Two weeks after, I peeled myself out of my sweaty bed, got Chip in the car, and drove south on the freeway. Neither of us spoke, or tried to. The only sound was the sporadic sputtering of the car, protesting against the heat and the speed at which I kept it. I couldn't force myself to do anything slowly, now; I believe 'things in motion tend to stay in motion' was the way it went, and so far it was holding true. Two weeks of pent-up aggression and energy blossomed in my chest and drove my foot into the floor.

Chip sat silently beside me, half disgruntled that I had roused him at two in the morning to visit a grave and half wondering whether I had finally lost it, holding a daisy in a coke bottle. I had almost tripped over the single flower in the grass outside his house this morning, the only flower blooming in the crunchy grass and cracked dirt. It seemed so surreal there, in the barren ground, that I had stared at it for almost a minute, on my knees, before picking it gently and continuing on to his front door. It seemed like a sign, maybe, like it had been planted there just for me to take to her – because I knew, if she were here, she would still appreciate the wild beauty of flowers that came from dirt instead of the chilly cage of the grocery store.

Someone had set up a small wooden cross at the scene of her death, and huddled around it were several tokens of grief: a pink teddy bear, a few flowers, wilted from the sun, and a plastic beaded bracelet with the words "Go With God" dangling from its center. I stared down at this little makeshift grave, clutching the one little flower I had thought was special, and wondered how all these people thought they knew her. Knew the real her, anyway. I didn't know who had left them, but I could guess: the one pretty girl who almost faked her maniac sorrow for attention from the people she despised; the nerd who she once smiled at in the hall, unknowingly included in a conversation, maybe even stuck up for behind the gym one day as we sat out there smoking instead of reading; and the last one, maybe one of her actual friends. Maybe one of them had had the same idea, though at a more reasonable hour - to drive past where she fell off her carefully balanced pedestal and fell out of our lives. I wondered if I'd ever be able to drive past this little cross without feeling like I was drowning slowly.
"Jeez." Chip's voice cracked. "Really...huh. I...that's some cross."
"Yeah, I guess." I replied softly.
He shuffled his feet behind me, and I knew without turning that he'd be staring at the sky, trying to get the tears that hovered on his lash line to disappear back into his eyes and dry up. I blinked, but I wasn't crying. I didn't feel like crying, really. I didn't think she would have wanted me on my knees by the side of the road, bawling and beating my fists on the crunchy grass. She would have wanted me to look up, wish her good luck, and get on with my life. That was the whole point of the poem she had tacked to the inside of her wardrobe; she didn't want anyone crying at her grave, because she wasn't there. She was everywhere.