Katie Williams: Absent

Partway through the dance, I see Evan standing in a corner among the wallflowers. I follow his gaze and find Mr. Fisk presiding over the refreshments table. Something must cross my face because Wes touches my arm and says, “Just ignore him.”

He nods past Evan and Mr. Fisk to Lucas Hayes, who cuts through the gym, threshing the crowd. The burner girl follows after him in a dress as dark and brief as her lips. Lucas turns and says something to her; the words are short. She stops at this comment, all the sass draining from her, her hands falling to her sides. Lucas walks on, leaving her behind. The crowd flails around her, buffeting her left and right, until she washes up by the refreshments table. When Lucas reaches the door to the hall, he looks back. Somehow, across the gym full of dancers, his eyes catch mine and hold them. They don’t look like his eyes, charmingly lazy and warm. His eyes look suspicious, mean. He darts out the door.

Through the doorway Lucas has just left, Usha enters, wearing a pouf of canary tulle that we’d found together at a garage sale a year ago. A group of people surround her—biblicals, well-rounders, even a pony or two—though none are nearly so vividly arrayed. One of them reaches to touch the hem of Usha’s skirt with a look of unguarded admiration. Usha laughs and spins, the yellow fanning out. Usha is a twirling type of girl again.

“We have to vote!” I remember.

“Vote?” Wes asks.

“For prom queen.”

“That’s right. You’re nominated.”

“I forgot,” I say, lifting a hand to my forehead.

“Really?” Wes asks. “You forgot.”

“Actually, I did. But it doesn’t matter. I’m going to vote for Usha Das.”

“Well, I’m going to vote for you.” He grins.

“If you must,” I say, and lead the way to the table with the ballot box. Mrs. Morello hands us the slips of paper. At the last minute, I change my mind and make a check not next to Usha Das, but Kelsey Pope. Consider it my apology. I fold the paper and drop it in the box with a smile.

Still, I’m just as happy when Usha is called up to the makeshift stage and crowned prom queen. She’s fumbling with the hairpins, and I’m clapping and cheering louder than anyone else. Wes musses my hair and swings his arm around my shoulder, murmuring, “No one has any idea how cool you really are,” and this compliment I claim as my own.

We escape the heat and noise, ending up back in the hallway, the dance still in full swing. The song lyrics from the past few hours echo in my ears like someone is whispering them to me from another room. Wes walks backward in front of me, his shirt unbuttoned at the collar, his tie laid carelessly over one shoulder, and his cheeks flushed pink all the way to his ears.

I reach out and let my fingers graze his jaw. He tries to catch them, but I’m too quick, and his hand closes on air.

I step over to the drop cloth. “Why do they still have this up?”

“I think it’s to protect the mural until it’s done.”

“But there’s no mural.”

“What do you mean? It’s right under there.”

I feel Kelsey’s pulse in my neck and wrists, starting up a flutter faster than when I was dancing. I pinch the edge of the drop cloth, the warp and weft of the fabric between my fingers. “No, I saw. Usha painted over it. It’s just a blank wall now.”

Wes shakes his head. “It’s a mural. She’s been working on it for over a month.”

Then I remember something: Stumbling down the hall after I’d seen Lucas with the burner girl, I almost ran into her, Usha up on her ladder. I’d been so upset that it hadn’t registered. I press a hand to my neck. There it is, my pulse, a little under-the-skin creature beating its wings.

“She kept painting it?”

“Of course.”

“But I saw her painting over it. She said, ‘Maybe we should be trying to forget.’ ”

“Here. See?” Wes steps past me and yanks the drop cloth free. My eyes follow it as it floats gently to the floor.

I don’t look at the mural right away. First, I look at Wes looking at it. He scans the wall, floor to ceiling, his eyes lit up like they were when he broke through the trees to the burners’ circle and found me scratching my designs into the ground.

“Will you look at that?” he says, voice awed.

So I look.

The mural reaches from floor to ceiling, a maze of lines and curves.

Birds.

The flocks of birds from Usha’s notebook, not inked centimeters across, but painted meters high, beaks pointed, wingspans unfurled, feathers all colors and speckles, delicate necks stretched toward the sky. And, parachutes, the calmly floating parachutes, their passengers tied safely below. Airplanes with whirring propellers. Bunches of helium balloons, hot-air balloons, too, with wicker riding baskets. Clouds of insects—monarchs, wasps, bluebottles, and dragonflies. Dragons, griffins, other impossible creatures, flying horses, and angels with trumpets as slender as their wrists. And there at the bottom, tiny in its corner, my contribution to the mural, my fuzzy little moth.

Usha has painted things that can’t fall.

She’s painted things that can fly.

I feel it again, that dissolving feeling, the feeling that happens whenever I inhabit someone. But this time it’s different, stronger, warmer . . . wider? And then I hear the voices, dozens of them, a whole crowd, whispering to one another. I can’t make out the words, but the tone is warm, like how you might whisper I love you to someone who’s sleeping. I place my palm against the slick shine of the dried paint, the tiny furrows of brushstroke, the wall beneath. The wall that will last for years.

“Hey,” Wes says softly.

I turn to face him.

“Hey,” he says again, taking one of my hands in both of his and holding it to his chest. “Why are you crying?”

“Because.” I shake my head. “Because I feel alive.”

Wes leans down and kisses me. I kiss him back. His lips taste like cigarettes, like paper burnt until it’s cinders, but then the cinders glow softly, rekindling with the warmth of his mouth. After seconds and years and eons, we part.

He grins, and I let out a little burst of laughter.

“So that was funny to you?” Wes says, but he’s still grinning.

I shake my head. “What are you even doing here, Wes Nolan?”

“Nothing much,” he says, “Just being here. With you.”

Footfalls behind us. We break apart, and Usha stands there in her dandelion of a dress, lipstick on her front teeth, rhinestone crown pulling away from the pins that hold it to her hair. She looks perfect, by the way.

“Sorry,” she mutters, backing away.

“Usha!” I call.

She turns, an uncertain expression on her face.

“You painted this.” I point at the mural.

“You shouldn’t have taken that off.” She gestures at the crumpled drop cloth. “It’s not ready yet. I still haven’t really—”

“Thank you,” I interrupt.

“For what?”

“They’re flying,” I say.

She nods.

“Now people will remember her as something other than . . . I . . . I’m sorry that I lied, that I said she jumped.”

Usha’s brows draw together. She pulls the crown from her head, holds it in her hands, running her fingers over the fake gemstones. “You don’t have to pretend.”

“I’m not pretending.” I put a hand to my chest. “I really am sorry. I’m sorry I lied.”

“You don’t have to pretend to . . . I know it wasn’t a lie.” Usha looks up from her crown. “Paige stepped off the roof.”

“Usha. No.” My hands fall to my sides, the silky fabric of Kelsey’s dress in them, crumpling and uncrumpling in my fists. “I know what people have been saying, but it’s not true. She fell. She fell.”