Loving Emily (6 page)

“I don’t know,” I say. “I hope so.”

They tell me and Rosario about their day. Second grade is hard, because Maddy, who is in a different class from Molly, got the cool teacher, while Molly got Miss Cruella. Her real name’s Miss Priscilla. Molly, at age eight, is bitter.

“So, today,” Molly complains, “Miss Cruella’s yelling at Cameron Fiske, yelling
maniacally
, but then the door opens and Mr. Palmer walks in, and just like
that”—
she snaps her fingers—”Miss Cruella starts talking in this fakey, sweet voice, pretending like she was being nice all along.” She sniffs in disgust.

We talk about ways that Molly can deal with Miss Cruella.

“Why don’t you just be so bad,” Madison suggests, “that they move you to my class?” She’s struggling to cut her chicken, having a hard time, but refusing our help.

“Why would they do that?” I ask.

“Well, I mean, if Miss Cruella doesn’t want to have her anymore.”

“Mmm, I don’t think it works that way. She’ll just get into trouble.” I hand Molly the juice pitcher, and she fills her glass.

“Many times,” Ro observes in her accented English, “there are difficult people. With the teachers, you must be polite. You must obey! But,
inside,”
she points to her chest, “you are
yourself!
You still have your own mind, your own heart.”

Molly thinks about it. “But then I’m just
copping out
,” she says, using an expression she heard in one of Dad’s movies.

“It’s called
playing the game
, Moll,” I say to her. “Ro’s right. If you know how to play the game, it means you’re smart.”

We finish dinner and help Ro clear the table. Ro insists on it, not because she’s trying to get out of work, but because she feels it’s her job to raise us right.

“I made dessert,” Ro says. “Ryan’s favorite.”

She sets in front of me a piece of warm apple pie with vanilla ice cream. It’s her homemade pie, the best in the world.

“Thanks, Ro.” When I take a bite, the flavors of apple, butter, and cinnamon hit me like a surprise. This is the first food that hasn’t tasted like cardboard to me since Michael died. I see him, sitting with me at this table only a month ago. “Do you remember, Ro?” I say.

She nods, her eyes filling with tears. The thing we’re remembering is, this pie wasn’t just my favorite. It was Michael’s, too.

“I
keep wondering if Michael’s spirit is here,” I say to Jonathan. “You know, like maybe Michael’s here watching us?”

“He might be,” Jonathan says. He’s sitting across from me in the school cafeteria, with his black-framed glasses and a t-shirt that says “Tokyo.” Although Jonathan’s an LA kid, like me, his parents came here from Japan.

“You know those people who have near-death experiences?” he continues. “They actually die, and they go down a tunnel toward a light and float around in the air looking down on people. But then something calls them back to the living.”

“Maybe that’s what happened to Michael,” I say. “Except no one called him back.”

We’re in my usual corner of the cafeteria, the gathering place for guys who went to the Westside Academy for Boys before coming to Pacific Prep. On a normal day, there might be half a dozen guys sitting there.

This week, in honor of Michael, the Westside group fills three long tables. Other kids pass by the tables or stand around in groups—talking and trying to take in the news that one of us has died.

Then, I remember something. “Jonathan! Michael said he had something to tell me the night he died. He said it was bad, and I had to promise to keep it quiet. But then he didn’t get the chance to tell me.” Guilt stabs me again. I wouldn’t even listen to him.

“Do you think it was for real?” Jonathan and I both know that Michael had a flair for drama. He liked a good story.

“I don’t know. Maybe he was in trouble for drugs.”

“Do you know anyone else he might have told?” Jonathan asks.

“Not really.” Lots of people liked Michael, but I was the person he spent most of his time with.

I push away a bowl of glue-like vanilla pudding in front of me. Just the sight of it makes my throat close up. “I’ll take it,” says a sophomore at the end of the table. I’m glad I don’t have to look at it anymore.

“Remember Michael’s phone call?” somebody says. “Back in kindergarten?” We all know what he’s talking about.

Michael had made his mark early at the Westside Academy for Boys. In fact, it was the day I met him, the third day of school. I was learning my way around the place. In the Admin Building they had an old-fashioned pay phone on a wall, and as I passed by, I saw a blond boy on the phone, laughing to himself. He saw me and waved me over, pointing excitedly to the receiver. I could hear a woman’s voice saying “Hello? May I assist you?”

Michael slammed the receiver back in its cradle and said, “Run!” And we both did, me clueless as to what was going on. Near the little-kid playground, we stopped. Michael was doubled over laughing.

“Who did you call?” I said.

I had my answer within a few minutes, when the distant sound of police sirens wafted across the campus. A couple of police cars turned into the school gates and pulled up in front of the Admin Building. It was lunch hour, so kids and teachers started running in that direction.

Michael’s eyes were round as silver dollars. “Shit!” he exclaimed.

I was blown away. At age five, I couldn’t believe I knew someone cool enough to say
shit
.

“I hung up!” he said. “What are they doing here?”

We stared at each other. “Don’t tell anyone,” he said.

Silently, I shook my head.

It took a few hours to straighten everything out. Our headmaster, Mr. Stamford, sent the cops away with apologies and did an investigation into who had called 911. I never said a word. But Michael did. Too excited to keep his mouth shut, he also told Jake and Sam, saying “Don’t tell anyone!” Of course, they did, and Michael was busted by the end of the day, making his first of many visits to Mr. Stamford’s office.

After that, for me, no one was ever as much fun to hang out with as Michael. And people told him that Jake and Sam had talked. I was the only kid who had kept his secret. Within days of his famous 911 call, Michael and I were best friends.

It’s time for class. As I head for the cafeteria door, forks and knives clatter, plates clink together, and trays slam. I escape before I lose my hearing.

When I think about it later, I realize I am the only one who always eats lunch at the Westside table. The other guys often sit with new friends they made at Pacific Prep. Even Michael did, sometimes, when he was alive. It’s weird, I think, that I’m the only one who still hangs exclusively with the old crowd from grade school.

O
n Wednesday, instead of school, I go with my folks and Rosario to the cemetery for Michael’s funeral. We’ve left Maddy and Molly at home with Yolanda, Ro’s niece, who fills in for her on days when Ro isn’t working.

“We don’t
want
to see Michael get put in the ground,” they said. They’d already suffered through Michael’s near-death by overdose at our house, so it was hard on them to learn that Michael had died for real this time.

Dad’s hands tighten on the steering wheel as he drives. “I can’t imagine what Nat and Yancy are going through.”

“Ryan, I sent them a lovely arrangement of orchids,” my mom says.

That should make up for the unexpected death of their son.
I almost say it, but decide it would be tacky to get nasty on the day we come together to remember Michael. So I just think it, instead.

Rosario gives me a side-long glance, as if she’s wondering if I’m going to mouth off again.

“Ryan?” she says. “Did you have classes this year—with Michael?”

“Physics,” I tell her. I suddenly think of something. “He would have been my partner. You know, for labs and this big project second semester. Now, I’m going to have to find someone else.”

Rosario has witnessed me and Michael in action on other school projects, pulling stunts like starting a six week project four days before it’s due. I can see her mind working.

“In this class,” she asks. “There are serious boys?”

“Yes, Ro.” I give her a face like I’m mad at her, even though she knows I’m not. “There are serious boys.” Like any serious boy would want me for a lab partner.

Ro pats my hand. “Michael had a good heart,” she says. “He always made me laugh.”

Me, too.

After we park at the Rolling Meadows cemetery, we walk to the funeral site. The Weston family plot’s a really nice grassy area under some shade trees. From here, you see rolling green canyons and the spiky outline of downtown LA off in the distance.

Nat and Yancy wanted to keep this service small. They’ve agreed with Miss Anderson to an all-school memorial service tomorrow in our gymnasium. But today, there are only about thirty people, those closest to Michael and his parents.

The ceremony’s short and simple. Memories of Michael roll through my head. The tennis games. The summers on the beach—boogey boarding, surfing and throwing Frisbees.

I stare at the ground until the ceremony finally ends. My dad motions to me to leave, but I mouth, “Just a minute.” I go stand by Michael’s open grave.

I told you I’d drive you home.

I’d meant to come and say a private good-bye, but all I can think is: he’s down there. Michael’s in that little box, soon to be buried under six feet of dirt. I am trying to take long slow deep breaths to get rid of the panic I’m feeling.

Why didn’t you wait for me?

A girl walks up and stands next to me. It’s Chrissie, from the tennis club, who, on the night of his death, Michael told me he had slept with. I’m too unnerved to be polite.

“What are you doing here?” I ask. No way did Nat and Yancy invite her. They don’t even know she exists.

“I heard Bobby Baker was invited, so I just tagged along,” she says in her accent that’s pure Southern fried chicken. Bobby’s the club pro that Michael took lessons with, and he’s an old friend of the Westons.

Chrissie’s dress, and even her shoes, are purple. I notice, because it’s a funeral, and everyone else is wearing black or dark gray. She has daisies stuck in her hair.

“Michael had a beautiful spirit,” she says. She pulls a daisy from one of her curls and gently drops it into his grave.

I
t’s noon on Thursday, and Michael’s not here to have lunch with me. Just like we always played tennis on Sundays at eleven, we always ate together at school on Thursdays. I think we both liked the routine in our lives. We knew what to expect.

I’m heading toward the cafeteria when, all of a sudden, Emily’s walking toward me.”Hi, Ryan!”

“Hi.” We both stop.

A memory is coming to me from my other life, the one I had before Michael died. She and I were going to have lunch together. I remember in a vague, distant sort of way that I was excited about it.

“Are you going to eat now?” I ask.

“Yes. I brought something from home,” she says. A beat, then, “What about you?”

“Same.”

I guess I should ask her to have lunch with me.

But I always sit with Michael on Thursdays.

I don’t say anything.

“Would you like to eat lunch together?” she asks a second later. “Or maybe it’s not a good time …” Her voice trails off.

I’m hearing her as if through ear plugs. She’s far away and out of focus. I want to answer her, but my throat clenches shut like a fist. It takes me a minute to get it operating again.

“Okay,” I say. “Do you want to sit outside? In the Quad, maybe?”

I find a spot in the shade under some trees, and we pull out our lunches. I have a plastic container that Rosario packed with leftover beef stew, but I don’t bother to open it. I haven’t been hungry all week. Emily has a sack lunch with a sandwich, peach, cookie, and thermos.

I wonder if Michael’s watching us and what he thinks of me for having lunch with a cute girl the very first Thursday after his death.

“Chase wrote me that apology,” Emily says. “You want to see it?”

“Yeah.” I take the piece of paper she hands to me from her backpack and read:

Dear Emily,
I’m sorry I called you a bitch. That was innapropriate.
Also, I’m sorry I was rude at your party.
Sincerly,
Chase Cavanaugh

“Hmmpf,” I say. “He didn’t exactly strain himself.”

“No, but he did apologize about my party when he didn’t have to. Miss Anderson didn’t know about that.”

To Emily, Chase is just a party wrecker, and I’m the warrior who defended her honor. She doesn’t know that Chase and I are both killers, Angels of Death. We have that in common.

My tongue feels thick and my brain foggy. “I was supposed to play tennis with Michael. That morning after the party.”

“Did you play with him a lot?”

“Every Sunday, at least, and during the week, too, sometimes.”

She touches my hand. “You must miss him.”

“Yeah.”

Her eyes, her calmness, her hand on mine—it’s like being wrapped up in a soft blanket. The tension’s draining from my shoulders, and I can breathe again without that tight pain in my chest.

She takes a small bite from her sandwich.

Once again, I’m staring at her perfect lips. What would it be like to kiss her?

Am I allowed to be thinking this way so soon after Michael’s death? No one’s told me the rules.

“Do you ever play in tennis tournaments?” she asks.

“No. I used to, when I was a kid. But when I was about twelve I quit. My coach was all on my case about it.”

“Why?”

“He thought I could do well if I tried harder. But I didn’t want to spend four or five hours a day on tennis.”

I’m acting normal and answering questions, when what I really want to do is put my head on her shoulder and go to sleep for a long time.

“Now that … well … I’m going to have to find a new partner.” I stare down into my untouched beef stew.