You Are Not Here (3 page)

looking in the mirror

at the circles under my green eyes,

the splotchy skin, matted curly hair.

Today is definitely not

a day for mascara.

It’s not even a day

that I should be thinking

about my face

or what I am going to wear.

I look in the mirror again

and think, Brian

will never cry again

or have red eyes.

He will never laugh

or kiss

me again.

on the sidewalk

in front of my house.

As Brian leaned in,

things disappeared

one by one.

The trees.

The houses.

The cars.

The sidewalk.

Gone.

There was just

my breath

and his.

His lips

on mine.

unless you count all the times

I buried pet hamsters

or baby birds that had fallen

from their nests.

But I’ve been visiting this cemetery

since I was little.

I don’t know how old it is,

but the oldest date legible

on the gravestones is 1831.

Some stones are so old

that I can’t read the writing—

time has rubbed them clean.

I like running my hands over those,

and wondering

what they once said.

But it’s different

when I see gravestones for babies

that had barely lived.

When I see those,

I can’t stop thinking

about how tiny and light

the caskets must have been

or how their mothers must have sounded

as they watched those caskets

disappear beneath the earth.

I need to take a shower

and get dressed.

The shower is a good place to hide.

You can’t hear the phone ring in there

or see that you have seven new texts

and four new voicemails.

Your friends cannot ask how you are.

They cannot look at you

with their pity faces.

They cannot hear you cry.

No one can see your tears,

not even you.

that I’ve ever taken a shower with.

It hadn’t occurred to me

how different it would be

from being naked while lying down.

In the shower, the lights are on,

your makeup is running off,

your hair is flat against your head.

There is nowhere

and nothing

to hide.

After a few minutes,

I got over it

and we took turns under the showerhead,

splashed water at each other,

and washed each other’s backs.

It reminded me of being a kid at the pool—

the playfulness, the games,

the water in my eyes

making everything blurry.

When Brian looked at me

and said, “Turn around,”

I did, but I was wrong

about what he wanted to do.

I could feel his mostly hairless chest,

warm against the back of my shoulders,

as I waited

for something to happen.

I was surprised to hear the sound

of shampoo squirting out of the bottle

and to feel a cold blob of it

landing on my head.

I turned around and gave Brian a squinty look.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

I asked playfully.

“Turn around,” he said with a smile.

How could something I do

almost every day without thinking

be so amazing

when someone else did it for me?

“That feels nice,” I said

as he massaged my scalp

and lathered the shampoo

through the tangle of dark hair

that fell to the middle of my back.

“Lean your head into me,” he said

as he guided my head under the water

and rinsed off the shampoo,

being careful

not to get soap in my eyes.

Next he put in the conditioner

and combed it through with his fingers.

He rinsed my hair again, then wrung it out.

He did this

without saying

a single word.

But I didn’t need any.

I understood his silence.

I start to get dressed for the funeral.

I know I’m supposed to wear black,

but that seems too ordinary.

Everyone will be wearing black

and I

am not

everyone.

I start with underwear.

I open my drawer and see

the light blue ones with bumblebees.

I smile.

Brian liked those.

That was one of our jokes.

The first time we really hooked up,

he was wearing boxers

with lobsters on them.

The second time,

he had on ones with polar bears.

I couldn’t stop laughing

because I thought he only wore

boxers with animals on them.

He swore it was a coincidence

and that those were his only two,

but I always made fun of him for it.

I look in my closet

and settle on wearing

a dark purple skirt, a black shirt,

and the bumblebee underwear.

in front of my house

so we can walk

to the funeral together.

She’s way more freckled from the sun

than the last time I saw her.

She is wearing a black skirt,

black shirt, and sporty silver sandals.

Her thick, straight, blond hair

is pulled into a simple ponytail.

I bet she didn’t have to think

about what to wear.

She’s a pro.

Both her grandmothers died last year.

I push open the screen door

and walk outside.

Marissa has been meeting me

at my front door

since we were little.

But never

for something like this.

“Annaleah…

are you ready?” she asks.

I hang my head down,

shake it.

I am not

ready.

met at the local pool

when we were five.

It was the same summer

that my mom and I moved here.

The story goes:

One of us had a box of Nerds.

The other one asked for some.

Nerds were shared.

Best friends status was established.

We can never agree

which one of us had the candy.

She insists it was me,

but that’s not how I remember it.

And since then,

we’ve had sleepovers,

told secrets,

and talked on the phone

late into the night.

We were together when we

smoked our first cigarette,

stole lipsticks from the drugstore,

watched horror movies that made us scream,

once laughed so hard

that we actually pissed ourselves,

and blew out birthday candles

for the last eleven years in a row.

But walking to the cemetery

for Brian’s funeral

is not

something I thought

we would ever do.

and we begin.

Each time I take a step,

it feels like I am not

making any progress—

like someone is pulling the church

farther and farther away from me.

But it doesn’t matter

how I feel.

Marissa moves me forward.

She is in charge of my body.

And even though this is the first time

I have seen or talked to her in weeks,

I could not imagine doing this

with anyone but her.

As we enter the church,

I walk past a bunch of guys

that I’ve seen Brian hang around with,

but never officially met.

I look at them and wonder,

Did Brian ever talk about me?

Do you even know who I am?

One of the guys looks up as I walk by.

He holds my gaze for a moment,

but then looks down again.

His eyes tell me nothing.

both times briefly,

and I wonder if his funeral

counts as the third time.

Since Brian and I started

hanging out a few months ago,

Marissa’s listened to me complain

about how Brian would disappear

for days and not call.

How he’d forget we made plans.

How sometimes I felt

like I was just a girl

he wanted to make out with,

not make a future with.

But there were good things

about Brian too.

Marissa never seemed

to want to hear about them.

She insisted

that I was wasting my time with him.

So when Marissa refused

to listen to any more of my stories,

I talked to Joy or Parker.

Like when I told them about

the time Brian’s parents went on vacation,

and I lied and told my mom

that I was sleeping at Joy’s.

That night Brian and I

got into his bed and watched

A Clockwork Orange
, his favorite movie.

The house was silent except for the TV

and our occasional voices.

I pretended it was our house.

That we were married.

That he loved me.

And I wondered,

Is this how it might feel

one day for real?

Perfect and normal.

I wished it would always be like this—

ordinary.

In the morning,

we sat at his dining room table

and ate Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

He brought out the bowls and spoons,

and I brought out the milk.

Up until then,

I’d only seen Brian eat pizza and chips—

things that didn’t require utensils.

So I was surprised

to see how he held his spoon.

Instead of just curling his pointer finger

around the spoon’s stem,

he used his middle finger too.

It was really cute.

I don’t know why, but it was.

Maybe because it made him seem

like a little kid

or maybe because now I knew

one of his subtle quirks.

And that made him closer to me.

His casket is up by the altar.

It’s the first thing I see

when we walk in

and it’s impossible

not to stare right at it—

especially because it’s open.

Marissa asks,

“Do you want to say good-bye?”

Her question is ridiculous.

I said good-bye to Brian

after we hung out

a few days ago.

He was fine.

There was no reason to think

I would never see him again.

and I don’t.

I haven’t seen him in days

and I miss him—

miss his face.

But I’m scared.

Scared of what he’ll look like.

Scared because this means it’s over.

That he is gone.

That he is not

coming back.

This is a different kind

of good-bye.

It has not shifted

since we met at my house.

I feel her grip tighten a little

as we walk down the aisle.

We are like a father and bride

on her wedding day.

We move slowly.

Both anticipating,

and maybe also fearing,

what is at the end

of this slow, careful march.

But my father and I

will never

take this walk.

And all the fantasies

I’ve had of Brian

meeting me at the altar

never looked like this.

As we get closer to him,

I feel my face and body start to burn.

It’s a cold burn.

My body is prickling.

It feels like there are spines

poking through my skin.

I used to get a similar feeling

whenever I’d get near Brian.

But this is different.

It used to be pleasant, tingly.

This is painful, sharp.

I look down into the casket.

My stomach contracts.

Is that really Brian?

He doesn’t look right.

It’s like a wax version of him.

His coloring is off.

He’s in a suit.

There is a cross around his neck.

I am inches from him,

but there is no smell.

No clean laundry.

No deodorant.

No hair gel.

Nothing.

There is

nothing.

I do not feel

Marissa’s arm.

I do not feel

the floor.

I do not feel

my body.

I want to burrow into his neck

and feel the warmth,

but this Brian looks cold.

This Brian

isn’t the one I know.