Chapter 3 - The Missing Backpack
The weeks after are broken glass in my memory. Pieces, no order.
Casseroles on the porch. A stack of sympathy cards I couldn't open. My mother arriving from Wren Harbor and crying so hard she couldn't get a sentence out. Flowers from the school. A small white coffin I will see behind my eyes for the rest of my life. Then everyone went back to their lives, and the house went silent.
Mornings were the worst. For about four seconds after I woke up, I'd forget. Then I'd remember, and it would all land on my chest at once, fresh, like it had just happened.
Claire was the only reason I got up. I had to. She was still here.
She got quiet in a way that scared me. She stopped sitting in her spot at the breakfast table — the one right across from Nora's chair. She stopped watching the shows they used to fight over the remote for. She slept with her overhead light on, every night. When I tried to talk to her, sometimes she'd answer in three words. Mostly she'd just shrug and look at the wall.
A week after the funeral, the school called again. They had Nora's things boxed up, and they wanted us to come get them.
I put it off for days. I couldn't walk into that building. Finally Claire said she'd come with me, and somehow that made it possible.
A secretary handed us a cardboard box at the front office. Inside: two textbooks, a spiral notebook, her gray hoodie, a couple of chewed pens, and her water bottle with the dented lid.
No backpack.
"Where's her bag?" I asked.
The secretary's forehead creased. "We assumed you had it. It wasn't in the classroom."
"No. I don't have it."
She called the nurse's office while we stood there. She checked the lost and found. She sent someone to look in the classroom again. Nothing.
Claire stood next to me with her arms crossed tight over her stomach.
"It probably got lost when the ambulance came," she said. "Everyone was freaking out. Stuff gets lost."
"Maybe."
May you like
I let it go. A backpack. Compared to everything else, what was a backpack? I signed a paper, took the box, and drove us home.
A month went by like that. I went back to work. I cooked dinner because Claire had to eat. I did laundry when we ran out of clean towels. I was moving, but I wasn't really there.
