My Death, 3

Breakfast was eggs, which Robin as beginning to hate. Tom was already at work on a new construction sight. Robin checked the clock. She had twenty minutes before Stacey came to pick her up.
She threw her hair into a ponytail and rammed a baseball cap over it. Preparing two lunches instead of one and foregoing her usual flip-flops to wear her weathered tennis shoes instead, Robin tried to think of whatever she might need. With a gasp, she dashed back upstairs to her room and rummaged under her bed. She returned downstairs, her bag strapped to her back and considerably heavier. At the car horn, Robin snatched up her backpack (with her half-completed Biology homework at the last minute) and ran out the backdoor.

“I slept in.”
“It’s fine,” Stacey said, checking her mirrors. Robin had shut the car door before the sports car roared out of the driveway. Stacey sped the entire length of Robin’s winding road.
“Are we in a hurry?” Robin asked, carefully. Usually when Stacey sped, it meant she was in a bad mood.
“No,” Stacey replied, confused. “What would make you say that?” She ran a stop sign and made a pedestrian jump back onto the curb.
Robin, securing her seatbelt, replied coolly, “No reason.”
At the school parking lot, Stacey screeched centimeters before a parked car’s bumper.
“You’re sure nothing’s bothering you?” Robin asked again.
“Oh!” Stacey said, climbing out of the car and slamming the driver-side door. “Jeremy’s just being weird, that’s all.”
“Weird?”
“Jealous,” Stacey corrected.
“Of anyone in particular?”
Stacey let out a great exasperated sigh. “Brent, of all people! I mean, everyone knows we’re just friends, right?”
“Yeah,” Robin validated. Stacey continued to explain Jeremy’s increasing protectiveness. Robin wouldn’t have admitted it, but she knew she wasn’t listening. Her mind was on this afternoon’s plans.
“Hey, Stac,” Robin shamelessly interrupted her friend, “do you think you could get me home a little earlier tonight?”
“Yeah,” said Stacey, a little off-guard. “Why?”
“I need to run an errand.”
‘Running an errand’ was code the two had adopted for Robin visiting her brother’s grave.
“What, again? You just went last weekend.”
“I know,” Robin rejoined, starting to walk a little ahead of Stacey. “I need to go again, ok?”
“Ok…” Stacey said and jogged to catch up.
Entering the school, they met up with Brent as usual, only this time Stacey kept to the other side of Robin. On their way into Biology, Brent bent over and whispered to Robin, “Stacey ok?”
“Jeremy saw,” was Robin’s quick answer before taking her seat by Stacey. Conscientiously, Brent sat on the opposite side of Robin.
Biology felt weird that morning. Stacey didn’t barrage Mr. Barrus with her usual stream of questions and took only sparse notes. She didn’t start to act normal until Brent had to separate himself again to perform another lab project. Lunch was even stranger. Brent usually sat by his two best friends, but today Robin spotted him amongst his wrestling team. He happened to turn around at that moment, caught Robin’s eye, gave her a shrug, and turned back to his teammates.
“It’s not like I don’t like Brent,” Stacey was saying. She dropped her tray of cold pizza next to Robin’s. “It’s just that I really don’t want to make Jeremy mad again…”
Robin forked her lunch like she was a professional acupuncturist, but didn’t eat. Her biggest problem was getting a ride since Tom would still have the Sudan. Periodically, Stacey asked a question and Robin gave her a sympathetic look and helplessly answered, “I don’t know, Stac. It’s tough, I know.”
During the drive home, Jeremy again resurfaced in their conversation. Out of the blue, Stacey blurted, “So, should I just stop being friends with Brent? Jeremy and I have been together for…four whole months! I can’t just dump him. Robin?”
“I don’t know, Stac,”
There was silence in the car while Stacey suspiciously eyed her friend, who was looking out the window as usual.
“I don’t think you’ve been listening,” she stated. “Look at me!”
“Sorry.” Robin shifted her gaze to the car radio. “My mind’s somewhere else.”
“Ok, so why do you have to go again today? Is something up?”
“No,” Robin sharply answered. “We just… I need to talk, that’s all.”
“What, you can’t talk to me? I’m actually here.”
Robin didn’t answer. Stacey let out a huff and let Robin off at her driveway.
“Hey!” she called as Robin got out of the car. Robin turned impatiently.
“Smile, ok?”

She finally drove off, satisfied with a smile that would have passed for a grimace in different light. Without bothering to go inside, Robin opened her bag. Thanatos, adding a few more pounds to her backpack, squished her second lunch. She checked her wallet: just enough for a round-trip bus fare. Robin waited for her friend make the last bend before she started to walk. Stacey thought she was going with Tom.
The bus was crowded; it was five o’clock and every breadwinner was trying to get home. Squished between a woman in a suit and a man in coveralls, Robin stuck in her ear buds. The woman made a few desperate attempts at conversation, which Robin successfully shot down with a non-conversational nod. She avoided eye contact by putting her backpack on her knees, leaning over it, and becoming mystified in her own converse sneakers.
From the bus stop, the graveyard was only a few blocks away. Robin stuck her hands in her pockets and set off with resolution. A female rocker’s husky voice streamed from her MP3, slammed her ears, and echoed in her thoughts. Robin’s strong stride matched the beat. Somehow, the rocker’s lyrics about an ex-boyfriend morphed and the song was unmistakably about Gordon.
It was all about Gordon reading his sports magazine in his bedroom; flashing his college mail in front of his parents while Hilda clapped; eating his favorite lunch, peanut butter and banana on whole wheat; banging his head to rock music while driving in his tiny, faded red hatchback; telling Robin about high school; studying for Biology tests, his hardest subject; spraying Robin with a water gun in February; telling Max Groban that Robin had a crush on him (she didn’t).
Then he drove home from school on a Thursday afternoon. Robin died.
A blaring car horn made Robin jump. She had entered a crosswalk without looking. Flustered and half awake, she stepped back onto to the curb and waved apologetically at the driver. ‘What are you thinking?’ his gesture asked.
For the first time, Robin looked around her. She didn’t recognize that restaurant, the one with the garish red and yellow sign and a dancing hotdog out front. She squinted in the late afternoon sun at the street sign. Her heart sunk. She had walked in the opposite direction. Pulling out her cell phone, Robin checked the time. She would have to run all the way to the cemetery and complete her plan in less than an hour to catch the bus back home—she had to beat Tom.
She doubled back at a jog, which made her ear buds fall out. Robin stuffed them back into her pocket without pausing. Revisiting the bus stop, she halted. She called herself stupid for wasting time, but stopped all the same. For a moment, she considered waiting there until her bus arrived. Her plan had been risky enough without a time limit. She should go home and try again later. Or she could just go home. She jogged in place for a moment, trying to make up her mind. She had homework, Tom might be home early, and anyway, it’s not like Gordon would stop being dead any time soon. Robin stood still. Or could he? Robin revived her race to the cemetery, a new vigor driving her.

She crashed into the iron gates, heaving for breath and sweating. Still panting, she pushed on the gates again, but they didn’t budge. They were already locked for the evening; did she really waste that much time? Confused, Robin pulled out her phone. They must lock them early on weekdays.
Robin looked first to the right and then to the left. Slipping her backpack off, she flung it over the spiked bars. It made perfect clearance and crashed on the opposite side. The next bit was trickier. The only horizontal bar was eight feet from the ground. The vertical bars were wet from recent sprinklers. After the first several tries of alternating gripping and jumping, Robin dropped back to the ground, panting with frustration. Then an idea struck her (after the thought that she shouldn’t have flung her backpack over until she knew she could climb the fence). Slipping off the converse and stuffing her socks inside them, she tied the laces together and slung them around her neck. Five years ago, Gordon showed her the trick to scaling walls when he climbed a neighbor’s seven-foot picket fence to reclaim their stray Frisbee. She used to tease him about his monkey toes.
Robin rubbed her palms against her jeans to get the sweat off them. She curled her short, stumpy toes around the iron bards and clutched with her hands as high as she could. The first time, she slipped immediately. The grass, as wet as her forehead, ruined the grip on her feet. She stepped back, put her hands on her hips, and thought.
Gordon’s athletic inspiration struck again. Besides football, he had also been their high school’s track star, setting three new records for long jump and high jump combined. Robin took a few steps back and gauged the wall as best she could. She ran, leaped, grappled, heaved, swung over, and dropped on the other side with only a few yellow bruises to show for it. She grabbed her backpack from where it had landed on the cemetery lawn. The zipper pulled apart when it crashed and Thanatos leapt a few yards further, greedily soaking up the dew in its parched yellow pages. Robin scooped it up and stuffed it back in the bag as she marched onward. Her brother was waiting.