Absent

6: HOW I DIED

ON THE LAST DAY OF MY LIFE, I STOOD UNDER A LATE FEBruary sky, the gray clouds pulled thin and high over our heads like a veil. The sun was somewhere behind there, but I didn’t know where. Maybe if I scanned the sky slowly, I’d find a spot to the west where the clouds burned white instead of gray, and that’d be the sun. Otherwise, it was all sky, from top of head to soles of shoes, and we were up there in it, because our physics teacher, Mr. Cochran, had gotten permission to take us onto the roof for our egg-drop project.

We, the physics class, clumped at the center of the roof’s flat, cement slab, as far as possible from the foot-high lip around its edge where Mr. Cochran stood. We shivered and stumbled against each other, but we didn’t break ranks. Mr. Cochran had been very clear: he had a quiz ready. If there was any running, any pushing, any “tomfoolery,” we would march right down and take it.

“Let’s not have you ending up like your eggs,” he kept saying.

That afternoon, I was a good kid. We all were good kids, good eggs. We stood at the center of the roof as we were told to. We didn’t run; we didn’t push; we didn’t tomfool. It’s possible we whispered. It’s possible we poked, and perhaps we turned to the roof’s edge like how the bean plants in Mrs. Zimmer’s biology room turned toward the dirty windows, even though they only opened inward, and then only a crack. I was alive then, though that wasn’t something I thought about, because it wasn’t remarkable; it just was.

“You were late again,” Usha informed me, as if I didn’t already know that. We stood as far from the rest of the group as we could without getting yelled at. Usha had fashioned her hair into a stiff egg-yolk mohawk in honor of our egg drop. It was the end of the day, though, and she’d started to smell like leftover breakfast.

“Headbang for me,” I said to distract her, and she obliged, making a rocker scowl as she dipped her head. As soon as she’d finished, she went right back to “You were late yesterday. And twice last week.” She poked a finger at my chest.

“Okay, okay, it’s not a big deal. I forgot this.” I held up my egg contraption. “I had to go back to my locker and get it.”

“That took fifteen minutes?”

“I stopped to fix my hair. Not everyone has such a resilient hairstyle.” I tweaked one of the peaks of her mohawk.

“True, true,” Usha allowed, “but since when do you care about your hairstyle?”

The truth was, I hadn’t been late because of homework or hair. I’d been late because I’d been waiting for Lucas Hayes in the burners’ circle. After lunch, I’d found a note he’d left in my locker with a hastily drawn tree and a six, which meant to meet him in the burners’ circle during sixth period, and I’d skipped American lit to do it. But he hadn’t been there. No one had. I’d sat at the base of a tree for half an hour, scratching patterns in the dirt and staring up at the protective branches above me, before someone had finally arrived. And that someone hadn’t been Lucas.

What are you even doing here, Wes Nolan? I thought when the sound of footsteps produced the cargo-jacketed, shaggy-haired burner. Wes was accompanied by Heath Mineo, the school drug dealer, so short and corrupt that he resembled a tiny mafia boss from the cartoons. Wes extracted a pack of cigarettes and tapped it against the trunk of one of the trees.

“Hey, look, it’s Wheels!” Wes said.

I rolled my eyes.

“You know her?” Heath asked as if I weren’t standing right there.

“Not even a little,” I said at the same time Wes said, “A little.”

“Someone stand you up?” Wes asked, flipping out two cigarettes and passing one to Heath.

I studied him for a moment, then dismissed him. There was no way he could know about Lucas and me. He was just trying to make a joke because when it came to Wes Nolan, everything was a joke.

Look at that. You’re alone and friendless.

Ha.

Ha.

Ha.

“I’m just sitting here. That okay with you?”

“Free country,” he said. “Free trees.”

Wes and Heath smoked their cigarettes down in near silence while I returned to my dirt patterns, silently urging them to go, knowing that Lucas wouldn’t show if they were here. But, maddeningly, when Heath finally dropped his butt in the mulch and left, Wes remained. I reached for my phone, but then brought my hand back. I didn’t want Wes to see me checking the time.

“It’s five minutes until the bell,” he said, visibly pleased with himself. “So whoever you’re meeting probably isn’t going to come.”

“I’m not meeting anyone.” Instead of my phone, I took my egg-drop project out of my bag, unwrapping it from the sweater I’d used to cushion it.

Wes slid two more cigarettes out of the pack, offering one to me.

“I don’t smoke.”

“Why not? It gives you superpowers, you know.”

“What? Like cancer?” I said, then grimaced. Everyone knew that Wes Nolan’s dad had died of stomach cancer freshman year.

But if my comment bothered Wes, he didn’t show it, saying, “Enough chemo, and you’ll glow like a superhero.” He tucked the cigarette back into the pack and nodded at my project. “What’s in the box?”

“You want to hear about my physics homework?”

“I’m here smoking. You’re here not smoking. Why not pass the time?”

“It’s an egg drop.”

“Like the soup?”

“Like you drop an egg off the roof, idiot,” I said, and he grinned wider at the insult. “We had to create an enclosure for the egg using stuff from around the house, and today we’re going to drop them from the school roof. If it doesn’t break, you pass.”

“And if it does break, you make egg-drop soup.” He blew out a plume of smoke. “Can I see it?”

“Only if you promise not to pretend to drop it as a joke.”

“You know me only too well, Paige Wheeler.”

He turned the gift box around in his hands, studying its tiny springs (pilfered from three remote controls), peeking under the lid.

“How does it work?”

“The springs are hooked to a Ziploc bag full of shaving cream, and the egg is in the middle of the bag.”

“Kind of a like an airbag in a car. Clever.” Then, of course, he pretended to drop it.

“Does everything have to be a joke to you?”

He grinned. “Why not?”

“Because not everything’s funny.”

“What? Don’t you like to laugh?”

“Of course. Who doesn’t like to laugh?”

“You, maybe. You always scowl at me.”

“Say something actually funny, and I’ll laugh.”

“Knock, knock,” he said.

“Who’s there?” I asked reluctantly.

“Me,” he said.

“Me who?”

He grinned. “Just me.”

“That’s the joke?” I asked. “Knock, knock, who’s there? Just me. That’s not a joke. That’s ridiculous.”

“Ah, but you’re laughing.”

“Yeah. At its ridiculousness.”

He was close enough that I could smell the cigarettes on him and, under that, another even smokier smell, like burnt leaves. One of his eyes was squintier than the other from the unevenness of his grin, but both eyes were the same warm brown. If there’s anyone whose smile would be asymmetrical, I thought. But it must have been the kind of smile that made you want to smile back because that, I realized, was what I was doing.

I pulled away so quickly that my head clocked the tree trunk behind me. “Lucas helped me with it,” I said, pointing to the project still in his hands.

“Lucas, huh?” Wes grunted, his smile dropping so fast I half expected to hear it shatter on the ground. “As in Lucas Hayes? As in the person you’re not waiting for.”

“I told you. I’m not meeting anyone.”

Wes handed me back the box, then he flipped his cigarette onto the ground, stubbing it out with his heel, and walked to the edge of the burners’ circle. But just before leaving, he turned around. “You know, if you were meeting me, I’d make a point of being here.”

“And I’d make a point of losing track of time.”

The grin was back, like I had complimented him instead of insulting him.

“Why are you smiling?” I asked.

“Because,” he said, “that was funny.” He tipped a salute and disappeared with the faint call of the school bell.

I’d waited another ten minutes for Lucas. He never came, and that, not hair or homework and definitely not Wes Nolan, was why I’d been late to physics.

Back on the roof, Usha’s interrogation about my lateness was interrupted by a burst of talk from Kelsey and her ponies. The ponies were examining Kelsey’s new piercing, a diamond stud in place of a beauty mark.

“. . . brought a picture”—the wind caught Kelsey’s voice—“so it’d be just like Marilyn’s.”

“Marilyn Manson’s?” I said loudly.

Kelsey turned and wrinkled her nose. “No. Marilyn Monroe. The piercing artist said that I resemble her. Crazy, right?” The ponies circled up, probably to assure her that it wasn’t crazy, not the slightest bit.

“Oh, that’s right,” I said to Usha. “Marilyn Monroe had a bunch of plastic surgery, too.”

“Geez, Paige.” Usha socked me in the arm. “Fight in your own weight class.”

“Ugh. She thinks she’s so edgy just because she broke up with Lucas Hayes and got a piercing at the mall.”

“Meh. She’s not that bad,” Usha said. “Just kind of obvious.”

“Usha Das!” Mr. Cochran called from the edge of the roof.

“She is that bad,” I argued, “and then some more bad.”

Usha shrugged then kissed my cheek with a smack before marching out to Mr. Cochran. Her contraption, which she held under one arm, was a cardboard replica of an old-fashioned plane, like the ones the Wright Brothers flew. It even had tiny paper-fastener propellers that spun. It must have taken hours to make, but it didn’t meet any of the assignment criteria; it wouldn’t protect her egg at all. Usha heaved it unceremoniously off the roof.

A giggle came from Kelsey and the ponies. It always sounded like they were laughing at you. I shot them a glare and accidentally met Kelsey’s eyes, peering at me over the ponies’ heads. Her eyes were wide and hazel and framed in flourishes of liner. I imagined Lucas gazing into those eyes. I looked down at the box in my hands, picturing the egg—perfect, white, seamless—in its center. I wondered what Usha would think if she knew I was hooking up with Kelsey’s ex-boyfriend. I wondered what she’d think if she knew he’d stood me up.

No, I knew what she’d think of that.

“All right, Paige Wheeler!” Mr. Cochran called with a wave. Usha passed me on her way back and said happily, “Crash landing! Total yolk!”

The closer I got to the edge of the roof, the bigger the sky seemed, the smaller the roof. Even smaller, me. It must have shown on my face, because when I reached Mr. Cochran, he clapped a reassuring hand on my back. “You okay there?”

“Agoraphobia,” I mumbled.

“You mean acrophobia.”

“Right,” I agreed, though really I’d meant agoraphobia. It wasn’t that the building was too high, but that the sky was too big. The empty sky, my empty stomach, so big that I’d be lost in them. The parking lot was below, beyond it the road where shiny cars, not yet dimmed by the stipple of winter road salt, drove steadily to the strip mall or the on-ramp or the Gas-N-Go, and then home, always eventually home. I stepped a foot up onto the lip of the roof, testing my fear. My heart thunked; the sky stretched itself wider.

“Hey, now.” Mr. Cochran clucked at my foot. “Feet on the ground.”

His words were underscored by a squeal of hinges. Mr. Cochran and I both turned at the sound of a door swinging open. The rest of the class had turned, too, and was squinting at the shadowy figure in the doorway that led down to the school. I blinked, trying to see who it was. When he stepped out into the light and I saw who he was, I blinked again, this time from surprise.

“Lucas Hayes!” Mr. Cochran shouted. “What are you doing up here?”

Lucas looked past Mr. Cochran, his eyes snagging mine, which filled me with something more expansive than my fear of the roof, more encompassing than the cold sky. He came here to see me. A smile worked its way onto my lips. As soon as I realized, I yanked it off my face. I refused to beam dumbly at the boy who’d just stood me up. After all, I wasn’t a no-respect burner girl. I wasn’t poor, dead Brooke Lee.

“Coach C!” Lucas called. “I need you to sign this for me.” He waved a paper in his hand and looked past me like I wasn’t even there.

Suddenly it felt like it was true, that I wasn’t there. And that made me feel embarrassed and resentful and tired, so completely tired that I wanted to lie down on the roof and stare out at the world with its toy cars, ribbon road, and twig trees. I turned away from Lucas and the rest of them, my arms still holding the egg contraption straight out into the big empty sky.

“Stay here,” Mr. Cochran said to me, and I nodded. Where else would I go? Behind me, Mr. Cochran’s voice faded as he started across the roof to sign Lucas’s form. I looked down at my feet, the buckles of my boots dull under the hazy sky; one foot was still up on the roof’s lip. And, almost as if I were watching myself do it, my other foot stepped up to join it. The horizon retreated an inch more, another row of houses now in my view. It was a victory over my fear, I decided. A victory of twelve inches, but a victory nonetheless. Suddenly I wasn’t afraid anymore, not of the height, not the wide sky, not Kelsey Pope’s whispers or Lucas’s smile, which I could almost feel behind me, wedged between my shoulder blades.

“Lucas!” a boy’s voice called. “Catch!”

And then the unmistakable sound of a cracking egg, followed by a gasp from my classmates.

“You were supposed to catch it!”

I started to turn around; I had the impulse to find Lucas’s eyes again, sheepish from not having made the catch. Maybe this time our eyes would meet, and we would see each other, no more than a stretch of roof between us. But I must not have realized how close I was to the edge, because as I turned, my foot slipped. My stomach lurched; my breath filled my mouth in a phantom scream. Suddenly, I wasn’t looking out at Lucas’s eyes, but up at the sky, marbled and gray, no sun to be seen.

I’m falling, I said to myself. Or maybe someone else said it to me.

My head hit the edge of the roof. My teeth bit together. My vision burst with a flash of pain so bright it could have been the sun, burning through that wispy sky.