“No.” Her mother sighed and sat down on the bed. “Matt’s parents aren’t talking and no one has seen or heard anything.”
“What about the fisherman?”
“Nothing. The police think he might have been a homeless person. They haven’t been able to ID him. They aren’t convinced that Matt was the one who killed him either.”
“Can you stop saying his name please? Just hearing it makes me feel sick.” Dani stared down at her hands and picked at her nails. “I don’t know if I can handle going to the funeral today.”
“It’s up to you, sweetie. I understand if it’s too much to bear. But I think going will help give you some closure.”
“I can’t look Tommy’s parents in the eye,” Dani said. “He’s gone because of me.”
“He’s gone because that, that—lunatic—was fixated on you.” Her mother rose from the bed and walked toward the window again.
“I don’t know why,” Dani said. “I didn’t lead him on. I told him to leave me alone. I’m not special.”
“You’re special to me.”
“Mom.” Dani huffed. “That’s not helpful.”
“Have you given any thought to what we talked about? You know, after your granddad died, I fell into a deep depression. Counseling really helped me …”
“No.”
“I wish you would.” Her mother said, her forehead a lined valley of worry. “Have something to eat, get a shower, and then see how you feel about going to the funeral. Sound okay?”
“Sure.”
Her mother kissed her on the cheek and threw yet another harrowed glance as she exited the bedroom. Dani exhaled a long, slow breath as she watched dust particles skitter through the blinds in the golden morning light. Every limb in her body felt like dead weight, but her head was light—detached as though with one good tug it would float up to the ceiling. She wished the bed would swallow her whole. How was she supposed to live with the pain and the guilt of being alive? With the fear of always having to look over her shoulder? Leaving the house knowing that he was still out there felt nearly impossible. Still, Dani knew she had to make an effort to show her face at the funeral, for Tommy’s sake at least. She didn’t believe in ghosts or the afterlife or anything like that, but just in case she was wrong, she wanted him to know that she cared.
Whatever chill pills they had given her at the hospital weren’t actually helping with her mood. The medication only served to make her feel tired and dizzy. Drugs only stopped her from feeling anything. She didn’t deserve to be comfortably numb as Tommy and Kyle and the fisherman laid in their graves. She didn’t deserve to be happy and safe and alive as their families grieved.
Dani kicked her legs over the edge of the bed, stood up, and swayed on her feet. She tugged the elastic waist of her pajama pants up and realized that they sat a little lower on her hips than usual. She didn’t have much interest in eating since the attack. Everything made her nauseous. She grabbed a towel from off the back of her vanity chair and padded toward the bathroom, knowing that even a session with her favorite Herbal Essences shampoo wouldn’t help her feel clean again. Time was all she had now, and time was what it would take for her to come back to the world again.
As she stepped into the hot shower, Dani knew that she couldn’t sit back and hide anymore. She needed to snap out of it. She needed to fight. Dead or alive, Matt Vickers wasn’t going to get the best of her. Her friends weren’t going to die in vain. She was still above ground and breathing, whether she deserved to be or not. She wasn’t going to waste her second chance. She rubbed a handful of botanical shampoo into her scalp, but no matter how hard she scrubbed, or how much aromatic body wash she rubbed into her skin, Dani couldn’t feel fresh and renewed. Matt Vickers had tainted her forever. His presence would always linger just under the surface of her skin.
The turnout at Tommy’s funeral was staggering, with a crowd that was eerily similar to their high school graduation. Hundreds of people lined up to pay their respects; the same people who gave heartfelt interviews to the local news. The same people who erected a shrine in his honor outside of Cool Flix, leaving floral arrangements, candles, balloons, stuffed animals, and notes of love and friendship. The entire town mourned Tommy right alongside Dani. She was surrounded by family and friends, and yet, she never felt more isolated and alone.
Only a few weeks before, the Sunset High graduating class of ‘98 had been electric, buzzing with all the possibilities of what the future would bring. Many of the faces that filled the seats at Bayside Funeral Home were the same in attendance at that-not-so-long-ago graduation, but the tone was far more somber. Dani and her fellow classmates had been a smiling sea of future hopeful doctors, lawyers, and corporate professionals, bolstered by the empty promises that their teachers and school counselors told. They were all encouraged to take out hefty college loans tomake their dreams a reality, to go for their dreams and passion and reach for the stars. And then after college there would be career, mortgage, marriage, motherhood. Her life and the life of her fellow classmates had been neatly laid out for them, their societal expectations clear. Even then, Dani was uncertain about whether that kind of traditional path was really for her. Now her future was more uncertain than ever.
Dani and her family were seated at the funeral in a row near the front, a fact for which she was grateful. She didn’t really care that everyone from her graduating class would all be whispering about her to her back; in fact, she preferred it. She was used to high school gossip, but looking everyone in the eye would have been far too difficult.
From their seats, she had a clear, direct view of her dead boyfriend. It was surreal to see Tommy lying in his casket, his face waxy and unrecognizable as the young man she loved. The horrible gash on his neck had been expertly covered up with a collared shirt and tie, but his skin was plastic and pale, like a mannequin at the mall. Dani couldn’t even cry; instead, she sat in a half-medicated daze throughout the entire funeral with her parents at her side, her expression as dead and emotionless as her heart.
Tommy’s parents wouldn’t even look at her. Dani suspected that they didn’t care much for her the entire time she and Tommy were dating, but now? Now she wouldn’t blame them for hating her. Tommy had told her how his mother didn’t like it that they were spending so much time together before he was set to leave for college. There would have been tension every time he came home to visit at the holidays and during spring and summer break when she and Tommy’s parents would be jockeying for his attention. Now, because of her, he would never come home at all. Even though his parents wouldn’tacknowledge her presence at the funeral, a pair of red-rimmed, shining eyes looked her way.
Melody.
Tommy’s little sister sat next to his parents, her gaze locked in on Dani with an accusatory death stare. Melody was only eight years old, but she was smart as a whip and shared Tommy’s same sandy brown hair and piercing dark irises. She acted like his little shadow anytime Dani visited their home, always hanging on Tommy and trying to get between them. Melody wiped a tear from her soft, pink cheek as the funeral director began the service. Dani flinched and held up a hand to wave, but Melody didn’t wave back.
Her cheeks flamed with shame as Dani glanced away from the grieving little girl toward the treeline surrounding the cemetery. She took some comfort in the fact that her boyfriend was being laid to rest in a beautiful, peaceful location. Tommy’s family was wealthy and had purchased a plot for everyone in the family at the prestigious funeral home. They certainly didn’t expect for their eldest child to be the first to go in the ground.
The funeral director took to a podium next to Tommy’s casket. Dani had never been to a funeral before and expected the place to be run by gaunt figures dressed in black with gnarled fingers and bloodless features. Her favorite childhood films had reinforced the notion that only ghouls could work with the dead. She was surprised to see a kindly looking middle-aged woman tap at the microphone and begin the eulogy of her dead boyfriend.
“Today we come together to honor the life of Thomas Harding, Jr.,” the woman said. “Tommy, as he was fondly known by his family and friends, was a young, bright man who brought joy to everyone he knew. He was a son, a brother, and a friend to many. We welcome you all to come forward and share your words and memories of Tommy today.”
Seaside High’s basketball coach took the stand first. Dani tuned him out as he droned on and on about Tommy’s scores and stats. She had only attended a few of his games, a fact that she was now ashamed of. Sports weren’t her thing, but she should have gone to a few games to support him. She gritted her teeth as the coach began to cry, bemoaning the fact that his would-be college had lost their best incoming player.
Teachers, students, cousins, aunts, and uncles all came forward to speak about her dead boyfriend, but no one mentioned the obvious. No one wanted to say the awful truth out loud; that Tommy didn’t die by accident or because he was sick. The truth was too terrible. Too painful. She realized just how little she knew about him as they told stories about his childhood, about the things that he had done in life, and the goals that he had hoped to reach. Dani sank deeper and deeper into her seat as she listened to his friends and family speak about how much they loved him. He would have studied medicine alongside his basketball career, and maybe even become a surgeon. Tommy was a good person who would have been a benefit to society, and just like that, he was gone.
