They are still pulling bodies out of the ocean. The divers fish the corpses from the water and drag them onto the boat. Most people call me a monster but not Dion's boss. Simone oversees search and rescue and is mostly curious about the why. Why did I drive the bus off the cliff? Why did I do it when it was full of kids?

She is always telling Dion that he is asking the wrong questions. This is her mantra. She repeats it, even after they are done having sex.

"Do you like that?" Dion will ask. "How do you like that?" Simone grips the back of his head and sighs but later she tells him these, too, are the wrong questions.

#

I do not feel at peace. The news cycle finds out about my drinking problem. They learn about an abortion I had in the early years of our marriage. Dion is bombarded by reporters. They ask: was I frequently drinking on the job? Did I hate kids? Had I always been a horrible wife?

No, no, no, I tell them even though they can't hear me. You have it all wrong.

No one wants to talk about how I was so careful most of the time. They don't talk about the gifts kids brought me at the end of the year to say thank you for getting them to school and back home, safely, every day.

The news isn't interested in my thoughts and besides Dion burned my journals. Not that I could read them anyway. I have lost that ability. Letters just look like everything else. Even my own name sits meaningless on my tongue. I feel untethered to it. I feel untethered to so many things I used to spin my life around.

#

Dion tries to kill himself one night but after swallowing the pills, he calls 9-1-1.

I hold his hand on the way to the hospital. He is so close to dying that his hand is firm in mine.

Lately, I've been falling in love with the man who pulled my body from the water and the way he rubs the bald patch at the base of his crown when he's nervous. I've been falling in love with Simone and the way she commands a room the moment she walks in. I stand behind them in the shower, missing the warm mouth feel of kissing. The water droplets pass through me. I wish and wish and wish.

"You don't want this, D," I say. His heartbeat grows stronger.

#

My life devolves from a headline to a failed book deal to a 10 second blip in the evening news on the one-year anniversary. They do not mention my name.

I wanted so desperately to be popular. I threw house party after house party trying to make friends. Where are they now? Not showing up to my funeral. Not calling Dion to check in.

He spends his lunch break crying in his car. I show up in the rearview mirror. He doesn't see me at first. When he does, he balls up his fists and presses them against his eyes. "Would you please leave me alone?" Dion asks.

#

For the next couple of months, I wander the cliff where it happened. There are memorials set up along the guardrail. I can't make out any of the names.

Sometimes I'll see some of the kids from the bus. None of them are ever mad at me. They don't ask why or about Dion or our marriage or if I hated kids.

They sit in a circle in the grass along the shoulder of the highway and instead ask if I know why the ocean is colder at the bottom. They ask if loneliness is a pain in your heart or your stomach and if there's any point in wishing on stars after you're dead.

I tell them, "Because the sun gets lost on the way down."

I tell them, "Loneliness is a pain in the back of your knees."

I tell them, "Yes. Always. Let's wish on one right now."

They are so young. They want the answers to all the right things.