Picture Us In The Light(66)
Harry’s late today, at an ASB meeting, and it’s different without him—more industrious, I think, less like we’re all hanging out. I keep watching Regina’s computer to try to see the center spread she’s been working on, but she’s turned the screen’s brightness all the way down and angled the monitor toward the wall. She’s quieter than usual, too, tucked away in the corner, and it’s at least an hour before she gets up to go around the room checking in with everyone. When she does, Chris Young covers his screen with his hands and orders, “Shield your eyes, Regina. Go check on someone else.”
She peers at what he’s doing. “Are you just writing your story straight into InDesign?”
He brings a fist to his chest, grinning. “Regina. Stab me in the heart. You’d accuse me of such betrayal? When I know how much you hate when people write straight into—”
“Just make sure you spell-check.”
Chris lets his eyebrows go up a little, watching her pass by. Andrew Hatmaker flicks a pencil at him. It hits him on the shoulder. And I’m kind of watching them, and also glancing back at the door each time it opens watching for Harry, and because of that I don’t hear what happens just before the noise level in the room dims all at once. Then Regina says, “What?”
She’s in the first row of computers, Lori Choi standing next to her, something defensive in Lori’s posture. Lori says, “Esther wants to tell you something.”
Esther says, “Lori, shut up.” She’s sitting down still, not looking away from her screen.
“What?” Regina repeats.
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, she does.” Lori nudges her. “Tell her.”
“Lori—”
“Esther doesn’t think the center spread is a good idea.”
All the rest of the noise is plunged from the room. Next to me, Emily Chien puts her pencil down.
Regina frowns. “Are you really that worried about—”
“I’m not worried,” Esther says. “It just feels too political to me. It feels like using someone who died just to make your point about free speech, and I don’t think it’s right.”
“You think—” Regina says flatly. “You think it seems like using—”
But then her control slips, her voice giving out on her. She closes her eyes like she wishes she had somewhere to hide.
The lights buzz quietly above us. Advaith shifts in his seat and bites his lip, staring hard at his screen.
“I’m just saying,” Esther says. There’s a tremor in her voice I don’t know her well enough to translate, but my best guess is this: she believes that. And she’s felt this way long enough to have been seduced by the idea of her own rightness, with the image of herself as the one person in the room willing to stand up for what’s right.
And, I mean: what in the absolute hell. Everyone knows—everyone knows—Sandra was Regina’s best friend.
I can’t get down quite enough air. Next to me Megan is blinking rapidly at her screen, and everyone’s waiting, and it’s all such a glaring, enormous silence for Regina to fill.
“I think,” Regina says, her voice shaking, “that we can’t—” She stops.
I know—most of my life I’ve known—what it’s like to have so much to say to someone who isn’t there. It’s that you can’t defend yourself against all those ugly accusations that crop up in your own mind—that you didn’t care enough, that you don’t deserve to be the one surviving. Or you can, it’s just that you can’t defend yourself to the one person who matters most. Regina knows perfectly well it’s a garbage suggestion that her ulterior motive is to make some kind of political statement, I’m sure, but Sandra doesn’t; Sandra will never know anything again. But it’s her opinion and her approval and her recognition that Regina actually cares about. It was always like that, the way they’d text incessantly about even the smallest things like sending each other pictures of what they were going to wear to school or the way they’d read books together so they could call each other at midnight and complain about characters they hated or the way Sandra would sometimes say things like Ugh, I’m such a bitch, and Regina would just laugh and link her arm though Sandra’s and say No, you just pretend you are, and you could tell that meant something real and vital to Sandra, that she trusted and also needed the way Regina saw her. And Regina needs all that to matter still, needs Sandra to understand it matters still, and that’s the part—that maybe that’s why she’s been wanting to do this tribute—that wrecks me. All our doomed, desperate dreams.
Esther says, “It isn’t okay for us to—”
“This isn’t your call,” I say. I tilt back my chair so I can meet her eyes over the computers. “You weren’t there.”
“Yes, I was. I was here last year. And it doesn’t feel right to—”
She doesn’t understand, that’s entirely clear. And, I guess, how could she? She was a freshman last year. How do you explain Sandra to someone who only ever knew her, reduced and clipped and faded, from that letter they read us all in first period?
So I should—can—reach past that first flash of anger and rummage around for some measure of generosity. “Esther—I get that you’re trying to do the right thing. And that’s cool, that’s good, but by any possible metric that could matter, you weren’t there.” I say it as gently as I can, but I don’t wait for an answer; it doesn’t matter what she’ll say. This isn’t hers to care about. “Regina,” I say, before I can talk myself out of it, “I’m in. Whatever you want me to do, I’ll do anything. You wanted a portrait, right? You still want one? I’ll do a portrait for you. Whatever you want. Count me in.”