Dead To You

32. make the friendship bracelets

There was another email notification from the principal late Wednesday night lighting up my phone out of the corner of my eye as I shifted aside the bulking assortment of Chanler uniforms in my closet to reveal the hangers tucked into the collars of the formal attire I hadn't touched since we moved into the apartment, one of my bedroom windows open and letting in a brisk breeze that ruffled the sleeves of the dresses I reached out to rub the fabric in between my fingers.

It had rained earlier that afternoon, humidity still lingering in the air even as the clouds clear and unveiled a black horizon with the light pollution of Main Street hiding the stars, the sound of water dripping from the edge of the roof and onto the chipping paint of the fire escape outside my raised windowpane. Principal Ackerman began the correspondence with the obligatory polite wish that this email would find us all well, as if I weren't standing in front of my closet searching for my darkest dress, and continued to state, as we may be aware, that the funeral for beloved and cherished student Bridgette Rosenbloom was tomorrow afternoon. To give our pupils the opportunity to grieve this tremendous loss and celebrate the life of their peer, there will be no penalties for absenteeism for students wishing to attend the funeral. Regular classes will still be held on Thursday as an option for those not attending the service.

I tossed my phone back onto my bed, letting my eyes flutter closed for a moment before I glanced over to my closet again where my sundresses had been parted to uncover a daunting black satin dress.

The next afternoon, I slipped it on with my back turned to the mirror attached to the wall above my dresser, sliding the thin straps over my shoulders and delicately tugging on the zipper that was cool against my exposed back and nearly caught in the ends of my hair. It went past my knees, a few inches down my calf, with a slit on the right leg and the fabric in a draped pattern over my chest and stomach. It was a dress I purchased last spring, after I managed to finally convince my mother to move back to Fairview and I thought I'd wear it on a date maybe—the first real one I would've ever had, since the scandal involving my parents combined with my disastrous crush on Noel Preston had a few repercussions on my romantic life—or perhaps some other occasion, a party I had been invited to or even a plus one for clambake just for the nostalgia, but no matter what I imagined, my friends were always a part of it.

I never really thought that since it was the only black dress I owned that I'd have to wear to attend one of their funerals, looking over my shoulder in the mirror to see the straps twisted on my back, a few moles down my spine exposed, my hair curled because my mother insisted on doing it at the bar in the kitchen while I nibbled on the scrambled eggs she made me.

I did my makeup for the first time since she disappeared, more than just a little lip balm anyway, although I couldn't bring myself to care that much about how my face looked rubbing in some tinted sunscreen with a light coat of mascara and a clear brow gel, a light pink lip gloss I knew wouldn't last throughout the day. I considered changing as I stared at myself, wondering if there was too much of my bare shoulders to be deemed appropriate for a funeral, not to mention the slit, but everything else I had seemed too loud, as if I were taking the celebrating of Bridgette's life a little too literally.

My mother's knuckles turned white around the steering wheel like the vans that were parked along the side of the road across the street from the cathedral, bulky cameras mounted to the shoulders of men clad in cargo shorts with faded logos of sport teams on their shirts, a few more tightly grasped in the hands of paparazzi with their faces almost entirely shielded by baseball caps and dark sunglasses. I heard the clicking of the shutter even through the rolled up windows of our van, the flashes turning the inside of my eyelids a bright red, and there was a subdued sigh across the console from me as my mother drove up the parking lot beside the cathedral, a security guard slowly ambling toward us with a somewhat bored expression on his face when he asked to see a form of identification, tapping on the screen of an iPad while I scrambled to pull my student ID from my purse.