Why do you care? that little voice whispers.
I don’t see it coming. He slaps me. Hard. My head is tossed to the side, and my cheek feels as if tiny needles are being shoved into every pore of my skin. Tim gives me another chance to tell him what he wants to know. When I remain wordless for a third time, he tries to do it again, but I sidestep him. Tim bristles. Sarah doesn’t seem to know what to do, how to feel. She can’t watch, but she does.
“Answer me!” Tim thunders.
I smile up at him. “No.”
Now Sarah looks truly frightened. Where is Fear? She opens her mouth to intervene, but before she can, Tim laughs. It’s so unexpected, she stares at him. I just keep smiling. Tim laughs and laughs.
“You’re a demon,” Tim tells me, shaking his head. “You’re no child of mine. I want you out of this house.” His face is redder than I’ve ever seen it, and now veins stick out everywhere. He’s not angry, exactly—Anger is nowhere to be seen—but this is who he is. Even without the Emotion. Tim lifts his hand again—
Even I don’t anticipate Sarah stepping forward, resting her fingers on his shoulder gently. Tim’s hand lowers, and he turns to look at her.
“You can’t kick her out,” she says timidly. He’s listening to her; he’s forgotten about me for the moment. Sarah swallows. “What would people say? We could get in trouble.”
Tim thinks. A minute goes by, and slowly, all those veins and redness fade until he’s normal again. The hand that was about to strike me inches up, twines with Sarah’s. She flinches, but Tim doesn’t see it. He’s pursing his lips at me, squinting.
Finally, he points at me rather than trying to hit me again. There’s earth under his fingernails. “You will do your chores every morning, you will go to school, and you will come right back here,” he says through his teeth, nostrils flaring. He shifts his glare to the place just over my head as he talks. He can’t even stand the sight of me. “You’ll do the afternoon chores, you’ll do your mother’s work, you’ll do your homework, and then you’ll go to bed.” Abruptly, Tim releases his hold on Sarah and storms out of the kitchen. Glancing at me with another anxious expression, she moves to follow.
I raise my voice to stop Tim. “Am I allowed to go to Maggie’s funeral tomorrow?” Copying him, I ask it without looking at his face, instead studying that wall like it’s the most interesting thing in the world. The right side of my face is on fire and the yellow flowers on the wallpaper consume me.
My father pauses. “It would look bad if we didn’t go,” he snaps as an answer.
As if that’s all that matters.
She lies there in the casket, her face small, white, still.
“Maggie spent her life always thinking about others,” Pastor Mike says. He’s the only pastor in Edson. He holds his Bible lightly, looking down at the body with a pasted-on expression of regret. This man didn’t know Maggie. His words are hollow, automatic. He’s probably thinking about what’s going to be on TV tonight. “She would go out of her way to reach those who were in need.”
Tim and Sarah stand behind me, as does a small portion of the town, including Joshua. He’s been ignoring me so far. At my side are Maggie’s parents, both drawn and gray.
The sun shines down as Pastor Mike continues his eulogy. We’re all dressed in black. Not sensible, really, since it’s sweltering out today—it seems even Fall isn’t around to do her job. The stench of sweat permeates my senses. I look down into the fresh grave, examine the girl in there.
The freckles that always marked her and made her Maggie now stand out, a stark feature that looks strange on such a vacant face. She’s wearing a neatly pressed dress. It’s pink. She hated pink. And they’ve actually done her nails. Maggie liked them chewed down to the nub and only used black nail polish. This isn’t Maggie. This isn’t my best friend. This is a person I don’t know. Where’s the life, the illumination? The sweetness, the contemplation, the wild abandon that made so many memories for us when we were young?
“Come on, Liz!” Maggie runs ahead of me to the ice cream truck, red pigtails bouncing all around her shoulders. I follow more slowly, feeling the heat of the day on my head. I can’t get any treats because Tim got angry when I asked him for money.
Just as I’m crossing the street, I pause. There’s an Emotion standing on the road, looking right at me. I recognize his white-blond hair.
“Why did you come back?” I ask him. Maggie is standing in line, getting her ice cream. She’s forgotten about me for the moment.
The Emotion smiles down at my upturned face. “You interest me. Not much can do that anymore.” There’s a hint of sadness in his eyes.
I don’t have a chance to answer; Maggie is running back up to me. Her cheeks are flushed and she breathes heavily. She holds two Dilly Bars in her hands.
“Here!” She thrusts the dripping thing at me, and I take it. “Happy birthday!”
I look at the bar and back at her. “It’s not my birthday.”
She grins, eyes sparkling. “It’s not? Oops. Oh, well. Come on!” She takes my hand in hers, dragging me away from the road and the Emotion who’s still staring at me, smiling.
The ice cream is melting in my hand, so I lick it quickly.
I stare down at the girl in that casket, feeling my nothingness dig a deeper hole inside of me. “She was often a counselor when her friends came to her in need,” Pastor Mike intones. Wrong, wrong. I was Maggie’s only friend. I never went to her for counsel. I never went to her at all.
Fear’s words come back to me: You’re a coward.
Doesn’t he know that if I really could, I would mourn my best friend? It’s not a choice, no matter what anyone believes.
As if my thoughts have summoned him, suddenly Fear is here, walking through the crowd of black like he belongs. Maybe he does. Apparently the threat at Sophia’s party is no longer a concern. I sense him coming up behind me. The crows on the gravestones hush.
“Look at her,” Fear murmurs in my ear, his lips brushing my skin. I turn to face him, but he wraps his hands tightly around my arms, forcing me to stay where I am. “No. Look at her, Elizabeth.”
He shouldn’t be here. Not now. I focus on Maggie’s face again, not really seeing it.
“Listen to me,” Fear breathes, and the hair on the back of my neck prickles. “I want you to look at your best friend. She’s dead, Elizabeth. She’s gone, and she’s not coming back. You were with her when all the life left her body; you saw every single one of her memories fade. Everything you two ever went through, every experience you ever had.” Somehow he thinks of the exact day I’d been thinking of earlier and uses it against me. “Remember all the times she bought you ice cream because you had no money? Do you remember when Maggie dragged you to the homecoming game, and after everyone left you two sat in the middle of the field and looked at the stars? She told you everything. You told her nothing. She sensed that, but she didn’t care. She always thought you would open up to her one day—”
“Stop.”
I hadn’t meant to speak out loud, but my voice slices through the still air. Pastor Mike does stop, staring at me expectantly. Someone coughs in the crowd. I can feel Tim stiffening. John—Maggie’s dad—turns around to look at me, and as his gaze settles on my face, it softens. It’s that expression that makes me realize something. Something bizarre; it doesn’t make sense.
I’m crying.