Invisible by Carla Buckley

dad said it made him laugh, too, every time he looked down at her mom, with her lips pressed tightly together but her merry eyes giving her away. Peyton closed the drawer and opened the next one. Sometimes her dad put the laundry away, and he was always mixing things up. But no, there were her mom’s turtlenecks that she’d still been wearing even though it was warm outside, all perfectly folded in rectangles. She imagined her mother’s hands neatly squaring them and pressing them flat.
    Dana put down the framed picture, knocking it against the bowl Peyton had made in third-grade art class that held the spare change from her dad’s pockets. “You need some help?”
    How could she help? She didn’t know where anything was. “I’m okay.” Peyton lifted up the soft clothes, searching for a glimpse of cornflower blue.
    “Are you looking for something for your mom?”
    Obviously
.
    “How about a dress?” Dana turned and opened the closet door.
    “Is that what I’m supposed to be looking for?”
    “I don’t really know. I guess you’d want something nice. Was there a dress she wore for special occasions?”
    Does attending your own funeral count as a special occasion?
    Her aunt sorted through the hangers, pulling out things and holding them up. “What about this? This is pretty.”
    Her mom’s church dress, deep purple, long and slim and belted. Peyton found herself nodding. That was it exactly. That was what her mom would want to wear. The look on her face must have told Dana that, because she said, “Let’s look for shoes.”
    They picked out a pair of black pumps, the heels still sharp, the leather uncracked. Peyton remembered when they bought them at the consignment shop. Her mom had been so tickled.
Five dollars!
she’d said.
And they fit perfectly!
    “We’ll need some underthings,” Dana said.
    Peyton looked at her blankly.
Right
.
    She pulled out a drawer and poked through the pink and white and black slithery things. She felt her cheeks grow hot. Seeing everything jumbled in a drawer, the very same place her mother went through every day, considering and deciding, just felt wrong. She pulled out something, anything, and dropped it on the bed.
    “Why don’t you let me go through that while you look for jewelry?”
    Peyton turned away to her mother’s jewelry box and sat down on the bed with it in her lap. She raised the lid and the tiny ballerina sprang up. It no longer rotated, though, and the music only played if she shook it.
    “So, what does your dad do?”
    A dull, adult question.
Do you like school? What grade are you in? Do you play any sports?
All the blah-blah-blah, getting-to-know-you questions that shouldn’t be here in this room. Dana should have known the answers to all of them long ago. Peyton gritted her teeth. “He’s a maintenance foreman.”
    “That’s right. That’s what he did overseas.”
    Overseas
. A neutral term for the word they were never allowed to mention at home:
Afghanistan
. Peyton had made the mistake once of asking her dad how he’d felt being there; he’d gotten up from the table without saying a word and left.
    Sorry
, her mom had said.
He can’t talk about it to me either, honey
.
    Dana folded the dress, tucking in the underwear she’d chosen. Setting it aside, she sat beside Peyton. “I can’t believe it.” She gestured at the jewelry box. “Your mom still has that? I gave that to her for her thirteenth birthday.”
    Big deal. Like that was supposed to mean something? “She got me one when I turned thirteen, only mine has a yellow tutu.” There. Let her hear that. Let it make her sad. How much her mom must have loved Dana, and Dana had never even sent her a postcard.
    But Dana just said, “You’re sixteen now, right? That makes you … what … a sophomore?”
    “I’m a junior. I have a late birthday.” She held out a gold bracelet. “Mom wore this sometimes.”
    Dana took it from her, holding it up so the little heart charm dangled. A