Page 111 of How to Hide in Plain Sight
I didn’t lower the bouquet.
“Are you okay?”
I felt a set of fingers wrap around my forearm. Karma’s voice whispered, “I gotta go, kid. Love you.” The fingers squeezed once. Then they disappeared.
When I looked up, she was gone. Everyone was gone. I stood alone behind the makeshift curtain. Just me and a lavender dress and a mangled fistful of flowers. Outside, the tempo picked up, as if Simon & Garfunkel knew I was lagging behind.
“Eliot?” said a voice behind me.
I jumped and spun around.
There stood Helene, stunningly beautiful in bare feet and a simple white dress, loose and embroidered, almost like a nightgown. The kind of dress you can actually dance in. On her elbow was her father. “Are you trying to keep me from marrying your brother, or do you just like a big entrance?”
“I…”
“Well, let’s get on with it,” said Tim. “Some of us are eager to get rid of their only child.”
Helene beamed. When she looked at her father, her eyes sparkled with more love in one glance than mine have emitted in the course of their entire existence. I didn’t know how to respond—whether Ishould laugh or cry or apologize—so I turned around and tripped over the flimsy curtain as I pushed out into the afternoon sun.
The first thing I saw after my eyes adjusted to the bright light was Manuel. Every face in the crowd had turned around to watch the procession, but my eyes fell on him immediately. As if I was already looking for him. For his wild curls and dark lips. We locked eyes. I looked away. Trained my gaze on the hem of Karma’s dress, which dragged along the patio’s mismatched slats of wood. The cloth dipped in and out of each crack.
I didn’t build the Fort with Henry.
I tried to remember. Tried to dig up memories of my brother in a way I hadn’t in a long time. I placed myself back in the center of the island. I flexed my fists. I tried to remember exactly what they felt like as we built the Fort. When I plunged them into the wet earth, fingers breaking soft dirt, arms ripped apart by juniper needles.
My hands plunge into the wet earth. Dirt squeezes into the cracks of my fingernails. Juniper needles rip at my skin.
Karma’s dress drifted left and Clarence’s shoes turned right.
A stack of bracelets jangle on my wrist, a rainbow assortment of little plastic circles. This year’s fashion trend. Everyone has them. I begged my parents to buy them for me. By the end of the school year, I had over thirty. By the start of next year, all will be in a trash bag.
I made it to the end of the aisle. I looked up and took my place at the very end of the bridal party, farthest from the altar. The music changed. Simon & Garfunkel were gone. The wedding march began. From the center of the curtain, Helene emerged with her father. All eyes followed as she approached. In the crowd, my mother beamed. Helene reached the front. The music ended and Caleb began to speak.
I look up from the bracelets on my wrist and see Henry’s smiling face. He laughs as he throws tufts of grass over his shoulder.
I glanced at Speedy, who was parked right before me in the firstrow. His knees jiggled. Was that possible? Could unmoving legs move of their own free will? His face smiled up at the ceremony with the kind of peaceful contentment only accessible to those who have seen death.
Caleb was saying something about everlasting love. Love and the work that goes into maintaining it. I tried to listen, but my mind kept spiraling through distant memories. I blinked.
I blink. Henry’s face disappears. In its place is an empty clearing.
At that moment, somewhere in the trees that hang over the roof of Sunny Sunday, a white-throated sparrow let out its call. I shivered. There it was again, that ghoulish feeling, the sense that I was standing directly atop my brother’s ashes.
I look down. I’m still digging. My bracelets still rattle. When I look back up, the clearing is still empty. Henry is still gone. White-throated sparrows cry in the trees above.
How idiotic. How impossible. Henry’s remains couldn’t be on that porch, with its many slats and holes to slip through. I tried to ignore it, to focus instead on Caleb’s speech. But my focus didn’t want to go there.
I’m a little girl afraid of death. I’m a little girl who does not understand the idea of souls, the idea of rest. Who needs a place to mourn her brother. Who needs to believe that he is safe underground, that his ashes will stay warm. That she’ll always know where to find him.
My knees buckled.
“Whoa, whoa.” Karma grabbed me by the elbows. The service stopped. Thirty pairs of eyes turned to me. Karma squinted into my face, which I can only imagine was the color of a young corpse. “You good, dude?”
I am a little girl who sees the consequences of her actions. I see them in the shape of a father curled up in the middle of a bedroom torn to pieces. I hear them in the mangled sounds spewing from within him.
I twisted my mouth into a smile. Shallow breaths dragged in through my lips. “I’m fine,” I heard my voice say.
The service resumed. Manuel’s eyes remained on me.
