Year of Mistaken Discoveries (5 page)

My mom was gripping the phone, and her face was gray. My dad touched her arm lightly, and it seemed to let the air out of her; she sank down on the closest chair. She shook her head at him, waving him off so she could finish the conversation.

“Of course. I appreciate your call.” She clicked off the phone and put it down really carefully, as if she thought it was a grenade that might explode.

“Hon?” Dad’s voice was almost a whisper.

I could visibly see my mom pulling herself together. That’s when I knew bad things happen in threes and the third was about to hit.

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart.” Her voice caught. “Nora’s dead.”

chapter six

I
wasn’t a kid. I understood the concept that people died. When our cat Mr. Mittens passed away, my parents didn’t try and convince me that he’d gone to live on a farm, or had decided to move on to a new family; they told me the truth. But while I understood the concept of death in practical terms, I didn’t expect it to happen to someone I knew. The idea that Nora was simply gone seemed impossible. It would have been easier for me to believe that she’d sprouted wings and ridden off on a unicorn. The past three days had slid by in a fog. It was as if the real world was turned up too high. Lights were too bright, sounds too loud, everything seemed to chafe and rub me wrong. I would do something normal like brush my teeth and then think,
Nora’s never going to brush her teeth again
. Then I would feel light-headed and have to sit down.

I didn’t think there would be anything worse than someone dying, but there was. After my mom had told me Nora was dead, I sat there shocked.

“What happened? Was it a car accident?” I finally asked.

“No, it wasn’t a car accident.” Her eyes didn’t meet mine.

“What happened?”

“It doesn’t matter,” my mom said. “What’s important is that you know that Nora was your friend. Losing her is a tragedy, for you, for her, for her family, for everybody.” I could see my dad raise an eyebrow, questioning what she was saying.

I knew something else was wrong. “What happened to her? Did someone kill her?”

My mom looked shocked. “What? No. No one killed her. Why would you think something like that? It was an accident.” Mom took my hands and squeezed them. She pulled me slightly so I was facing her and took a deep breath. “Nora died from an overdose.”

Dad gasped in shock. It didn’t make sense. I’d seen her last night and she hadn’t been high or drunk. I would have sworn she was completely sober. There had to be a mistake. “Nora didn’t take drugs.” My parents were looking at me with sympathetic eyes. I felt slightly panicked that they didn’t believe me. “She didn’t. I’m sure of it.”

“They were pills from home. Her mom was on medications, and it looks like Nora took them.” Mom’s voice was calm
and stable. “It’s not clear if she wanted to just . . . mentally escape, or if it was on purpose.”

My mind screeched to a stop. “On purpose? People think Nora killed herself ?” My stomach clenched, and a wave of hot acid crept up my throat. It felt as if the room was closing in on me.

Dad winced as if I’d slapped him. He glanced at Mom, hoping she would deny it. She took a deep breath as if she were in one of her yoga classes and trying to find her center. “Nora was really troubled. She’s struggled on and off with depression for a long time.”

I stood up. “No. This isn’t happening.” Mom tried to hold on to my hand, but I yanked it away. I felt panicked. “I’m sorry.” My voice hitched.

She pulled me up. “It’s okay, baby.” She wrapped her arms around me, and a second later my dad had his arms around both of us. I wanted to cry, but it felt like my insides had been scoured out with a rusty scoop, raw and empty.

Since I’d heard the news, I felt like I was wearing guilt like a stone gargoyle on my back. It pulled me down and made everything feel like it took too much energy. Nora was never a silver lining, plucky, glass-half-f type of person. She’d always gone through these dark moods; they were like sucking black holes. If you got too close, tried to cheer her up, she’d pull you in until you felt as miserable as she did. There was no jollying her out of one of her funks. It was one of the reasons that we’d drifted apart. I got sick of it, and now she was dead.

Last year in health class we had a unit on the warning signs of suicide. Even as I wrote them down in my notebook so I could memorize them for the test, I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, thinking how many of them sounded like Nora. I never said anything. Not to her, not to our lame school counselor, her parents, or mine. I just filed away the fact that it sounded like her and moved on. Then the night of the party I knew something was wrong. The whole story about someone conning her, her giving away her notebook, the way she hugged me when we said good-bye. Something was off. I ignored it because I wanted to go back to my house and talk to my friends about Colton.

My last conversation with Nora outside the party only three days ago kept playing in my head, making me feel like throwing up. I would close my eyes at night and see her standing there, thanking me, and then me walking away. I kept waiting for someone to stick a finger in my face and scream that I was the one who let her die, demanding I take responsibility for failing her. I could picture people recoiling from me in disgust when they heard. I could imagine my parents’ faces if they knew, how disappointed they would be in me. Part of me was dreading others finding out, and the other part wanted someone to do it, so it could all be out in the open. Instead my parents were tiptoeing around me, making a point to tell me how much they loved me. Even my friends who had never liked Nora had gone out of their
way to be extra nice to me. Calling to say how bad they felt.

I hadn’t gone to school for the past two days and instead hid in my bedroom. The shocking thing was that my parents let me get away with it. Normally our family rules required a fever, a notarized note from a doctor, and a possible case of Ebola before I could stay home from school. Anything short of bleeding or active death was dealt with by giving out some Tylenol and one of those mini packs of tissues. The problem was I couldn’t hide anymore. Today was Nora’s funeral, and there was no escaping the fact I was expected to show up.

“Are you ready?” Mom asked. She stood in the doorway to my room, but she seemed almost afraid to enter. She was wearing one of her black suits from work. I wondered if every time I saw her wearing it after this I would think,
That’s the suit she wore to Nora’s funeral.

“I guess.”

“Ms. Heady called this morning.”

I went completely still. I wondered if Nora’s mom had called to say I wasn’t welcome at the funeral. That if I couldn’t be there for Nora when it mattered, I had no business showing up at her memorial service.

“She’s going to have a part in the service where they will invite people from the congregation to share a memory of Nora.”

“Do I have to say anything?” My skin turned clammy. What if I started blabbing about all kinds of random stuff ? I
could talk about the time when we read her mom’s Harlequin romance novels out loud and made a list of the terms used to describe a penis. Her favorite was “he unleashed his pink steel.” Sure, that would be a great story I could tell everyone in their moment of grief. Or I could tell them about the time that I had called her in a panic because I was pretty sure I had lost a tampon somewhere inside me, and she had to talk me down so we could figure out what to do. Or the time we snuck into her parents’ liquor cabinet and drank a bottle of crème de menthe we found way in the back and ended up throwing up, and how I still couldn’t eat a Peppermint Pattie without feeling vaguely nauseated. I could picture myself standing there completely unable to think of a single appropriate memory to tell the crowd.

Or maybe I could talk about how I blew her off when she needed me most.

“No, of course you don’t have to speak at the service if you don’t want to,” Mom said. “Ms. Heady knows this is a hard time for you. She just wanted to let you know in case you needed a bit of time to think of something. She didn’t want you to feel put on the spot.”

“I should say something, though, shouldn’t I? Everyone will expect me to.” I tried to swallow, but all the saliva in my mouth seemed to have dried up. I felt a bit light-headed.

Mom rested a hand on my shoulder. “You don’t have to do anything that doesn’t feel comfortable.” She squeezed my arm.
“Your dad and I are downstairs when you’re ready.”

After she left, I glanced down at my desk. I’d buried the notebook Nora had given me in my bottom desk drawer. I’d piled heavy binders and books on top of it as if I thought it was going to crawl on its own, zombie style, out of the drawer. I hadn’t looked at it. I was afraid of what she might have written in there. Over the past three days I’d been sure someone would ask me about what she’d given me. Maybe even the police would show up and want it as some kind of evidence, but no one brought it up. I stood and looked myself over in the mirror. I picked a piece of lint off the sleeve of the dress my mom had lent me. I thought I looked older. Like a thousand years older.

• • •

I didn’t have a vast amount of funeral experience. Understatement. The only other funeral I’d ever been to was my grandfather’s when I was twelve. I’m not sure it even counts as a funeral, since my grandma kept calling it a “celebration of life” instead. Everyone at the event, other than me and my parents, was old. Really old, not just parent old.

The first thing I noticed when we walked into Nora’s family church was how young everyone was. It could have been a school assembly, except for the organ music and how everyone was dressed up. The lack of cheerleaders and hand-painted signs was also a clue. I might have imagined it, but it seemed like the quiet church grew even more silent as my parents and I walked
up the aisle. Her parents asked us to sit near the front since I had been Nora’s closest friend. I’d flinched when my parents told me that. Nora and I hadn’t really hung out as friends since high school started. I didn’t blow her off in the hallway, and we’d gotten together a few times, but I wouldn’t have listed her as one my close friends. Now I felt even guiltier that she hadn’t replaced me along the way. I was glad when we finally got to our seats, so I could stop feeling like a huge spotlight was following me down the aisle.

Nora’s dad led his new wife to a pew at the front. His face was locked down, reminding me more of a mannequin than a real person. Nora’s stepmom had dark circles under her eyes and bright, almost fluorescent, red lipstick. She was clearly in the camp that felt changes in a woman’s body should be celebrated and wore a tight, body-hugging black dress that did everything to accentuate her pregnancy short of one of those arrows pointing to her belly with the words “bun in the oven” printed across the top.

I felt a snicker bubble up inside me. I could imagine Nora’s voice in my head.

She’s wearing that to my funeral? Christ on a pogo stick, did she think the service was being held at her gynecologist’s office? If that dress was any shorter, I could do a pelvic exam from here. I swear to God, if she drops that baby during my funeral, I will haunt her for eternity.

I turned around to see Nora’s mom coming up the aisle.
Nora’s two aunts flanked her, holding on to her elbows. She looked shell-shocked. Her eyes kept darting around, glancing at everyone. I sensed she half expected Nora to pop up and yell out, “Surprise!”

Over the church loudspeakers a popular ballad that was always on the radio started to play. Nora would have hated it. She preferred the really alternative stuff, lots of bass.
If you’ve heard it, I’ve already moved on to something else,
she used to say. A few girls from school started to cry. Nora would have
really
hated that. They weren’t even people she hung out with. I realized my hands were shaking and sat on them to keep them still.

Pallbearers guided the highly polished casket down the aisle to the front of the church. It gave me a jolt of panic. For some reason I hadn’t expected Nora to be here. Course, technically this was her party; she was the guest of honor, so to speak. The urge to laugh started to bubble up again, and I bit the inside of my cheek to make it stop.

There was a spray of white roses on top of the casket. Someone had arranged for a framed copy of her senior picture to be propped up alongside. It was a good picture, but it didn’t look like her. Too polished. She had what she called her beauty pageant smile on. I suspected she’d lost a fight with her mom about what to wear for the photo.

I had the sudden urge to run for it. I spun around to see how far I was from the door. That’s when I saw Brody. He was sitting near the back by himself. He was still and stoic. Like a
statue you’d see in Washington, DC. There were dark circles under his eyes, and it looked like he’d lost weight. He met my eyes through the crowd and nodded. His nod was more than recognition that he saw me. It was like he reached through the air and whispered in my ear that it was okay and that I could do this. I nodded back at him and took a deep breath before turning around. I’d run out on Nora once. This time I owed it to her to stay.

chapter seven

I
didn’t understand why there had to be a social event after a funeral. I’d never felt less like having a party. Nora’s parents had arranged to have food brought into the church social hall. It looked like a cheap wedding reception. There were flowers that were already starting to go limp on the tables and a buffet table at the front with those silver warming dishes. People were dressed up, but a few had slipped off their uncomfortable shoes, and several of the guys had hung their suit jackets on the backs of their folding chairs and loosened their ties. Nora’s mom sat on one side of the room and her dad and his wife on the other. They shared a daughter, but they weren’t going to share this experience. People milled in between the two or hung out in groups, chatting. There were even people laughing here and there.

I’d mumbled how sorry I was to Nora’s mom, but I couldn’t say that she heard me. She stared through me. She had a grip on my hand. Her skin was ice cold. It was like she was the dead one. I had to tug my hand free when I walked away.