Who I Was with Her

by Nita Tyndall

I can barely hear her because all I can think is Maggie, my Maggie, is dead, and none of these girls will ever know what she meant to me.

Does she hold on for just a second too long? Or am I imagining that?

“They’re saying she was a runner. Did you know her?” he asks, not knowing what this question is doing to me.

Where do they go, the belongings of a dead girl? Will her parents keep her room the way it was so she’ll be seventeen forever, a girl trapped in the glass box of other people’s memories?

If no one recognizes you at your girlfriend’s funeral, were you ever really her girlfriend?

How even though she swore she couldn’t sing, my favorite thing was to call her late at night and have her sing me to sleep.

I miss her. She’s gone and I miss her and all I want to do is scream about how much I miss her and how much I love her but I can’t, I can’t.

Julia’s coming toward me, waving her arms, trying to get my attention, but if she talks to me I’ll scream.

How am I going to get through this? How am I supposed to go on without her, like nothing’s happened, like she isn’t gone? If I go, it’ll be final, but if I don’t . . .

She looks handsome. That thought feels like a betrayal—thinking another girl looks handsome, let alone my girlfriend’s ex, let alone the ex who’s driving me to that same girlfriend’s funeral.

Do I get to honor her memory anymore, though, if her brother didn’t even call me to tell me she died?

No one looks at the Baileys when they walk in, like their grief is contagious, like the people we love will die if we look at them or touch them.

I wanted to ask her—how? How could she hold on to that faith when so many other people in her church would have shunned her if they’d known about us? How could she believe in a God so many other people weaponized against her?

Death does that to teenage girls—makes martyrs out of them, perfect angels with white wings and halos that don’t quite fit.

Something inside me cracks. I didn’t know that. I didn’t know Maggie wanted to teach; we never talked about it. She never told me.

I knew so many things about her but not these things, and I think—God, did I even know her at all?

I knew so much about her because I loved her, because if I admit I didn’t know her and she is...

Do they know? Do they know who she was to Maggie?

I can see why Maggie liked her and I hate that I can.

She reaches over and touches my hand, softly, like she’s not sure if she should.

She deserved better than me.

I was so scared of her leaving me, and now she has.

I didn’t have to hide it with the boys, but now doesn’t feel like the time to bring that up.

I am just a girl telling her friend she broke up with a boy. Then why does it feel so significant, so much more than it is? You like her. I don’t want to think about that.

My heart should be in a lot of things more; there are a lot of things I should want more than I do. But wanting is difficult and painful, and I am such a fickle girl.

She thought I was good enough, thought we could be good enough together.

She’d squeeze my hand and she’d tell me how proud she is of me and how no matter where I go she thinks I’m going to do great.

I can’t cry about this, about her, I can’t—not now, even though the ache of missing her is so persistent in my chest.

I am a girl with potential and Maggie isn’t here.

There is a whole freaking couch cushion between us, and I want to kiss her.

I lean forward and kiss her before I won’t let myself take the chance anymore.

And then— she leans forward and kisses me back.

She kissed me. She kissed me. She kissed me. And I kissed her back. And all I can think on the drive home, is how much I want to kiss her again.

I’m afraid without her. So much of myself for the past year was wrapped up in who I was with her. I liked who I was then. I liked who she made me become, that I was not a snarky bitch, that I was not a disappointment, that I was just a girl she loved, a girl she thought was good enough. And without her I don’t know how to be that girl again.

I lie in bed and think about kissing whoever and think about sex and slide my hand down between my thighs and I stop thinking.

the grin that splits her face lights me up from the inside, because God, I’ve missed my best friend.

And just like that, I’m forgiven. If only it were that easy with everyone else.

“I just wish my mom would be happy with me, you know?”

Small towns with secrets are the backbone of this country. I am a girl with a secret. (I am a secret.)

“Us,” she says after a moment, and my heart beats faster because there is an us.

I don’t want to talk about college or the future or how the hell we’re going to get out of this small town; I just want to keep kissing her.

What is this? I want to say. We’re here right now, we’re together right now, what is this?

I’ve never been good at knowing what I want, though.

Girlfriend. She said girlfriend. And not in the way straight women down here sometimes do, laughing about getting drinks with their girlfriend. She said it like it meant something.

I’m bi, too. It’s on the tip of my tongue, but saying it to this girl I barely know, this girl I’ve only just met, when I couldn’t even tell my best friend about it, feels like a betrayal.

“Sneha’s like our wine mom,” one of the other girls says, squeezing her shoulder.

I’m not drinking for the taste, not tonight. I’m drinking so the world becomes a blur and so I can forget everything that has happened to me in the past few days. Ugh. Maybe I am my mother.

I am the girl who makes out with another girl at a party and discovers she likes it, and I will be eaten alive for that.

I don’t even know if that’s what I want, that everyone expects me to want to get out of here—but where would I go?

For the first time I think, maybe that’s why she sells Avon—because she likes it. Because it’s something she’s actually good at.