She replies a minute later.
Sure. I know where you’re at. See you then.
My dead girlfriend’s ex is driving me to her funeral.
This is so fucked up.
Elissa pulls up to my house right at 4:45, in the same blue pickup she was driving yesterday. It’s strange to see her behind the wheel. Most of the people who drive pickups here are the boys at my high school, revving their engines in the parking lot like some show of whose dick is bigger.
I jog down to meet her, tug on the hem of my navy dress, hair pulled back. I almost put my cross-country jacket on but decided against it at the last minute. I already feel like I don’t belong at Maggie’s funeral, and calling attention to it by wearing the jacket would have just made it so much worse. So I settled on a plain navy one that’s a little too small and a slightly different color than the dress, but it’s still warm.
I hop up into Elissa’s truck and buckle my seat belt as she pulls out of my driveway.
“You look nice,” she says, still staring straight ahead. I glance over at her. She’s in another dark button-down and black slacks. She looks handsome.
That thought feels like a betrayal—thinking another girl looks handsome, let alone my girlfriend’s ex, let alone the ex who’s driving me to that same girlfriend’s funeral.
Maggie dated her. Maggie dated her and didn’t tell me about it, never discussed who she’d dated. Never mentioned her once. And here she is, and she might be grieving just like I am but I wouldn’t know because until two days ago I had no idea who she was and Maggie never mentioned her why did Maggie never mention her?
Because that’s the thing—I don’t remember her mentioning Elissa. Not the name exactly, though maybe she mentioned an ex at some point. Truth be told, I didn’t pay attention, didn’t want to think about it, about Maggie with other girls.
Because what if she was comparing me to them? Especially if she’d been with girls who were already out, girls who knew what they wanted, girls who had known they liked girls since the age of eleven, and here I was, a fraud at sixteen who’d never even kissed a girl.
She never mentioned her but I never asked, and maybe I should have.
No. I know I should have.
Elissa’s car rolls to a stop at a light, the only one in our town.
We pass by a pizza joint with an arcade in the back, and I turn my head so I don’t have to see it. Julia took me there right when I moved, and we passed the time eating pizza and I showed her how good I was at Ms. Pac-Man, how I’d had the pattern memorized since I was a kid and Mom and I played while we waited at the movies, quarters shoved into our pockets.
I was going to take Maggie there, show it to her. But I was always afraid of running into someone we knew.
Anyway. It’s too late now.
“How are you doing?” Elissa asks, and it takes a minute to register again she’s talking to me, I’m so lost in my own thoughts.
“I’m . . . I don’t know,” I say, and it’s the first time since I found out about Maggie that I’ve said something honest, surprising myself.
But Elissa gets it. As much as I resent Dylan for forcing us together, that’s not her fault.
She nods. “Yeah. I—yeah. I get that. It’s weird—to think that she’s gone, you know?”
I do know, but I can’t say that, can’t force the words out of my mouth. So I ask her something different.
“How did you meet Maggie?”
“High school. I was on tech when they did Thoroughly Modern Millie two years ago. Only show I ever did,” she says. “Maggie was our stage manager. Sophomore, but she’d mess you up if you talked backstage. We met when I went outside for a smoke break during dress rehearsal and she came outside to complain about the actors. We hit it off, started dating,” she says as she fishes around in her pocket for a cigarette. “You mind if I smoke in here?”
“It’s your car.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“Yes,” I say. “I mind.”
She begins drumming her fingers on the steering wheel. “I quit, you know. I mean . . . Maggie wanted me to quit so I quit, but when I found out she died, I just . . . Old habits die hard.”
I flinch, and she looks over at me.
“Shit. Sorry. That came out wrong.”
“How’d you find out?” I ask quietly.
“Dylan called me, said he figured I’d hear it from someone at school sooner or later so he wanted to go ahead and tell me.”
“Dylan called you?” I can’t even keep the jealousy out of my voice.
She looks over at me. “Yeah.”
The sadness that was building in my chest quickly turns to rage. “Unbelievable.”
“What?”
“You get a call, and I have to figure it out from some girls in the locker room?” My voice grows shrill, like it always does when I’m angry, and it just makes me angrier, but I can’t stop. “We’d been together for almost a year and no one thinks to do anything about it, no one thinks to call or tell me?” I take a deep, shuddering breath, ball my hands into fists, and dig my nails into my palms. I can feel tears pricking at the backs of my eyes, but I will be damned if I cry now.
“I’m sorry Dylan didn’t call you,” Elissa says after a minute. “He should have. That was shitty.”
“Yeah.” I sniff. “It was.” I open the console to root around for a napkin or a tissue, grab one that looks like it’s been in there for a while, and blow my nose into it.
It’s not Elissa’s fault Dylan didn’t tell me. But the fact that she knew and I didn’t, the fact that he didn’t even think to call me, burns me up inside.
The car slows to a stop and I look up, crumple the tissue in my palm.
We’re here.
The parking lot is packed with mourners, black-feathered crows come to gawk at the dead girl. Leesboro’s cross-country team stands in a pack, all in their jackets. Next to them is a group of girls in colors too bright for a funeral—the drama department.
But with a start, I think, Maggie would have liked those colors. Maggie hated black. The drama department is doing more to honor her memory than I am.
Do I get to honor her memory anymore, though, if her brother didn’t even call me to tell me she died?
“I don’t want to go in,” I say as Elissa pulls out of the parking lot and parks her truck on the street. “I don’t want to do this.”
She looks over at me.
“Suck it up, Corinne,” she says, her voice raw. “You think you’re the only one grieving? You think anyone here is going to notice you? Maggie would have wanted you here, okay?”
That hits me. Elissa must notice, because she looks away from me before she steps out of the truck. I stumble out, wobbling on heels that I never wear. For a split second I think I’m about to go down, fall on the pavement and just lie there in a crumpled heap for the entire service, but Elissa grips my arm and pulls me back up. I’m surprised by how strong she is.
“Jesus,” I snap, brushing her off. “You’re going to crush me.”
She shrugs, but the look she gives me tells me she would rather have let me fall.
The church is packed. Elissa and I stand at the back, away from Maggie’s family and from all the girls from her high school.