“Should I call her back in and say you’re going to let her play with your makeup, then?”
“Not that I own much of it, but no.” Claire doesn’t need to wear makeup; she is stunning enough without it.
I walk around her room, looking through her competitive dance medals and awards. “Did you start school yet?” I ask.
“Tomorrow, like you.” Claire will be a junior this year at Cedar Falls High School.
“Excited?” I pick up the tiara she wore in last winter’sNutcrackerproduction and place it on my head. “I bet you’ll win homecoming queen this year,” I say, turning to face her and giving a mock queen wave.
She walks over and takes the crown from my head, placing it back on her bookshelf with her other collectables. “Well, don’t jinx it.”
“I would never!”
“How have you been feeling?” she asks. “About Jonah.”
Claire’s life is pure and dreamy, like the ballet she does. I could never muck it up with my problems. The thought of her knowing every little dirty detail of my life makes me feel ashamed that I could ever let her down like that in the first place. So I don’t get into my feelings or experiences with her. Big sisters give little sisters advice, not anxiety.
“I’m good, just here to pay my respects to his family and then I’ll be back at school. What are you reading?” I change the subject.
“Oh, this?” She walks back to the bed and picks up the book. “It’s so good. I’ll give it to you when I’m done. It’s about a world with dragons and magic, and a main character who loves both of these men, but they’re brothers, so she has to choose.”
“She doesn’t have to choose; she can love them both,” I joke. Claire only gives me a look. I run a finger across her dresser. “Well, I do love magical worlds that make me forget about this one,” I mutter to myself.
“Just think, this time next year, this could be you publishingsomething like this.” She holds up the book. “New York Timesbestseller, that will be you, Sloane.”
I can’t help but smile when she says it. Claire and I have dreamed up fantasy worlds together since she was old enough to speak. We talk about characters like they’re people we know. We love when they love, and we cry when they cry. We feel words on paper so deeply that they may as well be etched into our skin like a tattoo.
“I’ll sure try,” I say. And I would, for her.
“Nervous?” Adrienne asks as we stand in the receiving line at the funeral home.
“Yeah, a bit,” I reply, with the inside of my cheek now raw from the nervous biting.
“Don’t be, it’s just John and Lisa.” Jonah’s parents. The way she says it gets under my skin. I know, I know them better than you do, I want to say.
Fresh tears come to his mother’s eyes when she sees me. “Sloane?” she whispers, like she can’t believe it’s really me before her. I nod as I move in to hug her. “Thank you for coming. He really loved you.”
I’m sure he did for a time. But only in the way that two high schoolers could love each other: blindly. When the relationship makes sense because he’s the quarterback and you’re a cheerleader. Would Jonah love me now? Probably not.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I say.
I hug his dad next and express my condolences. His absent-minded nodding makes me wonder if he’s just shutting it all out. None of the faces in this line of people matter, because none are Jonah’s.
I walk up to the casket, hands shaking, and look down at hisface. He hasn’t changed much over the years. He looks just as he once did when I’d find him fast asleep on the couch after football practice. The tears I had been holding at bay slide quietly down one after the other. The first boy I ever loved, and the first boy to ever break my heart.
“I forgave you a long time ago,” I whisper.
Back at Pembroke, I can’t help but feel a bit numb to it all. I show up to my only Monday class still in my pajamas, pick up my syllabus for Professional Editing, and go back home to lie in bed. Annica and Dani both call but I ignore them. I need one more day to mourn Jonah. I take my journal out and read through his eulogy again, cringing when I get to the end. It isn’t right to keep this, not now, not after I told him I forgave him. I toss the journal in my schoolbag and get in the car. There’s a park in Pembroke, just outside campus, with tall hills of green grass and a river that runs through it. From the tallest hill you can see the whole campus.
I lie down in the grass there, looking up at the blue sky. If there is a heaven, is Jonah there? Is his spirit floating around up in the clouds looking down at us? Or is it wandering the earth? Is he here right now lying next to me? I put a hand out beside me and run it over the grass. In the movie version of my life, there’s a camera panning down above me. In my eyes I see him there, looking back at me, and my hand lies against his chest. But when the scene cuts back to camera view, it’s just me, alone in the grass.
When I decide it’s time, I take out the journal and rip out Jonah’s page. I grab the lighter from my bag and hold them both out in front of me. With a stroke of my thumb, a small flame appears just under the eulogy. I bring them closer together until the paperbegins to blacken above it, catching fire and spreading across the page. I hold it by the corner until the last of it turns to ash and blows away in the wind.
I rise early, feeling lighter than I did yesterday, like burning the eulogy removed an invisible weight from my heart. Tuesdays and Thursdays are when I have the bulk of my classes this semester, and even though it’s syllabus week, I want to make a good impression today. I stand in my full-length bedroom mirror, smoothing down the beige blazer.
“You’re going to ace all of your classes this year. You’re not going to get into trouble. You won’t let any boys get to you. You’re going to write your first book. For Claire. For you.” I write it down and tape it to my mirror. I read somewhere that writing down your goals helps you actually achieve them. I repeat the goals three times and by the end I kind of believe it.
I meet up with Annica for coffee across from the English building that houses most of our classes.
