Maybe, I thought, in the actual room where the body is laid out, they will have the lights dim so as not to be too bright and cheery.
Turns out the light in this room could probably give a person a tan.
I'd never seen an actual dead person before, and I wasn't eager to see one now. Thinking maybe I could work myself up to it—or not—I avoided the end of the room where the casket was set, surrounded by more flowers than I'd ever before seen indoors. I was amazed at the number of people, too, but it was too late to leave. My mom wouldn't be back for another forty minutes. There were a lot of sofas and chairs, so I headed for one and sat down in the hope that no one would notice my mismatched outfit.
Suddenly, I felt the waistband button of my mother's skirt give. I hoped it had just unbuttoned.
Yeah. What were the chances of that?
The thing was so tight, I was fairly certain it wouldn't fall off me, even with the top button gone, but since there were ten buttons going down the front, I was also fairly certain my mother would throw a hissy fit if I came home one button short because that would mean she had to either search out a store that carried a matching one, or change all of them.
I looked on the floor. But of course, no button. Deciding it must have rolled under my chair, I stood—taking care to adjust my velvet top over the waistband so no one would see I'd popped a button—and I got down on my knees to feel around on the rug.
Nothing.
People were trying not to look at me. They probably thought I was praying for Raquel but was too dumb to find the casket.
I got up, accidentally stepping on the hem of the skirt, and the button—which had been caught in the folds of fabric all along—fell to the floor and rolled under the chair.
Once again I genuflected and reached under the chair. Retrieved the button. Stood. Caught, once again, the trailing edge of the skirt. Felt it shift slightly southward, and threw myself into the chair before it could end up around my ankles. Knocked my elbow against the dried flower arrangement on the table by the chair. Caught vase and flowers before anything actually hit the floor, and only broke a couple of the stems by grabbing too tight. Stuffed them back in the vase, and set the vase back on the table. Hoisted the skirt back up to my waist.
I wasn't moving again, I thought, till it was time to leave. And until then, I would fervently pray that most of the other people would go first, before my mother arrived.
This was when I noticed how warm it was.
Much too warm to be wearing a velvet top.
Which was what my mother had suggested at home, but my lack of clothing options had made me hope she'd be wrong.
Don't think about it, I told myself. Think about something else.
So now I'm sitting here hating my clothes, realizing that there isn't much to think about—nothing that you want to think about, anyway—when you're at a funeral home for a girl you hardly knew and everybody you do know is clustered around the front of the room, talking to the dead girl's father or looking in fascinated horror into the open casket and saying such things as "She looks good, doesn't she?"
Hello?
I mean, I haven't checked, but doesn't she look dead?
I run my finger around my black velvet neckline, trying to get a little air circulating.
It doesn't help, but I try it a few more times.
I happen to look down and notice that tiny fibers have shed off the velvet top and are now adhering to my sweaty hands. The effect is like a multitude of stunted eyelashes. I can only assume they are also adhering to the exposed area of my neck and upper chest, where they probably give the impression of being stubble. Wonderful. People will assume that I am not only overweight but incredibly hairy and in the habit—though haphazardly—of shaving my entire torso.
I wipe my hand on the skirt and then run my hand over my neck and chest. I'm sweaty and sticky, and I'm wondering if I could have by chance touched my face and left a black fuzzy trail there as well.
The more I think about it, the more my face itches.
I make sure my hands are defuzzed before checking. No velvet fibers come off my face, but that could be because my sweat is making them cling.
I start to go through my purse. I know there's a mirror in there somewhere, but it seems to be buried under packets of Lactaid (because I'm lactose intolerant) and tampons (because—regardless of what they told you in health class about twenty-nine-day cycles—a girl knows that her period can start at any time).
There is that huge mirror in the front hall, but I don't want to get up—hairy and sweaty and with my skirt apt to fall off—so I continue pawing through my purse. Empty gum wrappers and a clump of hair from my hairbrush escape my lap and land on the floor at my feet.
Finally, I find the mirror. It's facedown and covered with lint, but by now I'm accustomed to using my mother's skirt to clean things.
My face is flushed and sweaty, but there is no velvet residue. I wipe some of the sweat off. Otherwise, anyone who sees me looking in the mirror will think I am conceited and can't get enough of myself. Then I run a finger under each eye so that no one can mistake my sweat for tears. I don't want to look like a hypocrite like Zoe and Meg and Aretha, who are carrying on about how much they'll miss Raquel.
I do notice, however, just as I'm about to drop the mirror back into my purse, that my neckline is red and irritated.
Is that from being overheated and the velvet chafing? I wonder. But only for a second.
I catch myself rubbing my palms on the skirt—not to clear them of velvet—but because they are itchy.
I check my palms. Sure enough, they have little red itchy bumps on them. Familiar little red itchy bumps. Because it isn't bad enough that I'm overweight and lactose intolerant—I'm also blessed with allergies. I'm guessing that something in that dried flower arrangement has set me off. And I've just touched near my eyes, which will make them start to itch and water.
I lean back in the chair, thinking Why me? and my head makes an audible bump against the wall.
I glance around to see if anyone has noticed.
Mara and her crowd still have Mr. Falcone cornered, so that's good. Mrs. Bellanca is chatting with a couple of the boys who have just walked in.
There's only one person looking my way, a girl I don't know. She's kind of red-eyed behind her glasses, and for a moment I hope she hasn't noticed me. She's raised her hand to her mouth, and I wonder if she's one of Raquel's relatives, and if she's about to start really crying.
Sigh.
Then I see—what she's doing is trying not to laugh.
Paul Phillips, Classmate
I don't understand girls.
Last week nobody liked Raquel Falcone much.
As far as the guys were concerned, if she'd been one of those fat girls who are desperate, she wasn't so fat that a guy would have turned her down. If there'd been a few pounds less of her, you would have said she was kind of cute. She was smart without being in-your-face smart. I mean, it wasn't like she had her homework at every single class or waved her hand when she knew the answer. And she was funny when she spoke up—which wasn't often—the kind of funny that didn't make you worry that tomorrow it would be directed against you. So, all in all, Raquel was the kind of girl who—if she was your sister, you wouldn't have been embarrassed.
So, as far as the guys were concerned, you could take her or leave her.
Except...
Big except here...
EXCEPT: The other girls didn't like her.
Not understanding girls and all, I couldn't say why. It wasn't like she was competition for any of them or anything. I mean, she wasn't the smartest, or the funniest, and—with or without the weight—she wasn't that cute. And besides not having the looks, she didn't have the clothes, or the voice, or the moves, or most especially: The Attitude.
Girls can be merciless.
Tough? Girls have got guys beat on that any day.
Nobody had to say anything—you just knew: If you were th
e kind of guy who missed those cues, who would talk to Raquel, you might just as well have a big LOSER tattooed onto your forehead.
But now, all of a sudden, it's Poor Raquel, and Sweet Raquel, and No-I-Never-Talked-to-Her-in-School-but-She-Was-My-Role-Model-and-Best-Bud Raquel. They're gloomy in the halls and writing solemn poems for her for the school paper and buying teddy bears to leave by the road where she died. I think Mara Ravenell is talking to someone in the Catholic Church to see about getting her nominated for sainthood.
I don't understand girls.
I didn't especially like Raquel, but I know well enough not to admit that now.
Zoe Kanisky, Classmate
I never knew anybody who died before.
Well, my grandfather—my father's father—died when I was about one, but that doesn't count. Someone who's only a year old doesn't really know anybody. In my grandmother's apartment, there are pictures of my grandfather, including one of him holding me in a blanket when I was a newborn. But I don't remember being a newborn, and I don't remember him: nothing, nada, zip, a total blank.
Sometimes I'll be watching an old movie, and I'll say to my mother, "That guy's kind of cute. Would he be like about a hundred now?" And she'll tell me, no, he died in a motorcycle accident, or of AIDS, or of some other thing she can't remember, but anyway he's dead. And I'll think, How sad. Or sometimes she'll say he's still around and making movies and she'll tell me some recent movie he's been in, and I've seen it, and I'll remember the part he played, and I'll go: Whoa, he IS like a hundred. Not to mention fat. And that's sad, too. Hard to say which is sadder: the beautiful young person who dies, or the one who doesn't.
Not that Raquel was beautiful. But she was young. She is—was—in fact younger than me. Mrs. Bellanca writes on the board who is having a birthday during the current month. My name was up there all November, sharing the month with Abigail Adams and Jamie Lee Curtis. Raquels was this month, on May 31. It was still up there for two days after Raquel died: "May 31—Raquel Falcone—15."
Kind of unsettling in a spooky sort of way.
Finally, somebody said something, and Mrs. Bellanca erased it. But you can still see the smudge mark where it was.
Kind of like Raquel.
Raquel's life as a smudge mark on the earth.
Did she see the car coming? Did her life flash in front of her like it does in cartoons? How badly did it hurt, and for how long? The newspaper said she was pronounced dead at the hospital. Does that mean she didn't die right away? And if she didn't, was she conscious? Did she know she was dying?
It gives me the creeps to think that one instant she was laughing and talking and probably thinking about what she was going to eat for her next meal, or maybe thinking about that birthday coming up in another two weeks, and then—pow!—all of a sudden she's a smudge.
It's gotten me to thinking: In the movies, you always know something like that is going to happen. You can tell by the dramatic music, or you can tell because the character has just said how happy and complete she is.
And then I started thinking about all those people who are killed in terrorist attacks. No eerie music foreshadowed that they were in some creepy terrorists version of a movie.
I made the mistake of mentioning all this to my grandmother. Instead of saying something to make me feel better, she said I was right! She said that it was kind of funny how some people are concerned with the end of the world, when for any one of us the end of the world could be seconds from now.
Gee, thanks, Gramma.
So, all of a sudden I'm thinking: How will I know? What if my life is about to end—bam!-— NOW?
Or now?
Or now?
Stacy Galbo, Classmate
Being the most popular girl in school isn't as easy as you might think.
A school takes its whole personality from the attitude set by the "in crowd," and that's quite a responsibility. Sometimes girls let the power go to their heads. They take as an example the catty, toxic girls in movies, because there it's funny—even though, in the movies, the popular girls are almost always the villains, and they get their comeuppance by either being one of the first victims of the crazed serial killer stalking the halls, or by being publicly brought down and humiliated by, of course, kids from the "out crowd."
Newsflash: There is no such thing as the "out crowd." That is a Hollywood construct.
You can be in (which is a select few), or you can be not in (which is the vast majority), or you can be out (but then you're not part of any crowd, because that's what "out" means).
But those popular girls who take Hollywood too much to heart and specialize in snide meanness—they can taint the entire school. (Are you listening, Zoe Kanisky?) The whole student body becomes disgruntled. The discontent spreads to the teachers and the administration, and then bounces back down on the students, intensifying the misery for all.
So I do my best to set a good standard, to be civil to all, and to talk behind the backs of only the outest of the out.
I didn't talk about Raquel, because there really wasn't anything to say. I thought that she was pathetic because she so obviously didn't even try— I mean how hard is it to lose a few pounds? And she wore her hair exactly the same every single day. Never tried anything new to see what would have been more flattering.
The worst part—for me—was that she was always doodling. I was sure she was making fun of me, because a lot of times she was drawing what appeared to be a caricature of me: this thin-waisted. perky-boobed girl with big green eyes, and half or her body weight had to be that mound of blond hair that seemed to have a personality of its own. Since I have admittedly good blond hair, green eyes, and a figure I'm not ashamed of—I thought these drawings were supposed to be me. Maybe I'm a bit oversensitive, but the thing that settled it in my mind was that this girl in the drawings was always carrying—or waving—a big knife. Before she married my dad, my mother's name was Metzger, which is German for "butcher," and that's exactly what her father was—a butcher in a meat market. Which is not a sexy occupation at all. I thought Raquel had found out about that and was pointing out that my mother comes from a decidedly working-class family.
It was only when I saw Raquel's sketchbook at the funeral parlor, with pictures of this character—labeled Gylindrielle, which was apparently Raquel's alter ego—rescuing kittens and in other heroic poses, and with other characters drawn in the same style, that I finally realized she was not poking fun at me. She was, in fact, revealing a desire to look like me.
Now I feel terrible.
And I wonder: What would have happened if I had gone out of my way to be nice to her? If I hadn't just refrained from bashing her, but had tried talking to her—about hair and clothes and diet and stuff? Not enough contact with her to jeopardize my own standing, which I've worked so hard to attain, but enough to help her improve herself so she wouldn't be so sad and hopeless.
Would she not have stepped off that curb?
Because I have to think: Being her while wanting to be me—surely she stepped into the path of that car on purpose.
Police Report Addenda/Witness Statements
THOMAS YEAGER, student at MCC: It was so sad. One minute we were all standing on the curb, waiting for the chance to cross the street. Me and Diego, we had parked in the lot of that bicycle repair shop, Crawford's. It was after hours, so we figured we'd be okay even though the signs are all, like, VIOLATORS WILL BE TOWED, as if it makes any difference whether anyone parks there when the place isn't even open. The parking lot for the theater holds, like, about three cars, but in this case that woulda been okay 'cause nobody came, 'cause the movie was kind of lame, which was why it was in the second-run theater, anyway, but it was better than the movie that was playing at the student center. So that's what I was thinking about: How come the student center always plays such crappy movies that we gotta go to a second-run theater for entertainment? And wouldn't it make more sense to forget the movie entirely and just go get some pizza? But Die
go, he's all into that cartoon stuff, and he's talking to this high school girl about how great it was, and there was this old couple there, too, waiting to cross the street, but I don't know where their car was 'cause it wasn't at Crawford's, and the girl—Raquel, they said her name was—she's talking to Diego a mile a minute about this one scene in the movie, waving her arms, and making moves like she's Xena, Warrior Princess, and the next thing I know, she's flailing her arms and falling off the curb, right in front of that car. That driver never had a chance to miss her.
DIEGO MANNILLO, student at MCC: No, I don't think she fell. I think she never saw that car and she just stepped off the curb. Thomas was being kind of pissy because he didn't want to be there at all. He thought we shoulda gone for pizza or burgers. Food, not film. But the old guy, the girl, and me—we were talking about this one feature, this parody of The Lord of the Rings that was the best part of the festival. And we're repeating the funny lines to each other, and the girl, she's holding one arm out like she's brandishing a sword, and she's holding the other arm limp-wristed and she goes in this fruity kind of voice like the Legolas character had, "Stepping off into battle, now," which is what he kept saying, and that's when she stepped off the curb. So I gotta think she did it on purpose. But she never saw that car.
EDWARD SELBY, 583 Clarkson Road: My wife and I didn't know any of the others. We just ended up together at the curb waiting to cross the street. Our car was behind the theater, but we were going to have some hot chocolate at that Greek restaurant next to the bike place before going home. My wife, she hadn't liked the movie and wasn't feeling well, which is why she didn't see what happened, and she was on my right-hand side. The one boy was standing off to the left, then the other boy—the one who was a pretty good mimic—then the girl, then me, then my wife, except that we were all kind of clustered—you know?—it's not like we were all standing in a row. The boy who was so good with doing different voices, he and the girl and I were having a good time pretending to be the various characters in the movie while we walked out of the theater and waited to cross. Then I think it's just like he said to the people from the restaurant: I think the girl just got overexcited and wasn't watching what she was doing. Such a pity. Such a terrible, terrible pity. It was awful to see. Terrible for the driver, too—she kept crying and saying, "It's not my fault." And it wasn't. The girl just stepped right in front of her. It was someone from the restaurant who called 911. They came running out when it happened. Awful. It's going to haunt all of us for a long time. It'll be so hard for the girl's parents. Must be terrible to lose a child. Just seems to be backward: Parents expect their kids to bury them. My wife's real shook up.