I have also been thinking about a girl I won't name. Whose heart was broken, who cried and cried, who shook and convulsed in my arms as I stood there with her in the donut hall after the funeral.
I realized two things: that suddenly we were the same height, and that she had loved Kyle, or thought she had. The idea of her infatuation appeared in my brain with a surety I still don't question. Even seeing them together all the time, even having earned her confidence, I'd missed it, but then, when it was too late, I knew. She'd idolized him, would have willed herself to dream of him, must have written his name hundreds of times in grimy blue Bic ink and shredded the paper so no one would find out. Middle school crushes are fleeting, and they're supposed to be, but what if he dies in the middle of it? Does the girl get stuck? Does he become more and more amazing in her mind, now that he can't reject her, or worse, ignore her? There is no good way to say, Honey, even if he were here, he still wouldn't talk to you. The reality of it was, they were never close. It’s been six years; she's in college now. I wonder if he's become just that kid who died when she was in the seventh grade. I wonder if the special pang has faded.
-
The funeral was in the morning and I had hours to kill before returning to the same building for my afternoon job (how eerie to think the mournful donut hall transformed within hours back to its usual state: the screeching lunchroom). I went to the bookstore to see Brannon and therefore feel better. I think it must have worked but I don't remember, there's a haze. I ran into someone unpleasant but it didn't matter. I glanced at my phone for the time and it didn't make sense, it was way off. I turned it off and tried again, and then it had plausible numbers. The phone learns its time from the satellite, it knows about daylight saving time before I do. This was a malfunction I could never replicate, and though I blamed the phone it's equally possible that I was so shaken I couldn’t read a digital clock.
Somehow, hours passed, and I went back to work. I was wearing a gray dress which I've worn before and since, but it is still the dress I wore to Kyle's funeral. I don’t remember much about the rest of the day, except that most of the children were ruined with grief. That would be true for weeks.
There is only one thing I remember clearly. I was standing against the wall of the gym, watching the few kids who hadn’t ever heard of Kyle, or were too little to get it, or who just didn't care. This was one of the brief times I was left alone that day. There was always a kid or seven who wanted to sit with me, or cry on me, or ask the questions that never ended because there were never any answers. But for a minute they were all grieving elsewhere and I stood by myself watching tiny people grunt and heave, trying mightily to get their basketballs anywhere near the net.
In nine years at that job there were only two Kyles, and it was the other Kyle who ran up to me then. He said, Can I ask you a question. I wanted to say Please Don't Ask Me About Heaven but I said Sure.
He said, Are you wearing that dress because you're gonna have a baby? Because now I can see, your stomach is fat.
---
One of the very few things I miss about my job is Kyle's basketball jersey, number 24, blue and white, framed and hanging on the wall of the lobby. It was the first thing I saw when I walked into the building. To tell the truth Kyle was sort of a jackass but that comes with being almost fourteen and I said hello to his jersey in my head every single day. It was like they hung a ghost on the wall. I hated my job. The idea of that building honestly gives me a wave of stomachache. Still, it’s the only building in the world that has that ghost.
