Adaptation (10 page)

She remembered the bird in the headlights, and she remembered waking up twenty-seven days later. But the more she tried to focus in on that
thing
that had happened between those events, the more it slid away from her, slippery as an eel.

Cypress Lawn was one of Colma’s bigger cemeteries,
but Reese’s mom almost missed the entrance to the parking lot. The tires squealed as she abruptly turned into the second entrance off El Camino Real. “Sorry,” her mom muttered. She followed the road uphill, passing a planting of annuals that spelled out
CYPRESS LAWN
on the way to a sprawling, concrete building on the hilltop.

All around them, the hills of Colma were blanketed with headstones. The dead of San Francisco—five million of them and counting—were buried here, just a few miles south of the city. Hardly anyone had been buried in San Francisco itself since the 1940s.

“There’s the sign,” Reese said, pointing toward a placard that read
CHAPMAN MEMORIAL
.

Her mom parked the Prius on the side of the road behind a line of other cars. Reese was about to get out when her mom put a hand on her arm. “How are you doing, honey?”

Reese knew she was supposed to be somber and saddened by the fact that she was going to a funeral—and she was—but she also felt uncomfortably exposed. As if she were about to walk into a packed auditorium wearing nothing but her underwear. How was she supposed to act at the funeral of her debate coach, who had been shot only a few feet away from her? She didn’t want to inadvertently do something wrong. “I’m fine, I guess,” she said, but she knew it was unconvincing.

“If you start feeling sick or anything, we can go at any time.”

“Okay.”

Her mom turned off the car. “All right. Let’s go.”

Reese got out. It was clear but windy, and she was glad she had worn long sleeves and pants. As they headed toward the mausoleum, she saw a tall figure leaning against the hood of a blue car parked up the road. David. She was relieved to see him; she wouldn’t have to face this alone.

“Can I meet you inside?” she said to her mom, pausing before they reached the iron gates to the courtyard. “David’s over there.”

“All right. I’ll save you a seat,” her mom said.

Reese walked toward David, her arms crossed against the wind. He was dressed almost identically to her—black trousers and a black button-down shirt—and as she approached he lifted his head to look at her, his face solemn. “Hi,” she said. “What are you doing out here?” The wind gusted over the hill, making the American flag hanging near the mausoleum flap like birds’ wings.

“Hey,” David said. “I just needed a minute.” He pulled something out of his pocket and held it out to her. “I brought this.”

She reached out and took it. It was a photo of the two of them with Mr. Chapman, taken in Phoenix right before the semifinal round. Mr. Chapman was standing between them, his arms around their shoulders. Both she and David had strained smiles on their faces. She had forgotten about the photo. The morning it had been taken, she had wanted to crawl into a hole rather than be anywhere near David. But now she was grateful that Mr. C had corralled them into posing together. Seeing the photo nudged something inside herself, and sadness welled up thick and dark. The photo shook in her fingers.

“I thought we could give it to Mr. Chapman’s wife or something,” David said.

“That’s a great idea.” Tears pricked at her eyes.

“Hey,” David said softly. He reached out and squeezed her shoulder. His hand seemed to linger on her, and her breath caught in her throat. She looked up at him. His eyebrows drew together in concern. “Are you feeling all right?” he asked. When he let go of her, she was leaning toward him, slightly off-balance.

She choked on a laugh. “My mom asks me that every five minutes.”

He smiled slightly. “Mine too.”

The tension of the last few minutes dissipated somewhat, and she handed the photo back to him. He was going through the same thing she was. Maybe she should tell him about the scars. “David…”

“Yeah?”

She hesitated, pulling her hair over one shoulder as the wind buffeted her. “I saw something in the mirror when I got home. There were scars all over me. Did you—do you have scars from the accident?”

He studied her face. “Yeah, of course.”

“Do you have scars all around your head?”

His eyebrows furrowed. “Where?”

She ran a finger along the edge of her face. “Here.”

He came closer, raising a hand to her head. Her scalp tingled from his touch.

“Do you see it?” she whispered, her pulse speeding up as his fingers traced her hairline.

“Just barely.”

She felt his breath on her ear, and the rush of the wind over the hills of tombstones seemed to echo the buzzing sensation that lit through her body.

David went very still. “Reese…”

All of her senses seemed to zero in on that moment: the brisk wind on her face, the throb of blood in her veins, the thrill that traveled directly from David’s fingertips into her body. “What?” she said, the word hanging in the air between them like a bubble of hope.

His hand fell away from her and he stepped back. His expression was slightly apologetic. “We should go in. I think the service is going to start soon.”

The bubble burst. She had forgotten already: After her behavior at nationals, he was obviously not going to be interested in her. The fact that they’d had this crazy accident together didn’t change a thing. They were just friends.
Friends.

Disappointment settled over her thickly, but she swallowed it like a bitter pill. “Of course. Let’s go.”

Just through the iron gates was a courtyard with memorial plaques mounted on the walls, each one bearing a person’s name and dates of birth and death. Several rows of chairs had been set up in the courtyard, all facing a podium that was hung with a wreath of lilies. There were already about a dozen people there, and Reese saw the high school principal along with a few teachers she recognized. David went to sit with his parents in the third row, and Reese saw her mom waiting a couple of rows back. Reese sat down beside her, feeling worn out even though the service hadn’t even begun yet. Her mom squeezed her knee and whispered, “That’s Mr. Chapman’s wife up there.” She indicated a woman in a black dress who was standing near the podium. She didn’t look sad; she looked empty. Reese clutched the edges of her seat as a wave of something desperate and lonely swept against her. She hadn’t expected the funeral to affect her so strongly. Her mom put an arm around her shoulders, and Reese leaned against her gratefully.

Other students from the debate team were scattered throughout the audience, and some of them twisted around to look at her, unable to hide their curiosity. The feeling of being exposed came back, and Reese shrank into her seat. She slumped in relief when the service began because that meant her classmates could no longer stare at her. But when Mrs. Chapman went to the podium to speak, Reese had to lower her gaze to the ground so that she didn’t become overwhelmed by the grief on Mrs.
Chapman’s face. Reese couldn’t remember her emotions ever being so volatile before. It was as if a storm were brewing inside her: the wind swirling dark clouds in an accelerating spiral. She managed to hold it together through the entire service, and she even went with David to deliver the photo to Mrs. Chapman, who embraced her in thanks. The woman’s body felt brittle as a bird’s. Reese had to excuse herself afterward, muttering that she was looking for the ladies’ room. Someone directed her toward the mausoleum entrance and she went inside on shaking legs, worried that she was going to throw up.

She hurried down a broad corridor lined with memorial plaques up to the twenty-foot-high ceiling. She caught sight of the
RESTROOM
sign at the end of the hall, and she quickened her pace until she was practically running, her sneakers slapping dully on the marble floor. She turned the corner and saw the ladies’ room to her right. She ducked inside. There were two stalls and she slipped into the empty one, slamming the door shut. She bent over, her breath wheezing in her lungs. A droplet of sweat trickled off her temple and plunged into the toilet. Someone flushed in the next stall, and as water stormed through the pipes, she began to calm down.

Out there, she had been afraid she would fly apart, as if she were a rag doll being fought over by children, the seams stretching to their breaking point. It was better in here, alone. There was no one to see her, and no one for her to see. She felt herself knitting back together again.

She waited until the bathroom had emptied and then came out, turning on the sink to splash water over her face. Over the sink a sign had been affixed that read
DANGER: DO NOT DRINK THIS
WATER
.
Ugh.
Not a good thing to see in a mausoleum bathroom. She straightened, pulling some paper towels from the dispenser to dry off her dripping face and hands. Some strands of her hair had gotten wet, and she ran her fingers through it in an attempt to straighten out the windblown mess. She heard footsteps approaching, and a woman she recognized from the memorial service entered the bathroom. Reese gave up on finger combing her hair and left as the woman went into one of the stalls.

She wasn’t eager to go back to the memorial, though, and as she stepped out into the hallway she glanced to the right.

A man in a black suit was framed briefly in the archway to the next corridor.

She stared at the now empty archway. Who was that? He reminded her of Special Agent Forrestal.

She walked toward the archway, but when she reached the threshold of the room beyond it, there was no one there. It was a roughly square space, the walls lined with glass cases filled with urns and framed photos. Though she was surrounded by the dead, there was nothing frightening about the space. It was peaceful there. Glass doors on the right led out to a grassy courtyard, and wide corridors full of more memorial plaques branched off to the left and continued straight ahead. She looked out the doors, but the courtyard was walled in and empty. Maybe the man had gone down one of the corridors.

She took the one to the left. It was roofed in stained glass depicting blue flowers growing among waving green grasses, and the sunlight that shone through it made the corridor glow. She began to walk as quickly and silently as possible, hoping to catch a glimpse of the man again. She passed a room tiled in blue and
green like a Moroccan courtyard. She passed a stone tomb carved out of the wall, as if it had been lifted whole from a medieval European crypt and transplanted here, to be surrounded by the ashes of Californians. The mausoleum seemed to go on forever: a palace of the dead, silent but for the whisper of her footsteps. She was a world away from the funeral now, focused solely on catching another glimpse of—

There.

She ducked into an alcove, pressing her back against the marble wall, pulse racing. She leaned forward to peer around a vase filled with silk flowers.

A man in a black suit with a coiled wire curving over his ear was standing about fifteen feet away, half-hidden by a statue of a woman draped in classical Greek robes. She held her breath. He was standing so still, and she couldn’t see his face—and then he lifted a hand to the wire in his ear, and the very faint sound of his voice drifted to her. He turned his head slightly.

Reese flattened herself against the wall before he saw her. She hadn’t been able to get a good look at his face, but there was something about him that freaked her out. She heard his footsteps clicking across the marble, and she froze, worried that he was going to walk right past her and ask what she was doing following him.

But as the minutes ticked by, the footsteps faded. He hadn’t found her.

She peeked out again and couldn’t see him. She took a deep breath and ran back the way she had come, her hair flying out behind her.

She wanted to talk to David, to ask him if he’d seen a man in
a black suit anywhere, but by the time she returned to the courtyard, there was no sign of him. “He had to leave,” her mom told her when she asked. “He said to tell you good-bye.”

“Oh.”

Her mom gave her a concerned look. “Are you all right? You just turned white.”

Reese tried to erase the disappointment from her face. “I’m fine.” But as she and her mom made awkward small talk with the other students and teachers at the funeral, she couldn’t help but think that David must be avoiding her now. She told herself it was easier this way—no more complications—but it didn’t work. It still stung.

Reese had known Julian her entire life. Their moms
had been friends in college, and for as long as Reese could remember, they had shared summer vacations up at the Russian River, weekend trips to Disneyland, and holiday meals that mingled family related by blood or by friendship. Julian’s mom was African American and his dad was Jewish, while Reese’s mom was a lapsed Catholic, so there were a lot of traditions among them. Reese thought of Julian’s parents almost as extensions of her own mom, and Julian was more than merely a friend; he was like a brother to her. But when he opened the door to his house later that afternoon, even she was startled by the strength of the joy that crashed through her at the sight of him: brown eyes alight, full lips widening to reveal a flash of white teeth in a smile that could knock you over.