Katelin isn't at school the next day.
Or the next day.
Or the next day.
She's at the shelter now, but I thought she would have told me before she left. I miss her much more than I had thought I would. Each day, I subconsciously anticipate going to tutoring and laughing with her and I remember moving inside her in my cold room and how we clicked so perfectly and how I forgot everything about any of my other girlfriends and how I broke up with all six of them the next morning.
When I get home on the third day after she went to the shelter, I call them.
A woman answers. She sounds maternal and fat and friendly. "Helping Hands Women and Children's Shelter. How may I help you today?"
"Hey, my name's Kenny McCormick. I was wondering if I could talk to Katelin?"
She sounds confused. "Katelin?"
"Yeah. We had called earlier to reserve a space?"
"Oh, yeah, yeah! I remember you two now. I'm looking forward to seeing her here soon."
A minute passes before I can process this information. "She isn't there yet."
"Nope. She was due here in the next two days, though."
Another minute passes, and neither of us says anything. Then she gets it. "Oh, dear." She says.
They find her on Monday.
It wasn't just her. It was everyone: her mother, little sister, and older brother, and her father, in a suicide, as well.
Hunting rifle. Very accurate shot, though usually used as a long-range weapon. At short range, it blew out her entire rib cage and spattered it on the walls of her bedroom. She had been packing for the shelter when he found her.
Everyone at school goes to her funeral, even though no one knew who she was.
The guys don't really know what to say, but they—meaning Stan and Kyle (Cartman, being a sociopath, doesn't really care)-all try to tell me the stuff they think is right. They don't understand what my relationship was with her: they know she wasn't a girlfriend, and they know she wasn't a bro, so they don't really know what she was. It would be no use telling eighteen year old boys that she was the light that lit up my world.
The coffin is only open up to her neck, hiding the fact that she must have no chest left at all.
She looks like she's sleeping. I remember she smiled when she slept next to me; she's smiling a little now. There are no bruises left on her face. The bruise cream must have worked.
Her tombstone is made of white marble, and is placed next to those of her mother, brother, and sister. Suitably enough, her father's tomb is in another part of the cemetery. They asked the person who knew her best to help choose the engraving to be placed under her name. She had a grandmother who was too ill to come. Her father's brother was in jail and had never met her. Her mother was an only child.
They chose me. I picked the only thing that made sense.
Under her name is a date that sets her death as almost six months after her eighteenth birthday.
Under the date is engraved what she was to me: The Unexpected Loveliness.