The police tape warns me: DO NOT CROSS.
I step back on wobbly legs and let myself cry, hard, because it’s raining and everyone here has a wet face.
I find Wil’s bedroom window, fix my gaze until Wil’s shadow appears, just for a second. I want to sprint across the lawn and dive into the house. I want to hold him so tightly neither one of us can breathe.
But I do none of those things, because I don’t get to be that person for Wil anymore. We aren’t us. So I stand in the crowd with everyone else, alone under the grieving sky.
BRIDGE
Spring, Senior Year
I lose count of how many days have passed since Wilson was murdered.
Since Wilson was murdered. The words are cold salt water filling my lungs. I haven’t even said them out loud. I turn off the news every time it comes on. I can’t stand to hear the story again: how Henney went downstairs for a drink of water and interrupted the burglar. How Wilson saved her, but couldn’t save himself. How Wil woke to his mother’s screams after the killer had vanished through the shattered glass door.
I tell Mom I don’t want to talk about it. I shrug Micah off when he leans against me on the couch and hands me the remote. The only person in the world I want to talk to about this is Wil, and I feel guilty for even having the thought. If I can’t sleep for more than a few hours at a time, if it’s hard to catch a breath when I open my eyes and remember, if I feel blank, I can’t imagine how Wil must feel. I lost the man who felt like a dad to me. Wil lost the real thing.
I’ve almost called him a million times. I’ve driven by his block every day after school, and every time there is one less cop car, one less officer, one less gawking neighbor. The crime scene tape is still wrapped around the yard, but it sags and the yellow has faded. On the news, they talk about the “hunt for a killer,” but the segments don’t last long. New, terrible things happen every day, and there’s only so much time between commercials.
On the morning of the funeral, I am full of hot sadness that boils up to the top, threatening to spill over. Mom is short-staffed at work, so she stands on the front stoop with Micah and me and gives us too-long hugs when Leigh pulls up to the curb.
At the church, I sit between Micah and Leigh in a middle pew. The benches are a worn-down wood and the high ceiling looks exactly like an upside-down boat, which I think Wilson would like. We don’t talk about the police cruisers parked out front or the two detectives standing in the back, guns and badges clipped to their belts.
Leigh slips her fingers through mine. I can feel her heartbeat through her palm, and I try not to think about how fragile we are.
“You okay?” Leigh murmurs. “Sorry. Stupid question.”
“Yeah.” My heart is racing and I’m clammy, sweating in a black wool dress that I dug out of Mom’s closet, along with a pair of hand-me-down pumps that gap on the sides. The dress is wrong—the fit, the itchy winter fabric, the occasion—but it’s all I could find. Micah’s shirt and tie are a little too big. They belonged to his dad, maybe. His hair is slicked back. He’s been quiet this morning. Sweet.
Micah leans into me. “I’ve never been to a funeral before.”
“Me neither.” I loop my arm through his and rest my head on his shoulder. He tolerates my affection for about a minute before he inches down the pew.
The church fills quickly, and it feels like the entire senior class is here. Ana shows up in a gauzy black dress. The tip of her nose is red and her eyes are glassy. She’s beautiful, I think without meaning to. By the time the organ music starts, there are people standing around the perimeter of the church, spilling down the steps and into the street. The entire congregation turns around at the same time to watch Wil and Henney enter the church and stand in front of the arched doorway. Hundreds of people trying not to see the purplish marks creeping around Henney’s collar on either side of her neck. Someone’s hands made those marks. Someone who is watching television right now, or drinking coffee. My stomach surges.
Wil is holding his mother so tightly there is no room for air between them. It’s a strange sight. I can’t remember Henney ever reaching for Wil’s hand or stroking his hair or kissing him good night. Henney has always felt like the exact opposite of my own mother. Where my mom is constantly hugging Micah and me, letting her thoughts and feelings roll off her tongue, Henney is quiet. Full of unsaid things. In all the years I’ve spent in the workshop, Henney never joined us. Every once in a while, she’d stand outside with a tray of gritty lemonade. But she never came inside. She never grabbed a piece of sandpaper.
But I think tragedy can change people chemically. It can soften them or harden them, and maybe Henney has become a different version of herself.
Wil guides his mom down the aisle. He’s an echo of his dad: tall and broad with nut-brown hair that curls a little around the temples. When he passes the detectives, his gaze stays fixed straight ahead, but the color leaks from his face and neck. He tucks Henney into the front pew and settles in next to her.
The priest begins the service. When Leigh squeezes my hand, tears pop from the corners of my eyes. I hear the sermon, ebbing and flowing like a steady wave, as I break Wil down into familiar pieces: the slope where his neck meets his shoulder; the long twiggy scar on his finger from freshman year. His dad really chewed him out for that one, even with me thinking, He’s bleeding, though; we should do something. This is what happens when you’ve been looking at—no, seeing—someone for as long as I’ve been seeing Wil Hines. You don’t see them as some seamless whole person, the way the rest of the world does. You see them broken down into the millions of essential atoms that make them Not Everyone Else.
After a final amen, Wil gets up and goes to the lectern at the front. He pulls a piece of paper from his pocket and blinks several times.
“I wanted to read part of this poem for my dad and say some words.” Wil clears his throat. His voice is dry and brittle, like dead leaves. “Under the wide and starry sky / Dig the grave and let me lie.”
I hold my breath. Watch Wil lean over the lectern, watch him grip the edges so hard his knuckles turn white. His jagged breath echoes through the church. Henney bleats a low, awful sound that knots my insides. Wil looks up, his eyes staring blankly at the back of the room and rakes his hands through his hair, like he’s trying to claw the sadness from his brain.
In the quiet, every little noise is amplified. All the uncomfortable noises we emit because silence itself is terrifying: the coughs and sniffs and the creak of wood under shifting live bodies.