Everybody came to your funeral. Alex Yard sat in the third row next to Becky Bruins, who sobbed the entire time like the two of you had been best friends since kindergarten, and I seriously thought about getting up, walking right over to Becky, getting in her face, and saying something dramatic like, just what the hell are you playing at, but I didn’t because you can’t just act on every stupid impulse you have.

I thought you knew that, Julia.

Throughout the entire service, Alex Yard kept on pushing his hair over his forehead in the way that you absolutely loved, and I kept on looking at him and thinking that I’d never hear the end of it if you knew that he was here in the church for you.

For you, Julia. For you.

Your brother got up and talked about the time you put a line of ketchup underneath your nose and did this weird little hat dance around the kitchen table like it was the biggest craze in France, and then your brother laughed and then he coughed a few times like he couldn’t get the rest of the words out without warming up his throat.

I sat with your family. They were always as much mine as they were yours; that’s what you said. But without you, the space between me and them was too big. It’s like I fell asleep and someone replaced my body with different parts, giving me arms that were too small and a head that was made for someone three times my size.

I don’t fit right without you, Julia.

The guidance counselor sat in the back, and I wondered if she was worried about her job.

Coach Eileen came too, and when she shook your mother’s hand, she scrunched up her nose like something smelled really badly, and it reminded me of how you passed gas in gym class when we were doing yoga and blamed it on Mia Simmons because we heard she had a thing for Alex Yard.

Your father touched his fingers to his lips and pressed them against the silver box they put you in, the coffin that looked like a rocket ship that would never take off, and the gravediggers shoveled dirt on top of you, and I thought you’re missing everything, Julia, you’re missing everything, and then I threw up in the grass.

Whitney Weisenberg is a writer, artist, teacher, Master Educator, mother of two daughters, and Noodle the Doodle. She lives with her husband in Ohio, where she likes writing short stories and drawing unflattering portraits. Her literary work has appeared in Paper Dragon, Dead Skunk Magazine, Nunum-Done in a Hundred Anthology, Nine Cloud Journal, Gabby and Min’s Literary Review, The Blue Mountain Review, Porter House Review, Little Old Lady, and Poet’s Choice. You can follow her creative journey at https://instagram.com/w_whitney.