Mr. Cleve let me skip school for Chantal’s funeral, even though it was only supposed to be for the eighth graders and up.
“It’ll give you closure. Since you girls shared a room and all,” Mr. Cleve explained when he came to see how I was settling in at the new house. The word closure seemed like it didn’t fit in his mouth. It looked like somebody else had told him to say it. Probably the psychologist.
I didn’t have a proper dress to wear to the service, so Mrs. Waylene, my new housemother, said I could go back to the brown brick house and look in the castoff closet there. I found a dark-green sweaterdress one of the Super Tramps had ditched and some maroon tights from Chantal’s drawer, and I changed in our old room. Her black clogs, still arranged under the bed, were too big for me, but I slid my feet in them anyway.
When I got back, Mrs. Waylene made a clucking sound.
“Should I not wear the clogs?” I asked.
“No, honey. You look just great,” she said and went to call the rest of the girls.
The group of us drove to Hollyhock Community Church in silence. They’d set up the white casket on some kind of stand that had been covered with a white cloth. Vases of plastic flowers and pots of greenery ringed the casket. I was pretty sure they’d gathered them from the houses at the ranch. I recognized a big potted palm Mrs. Bobbie kept in our old dining room.
Mrs. Bobbie and the other house moms were bustling back in the fellowship hall, setting out deviled eggs and ham rolls and sugar cookies for after the service. Somebody said Chantal’s aunt and uncle were there, and there were a few grown-ups sitting in the pews who I didn’t recognize, but I couldn’t say for sure. As far as I knew, Omega’s story was the gospel truth: Chantal’s parents were dead, and she had been alone in the world. Part of me did hope her whole family was gone, so there would be no one to see me there, walking around in her clogs.
The top half of the white casket was propped open, and the preacher quietly announced to all the kids that we were to view the body. Everybody was extra quiet and reverent and got in line without the usual rowdiness. Then we all filed down the aisle. The choir director was playing the piano, something really sad and pretty, and there was only a low murmur of the kids’ voices under that. When it was my turn to walk past the casket, I looked down at Chantal.
She lay nestled in swaths of white satin, her eyes closed, hands folded over her chest. She had on a lot of foundation and even pencil on her eyebrows, which I’d never seen on her when she was alive. Her greenish hair had been curled and fanned out around her. She didn’t look alive, not at all. She looked more like a Chantal mannequin. A Chantal doll.
The white satin made me think of Mrs. Bobbie and all the fabric she kept in bolts stacked around her room. I pictured her cutting a length of white satin and gently arranging it around Chantal, making sure she was safely tucked in for the long sleep ahead. The girl looked warm in there. Safe. Like she’d actually fallen straight from the top of the mountain down into the pillowy satin casket, her hair fanning out like an angel’s.
She’d had a seizure—an epileptic seizure because she’d forgotten her medicine—and then she’d stumbled and fallen from a high rock ledge. It was nighttime and she’d wandered away from the campsite. Later, after I’d seen the psychologist, the police would blame Mr. Al, but Shellie told me it hadn’t been his fault. After everyone had gone back to their tents for bed, she and Tré had snuck out with him. They’d hiked up the gorge to smoke some weed, and that’s when Chantal had woken up and come looking for them.
When she showed up, Mr. Al told Chantal to go back to her tent and go to bed. But she never made it. A parks search party had found her the next afternoon in a crevasse near the base of the falls. She was dead, but hadn’t been that way for long. That was the worst part. She’d lived a good long while after she hit the bottom.
It took twenty-seven crew members from the Fire and Rescue to get her up. The doctors who examined her said she’d had a grand-mal seizure, then probably lost her footing. She’d tumbled over eighty feet to the bottom of the falls. Broken her neck and her back. Smashed the back of her skull to smithereens.
Since I’d heard the news, I hadn’t been able to eat. My stomach had been in knots every day, and each night, as I drifted to sleep, I pictured Chantal lying at the bottom of the cliff, mangled and dying. I knew something no one else knew, that she’d had the seizure because she hadn’t taken her meds. And she hadn’t taken them because I’d stolen them.
But at Mrs. Waylene’s house, in my new twin bed, there wasn’t anyone kicking my mattress, so I slept surprisingly well. Eventually, the stomachaches stopped too, and I got my appetite back. I liked Mrs. Waylene and her husband, Mr. Bob, and the other girls in the new house.
All of it worried me, though. What kind of person could sleep so soundly, could be happy and even laugh, knowing what they had done? A monster, I guessed, which was what I had become.
Inside the church, the pianist hunkered over the keys, playing with an extra measure of gusto. The tune was so melancholy and beautiful, tears pooled in my eyes. I realized I was gripping the edge of the casket.
“It’s from Anastasia,” a girl next to me whispered. I’d never seen her before. It was possible she went to our school and she and Chantal had been friends, although I couldn’t remember seeing Chantal hanging out with anyone.
“It was her favorite movie. She knew all the words,” the girl said.
All the words in the whole movie or just the songs? I wanted to ask but didn’t. I’d had no idea Chantal liked Anastasia. We never watched movies. Mrs. Bobbie thought they were a bad influence on us.
“Did you live with her?” the girl asked.
I nodded.
“Did she ever talk about Cynthia? That’s me. Her cousin. My mama was trying to get her to come live with us, before she . . .” She nodded at the casket.
I didn’t know what to say. My ears were ringing now, so loud I couldn’t hear the Anastasia song.
“Hey, stop,” the girl said then.
I looked down. My hand had stretched out into the white sea of satin and taken ahold of one of Chantal’s green-tinted curls. Alarmed, I snatched my hand back, then broke out of the line and ran, across the church, weaving my way through the throng of kids and adults, until I found a door. I pushed against it and burst out into the sunshine.
I stood in a parking lot full of pickups and beat-up Cadillacs, dusted red from dirt roads. I blinked in the bright sun, trying to decide which direction to run. The church was a long way from the ranch and not all that close to town either, so my choices were limited. If I didn’t want to go back inside there, I would have to hide.
I spun, looking around for a spot to duck under until the coast was clear. That’s when I saw them: Omega and Mr. Al, on the far end of the parking lot, standing in the shade of a mimosa tree that had lost all its fern-shaped leaves, so that only the brown seed pods remained, clinging to its spindly branches.
Under the tree, Omega’s head was tilted up to Mr. Al’s. She wore a black off-the-shoulder dress. Where she’d gotten it, I couldn’t imagine; I’d never seen such an exotic thing in the closet. Mr. Al was dressed in a dark suit and tie, and his floppy hair was, for once, slicked back. He kept starting to reach out to touch her, then putting his hand back in his pocket. I thought of Mrs. Bobbie, busy in the church kitchen. She would be pissed if she could see the two of them, standing so close. Even I could feel the strange tension in the air.
The wind blew, and the mimosa pods rattled like bones over their heads. Omega was talking loudly—the consonants rat-a-tatting like gunshots across the parking lot. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but I could tell she was upset. She shook her head violently, and then she started beating against Mr. Al’s chest with her fists. I couldn’t move. I was mesmerized. I’d forgotten all about touching dead Chantal’s hair and the sad, lovely piano music and her friendly cousin.
And then they shifted toward each other. And for a second, they looked like kindling sticks laid for a fire, their bodies making an upside-down V. It occurred to me that Omega no longer seemed like one of the Super Tramps—a high-school girl talking to her foster father—but like an adult, just like Mr. Al. Like Everlane pleading with Dex.
Especially when Mr. Al caught her by the wrists, and she wilted against him. Then when she lifted her face, I saw her reach up and press her lips against his. He jerked back, reeled back almost, releasing her from his grip. She let out an anguished sob, stumbled through the cars toward the highway, and started running in the direction of town.
After a moment or two, Mr. Al turned and lumbered toward the church. When he caught sight of me, his face broke into a sad smile.
“Hey there, Daphne-Doodle-Do. Why aren’t you inside?”
I lassoed him with my arms and let him hold me. His spicy aftershave-and-coffee smell comforted me. I wanted to stand there with him forever, my face pressed into the stiff material of his suit jacket. I didn’t feel one bit cold. Just electrified and scared by what I’d witnessed.
“You know, Daphne, what just happened—” he started.
“Is Omega your girlfriend?” My voice was muffled in his jacket.
He let out a harrumph sound, but I couldn’t tell if he was laughing or it was something else. I stayed very still, hoping he wouldn’t let go. He circled his hand between my shoulder blades. “No, darling. I love her, just like I love you. But not that way.”
“Why did she kiss you?”
He was quiet for a moment. “She’s confused. And she’s sad,” he said.
The idea of Omega being sad felt like the world being folded up with me inside of it. I couldn’t bear it.
“We should go get her in your car,” I said. “She’ll miss the funeral.” And the food afterward, in the fellowship hall, I was thinking too.
Mr. Al let out a heavy sigh. “Mrs. Bobbie has the keys.”
It was the last thing I wanted to do, tear out of his embrace, but somebody had to go after Omega. Somebody had to cheer her up. So I did. I wove my way through the cars in the parking lot and, when I got to the road, kicked off the clogs and started running as fast as I could in the direction I’d seen Omega go.