Out of Order (15 page)

I returned to my seat with the rest of my row. I did not throw anything in the air when they announced our graduating class. I sat still with the piece of paper in my lap that meant nothing and had nothing printed on it. I sat still as a statue when the room erupted into applause. I sat still and tried not to think that Ricky would be sitting on my left if she weren’t at the morgue. I sat still.

T
HE
SERVICE
was long and the church was hot. Still, I sat through the whole thing quietly, kneeling and sitting on the glossy, smooth pews as cued. My mother’s mouth moved silently along to some of the prayers as though on instinct, though she hadn’t practiced or believed since before I was born. Outside the sun had reduced the dirt roads to mirages of sparkling air, a distant, unreachable oasis. Beads of sweat that gathered on bent necks and dampened starched collars were whisked away by the handkerchiefs of aged women and the dusty hands of children kneeling in the front row in their Sunday best.

I thought there’d be more people at the funeral. Even though the church was nearly full, it didn’t seem like enough. Two or three of the mathletes sat awkwardly together, some girls from the choir, a handful of others from our class. I expected the church to run out of standing room, but there were many faces missing from the crowd. Sean Dobson and Luke Turnbull weren’t there; Janet Morrison was conspicuously absent. Lillian and Diana from the dance team had come, huddled together near the back, but the rest of the team hadn’t shown. I was most disappointed to note that of Mike Lewczynski and all his friends—the Zimmerman twins, Nathan Smith, Mason Lowe—not a single one of them had bothered to come.

The turnout had been even worse at Jake Hastings’ funeral the day before, where I’d gone and sat quietly in the back row. I hadn’t known him long or well, but I had known him last. His mother wore a pale green dress and sunhat reminiscent of Jackie Kennedy’s iconic look and his father, in a blue cotton button-down, had broken down into heaving sobs halfway through the eulogy. That funeral had been noisy with chatter from the large Hastings family but there hadn’t been many people beyond that. There hadn’t been a viewing. The casket remained, thankfully, closed. Nobody should have to see someone they love looking like that.

I had never been to a funeral before that week, but I imagined that not every funeral was like these funerals.

After the long church service, paid for by Jessa’s family, an hour-long wake and viewing had been scheduled. I was told quietly by Ricky’s stoic father that they were using that time to prepare the hearses, two of which had to be borrowed from neighboring towns for this unprecedented triple funeral. The caskets would remain in the front of the church in a semicircle until the many pallbearers were coordinated to carry them out to the waiting cars.

“The Fuentes family took care of everything,” Mr. O’Brien said, and I felt a deep sense of shame coming from him. I touched his arm carefully when he moved to leave my side and to stand by the casket of his only child.

“That was very nice of them,” I said softly. “I’m sure Ricky wouldn’t have wanted you burdened by the cost of everything. She worried about stuff like that.”

Mr. O’Brien cleared his throat and nodded once, squaring his shoulders and marching down the aisle like only a drill sergeant could. Having rented the suit he was wearing, the left sleeve was pinned up rather than hemmed to avoid swishing, dangling fabric where an arm should be.

Everyone milled aimlessly around the church, soft voices nearly obscured by two loud fans moving air about the stifling building. Those who went outside for some air removed their suit jackets and loosened their ties, fanning themselves with hats, clutches, and pocket squares. My parents were among those who left the church, not wanting to intrude on the last few moments I had with my friends.

I wandered awkwardly off to a corner, neither in the way nor near enough the semicircle of caskets to accidently see inside. I was still working up the courage to go say good-bye when I felt a large body sidle up next to mine. I glanced over and saw that it was Robert, his face gray and drawn.

“I can’t see her like that,” Robert whispered, his eyes on his shoes. He was wearing running shoes with his neat black suit, the same outfit he’d worn to prom. “I can’t look.”

“Then don’t,” I said, as if it were that simple, as if not seeing it made it any less real. As if by not going to stand next to the casket, Robert could pretend that Ricky might walk through the doors of the church wearing that god-awful Wednesday Addams dress she reserved for church functions and funerals. She’d be sweating in that thing, with its long sleeves and high collar.

“I haven’t looked yet either,” I sighed, wrapping my arms around myself as though I’d felt a chill. I felt hot all over, but my hands were clammy. Every time I walked outside I expected it to be raining, for the sky to open up and mourn with us, but there hadn’t been a drop of rain in weeks. It was a dry summer.

“You were with them,” Robert said after a long moment of silence between us. “Right before it happened?” He didn’t look at me when he spoke, instead rubbing the toe of his right shoe over the one of his left, prying off a layer of dried mud off the bottom. I released the roughened piece of my cheek that I’d been unconsciously worrying between my teeth; it felt hot and sore.

“Yeah,” I said. “I was there. The only reason I’m alive is because I had to pee.”

I kept making jokes about it. As if laughing about it made it any less real, or any less hard. As if by laughing about it I could forget that if I’d coughed, or not hid fast enough, or any number of things—that I’d be having my funeral today too.

“After I got home that night, I paced around my room trying to work up the courage to call. Ricky gave me her number at the dance. She put it right into my phone and had me put mine in hers.” It was the most I’d heard Robert say all at once, so I didn’t dare interrupt. He spoke rapidly and with his eyes closed. “I got too nervous to ask her out to her face, but at home, I sent her this… text message. Asking.”

I closed my eyes and tried to imagine how that would feel. The nervous, excited flutter of hitting “send” on that message. The anxious wait for a reply. (Ricky’s phone on silent in her purse. Two unread messages when I found it on the floor.) My eyes snapped open, and I wiped my clammy palms on the sides of my dress, biting the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste blood.

“Do you know if she… got it? It was marked ‘read’ when I woke up in the morning, but it could’ve been… her mom, or….” Robert met my eyes, and the sharp pain in my side twisted like a blade under my ribs.

“She saw it,” I lied without hesitation. A lie that tasted of blood and smelled of sweat. A little white lie that wouldn’t hurt anyone. “She was really excited. Spent, like, five minutes trying to decide how to reply, you know, after she saw it pop up on her lock screen. She didn’t want it to show up as ‘read’ right away and look too eager.” I laughed hollowly. “She was playing it cool because she… really, really liked you.”

Robert ducked his head again but not fast enough. I saw the tears.

“It’s okay to cry.” Saying it like that sounded stupid, but it was true. “It seems like that’s all I’ve been doing. Crying, sleeping, trying not to think about it.” I touched his arm. “You would’ve made a really cute couple.” My voice cracked again, and he looked up at me, eyes swimming.

“So would you,” he replied thickly, the tears coming through in his low, heavy voice. I must have looked confused, because he added, “You and Kate.”

I pulled away, feeling suddenly cold. “Brandon told you that?” I demanded, my lower lip quivering with betrayal. “He promised he wouldn’t say anything.”

Robert shook his head quickly. “No, I just… saw the way you looked at her, when you thought she couldn’t see you. And the way she looked at you, when you weren’t looking.” He seemed to realize all at once that he’d spoken to me more now, at the funeral, than he had in all our previous interactions combined. His jaw snapped shut, and he clasped his hands together in front of him solemnly.

“I know Ricky would’ve been supportive, if she’d known about me and Kate,” I said as though Robert hasn’t just clammed up tight. “We were a little worried about how Jessa would react, but not Ricky. Ricky was kind, sort of mushy and sentimental. Like you.”

I glanced toward the front of the church, where Ricky’s dad stood guard over his daughter. He nodded vaguely at anyone who approached the casket, his jaw set in a hard line, as though he daren’t breathe through his mouth. He stood square-shouldered and straight despite his lopsided weight. He looked like a toy soldier, roughened with use, standing sentry over his little girl.

I could see a strange correspondence there, between Mr. O’Brien and Robert. The shyness, the reserved nature, the importance of hanging on to every word; they may have looked nothing alike, but they shared those things. Robert was the kind of man Ricky should have fallen in love with. He would have treated her right, respected her, protected her.

“She was always a romantic.”

Robert pulled anxiously at his tie and then straightened it again carefully, smoothing it down with his large, shovel-like hands. “I have to see her,” he said, sounding pained. He rubbed at his eyes ineffectually with one hand, mixing sweat and tears to glaze his dark cheeks before swooping his hand upward to scrub over his close-shorn scalp.

“Want to go up together?” I said. I wasn’t quite ready yet, but I would make the walk with him if I had to. If that’s what our friendship required, I would do it.

He shook his head. He dropped his arms to his sides and rolled back his shoulders, preparing himself mentally and physically. “I have to do it myself.”

I watched him make the short walk up the aisle to stand before Ricky’s father. He stopped before the casket and, with a jerky movement, pulled his hand up in a salute. Mr. O’Brien stuck out his hand for a shake instead, and that was when I looked away. I did not watch as Robert stepped up to the casket and looked down into it, though I knew he must have. I would not allow myself to ogle that private moment. I gave them that courtesy.

I waited, head bowed, for a long time before I approached the pulpit myself. I went to Ricky first, stood for a moment on the short step below. I looked at her father and shook my head.

“What am I supposed to say to her?” I asked him, feeling horribly out of place—like my body wasn’t a part of me, but simply filling up space. Nothing about this day felt quite real, from the chalked American flags on the sidewalk that morning to the sparkling light coming in the stained-glass windows of the church. A day we’d all been looking forward to, for the parties and the celebration, instead spent burying three people I loved.

“You can say whatever you like. I just… told her I loved her and said good-bye,” Mr. O’Brien said.

My reply of “Thank you, Mr. O’Brien, sir,” slipped out easily, as it had a hundred times before. I didn’t get the stern nod that the phrase had garnered me at dozens of sleepovers, birthday parties, and study dates; Mr. O’Brien cleared his throat instead.

“Call me Phillip,” he said roughly. I was shaken more by his words as I stepped up to the casket than I was by the sight of Ricky lying there, looking for all the world as if she were asleep.

“They should’ve put more blush on her,” I said, blinking tears from my eyes as I glanced at Ricky’s father. “They did a little, but she was always so easy to blush. There isn’t enough color in her cheeks.” Phillip O’Brien nodded jerkily, understanding.

She looked so lifelike, and yet—there was something missing that I couldn’t place. Yes, the healthy flush of blood under her ruddy cheeks, but something else too. Her red-blonde hair was combed straight, and she was wearing a light pink sundress and a red cardigan, which did nothing to disguise her deathly paleness. It was like looking at a wax statue of Ricky; the proportions weren’t quite right.

Her little button nose and childlike, heart-shaped face had always gotten her stopped going into PG-13 movies, even after she’d gotten her driver’s license. She had a dusting of freckles everywhere, seemingly random, but one time we connected them all with washable makers and found they formed all kinds of constellations on her skin.

“Do you remember at my tenth birthday party, when I fell down the stairs and everyone saw my underwear?” I asked quietly, leaning forward over the side of the casket. I knew her father could hear me, but these were the words coming out of my mouth. “You were so angry that everyone laughed that you lifted up your dress and yelled, ‘Haven’t you ever seen panties before?’ You were embarrassed afterwards, but I thought it was the bravest thing anyone had ever done for me. You were my hero that day.”

I heard Phillip O’Brien snort and then cough to cover it up. You couldn’t laugh at a funeral.

“I know we fought this year about Mike Lewczynski and all that stuff,” I continued, feeling strange about talking to this facsimile of Ricky. “But you were my best friend forever. And that doesn’t change now.” I pulled up the sleeve of my dress and held up my wrist. “You can’t see it, but I’m wearing the friendship bracelet you made me when we were fourteen. When I get home I’m going to put it somewhere safe, where I can’t lose it. I’ll wear it every year on your birthday and you can wear yours in Heaven with Jessa and Kate.”

I let my sleeve fall back down, hanging almost to the end of my hand, and then used it to wipe away my tears. “I love you, and I’m going to miss you. Good-bye, Ricky. See you soon.”

“Not too soon,” Phillip said when I stepped back, and I had to bite down on the raw inside of my cheek so as not to retort.

“Not too soon,” I amended softly, feeling his stare on my back as I walked up to the second casket.

Jessa’s parents were busying around getting things in order, diverting people and greeting guests, shaking hands and accepting condolences.

Jessa was laid out exactly as I imagined her, in the white quinceñera dress they’d had specially made when we were fifteen. Someone had added a lace collar to the neck. It looked seamless, and if you didn’t know it wasn’t part of the original dress, you wouldn’t have been able to tell it was added to cover bullet holes. I wondered briefly what the holes had been filled with. Some kind of putty, I’d imagine.