locating a tampon. I hand it to Chim and she smiles, all grateful. I manage not to roll my eyes directly in her face. She’s wearing a skullcap that’s totally inappropriate for the eighty-degree day, and the ends of her hair peek out from under it. She’s chopped it since I last saw her three months ago, and apparently dyed it pink. She looks cute, I guess, if you like that sort of thing.
We start down the crowded hall together, into the black hole that is this fucking school, toward lockers and classrooms and all the things I hoped to never have to deal with again. We have to push by people to get through; Lucy warned me how overstuffed it is here, but I didn’t really expect it to be this bad. I should have, though, I guess, since there are now so many students enrolled here that we have two principals: Rose-Brady, who came with us from Carter so we’d have a familiar face in charge (eye roll), and Kalb, the original QA principal.
The walls around us are papered with flyers talking about dances and tryouts and all the normal crap, but I see the other ones too—the ones talking about grief groups and counselors and how to deal with life after death. I want to tear them all off the walls and throw them in the toilet and flush them far, far away from here—from me. Rose-Brady made me go to one of those grief groups last year, before Carter closed, but that didn’t turn out so well. At all. So now I see a private therapist. Who tells me shit like It gets better. I used to have to see her multiple times a week—luckily, since last fall I’ve managed to avoid going outside of the once-a-month sessions that Rose-Brady and the school board made known were a requirement to even consider my reenrollment.
“Chim. Please stop. It’s fine; you know it’s fine. Now that I’m back you cannot start tiptoeing around me. You know I hate that shit.” More accurately, I hate having to have conversations with people whose eyes are so full of pity, who don’t see me anymore, just a reflection of Jordan’s ghost.
Chim, who never used to get embarrassed by her big mouth around me, blushes an even deeper shade of red. It’s impressive.
“No, I really am sorry. I have to start thinking before I speak; my mom keeps telling me that. I’m always saying stupid stuff, and I know I need to be more sensitive around you….” She’s babbling, all nerves and tongue flaps, and my chest tightens. We’ve known each other since kindergarten—she was my first real friend outside of Jordan, actually—but ever since last year it’s been hard for me to stomach the sight of her. It’s not fair, I know that, but it’s like I just can’t let myself relax when I’m with her—we can’t seem to find the rhythm of our friendship since Jordan died.
We reach her locker, and she’s still talking. I am so tempted to slap her to get her to just shut up (am I really supposed to just stand here and listen to this incessant chatter?), when a warm hand clasps my arm.
“Ladies.” I turn, and there she is—my savior, Lucy, the only person I want to see these days; the only person who seems to be able to see me through the haze of what happened last year. She smirks like she knows exactly what I was just thinking—knows that she stopped me from smacking Chim across her lovely, annoying face.
“How are we this morning?” Lucy, as always, is wearing black on black on black: a T-shirt of some obscure local band who will be famous by next year, and ripped leather pants. The administrations of all the local public schools outlawed that sort of clothing last year when they instituted a strict countywide dress code, but Lucy is apparently the exception to that rule. She usually is.
She hip-checks me and lays her curly brown head on my shoulder. My heart rate slows, and I remember how to breathe as some of the tension drains out of my body. My hand unflexes by my waist, and Lucy slips in a roll of Girl Scout cookies. Thin Mints. My