Free Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson Page B

me strong and steel-ribbed.
    They should have put her crochet needle in the box next to her, and yarn so she’ll have something to do in Eternity. Some Gaiman, Tolkien, Butler, a few tabloids, mints—peppermint, not wintergreen—her swimming ribbons and Girl Scout badges, the posters from the plays she was in. I bet she’d like a box of cereal to munch on, too: comfort food for the ride.
    Her mother sobs louder than the organ.
    I reach into my jacket pocket and pull out the small disk of green see-glass, born in the heart of a volcano, ca-pable of showing the future. I stole it from Cassie’s room when we were nine, but I could never make it work, no matter how the stars lined up.
    I slip the magic glass into her frozen hand.
    Cassie’s fingers curl around it.
    My heart stutters.
    She squeezes the green disk tightly, then she blinks—

    once, twice—opens her eyes wide, and looks straight at me. She reaches up and touches her hair. It comes out of her head like dandelion fluff. A few strands float up to the real candles burning at the head of the box. They ignite like sparklers.
    I cannot breathe.
    Cassie sits up slowly. She holds the magic glass up to her blue eye, looks through it and laughs, a low, dirty sound that only came out at two or three o’clock in the morning. She pops the glass in her mouth and swallows it, then wipes her mouth with her hand, staining her fingers with wax and blood.
    She frowns and opens her mouth—
    —no. She is not sitting there. She’s not there at all.
    There is no blood, no cloud of doll hair burning up in the candle fire.
    I blink. She has disappeared from the coffin. The soccer ball rolls backwards. Her feet aren’t there to prop it up.
    I blink.
    She’s still gone, the white velvet sheet thrown to the side like she didn’t hear the alarm go off and now she’s going to be really late and her dad will take the car away again and she’ll have to drive with me, and that’s a little scary.
    The organ music pours down and floods the church.

    The line behind me mutters. People have places to go and things to do and the new episodes come on in half an hour, and besides, they are all much too polite to notice that the coffin is empty. The fun uncle is buttoning up his coat. The space in front of Cassie’s parents waits for me.
    A hand touches my shoulder and a guy whispers in my ear. “It’s okay. Go on. I’m right behind you.”
    I trip, then shuffle, eyes down, over to her mom. Mrs.
    Parrish drapes her arms around me without a word and lays her head on my shoulder. I pat her on the back. Mr.
    Parrish shakes the hand of the guy behind me and says something that I can’t hear because Cassie’s mom is so heavy that she is dragging me under the hip-deep water in the sanctuary and down through the marble floor. She wants us to sink below the basement into the warm crawly dirt, where Cassie has a room waiting, so the three of us can curl into critter balls and wait for spring.
    The hand touches me again. Mr. Parrish pulls us out of the ground and unpeels his wife from me. He fierce-kisses my forehead, but can’t find anything to say.
    “We’re so sorry for your loss,” says the smoke-eyed Elijah guy attached to the hand that is holding mine.
    “Words aren’t enough.”
    He pulls me into the tide moving out the door. I stumble, and he grabs my arm to keep me from falling.

    “Drink this.”
    Elijah pushes a heavy mug of hot chocolate toward me. I don’t remember who ordered it. I don’t remember walking here.
    “Go on.”
    I use both hands to pick up the mug, and sip. It burns my lips and tongue and my pink throat. Serves me right. My hands shake as I set the mug back down, and it sloshes on the table. He pulls paper napkins from the metal holder to wipe up the spill.
    I know this place, I’ve been here before. It’s the vegetarian diner a couple of blocks from the church, the place with chill music, hemp bagels, and petitions at the cash register.
    “How you doing,