Clouds In My Coffee by Andrea Smith

knew that making love could feel as good as it did today. Erik and I connected in a way that was beyond physical for both of us. He reached into my soul. I even moaned, which I have never ever done before! I swear, I felt like I had died and gone to heaven. We didn’t have a rubber though, but Erik said going bareback just one time wouldn’t make me pregnant. Fingers crossed.

Chapter 16
    It’s been close to four weeks since Christmas and we’re back in school, suffering through winter quarter and especially suffering through winter in Wyoming.
    Everyone is still shell-shocked over Angie Linton’s death. Erik and I had gone to the viewing together and then to the funeral the following day. Marshall Rydell didn’t show at either. Everyone at school felt touched by the stark reality of what had happened.
    Except for Marshall.
    He still struts around like God’s gift to the female gender; flirting with any and every girl that doesn’t see him for what really he is—a psycho loser. He doesn’t look my way anymore and I’m relieved.
    I think back to that evening at the funeral home, where a long line of students from school had waited in line to pay their last respects to Angie.
    Her mom had pulled Erik aside once we reached the front to talk to him, wiping the stream of tears from her face with a damp handkerchief. It had been surreal, looking at Angie as she lay in that casket, thinking about how young she was and the waste of it all.
    Later, on the way home, Erik told me that her mother didn’t believe it was a suicide. She said Angie had acted fine. She’d left around ten that morning for the mall, telling her parents she was going to finish her Christmas shopping. She’d been on the phone with a friend right before that. When she hadn’t returned by the time they were getting ready to go to church services at seven-thirty, they hadn’t been all that concerned, figuring she had run into some friends from school and was catching up.
    They had stopped after church at some friends’ home for a Christmas Eve party, leaving at ten-thirty for home. When they hit the garage door opener, they saw Angie’s car inside…running.
    He said that Mrs. Linton was beside herself. She felt guilty about it, like she could’ve prevented it somehow if she hadn’t gone to church or if they’d gotten home sooner.
    “Did she ever ask the friend that Angie was talking to on the phone about it?”
    “I didn’t ask. As far as I know, she didn’t. She didn’t act like she even knew who it was.”
    “So what do you think, Erik?”
    “It doesn’t matter if it was or not, dead is dead,” he replied.
    “So what does Mrs. Linton think, if not suicide?”
    “She thinks maybe Angie got high and then passed out in the car before remembering to turn off the engine. She said the coroner did a tox screen.”
    “What will that prove?”
    “I guess it will show if she had drugs in her system. I think they want to believe it was an accident because it’s easier to accept.”
    “Yeah. I guess you’re right.”
    At any rate, Mrs. Linton called Erik this evening as we sat at his house, watching The Six Million Dollar Man together. She wanted to let him know that the blood testing had shown Angie had no trace of Quaaludes or any other type of depressant in her system. The cause of death would remain suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning.
    “I guess there’s no getting around it,” he sighs, hanging up the phone in the kitchen and coming back to the sofa where I’m sitting waiting for him.
    “What?” I ask.
    “Angie just wanted to die. Her mom said there were no drugs in her system.”
    I wish he’d let himself off the hook. I’m worried about him - and I’ve now got other things bothering me.
    January 18, 1974
    Dear Diary,
    Life’s a bitch, and then apparently, you die. I want Erik back. He’s so distant these days.
    Me.
    P.S. My period’s late.
    Bummer.

Chapter 17
    Erik’s been ditching school a couple of days a week.