Free Sketchy by Olivia Samms

parent’s car as we drive to the funeral.
    “I heard more from campus police. They don’t think any foul play was involved,” Dad says. “Agatha was found fully clothed, lying in the grass on Wave Field.”
    “On campus, Dad? They found her on campus?”
    “They did.”
    My stomach jolts.
    I can’t share with my parents that I saw her at the frat house with Marcus on the night she died. They thought Iwas at a meeting, and they’d probably throw me back into rehab, even though I didn’t take the pills from Marcus.
    It eats away at me.
I could have helped her. I should have helped her, but I was so pissed at her and Marcus.
The tears start welling up in my eyes again, and I wipe them with my black-knit blanket poncho and stare at the clouds outside the car window.
    I wish I were on top of one of the clouds. Floating away, away…
    I hear the somber chords of a pipe organ as we walk up to the mortuary. We find a seat in the back. My mom and dad bookend me, shielding me from potential looks and stares. Fellow ex-classmates, the girls from Athena Day, huddle in the front pews, crying, hugging one another.
    Aggie’s parents sit by her coffin. Her mom sobs, her mouth reciting prayers as if she’s in a séance, summoning Aggie to rise up from the dead.
    My mom draws me in close and softly cries.
    I spot Maria, Aggie’s housekeeper. Her face is buried in a lace hankie. I miss Maria, miss her sweet, understanding eyes.
    A slide show begins on a high screen in the front of the room. Dozens of blown-up pictures of a happy, carefree Aggie throughout the years flash above: Aggie as a pudgy, adorable baby; her toddler years; her birthday parties. Aggie in middle school. I recognize the picture of our tenth-grade school camping trip—river rafting down the Indian River in northern Michigan. Aggie and I had so much fun, but wewere blasted. I see my hand—the silver ring I wear on my thumb—it rests on Aggie’s shoulder. But my body, my face, is cut out.
    Our eleventh-grade class picture—all forty of us—is displayed on the screen. Aggie stands in the middle, her big, toothy smile framed by her curly hair. I stand next to her—but my face, my face is blotted out with black ink. It’s obvious to me that I am cut out, obliterated out of every single picture.
    I don’t understand. Why? Why am I not in any of the pictures? I didn’t do anything wrong!
    My chest swells with emotion—deep, deep sadness and hurt—and a long-overdue sob gushes out of me, echoing off the marble walls of the mortuary.
    The girls whisper, nudge each other—some of them turn around. I feel eyes burning into me—judging, hateful, piercing.
    I make eye contact with Aggie’s mom. She turns and whispers something to her husband. Probably saying, “What is she doing here? That druggie!”
    My head feels like it’s going to explode off my body, like in the pictures, and I untangle myself from my mom’s arms and stand, crying out, “I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t! She was my friend, my best friend. I belong in those pictures, too!”
    The organist stops, holding a sustained minor chord. Mr. Rand stands, looks at me—anger fills his red-rimmed eyes.
    I bolt out of the mortuary.
    My parents follow, calling out to me, “Bea, Bea, please stop!”
    I run across the street, pass Aggie’s hearse—and a car nearly hits me. I continue, fast, into a woody ravine. I don’t feel my legs as they move through the muddy thicket. I don’t feel the dense, leafless trees scratching at me, pulling at my hair. I keep running faster and faster to I don’t know where.
    The creek stops me—the creek where Willa was found—and I fall to the ground, crying, wailing, wanting to die, wanting to end it all. Rolling around in wet, rotting leaves.
    Why wasn’t it me? Why not me?
    “That wasn’t fair of them,” he pants, out of breath. “You being cut out of the pictures.”
    I peek through my fingers covered in mud and leaves.
    Marcus.
    He crouches