Absent (Katie Williams)

her to be friends with them because she’s the school charity case, the girl whose only friend turned out to be a jumper. No wonder she wants everyone to forget me.
    Sorry, Usha, but I won’t be forgotten. I step between the two biblicals, plunging my hands, past any resistance, straight into Usha’s back.
    Salt.
    Salt sharp on my tongue.
    On Usha’s tongue.
    I close my mouth and let the salt taste spread out. I’m vaguely aware of the biblicals on either side of me, and the rest of the milk-slurping, sandwich-crust-balling cafeteria around us.
    But at first there’s nothing except for salt.
    The taste is a shape: a prickly ball in my hands. The taste is a sound: a dozen taut wires plucked at once. The taste is a color: a gleaming silver. I bite down and feel the chips crunch, and that crunch is something else entirely. I chew, the bits of chip breaking apart on my teeth and tongue. It’s been almost a month since I’ve eaten. I’d forgotten how it feels, how it tastes. Actually I’d forgotten taste existed altogether.
    Then I see the orange sitting here in front of me. I grab it like it’s a prize, which it is, bumpy and waxy and round and sour-sweet. I look down at my hands that are not my hands—light brown, knuckles whirled with charcoal, nails polished with picked-off green. I dig a painted finger into the orange peel and nearly laugh out loud at the feeling of pith caught under my nail. I dance my feet with a squeak, the rubber of the boots rubbing against each other. My squeak!
    Then I remember that I’m in the middle of a crowded cafeteria. I’m Usha. So, as Usha, I should probably fight my impulse to run down the cafeteria line taking spoonfuls of all the foods. And maybe I shouldn’t pass behind the tables of eaters, running my hands over my classmates’ backs—the nubby flannels of the burners, the slick letterman leathers of the testos, and the careful cottons of the biblicals. I pull myself away from my salt and orange peel and squeaky boots. I am Usha. I have to act like Usha.
    The biblicals have stopped hovering and have taken a seat on either side of me. Usha and I used to make fun of these girls, calling them by saints’ names, which she’d pulled from an app on her phone: Agnes and Humbeline and Bertilia. But their real names are perfectly normal: Jenny, Erin, and Rachel.
    I peel a strip off my orange and decide that I’m ready to try talking.
    “Hey,” I say. It works. The voice that comes out is Usha’s. “I need to ask you something. As friends,” I add for good measure.
    “Of course you can,” Jenny says.
    “You’ve heard the rumors about Paige’s death, right?” I ask. My question is accompanied by a faint stirring, a jostling inside me. Is that you, Usha? I wonder, setting my palms flat on the table. I’m sorry, but I need you right now, just for a minute. Please don’t push me out. The stirring comes again. It’s not nearly as strong as yesterday’sshove, so I push back against it, focusing on being solid and still and here. It’s sort of like hovering, like holding yourself in place.
    The biblicals share a look, their bangs clean lines across their foreheads.
    “Have you? Heard them?” I prod.
    “No, I don’t think so,” one says in a tone that makes it clear she has.
    “Really? You haven’t heard that Paige committed—”
    “We try not to gossip,” Rachel cuts in.
    “Okay, fine. But you have ears. People say she jumped. You heard that, right?”
    “We heard it,” Erin admits grimly. “Everyone’s heard it.”
    “Well, I just want you to know—as a friend—that it’s not true.” Again comes the stirring feeling; this time, I ignore it.
    The girls look at each other, then back at me.
    “We hope it’s not true,” Rachel says.
    “It’s not,” I say. “I was there. She fell.”
    “We hope so,” Rachel repeats. “We pray for her.”
    I stare at her. She blinks back at me placidly.
    “You what?”
    “Pray for her,” Rachel says uncertainly. She’s heard something in my voice, something sharp-nailed, quick-tempered, and trapped in a small space. She continues, “If she killed herself, she can’t go to heaven.”
    “What if there is no heaven?” I say.
    “Pardon?”
    “You know: tra-la-la heaven? What if it doesn’t exist?”
    The biblicals’ smiles disappear, then reappear like cards in a magic trick.
    “It’s all right if you don’t believe right now,” Jenny says. “It takes time to—”
    Enough of this. As if it