But I do want to know who’s in my kitchen. I walk downstairs toward the sound of pots banging and find Aunt Penny elbow-deep in pancake mix.
“I’m making pancakes,” she helpfully points out.
I try to force a smile, but it’s like those muscles don’t work anymore.
Aunt Penny angrily whisks the pancakes with a cheerful smile. It’s so bizarre to see her smiling right now that I sink into a chair at the kitchen table and just watch her. Paige walks in moments later.
“Hope you’re hungry!” Aunt Penny says.
With a flourish she places a heaping platter of crumbly pancakes on the table. Paige bravely forks one onto a plate and cuts a small bite, while Penny eagerly watches.
“Well?” she asks as Paige swallows.
“You probably should stick to acting,” Paige finally says.
Aunt Penny’s smile breaks away and she dissolves into tears that leave her gasping for breath.
“I was just joking!” Paige cries. “Oh my God, I didn’t think you’d get so upset.” She looks to me for help.
“I just don’t get it,” Aunt Penny hiccups, messy tears streaming down her face. “Why Gwen?”
I plug my ears like I’m five. I just don’t want to hear this. But of course I do anyway.
“What have the police said?” Paige asks.
“That it was a random crime,” Penny answers, shaking her head. “A mugging gone bad.”
It’s a ridiculous story, but with just one glance I know it’s the story Paige and I will run with.
Aunt Penny tears at her hair. “How could she leave me? I don’t know how to do this without her. I don’t know how to raise a kid!” She takes a deep breath and sobers up, chewing on the corners of her fingernails as she paces the kitchen. “My apartment is too small for three girls, let alone four. I’ll have to move in here. I wonder what the mortgage payments are for a place like this. Indie, do you know what the mortgage payments are? Oh God, why did I quit the Bistro? The tips weren’t that bad. I wonder if they’d take me back if I apologized about the whole plate incident.”
And then it hits me. Aunt Penny is my new guardian.
It turns out funerals are the hottest social event next to prom. Hundreds of people show up, the whole of Fairfield High crammed into the pews and packed along the walls like sardines in a can. Devon sits a few rows behind me, dressed in the same dark navy suit and salmon tie he wore to his uncle Leonard’s funeral last June. A few spots over from him is Bianca. If this had all happened a month ago, it’d be her sitting next to me instead of Paige. The few feet separating us feel like miles. And though I’d never give up Paige’s friendship—not in a million years—a small part of me wonders if this tragedy will be what brings Bianca and me back together. If this will be the one thing that makes her realize what a terrible friend she’s been, makes me somehow find it in my heart to forgive her. But I shake off that thought almost as quickly as it comes.
The priest drones on in his heavy monotone, and I don’t feel bad about tuning him out. Mom wasn’t even Catholic and wouldn’t have wanted a church funeral—a fact Aunt Penny just couldn’t understand and I didn’t have the energy to fight. And so I count the panes in the stained-glass mural, wondering who does that for a living—stains glass for churches—so that I don’t have to think about what I’m doing. Which is attending Mom’s funeral.
At some point, the priest must have said my name, because everyone is looking at me, and Aunt Penny gently nudges me forward. The church grows so silent you can’t even hear a single rush of breath as I reach the altar. I pull my carefully folded note out of my pocket, but I can’t get past “My mom was,” no matter how many times I try. The entire congregation erupts into sobs at the sight of my raw emotion. It’s almost like they’re here because they care about me. Almost.
I stay just long enough not to be rude, carefully avoiding Bianca and Devon (I don’t want to talk to them in a vulnerable state, lest I end up forgiving them both), and then I slip out the back and wait in the car until Aunt Penny and Paige find me.
And then Friday. There are no more official funeral preparations to take care of, and the casseroles have stopped coming, and everyone’s left the house—even Paige, because she isn’t as lucky as me and doesn’t get a whole week of bereavement leave—and Aunt Penny’s off taking a business class to learn how to run an occult shop she has no interest in running but has to because how else is she going to raise me? And I sit down at the kitchen table and realize that Mom really died. That she’ll never come back. And that I am alone. Cold hands reach out for me, threaten to pull me into a dark place where I might never escape, and I let them.
It’s like I’m trapped in a block of ice that nothing can penetrate. Everything around me is just a blur of color, a flash of movement, garbled sounds I can’t quite decipher and don’t want to. Time passes like sludge.
I burrow under the covers of Mom’s bed and breathe in her scent, which still clings to the fabric. And then I take out my cell phone and listen to Mom’s voice-mail message—“You’ve reached Gwen. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can”—over and over and over, until sleep finally claims me.
Aunt Penny comes in every now and then to leave food on the dresser and to try to coax me to come downstairs for this reason or that, but I don’t get out of bed. I don’t care if I starve. I wish I’d died too.
I wake at an ungodly hour to the sound of low murmurs outside the bedroom door. I sit up and rub the sleep out my eyes just as the door swings open, and Aunt Penny and Paige are there.
“I’ve had enough of this,” Aunt Penny says. Paige just shrugs apologetically.
I lie back down and roll onto my side, defensively pulling the covers up to my chin. But Aunt Penny marches to the end of the bed and yanks down the covers so that I’m exposed in my pajamas.
“Hey!” I yell, sitting up and reaching for the blanket.
“Look, I’m sorry to have to do this,” she says, holding the blanket away from my reaching grasp. “I know what happened was terrible, really terrible, but I care about you, and I can’t watch you do this. It isn’t healthy. Yes, your mom died, and I’m sorry about that—you don’t know how sorry I am. But you have to get out of bed. And for God’s sake, woman, you have to shower.”
Paige throws open the blinds, and offensively bright light streams in the window. It’s almost like she’s on Aunt Penny’s side or something.
“Breakfast is waiting downstairs,” Aunt Penny says. Reading my thoughts, she adds, “It’s takeout from Coffee Bean, so you have no excuse.”
Paige follows her. The door clicks shut, and I’m left gaping at the empty space. I have the feeling that I should be mad—it’s only been a week since my mom was murdered. But I’m not mad.
I amble downstairs toward the scent of coffee and fresh bagels. In the kitchen, Paige and Aunt Penny have their backs to me as they bicker about which station to watch on the little TV. They speak to each other in the way that only longtime friends do, and I have to wonder how long they’ve been doing this—conspiring to get me well. Something sparks inside me. I hadn’t thought it was possible, but a tiny hole has chipped away at the ice block, and a sliver of light streams inside.
23
Bereavement leave is over, and I have to return to school. (Okay, so technically the leave was over a few days ago, but I guess I just needed more time to grieve the death of a parent. I must be weird.)
Following my little experience returning to school after Jarrod’s party, I’m used to staring. Staring I’m prepared for. Staring I might be okay with. It’s the pity I can’t stand. Every person I see in the halls of Fairfield High drops what they’re doing when I near so they can show me their best abused-puppy impressions. People I don’t even know squeeze my shoulder, pat my back, mumble apologies as I pass through crowds.