Picture Us In The Light(51)

“Oh, I emailed him yesterday to make sure it’s okay to switch the date with the printer so the March issue comes out right on the seventh, and he emailed me back last night saying we should just stay on schedule and keep it for the twelfth like it’s scheduled.” She runs a hand through her hair that way she does when she’s a little stressed. She always gets like this in the final few days before we go to press, but it’s early this time. “I should’ve just done it without asking. He probably wouldn’t have noticed.”

“Why doesn’t he want to change it?”

“I think he just doesn’t want to have to deal with the printer. But I’ll tell him I’ll do it.”

“Ah. You don’t think he’ll find out, do you? About the center spread?”

She shrugs. “When was the last time he looked at something before it went to press?”

“Fair enough.” I fight back the part of me that would keep her talking about the press logistics or about anything else, really, until we’re out of time. “Hey, I, ah, wanted to see how it’s going with all that. With the tribute, I mean. I keep meaning to talk to you about it.”

“It’s going all right.” There’s a tiny shift in her posture—she stands straighter, and her voice brightens. “I’m working on my piece, and Margie and Helena are getting quotes from people. I think they’re going to just get as many as they can and then we’ll pick the best ones. How’s the art going? When do you think it’ll be ready?”

“Ah, yeah, the art.”

“I was thinking it would just be your art and a lot of white space, and—”

“Right. Yeah.” I balance the books against myself with one hand and rub the other on the back of my neck, where the muscles feel tight. “About that, that’s kind of what I wanted to talk to—”

Her expression shifts. “You’re not going to do it?”

“Reg, I think I have to pass this time. Could you use a photo instead?” My palms are sweating. “It’s just that my parents have both been such wrecks lately, and if I get in trouble for anything—I really think it might push them over the edge.”

“I see.”

She knows about what happened, obviously, even though we’ve been talking less; if nothing else most of the details about our lives channel back and forth through Harry. “My parents are both stressed all the time because my dad still hasn’t found anything and my dad is, like—not doing well. I think he’s depressed. And it’s been really hard on my mom.”

“Right.”

Why don’t I just tell her the truth? “I also just—I don’t think I could do it right. You know?” I swallow. “I’ve been off lately. With drawing, I mean, and I wouldn’t want to give you something crappy for this, of all things.” Her expression hasn’t softened. My face feels hot. “Reg, I swear to God, it’s not that I don’t care about Sandra or anything, or about you, it’s just that—”

“I understand.”

“Reg, come on, don’t be mad. I’ll help edit layout. Or I’ll do whatever you want, as long as it doesn’t have my name—”

“Oh, that’s fine,” she says, her voice like shards of sun. “I understand. It’s fine.”



For a long time after she died it didn’t feel like we’d ever find our way out of the initial shock and horror of it. It was the way everything reminded you, the way it would wash over you without warning when you were sitting in class or buying fries in the lunch line or lying in bed when the rest of the world had already gone to sleep. The ordinariness of the world, the same trees swaying, the same murals watching from the walls of the gym and the same hills gold with haze in the late afternoons, all felt like they’d been placed there specifically to mock us. Because nothing was ordinary, nothing was the same.

And we were all scared. I wouldn’t have expected that from Sandra in a million years, and then you start to worry whether it could happen with other people you knew. Whether it could happen to you.

For the rest of the school year, I felt sick walking into first period and seeing Ms. Lee every morning. Or we panicked whenever someone posted sad lyrics or whenever our calls went to voicemail, or I’d text Harry and Regina at odd hours and be jittery and anxious until I heard back. Sometimes Regina just wouldn’t answer and I’d freak out and make Harry check on her, and then the next morning she’d act like nothing had happened.

At the first of those assemblies we all had to go to, eight days after she died, a psychologist told us that the vast majority of people who survive attempting suicide regret those attempts almost immediately and are thankful they survived. When she said it I got that sharp flash of pain above my heart that you get sometimes and you have to breathe past (precordial catch, my dad told me once when I was little), but it hurt so much I took shallow breaths to spare myself. There was a loosening feeling in my head. When I looked around the bleachers, a lot of people were crying. Harry was sitting stiffly next to me, and him sitting there was the only reason I was able to gather myself back together. I pressed my hand against my heart and breathed all the way past the pain until it released.

This was the part I couldn’t stop thinking about then: If there was a moment, before it was all over, that she regretted it. If she saw what she was losing and tried to clutch the whole weight of the world in her hands as it all drained away.