Daisy plucked, p.8
Daisy, Plucked, page 8
Without Hana here to pull Daisy into the group, she felt like an outsider, despite their obvious efforts to include her.
“So Daisy, how’s your summer going?” Chrissy asked. Chrissy had been Hana’s roommate for the spring semester after Hana’s first roommate transferred to another school.
“Boring to be honest. My brother is gone, and I’ve just been working. It honestly feels like I’m just crawling through the days until I leave for school,” Daisy said. She was excited to go away to college, but she didn’t think New Paltz would ever feel like home the way it had for Hana. Daisy hid herself in different ways than Hana did.
“Same,” Chrissy said. “I hate working, though. Doing swim lessons for spoiled kids sucks.” Daisy laughed, and the group moved into stories about weird customers at their jobs. They laughed like they meant it, but also like they were trying not to think about what was coming.
When the cemetery’s gates came into view, the group got quiet. Skippy pulled over to the side of the road outside of the cemetery.
“You can drive onto the paths,” Daisy explained.
“This mammoth doesn’t corner well. My mom told me not to park outside,” Skippy responded. They all got out and turned to Daisy since she was the only one who knew how to get to the grave.
“Right. Well, now I feel like some weird tour guide. Should I walk backwards?” Daisy joked, trying and failing to raise the mood.
They walked silently to Hana’s grave, which was marked only with fresh dirt. Daisy asked about the missing gravestone the day after the funeral, and Henry told her that Noriko was still waiting for the gravestone she ordered to be engraved and placed.
Mark Holm’s grave was next to Hana’s, but his name was already carved into the dark gray granite of his headstone. The polished surface proudly proclaimed him a beloved father and caring husband. Noriko’s name and birthday was on the stone next to Mark’s, with just the date missing, like it was waiting for the day she would join her late husband.
Daisy had come with Hana to plant flowers and tend to them the past few summers, though their last visit was in May. Daisy didn’t notice the flowers at Hana’s funeral, but it seemed someone else was tending to them now.
It felt wrong to have nothing marking Hana’s grave, but as if Victor read Daisy’s mind, they pulled a small lesbian pride flag out of their bag.
“I thought she would want that here. She was proud of who she loved,” Victor said quietly, their eyes flicking to Daisy’s face and then away.
Daisy held onto her flimsy belief that Hana was murdered and steeled herself to find out where everyone was when Hana died. She needed to do this for her oldest friend, for her only love.
“Why doesn’t she have a gravestone? Her dad has a gravestone,” Aaron said, staring at the dirt patch of Hana’s grave.
“She won’t have a gravestone for a little bit,” Daisy replied. “I guess they take some time to engrave, and, well ... It’s only been a month.”
Daisy was the first to sit, a few feet from the end of the fresh dirt, facing where the gravestone would eventually go. The rest of the group sat on either side of the grave, though none of them would look down at it.
“I can read my thing first,” Chrissy said, reaching into the pocket of her jean shorts to pull out a small piece of paper. Daisy knew that they were planning on reading things, but she still didn’t have anything prepared. Much like her plan to gather alibis, she was hoping inspiration would strike. Hopefully she could wrangle her feelings into a cohesive thought when it was her turn.
Daisy stared at the group. She didn’t belong there without Hana. After a year of college, they all seemed convinced they were both infinitely wise and constantly learning. Being around them was like being surrounded by variations of Hana, and Daisy possessed ample experience making herself small to fit into whatever narrative Hana was prizing that week. She got used to being whoever it was that Hana wanted her to be, a liquid personality that shifted to fit whatever standard Hana held her to at any given time.
When she stared around the circle of grief-stricken students, she realized she didn’t care if they liked her. She didn’t care to be pretty or pretentious or perfect for them. She didn’t care to be the right image of the grieving girlfriend or ex-girlfriend or whatever they thought she was. She didn’t care to pose correctly in their frame of reference. She felt free for a moment before Chrissy began.
“Meeting Hana was like seeing an old friend whose name you’d forgotten ... She — she wasn’t a light; she was a flame. She burned so bright and when you got close enough, she kept you warm. I miss her so much, and not realizing she was burning out is one of the biggest regrets of my life.” Chrissy paused, clearly trying not to cry. “I miss the way she argued with professors about what she believed, even when they told her she didn’t have evidence to support her point. I miss how fearless she was at parties, making stupid guys do dares so we could get free weed or beer or even a hat that one time.”
The rest of the group laughed, and Daisy smiled, though she wasn’t in on their inside joke.
“When I found out Hana died, it was like a sun went out,” Chrissy continued. “The entire night sky looks off without her star there.” She let out a wet laugh. “Now I’m just mixing metaphors, so I’m going to wrap it up. Hana, if there’s that afterlife you believed in, I hope it’s everything you prayed for.”
Daisy held back tears, and when she glanced up at the grave, Hana’s ghost sat cross legged where her gravestone should be. She looked at her friends fondly, like seeing them together was a gift she couldn’t properly thank them for. Hana smiled at Daisy. She wondered what Hana thought of Chrissy’s speech.
“I can go next,” Victor said, taking a deep breath. “I suck at writing things, so I just brought this poem. It’s the one that they read in Hill House even though Hana thought that show wasn’t good. I mean, memorials are for the living, right?” They went on to read the poem, one about how Hana wasn’t gone; she was just away.
Daisy watched Hana’s ghost, and her expression was something new. It reminded Daisy of the time she broke her ankle playing tag in Hana’s backyard when they were still in elementary school. Hana tried to pick her up and carry her into the house to get help, but she just ended up dropping Daisy and hurting her more. Hana still apologized any time it crossed her mind, like she needed Daisy to know how much her mistake hurt her too.
Skippy also read a poem, but it was one that Daisy didn’t recognize, and Skippy didn’t try to give it context. The poet’s name was clearly difficult to pronounce, but it rolled off Skippy’s tongue like it was the easiest thing in the world.
“I also have a poem. But I wrote this one,” Aaron said, volunteering to go next. Victor quirked up their lips.
“Show off,” they teased. The group needed something small to laugh at. Then Aaron started reading the poem, and the lump in Daisy’s throat got harder to swallow around. She couldn’t bring herself to look at Hana’s ghost.
The weirdest thing about death
is the way it consumes life.
Making a cup of coffee
is never just making coffee again —
it’s one more I got to wake up
and she didn’t.
Beauty is tainted —
why didn’t she get to see this?
Was she not as deserving
of the sight of a fawn
stretching its legs
in the morning light
streaming through the trees?
Maybe somewhere or somehow
she’s still here —
maybe she’s in the paradise she dreamed of,
or maybe she’ll come back as someone else,
a familiar mind
dressed in foreign skin
and a new name.
One day, we’ll follow her
to that place beyond the trees.
A place that makes the deer stand still.
A place where, I hope,
she is right now, dreaming.
Hana’s ghost was crying, and it surprised Daisy. Seeing Hana, who rarely cried, so blatantly breaking down felt more perverse and unnatural than the sight of a ghost sitting on its own grave.
“You have to find who did this,” Hana choked out. “You can’t let them keep believing I did this. I didn’t want to leave them. I didn’t want to die,” she pleaded. Daisy gave the smallest nod she possibly could. She tried not to be jealous, tried not to let the fact that Hana hadn’t cried over losing her make her bitter. She found it was easier, sitting on Hana’s grave, to give her some grace. Later she would worry about it, but for now she was here, and it was her turn to speak. Everyone else had already said something and they stared at her expectantly.
She took a deep breath, trying to steady herself to begin. “When Hana died, I didn’t know for a full day because we were fighting. We were always fighting. I think Hana’s favorite thing was seeing how far she could push people, how much ground she could cover before the bungee cord would snap her back. But that’s not really what you’re supposed to talk about after people die, so I’ll just keep those fights to myself.” The group let out small, nervous laughs.
“Hana might’ve been the love of my life. She definitely was the love of the life I’ve led so far. Maybe that would’ve changed, maybe we were going to outgrow each other, but I always expected that we would be there for each other in some way. But she ... I think I always expected us to grow old together. Maybe as lovers. Maybe as friends that were too close for the comfort of our respective spouses. I looked up the time she actually died this week. I don’t really know why,” she lied, “but it felt like I should know the exact moment when all of the visions for the rest of my life shattered. The exact moment that meant we weren’t making up from this fight. One-thirty p.m. on June eighteenth. A random Tuesday that meant that the entirety of my life was uprooted. I think I was sitting in a final at the time. I was trying to fight through pre-calc questions, and Hana was taking her last breath. God, it makes everything seem stupid now. It makes everything else feel small, insignificant, like I should’ve spent every moment of the days she was here with her, telling her that she was loved and that her future was stretching out like a promise, not a threat. But even if I did, who knows if she would’ve broken her promise. She’s done it before.” Daisy cut herself off, feeling like she was spiraling.
“I always hated pre-calc,” she said, “but now that I’m going to always associate it with the moment that took away my best friend, it’s even worse. Hana dying didn’t just take her away, it took away all the things we loved together and all the things she loved on her own. And I’m going to miss all of it, all of her, even the parts that I probably shouldn’t miss. She really was something, wasn’t she?” The group was completely silent, all staring at the still-fresh dirt on top of the grave. Daisy wondered how long it would be until grass would grow over it. Would she know who killed Hana by then?
“God, Daisy,” Victor said, wiping away their tears. Daisy let out a startled laugh, unsurprised that they were the first one to break the silence she sent them spiraling into.
“Sorry, I didn’t prepare anything, so I just kind of dumped out my brain there.”
“It was great,” Chrissy said. “And I — I don’t think it’s weird that you looked up when Hana died. I was — I wanted to know too. God, now I have to remember where I was.” Daisy’s heart lifted. Her stupid, rambling, ill thought-out speech was working. It was doing what she wanted.
“Tuesday afternoons are when I teach stupid private swim lessons to these spoiled siblings that I know from the camp I usually work at,” Chrissy said. “Their parents pay out the ass, though, so I always say yes when they open the pool at their house and ask me to come teach their kids. I remember that they were working on dives. The boy, Jackson, split open one of his toes on the edge of the pool and was crying like crazy, and I remember thinking ‘Man, when I tell Hana, she’s going to get a kick out of this.’ But when I texted her, she didn’t respond. Afterwards I felt stupid for texting her about something so dumb when she needed a real friend to help her. But now, well, she was already gone when I texted her. Maybe Jackson’s toe wasn’t even split yet, maybe the whole thing was after she was already gone.”
They all sat in silence for a moment after Chrissy finished. Daisy watched her hand twitching toward her pocket where the outline of her phone was, and she felt guilty for making Chrissy think about whether her best friend was dead when she texted her about spoiled rich kids.
“I think I was on my way to pick up my brother from a test,” Aaron said after a moment. He looked conflicted to continue, as if he was betraying Hana. “I wasn’t thinking about her when it happened. I wasn’t even ... I don’t know if I thought about her the entire day. I don’t know if I even thought about her between picking up my brother and going home. I muted the group chat because everyone was annoying me on Monday. What if I didn’t think about her the entire day she died?” he asked, pleading for someone to have an answer that would reassure him.
“I didn’t think about her,” Victor admitted. “Skip and I were at that stupid pre-camp training for counselors. They keep us busy every minute of the day trying to get us ready for camp as if we haven’t been counselors there for years. I can’t see Hana as the camp type, so there was nothing there to make me think of her, or what she was doing, or what she was going through.” They stared at their hands, and Chrissy put a comforting hand on their shoulder.
“Vic, you couldn’t have known,” she said. “If none of us knew how bad she was struggling, she must’ve been hiding it on purpose. There’s no way that all of us could’ve missed the signs.” She tried to comfort them, but Victor didn’t seem any happier.
“I texted her that day too,” Skippy said softly. “I was asking what she thought about my summer class topic, and she responded. Around noon.” The heaviness of the statement settled into the circle. Skippy was probably one of the last people to communicate with Hana before she died.
“And she didn’t seem ...” Aaron started.
Skippy shook her head fiercely. “No, she was just her normal self. Joking about the fact that being an English major was stupid, and I should’ve just stuck to being undecided. She thought it was funny I had to read Frankenstein again already after just reading it last semester.” A few small chuckles broke out around the circle.
“That’s just like Hana,” Daisy said after a beat of silence. “She never let anyone know anything was wrong until she’d figured out how she was going to fix it. If she didn’t have a plan yet, she didn’t talk about her problems.”
The circle sat in silence, and Hana’s ghost disappeared again. Daisy wasn’t sure if she had gone back to wherever she was before or just walked away so she didn’t have to listen to everyone mourn her. Daisy reached into her bag and took out the six pack, cracking each can out of the biodegradable plastic loops holding it together and passing them around the circle. Victor, who was sitting closest to the grave, gently placed the extra can next to the pride flag, and Daisy smiled at the caring thoughtfulness of the gesture.
“To Hana,” Daisy said, cracking her can open and holding it up in front of her. The rest of the group mimicked her actions and words, and her throat tightened at the sight. If only Hana, the real, living Hana, were here to join the circle, to complete it and fill the empty spot she left.
Daisy drank deeply, tipping her head back and polishing off her can of beer in under a minute. When she brought her head back to a neutral position, Skippy was staring at her with a small smile on her face.
“What?” Daisy asked her.
Skippy shook her head. “Hana always talked about you in this way like you were magic or something. Something untouchable. It’s nice to see you just ... be you. Not that you’re not magic or anything, just — it’s nice to see,” she said.
Daisy laughed. “Yeah, Hana always did that with the things she loved. Everything was always on another level with her.”
“She was just on another level,” Victor added.
Daisy smiled. “Yeah. I guess she was.”
Chapter 8
Hana — age 16
3/2/16
Dear diary,
Eight days since dad died. In a normal year, it would be seven days, but it’s the leap year, so an extra day of shit. An extra day of people pretending to care about how I’m doing when they just want to gossip about me. And Daisy.
Daisy continues to be annoyingly perfect. And yeah, I know that’s not fair to call her annoying, but it’s like she knows what to do all the time and I hate it. I have no idea what I’m doing! I can barely get ready for the day without breaking down, and she’s over there being the perfect girlfriend, making sure people don’t talk to me when I don’t want them to and collecting all my homework for me (and doing some of it for me when she can. Because of course she can do that).
And obviously I’m so grateful to have her but I also hate that she’s doing so well and I’m not. And then I feel guilty for hating that she’s okay and then I think about how much it must’ve sucked for her to lose her mom when she was, like, 4, and then I hate myself for hating her and then I break down again. I’m so lost. I couldn’t talk to Dad about Daisy when he was alive, but if he was alive, I still could’ve talked to him about her without saying it was her. And ... I don’t know. If he was here things would be so much better. Everything is worse without him. I’m worse without him. I don’t know how I’m going to do any of this without him. How do you go on without the person you looked up to being there for you? How will I figure anything out ever? Who else will give me advice and still be there for me without judgment when I don’t take it and everything goes wrong?
