Optimists Die First Page 8

  “Ow. Ivan, stop.”

  “Sorry. I just wanted you to see me.”

  I don’t know why, but that made me feel even more gutted. “I see you.”

  “You look sad.”

  “I feel sad.”

  “Yeah. Me too.”

  We sat in silence for a few more minutes. “I guess we should get to class,” I said. We both stood up. Being a good six inches taller than him, I gazed right down at his terrible bed head. “Hang on.” I grabbed a comb from my tote bag. “Do you mind?”

  Ivan shrugged. He turned around, and I combed out the back of his hair. It was super greasy. I felt the bagel rise in my throat again, but I got the job done. “There. That’s better.”

  He broke into a huge grin. “Thanks, Petula.”

  “You’re welcome, Ivan.”

  When I entered the building I went straight to the girls’ washroom. I threw my comb in the garbage and scrubbed my hands under scalding-hot water for two full rounds of “Happy Birthday.”

  I didn’t see Jacob until Friday at Crafting for Crazies; he’d been absent all week. I took a seat as far from him as possible, still irritated by his Debbie Downer remark. At least Koula wasn’t there, I noted with relief.

  I was in a crappy mood. My encounter with Rachel still stung, big-time. Since our talk she’d made a point of smiling at me and saying hi in the halls, but the casual friendliness was almost worse than no friendliness.

  Betty joined us, wearing a banana-yellow suit. She looked like Big Bird’s little sister. “I have what I hope will be an especially fun assignment for you today.” She pulled a package of Costco tube socks from her bag and tossed it onto the table.

  We stared at the package, confused.

  “Sock puppets,” she said.

  Alonzo laughed. Betty didn’t. “Wait,” he said. “You’re serious?”

  Suddenly the door burst open and Koula walked in.

  “If you’d let me explain,” Betty continued as Koula sat down with a thud. “The idea is that you can decorate the socks and create a completely unique persona. Then you can use the puppets to express your true feelings. You’d be surprised how much more truthful you can be when you speak through a conduit.”

  We were dead quiet.

  Betty tore open the package and tossed us each a sock. “Remember our motto: Less cynicism, more openness. At least give it a try.” She put a sock on her own hand. “See?” she said in a high-pitched voice. “It’s not that hard.”

  We all rolled a sock onto our hands. Jacob got some help from Ivan.

  “Who would like to start?” said Betty’s puppet.

  Koula lifted her sock-clad hand. “Koula tried to visit her mom last night.” Her puppet spoke in a seriously creepy Oscar the Grouch–meets–Freddy Krueger voice. “Koula wanted to say sorry. When her mom saw who it was, she wouldn’t open the door. So Koula started kicking it and yelling, ‘Bitch, let me in!’ But she wouldn’t!”

  “And this surprises Koula?” I, or rather my sock puppet, asked.

  Koula stood up. “Shut your piehole, Grandma,” her sock puppet said.

  My sock puppet got right in her sock puppet’s face. “You shut your piehole! Tell Koula to quit telling people I went after Rachel with a carving knife. Tell her I think she’s a psycho bitch!”

  Koula dropped her hand and put her face inches from mine. “Don’t call me a psycho bitch, bitch!”

  I recoiled from the smell.

  She reeked of booze.

  Betty smelled it, too. “Koula, you’ve been drinking.”

  Koula lifted her sock puppet. “Koula has not.”

  “I’m not stupid.”

  “Could’ve fooled Koula,” said her sock puppet.

  “Don’t make me get the Jar—”

  “You think you’re helping us with these lame-ass baby projects, but you’re not.” Koula swiveled the puppet to look at the rest of us. “Well? Is Koula right, or is she right?”

  Betty cast her cool gaze on the rest of us.

  We all raised our hands.

  “She’s right,” said our sock puppets.

  “Told you!” Koula raised her socked fist triumphantly and lost her balance. We watched in horror as she fell face-first on the carpeted floor.

  “Mrrmph,” she moaned. Then she started to cry. Wail, actually. Mascara ran down her cheeks in two dark lines.

  For the first time, unflappable Betty looked flapped.

  Alonzo squatted down beside Koula and stroked her hair. “Oh, Koula. Drunk and maudlin. What a winning combo.”

  Koula let loose with a string of swearwords. Then her wailing ceased as suddenly as it had begun.

  She’d passed out.

  “Help me get her up,” said Betty.

  We tried to get Koula to a standing position, but she was deadweight. Instead, Alonzo and I positioned ourselves by her shoulders, while Jacob and Ivan positioned themselves at her feet. “On the count of three. One, two, three.”

  We hoisted Koula and carried her to Betty’s office, where we laid her on the love seat. Betty put a blanket on top of her, then turned to the rest of us. “You don’t like my assignments, and that’s fine. So here’s my challenge to you: Come up with your own project. Present the idea to me next week.” Then she pushed us out of her office and closed the door.

  The funeral was Jacob’s idea. “Ivan, in your drawing, your regret was not being able to go to your mom’s funeral. Well, maybe you can. Maybe we can create one for you.”

  “How?” Ivan asked. We were sitting at JJ Bean, and Ivan was slurping a huge peppermint hot chocolate.

  “Does she have a gravesite?”

  “Yeah. At Mountain View Cemetery.”

  “So we’ll go there.”

  “And do what exactly?” Alonzo clutched a latte. He sounded skeptical.

  “Go through the rituals. It’ll be like performance art. I can film it.” Jacob turned to Ivan. “You’ll have the video as a keepsake. It’ll be something you can watch any time you want.”

  Ivan was still trying to wrap his mind around the concept. “Can I talk about her? Like, memories and stuff?”

  “Absolutely. You can deliver the eulogy. Say a proper goodbye.”

  Ivan’s eyes lit up. He had a big whipped cream mustache. “I like this idea.”

  When Jacob pitched the idea to Betty the following Friday, she also liked it.

  I was the only one who hated it.

  —

  The last time I’d been to a cemetery, we’d buried Maxine. I remember very little from that day. When I picture it, we are enveloped in fog, although apparently it was clear and sunny. I remember my dad and his sister, who’d flown in from Antwerp, having to hold my mom up because her knees kept buckling. I remember murmurs of relatives I barely knew. “Such a tragedy…” “Home alone with her sister…” “Death of a child…” “Never recover…”

  I remember my sister’s tiny coffin.

  That image gets replayed a lot.

  And I remember the sound my mom and dad made when the coffin was lowered into the ground.

  So hanging out at a cemetery on a Saturday night—the date everyone had agreed to—was not my idea of a good time. I thought about bailing.

  Then I thought about Ivan, and how much this meant to him.

  Then I thought about bailing again.

  Then I thought about Ivan.

  And on it went.

  I was still agonizing over it when Jacob arrived at seven to pick me up. He wore a tailored gray suit with a black wool coat on top. “Wow,” I blurted. “You look nice. I mean, aside from that.” He also wore his filthy John Deere cap.

  “I’m sure you look nice too, under all those layers. At the moment you look like the Michelin Man’s twin.”

  I wore a dark blue skirt, thick wool tights, and a white shirt. I’d pulled on two bulky sweaters, followed by my peacoat, cat hat, mittens, and Belgian flag scarf. The last thing I needed was to catch some new strain of flu virus.

 
; I grabbed my dad’s reflective vest from the hall closet.

  “You’re not actually putting that on.”

  I wrestled it on over my other layers. “It’s pitch-dark out. This way I can be seen. You, on the other hand—a car would never see you. You’d be roadkill.” I picked up my backpack, which was heavy with supplies.

  Jacob grabbed it. “Allow me.”

  I yelled goodbye to my parents and followed him out the door.

  —

  I did a deep-breathing exercise as we walked to the bus stop.

  “You okay?” asked Jacob.

  “Yes. Why?”

  “You sound like Darth Vader.”

  I wasn’t about to tell him that on top of everything else, I hadn’t set foot on a bus in two years. “Oh, I almost forgot. I have something for you to try on.” I rummaged around in my backpack and pulled out a half-finished beagle hat.

  “No way. You did it.”

  “Yes.” My boxes of old crafting supplies were still in my bedroom, so a few nights earlier I’d forced myself to dig out some knitting needles and balls of wool. I felt anxious, but once I got started, it felt fine. Good, even. Like riding a bike, even if I would never again ride a bike. “I need to see if it’s the right size.”

  He sat down on the bus shelter bench. I stood behind him and put the hat on his head. “I think I’m going to need to make it bigger. Your cranium is massive.”

  “It holds a very big brain.”

  I held the hat in place. His hair was super soft and shiny. I wanted to run my hands through it. Instead I leaned in carefully and sniffed. His head smelled like Ivory soap and breakfast sausages.

  Delicious.

  I had an overwhelming urge to bury my lips in his hair. The voice inside my brain was goading me on. Do it! He won’t even notice. I knew it was madness, but I leaned in closer. Closer. My lips were almost touching his hair—

  “Here’s our bus.” Jacob stood up, and I narrowly avoided losing my front teeth.

  —

  It took me forever to pay the fare because I didn’t dare remove my mittens and touch any of the bus’s surfaces with my bare hands. Finally Jacob grabbed my wallet and took out the correct change.

  We walked toward the back. I wrapped my scarf over my mouth. Jacob shook his head. “Maybe we should roll you up in layers of bubble wrap. Poke a few holes in it so you can breathe.”

  “Ha-ha.” It came out muffled.

  We found two seats near the back. I do not understand why buses don’t come equipped with seat belts. It’s just common sense.

  I started another deep-breathing exercise. Aside from my loud inhalations and exhalations, we made the journey in silence.

  Ivan was waiting for us when we got off the bus. He wore a shiny black tracksuit. “It’s the best I could do,” he said. “My mom bought it for me.”

  “That makes it perfect,” said Jacob.

  Koula and Alonzo stepped off another bus a few minutes later. Koula was still grounded, but her dad was attending a Greek Cultural Society banquet and wouldn’t be home till late, so she’d snuck out. She wore a short black dress with black fishnet tights, red Doc Martens, and a black bomber jacket. Her nose still showed signs of rug burn from her fall. “I brought flowers,” she said, her voice subdued. She held up a limp bouquet of carnations dyed a garish blue. “You said blue was your mom’s favorite color.”

  It was becoming harder to completely hate her.

  As we headed toward the cemetery entrance I fell into step beside her. “How are you doing?”

  “Meh,” she said. “But thanks for asking.”

  We arrived at the entrance. We’d worked out all the final details of our plan at YART—Alonzo had even made a checklist—but we’d forgotten one thing.

  Opening hours.

  The gates to the cemetery were locked. A six-foot-high wrought-iron fence ran along the perimeter.

  “Crap!” Ivan’s cheeks puffed out. He looked like he was about to burst into tears.

  I put a hand on his shoulder, secretly relieved. “It’s okay. We can come back another time.”

  “But I’m all ready! I have things to say!”

  “Ivan, you can climb, right?” asked Jacob. Ivan nodded. My heart froze as I understood what Jacob was suggesting. “I’ll go first.”

  Jacob started to climb the fence. It took him a while with his robotic hand, but by using his left hand to pull himself up, he eventually made it to the top. He jumped down to the other side. Alonzo helped Ivan over, then Koula.

  Then it was my turn.

  I was terrified.

  Alonzo gave me a boost. I started to climb. With all my layers, it wasn’t easy. I’m pretty sure I whimpered. When I got to the top I perched there, my feet dangling over the other side. The earth seemed a long way away.

  Jacob held out his arms. “I’ll catch you.”

  I didn’t move.

  “It’s okay. You can trust me.”

  I closed my eyes. I jumped.

  And he did catch me, sort of. The sheer mass of my five-foot-eleven body landing on his made him stumble and fall backward, but he never let go of me. I landed on top of him, my face centimeters from his.

  I started to laugh. I’d leapt from a fence! I felt like Wonder Woman!

  “Oh my God, you’d think you’d just climbed Mount Everest,” said Koula. “Get over yourself, Grandma.”

  —

  “My mom was a great lady. She always put a treat in my lunch, like a Twinkie or a bag of chips. Or Cheez-Its. She knew I loved Cheez-Its.” Ivan was delivering his eulogy. We stood by a simple marble headstone that read IVANKA BOGDANOVICH, BELOVED DAUGHTER, MOTHER, AND WIFE. “And she only yelled at me when I deserved it. And she only smacked me when I was really out of control.”

  Alonzo and I shared a look, but Koula nodded like this made sense. Jacob stood a few feet away, filming.

  Ivan started talking directly to the tombstone. “We miss you, Mom. Dad’s doing okay. He drinks a lot of beer. And vodka.” He started to cry. Because I was so layered up, I figured I could safely put an arm around him. “You knew you weren’t a great swimmer, so I’ll never know why you swam out so far, and that’s hard.” He wiped his sleeve across his nose and I did my best not to shudder. “I miss you every single day.”

  Poor Ivan. He wasn’t a demon. He was just a kid who’d lost the person who was most important to him in the world. I wrapped my other arm around him. If he got snot on me, it would only be on Dad’s reflective vest. I could put it through a hot-water wash.

  Alonzo pulled out a speech he’d printed from the Internet and began to read. “Because God has chosen to call our sister from this life to Himself, we commit her body to the earth, for we are dust and unto dust we shall return.”

  I unzipped my backpack and pulled out a collapsible shovel. Ivan took it and dug a small, discreet hole next to Ivanka’s tombstone. Then I lifted out the miniature coffin/memory box I’d made for the occasion. I’d lined an old Converse shoe box with purple velour and written Ivanka’s name in calligraphy on the lid.

  “That’s really nice, Petula,” said Ivan. He opened his own pack and started taking out items one by one. “This is a Mother’s Day card I made for her when I was five. This is a stone I gave her, because it looked like a heart. This is a photo of the two of us together in Mexico. Before she…Well.” He placed the items in the box.

  He put the lid on and laid the box in the hole. Then he shoveled the dirt back in place and patted it down.

  Jacob caught it all on camera. Including the blinding beam of light that suddenly engulfed us. “What the hell do you kids think you’re doing?”

  A large security guard stood on the roadway, aiming his flashlight at us. “Good evening, sir,” Jacob began. “I can explain—”

  The guard didn’t let him finish. “You’re not supposed to be here. I’m calling the cops.” He pulled out his phone.

  Jacob lowered his camera. “Run.”

  —

&nbs
p; We split into two groups. Jacob, Ivan, and I went left; Koula and Alonzo went right.

  The guard chose to run after Jacob, Ivan, and me. For a large guy, he was surprisingly fast. We tore through the cemetery, weaving among tombstones. In retrospect, my reflective vest was perhaps a bad choice; I made for a very visible target.

  I was worried I was going to pee my tights, but Ivan was having the time of his life, laughing as we ran. Jacob was still holding his camera up.

  “You’re filming this?” I said.

  “Of course! This is solid gold!”

  We arrived at the fence, panting. Jacob shoved his camera into his pocket. He gave Ivan a boost over, then me. I hesitated when I reached the top; Jacob wasn’t there to catch me on the other side. But I could see the guard bearing down on us. So I jumped.

  I landed on my knees, hard.

  Jacob started to climb the fence, but his bionic hand slowed him down. The security guard was closing in.

  Jacob reached the top of the fence just as the guard arrived, wheezing and out of breath. He grabbed Jacob’s foot. “Gotcha!”

  But all he got was Jacob’s shoe. Jacob wriggled his foot free and dropped to the other side. “We’re sorry to have caused you any trouble,” he said. “We weren’t being disrespectful, you have my word. We were just helping someone grieve.”

  The guard looked taken aback.

  “I don’t suppose you’d toss me my shoe?” Jacob asked.

  The guard looked at the shoe in his hands, still catching his breath. Then he shrugged and threw it over the fence.

  Jacob caught it. “Thanks.”

  We heard sirens in the distance. We had no idea whether they were for us, but we didn’t wait to find out.

  We started running again. Over his shoulder, Jacob hollered, “Have a good night!”

  —

  Jacob and I got back to the Arcadia an hour later. He knelt to check on my torn tights and banged-up knees. “Be sure to put disinfectant on when you get upstairs.”