“I think so,” Maya replied. “And you know what else isn’t expensive? Those little white lights, like Christmas ones, that we could string up. I wonder if they sell them in summer.”
“Even if they don’t,” Ambrose said, “someone has to have some in their attic. We’ll ask around.”
“Oh, I love this!” Maya said, clapping her hands, a smile on her face. “I mean, I know we wanted to keep things simple, but...”
“...this will be simply beautiful,” Lauren finished for her.
Maya looked like she might tear up again, or already was. “Thank you,” she said to Ambrose, clearly meaning it. Then she looked at me. “Seriously.”
“Oh,” I said, holding up a hand. “This is all him.”
And it was. I was acutely aware of this for the next forty-five minutes, as I finished the work day with them so close by, excitedly planning away. I focused on my packing, getting the tissue wrapped just right, clearly labeling each bin with its contents. Everything in its place, just as it should be, even as this crazy, last-minute event came together only steps away. But as they left at five, still chattering excitedly, and I locked up alone, I couldn’t help feeling like I’d lost. What, though, at least this time, I couldn’t say.
CHAPTER
21
WHAT DOyou say when there’s nothing left to tell? Just the final details, the flimsy bits, or maybe not so flimsy at all, that round out the end of the story. This is the part no one ever wants to share. But here it is anyway.
I ditched school after first period the day of the shooting. I just couldn’t stay there, looking at my phone’s screen, empty of messages and calls from Ethan. The guard wasn’t at the school parking lot gatehouse when I left, but if he had been, I don’t even know what I would have said, what magic words I could have summoned to win my release. I was speechless, silent, and all I could do was cry. And I didn’t even know anything for sure yet.
That would come later, hours after I showed up tear-stained and shaky at the office, giving William what he would later call, when he told his part of this story, “the scare of his life.” He was not a news person, and my mother never paid attention to anything on TV or radio other thanDaybreak USA, which she’d cut off early that morning. So they’d had no idea what was going on, instead immersed in the details of their bucking bronco wedding. We’d had to go next doorto the stationery store, where they had a TV in the back, all of us crammed into their tiny office watching live coverage. I remember my mother kept looking at me, her face more worried than I had ever seen it, while William held my hand, his other arm over my shoulder. So close, and yet nothing, and no one, could get to me.
I tried calling Ethan every few minutes, and checked his Ume.com page, where other people were also begging him to update. He’d last logged in the night before, posting a picture of his cleats after a particularly muddy practice. I’d look at them a million times.
Later, at home, after a pizza arrived that no one ate, my mom and William kept leaving the room for huddled conversations of which I caught only a word here and there: “contact,” “question,” “interfering,” “necessary.” They asked if I had a number for Ethan’s parents, an address, anything. I didn’t. But even if I had, I wasn’t sure I could have called at that point. Ethan would never have made me worry. He would have gotten in touch, somehow, as soon as possible. So I knew, by then. But I didn’t want to know.
It sounds so weird now. All of this, in retrospect, seems tear-streaked and damp. How I could sit so silently in front of a TV for hour upon hour, fingers gripping my own fingers, until that moment early the next morning when the names of the victims were released. There were four before him, and, I knew by the math, two after. I didn’t hear those, though. When I saw his name on the screen, everything went black.
It would be days later that I’d finally piece together the whole story. Partly from a friend of the family who answeredthe phone at the Carusos’ when William finally got through and explained who he was. Some from the news stories that put together timelines, marking the exact spot in the gym where Ethan had come running after hearing the shots that killed two female volleyball players. He’d tried to talk the guy into putting down the gun, witnesses who looked to be in shock themselves told Patrick Williams, who went to Brownwood to report live on location. I’d sat with my mother watchingDaybreak USAso many mornings, and now, suddenly, they were talking about someone I knew. Someone I loved. The picture of Ethan all the news outlets showed, provided by the family, was one I hadn’t seen, a candid from junior prom the year before. Every time it went up on-screen, I wanted to believe, somehow, it wasn’t him after all. Like if I didn’t know that Ethan, it couldn’t be mine who was gone.
I watched everything I could, even after the major networks moved on. Nothing about the shooter, though. His name and details were of no interest to me, not deserving of a single breath I was still struggling to take. But the special reports on the victims, details true or not (“Ethan Caruso loved soccer, lacrosse, and, his friends say, Lexi Navigator”) I soaked in like water. And when they weren’t on, and I was alone, I ran over our own story, that one night, again and again in my mind. Every bit, from the minute I stepped into the damp sand until he drove away, a flash of red through those whirling revolving doors. Like if I repeated it enough, I could conjure him up, bring him back, and this would all be the bad dream I wished it was.
I wanted to go to the service. When it was announcedon the memorial page his friends had put up, I immediately made plans to make the trip, William and my mother offering to come with me. The night before we were to leave for the airport, though, I started throwing up, the sickest I had ever been. It was like my grief was toxic, turning my very body against me. After I passed out walking from the bathroom back to my bed, my mom put her foot down and told me I had to stay home. I didn’t speak to her for three days.
They had a group memorial that was televised, a “healing event” for the community. Students held candles, teachers linked arms, everyone cried. The lacrosse coach, between his own sobs, talked about how, on that morning, he’d asked Ethan to his gym office to tell him about some interest from a college recruiter. When Lexi Navigator, in a plain black dress and minimal glitter, was introduced to sing her song about loss, a favorite of one of the victims, I held my pillow to my mouth and screamed.
There were more details. Like how I missed a full week of school, staying in my bed and sobbing. The way Jilly came by every afternoon and crawled in beside me, her arms around my waist, holding me as I tried to sleep. The brightness of the sky outside, the filtered sunlight through the tree just past my window, the most beautiful fall, everyone agreed. It probably was. But even though I was there, and lived it, I couldn’t have said so. The dead aren’t the only ones who vanish: you, too, can disappear in plain sight if enough is taken from you. I was still missing, in many ways. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to be found.
CHAPTER
22
I KNOW YOU WANT NO PART OF THIS, BUT I NEED A PUNCHBOWL.
This was the third text I had gotten from Ambrose, and it was only nine a.m. So much for my bonus, unexpected non-working Saturday. I picked up my coffee, taking a sip, and reminded myself that Jilly and I had an entire day planned at the pool together. It wouldn’t be relaxing—nothing was with Crawford, KitKat, and Bean in tow, as they would be—but at least I’d be off the clock. If I turned off my phone.
NOBODY LIKES PUNCH, I texted back.DO PITCHERS OF SOMETHING INSTEAD. LESS MESSY/GERMY.
In response, he sent me a thumbs-up, the same response I’d gotten when called earlier to advise on one of those plastic aisles you roll out for everyone to proceed down (they never stay put and look awful) and the merits of mushroom appetizers versus meatballs (as one of our favorite caterers, Delia, always said: vegetarians aside, everyone loves meatballs). It was clear that in the last fourteen hours or so this impromptu, easy backyard wedding had morphed intosomething more complicated. And who needed that?
Not me, I thought as I found my bathing suit and pulled it on, then tied my hair up in a ponytail. I was searching the hall closet for some sunscreen when my phone rang. I sighed, not in the mood for more questions, but then I saw it was my mother.
“Hey,” I answered, “how’s life in the tropics?”
“Wonderful,” she replied. I blinked, surprised, then looked at the screen again, confirming it was in fact her I was talking to. “It’s just so relaxing and gorgeous. I should have done this years ago.”
This time, I looked at the clock. With the time difference, it was just after ten, which meant either she was still loopy from a late night before or she was already hitting the mimosas.When in Rome, I thought. “Wow,” I said. “I have to say I’m surprised, with how much you resisted.”
