is to talk to a girl
they’d probably never heard of.
“Annaleah?”
“Yeah. I’m gonna go.”
“Do you want me to come over?”
“No. I’ll talk to you later.”
I hung up the phone
and looked around my room.
There were pages from magazines
and posters on the wall,
photos of friends,
piles of dirty clothes,
and all of it seemed absurd.
It was absurd
that I had dirty laundry
and that Brian
was dead.
Idiopathic hypertrophic subaortic stenosis.
That’s what the Ledger said
was the cause of death.
The wall between the chambers
of Brian’s heart became thickened
and blocked the flow of blood.
The article said there was no way
to prevent it,
that there would have been
no symptoms,
and that it would have happened
lightning-fast
and without any pain.
They saw IHSS clearly in the autopsy.
There was no doubt about it.
All the rumors that Brian had overdosed
or that there was an outbreak of meningitis
were ruled out.
The thought of Brian on an autopsy table,
cold and alone,
except for a doctor,
makes me want to throw up.
The thought of someone
looking inside of Brian,
holding his heart,
is surreal.
How can a person be
filled with life
and then be empty?
Where does it all go?
I wonder
how many people
are walking around
with something silent
and terribly wrong inside them.
Our bodies are so complex.
So many opportunities
for something to go wrong—
it’s amazing that people
aren’t dropping dead
on the streets all day long.
I wonder if Brian knew
what was happening.
Was he scared?
Was he in pain?
Did he see his life
flash before his eyes
like in the movies?
I wish I had been there
to hold his hand,
brush the dark hair
away from his cloudy blue eyes,
whisper to him over and over
that he was loved.
But I doubt my face
was the very last one
he’d wanted to see.
Brian and I met
on the first really warm day in March.
The kind of day where you feel
as if your bones are thawing out,
and all you want to do
is be outside.
So I went for a walk
and found a sunny spot by the bay,
where I sat and stared at the water.
I don’t know how long I was there,
but it was a while.
When I finally got up,
I heard someone say,
“But I’m not done yet.”
I quickly turned around.
Not twenty feet behind me
was a guy about my age.
He was holding a sketchbook
and smiling.
He was cute,
really cute,
with dark brown hair
and blue eyes.
I couldn’t believe
that I hadn’t heard him
come up behind me.
I couldn’t believe
that he had been drawing me
the whole time.
I suddenly became self-conscious.
Had I done anything embarrassing
while I was sitting there,
like pick my nose
or fix a wedgie?
I walked toward him
and looked down at his sketchbook.
There I was,
sitting in profile on the hill.
It mostly looked like me.
The only thing that was different
was that he had put
an imaginary gust of wind in my hair
so that it floated behind me.
“I’m Brian,” he said.
“Annaleah,” I replied.
He asked which way I was walking,
and I pointed in the direction of home.
“I’m going that way too,” he said.
As we walked, we talked.
We were both juniors.
He went to the nearby high school
and I told him that my school
was a few towns over.
We tried to see
if we knew people in common,
but it didn’t work.
Most of my friends
were from school and didn’t live nearby.
Most of his friends
were from the neighborhood.
Before we split to go different directions,
he asked for my phone number.
I couldn’t believe
how easy this was.
Guys in my school acted
like I didn’t exist.
And random guys this cute
never asked for my number.
So I gave it to him.
But he never called.
The next time I saw him
was kind of like the first.
We ran into each other
two weeks later by the bay.
It was only sort of by accident.
After we met,
I started taking walks by the water,
hoping to run into him.
When we talked this time,
it was as easy
as it had been before.
We discovered
that as kids we’d both been obsessed
with Arlene’s, the local candy store,
that had since turned into a travel agency.
I told him, “During the summers when I was little,
I hung out at the pool with my friend Marissa.
We were always wandering around barefoot,
and sometimes, without even realizing,
we’d start walking and end up
at Arlene’s, more than half a mile away.
That place was magnetic.”
“I know. That candy was like crack.
They had everything: Sugar Daddies and Babies,
Charleston Chews, Laffy Taffy, Swedish Fish—”
“And candy lipsticks and cigarettes,
Now ’n’ Laters, Nerds, Fireballs, jawbreakers—”
“The Lemonheads were the best,” he said.
“I was more of a Candy Button girl.”
“Gross. You ate paper,”
he said, giving me a little shove.
I tried to imagine an eight-year-old Brian.
He’d have been scrappy.
Rail thin with scabbed knees.
“Maybe we fought
over the last Laffy Taffy,” I said.
“Maybe…”
This time when we parted,
he promised to call
and he did.
Our first date
wasn’t much of a date.
Not that Brian ever actually
used the word “date.”
When he finally called,
he asked me to “hang out.”
That afternoon, our conversation
was like an epic road trip—
but with no map to guide us
and all the time in the world
to get where we were going.
We meandered, lost our way,
doubled back.
It was nice not ha
ving
any friends in common.
I felt like I could be me
without all the crap
that came with me.
I could just show Brian
the parts of me that I wanted.
So I didn’t mention my dad,
or that my longest relationship
had been for three weeks
in camp to a boy who kissed
like he was searching my mouth
for something he’d lost,
or that even though senior year was looming,
I had only skimmed the college catalogs
my mom had been stacking on my desk.
Instead I said,
“I’m reading The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath.
But it’s going really slowly.”
“Why?” he asked. “Too boring?”
“No. The opposite.
It’s so amazing that I have to stop
every few pages to read passages twice.”
The topic of crazy people reminded Brian
of the hysterical laughing fits
he has while watching Family Guy.
“I can watch that show for hours
without even taking a bathroom break.”
“I’m that way about documentaries—
That led us to talking about vacations.
“A few years ago, my mom and I
went to Mexico, and while I was snorkeling,
I got the worst sunburn of my life.
A few days later, my back started peeling.
I looked like a molting reptile or something.”
“That’s freaking disgusting.
But get this: I was at a concert last month
and this huge, tattooed guy
had an iguana on his shoulder.
I almost barfed up my beer.”
“Do you go to concerts a lot?”
The only concert I had ever been to
was the American Idol tour a few years ago.
And that was with Marissa and both our moms.
Not something I wanted to brag about.
“Yeah. I try to.
Nothing’s better than leaning against a speaker
and feeling the bass vibrate
through my body.”
Which eventually led him to
“This one night, my friend Peter and I were
at a show in the city and missed the last train home.
So we wandered around the Lower East Side,
bought bread still hot from a bakery oven,
and watched the sun rise up over the East River.
I think it was one of the best nights of my life.”
That afternoon felt like
one of the best days
of my life.
Brian and I went on like that for weeks.
We’d go for walks or hang out
at whoever’s house had no parents.
We’d listen to music,
rarely do homework,
and mostly hook up.
He never drew me again
after that first day at the bay,
and I always wished
he had.
At home, I can’t stop
looking in the mirror
at the circles under my green eyes,
the splotchy skin, matted curly hair.
Today is definitely not
a day for mascara.
It’s not even a day
that I should be thinking
about my face
or what I am going to wear.
I look in the mirror again
and think, Brian
will never cry again
or have red eyes.
He will never laugh
or kiss
me again.
We had our first kiss
on the sidewalk
in front of my house.
As Brian leaned in,
things disappeared
one by one.
The trees.
The houses.
The cars.
The sidewalk.
Gone.
There was just
my breath
and his.
His lips
on mine.
I’ve never been to a funeral,
unless you count all the times
I buried pet hamsters
or baby birds that had fallen
from their nests.
But I’ve been visiting this cemetery
since I was little.
I don’t know how old it is,
but the oldest date legible
on the gravestones is 1831.
Some stones are so old
that I can’t read the writing—
time has rubbed them clean.
I like running my hands over those,
and wondering
what they once said.
But it’s different
when I see gravestones for babies
that had barely lived.
When I see those,
I can’t stop thinking
about how tiny and light
the caskets must have been
or how their mothers must have sounded
as they watched those caskets
disappear beneath the earth.
It’s getting late.
I need to take a shower
and get dressed.
The shower is a good place to hide.
You can’t hear the phone ring in there
or see that you have seven new texts
and four new voicemails.
Your friends cannot ask how you are.
They cannot look at you
with their pity faces.
They cannot hear you cry.
No one can see your tears,
not even you.
that I’ve ever taken a shower with.
It hadn’t occurred to me
how different it would be
from being naked while lying down.
In the shower, the lights are on,
your makeup is running off,
your hair is flat against your head.
There is nowhere
and nothing
to hide.
After a few minutes,
I got over it
and we took turns under the showerhead,
splashed water at each other,
and washed each other’s backs.
It reminded me of being a kid at the pool—
the playfulness, the games,
the water in my eyes
making everything blurry.
When Brian looked at me
and said, “Turn around,”
I did, but I was wrong
about what he wanted to do.
I could feel his mostly hairless chest,
warm against the back of my shoulders,
as I waited
for something to happen.
I was surprised to hear the sound
of shampoo squirting out of the bottle
and to feel a cold blob of it
landing on my head.
I turned around and gave Brian a squinty look.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
I asked playfully.
“Turn around,” he said with a smile.
How could something I do
almost every day without thinking
be so amazing
when someone else did it for me?
“That feels nice,” I said
as he massaged my scalp
and lathered the shampoo
through the tangle of dark hair
that fell to the middle of my back.
“Lean your head into me,” he said
as he guided my head under the water
and rinsed off the shampoo,
being careful
; not to get soap in my eyes.
Next he put in the conditioner
and combed it through with his fingers.
He rinsed my hair again, then wrung it out.
He did this
without saying
a single word.
But I didn’t need any.
I understood his silence.
After my shower,
I start to get dressed for the funeral.
I know I’m supposed to wear black,
but that seems too ordinary.
Everyone will be wearing black
and I
am not
everyone.
I start with underwear.
I open my drawer and see
the light blue ones with bumblebees.
I smile.
Brian liked those.
That was one of our jokes.
The first time we really hooked up,
he was wearing boxers
with lobsters on them.
The second time,
he had on ones with polar bears.
I couldn’t stop laughing
because I thought he only wore
boxers with animals on them.
He swore it was a coincidence
and that those were his only two,
but I always made fun of him for it.
I look in my closet
and settle on wearing
a dark purple skirt, a black shirt,
and the bumblebee underwear.
Marissa is waiting for me
in front of my house
so we can walk
to the funeral together.
She’s way more freckled from the sun
than the last time I saw her.
She is wearing a black skirt,
black shirt, and sporty silver sandals.
Her thick, straight, blond hair
is pulled into a simple ponytail.
I bet she didn’t have to think
about what to wear.
She’s a pro.
Both her grandmothers died last year.
I push open the screen door
and walk outside.
Marissa has been meeting me
at my front door
since we were little.
But never
for something like this.
“Annaleah…
are you ready?” she asks.
I hang my head down,