How She Died, How I Lived Read online

  “Hey.” Lindsey holds me back before I go into psych. “So all this”—she circles her hand in the direction of the flyer—“it’s not sending you back, is it?”

  “Back where?”

  She scrunches her face, genuinely sad for me. Disappointed, even. “Oh, honey.” Then she leans in and gives me a hug.

  Lindsey feels warm, like a biscuit. Her hair has a sweet strawberry smell. And despite myself, I give in to the hug.

  “What was that for?” I ask when she releases me.

  “Nothing.” Her face brightens to a grin. “For you! Being you.” She pushes her bangs back, and I see that the smile doesn’t reach her eyes. “Call me, okay?”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  Just then, a burly guy comes out of psych and barges past us with a bathroom pass. Before the door closes, I half wave to Lindsey and slip into class, walking stiffly to keep my sneakers from squeaking.

  Deviant Psychology

  “Before we can understand what’s considered abnormal, we have to define normal,” says Ms. Ramano.

  Some might consider Ms. Ramano abnormal. Abnormally short. Abnormally round. She is almost disc-shaped, like the mirrored face-powder cases women carry in their purses. A face-powder case with legs. But she’s spunky, and I like her. Plus, she lets me off for being late with nothing more than a stern look. Normal is definitely overrated.

  “So once we have a norm defined,” she says, “deviant psychology asks how individuals find themselves outside that norm. As with all things, there are various theories.”

  She scrawls on the whiteboard:

  Norm/Psychoanalytic Theory/Cognitive Development Theory

  Her words roll into one another—“a diseased mind, inappropriate learning, improper conditioning, the absence of appropriate role models”—and I think about Kyle. Is it his diseased mind that’s to blame? I mean, of course it is, right? His mind would have to be diseased for him to do what he did. But is that the whole story?

  He grew up like most everybody else in Midland, if not in the same neighborhood as me and Jamie, at least in the same kind. There aren’t too many options. There’s Longhorn Place with its old fancy brick homes in shady yards on wide, winding streets north of Main. There’s Emerald Heights with massive McMansions carved into the narrow hillsides surrounding town. There’s the Bottoms by the river, where all the poor people live. Then there’s everybody else living side by side in split-levels and ranches and the occasional two-story with porch. The names of the neighborhoods change, but the neighborhoods don’t. Kyle lived near Center Park with his grandmother in a smallish frame house with yellow siding, two purple-leafed trees in the front yard, and a garden plot out back. It was the kind of house I imagined might have doilies on the coffee table and dusty African violets lining the windowsill. It could have easily been down the street from me, but wasn’t.

  But that’s just the house. He said he had problems with his grandma. I’m not sure if he even knew his mom. And according to the gnats, his dad shot himself when Kyle was four. So yeah, that’s pretty messed up. But does it mean he gets to grow up and beat some girl to death—for her car, of all things? Really?

  And then for him to be so nonchalant about it. Like it was just another thing he had to check off his list before he headed out of town “on his quest.” That’s how he talked about it in the papers, like he was destined for some epic journey. He’d packed her SUV with clothes, deodorant, drugs, a couple bags of potato chips, a box of cereal, a laptop, and $188 in cash. But he was found a day later not thirty miles from home.

  It’s like he got stuck somewhere in his mind, the way he had in algebra class. Did Jamie die because leaving town was a word problem Kyle couldn’t figure out?

  Ms. Ramano draws a big red circle on the whiteboard and writes HUMAN MOTIVATION inside. “You have to consider what’s behind it all, an individual’s motivation. What is driving this person—a basic motive like hunger, or a secondary motive, something they aspire to be, for example?”

  She turns to us: “What is driving you? Right here, right now, what do you want?”

  What do I want? God, what a question. Who knows…

  I want to be alive. And to be okay with being alive. To not wake up in the morning and have my first thought be of Jamie; to not lie down at night and have my last thought be of Kyle. I want Jamie to be alive, too. I want to read the paper without the urge to set it on fire in the kitchen sink. I don’t want to flinch when I see the shadow of Kyle’s soft jaw on every broad, bland face I pass. I want to jog down the street, barefaced, without thinking once about what a crowbar can be used for.

  I want my life back. Or someone’s life. A new life, maybe.

  I want a different past.

  I wonder if I would have given him my car if he’d asked me.

  In my fantasies sometimes, that’s what I do. Sander doesn’t text. Jamie’s safe at home. It’s me at Moser Field. We smoke together. Kyle tells me his life is a shithole. That he has to leave town. I say, “Take my car. You can have it.” I hand him the keys. Then I run off into the woods at the edge of the field, and he doesn’t follow.

  Running

  In gym, I watch Charlie Hunt. He is wearing a gray sweatshirt, hood up, shoulders slumped, face down. I don’t think he’s been sleeping. His eyes, what I can see of them, have the slightly bruised look of overripe fruit. Beside him, Mark Lee is crisp by comparison, washed and polished. He probably irons his sweatpants. The kind of guy who puts the “butt” in “button-down.”

  Even so, Charlie—the Charlie from before—used to outshine Mark. He used to outshine pretty much everyone. Before, Charlie had a smile that made people feel like at any moment something amazing might happen. Supernova.

  Now his face is the pocked surface of a distant moon.

  Anyone who didn’t know the two of them might wonder why someone as clean-cut as Mark would hang out with such a… I don’t want to say loser, but it’s probably what someone would think.

  For warm-up, Coach takes us up to the practice field and has us run laps. Like usual, Charlie bolts. I don’t know what gets into me, but I take off, too, fast, determined to catch up with him. My feet make an obstinate thwuk-thwuk-thwuk on the track. I’m a good runner, and though he is, too, I’m gaining. Yeah, he had a head start, but he’s running alone, while I am running against him.

  As we round a bend, I push myself harder. I don’t have a plan for what will happen once I catch up, but for whatever reason, I’m determined to run beside him.

  At the end of the first lap, he is only a few paces ahead. I put my legs and lungs into it, pounding the track, breathing loud, and then I am by his side. I adjust my pace, matching my steps to his. At first, he doesn’t notice me, but after a few seconds of my meeting him step for step, he looks over—not even for a half second, just a glance, but enough to show he’s noticed. Then he speeds up.

  Now he is running against me.

  I surge forward. My lungs are burning, but it’s a good burn and I drive through it. I no longer want to run beside him. I want to beat him. I want his sleepy eyes to widen at the sight of me as I blow past. I want this, whatever this is, to wake him up.

  I imagine we are in a cornfield. The two of us sprinting down the narrow, rutted rows. The wind, the sun at our backs. In my mind, I see myself not just running, but flying, my feet never hitting ground. I slice into the air in front of me, pumping my legs, deepening my breath. Harder. Faster. I run like I was born for this, like I lived for this alone.

  A Crumb

  The next day in English, Charlie looks at me like I’m some kind of freak. Not blatantly, but enough for me to hear the blip-blip-blip of his freak-dar go off.

  I squinch one eye at him like I think he’s the freak.

  “All right now.” Mr. Campbell’s southern drawl booms out over the tops of our heads. His hands, which are surprisingly small for a grown man, rub down each side of his cheek, stroking his cropped beard like it’s an exotic and well-loved pet. H
e is a plaid-shirt-and-crisp-dark-jeans type of teacher, but today he is wearing a thin black tie with the plaid. I’m pretty sure his shaggy chestnut hair teleported onto his head directly from 1982.

  “Time for Poem of the Week.” He claps his hands once, enthusiastically. “Clarissa, you’re up.”

  Each Wednesday, one of us—a different victim each week—has to stand in front of the class and read a poem. Whatever poem we choose, as long as there’s no bad language. We set it up beforehand with Mr. Campbell and he makes copies for the class. As he passes out the papers, Clarissa Coleson shuffles up and slouches in front of his desk. Her bangs, which aren’t really bangs but a big hunk of brown hair with a dyed pink streak, blur out her face. She pushes them aside, but when she looks down at her paper, the hair falls again, drawing a pink-and-brown curtain between her and the rest of the world.

  “So, this is Emily Dickinson,” she mutters. “‘Hope is the thing with feathers…’”

  I read the page with Clarissa:

  …That perches in the soul,

  And sings the tune without the words,

  And never stops at all,

  And sweetest in the gale is heard;

  And sore must be the storm

  That could abash the little bird

  That kept so many warm.

  I’ve heard it in the chillest land,

  And on the strangest sea;

  Yet, never, in extremity,

  It asked a crumb of me.

  “Good,” says Mr. Campbell when she finishes reading, even though Clarissa mumbled half the words. “So, what’s your question?”

  It’s mid-September, only the second one we’ve done of these, but still we know the drill. The presenter has to ask the class a question about the poem after reading. It’s part of the whole Public Shaming event. And worse, it can’t be vague, like “What do you think about this poem?” or “What part did you like?” Half the time I don’t think even the poets knew what they were talking about, so how are we supposed to know some specific question to ask? When we asked Mr. Campbell about the question part, he said, “Point to a single line, or a single word, and ask about that.”

  And that’s what Clarissa does. “It’s about the crumb at the end. In the poem, hope is a bird, right, and it sings even in the cold or the storm or whatever. But it doesn’t ask for anything, not even a crumb. But I don’t get that. I mean, hope isn’t like that.”

  Mr. Campbell raises his eyebrows. “Tell me more.”

  Clarissa has already returned to her seat. She folds her arms over her chest and stares at her desk like it has the answer. “Hope,” she finally says. “It asks for a lot. You have to put yourself out there to hope. And then sometimes it all goes bad anyway.”

  “Excellent question!” says Mr. Campbell, even though I don’t think it was technically a question. “So what does hope ask of us? What is required for us to have hope?”

  Mr. Campbell looks expectantly around the room, which is suddenly full of crickets. He paces the trail between the wall and his desk.

  Paige Sanchez, because she has a huge crush on Mr. Campbell that everyone except Mr. Campbell finds embarrassing, finally pipes up. “Um, it asks us to believe something even if we can’t know it for sure?”

  “Right! And why should we do that? Why do we hope, even when we can’t know something for sure? Even when there’s no logical reason?” Mr. Campbell asks.

  I always thought teachers were supposed to have an answer in mind before they ask a question, but I’m pretty sure Mr. Campbell is winging it. I mean, how could he know the answer to that question? Is there even an answer?

  Doe-eyed, Paige stares at Mr. Campbell and chews a fingernail. Russell Soto tosses a crumple of paper across three rows to make a perfect swish in the trash can by the door.

  “Why do we hope?” Mr. Campbell asks again.

  As it turns out, there is an answer to the question and Nick Richert has it. “Because we’re stupid.”

  Laughter spurts from the back of the room. I look back, but Charlie is not one of the guys laughing. Charlie is sitting with his hands on his forehead, like his head hurts.

  Hopeless.

  The Gathering

  There are over a hundred people here, easy. Maybe two. Kids from school, teachers, but also random neighbors, members of the city council, some old folks who are probably from the dentist’s office where Jamie worked.

  I’ve come with my parents. They never knew Jamie, but it’s their civic duty—payment for having their daughter still alive.

  Neither one has a clue how close it came to being me. They know Kyle texted me, of course. I told the police. But I haven’t told anyone I almost texted back. That I was a thumb-stroke away from hitting send.

  When I see Lindsey here without her mom, I wave her over. It’s no surprise Lindsey’s here alone. Kind of ironic, though—Lindsey, who is always mothering everyone, is herself pretty much motherless. After her dad left, her mom perfected the Art of Emotional Distance. Mrs. Barrow clocks in on the daily food-and-shelter kind of stuff, but she’s not really there for Lindsey. It’s like she thinks of Lindsey as a roommate who helps out with the vacuuming and takes care of Veronica, Lindsey’s sister who just started her freshman year.

  We stand on the manicured turf of Midland Stadium. Our town lives and dies by football, so this is pretty much as sacred as ground gets. Lindsey nudges me and points at the scoreboard.

  The screen has a slide show playing on a loop.

  Jamie as a toddler with a bow taped to her bald head. Jamie decked out in silver sequins, a spunky six-year-old, twirling a baton in the Fourth of July parade. On the Easter Bunny’s lap. Trick-or-treating in a Hogwarts scarf and robe. Here she is maybe fourteen, pushing a boy in a wheelchair. Here in a blue prom dress, a corsage on her wrist; behind her, a smiling Charlie with his arms around her shoulders. In her graduation cap and robe. In the dentist’s office where she worked, kissing the cheek of a silver-haired lady in a neon-green beret.

  Roland Foggerty, our balding mayor, climbs onto the stage that’s been set up at one end of the football field. The picture on the screen changes to a live feed of the mayor as he walks to the podium. Blue blazer, red tie.

  “Today, we close the book on a troubling chapter for our city. The man responsible for the brutal death of one of our beloved daughters has admitted his guilt. He is awaiting the sentencing trial, which will determine whether he faces life in prison or the death penalty. Time will tell his fate. But this gathering is not about him. This gathering is about Jamie Tatum Strand.” The mayor pulls a cloth handkerchief out of his coat pocket and wipes his sweaty forehead.

  “Anyone who met Jamie was deeply touched by her magnificent spirit,” he continues. “She had a smile for everyone. She never let her physical challenges get in her way. She always stood up for what was right, even with one leg shorter than the other.”

  Lindsey rolls her eyes. “I think I just barfed a little in my mouth,” she whispers—but it’s one of those loud stage whispers that anyone around us would have to be deaf not to hear. The back of my head tingles, and I’m pretty sure the people standing behind us must be giving us a nasty look.

  I glance back, but I don’t see angry old people. What I see, behind a clump of middle school kids, is Monica and Andie. If I had to guess, I’d say they are now purposely not looking my way. My best friends.

  Ex–best friends.

  But no, that isn’t quite right either. It’s not like they’re my mortal enemies. They’re not my ex-anything. They’re just not in my life anymore. We… drifted, I guess.

  I keep looking back and eventually Monica can’t avoid seeing me anymore. She gives me a nod, then trains her eyes on the stage, like the mayor’s glistening forehead is the Eighth Natural Wonder of the World. Andie never even looks.

  I don’t blame them, I swear. Lindsey says I pushed them away, and she’s right. Maybe they just weren’t screwed up enough for me. After the murder, when they talked about Jamie,
I felt like they were really talking about me. Like you could insert my name, my life, in the blank. And if they talked about anything else—the normal high school sighs and whines—it just seemed cold.

  At the end, it was all petty stuff. Monica liked someone who liked someone else, and I suppose I couldn’t muster the appropriate enthusiasm for all the drama that ensued. Meanwhile, Andie swore a girl in her World History class was mimicking her style. The same floral top from last week, the same cropped jean jacket from the week before. Like the fate of the world rested on the fact that no one else wore her signature flats.

  I blew. Said a bunch of mean stuff you can’t take back. So yeah, maybe “drifted” is an understatement.

  They pretended like they forgave me, like it was still okay between us. But after that, they didn’t really make an effort. And me—well, everything had come to seem so useless.

  For a while, I got stuck with Jamie, I guess. Wrapped in that tablecloth on the side of the road. How could I expect them to stay there with me?

  I’m not sure even now I know my way out.

  Beautiful Girl

  The varsity cheerleaders walk through the field with cardboard boxes, doling out candles. By the time they make their way to us, Jamie’s mother has publicly wept, her father and stepmother have publicly wept, and her brother has stared vacantly into the crowd, a bloody flake of tissue paper stuck near his ear where he nicked himself shaving.

  I spy Mark and Charlie down front, close enough to be caught in the floodlights aimed at the stage. Otherwise, there are only two field lights on, and they’re far enough away from where I’m standing that I can almost feel the dusk settle on my shoulders. We light our candles, but it’s windy and we have to shield the flames with our hands to keep them from blowing out.