Margaret Jean “Maggie” Bailey.
Maggie Bailey was a senior at Leesboro High School—
Oh god, I can’t do this. I can’t even look at the dates.
I close my eyes for a moment, try to steel myself, and then open them again. Run my finger down the column until I find the information about the wake.
I have to go. Don’t I? I owe it to her to go.
How can I, though? How can I go to her wake knowing that no one there knows who I am? That they get to openly grieve and mourn, and I—
Fuck. It’s not like they’ll be paying attention to me, anyway, not like everyone will immediately sense that I don’t belong. Even in a town as small as ours, that’s not going to happen.
I crumple the newspaper and throw it in the trash. Bysshe jumps up and nudges my hand, and I want to scream at him to get out but instead I bury my face into his fur. He tolerates it for about two seconds, then leaves.
“Corinne?” My dad calls up the stairs. “Where did the paper go?”
“Bysshe tore it. I threw it away,” I say, and the cat looks at me, almost affronted. “Sorry.”
I hear my dad mutter something about that damn cat and my heart races like I’ve just stopped running.
What if he pieces it together?
But he won’t. He has no reason to, he won’t.
I press the heels of my palms into my eyes, the pressure stopping me from crying. I think again about texting Julia, Dylan, someone to go to the wake with me tomorrow, but Julia doesn’t know and Dylan has to be with his family and I’m going to have to get through this alone.
Two Days G O N E.
My car rumbles as I pull into the parking lot of Whitewood United Methodist. I am the first one here. I turn my car off; shaking hands take keys out of the ignition. I pull my cross-country jacket on over my navy dress, because Maggie hated black and loved to run and I need something that reminds me of her to get through this fucking wake.
I hope it’s not open casket.
My phone beeps.
Hope you’re doing okay.
Julia.
I almost asked her to come with me, almost thought about explaining to her in the car, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Couldn’t bring myself to tell her that the reason we didn’t hang out over the summer is that oh, by the way, I had a secret girlfriend that I was with for almost a year and never told you about, and now she’s dead and do you want to come to the wake with me?
I turn my phone off, sit in silence until the Baileys pull up. I want to turn my head away from them, don’t want to watch as Mr. Bailey guides Mrs. Bailey out of the car, both of them crumpled, both of them aged fifty years. But Dylan catches my eye and he holds it until they turn to enter the church and oh God, I cannot do this.
If I go in, it’ll be final. Maggie will be dead and Dylan will look at me like he hates me and the Baileys won’t know how much I loved their daughter. If I go in, all anyone will see is some girl who probably knew Maggie from school, and I will be surrounded by everyone else’s grief and not allow any of it for myself, and I just—I can’t.
I don’t go in.
I sit in my car the entire time, let the car run until the heat fogs up the windows and no one can see that I’m not crying.
There’s a rap on my window after the wake is over, a shock of red hair through blurred glass—Dylan.
I can’t look at him. I can’t look at him because when I do I will see her face.
This was a mistake. Coming here was a mistake.
Dylan raps on the window again and I roll it down just a little, still not looking at him.
“Corinne,” he says. “I, um . . . I looked for you.”
“I didn’t go in,” I say.
“I know. I can see that,” he says, and absurdly, I want to laugh.
I finally turn my head, just enough to see him. His face is pale, even paler than his normal fair skin, blanched under his freckles.
He looks like her. That’s my first thought, that he looks like her except his hair is bright red instead of her brown, his face sharper and more defined. She called him Ron if she was being affectionate—because of the hair. I thought it was his middle name until she told me it was a Harry Potter reference.
I’d been planning to read those books, eventually, but now it just seems pointless. I don’t want to read about magic if it can’t bring her back.
“Did you—do you want something from me?” I ask, because I can’t think of anything else, because here is the only other person who knows about me and Maggie and the only reason he and I are even talking to each other right now is—
Is because she’s gone.
He doesn’t answer my question, instead responding with one of his own. “Why didn’t you go in?”
Because she’s gone and it’s final and you’re the only one who knows and I can’t deal with that, I can’t deal with her being gone—
Because everyone else is grieving her and I can’t because—
Too many ways to tell him that he won’t understand, that he can’t understand. She was his sister and she was my girlfriend but only one of us gets to claim her now that she’s gone.
My mouth is dry when I finally answer him. “Do you think I want to see her in there when—”
When she’s gone and it’s final—
“When no one knows who I am?”
Dylan swears and steps back for a minute, then comes back to my car, placing his hand on the window as if he can push it down farther. “I can’t believe you’re making this about you. What, you think anyone is going to recognize you? You made sure that didn’t happen.”
I flinch. “You asked,” I say dully.
But he’s right and I hate that he is.
If no one recognizes you at your girlfriend’s funeral, were you ever really her girlfriend?
“Anyway,” Dylan continues, now staring straight at me. “I actually—I need you to come with me. There’s someone I want you to meet.”
I shake my head. “No.”
“Corinne,” he says. “You—you owe this to me, okay? To her. Please.” His voice is raw when he says the last words. “Trust me.”
I get out of the car. Dylan steps back and the two of us start off across the parking lot toward a blue pickup truck, now one of the only cars left.
“How . . . how are your parents doing?” I ask him, and he sighs.
“Not good. I—I’m probably going to take a week off from school to stay here and help them.”
“Oh.”
A nicer girl, a girl who is not me, would offer to help. That girl would be friends with her girlfriend’s brother, her girlfriend’s parents; that girl would have people to share her grief with.
But I’m not, and I don’t.
We stop in front of the blue pickup. Dylan shoves his hands into his pockets. A girl comes around from the back of the truck, stubbing out a cigarette under her boot. Her skin is a warm brown, her face sharp and angular. Her short hair is shaved on the sides, close dark curls at the top. She’s in dark jeans and a button-down top, and she’s taller than me even though I’m in heels.
“Who’s she?” I ask, my voice as cold as I can make it because if I have to do this, I will be as fucking difficult as he thinks I am.