I think they can tell I don’t belong. I think they can all tell. Girls can sense that. It’s what we’re trained for, some twisted survival mechanism.
Our backs are pressed against the wall of the church. In front of us is a sea of black, sniffing students and parents and teachers.
No one looks at the Baileys when they walk in, like their grief is contagious, like the people we love will die if we look at them or touch them.
I gather a piece of my dress in my fingers, play with it so I can give myself something to focus on as the pastor drones on about Maggie being in a better place and about it being her time. If he says something about God needing another angel or some bullshit like that, I will stand on a church pew and scream.
Maggie believed in all this. Maggie believed in God, she prayed before meals and did youth group on Sundays, and I wanted to ask her—how? How could she hold on to that faith when so many other people in her church would have shunned her if they’d known about us? How could she believe in a God so many other people weaponized against her?
I will never have the chance to ask her.
The pastor stops talking, and there are murmurs as everyone in front of us reaches for hymnals, a collective clearing of throats and rustling of pages. Elissa shifts next to me. I’d forgotten she was there.
The piano starts up and the lump in my throat gets bigger because it’s “How Great Thou Art,” which was Maggie’s favorite.
She made me go to church with her once and they’d sung it, and I’d stood and watched as she sang along even though she always said her voice was terrible.
It didn’t mean to me what it did to her, but hearing it now nearly bowls me over, because in all these voices singing the chorus, hers isn’t among them.
“Do you want to step outside?” Elissa whispers as the congregation moves to the second verse.
I shake my head. “I’ll be fine.”
“You sure?”
“Back off, Elissa,” I snap, and she steps away from me, nearly running into another cross-country girl who turns to look at the two of us like we don’t belong here.
I don’t belong here. I don’t belong with these grieving girls, girls who get a claim to Maggie while all I got were stolen moments and kisses in her basement.
But I think of what Elissa said, how Maggie would have wanted me here, and I can’t make myself leave.
I don’t know how I make it through the funeral. I hold pieces of myself together by leaning on the back wall and closing my eyes, thinking about Maggie, about her smile, about how she would have cracked a joke to get me to laugh, to get all of us to laugh, because she couldn’t stand to see anyone cry.
I’m going to make it through this, I’m going to be okay—
And then Dylan stands up. His face is red even though he isn’t crying, his grief reverberating throughout the room.
If Maggie were here, she would comfort him. They were close, especially since they were only two years apart, and if she were here—
But she isn’t. She isn’t here, and the rest of us are, and we are the ones who have to go on without her even though we can’t and it just isn’t fair.
Dylan clears his throat, and through a gap in the crowd I can see—
He has his hand on the coffin. Her coffin. And he’s leaning on it like I am on this wall, other hand trembling as he holds a piece of paper out in front of him.
He clears his throat again, and someone breaks out into loud sobs before he’s even started. For a second I think it’s one of the drama girls, but no—it’s Mrs. Bailey. Collapsed onto her husband’s shoulder, body shaking.
“Maggie,” Dylan begins, and him saying her name, the sound of it in his mouth, somehow makes this more real, and I grip Elissa’s arm to keep from falling again. “Maggie . . . my sister . . . she was great. She was a winner, and I think everyone in here knows that—she would do whatever it took to win.”
He says it with pride, with sadness, but the cross-country girls in front of me shoot glances at each other.
Maggie was competitive, if you were being nice. If you weren’t, she was sometimes a bitch, with a perfectionist streak not only for herself but for everyone around her.
But no one here is going to say that. They probably won’t ever again. Death does that to teenage girls—makes martyrs out of them, perfect angels with white wings and halos that don’t quite fit.
“She was so driven,” Dylan says, “And she really wanted to use that, to help people—especially kids, she was really good with kids. Her favorite thing to do on Sunday evenings was to volunteer with the youth group. She was . . .” His voice cracks, which brings on a fresh round of sobs from Mrs. Bailey. “She wanted to be a teacher.”
Something inside me cracks. I didn’t know that. I didn’t know Maggie wanted to teach; we never talked about it. She never told me.
She didn’t tell me about teaching, about Elissa. I knew so many things about her but not these things, and I think—God, did I even know her at all?
No. I did. I have to cling to that. I did know her; I knew so much about her because I loved her, because if I admit I didn’t know her and she isn’t here anymore to tell me—
I can’t deal with that.
I turn my attention back to Dylan. He’s lowered his paper, his face as red as his hair, and then he starts crying. Not the open sobs of Mrs. Bailey, but tears are streaming down his face, no effort to hide it. A sense of unease fills the air, uncomfortable shifting because Dylan is openly crying, leaning on his sister’s coffin to support himself. Unease because God forbid a boy—man, I guess, since he’s in college—cry so openly even though his sister has died. Better he keep it in, bottle it up, so the rest of us don’t have to be uncomfortable.
But Dylan is standing in front of us, and he is crying.
After a minute some of his college friends get up and lead him back to his seat, where he sits next to his parents, their heads bowed, arms around each other.
I can’t do this. I can’t stand here and watch them carry her coffin out, as her family walks out and everyone shuffles behind them whispering, I can’t.
I mumble something to Elissa about needing to get some air. She wordlessly presses her keys into my palm in understanding, and as soon as I push my way out of the church I run to the truck and lock myself inside.
Elissa stands around in the parking lot for a good while after everyone has walked out, talking with a few other mourners who look about her age. Some of the theater girls come up to her and hug her.
Do they know? Do they know who she was to Maggie?
I watch her. The way she deftly lights a cigarette, the way one of the girls touches her arm and she tips her head back and laughs. I can see why Maggie liked her and I hate that I can.
What are they talking about, these girls? What are they saying that I don’t know?
And that question comes back to me again, how much did I really know about Maggie?
Do I even deserve to grieve her?
Elissa gets back in her truck a few minutes later, smelling like cigarettes and the perfume of one of the drama girls. She starts her car but doesn’t move it out of park, just sitting there for a minute.
She reaches over and touches my hand, softly, like she’s not sure if she should. “Hey,” she asks. “Do you . . . do you want to go to the gravesite?”