It's Friday night and I am standing in front of my closet, wondering how I could own so much black but have absolutely nothing to wear to a visitation. As hard as it may be to believe, I don't actually go to many events like this, so I don't have anything to wear. Each outfit I pull out has a happy memory attached to it. I couldn't wear any of this to anybody's visitation, especially Tori's.

Mom's staying late at work again so the house is empty, but I still cautiously tip-toe into her bedroom and open the door to her giant walk-in closet. Everything inside is organized by color, from short sleeve to long sleeve. She's obsessive when it comes to organizing her things. Her closet, her desk, every drawer in this house. Everything is arranged by color, size, the alphabet. She absolutely hates how I'm always messing her things up – and she always notices. She'll know I took her clothes, but for an occasion like this, I don't think she'll mind.

I slowly pick through her black dresses, one by one, remembering the last time she wore each one. Grandma's funeral, the big showcase three years ago – the last time she actually made it to one – the day she and dad signed their divorce papers, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of the week after that. The one on the end I don't remember her ever wearing. It looks a bit small for her anyway, so I pull it out and hold it up to my body. It's got a deep V-neck, although there's some black lace over top, disguising it as a scoop-neck. The sleeves are tight and stop at the elbow, and it falls just above the knees. I yank my sweatpants down and pull my top off, leaving my clothes on the floor as I try the dress on. It fits me almost perfectly, which makes me wonder when my mother bought this, as she weighs about fifteen pounds more than I do, and has maintained that weight for as long as I can remember.

I almost look too good in this dress. Does that make it inappropriate for this kind of event? Are you supposed to look good at a visitation? I don't want to look bad. That would be an insult. If I look good, it looks like I care, right? Not that I really need to looklike I care. The only people who will actually see me are the ones whose opinions don't matter. I'm going for Tori…and partially for myself.

I leave the closet and go to Mom's jewelry armoire, figuring that if I'm going to borrow her dress I might as well go all the way. I rip the first thing I see - a long silver chain with a deep purple pendant hanging from it – off its hook and hang it around my neck before looking in the full-body mirror on the wall beside the closet door for the first time. I try to think of the last time my legs were this exposed and come up empty-handed. The green nail polish – one can only take so much black – on my toes is chipping and my feet are still dirty from earlier today. It hadn't occurred to me that Bed Bath and Yonder wasn't exactly a sanitary place when I wandered in there barefoot a few hours ago. The manager who had kicked me out was much more concerned with me not wearing shoes to remember that he'd banned Tori and I from his store six months ago for repeatedly getting caught on the bed displays.

I need shoes. Unfortunately my mother's feet are a size bigger than mine, so I wander back to my own bedroom, sit down in the doorway of my closet, and start digging through my shoes. When did I get so many boots? I could probably buy a house in Hawaii with the money I'd make selling these on Ebay.

At the bottom of the giant, messy, terribly disorganized pile I find a pair of black ankle boots, which I have to squeeze my feet into, since I haven't worn them since freshman year. They're probably the most visitation-appropriate shoes I've got, so they'll have to do. I stand up, check my hair in the mirror, and leave. When I pull into Tori's driveway (I thought having visitations at your house was something people only did in movies, but I've been proved wrong.) I notice the time and realize the visitation started two hours ago. All of my friends have probably come and gone, and I'm going to walk in there and see two dozen people I've never seen before in my life. I don't want to get out of the car.

Ten minutes later I stumble into the house – it turns out it's hard to walk in shoes that are a size too small – and the first thing I see is the back of Beck's head. He's wearing a solid black shirt and khaki pants. Since when does Beck own a single pair of khakis? He starts to turn around and I duck behind a tall man standing by the couch. I don't want him to see me. I feel so out of place. I'm just a little child playing dress-up in her mother's clothes, showing up at the visitation for somebody who died believing I hated her. People like me aren't supposed to go to these things. People like me aren't supposed to care.

Beck takes a couple steps toward the back porch and I notice he's following Andre. Robbie's right outside the door, waiting for them, and Cat is nowhere to be seen. She doesn't have a very long attention span and doesn't deal very well with these kind of things, so she's probably gone home by now.

Tori's dad is sitting on the couch with a blank look on his face. A woman who resembles Mrs. Vega – perhaps her sister? Tori used to talk about her aunt a lot. – is beside him, patting him on the back while wearing a very similar facial expression. Trina is sitting on the floor at her father's feet, her face bright red from crying. I don't know if I've ever seen her cry. That girl has the thickest skin out of everybody I have ever met in my life. I suppose you'd have to, if you had such an irritating and unappealing personality.

There are half a dozen strangers standing in the kitchen and a few kids from school are standing by the piano, on top of which is one large photo of Tori and several smaller ones – I recognize, from this distance, one of the small ones as the group photo of our "Ping-Pong team." – as well as a large vase full of multi-colored flowers, a guest book, and a stack of those depressing little program things. The teacher I would have had for Health class if I hadn't skipped every day is next to the stairs, talking to a man I don't recognize as Sikowitz until a moment later. His hair is brushed, and he's dressed very much like Beck is – black shirt, khaki pants. He's actually wearing shoes, which is the biggest surprise of all. He sees me, still hiding from Beck behind the tall stranger, and nods. I do some sort of stupid half-wave in response, which luckily he doesn't see.

Before I have an anxiety attack or embarrass myself any further I go upstairs, where it's quiet. There's a buzzing coming from downstairs, but up here the lights are off, the doors are all closed, and there's not a soul in sight. I yank my too-small shoes off and carry them down to the end of the hall, where the door to Tori's room is. I shouldn't be up here at all, let alone going inside a dead girl's bedroom. This is inappropriate in so many ways.

I open the door and realize I'm not the first one to come up here. Tori's mother is sitting on the edge of the bed, sobbing. She doesn't notice I'm there at first, and I start to close the door and back away, but she looks up as I'm backing away.

"Jade." She says, her voice weak. I'm partially surprised she remembers my name. "You can come in."

"Oh, I was just, ummm… It's really crowded down there so I thought I'd come up here and, uhh…"

"Can I hug you?" She asks me as she stands up. Normally I would say no right away. I'm no fan of hugs, and I've always reserved them for people who mean a lot to me. Fortunately – or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it – I don't give them out very often. Mrs. Vega, however, looks so heartbroken that even I can't deny her. "I've been up here all night," she says, "so I haven't seen any of Tori's friends yet. You were all so important to her, and I just…can I hug you?" I step toward her and hold my arms out. She grabs a hold of me and starts sobbing into my hair, and then I'm crying too. I don't even know Mrs. Vega that well, but I stand there in her daughter's room with her for several minutes, crying into the sleeve of her shirt until she lets go of me, mumbles something about going downstairs, and leaves the room, shutting the door behind her.

I stand still for a moment, unsure about what has just happened. I set my shoes down at the foot of Tori's bed and walk over to her desk. Everything on it is covered in dust. I sit in her chair and run my hand over her laptop, leaving a cleared stripe. I look at her books – she's got a lot of romance novels. I pull a couple off the shelf and notice how new they look. She probably never had a chance to read these. Beside the romance novels are some realbooks. Wintergirls, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, The Virgin Suicides, Lord of the Flies, Never Let Me Go, The Time Traveler's Wife, My Sister's Keeper, The Pact, The Bell Jar, The Lovely Bones, Go Ask Alice… She's got a lot of sad books. A lot of books in general. She had never seemed like much of a reader to me. These books - I can tell just from looking at the spines – have been read a lot, but they're still covered in way too much dust to have been touched anytime recently. There's a bookmark sticking out two-thirds into Wintergirls, so I pull the small turquoise book off the shelf and flip it open.

I read out loud the sentence next to my thumb.

"Once the sleeping pill straps my arms and legs down to the mattress, she opens my skull and rips out the wiring. She screams holes in my brain and pukes blood down my throat."

"That's morbid." I whisper to nobody in particular. I flip it over and read the back, as this is one of the few books on her shelf that I haven't read. Normally I would just take it – she probably wouldn't notice – but even I am opposed to stealing from dead girls. I'll have to get my own copy sometime. When I start to put the book back, I notice a piece of paper sticking out where it used to be. The paper is a crumpled page protruding from a small notebook. I pull the notebook out, replacing it with Wintergirls. It's a plain black book, maybe a hundred pages thick. I'm invading Tori's privacy and I feel bad, in a way, but I open it to the first page anyway. It's covered in drawings. The next page, more doodles. The third page looks like half of an old algebra assignment, but the fourth page – that's where it gets good.

On the right side of the page is a disturbingly accurate drawing of Robbie. In a fancy, sickeningly girly script alongside it is his name, with a bulleted list below it.

- Robbie is awkward. There's no other way to put it. How else do you describe a boy who carries a puppet around with him all the time, without using words from Jade's vocabulary?

- Despite his awkwardness, though, Robbie is sweet. He always means well – except for that Robarazzi thing…

-I'mnotentirelysurewhat'swrongwithhimbutI'mfindingiteasytoignorehisproblems,muchlikeI'velearnedtolivewithmyown."

It reads like some sort of amateur, wannabe psychiatrist's case notes. I flip the book and see Cat's face drawn in the corner. Her list is a little longer. Beck is on the backside, with Andre on the one across from him. On the back of Andre, page number eight, is me, but there isn't just a little list on this page. There are paragraphs. Big paragraphs, scrunched onto the page in tiny, barely legible writing. It carries on to the back, ending halfway down. I hesitantly turn back to Cat – I want to read my page, but it's always best to start at the beginning. Just as I flip back to the start, however, I hear the door creak and quickly shove the notebook into my bag. Trina is standing there, staring at me. Her face isn't as red as before, but she looks pale and all her makeup has been wiped off.

"What are you doing?" She asks, leaning into the room without putting a foot over the threshold.

"I, uh…Tori borrowed something from me a few weeks ago and I really needed it back…I figured I'd just… I'll go now." I grab my shoes and push past her, making my way through the crowd and out to my car as fast as I can.

It was a Tuesday when Tori showed up at my locker the second our last class of the day let out. I'd been too distraught on Sunday to even tell her what my problem was, but she had deduced from the positive pregnancy test and the few words I was able to get out through my sobbing what I was there for. She had taken me inside the house, sat down beside me on her couch, and offered to call and make me a doctor's appointment – which she then did only a few seconds later. Tori had taken my reaching out for help once again as a sign that we were best friends forever or something, so she had decided to accompany me to my appointment. I was a bit preoccupied to bother with correcting her, so here she was, standing at my locker, tapping her toe about as fast as my heart was beating.

"You ready?" She asked, her voice nearly drowned out by the sound of her foot.

"Yes."

"You scared?"

"Yes." I slammed my locker shut and closed my eyes. I knew that the chances I'd hear anything different from what the test had already told me were too small to even hope, but I was trying to be optimistic for a change.

Tori took my hand and led me out to my car, prying my keys out of my hand when I tried to get into the driver's seat.

"I'll drive." She said, opening the door. I frowned at her, too nervous to open my mouth and argue with her. "I said I'd help you Jade. I meant that."

We sat in the car for several minutes in silence, neither of us wanting to leave quite yet. Other students were running around and driving out of the parking lot behind us, but inside my car, Tori and I just sat there, staring at each other.

"You know…" She mumbled, reaching out and grabbing my hand. I pulled it away, but she took it again. "No matter what happens, you have five people who love you and support you. Well…five and a half." She smiled and patted my back before turning to the wheel. Forcing the keys into the ignition, Tori tried to start my car, but of course, it didn't start on the first try. She tried again, and got the same result.

"Try it again." I mumbled, "Third time's the charm, right?" She twisted the key again and the engine finally turned over.

"Ready?" She gave me a hopeful, yet pathetic smile.

"No. Take me home. I'm not going."

"Yes you are."

"No I'm not." She ignored me that time and drove out of the parking lot, nearly blowing the stop sign due to her inexperience driving my car.

Half an hour later, we sat together in the corner of the unfamiliar waiting room at the office of the doctor that Tori had made me an appointment with. It didn't occur to me at the time how strange it was that she knew the name of this particular kind of doctor. I'd just gone along with whatever she said because I was too convinced that my life was over to question her.

A couple young women and a few other teenage girls were scattered throughout the room, and I swear the girl sitting directly across the room from me had been my best friend in middle school. She made eye contact with me for a second and raised her eyebrows before turning away.

There were half a dozen of those creepy Anne Geddes photographs around the room, which certainly didn't have any sort of calming effect. I would rather not look at a framed picture of a baby poking its fat, ugly, little face out of a hole in an egg, especially while I'm sitting in a gynecologist's office.

Tori's face was pointed at the magazine in her lap, but as she flipped through it I could tell she was watching me. Who could blame her though? I was hyperventilating just sitting there. My breathing was loud enough for the whole city to hear it.

"What are you gonna do about your parents?" She questioned rather apprehensively.

"My mom already knows." I told her, closing my eyes. Tori reached out and pried my fingers off the armrest of my chair, squeezing them between both of her hands. "She walked in on me taking the test."

"Well you're still alive…that's a good sign, right?"

"I guess." I paused and opened my eyes. "I'm not telling my dad. He'd probably just tell me that my stupid, pointless dreams are now completely out of my reach."

"He'd be wrong." She reassured me, letting go of my hand just as a nurse opened a door across the room and called my name.

"We'll see."

I returned to the waiting room nearly an hour later, surprised that I could even remember how to walk. I was too shocked and terrified to even be concerned with the way I'd just been violated. My life was over, simple as that.

"I'm guessing you didn't get good news." Tori said, meeting me in the middle of the room. I just shook my head, afraid that if I opened my mouth I'd throw up. She opened the door for me and set her hand on my shoulder as we walked outside.

"I know you probably think your life is over right now," she told me, her hand sliding down my arm and latching onto my hand as I started walking faster than her, "but this isn't the end of the world, you know? You can-" I shoved my heavy bag, full of pamplets from the doctor, into Tori's hands and jerked away from her so I could vomit in the bushes. She just bent down beside me and held my hair back without a word.

At that exact moment, Tori Vega became my best friend.


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