t bring myself to pick up the phone.
I did this to myself.
One Day G O N E.
For a second when I wake up, I forget.
And I roll over and I reach for my phone because there’ll be a text from her saying she wants to hang out after the meet this weekend and—
But there’s nothing.
My chest feels hollow. Is hollow.
Maggie’s gone, Maggie’s dead, Maggie died—
And I have nothing physical to remind me of her, nothing tangible, and suddenly I desperately want a piece of her to hold on to. What will her family do with her running stuff? Her spikes, her shorts, her medals? Where do they go, the belongings of a dead girl? Will her parents keep her room the way it was so she’ll be seventeen forever, a girl trapped in the glass box of other people’s memories?
I need her running stuff. I need to see it, need to have it because it’s a reminder of who we were, what we were to each other, how we met, and I need to have it, not sealed up in her closet forever.
Without thinking, I pull out my phone to text Dylan.