She needs him, and they were supposed to be together.
For a second, I see myself running to the cemetery, pounding against the casket, and telling God that I’ll take Connor’s place. We won’t even have to switch bodies. My soul can just go wherever, and Connor’s can jump into this body and then Emma can be happy again. They can both be happy.
“I miss him so much,” she says.
I swear her blue eyes aren’t just glistening with tears; they’re turning into tear-filled orbs.
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“I wish . . .” My voice falters. “I wish . . .”
Emma knows what I’m trying to say, what I’m feeling. I mean it too, I really do, but what I really want is for her to shake her head and tell me not to wish for that, not to wish that I could take Connor’s place. But she doesn’t. She just stares at me and wonders, like everyone else, why I’m alive and Connor isn’t.
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open the refrigerator and scan the contents. There are five glass bowls and pans wrapped in plastic. Most of them haven’t been touched. I don’t get the whole tradition anyway. Someone in the family dies, and friends and neighbors suddenly get paranoid that everyone else in the house is going to starve to death, so they make casseroles that even a starving person wouldn’t want to eat. Not to mention worrying about which casserole came from which neighbor.
Mrs. Carson, three houses to the south, has at least seven cats. Her three mutt dogs are always getting into the neighbor-hood garbage, and rumor has it, she just bought a pet rat. Does anyone really want to eat something out of her kitchen? And Denise Parker, across the street and two doors to the north, has been rumored on more than one occasion to have cooked meth in her kitchen. That casserole might be interesting to try, but . . . I don’t think so.
If Dennis Kingsbury baked something up, I’d be inclined to eat that. He’s been diagnosed with obsessive compulsive personality disorder, which basically means surgery could be 4 9
Copyright © 2015 by Debra Dockter.
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performed on his kitchen table with no fear of the patient getting an infection. If he brought something over, though, he forgot to place a crisp yellow sticky note with his name and precise heating instructions on it.
There is a bar of plastic-wrapped cheese covered in green mold and numerous bottles of nearly empty condiments, but not much else.
“There was plenty of food at the church. You should have eaten something there,” Dad says, startling me. He’s wearing his lounging pants. Connor gave them to him last Father’s Day.
They’re a thin, navy flannel with four-inch trout swimming up the legs. He’s also wearing the “Just Fishing” shirt I bought him. Connor and I actually coordinated gifts. Dad looks exhausted. The bags under his eyes have bags.
“I didn’t feel like it,” I say, knowing that he and Mom evidently hadn’t felt like it either.
“You and Emma have a good talk?”
“Not really.”
Dad peers over my shoulder into the fridge. “Slim pickins.”
“That’s okay.” I shut the door. “I’m not that hungry.”
He stares at me through bloodshot eyes. It’s more than just staring, he’s . . . examining me, but he can’t see what he wants to know. He can’t see inside of me. He can’t see what it’s like to lose a brother, a twin, just like I can’t know what it’s like to lose a son.
“What have you eaten today?” he asks, resorting to what he can deal with: the physical.
“Counting breakfast and lunch?”
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He nods.
“Nothing.”
“That’s what I thought.” He nudges me out of the way and opens the refrigerator door again. “There are eggs. I can whip up one of my not-so-famous omelets. Besides, I need to talk to you about something.”
“What?”
Dad starts cracking eggs into a bowl. “I talked to the principal today. She wants you to do her a favor.”
“Drop out or transfer?”
Dad pours the eggs into a pan, shakes salt and pepper over them, and shuffles them around with a big wooden spoon.
“She wants you to give Connor’s speech at graduation.”
The little appetite I’d worked up vanishes. “What?”
“You don’t have to memorize it. He gave her a copy last week. She’ll give it to you at graduation. All you