ONE DAYS UNTIL ANNIE LEBLANC DIES: 30
There are a few things nobody tells you about bringing your best friend back from the dead:
The dead don’t always arrive on time because, apparently, they need bathroom breaks or something on the way back from the afterlife.Not everybody is going to be happy you’ve chosen said person to come back. They’re not like POWs, where their return is universally celebrated. It’s more like the Rolling Stones going back on tour, or the arrival of another Twilight movie.The ceremony isn’t necessarily cult-y or weird. There aren’t any black robes or virgin sacrifices, which is probably a good thing. As the Resident Virgin Dork of Lennon, California, I would definitely be at the center of that pentagram.These are the things that are running through my head as I sweat my face off on the small stage rigged up at the head of the football field, the last remnants of an Atomic Fireball disintegrating in my mouth. Not the fact that my best friend, who I hadn’t talked to for over a year before she died, is on her way back to the land of the living. That, in most cases, this is not the hallmark of a best friend, and that by even calling Annie this, I’m basically confirming that I’m the loser everyone already suspects I am. No, I’m preoccupied with the fact that nobody ever seems to want to touch me in a way that is neither accidental nor platonic.
“What is wrong with me?” I mutter under my breath.
“What’s that, sweetheart?”
Ruth Fish smiles down at me. Her baby-pink lipstick matches her pale pantsuit.
I blink up at her and feel a blush spreading across my neck. “Nothing.”
She reaches out a hand and squeezes my shoulder. “It’s okay to be nervous,” she says.
“I’m not nervous,” I say quickly.
This is a lie. I am very nervous. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever been this nervous in my entire life. Over the sounds of Bruce Springsteen playing from the stadium speakers, I can feel the eyes of everyone in the audience on me, their gazes somehow burning even stronger than the sun. I sink lower into my plastic chair and bring my comic book up so it covers my face, like that’ll make any difference. Besides a squat podium and Ruth Fish, I am literally the only thing on this outrageously small stage, baking like roadkill on the artificial turf of Lennon Union High School’s football field. They could’ve at least held this event somewhere with shade, but because I’m the youngest Welcome Back winner in Lennon’s history, hosting the ceremony at my school was the most obvious choice. Forget the fact that I graduated over a week ago and therefore am no longer an attendee of Lennon Union, that I’m nearly eighteen and technically almost an adult.
“It won’t be long now, honey,” Ruth says as she grabs her phone from underneath the stage’s central podium.
Ruth Fish is the kind of person who adds “honey” or “doll” or “dear” to the end of every sentence. She has the sugary sweetness of a little old grandma from Minnesota, even though Lennon is so far south, I can practically see Mexico from my house. Even though that by being the president of the Lennon Historical Society, she’s got to be into some seriously dark shit.
I swallow hard and focus on the football field, on the balloon arch sagging down from the goalpost fifty or so yards away. THIS IS EAGLE COUNTRY is spray-painted on the grass in burgundy and white, leading up to a banner with the words WELCOME BACK, ANNIE scrawled across it in uneven writing. One of the Ns in Annie is smaller than the other, as though it were crammed in at the last second after the sign-maker spelled Annie’s name wrong. Other than this and the streamers draped across the bleachers, the football field basically looks exactly as it did during the entire last season, when our team lost so many games, even the players’ parents stopped showing up.
“Hi, Wilson,” a voice says from a few feet away. The reporter from the Lennon News, who put the picture of a bewildered-looking me on the next day’s front page, my mouth dropped open so wide you could practically see my tonsils. He’s somehow wearing a khaki jacket in spite of the heat. “I’m Tom Bradford from the Lennon News. Could I get an interview with this year’s exciting winner?”
He makes it sound like I beat the Russians in a chess tournament, not that my stupid name was drawn out of a stupid bowl. I didn’t even plan to put myself in the running for Welcome Back; one second, I was cramming my visor into my backpack after a shift at work, and the next I was scribbling my and Annie’s names on the back of a receipt for a bag of Doritos. It was like my subconscious and fine motor skills were actively plotting against me, conspiring to bring about what could either be the best or worst thing to ever happen in my life. But once our names were in the bowl, I couldn’t take them back.
Before I can answer, Tom runs a hand across his bald head and peels a tiny notebook out of his pocket. “Why’d you pick Annie”—his eyes search the notebook pages—“LeBlanc?”
“I, uh…” I start to say, but look down at my shoes instead.
It’s a fair question, but one not even I’m sure how to answer. How does one say without sounding pathetic: Annie was the best friend I’ve ever had and even though she didn’t talk to me for a year before she died, I still think about her all the time and I’m pretty/sort of/mostly sure that if she were to come back right now, things would be different because she won’t be around that school or those people, although I’m not totally sure, so now that I think about it, maybe—
“Wilson?” Tom prompts.
I blink. “She is—uh, she was my best friend,” I stammer eventually. “I mean, with Ryan. That’s—she’s our other best friend. Was. We were best friends. We were the three best friends.” I swallow. “There were three of us.”
“Ryan Morton?” Tom says. “She was with you when you found out you won.”
Standing next to me in the newspaper picture, a scowl so deeply cut into her face, it looked almost painful. Of course Tom the reporter knows Ryan Morton, daughter of Terri Morton, owner of the most famous restaurant in Lennon.
And then, without warning, Tom turns and waves to someone in the crowd. “Ryan!” he shouts. “Come on up here.”
A figure rises from the crowd from somewhere within the first few rows. Ryan Morton walks slowly up the center aisle, looking annoyed at having been acknowledged.
As she climbs onto the stage, Tom points his pen at her. “Ryan, Wilson says you were best friends with Annie too.”
Ryan’s face morphs from a look of vague disinterest to one only someone who knows her favorite nail polish color as a kid was called Macaroni Sunshine could recognize as sarcastic glee.
“Oh yeah, totally,” she says.
The only thing more surprising than Ryan Morton admitting she was ever friends with Annie LeBlanc—sarcastic or not—is the fact that she’s even at this thing. Ever since finding out I won Welcome Back, she’s been ignoring me again, the Atomic Fireball peace offering firmly off the table.
“So, how do you feel about Annie coming back?” Tom says.
Nobody waits for me to answer.
“Oh my god,” Ryan says, “like, unbelievably psyched. Ever since she died, life has been basically unbearable. Like, who cares that she transferred to some elite private school for rich kids with con artist parents the year before and never talked to us again? We are disgusting.”
Tom is dutifully taking notes while I curl my fingers around my comic book and pray for death. My nails dig into the front cover of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Wolves at the Gate, the one where Dracula comes back. It’s my favorite issue in the series, mostly because Dracula is the best character ever. It’s one that used to make me feel calm when I was a kid, but now all I feel like doing is shredding the pages and disappearing into the rubble.
“Do you have any plans for the summer?” Tom asks.
I open my mouth, but all that comes out is air. Since finding out I won Welcome Back a couple of days ago, I’ve been agonizing over what Annie and I would do for her one month on Earth. The notebook in my nightstand is crammed with lists of activities I scratched out one by one, none of them feeling right. Because even though I technically put Annie’s and my names in the bowl, I never, for a single second, thought I’d actually win.
“Of course we do.” Ryan flicks her long brown ponytail over her shoulder. “First, we’re gonna go to the beach, then we’re gonna go shopping, and then we’re gonna have a sleepover and a slo-mo hot-girl pillow fight!”
Ruth Fish, her phone call finished, apparently having heard all this, clears her throat and nudges me and Ryan backward.
“That’s enough questions for now,” she says. “Pictures? Anyone? Tom, do you want another picture of the girls?”
Ryan and I stand about a foot apart while Tom snaps pictures with his camera. In my green-and-blue flannel shirt and thrift store denim shorts, I can’t help but feel a little underdressed standing next to Ryan, who’s wearing a long off-white bohemian-style top with lacy sleeves that hang past her wrists. Peeking out of her shirt is a gold necklace with a tiny R charm on it, one she’s been wearing every day since we were kids, when Friday night sleepovers at her house were as reliable as the sun.
“Tom, let’s get pictures with Annie’s parents, too,” Ruth says when he’s finished.
She leads Tom back to the crowd, where a couple in clothes even I can tell from this far away are expensive sits in the front row. Mr. LeBlanc is in a white summer suit like something out of a movie about the South, while Mrs. LeBlanc wears a long army-green dress and a straw hat whose brim is as wide as a Hula-Hoop. Mrs. LeBlanc’s smile opens wide as Tom introduces himself, Mr. LeBlanc shuffling forward in his chair to shake his hand. They start to talk, Mrs. LeBlanc tipping her head back to laugh in a way that rich women do on TV, as though they expect everyone in their immediate vicinity to join in.
And then, without warning, the crowd falls silent as a pickup truck appears between the far goalposts on the field. Ruth Fish quickly pulls Annie’s parents onstage so they’re standing right next to me. She begins talking into the microphone, but all I can hear is the blood rushing in my ears. My comic falls to the floor, sliding somewhere underneath my chair.
This is the first time I realize I don’t actually know how this is supposed to go; does Annie skateboard down the aisle? Fly out of the back of the pickup truck with makeshift angel wings? I file through memories of the other Welcome Back ceremony I went to, but they happen only every ten years, so it’s fuzzy. All I remember is seven-year-old me sitting at the back of the crowd, drawing on my hands with permanent marker.
For a second, as I stand here, my heart thudding and skin overheating, I think I might be sick. I think I might actually projectile vomit onto Mrs. LeBlanc’s dress, which probably costs as much as I make in an entire month. Somewhere in the commotion, Ryan has left the stage, disappearing back into the crowd.
Part of me wants to run away, just dip the fuck out of here, but then I remember that I’m the one who did this. I picked Annie. Even if I did put our names in the bowl on a whim, even though I never thought in a million years that I’d actually be standing here, there was still a part of me that wanted this. That still wants this, more than anything.
A man in a San Diego Padres jersey emerges from the truck and jogs around to the passenger side. He swings the door open, revealing a figure sitting motionless in their seat. I have to blink into the sunlight to make sure I’m not hallucinating, but there she is. Annie LeBlanc lowers herself onto the artificial grass, wearing a short dress covered in bright, sparkly pink sequins, her long blond hair draped over her shoulders. Everyone in the crowd turns toward her, phones up, waiting.
TWO DAYS UNTIL ANNIE LEBLANC DIES: 30
As Annie stands there, someone in the crowd breaks into applause. It’s gentle at first, then picks up momentum, thundering by the time Annie starts walking down the center aisle. She’s barefoot, a pair of gold high heels looped around her wrist. Everything transitions into slow motion as I watch her do this: Annie’s movements, the tiny squeaking noises Mrs. LeBlanc is making from beside me, the clapping. I know this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, giving Annie a second—albeit brief—chance. Her death was so sudden, and now she can be with her family again, sleep in her own bed, do all the things in Lennon that she used to love. That we used to love. But my brain is still humming with worried questions, the same ones that have been swirling around my head ever since Ruth Fish told me I’d won.
What if Annie didn’t want to come back?
What if Annie doesn’t want to see me?
What if this was all a big mistake?
I twist my hands in front of my stomach, cursing myself. What was I thinking? There’s no way Annie will ever want to hang out with me again, not when I’m the same nothing she left last time. And while last time the only person who knew the full scale of my humiliation was Ryan, now all of Lennon are guaranteed to see I have approximately zero friends and always will.
It’s only seconds before Annie reaches the stage, but it feels like hours. For a moment I think I must black out, that I’ll come to in my bed and realize it was all just a dream, a plot from one of my comic books. But then Annie’s here, collapsing into her parents as her mother lets out a choked sob.
I just sort of watch this part with the awkwardness it deserves, like a kid waiting their turn to see Santa Claus. I squirm and clench my hands, trying to look like I’m not actively searching for the nearest exit, trying not to look desperate, until finally Annie turns to me.
“Wilson?” she says.
Annie stares up at me, her eyes wide in disbelief. And then every part of me is sure, sure this is the moment where Annie cringes quietly at the sight of me, says a polite hello, and then doesn’t talk to me again for the rest of the summer. Maybe she doesn’t even say hello, maybe she just runs. But as I’m imagining everyone in the crowd pointing and laughing at me like something out of a 1950s fever dream, Annie leans in to hug me, her arms looping around my neck.
She buries her face in my shoulder. “It’s really you,” she says softly, her arms tightening.
At first, I’m stiff, waiting for her to pull away, but when she doesn’t, I tentatively let my hands reach up around her back and pull her close. Then, just like that, I settle into her, my worries melting away like ice cream. It’s so easy. She even smells like Annie, all vanilla perfume edged with rose. The smell of my childhood. Her nose is the same shape, slightly crooked at the end, and she’s wearing the gold hoop earrings she bought with the money she saved up from the lemonade stand we ran that summer when we were ten.
Copyright © 2024 by Molly Morris
