“Text me,” she says, handing my phone back to me and standing. I look down. She’s put in her name, Maggie Bailey, and a little smiley face next to it.
“I will,” I say, and I watch as she leaves.
Two Days G O N E.
“I was out with Julia,” I call to Dad as I come in the door, hurrying up the stairs before he can even ask me how Julia’s doing.
I toss my dress off and it lands on Bysshe, who meows in protest before hurrying under my bed. I lie down and pull out my phone, open it to Instagram, to Maggie’s page. She kept it locked, but she let me follow her, even put a photo of us up once.
I click on her most recent photo, a shot of her with her hand on her chin, her face like she’s clearly trying not to laugh, captioned wondering if I can convince my team to run to Coney Island Ice Cream for free ice cream?
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I start scrolling.
i can’t believe i’m never going to see your smile again.
rest in peace girl.
i know God needed you but i wish it wasn’t so soon.
i miss you and love you maggie seems like yesterday you were letting me borrow your romeo and juliet notes. rip xoxo
theyre dedicating the rest of the season to you, beautiful.
Anger suddenly flares in my chest. These people, they don’t know Maggie, don’t know her like I do—did. But here they are commenting on her posts and talking like they were all best friends; they’re dedicating everything to her, their grief gets to be public, and they get sympathy and free passes to the counselor’s office, and I’m sitting here falling apart and it won’t change shit.
I close the app. Before I can stop myself, I open Facebook, even though I rarely use it. Maggie and I were friends, but she only had a profile for her grandparents to see it, and I only had one for updates from a few people in Colorado.
I go to her wall.
It’s almost worse, here, the comments, because here are her parents and here are older people from her church, calling her an angel and talking about how she’s up in Heaven with her pretty white angel wings. Half the people posting have changed their profile pictures to themselves and Maggie, her face staring out at me from so many tiny circles.
I can’t look away.
I switch back to her Instagram, scroll back to the photo of us, taken together after her school’s talent show that she helped manage. My arm around her waist, both of us grinning. I’d been so nervous about her posting it, but girls do that all the time, that casual touching, arms linked or around waists or shoulders. And she wanted to post it, so.
There are no comments on this photo, and I tap to leave one.
What do I say?
What can I say? I can’t talk about how much she meant to me or how much I love her or how sometimes we would do homework together and I’d get so absorbed in my work she’d tease me about it, call me a nerd. How she hated her legs because they were too thick and muscular but how I’d spend hours trailing my lips over them, how the knowledge she’d wait for me after a meet so we could go out for a private date was sometimes the only thing that kept me happy. How the first time we had sex she was all I thought about the entire day, how we were both shy because it was the first time we’d really seen each other naked but how even though we fumbled through it, I thought it was perfect. How even though she swore she couldn’t sing, my favorite thing was to call her late at night and have her sing me to sleep.
I miss her. She’s gone and I miss her and all I want to do is scream about how much I miss her and how much I love her but I can’t, I can’t.
I take a shower, come back and crawl into bed, and scream into my pillow until my throat is raw and I can finally, finally fall asleep.
When I wake up, that photo of us is still there, the last thing open on my phone, that comment waiting for me.
I say nothing.
Three Days G O N E.
Maggie’s funeral is today.
It’s the only thing I can think as I go through school, sit in class.
She is going to be placed in a coffin shell and lowered into the ground and never, ever come back. The girl I loved, the girl I thought I had a future with, the girl who made me want to be a better, braver version of myself. Maggie is gone and I will never hear her laugh again or hold her while she falls asleep, my arm going numb under her weight but I would never dare move it and wake her up—
“Corinne?”
I blink. Everyone else has left chemistry, and I’m still sitting here with my textbook open, not even looking at the page.
Haley is frowning down at me. “You spaced out.”
“Yeah, I got that,” I say, and shut my book and stuff it in my bag.
“You weren’t at practice yesterday,” she says.
“I know.”
She frowns at me. For a second I think she’s going to ask me if I’m okay, or something like that, but Haley isn’t the type for sympathy or nice feelings. She says what she thinks and who cares how it makes anyone else feel.
Sometimes I wish I could be like that.
“Are you coming today?” she asks.
“I—probably not, I’m going through some family stuff. Julia knows, though,” I say. Haley raises an eyebrow but doesn’t say anything else.
I begin to feel sick around lunch.
Maggie’s dead, Maggie’s gone, Maggie died—
I’m not going to make it through the rest of my classes, not going to be able to sit here while everyone else laughs and carries on like nothing has happened, like the world hasn’t shifted.
I head to my locker, grab my books and my keys.
Julia’s coming toward me, waving her arms, trying to get my attention, but if she talks to me I’ll scream.
I run away before she can find me.
Our house is empty; Dad’s at work and Bysshe is asleep in a patch of sun. I throw my bags by the door, sink against it.
I’m going to have to go to the funeral. I’m going to have to go in—I can’t skip, not after the wake, not after what Dylan said.
How am I going to get through this? How am I supposed to go on without her, like nothing’s happened, like she isn’t gone?
If I go, it’ll be final, but if I don’t . . .
I can’t think about it.
My phone buzzes.
You ok? Didnt see you at lunch.
Trent. My ex. Sort-of friend.
Not like we’re close enough that I’d tell him about Maggie. I don’t know how he’d feel, me dating a girl just months after I broke up with him.
But it’s sweet that he still checks in, that he cares.
Yeah. Stomach bug. Thanks for checking, I type back, and flop down on the couch.
My phone buzzes again a minute later, but I just leave it on the coffee table and close my eyes.
I think I sleep.
Around four, my phone buzzes again, and I pick it up and half-heartedly think about just texting Trent everything.
But it’s not him. It’s some unknown number asking if I’m going to the funeral and if I want company, and I remember—
Elissa.
Part of me wants to text and tell her to fuck off, because I’m still angry that Maggie didn’t tell me about her, but the other, stronger part just doesn’t want to do this alone.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I text her and say yes, I’d like a ride, and can she pick me up; I live off Kirkland Road.