Absent – Katie Williams

For inspiration.” “All that paint is still there.” She fidgets. “You might want to put it away before someone pours it over the wall or floor or something.” “I don’t think anyone would do that.” “You don’t?” “It’s a memorial mural, so vandalizing it would be pretty harsh.”

“Oh. I guess so.” She pulls at the hem of her shorts, not that the extra quarter inch covers much of her stick legs. I wait patiently for her to leave. She’s odd and, well, exasperating. No wonder people make fun of her. Why is she standing silent and fidgeting? Why not head on her way? Finally she says, “I’m sorry about your friend.” “Thanks,” I say, then, on impulse, “What happened to your regular clothes?”

She looks down at her gym clothes as if she’s only just realized she’s wearing them. “Oh,” she says. “The toilet.” “The, um, what?” “Someone put them in the toilet while I was in gym class.” “That’s awful.” She sways in place. “I guess. After the last time it happened, I started keeping a spare set of gym clothes in my locker. See?” She plucks at the armpit of her sweatshirt, pulling the fabric up toward my face.

“Freshly washed. Doesn’t smell.” “That’s okay.” I pull back. “I believe you.” When I step back, Greenvale takes my place and breathes on the streak of grease my fingers have left, lifting her sweatshirted hand to rub the glass clean. “Why bother?” I ask. “Oh.” She gestures at the gold and silver cups. “I think they’re pretty.

I mean, imagine doing something like that.” For a moment, I try to imagine it—the globe of the ball between my hands, the ribbon breaking across my chest, the faraway roar from the stands—and maybe she’s right. Maybe it is something to imagine. But then I notice the reflection in the glass. The bathroom door. I haven’t been watching it. “Excuse me,” I say, leaving Greenvale by the trophy case.

“WHEN YOU DIE,” LUCAS HAYES ONCE TOLD ME, “IT’S LIKE every wound your body has ever had—every skinned knee, paper cut, pimple—opens up and says See? I told you so.” Lucas had held Brooke Lee as she’d jittered and bucked, rolled and foamed, and—yeah—died, so I figured he knew what he was talking about. My best friend, Usha Das, took a different view. “Dying isn’t pain,” she said. “It’s nothing. That’s scary now, but you won’t feel scared when you’re nothing. You’ll feel nothing when you’re nothing.” The biblicals in their cafeteria prayer circle all agreed that dying was being folded in the arms of Our Father, all woolly beard, thick bathrobe, and water vapor.

The burners, on the other hand, hated their fathers, who bothered them all the time. Or didn’t bother them enough. They sucked on their cigarettes and said that dying was like blowing out smoke. Then they’d watch their smoke rise and twist and disappear over the heads of the shampoo-shiny ponies and gym-wet testos, who didn’t need to think about death because they could just smile pretty at the grim reaper and watch him float the other way, couldn’t they?

People were talking a lot about death that year, my senior year, because Brooke Lee had died right there in the girls’ bathroom across from the gym. I didn’t pay attention to most of it. My classmates were no more than what Usha and I had named them—biblicals, well-rounders, testos, and the rest—and they were always babbling on about one thing or another.

But after I died, they started talking about my death and then I had no choice but to listen. 1kitap1.com/en 1: MARCH GRIEF GROUP MEETING AT THE MARCH GRIEF GROUP MEETING, MY FORMER CLASSMATES steer their chairs in lazy circles, bumping the armrests against one side of the table, then the other. Posters stare down at them, pouting teen models labeled with pretend afflictions: Anorexia! Gonorrhea! Steroids! Depression! On the table, a row of Kleenex boxes issues its scratchy white blossoms. How many tears would it take to soak this supply?

How many nose blows? How many muffled sobs?

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: d7e611091043ff0d
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 5,004,783 bytes (4.773 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 159
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 236.22 minutes
• Total Words: 47,244
• Total Characters: 253,787
• Average Words per Page: 297.13
• Average Characters per Page: 1596.14

Most Frequent Words

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