What Remains
an excerpt

Chapter One
“May I have your attention, please, for a very serious and important announcement?” Everyone heard the tremor in the principal’s voice. Conversations stopped; pencils writing notes (history notes and love notes alike) suddenly paused. Heads turned reflexively toward the nearest wall speaker, as if to somehow hear better what was about to be said.

“Mandy? Amanda!” Mrs. Henderson yelled down the stairs. “Come on, get up—you’ll be late for school!” “I’m already up, Mom!” Amanda closed her notebook and rotated her still shoulders. She had been up since 3:00 a.m. studying for two major tests. But now she need to take a shower, grab some breakfast, and get dressed in time to meet her ride to school: Carla wouldn’t wait long for her if she were running late, even though Amanda always had to wait for Carla when it was Amanda’s turn to drive. “We’ll have to talk about that . . . someday,” Amanda muttered to herself as the shower beat against her tired body.
Amanda’s long thick hair still hung in a wet rope down her back as she slipped on a sweater, fastened her jeans, and ran up the stairs. Opening a can of Diet Coke and pouring the caffeine down her throat made Amanda begin to feel almost human. “That’s no breakfast for my favorite only child,” her mom chided, slipping a container of blueberry yogurt and a plastic spoon into Amanda’s backpack. “Here, eat that on the way to school.” Moments later, Carla pulled up in front of the Hendersons’ house just as Amanda lugged her backpack outside, letting the screen door flap shut behind her. “Bye, Mom,” she called out; “love you!”
Amanda began repeating chemical formulas under her breath, practicing for one of her tests, as she lurched down the driveway. “Morning, geek,” Carla sang out. “Morning, dumb blonde,” Amanda replied. Their normal greetings now over with, Amanda pushed Carla’s make-up case and tissues to one side and slid into the passenger seat. “Ugh,” she groaned, “I hardy got any sleep last night because I was studying for tests in Chemistry and English; my hair’s still wet; I didn’t have time to put on any make-up—what do you bet the first person I run into at school today is Toby?” Carla looked sideways at Amanda and frowned. She almost said something but turned the radio up instead. Next stop, Benjamin Franklin High School.
Toby was nowhere to be seen (‘Probably sleeping in, like I wish I were!’ Amanda thought jealously). This actually suited Amanda fine. She knew her hair would be dry and presentable by lunchtime, and she wanted the chance then to sit quietly with him and talk some things over.
During first period, Amanda took the easier of her two tests, on a lot of vocabulary from the novel Animal Farm. The test went well—Amanda was such a voracious reader that she’d known most of the words even before studying last night. ‘So far, so good,’ Amanda thought, finally eating her blueberry yogurt as she walked down the crowded hallway to chemistry class. She became aware of music overarching the noise of lockers slamming and friends gossiping: “Peggy Sue, Peggy Sue, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty Peggy Sue.” The school’s p.a. system was a little scratchy, but the music was so infectious that Amanda smiled as she noticed how many people were singing along. Amanda smiled at a sudden memory. In the second grade, she’d had a classmate named Peggy Sue who had proudly declared that the song had been written especially for her—and had dumped Toby’s pencil box on the floor when he had dared to suggest otherwise.
Now, however, the song and the blueberry yogurt both came to an end as Amanda slipped into her chemistry classroom as the bell rang. Mr. Varner shut the door and began to hand out the tests.

After a long pause, the principal continued. “I’m very sorry to have to tell you this, but one of our students, junior Amanda Henderson, died last night at West End Hospital. We’ve arranged to have extra counselors at the school today. Please feel free to come to the Guidance Office or the Lecture Room if you need to talk. The Hendersons will let us know when and where the funeral will be held. I know how hard this is to hear. Please keep the Henderson family in your thoughts and prayers.”

Despite all her studying, Amanda thought she’d probably failed her Chemistry test. She’d left the house in such a hurry this morning that she’d accidentally left her calculator on her bed, and Mr. Varner wouldn’t lend her one of his, so she’d only finished about two-thirds of the problems. “This is not the first time you’ve forgotten something, Amanda. You need to get better organized. In the meantime, use your mental calculator like we all had to do back when I was in high school.” Mr. Varner always spoke in bold face like that, raising and lowering his eyebrows as punctuation. Usually, this just made Amanda and her friends laugh during their occasional lunch-time imitations. Now, though, it just made her even angrier with Mr. Varner than she was with herself.
When the bell rang, Amanda reluctantly turned her test paper in, picked up her ever-present backpack, and headed for the cafeteria. ‘I’ve got to find Toby,’ she moaned to herself; ‘he’ll find something crazy to say to get me out of this mood.’

“What?!” Carla Winston had been half asleep until she heard Amanda’s name over the loudspeaker. True, Amanda hadn’t come out when Carla had honked this morning, but—“What?! It can’t be! What happened??” She stood up quickly, then swayed, trembling, she’d heard wrong, or that this was some kind of sick joke, or even that there somehow might be another Amanda Henderson in the school. “Please, Mrs. Garcia, please—I have to find out—she’s my best friend—I have to go, please!” The other students sat in stunned silence as Mrs. Garcia immediately wrote a hall pass, allowing Carla to go to the guidance office. Feeling helpless, Mrs. Garcia started to say, “Do you want someone to go with you?” but Carla had already run from the room, clutching her pass in one hand and her purse in the other, leaving her books forgotten in her desk.
At the guidance office, fifteen or twenty students were grouped in small clusters, with others milling aimlessly in the hallway. Carla stood by the secretary’s desk, willing her to announce that it had all been a mistake, that Amanda was really all right. Many of the other students were openly weeping; others looked frightened. Most were hugging or holding hands, squeezing each other so tightly that their fingers were numb. Their expressions were numb. All were tense and confused, waiting for someone to tell them what had happened. Moments later, the guidance director, Mr. Saunders, walked quietly out of his office. An older man, gray-haired and gentle yet usually firmly in charge, he now appeared shaken and tired. After a brief pause, he found the strength to get everyone’s attention. “We shouldn’t be standing around here. Let’s walk down to the Lecture Room where we can all sit down, and I’ll tell you what I know.”
Carla felt almost hypnotized; she followed everyone without really knowing where she was going. All she knew was that she hurt. The pain gripped her chest and fogged her brain. She knew she wanted to cry, but somehow hearing everyone else’s tears kept hers bottled up. Toby—she needed Toby. Where was he?

Amanda walked into the cafeteria, scanning the crowds of people for Toby. She saw some of her friends already sitting at their normal lunch table (this was the third year that her group had claimed the same spot for themselves). She saw Mr. Varner talking with two other teachers. She saw a freshman throw peas at his none-too-happy tablemates. She saw the sullen faces at the Lunch Detention table. She saw all this and more without really seeing any of it, until she saw Toby—Toby and Carla!—Toby and Carla standing close in one of the food lines, holding hands and laughing. They were looking at each other as if the hundreds of other people in the room didn’t even exist, as if she, Amanda Henderson, didn’t even exist! Amanda froze for a moment that seemed to last forever. Finally, yet only seconds later, she ran up to Carla, to Carla and Toby, and slapped Carla as hard as she could! Then Amanda spun around and ran out of the cafeteria, oblivious of all the people who were pointing, questioning, staring at her pain. Amanda ran down the hall, past teachers who tried to stop her (“No running in the halls!” “Where’s your hall pass?”), past friends asking what was wrong (“Amanda? Amanda, wait!”). She stopped only when a cramp in her side forced her to buckle over and catch her breath. Panting, feeling sick to her stomach, Amanda gave up trying to stand, crumpling instead against a locker. How could Carla do this to her? Carla knew that Amanda was Toby’s girlfriend! She had been through Amanda’s elation when Toby and she had first started dating, been through the highs and lows of their 8-month relationship, been through Amanda’s nervousness when it had seemed lately that Toby had been trying to avoid her. Carla and Amanda had even talked about Toby in the car just this morning! Yet there they both were, gazing at each other and knocking the breath out of Amanda as painfully and unexpectedly as if they had literally kicked her in the stomach with all their combined strength.

As the fragile crowd of students reached the Lecture Room, some automatically pulled the scattered chairs into a large but tight-knit cluster. “Please,” said Mr. Saunders, “take the hand of the person sitting next to you. This is going to be tough for all of us, really tough, and we all need to know that there are people right here who feel the same pain we feel.” He reached for the hands of the students on either side of him and waited while people quietly, tentatively, then gratefully, closed themselves into a sort of prayer circle. The tension was almost palpable. After a few minutes of emotional silence, Mr. Saunders began to speak again. “First, let me introduce the other adults in here. We have asked the county’s crisis team to help us through the sadness and anger and shock that we’re all feeling right now as we miss Amanda.” One by one, three women and two men stood as he gave their names. “This is Mr. Mason, the team coordinator, and Mrs. Anderson, Mrs. Forsythe, Miss Campbell, and Mr. Benson. Please feel free to go up to them at any time for any reason. They are all dedicated to helping us learn to cope with this horrible news. It’s okay to need help; I will be talking with one of them later myself.” Mr. Saunders smiled ruefully. “Even counselors can need to be counseled,” he added. After another moment of raw silence, he looked around room full of tear-filled eyes as he said, “Amanda woke her parents at about one o’clock this morning, and told them that she had swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills and a bottle of antidepressants. SHE HAD CHANGED HER MIND—always remember that! In the end, she wanted to live! But she had taken so many pills, and waited so long to let her parents know . . . Even though they called 911 right away and the ambulance sped her to the hospital, and even though she got her stomach pumped, her body had already absorbed too many chemicals, and she died.”
Amid the sobs and moaning, many students were asking questions. “But, why?” “Why did she do it?” “I just saw her yesterday—she seemed fine!” “She was so smart, so nice, so pretty.” “Why? Why???” Mr. Saunders used his sleeve to wipe his face (some students wondered if he were crying, too), then cleared his throat. “Please,” he said, “listen. Amanda’s parents asked me to share some more information with you. First and most important, they want you to know that they don’t blame any of you. Amanda suffered from clinical depression, a biological illness she’d been struggling with for several years. She was taking various prescription drugs, and she’s been seeing a therapist, too, but she didn’t want you to know. Amanda put tremendous pressure on herself to be her best, but she was dragged down by her depression. She simply couldn’t cope with the kinds of problems that are really just a normal part of growing up. But remember: she did change her mind!” He paused for a moment, looking at the pained faces surrounding him. Then, taking a deep breath, he continued. “Some of you knew Amanda pretty well and may feel guilty, may feel that something you did caused her to take this action, or that you should have seen it coming and been able to prevent it. But if you feel that way, you are wrong. I know that’s easy for me to say, but it wasn’t your fault, no matter what you may have said or done, or not said or done. Her parents don’t blame any of you, and Amanda wouldn’t want you to live with that burden.”
No one spoke. The silence hung heavy like wet laundry on the line. Several seconds later, Carla suddenly jumped from her chair, knocking it over, and ran desperately towards the door—she had to escape—she couldn’t breathe—surely they all knew that this was her fault! “Let me go!!” she screamed—and was instantly enveloped into the arms of a woman she didn’t know. “I said let me go!!” Carla began to beat the woman’s chest, her fists clenched and flailing. Suddenly she collapsed to the floor, rocking back and forth, sobbing and repeating over and over, “I’m sorry, Amanda. I’m so sorry, Amanda . . .” The woman had curled up on the floor next to Carla, and the two of them hugged and cried, unaware of the stares and whispers and tears around them.
After a few minutes, the room began to get cautiously noisy. As the students began to separate themselves informally into small, fragile groups, the counselors began to scatter themselves among the groups, answering questions, offering support.
Someone brought Carla a box of tissues, quietly placing it on the floor beside her, and then disappeared. The woman Carla had both hit and hugged smiled gently when their hands bumped while reaching for the tissue box. “Hi,” she said; “I’m Miss Campbell. Let’s go wash our faces and get something cold to drink, OK?”

Amanda walked slowly to the school’s clinic. She’d decided to call her parents from there and tell them she was sick—and she was sick, too, sick of phony friends, sick of teachers with petty rules, sick of stress, sick of life. All she wanted to do now was to escape to a heavy, dreamless sleep. And to lose, finally, the pain and the heaviness in her heart.
That evening, Mr. Henderson crept quietly into his daughter’s room. “Are you awake, honey?” he asked tentatively. “Mom and I thought you’d want to know that it’s 8:00. We saved you some dinner. How are you feeling? Can you come upstairs and eat something with us?” Amanda opened one eye a bit and flinched at her father’s concern. “I’m not hungry, Dad. Sorry.” Even in the shadows, she saw his crestfallen look. “Maybe I’ll come up later,” she added, to try to please him. “I love you, Daddy, you and Mom. I’ll be O.K. Don’t worry about me.” A wry smile flickered across Mr. Henderson’s face. “Sweetheart, you’re our daughter. Of course we’re going to worry about you. But if you want to sleep, I understand. We’ll be upstairs if you need anything, okay?” Amanda didn’t answer. In the darkness, he thought she’d fallen back to sleep. “I love you,” he whispered, then tiptoed out and gently shut her door.

Carla sat across a small table from Miss Campbell and stared at her with contempt. “Look,” she said, “just because you give me a hug and a can of Pepsi, that doesn’t mean you’re some kind of miracle worker. Amanda’s gone. All the hugs and good intentions in the world aren’t going to bring her back.” Miss Campbell took a sip of her Pepsi, put the can down, handed Carla a tissue, and waited. After several seconds, Carla almost exploded. “You can’t just hive me a tissue, say ‘there, there, little girl,’ and think that everything will be all right! In case you haven’t noticed, it doesn’t work that way, okay? This is real life, not a TV movie, and we can’t tidy up all our feelings before the commercial break!”
Carla sat with her arms crossed tightly over her chest. Her eyes focused coldly on Miss Campbell, as if daring her to open her lips and speak. Several seconds, a minute, two minutes passed. “Say something, damn it!” Carla finally spat out. “Why, honey? You’re doing pretty well on your own. Every word you’ve said so far is true.” Miss Campbell reached across the table and opened her hands, silently inviting Carla to reach out, too. Again, a minute, two minutes passed. “I’m going back to class now,” Carla stated. “Well, okay, if you feel like you’re ready, but I think you ought to stay here with me a little longer.” “Did I ask you what you think?” “No, Carla, you didn’t . . . but maybe you should.” They continued to sit, one reaching out, one tightly wound up in anger and in fear.

Amanda reached under her pillow and pulled out the two bottles she’d been caressing before her father had appeared at her door. She stroked them again for several minutes, relishing their smoothness, absorbing their strength. Then she emptied both bottles, feeling the slippery capsules rain into a pile on her bed. She pulled her hand through the pile, letting the capsules run through her fingers over and over (like precious jewels? like gravel?), mixing them again and again until she almost felt hypnotized by the soothingly repetitive action and by the heavy darkness of her silent room, her cocoon. But when she emerged from this cocoon, it would be to spread her wings in a world without sadness, a world without stress. Should she write a note? ‘That’s what people do, isn’t it?’ she thought. She already felt drugged by the blackness surrounding her, however, and by the finality and the rightness and the inevitability of her decision. There would be no note. She reached under her bed for the water bottle she’d filled earlier in anticipation of this moment. Finding it, she unscrewed the top and took a long, determined drink. Already the pain of living—the heavy, aching sadness that had pressed down so strongly just minutes before-- seemed to be receding. Finally, one by one at first, then in twos and threes, Amanda Henderson swallowed one-hundred thirty-seven capsules.