"Frankie..." Yun Sun said.
"I've been thinking about Madame Z, though. Her whole don't-mess-with-fate mumbo jumbo."
"Frankie-"
"Because how could Will asking me to prom lead to anything bad?" I walked to the freezer and grabbed a box of frozen waffles. "Spit's going to fly from his mouth and land on me? He'll bring me flowers, and a bee'll zip out and sting me?"
"Frankie, stop. Didn't you watch the morning news?"
"On a Saturday? I don't think so."
Yun Sun made a gulping sound.
"Yun Sun, are you crying?"
"Last night... Will climbed the watertower," she said.
"What?!" The watertower was easily three hundred feet tall, with a sign at the bottom prohibiting anyone from ascending. Will always talked about climbing to the top, but he was such a rule-follower that he never had.
"And the railing must have been wet... or maybe it was lightning, they don't yet know..."
"Yun Sun. What happened?"
"He was spray painting something on the tower, the stupid idiot, and-"
"Spray painting? Will?"
"Frankie, will you shut up? He fell! He fell off the watertower!"
I gripped the phone. "Jesus. Is he okay?"
Yun Sun was unable to talk for sobbing. Which I understood, sure. Will was her friend, too. But I needed her to pull it together.
"Is he in the hospital? Can I go visit him? Yun Sun!"
There was wailing, and then a shuffling sound. Mrs. Yomiko took over.
Chapter Five
"Will died, Frankie," she said. "The fall, the way he landed... he didn't make it."
"I'm sorry... what?"
"Chen is on his way to get you. You'll stay with us, yes? As long as you want."
"No," I said. "I mean... I don't..." The box of waffles fell from my hand. "Will didn't die. Will couldn't have died?"
"Frankie," she said, her voice infinitely sad.
"Please don't say that," I said. "Please don't sound so..." I didn't understand how to make my mind work.
"I know you loved him. We all did."
"Just wait" I said. "Spray painting? Will doesn't spray paint. That's something a pothead would do, not Will."
"Let's get you to the house. We'll talk about it then."
"But what was he spray painting? I don't understand!"
Mrs. Yomiko didn't answer.
"Let me speak to Yun Sun," I pleaded. "Please! Put on Yun Sun!"
There was a muffled exchange. Yun Sun came back on.
"I'll tell you," she said. "But you don't want to know."
A cold feeling spread over me, and suddenly, I didn't want to know.
"He was spray painting a message. That's what he was up there doing." She hesitated. "It said, 'Frankie, will you go to prom with me? "
I sank to the floor, next to a box of waffles. Why was there a box of waffles on the kitchen floor? "Frankie?" Yun Sun said. Tinny, faraway sound. "Frankie, are you there?"
I didn't like that tinny sound. I pressed the Off button to make it go away.
Will was buried in the Chapel Hill Cemetery. I sat, numb, through the funeral, which was closed-coffin because Will's body was too mangled to be viewed. I wanted to say good-bye, but how did you say good-bye to a box? At the grave site, I watched as Will's mother threw a handful of dirt into the hole where Will lay. It was horrible, but the horror felt distant and unreal. Yun Sun squeezed my hand. I didn't squeeze back.
It rained that evening, a gentle spring shower. I imagined the ground, damp and cool around Will's coffin. I thought of Fernando, whose skull Madame Zanzibar had liberated after his coffin shifted in the wet earth. I reminded myself that the east side of the cemetery, where Will was buried, was newer, with tidy landscaping. And of course there were modern ways of digging graves now, more efficient than men with shovels.
Will's coffin wouldn't come undug. It was impossible.
I stayed with Yun Sun for nearly two weeks. My parents were called, and they offered to return from Botswana. I told them no. What good would it do? Their presence wouldn't bring Will back.
At school, for the first few days, kids talked in hushed tones and stared at me as I passed. Some thought it was romantic, what Will did. Others thought it was stupid. "A tragedy" was the phrase most often used, spoken in mournful tones.
As for me, I haunted the halls like the living dead. I would have ditched, but then I'd have been corralled by the counselor and forced to talk about my feelings. Which wasn't going to happen. My grief was my own, a skeleton that would rattle forever within me.
One week after Will's death, and exactly one week before prom, kids started talking less about Will and more about dresses and dinner reservations and limos. A sallow girl from Will's chemistry class got upset and said prom should be canceled, but others argued no, prom must go on. It's what Will would have wanted.
Yun Sun and I were consulted, since we were his best friends. (And since I, though they didn't say it, was the girl he died for.) Yun Sun's eyes welled with tears, but after a shaky moment, she said it would be wrong to ruin everyone's plans, that sitting home and mourning wouldn't do anyone any good.
"Life goes on," she said. Her boyfriend, Jeremy, nodded. He put his arm around her and drew her close.