a hundred seconds too long.
“Um,” Jules started. I watched her eyes dart to Zack, but his eyes were closed, his shoulders were shaking, and tears streamed down his face and dripped from his chin. I’d never seen a boy cry before. That’s one of the things about going to an all-girls’ school your whole life: it’s hard to believe that boys are people too.
“Hi,” Jules said, and waved a weird, stiff hand at the crowd. Her eyebrows rose. Oh my god, she was now biting her lip because she was trying not to laugh. It was happening. I’d heard about that happening to people at funerals, and now it was really happening to Jules. There was a long silence. A baby cooed. A few people whispered. One corner of Jules’s mouth twitched upward. She looked like she was in physical pain. Breathe, I thought, as her face turned red. She needed oxygen or she was going to pass out.
I stood up.
“Cricket?” my mom whispered.
“She needs me,” I whispered back and slid past her, out of the pew. Maybe my mom was the type to disappear into herself when things got rough, but I wasn’t.
It couldn’t have been more than ten paces from my pew to where Jules was standing, but it felt like it took forever to get there. I could feel everyone looking at me as I walked down the aisle. My ears were hot, and my feet were sweating inside my too-tight flats. I locked eyes with Jules. Her head tilted and her brow pinched as she watched me approach. For a second I wondered if I was doing the right thing, but leaving her standing there alone, suffocating in front of everyone, was not an option. Not for her best friend.
“It’s okay,” I whispered when I finally reached her. She looked at the ground and took a big gulp of air. I turned to face the crowd.
“The last time I saw Nina,” I said, “I was over at Jules’s studying for exams. I was really stressed out.” I could hear myself speaking, like an echo on a cell phone. Then without meaning to, I started to focus on a pleasant-looking dad type with foppish hair and wire-rimmed glasses. There was something kind about him, like a beloved English teacher. His head tilted. “And she was in the backyard, painting a big fish, like applying paint to an actual trout or something.” The man smiled, his eyes squinting behind his glasses.
“She was making these fish pictures. And she was barefoot, one pant leg was rolled up, and her hair was doing that thing where it kind of stands up on one side.” At least ten people laughed. Jules walked back to her seat. My mouth was dry, but I kept going. The story seemed to be telling itself. “And she had that look on her face. The one she got when she was really into something?” A horse-faced woman with a headband nodded. “That look that meant she was ready for anything, ready for action, ready for life.” That last word hung in the air. My breath caught. “And before I knew it, I had a cold fish in my hand and she was teaching me how to use a trout to make a print, which was actually fun—gross and messy and fun. I forgot all about my exam. We made five and left them drying in the basement.” I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. “I don’t remember what happened to the fish.”
“So that’s that smell,” Mr. Clayton called from the front row. This time almost everyone laughed. Except Jules. She was slouched, her hands in the lap of her black crepe dress, her face as still as a doll’s. I tried to make eye contact with her, but she was staring at the ground. Zack looked right at me, though. Something about the way he was smiling, crying with his eyes open, urged me to keep going.
“And that was the thing about Nina. She looked at a dead fish and saw an art project; she’d look inside a refrigerator and find nothing but hot dogs and mayonnaise, and she’d throw them together and make you feel like you’d had the best meal of your life.” I was gesturing wildly with my hands—they seemed to have a life of their own. “She looked at you,” I choked, “at me, and saw someone to love.” The man with the wire-rimmed glasses dabbed his eyes with