Katie Williams: Absent

WHEN I EMERGE FROM THE STAIRWELL THAT LEADS DOWN from the roof, the extracurriculars are ending, just in time for everyone to get home for dinner. I linger at the ragged edges of groups of student council officers, basketball players, half the chorus for the spring musical, and the track-and-field runners. In one short walk down the school hall, I hear my name mentioned again and again. Everyone is talking about what Kelsey Pope said in the grief group meeting, about how I killed myself.

By the time I reach the end of the hall, I’m sick of my own name. But when I hear it one more time, coming out of the art room’s half-open door, I stop, because this time it’s Mrs. Morello’s voice saying it. I peer in to find her teetering on one of the stools that line the high tables. Mr. Fisk, the art teacher, sits on the stool next to her. Across from them sits Usha.

I can’t see Usha’s face, only the back of her messy black bob and the tips of her elbows peeking out from either side of her rounded back. Her arms must be crossed over her chest, which is not how Usha sits at all. Usha sits legs akimbo, head tilted, hands constantly in motion, tapping on the table or her own knees, unless she has pencil and paper, in which case, they’re busy drawing. I step closer to this tough-jawed, pulled-up version of Usha.

“. . . authorized a mural to memorialize the students we’ve lost this year,” Mrs. Morello is saying. “We’ve designated a section of wall in the hallway. Right by the doors to the student parking lot.”

A memorial mural.

I imagine my face floor-to-ceiling high, my painted pupils staring down at students who rush below it. I imagine two girls, decades from now, pausing beneath it. One of them will say, “Who’s that?” And her friend will shrug and answer, “Some girl who died.” And I’ll be standing behind them, silent as my mouth painted on the wall.

Some girl.

Who died.

Mrs. Morello is beaming down at Usha, the kind of lipless smile adults use when they have a present hidden behind their backs. Usually something you don’t want. Usually socks.

“The school board decided that, rather than hire a professional artist, it would mean more to have a student paint it. It would be a way to—”

“No,” Usha says.

Mrs. Morello blinks rapidly. “Pardon?”

I’m startled, too. Usha isn’t a suck-up well-rounder, but she’s never rude to teachers. In fact, she was always telling me that it’s rude to raise my hand only to point out when a teacher has made a mistake.

“You were going to ask me to do it, right?” Usha asks Mrs. Morello in the same detached voice. “Paint it?”

“Well. Yes.”

“So, no. I don’t want to paint your mural.”

“But . . .” Mrs. Morello’s smile falters, then regains its ground. “It’s not my mural. It’s for Paige. Principal Bosworth has decided that you’ll have complete creative freedom. Whatever you think best expresses Paige and Brooke and the school’s loss, you can paint it. And Mr. Fisk recommended you especially.” She looks over at Mr. Fisk for help.

He runs a hand over his beard and clears his throat. “Think of it this way, Usha. This is a chance for you to remember Paige, to help other people remember who she was.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t be trying so hard to remember her,” Usha says. “Maybe we should be trying to forget her.”

“Usha,” I whisper, even though I know she can’t hear me. The world starts to tilt; I look down. I’ve forgotten my hover and started to sink through the floor. By the time I get my feet right, Mr. Fisk is saying something that ends with “. . . can be upsetting,” and Usha has already slid off her stool. She stands with the table between her and the teachers.

“Everyone keeps saying that,” she tells him.

“Saying what?” Mr. Fisk asks.

“That word: upset. You must be upset. Isn’t this upsetting?”

“Because people are worried about you,” Mrs. Morello puts in.

“Well, it’s a stupid word. Upset. Like something’s been knocked off a table. Like I’ve been knocked off a table.” She looks down at her crossed arms, takes a breath, uncrosses them, plants them on her hips. “What if I’m not? Upset?”

“Then you’re not upset,” Mr. Fisk says smoothly. “You can feel whatever you feel.”

“I feel angry.”

“Yes.” Mrs. Morello nods emphatically. “It’s not fair, is it?” She pats the table as if Usha’s hand were under hers, even though it’s not. “It’s not fair that she died.”

“It’s fair.” Both adults open their mouths, but Usha keeps talking right over them. “You jump off a roof, you die. That’s completely fair.”

“Depression can be difficult to—” Morello begins.

“That’s the thing,” Usha interrupts. “She didn’t say she was depressed. She didn’t say anything, that she was sad or . . . she just did it. I’m not angry at death. I’m angry at her. I was supposed to be her friend, and she just did it.”

“Usha. Please. I didn’t.” My voice is loud in the quiet room, but it doesn’t matter. I could scream, and it wouldn’t even be a whisper.

Usha doesn’t even flinch as she says to Morello and Fisk, “Sorry, but I’d rather not paint some mural. Not for you, not for the school, and not for her.”

IN LIFE, USHA WAS MY FRIEND. IN DEATH, EVAN IS. WE SPEND most nights in the library. Though the room is set windowless in the center of the ground floor, it glows with a series of dim lamps that the librarian leaves on; she also leaves books open on the tables and cart. Each night, Evan and I move from one book to the next, reading two pages about photosynthesis, then the French-Indian War, then how to build a go-cart, then a teen romance novel. We shout to each other from across the room: Found one on economics! Here’s, oh, Little Women, the haircut scene! Sometimes I suspect that the librarian leaves the books open on purpose because she knows we’re here, but Evan says that’s silly. No one knows we’re here except for us.

When I arrive in the library that night, I don’t tell Evan what Usha said about me. If I say it out loud, I’ll . . . I don’t know what. Can’t cry. Not an option. No working tear ducts. So I pretend it didn’t happen. Not just Usha refusing to paint the mural—all of it. I pretend I didn’t fall, didn’t die. I pretend that my friend Evan and I are staying late to work on a project for school, that we were accidentally locked in the library. We’ll pass the time reading random passages out loud until, in the morning, the janitor will open the door to find us blinking in the early light. He’ll say, “What are you two doing in here?”

Once Evan and I have finished our snippets of reading, we meet up at the empty spot on the far side of the stacks where the card catalog used to be. The carpet is still tamped down in a square from the old catalog’s weight, and we settle into this depression. How much did they weigh, all those slips of paper? Even the ink printed on them must have weighed something.

“Look!” Evan points at the light fixture. A moth flutters around it. “I used to stick the neck of my desk lamp out my window at night just to see the moths do that.”

“That’s depressing.”

“Why?” Evan asks.

“Because. They think they see something beautiful, but they can’t get to it. They hit the glass. They keep hitting it until either they knock themselves out or they get fried.”

He considers this. “I don’t know. I like their optimism.”

We both watch the moth for a minute, batting its head and wings against the light fixture.

“Evan? How long have you been here?”