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Mattie was always nervous asking her teammates for a ride home.
She tried to do so as little as possible. Her mother only worked until five most days, so it wasn’t too big of a deal to wait the few extra minutes after practice for her. Mattie didn’t mind it. The school was safer than most places to hang out by herself and it helped clear her head. She had always liked to have some alone time, especially after hours spent in crowded hallways and classrooms, being too tightly pressed into people she didn’t know. It was nice to be able to take a moment to breathe.
That wasn’t to say that the other girls never offered. Actually, most of the time, she couldn’t get them to stop offering. Reese and Cairo were notoriously bad about it, although they had very different ways of going about asking. Reese typically would pester her about it if she found out, whereas the latter always pretended it was something of an accident (‘Oh, well, I just happened to be passing your house, anyway. It’s not a big deal.’) in order to keep up her reputation. Mattie was grateful for both of them, truly, but rides home with them could sometimes feel a bit awkward. As much as they all tried, no one could stop their thoughts from ending up on what had happened the semester before. How do you ignore the fact someone framed you for murder? How do you move on from that?
Mattie had always been called a forgiving person... but this whole thing was a little more than she was used to handling. This wasn't like forgetting someone's birthday or stepping on their feet. Even if she understood why it had happened, she couldn’t help but wonder how much of the team’s feelings for her stemmed out of guilt. It was hard to shake off the idea that everything they’d built since she’d arrived back, the bond they now had… how much of that was because they felt responsible for what they did to her?
Rides with Eva and Kate were a little better, but the freshman always felt like something of a third wheel. Kate could drive, but apparently chose not to. Eva seemed happy enough to play the chauffeur to anyone who needed a lift, but Mattie didn’t want to interrupt their alone time as a couple.
So really, Mattie would have been fine waiting most days.
The girl had been doing just that one day, sitting on an outside bench after practice attempting to read the next chapter of The Great Gatsby for English when she heard a voice. The sound made her jump, having not realized anyone was still left. Cairo had dismissed the meeting fifteen minutes earlier than usual, having had to get to an appointment. Everyone else had trickled out after her. Or, at least, the freshman had assumed.
“Mattie?” The girl approached her from behind, carrying her backpack over her shoulder. “You’re still here?”
The freshman turned to find Annleigh standing there, her long curls now pulled back in a low ponytail. She must have taken it out of its usual style after practice to get it out of her face. Mattie couldn’t remember ever seeing her with it like this, although that wasn’t exactly saying much. Annleigh seemed to be the most distant from everyone on the team. She was always distracted, texting or staring off into space. Mattie hadn’t wanted to pry into her life. The junior had gone through quite a lot in a short period of time. They all had, of course, but losing your boyfriend and your sister (the first because of someone you had to see every day) couldn’t have been easy.
When she realized who it was, the freshman relaxed a bit. “Um, yeah…! I’m just waiting for my mom. She gets off of work in a few minutes.”
The brunette frowned, as if processing. “Do you want me to drive you home?” She asked, tipping her head. “I don’t mind.”
“You-” This was a first. She thought about saying no, but it was getting pretty cold outside. It was one of those days that looked sunny and convinced you not to bring a jacket, only to slide down to almost freezing in the afternoon. Besides, her mother never minded someone else bringing her back as long as Mattie texted her to let her know. “Um, sure… that would be great, if you don’t mind!”
Annleigh nodded, smiling, and then motioned for her to follow. The two of them made their way through the student parking lot. The freshman couldn’t bring herself to talk. She hadn’t ever expected something like this to happen. Honestly, she hadn’t known that the junior had her driver’s license. They just kept walking in silence until they reached a small, silver Volkswagen Beetle parked in one of the less crowded, side lots of the school.
“Cute car…!” Mattie said, if only to break the tension.
Annleigh startled a bit, as if she had been lost in thought. Her eyes raked over the car with an expression the freshman couldn’t read. Mattie felt like she’d said something wrong, but she wasn’t sure how. “... thank you…” The brunette finally said, but the smile she gave didn’t reach her eyes. Something just felt… wrong.
No matter who offered to drive her home, Mattie always found herself wishing they lived closer to school. It wasn’t exactly far, per say, but it didn’t qualify as close, either. It was just the awkward amount of distance that people still offered her rides, but she felt bad about how much gas they were probably using up. The freshman’s family didn’t live out in the country, but they lived enough outside of it that they could have space for all the animals her mom rescued. The Wheeler farm, her friends from junior high school had called it. So far, only Reese and Eva (on the one occasion she wasn’t with Kate) had actively come inside to meet some of them. Her mother had once offered to host parties for teams she was on, but that had been before this particular group had framed her for murder. She wasn’t really sure how she’d take to them coming over now.
This ride was especially awkward, because Annleigh didn’t seem to be talking much. It was a little unnerving. Annleigh typically had a lot to say. Not in the same way Eva did, who rambled anytime she got nervous or excited. The brunette seemed to talk because she always assumed it was what you were supposed to do. Mattie noticed that a lot of who Annleigh was seemed to be modeled after expectations for what you were supposed to be, rather than someone she seemed to want to be. If they had been closer, she might have asked her about it. With how things were, though… the freshman didn’t want to pry.
(It didn’t stop her from worrying, truthfully.)
“Hey,” Annleigh’s voice was soft when she broke the silence for the first time. She seemed nervous. “... do you mind if we make a stop on the way? Sorry, it’s just- I mean, you can say no. It’s just… It’s on the way, and it might be dark on the way back. It’s okay if you need to get back, though.”
“Sure…!” Mattie agreed quickly, if only because the junior seemed so anxious. It also wasn’t like Annleigh to show her anxiety. She seemed more like an ‘ignore it and hope it will go away’ kind of person. “That’s fine with me. My mom doesn’t need me home for a bit, so it’s cool!”
The relief on the older girl’s face was instant. “Thanks, Mattie…” She didn’t turn her head, seeming to need to completely focus on the road in front of her. The freshman noticed that her hands gripped the wheel a little too tightly to be considered comfortable. There were other things too, like how she kept leaving her blinker on for long stretches after lane changes or the fact she kept reaching up to adjust her rear view mirror, that indicated that Annleigh was nervous about something.
Another moment of silence passed. “Did you always have your driver’s license…?” Mattie asked curiously. She needed someone to make small talk. It was unusual for her to be the one prodding the conversation forwards, but the silence felt stifling.
Apparently, however, it was the wrong thing to say. Annleigh just looked even more distracted by the question than she’d already seemed. Seeing her obviously distressed made Mattie shrink back in her seat. All you do is make things worse , the annoying little voice in her head echoed. Not really what she needed right now.
“Um, no...” The junior finally responded, still not taking her eyes off the road. She barely even blinked. It was disconcerting, to see someone normally so bright and full of life seem so… numb. “I haven’t.”
That seemed to be all she was willing to say.
The sound of tires hitting gravel made Mattie look up from her phone. She didn’t usually like to be on it when she was with someone, but since conversation hadn’t seemed to be helping Annleigh relax, the freshman thought maybe leaving her space to think might help. The two of them had spent the rest of the drive to… wherever they were going in silence. The older girl hadn’t turned on the radio, not even to one of the Christian stations that Cairo always teased her about listening to. Mattie had spent a few minutes texting her mom to update her on what was happening, but the rest scrolling through her phone for anything to make her look occupied. There wasn’t much. A few new photos on Instagram of her friends from junior high, but otherwise, it was just another Tuesday afternoon.
She looked up at the change of ground and out the car window. Annleigh had turned into a gravel driveway on what looked to belong to a… church? Or, at least, the back of a church. This didn’t appear to be the front entrance. The car wound up the grassy hills full of statues and…
Oh… oh.
It was a cemetery.
Suddenly, everything seemed to make sense. Annleigh’s nervousness to ask if she could stop here, her need to come before the sun went down, the change in her bubbly persona to who she must be when she was by herself. Mattie felt herself overwhelmed by the desire to comfort the girl next to her, but she didn’t know how to start. She wasn’t even sure if it would be wanted. They’d come a long way as a team, sure, but in some respects, they were still strangers. Strangers that should be enemies, really. After everything that had happened, after being framed by girls who knew she was innocent, Mattie knew she should have been angry. Knew every reasonable person would be. Angry that they knew, angry that they lied, angry that they took months of her life away.
… but it was really hard to be upset with Annleigh as she watched the tears start to fall as she parked the car.
The brunette got out quickly, closing the door behind her and grabbing something Mattie couldn’t see from the backseat before walking towards a certain spot about halfway up the hill. The freshman waited, not sure if she should follow. She wasn’t asked to, but Annleigh had also made the decision to go while she was in the car. She contemplated what to do, before deciding to give her a few minutes alone for privacy before following her.
She counted to sixty around five times before opening the passenger seat door. Mattie instinctively checked to make sure that the older girl hadn’t left her keys inside (she hadn’t) before closing it, on the off chance the car locked. She fiddled with her ponytail. What if Annleigh didn’t want her there? Grieving was a private process. Mattie wanted to respect that, wanted to respect boundaries, but she couldn’t stop thinking about how scared the older girl had looked on the road. How alone she had seemed.
It would be easier to stay here and wait. It would be easier to ignore this, probably, and to pretend (as she thought Annleigh might think she wanted) that it never happened. It would be easier to be angry and bitter about what she, and the team, had done to Mattie. Frankly, she thought she'd have the right to be, too. Sure, her friend or sibling hadn't died, but she'd lost things too. Time. Friends. Innocence. They'd blamed her for their own mess, and whether their fear had been justified or not didn't change that it had been wrong. It had been wrong, wrong what had happened, and she didn't think anyone could have blamed her for holding a grudge. It would have been much easier.
But the easiest things were not usually the best ones, and choosing to be kind was something not enough people did in this world. So it was up to Mattie to start.
The girl’s sneakers slid in the gravel and then in the dirt as she made her way up to where Annleigh was half-sitting, half-kneeling in the grass. The whole area was peaceful and covered in flowers, some fresh and some beginning to wilt at the edges. It made Mattie a little hopeful, somehow. Graveyards were no one’s favorite place, but it was nice to see all the flowers. It was nice so many people still had those here holding onto them.
“Annleigh?” Mattie murmured as she approached, careful not to scare the older girl. “Um, sorry… I just… I wanted to, um… make sure you were okay…” She trailed off as her eyes fell on the headstone in front of them.
It was covered in flowers. So thoroughly covered by them, in fact, that Mattie couldn’t see the name it bore. There were dozens and dozens of them, mostly loose and scattered over the stone, but others were lovingly tied with ribbons and arranged to make sure they had enough water. Not all of them were new, but most still seemed to be in bloom. As the freshman watched, Annleigh reached out with shaking hands and adjusted a few of them. She didn’t know enough about flowers to recognize most of the types outside of the roses and forget-me-knots, but she appreciated the skillfully selected color scheme. Looking at the shades of pink, red, and yellow, Mattie was overwhelmed by emotion.
Annleigh must have done all this, then. She must come here to do this, probably every day.
The younger girl looked around the cemetery and found that many of the graves had flowers left on them that seemed to match the ones here. The brunette must have given them to others, other graves who’s loved ones may have passed or been too far away to see them.
“... oh, Annleigh…” Mattie whispered, her eyes moving back to the other girl only to find her with tears spilling hard and fast onto the ground, her arms wrapped around herself as if they were the only things keeping herself from falling apart. The freshman moved to her side, placing her own hand on her shoulder as a test to see if she was alright with the contact. Almost instantly, the brunette reached up and grabbed it. She was shaking as Mattie sat down in the grass next to her.
There was a moment where nothing had to be said. There was a moment where it was alright that there was silence.
Then Annleigh spoke. “... I got my license a few weeks ago. I didn’t want it. I never did. I hate driving… It’s too fast and all the street signs get mixed up in my head, sometimes.” She took a breath. “Clark used to drive me everywhere… rain or shine. He wasn’t afraid, but he never made me feel like it was silly that I was. He just… did it, with a smile on his face. The way he used to do everything.”
The junior paused for a moment, but Mattie didn’t rush her. She kept holding her hand, hoping it would indicate to her friend that she was there for her.
“The day I went back to school after… everything…I hadn’t even thought about it. About going home, I mean. Dad drops me off to school in the morning, but Clark… he always took Farrah and I home. I hadn’t even thought about what to do. The day ended and I made my way out to the parking lot and… he wasn’t there. And I knew he wouldn’t be. It was all so stupid, because I knew he wouldn’t be. I knew it… but I just thought…” The brunette was crying in earnest, now. Mattie squeezed her hand to indicate that she was still there, that she wasn’t going to leave her.
She ran her other hand across her face, trying to wipe away some of the tears. “I don’t know what I thought, really. I just didn’t, in the end. It was one of those things I hadn’t even considered. I missed him so much for the bigger things, I let the little ones slip through the cracks. In the end, it was just a matter of time before I fell apart.” She whispered.
There were a few seconds as Annleigh tried to catch her breath. Mattie released her hand gently to pat her on the back, hoping it might help. She wasn’t really good with grief. It was something she had been lucky enough not to experience much of in her life. All she could do was sit here with the older girl and reminder her that there were still people in this world holding onto her.
“... Cairo drove me home. She found me in the bathroom crying. I… I’m not sure if it was a coincidence or if she might have expected me to have forgotten. You know, she used to drive Riley everywhere too… I thought she was going to say something about the crying, but she just steered me to her car and dropped me off without saying anything. After that, I just walked home…”
The wind picked up a bit, sending a few of the loose flowers rolling away down the hill. Mattie watched them go, wondering where they might end up. It felt poetic in a way she couldn’t quite explain. It felt like nothing at all.
“I bet he likes the flowers…” The freshman whispered, hoping it was comforting. Hoping it was the right thing to say. Hoping, more than anything else, that it was right to say anything at all.
The brunette wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her cardigan, again. The tears had stopped falling so fast now. She picked up the nearest rose and touched its petals gently. “I hope so. I don’t know… I mean, I guess it’s silly to do. To bring them every day. I know he’s not really here anymore. But… the first time I came… it just looked so cold. Impersonal. It just didn’t feel like what he would have wanted, I guess. And Farrah—” Her breath hitched on the last word before she continued. “She didn’t like flowers very much. She always complained they made her sneeze. I didn’t know what to do, really. I still don’t know if she would have wanted me here at all…”
Annleigh tipped her head and gestured to a grave a feet yards away, under an old apple tree. A few flowers, different to the ones on Clark’s grave, had been put into the vase, but mainly there were books. A small stack of them tied with a purple ribbon, as if someone had been about to give them as a gift.
The freshman didn’t need to ask who’d brought them.
“I think it’s lovely…” Mattie said quietly, squeezing Annleigh’s hand again. She was relieved to see a small smile flicker across the older girl’s face. “I think she would have liked it a lot. I think she would be glad to know how much you miss her…”
“I was afraid she might think I didn’t… for a while. I wish… I wish I hadn’t told her… I wish…” The junior trembled, and her lashes threatened to release another burst of water before she sucked in a breath. “But I can’t keep focusing on that. I just hope… she knows that I’m sorry… and that I miss her. And…”
That I wish she was here instead.
Annleigh didn’t have to say the words out loud for the younger girl to understand them. She knew it instinctively, knew the weight of that guilt, knew what it was like to feel as if you had been spared from something you might have deserved. The freshman knew she couldn’t talk Annleigh out of that line of thinking, the idea that Farrah or Clark or both of them should be here instead of her. That was for professionals, for people who understood what pain was like more than a fourteen-year-old who had only known the girl for a few months now.
Watching your friends experience grief was difficult in a way no one talked about. You want to help, you want to make things better, but sometimes, that isn’t an option for what you are capable of. Sometimes, you live in fear of making things worse, of hurting them more, of saying the wrong thing and opening up new wounds or holes or stitches they had already tried to sew shut. You want friendship to mean that you can help each time someone is down, each time there is pain, each time you watch them struggle with a burden you long to take away.
But it can’t always mean that, and learning that is its own loss. A loss of innocence. Learning that sometimes, healing means admitting to someone that they need someone else, someone more, as well as you is a loss. Because we are taught that not being enough is a bad thing. We are taught that it is a failure. We are taught that loss is something you have to go through, fight with, to be able to get out the other side.
It is not.
Sometimes, friendship is simply holding onto someone’s hand when they feel as if they’re drifting away. You do not need to understand what makes a balloon float to grab the string to keep it with you. You do not need to fully comprehend something, to be able to fix it, to be able to take away all pain to love.
“... I wish I knew.” Mattie admitted, and it hurt a bit. It hurt because the easiest thing to do would be to assure Annleigh that her sister had known that she loved her. But it didn’t feel right, saying something like that. Not when it so clearly would have been speculation, at least. Mattie had only met Farrah the one time, a night when they both had been drunk and only one of them had made it out of. Saying something like that felt meaningless, like those messages they write on the ‘sorry for your loss’ cards. Telling someone like that is easier, but it doesn’t always make it better. She had a feeling Annleigh had been told a lot of things like that in the past few months.
The freshman continued, eyes looking at Clark’s grave and the pile of flowers rather than at the girl next to her. “I wish I could tell you that she knows… I wish I could make it better. I wish she and Clark were here, and Chess, too. Sometimes, I even wish Riley was here… I know it’s stupid and probably the wrong thing to say right now, here.” The younger girl choked out, her own eyes feeling fuller than she had expected them to be. “I just… she was the first person who was nice to me at this school. Who saw something in me even before high school had started. She told me that she thought I could be cheer captain one day…”
She trailed off, finding it increasingly harder to force the words out. This was all wrong, somehow. Everything she said was wrong. Annleigh was suffering and here she was, not even able to tell her that Farrah loved her, going on about the girl who’d killed her. If things hadn’t been so awful, they might almost have been funny in the most fucked up way she could think off.
“... I want them back…” Mattie finally admitted, not sure who she was confessing to. Maybe to herself. Maybe to Annleigh. Maybe to the boy in the grave that she’d never gotten the opportunity to know. To the two girls she could have been teammates with. To the one who she had been who had decided to take that away from her. “I want them all back. I want things to be okay again. I want to go to the sleepover and get drunk and not wake up to a knife and someone else’s blood on my hands. I want my first day of high school and my first time at practice and a captain who I could believe in.”
Both of them were crying by this point. It was Annleigh’s turn to wrap her arm around Mattie’s shoulders and pull her closer. In the dull gray mist of the air, it felt like they were the only two people left in the world. “I want them back, too…” The junior was looking at the flower in her hand. “I want Clark to drive me home after school. I want Chess to roll her eyes at Kate when interrupts everyone. I want Farrah back… I want her to be here so badly that it hurts… and… and some days, I wish Riley was here, too. The girl I knew the last two years. She used to send cute animal pictures to the team group chat…”
The wind whipped up their hair as they sat. The light was fading quickly, but neither of them wanted to be the first to move. “It’s not fair…” Mattie ended up saying, the words seeming as useless outside her head as they had inside. “In the end, it’s just… not fair. People always say the world isn’t, and I know that. I know it’ll be okay, someday, I guess. But it isn’t now.”
“It’s not fair…” Annleigh echoed, and something in admitting it hung there. It was the first time either of them had acknowledged it. That something wrong had happened, that something had been lost, that something they should have been guaranteed as children had been stolen from them.
It wasn’t okay. It might not ever be, in some ways. There was always going to be a little part of them, Mattie thought, that would always be holding on to a fantasy, a world where things had changed, a place where things were better. But it would get better.
“... Farrah always wanted a Beetle. That’s why I picked out that one.” Annleigh stood up and walked over to her sister’s grave. Her mascara had smudged. If her sister could see her wherever she was, she’d probably be amused at the sight. “She was so excited to drive… on good days…”
The junior sighed. “It’s getting dark…” Mattie took that as an indication that she was ready to continue. Sometimes, life was like that. Sometimes, you had to keep going, even when you didn’t think you could. You had to keep going even when others no longer could. “I should probably get you home… Thank you. For coming, I mean… It means a lot.”
“Of course…!” Mattie said quickly, getting up and dusting her skirt off. Both girls started walking back in the direction of the car as the sun began to set above them. The light was fading, but it would rise again the next day. It always returned, even after the darkest nights.
But you didn’t always have to wait on the sun. Sometimes, you just had to remember you could turn other lights on. “I could come back with you, if you wanted… I mean, it’s totally fine if you’d rather be alone, of course. But… if you want. I wouldn’t mind.” The freshman offered, a sad smile on her face.
Annleigh smiled a bit, too, her eyes looking back to where Clark and Farrah’s graves were. “I’d like that.” She nodded. “It would be nice to have some company, I think… Maybe we could bring Kate, too. Chess is buried here.” The girl gestured down the road. “I go to see her sometimes, too. I’m not sure Kate’s been yet… I don’t think she would want to go alone.”
“That would be nice.” It would have been nicer to have them here. It would have been better. But it wasn’t real. It wasn’t okay that it wasn’t real, but it was what they had. They had to keep going. It was all they could do, in the end.
Even when the night closes in, there will always be stars.
(the thing about stars is you can’t tell which ones are about to die.)
(with your own two eyes, you can see only the 6000 or so living stars, research tells you. you’re not sure of the exact number, if you’re being honest. maybe no one really does. with a telescope, you can see many more of the heavenly spheres, the ones that have already died but because of their distance from us, you still can see the outline of what once was.)
(the sky is a symphony of living and dying stars, and we are onlookers without sheet music. we have no idea what is written for us, and there is something unfair in that. there is something unfair in loss, and it is not what is talked about. it is not the pain, the grief, the sorrow. it is the absence that is so desperately unfair. it is the knowledge that you must continue, even when someone else cannot.)
(at night, you sit outside and audit the symphony that exists in the gap between you and the heavens. sometimes you crane your eyes and neck to see if you can see anyone up there, watching over you. but mainly you listen. the stars, even the ones that might be at the end of their life, have reemerged as a constant orchestra to a world like yours that is racked with nothing but uncertainties.)
you’re here. you’re safe. the stars whisper. you’re alive. )
Annleigh wrapped her arm around the freshman’s shoulders as they made their way back to the car. The same car that Farrah wanted. In the trees, she could hear a bird singing even though the season for songbirds had passed. Some people might have taken this as a sign. Others might have seen it as an omen. All Mattie could think is that in some ways, she was so lucky to be hearing it at all. She was so lucky to be alive that it hurt, sometimes, and that was okay. It was alright to recover, to be recovering. It was alright to continue.
And if it was not alright now, then one day it would be.