Free The Dead And The Gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer

clergy.
    Staying firmly in line, Alex began the death stroll. Most of the bodies couldn’t possibly be Mami. They were black or white or Asian. They were too young or too old, too fat or too thin. Their hair was gray or white or blonde, too short or too long. One woman, hardly more than a girl, had green and purple hair. One was chemotherapy bald. Another was pregnant. Their eyes were usually open, and they stared up at the moon that had killed them.
    Sometimes the line stopped short, when someone ahead of them needed to check a face, a body, a piece of jewelry. A scream would pierce the air as a loved one was found. A woman several people behind Alex cried, “Holy Mother of God!” and he assumed she’d found who she’d come to look for, but she stayed in line until they made the next turn, when she went off to the nearest Police Identification Booth.
    Alex felt a sharp sting he was stunned to identify as envy. He hated himself for feeling that way. No matter what, it would be better not to find Mami there. As long as she was only gone, there was a chance their prayers for her return would be answered. But if she were lying there . . .
    “Stay in line! Stay in line!”
    Twice Alex saw women he thought might be his mother. Something about the shape of their faces, the tone of their skin, stopped him short. But one woman had a diamond engagement ring, and the other wore a Jewish star pendant. When he looked more carefully at them, he realized they looked nothing like Mami, not really. Mami would laugh if she knew Alex had mistaken a woman with a Jewish star for her. He tried to remember the sound of her laughter, but it was impossible. He told himself he’d hear her laughing again, that it was all right not to be able to remember what the sound of her laughter was like just then.
    By the time he’d finished the march around Yankee Stadium, two other people from his bus had left the line to go to the Police Identification Booths. The rest walked out in the same order they’d come in. They tossed their sickness bags and face masks into the appropriately labeled bins.
    No one spoke as they showed their tickets and boarded bus 22. Eventually the bus pulled out. One woman had left her Bible on her seat, and she picked it up and began reading it, her lips moving silently. A dozen or more people wept. A man mumbled something Alex assumed was Hebrew. One woman laughed hysterically. The woman sitting next to Alex pulled tissue after tissue out of its packet, tearing each one methodically to shreds.
    God save their souls, Alex prayed. God save ours. It was the only prayer he could think of, no matter how inadequate it might be. It offered him no comfort, but he repeated it unceasingly. As long as he prayed he didn’t have to think. He didn’t have to remember. He didn’t have to decide. He didn’t have to acknowledge he was entering a world where no one had laid out the rules for him to follow, a world where there might not be any rules left for any of them to follow.
     
     

Chapter 4 
     
    Friday, May 27
    Danny O’Brien dropped a crumpled piece of paper in the first-floor hallway, as the boys began leaving Vincent de Paul for the day.
    “Pick it up,” Alex said. “You heard what Father Mulrooney said.”
    “You pick it up,” Danny said. “I pay tuition to go here.” He began to walk off when Chris Flynn came up to them.
    “You heard him,” Chris said to Danny. “Pick it up. And then apologize.”
    “It’s all right,” Alex said, bending down to pick up the paper. “I should have done this in the first place.” It enraged him to think of Chris fighting his battles for him.
    “I’m sorry,” Danny said. “I really am, Morales. Blame it on the moon. It’s making me crazy.”
    “Forget it,” Alex said. He tossed the paper into the nearest wastepaper basket and headed out. He didn’t have time to waste with people like Danny O’Brien.
    But the incident continued to bother him that afternoon as he walked