that only she knew about. Maybe she’ll show me the secrets she kept there. Because this whole time, she had to have known something we didn’t about whatever was on the other side of that fall that was so much fucking better than staying on solid ground with us.

I say “us” like we were a gang. Maybe we were, and jumping was the only way out.

The girl was offering me a ride to Adaoha’s parents’ house in Maryland. We—the friends who knew her best—were gathering there to console and have council. What happened? Nobody knew, the girl said. She’d been found. Found. She’d done this to herself. Nobody mentioned the word that rhymes with civic pride. We don’t even smoke cigarettes.

The girl’s voice was still in my head, saying she figured I was ignoring her calls because I already knew. Because I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t. If I said another word, the feeling might come back to my tongue.

“No, that’s okay,” I said. “Adrienne will take me.”

Fuck. Now I have to tell Adrienne. I call, and she doesn’t pick up. I text something urgent. She calls back—was coming out of class. Law school. She is laughing with someone. I don’t want to say it, don’t want to change her. I almost hang up. Whoever’s walking next to her is laughing like a maniac. There is the opposite of a pregnant pause. I contemplate hanging up again.

“Yeah, what’s up,” she said.

“Adaoha died last night,” I say.

“What?”

In times of crisis, what gets the most use out of any of the five W’s. Like fuck, it’s ambidextrous, able to play both sides by way of inflection. What (emphasis on the “tuh”) demands an answer. Whaaaa (with an endless “ah,” almost like pi) is genuine shock and awe. What (with a breathless “whuh”) is deflated, defeated. We practiced each one over the next week, as if rehearsing for something thrown together at the last minute. Everything was hectic, and nothing was patient.

We’d become walking automated voice systems. No matter how hard you raged against the machine, “What” was the only response, when the obvious prompt should have been “Why”? We didn’t bother to ask until six feet of packed dirt buried any hope of an answer. I probably didn’t want to hear it anyway—I probably would have told Adaoha, Keep it moving, please get it together, do something with yourself, or something like that. Maybe I’d cursed her, killed her. On a church pew, guilty tears threatened my face, twisting it into something so grotesque I was terrified it might freeze that way forever if someone happened by and slapped me on the back.

Funerals fucking suck. The name itself brings to mind stiff organs, whorish makeup, and venereal disease (for me anyway). To remedy that in civilized circles, the ceremony is renamed a “homecoming,” which itself brings to mind broken beer bottles, communal anger, and matching uniforms. The tailgate was in the bat cave. I went into overdraft buying a dozen white roses to make corsages out of and was blessed with a mindless two hours, wrapping green floral tape around freshly cut stems.

There is a false sense of accomplishment in numbers and costume. The corsages were for us—her sorority sisters. Standing in my kitchen, each of us pinned one above the heart of another, making sure it wasn’t crooked. The actual ceremony was an ominous afterthought. It was all about the preparation, preparation, preparation. Which of course all went to shit as soon as we saw Adaoha in a coffin. A fucking coffin. Another word in desperate need of a euphemism.

The flowers had to be white. White like the dresses we wore when we became sisters. When Adrienne, LaKia, and I saved Adaoha from a life sentence of nerd alerts. Despite the pats on the back we gave ourselves, she still turned out better than us. See, we all had the same bag. Note here that I am not speaking in the metaphorical sense, that each one of us tiny human beings has some tiny “bag” of fear and loathing festering on the bottom “shelf” of our “bookcases.” No, I mean that Adaoha, Adrienne, LaKia, and I each have the same exact bag. We got them as presents on the night we were made Deltas. After a nationally sanctioned and predetermined period of learning about sisterhood, scholarship, and service—and also screaming, sit-ups, and sleep deprivation—we put on those white dresses, said a few magical words, and poof, we were related.

Adrienne I’d