Free Slain by Livia Harper Page B

the Purity Ball. It’s right on the front lawn, buried in flowers and teddy bears and florist balloons printed with We Miss You and Rest In Peace . There are drawings too, and pictures. Someone has put together a collage of photographs, most of which I’ve never seen before, but all of which seem to have been taken at various youth group activities.
    And around it all, on the lawn, her name is spelled out in candles:
    JUNE
    Glowing. Flickering in the darkness. Her name.  
    The sight makes my throat thick.
    Paige spots me and waves. Mike nods to me too. I haven’t talked to him since that night, though I’ve been meaning to call, because it’s what I would do if I was really his girlfriend, in my heart. It suddenly seems strange that he hasn’t called me yet. But he’s probably been as sidelined by this as everyone else has.
    All the other kids are here too: Chuck, Ruth, Ben, Angela, Erica, Katie, and Nicolas (June’s boyfriend). I walk over to them and join their ranks. I’ve grown up with these kids. I may not believe the same thing as them anymore, but they’re the only ones I want to be with right now. None of them know what the police are thinking about me, and not one of them would believe it if they did.
    Paige hugs me when I walk up to her.
    “Say something, please,” she says through her tears. “The adults aren’t saying anything, and her parents aren’t even here, and all this silence is killing me.”
    I look up and see Angela nod to me, Chuck too.
    “Please,” Paige says. “You knew her better than anyone but Nicolas, and he’s mess.” I look over to him. He’s totally destroyed, barely standing he’s crying so hard. I’ve never seen him like this before. The sight of him so broken breaks us all a little bit more, I can feel it.
    “What am I supposed to say?” I ask Paige.
    “I don’t know. You’ll figure it out. You’re good at this kind of stuff.”
    Angela speaks up, “Do it. It would make everyone feel a lot better.”
    Then Ben chimes in too. “Come on, Em.”
    And Chuck, “Yeah. Say something.”
    My hands are shaking as I leave their circle and take a few steps toward the cross. Maybe I shouldn’t do this. Maybe this is a bad idea.
    Once I’m there, everyone stares at me expectantly, at least everyone close enough to see. I clear my throat, trying to think of what I should say, but nothing’s coming. Nothing at all. What can I say about her? That she was sweet? That she was brave? That she was loved? I don’t know, not really, if any of that is true. What I know of her seems so small compared to what her entire life must have been made up of. Who am I to say anything at all?
    The only thing I can think of, the only thing playing though my head, is the song I sang at my Grandma Betty’s funeral: “It Is Well With My Soul.”
    I don’t have anything else, so I sing.
    “When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
    When sorrows like sea billows roll;”
    The crowd, all of them now, turns their attention to me. My voice quavers, but I keep going, letting it swell and rise with the melody.
    “Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
    It is well, it is well with my soul.”
    I take a breath to calm my nerves, then move on to the refrain.
    “It is well…”
    And I hear it then, the words sung back to me as they are when it’s sung in church. The echo is from my friends. Paige and Angela and Ruth and Katie, joining in so I won’t be alone.
    “It is well,” they sing.
    “With my soul,” I sing.
    “With my soul,” they echo in response, the boys coming in now too. Ben’s deep bass and Chuck's shaky baritone. Then all of us together, and someone from the crowd joining in with a harmony.
    “It is well, it is well, with my soul.”
    I move on to the last verse, and now they’re all singing with me. The whole crowd, at least the ones who know the church, who know the song. You can tell the intruders by their silence, but the rest of us are singing it out into the