Authors: Samantha Schutz
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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,
shake it.
I am not
ready.
met at the local pool
when we were five.
It was the same summer
that my mom and I moved here.
The story goes:
One of us had a box of Nerds.
The other one asked for some.
Nerds were shared.
Best friends status was established.
We can never agree
which one of us had the candy.
She insists it was me,
but that’s not how I remember it.
And since then,
we’ve had sleepovers,
told secrets,
and talked on the phone
late into the night.
We were together when we
smoked our first cigarette,
stole lipsticks from the drugstore,
watched horror movies that made us scream,
once laughed so hard
that we actually pissed ourselves,
and blew out birthday candles
for the last eleven years in a row.
But walking to the cemetery
for Brian’s funeral
is not
something I thought
we would ever do.
and we begin.
Each time I take a step,
it feels like I am not
making any progress—
like someone is pulling the church
farther and farther away from me.
But it doesn’t matter
how I feel.
Marissa moves me forward.
She is in charge of my body.
And even though this is the first time
I have seen or talked to her in weeks,
I could not imagine doing this
with anyone but her.
As we enter the church,
I walk past a bunch of guys
that I’ve seen Brian hang around with,
but never officially met.
I look at them and wonder,
Did Brian ever talk about me?
Do you even know who I am?
One of the guys looks up as I walk by.
He holds my gaze for a moment,
but then looks down again.
His eyes tell me nothing.
both times briefly,
and I wonder if his funeral
counts as the third time.
Since Brian and I started
hanging out a few months ago,
Marissa’s listened to me complain
about how Brian would disappear
for days and not call.
How he’d forget we made plans.
How sometimes I felt
like I was just a girl
he wanted to make out with,
not make a future with.
But there were good things
about Brian too.
Marissa never seemed
to want to hear about them.
She insisted
that I was wasting my time with him.
So when Marissa refused
to listen to any more of my stories,
I talked to Joy or Parker.
Like when I told them about
the time Brian’s parents went on vacation,
and I lied and told my mom
that I was sleeping at Joy’s.
That night Brian and I
got into his bed and watched
A Clockwork Orange
, his favorite movie.
The house was silent except for the TV
and our occasional voices.
I pretended it was our house.
That we were married.
That he loved me.
And I wondered,
Is this how it might feel
one day for real?
Perfect and normal.
I wished it would always be like this—
ordinary.
In the morning,
we sat at his dining room table
and ate Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
He brought out the bowls and spoons,
and I brought out the milk.
Up until then,
I’d only seen Brian eat pizza and chips—
things that didn’t require utensils.
So I was surprised
to see how he held his spoon.
Instead of just curling his pointer finger
around the spoon’s stem,
he used his middle finger too.
It was really cute.
I don’t know why, but it was.
Maybe because it made him seem
like a little kid
or maybe because now I knew
one of his subtle quirks.
And that made him closer to me.
His casket is up by the altar.
It’s the first thing I see
when we walk in
and it’s impossible
not to stare right at it—
especially because it’s open.
Marissa asks,
“Do you want to say good-bye?”
Her question is ridiculous.
I said good-bye to Brian
after we hung out
a few days ago.
He was fine.
There was no reason to think
I would never see him again.
and I don’t.
I haven’t seen him in days
and I miss him—
miss his face.
But I’m scared.
Scared of what he’ll look like.
Scared because this means it’s over.
That he is gone.
That he is not
coming back.
This is a different kind
of good-bye.
It has not shifted
since we met at my house.
I feel her grip tighten a little
as we walk down the aisle.
We are like a father and bride
on her wedding day.
We move slowly.
Both anticipating,
and maybe also fearing,
what is at the end
of this slow, careful march.
But my father and I
will never
take this walk.
And all the fantasies
I’ve had of Brian
meeting me at the altar
never looked like this.
As we get closer to him,
I feel my face and body start to burn.
It’s a cold burn.
My body is prickling.
It feels like there are spines
poking through my skin.
I used to get a similar feeling
whenever I’d get near Brian.
But this is different.
It used to be pleasant, tingly.
This is painful, sharp.
I look down into the casket.
My stomach contracts.
Is that really Brian?
He doesn’t look right.
It’s like a wax version of him.
His coloring is off.
He’s in a suit.
There is a cross around his neck.
I am inches from him,
but there is no smell.
No clean laundry.
No deodorant.
No hair gel.
Nothing.
There is
nothing.
I do not feel
Marissa’s arm.
I do not feel
the floor.
I do not feel
my body.
I want to burrow into his neck
and feel the warmth,
but this Brian looks cold.
This Brian
isn’t the one I know.