1

Freshman year, Monica died the night of the Homecoming dance. They found her in her brother's car, crunched against a tree down near the river. No one had ever noticed us before she killed herself, but when she did, everyone claimed to be her best friend, so that they'd get attention.

They had a prayer service in the chapel, and for a week the school chaplain let kids come in his office during study period to eat candy and talk about death instead of doing their chem worksheets. But two weeks later, the football team won the championship, school pride overran everything, and Monica was forgotten by everyone but me. “Monica” used to be the name of my best friend. The one I went to tap dance classes with in fourth grade, the one who I smoked clove cigarettes with in the park, the one who forgave me for not going to her thirteenth birthday party because I was mad at her for inviting the girl who cheated off my biology midterm. “Monica” used to be a name I threw around all the time because she called my house and rode my bus home from school and slept over on school nights so we could watch black and white movies together.

But “Monica” doesn’t even exist anymore. The girl with the birthmark on the back of her knee and the triangle-shaped baby toe was just a figment of my imagination. We’d videotaped ourselves acting out our favorite movie scenes and dropped condoms full of water out of the second floor window of her house when her brothers’ friends used to smoke on the front porch. But “Monica” is a principle now. An event. Teachers use her as an example, a cautionary tale. Don't drive fast at night, or you'll end up like Monica. You never know what can happen, think of Monica. Life is short, remember Monica?

I don’t even remember the last time I said her name out loud. It seems like blasphemy to talk about her as a person, as my best friend, rather than to use her as a concept like kids did in class, as if her death was a "group event" that affected all of us. The other kids at school seemed to forget that while Monica was alive, they had made fun of her for dying her blond hair black and being quiet in class. They made fun of the fact that her mother made her adhere to school dress code, so that her skirt was always long and frumpy, instead of tailored short like the other girls. They taunted her for being poor white trash and too skinny and too awkward and too smart in math. But she was my only friend.

When we were in first grade, Monica and I went on our first Girl Scout sleepover with the girls in our troop. We all ate s’mores and drank hot cocoa and used a toilet that was just a wooden seat above a hole in the ground. We sang a song about eating worms and I missed my mom and the woods were dark and I couldn’t remember the words to the prayer I always said before bed. I ran away from the fire ring and threw up warm, chocolatey vomit onto dry leaves, which crinkled. “It’s because you sang that gross worm song!” she yelled at everyone, running to my side to help. When she saw me puking in the flickering firelight, she threw up as well, hers mixing with mine in the dirt. Troop mothers came running over, but Monica and I just grabbed onto one another and cried, snot and tears and puke all over our faces.

After a few months, the "Monica" excuse did not fly anymore. My mother would yell at me when I didn't do my homework, just the way she had when Monica was alive. When I cried and wanted to stay in bed all weekend, she no longer pitied me and made me tea. Teachers stopped saying, "It's a hard time for us all," when I forgot an assignment or failed a pop quiz.

Regular life took over again, and I was supposed to be normal again. I was not supposed to think about her all the time, or dwell on her absence. I was supposed to try to be popular and make good grades for college and go to the Prom with a senior. Inside, I felt empty. I had nightmares.

The only girl in school who was nice to me was Channing Kendleton, who dressed up her school uniform to be as goth as possible, with a black leather dog collar on and lots of black eyeliner. She was a "depressed goth" according to most students, but she had kind of adopted me. She was a junior girl who scares away almost everyone, but she sat in front of me in a school-wide assembly about Monica's death. Halfway through, she leaned back on her folding chair, and whispered in my ear, "Wouldn't it be so great if the world ended right now?" She smiled.

Channing had great under-eye circles from drinking too much coffee and having too much sex. She was the kind of person people talked about. She made you want to figure her out. The pretty girls at school hated her because everyone wanted to know Channing’s business and not theirs. I always felt sort of special being chosen as her company, like I was let in on a secret or something. I really wanted her to like me, and to continue stopping to talk to me in the hallway, much to the shock and disgust of the gossip girls in school, who would mutter, "What do they have to talk about?" I wanted her to continue to invite me on her trips to the mall where we didn't buy anything.

Channing's right-hand-man was Dustin LaPore, who was a pale, silent boy one grade above me who spent all his lunch hours on the computers in the library and all his studies in the cafeteria, sneaking out the back door to chain smoke with the Mexican kitchen staff. Channing called Dustin "Dusty" and liked to rumple his hair (which seldom did good, since his head was shaved) and make him drive her places in his dad's borrowed beat up Cadillac. Dusty was very quiet and rarely spoke directly to me, usually just being quiet and watching me. He was nice, and we had some laughs, but I felt like if you stretched open his mouth and looked down his throat, you'd see a deep well with no end, and water at the bottom reflecting a full moon. I wanted him to like me. If he liked me, Channing would like me, and they would let me stay their friend. They weren't dating, but were inseparable. I usually just listened to them and watched them be dark and beautiful, rarely adding to the adventure other than to offer a shy smile and head nod. I was just glad not to be alone.

The summer of freshman year, Channing went to France with her family and Dustin had summer school. He had failed gym because he refused to change into the school's gym uniforms. I hadn't seen either of them in months, and had spent my summer at the beach with my mother. I'd spent most days inside the little bungalow we'd rented by the shore, listening to my iPod, crying, and sleeping. When it was time to go back to school, I'd never looked forward to the distraction of homework more.

First day, sophomore year, I sat next to Dusty on the bus. He'd never been on my route before, and I'd had no idea he would be there. His was the first bus stop on the route, meaning he spent every morning standing at his bus stop in the humid, dim 5:45am light. He'd chain smoke his father's cigarettes as he watched for the street lights to come on and the damp yellow bus to crest the hill. He would stay just awake enough to catch the bus, but asleep enough to be able to doze off for the rest of the hour it took to get to school.

It was a cold, raining day, so I spent my morning stamping the feeling back into my feet and blowing on my fingers as I waited for the bus. It was still practically summer, but the rain was already autumn. Dusty and I lived the farthest away from school, too poor to be rich kids, but too rich to fit in in their neighborhoods, where no one else had money to go to private school. When I climbed up the steps and got on the bus, I didn't know there was even anyone else already on. Assuming the bus was empty, I wandered slowly, trying to pick the perfect seat to start off the school year. I knew where you sat ont he bus was one of your first social statements on the new school year. Should I choose the far back? The far, far back? A single seat? They all had so many implications... If you sat in the single seats, you were closing yourself off to social interaction. You were sitting ALONE. If you sat in a double seat, you were at least open to friendship options. And then there was where you sat... In the front of the bus wasn't good because people could be behind you making fun of you the whole ride, and you wouldn't even know it was happening. It's also not a great impression to make that everyone on the bus knows you by the back of your head, rather than face. But also, a lot of the troublemakers sat in the laaasssst rows, so that they could throw shit out the windows at other cars. I didn't want to give the other kids the impression that I was going to engage in that kind of behavior just to make friends. Plus I'm scared of getting arrested. And I don't want the bus driver to think I'm a hoodlum and hate me for the rest of the year and drive past my bus stop without picking me up or something. So... a double seat in the middle to far back.

I tripped over something, stumbling sleepily. Dusty woke up with a grunt because I had kicked him in the shin.

Limply, sleepily, he nodded toward me with a casual toss of the head. He lifted his hand in a still wave. "Hi," I squeaked out shyly, blood rushing to my ears and cheeks. I wanted him to still want to be my friend. I wanted him to like me. He moved his hand, gesturing, waving me toward him. I froze.

"C'mere," he mumbled, beckoning me. I sat slowly next to him. He wrapped an arm around my shoulder and yanked me forward, so that I was snuggled against his torso with my head nestled into the armpit of his heavy leather jacket.

His coat creaked under the weight of my head as I relaxed, letting him hold me, getting high on the smell of his jacket and cigarettes. He was warm and dry and it was no time before I was dozing off to the sound of the rumbling bus and the rain hitting the small, yellowing window that didn't open.