See You in San Francisco

04 | will everyone just leave me alone

          Part of me wanted to call them out on what they were doing, as it certainly wasn't the time to be petty. The other half insisted it was none of my business and my words would have little to no effect.

          "Moving on," Felix piped in, before things could escalate any further. "What do we do now? Where do we go from here?"

          "Maybe we should compare the texts we got and see whether there's any common ground," I suggested, then turned to Sofia, trying my hardest to keep my voice as steady as possible. "Did Meridian ever tell you what June told him on the phone?"

          "No," she quietly replied.

          Other people would have dropped the subject. By the way she was acting—the defensive posture, arms firmly crossed in front of her chest, hunched forward to make herself look as small as her height allowed—it was pretty darn clear she didn't want to keep talking about it, but Felix was different and tenacious, which was what made him as good of a reporter as he was.

          "You know you don't have to lie to us," he insisted. "We know you're the one out of all of us who's closest to June, but this is important, Sofia. Whatever June told him could be the key to—"

          "Felix, back off," Grace demanded, cutting him off, and I shuddered. If we kept snapping at each other like this, this group's days would be counted. I wanted to believe our friendship bonds were stronger than that, but everyone was hypersensitive thanks to June's death, and someone could say something they'd end up regretting later—something that would be enough to send someone else over the edge and cut us off completely. "Leave her alone."

          "Because hurting Sofia's feelings really is the last thing any of us wants to do right now," Leon muttered, loud enough to be hearable by everyone in the circle. Grace threw him a truly murderous look and I opened my mouth, ready to intervene in case things got even uglier, but the strident sound of the bell ringing stole my thunder.

          Fortunately. I liked to keep things peaceful, but there was something about getting involved in other people's conflicts that rubbed me off the wrong way.

          So, as we went our separate ways—I followed Sofia and Felix towards our AP Physics classroom, while Courtney and Grace entered the Biology lab to our right and Chris and Leon walked the opposite way towards English Literature—I could only pray that conversation had been the worst we'd face.

          The words hung on the tip of my tongue as we occupied our seats. I wanted to say something comforting to Sofia, who had to deal with her own grief as well as Meridian's, but she didn't even look my way, not once. Her dark hair formed a curtain between us, and she remained silent as we pulled our textbooks and graphing calculators out of our backpacks.

          It felt so weird to me, how people expected our lives to go back to normal. I knew it was the natural, healthy way of coping, and we shouldn't spend the rest of our lives drowning in grief, but it felt nasty that we got to keep living and June didn't.

          Around us, people whispered. We'd have to get used to it throughout the following days, accepting it as the 'new normal', regardless of the bitter taste it left in our mouths (God knows how badly I wanted to turn around and tell those girls to shut the hell up). They discussed ways of honoring June, with rivers of tears streaming down their cheeks, and I couldn't remember ever having her seen them talk to her.

          They suggested a candlelight vigil, flowers, memorials. We all knew June would have hated the attention, as she'd always preferred to stand on the sidelines and let the action unfold without getting involved. I knew Sofia could hear them, since she was sitting right next to me; Felix, on the other side of the aisle, shook his head almost imperceptibly, bringing my thoughts to the real, palpable world.