Premeditated (30 page)

They set her coffin on a pedestal up front and arranged all the flowers and wreaths around it; a huge stone cross was carved into the wall behind the dais. The churning sky matched my mood perfectly.

“Wait,” I said as they prepared to seal the casket before the service. Uncle Paul told the men in charge to hold off. “Can you open it for a second?”

He nodded, and they opened the lid. I don’t know why they wanted a closed casket; Claire liked sunshine and open air, grass and trees. She was happier outside. No, not true. She was
happier alive, because dead she could never be happy again. She couldn’t be sad or cry or scream or laugh, because she was gone.

I struggled with the latch on my necklace before finally tugging it off with a tiny snap. The charm didn’t mean anything anymore. My Cuckoo was gone—a “was” instead of an “is.” She was past tense, so I left the remainder of Cuckoo and Dodo with her, draping the broken chain over the hands I couldn’t stand to touch because I knew they’d be cold.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I tried.”

I slipped my hand into my pocket, grasping the memory card she’d poured her heart and soul into. I’d planned to bury that, too, hoping it would end things for good, but I couldn’t let go of the last bit of clinging hope that said it still might come to some good if I kept it.

“Are you ready?” someone asked me. It had to have been Uncle Paul, because Aunt Helen hadn’t spoken since the hospital.

“Go ahead.”

The workmen set the pins with a drill so the casket couldn’t be opened again, then arranged the flowers over the seam. Claire was already buried, and she wasn’t even underground yet.

When I turned around, the seats behind me were full, except for the family row, and there were so many people standing that they had to line up outside the pavilion itself. I’d heard that young funerals were the most crowded, but I don’t think it would have mattered how old she was. Claire would have created a mob.

My mom and dad were in their places, and the seat obviously meant for me—the one between them—was the last
place I wanted to be. I sat there anyway and hoped things wouldn’t get any worse.

Of course, I’d run out of good luck the day I started Lowry.

“Mom, stop picking at my hair.”

She pulled at the strands while I anchored myself to my chair so I couldn’t slap her hands away. That was what she wanted.

“I don’t see why you couldn’t have waited another day or two to dye it back,” she said.

“Not now, Mom.”

“But your father said you looked so pretty with the blond hair.… I didn’t even get a picture. And now you’ve cut it short, too. This is because you knew I couldn’t stop you, isn’t it? You knew I’d be coming and—”

“Stop it!” I jerked my head away so she lost her grip on my hair. “Just stop. Everything, and especially today, is not about you.”

“Dinah Rain Powell, don’t you dare talk to me that way.”

That was the point when she tried to cry tears of frustration, but she’s a horrible actress.

“Please, Daddy, do something. Can’t you make her go to the car?”

“Just because I may not dress as nice as your precious aunt and uncle who spoiled you rotten …”

People were throwing us uncomfortable glances, whispering things I’m sure my mom thought were sympathetic toward her.

“Listen to yourself, Mom,” I begged. “Can you honestly not hear what you’re saying? We’re at Claire’s funeral—she’s dead, and you’re still yammering on about how unfair it is that all you got out of life was a husband who loved you and a kid who
gave up trying years ago. Unfair is Claire never graduating high school … never
starting
high school. If you really believe Uncle Paul and Aunt Helen have it better, then you’re more delusional than I thought.”

I knew my mother; this was only the beginning. If someone didn’t shut her down soon, she’d keep going until the entire focus of Claire’s memorial shifted to her.

“You little brat. If it weren’t for me, you’d—”

“If it weren’t for you throwing another temper tantrum, and Daddy letting you when he should have filed for divorce and left you in whatever world you live in, I’d have been close enough to Claire to stop this from happening, and we wouldn’t be here.”

She was starting to catch on that the situation had shifted out of her favor, so she made one last bid for sympathy.

“Just because you’ve spent a couple of weeks pretending to be better than the rest of us … wearing fancy clothes and driving that fancy car … and don’t think I don’t know about it—”

“Stacy, that’s enough.”

“Don’t try to blame this on me. Do something about your daughter and her mouth.”

“Dad,” I said. “Switch seats with me before I lose it.”

Anything I did because of a lost temper would only make things harder on Uncle Paul and Aunt Helen. They were doing a great job of ignoring my mother in favor of flower arrangements when Grimace roared into the cemetery, blessedly loud enough to drown out whatever my mother’s complaint was.

“Go on, D,” my dad said.

“She can’t leave the family row,” my mother snapped. “What will people say?”

“That at least one member of this family has enough respect for the dead to act like they’re in mourning.”

Mom had never been speechless before, but his words cut the bluster right out of her. She deflated into her seat and tried to make herself cry again.

“Go on,” Dad said again. “Stay with Tabitha.”

I was out of my seat as soon as he’d said it, but sadly not far enough to keep me from hearing my mother’s last remarks.

“And I don’t know why you let her associate with that castaway freak. That girl … if that’s what you want to call her … the way she dresses, no one could be sure one way or the other. And don’t pretend it’s not just to spite me, either. You let that … 
thing
 … corrupt my daughter, talk her into cutting her hair off. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were dating behind your back.”

“If Dinah wanted to date Tabitha, she’d tell me to my face. Then I’d give her forty dollars for dinner and a movie.”

I thought Mom was going to choke on her own tongue. Funerals are the last place to break out pom-poms, but I wanted to cheer for my dad right then.

He got up and went to stand with Uncle Paul and Aunt Helen—the way Mom should have done. She should have been trying to comfort her sister, or even crying over her niece, not … whatever she was doing.

“I see your mother came,” Tabs said.

“She thinks we’re dating. Dad’s all for it.”

“There are many reasons I love your father.”

“I don’t know why she even bothered flying in.”

Except to be a bother, which is pretty much her goal in life. Like some twisted addiction to chaos.

Tabs had stopped at the back of the crowd, between the pavilion and the paved road that snaked between the burial sections. Brucey, with a brushed ponytail and clothes that for once didn’t make him look like he was on his way to a rave, had gone straight from Grimace’s passenger seat to the dais, clutching a bundle of pink tulips.

There’s a story behind that.…

I’d always suspected that Claire had a bit of a crush on Brucey (as did he, but Brucey’s not the kind of guy who would rub it in). He wasn’t the sort of person she hung out with in her own circle, and the things he’d learned from old movies made him just unusual enough to qualify as a then-preteen’s brand of mysterious. What sealed the deal on her permanent fascination was when she’d been sick for four days straight with some kind of superflu when she was twelve. She was miserable; she couldn’t even get out of bed.

Brucey came by the house to visit because that’s what he does when people are sick—he never catches anything himself. Mr. Sleight-of-Hand put on a reverse pickpocketing act and snatched a handful of pink tulips out of thin air. Sure, he’d asked me ahead of time what kind of flowers the Cuckoo liked, but she never gave it that much thought. It was magic.

And if I thought about it, and how Brucey had been since he learned about Brooks’ role in Claire’s misery, maybe the crush hadn’t only been on Claire’s side of things.

I hadn’t really cried that whole day, but seeing Brucey with that bouquet nearly did me in. He stood next to Claire’s casket, arranging the tulips one at a time, so they’d mesh with the spray already on the box (he gets a bit OCD when he’s upset). The last one he laid on top, right above where her hands would be.

It was the kind of scene that makes a great fairy-tale ending, only the princess was bolted in and the prince couldn’t kiss her awake. Alice couldn’t make it back from Wonderland.

Lines from the poem Mr. Tripp had made us read in class droned in my head like a broken music box.

I’d never see Claire again. I had to turn my attention back to Tabs before I ended up a puddle on the pavement.

“What happens now?” Tabs asked.

“After the funeral, I guess I go back into solitary. At least we can still talk online, assuming Mom doesn’t trash my computer. Dad was going to let me stay before, but now …”

“I don’t guess you’d want to stay here, huh?”

“I’d rather stay with Aunt Helen and Uncle Paul than Mom, but I’m not sure they’re even going to stay after this. They may stay in the city, but they’ll probably move houses or something.”

Moving was a good idea. Aunt Helen couldn’t climb the stairs to Claire’s room without bursting into tears; if they stayed in that house, she’d probably end up one of those people who kept a shrine to their dead kid forever, never letting anyone move the furniture or wash the dirty clothes.

At least
her
mental issues developed for a good reason.

Brucey joined us. He had his head down, and his shoulders were bowed more than normal. He’d undone his hair so it would cover eyes I knew were red. He didn’t say a word, just
stepped up next to me and hugged me around the middle so I was hidden behind the curtain of his hair and his too-tall self.

It was an invitation to cry where no one could see, and I was ready to take him up on it, but the universe’s dark side didn’t take days off for funerals.

“Dinah, don’t turn around,” Tabs said, out of nowhere.

I did what most people would do, which was the exact opposite of listening. Brucey was smart enough not to let me go.

“I don’t believe it.…”

Scratch that. I believed it; I just wished it weren’t happening. As mourners’ cars filled in along the road, there were a lot of faces I didn’t recognize. But one … one young face with dark hair and brown eyes, wearing a black suit, was forever burned into my brain. I hadn’t been near him since he’d tried to defend me in homeroom, but Brooks had been in my nightmares ever since the hospital, and now my nightmare was crossing the grounds, straight for me, with a bunch of flowers in his hand.

“D, don’t.” Tabs grabbed me by the shoulder before I even knew I was moving forward. Brucey’s arms tightened around my waist.

I was already beyond the possibility of “don’t.” “Don’t” had ceased to exist. First dealing with my mom, and now Claire’s murderer showed up at her funeral with a bouquet of roses and violets. “Don’t” didn’t compute.

“Remember what you said about making things harder on your aunt and uncle.”

Harder? No. The only thought in my mind was how
easy
it would be to end everything right here. I might not have been able to come through for Claire while she was alive, but I could
get her some peace before she was buried. This time, there was no teacher to stop me.

Brooks walked past us toward the front of the pavilion, where the rest of the flowers had been placed. His weren’t in a vase or arrangement so much as they were the sort you’d hand off, so he laid them on top of Claire’s coffin, over Brucey’s tulip and next to her photo. For one desperate second, I thought he’d finally decided to stop pretending. I thought he’d come to confess.

But he didn’t. He just laid his flowers down, glanced at the photo like the face was one he didn’t recognize, even though it was from her fifteenth birthday, and turned away.

“Hey,” he said as he came back to where I was. Somehow “homicidal rage” must have translated into “grief” in his head, because I was not in the mood to have him say “hey” like we were friends and it was all right for him to be there. “I called your uncle; he told me when the service was … I just wanted to be here,” Brooks said nervously. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Finally decide to grow a conscience?” I could have counted the placement of Brucey’s fingers against my abdomen, I was pulling so hard against him.

“Look, I know you’re upset, and that you want someone to be mad at, but I don’t know what I did to you.…”

“To me?” I scoffed. “You didn’t do it to me. You did it to her!”

I pointed to the coffin and the photo of Claire he’d all but ignored.

“Dinah, people can hear you,” Brucey whispered.

Let them. Wasn’t that the point of this whole thing—to expose the truth and make people see it?

“Dinah, I’ve never met her. I don’t know why you think I have,” Brooks said.

“Because Claire told me, that’s why.”

“I’d never seen her before the other night in the hospital.”

“Maybe you didn’t recognize her with her clothes on.”

“D? Everything okay?” Dad stepped up beside us, resting his hand on my shoulder, and Brucey let go. I’m sure he thought with my dad there things would get better, but when you’re sharing air with a murderer, “better” requires a U-turn mood swing, and I hadn’t hit bottom yet.

Uncle Paul and Aunt Helen were staring. Everyone was staring, including the priest. One thing was for sure: if Mom wanted to catch the crowd’s attention, she was really going to have to work for it this time.

“Why don’t we go sit down?” Dad asked.

“Good idea.” Tabs tugged on my arm, pulling me back toward the seats. Brucey’d stuck his hands deep in his pockets and was already shuffling that direction.

“I’m not sitting down, not anymore. I’m not waiting anymore. I’m not stalling anymore. I’m not even trying anymore. And no, I’m not okay, Dad. I’m not okay because I will not stand here while the guy who killed my cousin brings her flowers and pretends it never happened.”