That Night

by Cecily Wolfe

  She imagined that they would be in the room with . . . she didn’t let her thought take her quite that far. Yes, they had lost a child, but there was one right here, alive and in need of their attention, and she looked like some sort of lost orphan.

  “Cassidy, Mia,” Sarah’s father nodded at them grimly. Cass liked that he didn’t even try to smile or act as if this was some sort of social occasion. He was a pretty straightforward person, and had never treated them as if they were less intelligent because they were children.

  She wished her parents were more like that, but they were probably with Kay’s parents and the rest of the PTA crowd, chatting about how terrible this was, but also, whose kid didn’t get that big scholarship or who was having an affair with whoever else or whatever it was the adults in this town did for fun. Cass thought that even though she only had to wait a few more months before she left for the Air Force, it would be a few months too long, and even longer without Kayla.

  Mia leaned against her, her thin arm wrapped around Cass’s back. Cass draped her own arm behind Mia and pulled her close, feeling Mia relax within her embrace.

  “I’m going to give my condolences to your parents, Mia. I hope you will let Sarah and me know if there is anything we can do for you. Not your parents, but you.”

  Cass watched Mia as she nodded in response, and the three of them watched Sarah’s father walk, his back straight, head held high, around the corner and into the main room. Sarah crouched in front of Mia so that Mia was taller than she was, and took her ratty ponytail in one hand, rubbing the ends as she looked at it.

  “We gotta do something about this, Mia.”

  Sarah was the braiding expert, and Mia knew it. How many times had Sarah spent the night at Kayla’s, working Mia’s hair into pretty crowns and fancy braids as the older girls talked school and boys and college. Sarah tried to smile, and Cass could see how it pained her to make the effort.

  “I have a comb in my purse. Why don’t we go into the restroom and I’ll get you fixed up real quick?”

  The three of them began to walk towards the automatic doors, where the restroom stood just inside the building entrance. Sarah moved beside Cass, and Cass pulled her close for a quick second before she pushed the narrow door open so they could walk in one at a time. Before Sarah could follow her, though, she heard a boy’s voice call her name.

  Sarah turned her head reflexively just as she realized who it was, so even as she knew she didn’t want to see or talk to him, she was already facing him. Danny was sweating and his mouth was working like a fish struggling out of water.

  She started to look away with the intention of following Cass and Mia when she heard another voice, a girl this time, and when she heard the word junkie she ran towards the voice and suddenly her hands were slapping at the face of the source, a girl with a green and white bow clipped in her hair, a bow just like Kayla had worn on game days, a bow that meant they worked together as a team.

  Someone screamed and Sarah grabbed at the girl’s hair, yanking a handful and pulling her head towards her just as someone wrapped his arms around her waist from behind and yelled at her to stop, but she couldn’t, she couldn’t just let that word go, not when Kayla was gone and there was nothing else she could do for her but fight.

  Day Six

  Friday

  Before his parents left for the funeral, both of them stood in his bedroom doorway, as they had been doing off and on for what seemed like days now. Paul wasn’t sure how many days it had been since the police had brought him home, since Kayla had been gone.

  “We really think you should come with us,” his mother said, her voice so much smaller than it had been earlier in the week, when she had been demanding and pushy. She sounded defeated, aware that her thoughts meant nothing to him.

  Paul stared at the wall, his back to them, and he heard his father clear his throat before attempting to sound authoritative. He too had grown tired of hassling Paul every few hours, and his half-hearted effort now reflected that fatigue.

  “Tell us how to help you. We just want to help.”

  Paul thought of Kayla’s parents, how they should have said the very same thing to her when her physical therapy had come to an end and her knee still hurt. It was keeping her up at night and she was worried that she wouldn’t be able to stay awake in class once school started.

  She tried to explain the dull throbbing that was wearing her out, but they insisted that the therapist and doctors said her knee was fine and shouldn’t be giving her so much trouble.

  “But it’s not fine, and they won’t listen. It just hurts. Why won’t they believe me?”

  The words rang like an echo in his memory. It’s not fine. It hurts.

  “We’re going to get a doctor to come visit, just to see if there is anything he can do.”

  Paul knew that a doctor couldn’t do anything. Couldn’t make him feel better, because the only person who could do that was Kayla. He heard his parents’ voices but his stomach began to growl, and the sound was loud and even as he felt the churning in his gut he closed his eyes to all the noise and let sleep overtake him.

  Sarah was still sleeping when Cass woke, so she left Sarah’s bedroom quietly and as she was walking towards Sarah’s bathroom, saw Sarah’s father waiting in the hall.

  “Still asleep?” he asked quietly, nodding towards the bedroom door. Cass returned the nod, and he turned and walked away. She wondered how much easier life was with parents who didn’t hassle you about every little thing, about what you wore to school, about who you went to Homecoming with, about where you wanted to go to college.

  She imagined that Sarah’s father wasn’t perfect, but he seemed pretty close, and Sarah had never once complained about him. Cass could almost be jealous, but she knew that the two of them missed Sarah’s mother fiercely, and that was something Cass would never wish on herself or anyone else. She was worried though, that Kay had been gone almost a week and she didn’t miss her as much as she probably should have.

  Was there a way to measure how much you missed someone?

  After she showered and went back into Sarah’s bedroom wrapped in a towel, she wondered if missing someone was directly related to how much you loved them. That couldn’t be right. She had been friends with Kay and Sarah since kindergarten, and there was never a time when they weren’t close, when they didn’t have each other’s backs.

  Sarah had been willing to fight, had actually fought, someone who spoke against Kay, and while Cass knew she would have done the same had she been the one to hear the slur, she wasn’t sure if she would have been so driven.

  It had taken two grown men, Danny, and finally, Mia’s shouting to get Sarah to release Riley, and even then, Sarah had refused to let go of the bow she had pulled out of the girl’s hair.

  “She doesn’t deserve to wear it,” Sarah had hissed as Cass pulled her hands through Sarah’s hair in the restroom afterwards. Sarah was braiding Mia’s hair as Cass attempted to tame Sarah’s, and Mia had calmed quickly after the incident. Cass thought that Sarah’s actions in defense of Kay had pleased Mia, and remembered how she, Sarah, and Kayla had been when they were Mia’s age.

  Standing up for each other when another kid tried to cut in the lunch line, saving swings on the playground during recess, and sitting three to a seat on the bus, even when the driver yelled at them to split up.

  “Two’s the limit, ladies!”

  “But there’s three of us!” they would shout back in unison, and he would act as if he hadn’t heard, driving away from the school knowing that he couldn’t separate them if he tried.

  Three of us. Cass turned to look at Sarah, who was awake and staring at the wall. As if she could sense Cass’s gaze, Sarah looked at her and spoke with a voice that held no emotion.

  “I can’t go. I can’t look at it.”

  It. Not her. It wasn’t her, not really, just a soulless body in a box. A box they would watch lowered into the ground later that afternoon. Cass stood still,
unsure what she could say. She felt the same way, and imagined that a lot of people did.

  Some of them probably didn’t care all that much, not because they were cold or mean, but just because they hadn’t been close to Kayla.

  “We’re together, and we have to be there for Mia. We can’t leave Mia alone.”

  Sarah nodded and pushed up and off the bed. All three of them loved Mia, and now there were two of them who had to make up for the sister Mia had lost. Sarah hoped that the braid she had worked around Mia’s small head into a neat crown had held up overnight as Mia slept, so she would look like a princess today.

  Kay’s parents needed to take care of the daughter who lived, although Sarah could understand how their grief could keep them from giving her the attention she needed. She, of all people, could understand.

  The funeral director had made it very clear that the girl who had instigated the fight with hateful words was not welcome at the funeral home, but Sarah and Cass were still worried that some other idiot would mouth off and cause trouble. Sarah supposed she could have let the remark go last night just to keep the peace, but before she could actually think she had launched herself at Riley, and it was done.

  Now all those adults who stood together whispering and looking pointedly at her had something to talk about besides themselves for a change. Sarah tugged at Cass’s dress sleeve when she saw Paul’s father talking furtively with Sarah’s dad.

  “He wouldn’t even talk to me. I went to his house and I wasn’t even allowed inside.”

  Danny suddenly appeared at Sarah’s elbow, and she stepped away from him. She didn’t blame him, not really, but he was a reminder of the party and she didn’t need that now.

  “I’m really sorry. You have to believe me. I just didn’t know.”

  Cass wondered why in the hell she and Sarah had to deal with him. He looked awful, his face blotchy and his eyes watery and wild. Where were his parents?

  “Fine, we believe you. Now leave us alone.”

  He looked at Sarah as if he wanted to say something else, then nodded and walked away. Cass sighed in relief.

  “I don’t blame him, really. I just want to know who it was.”

  Cass looked at Sarah, knowing that they felt the same. She wasn’t sure what they could, or would do, if and when they found out, but if they didn’t know, they wouldn’t have the option.

  The funeral director walked towards them with a practiced smile, gesturing towards the large room at the end of the hall where the service would be held. The room where the casket sat, the room both of them had successfully avoided last night and so far, today.

  Kayla’s parents had taken Mia in with them earlier after Cass and Sarah had kept her close to them while people kept arriving, adults they had never seen, classmates who offered sad smiles, hugs, or wary looks that gave away their knowledge of last night’s incident.

  “Let them stay away,” Sarah had said, frowning. Mia had imitated her expression, and Sarah and Cass had almost laughed. Kay would have thought it hilarious, but laughing felt impossible now.

  It was unavoidable, and Cass thought that maybe the two of them could wait in the hall until the service was over. Everyone knew that the three of them were best friends, though, and that Kayla’s boyfriend was conspicuously absent.

  How did that make Kayla look? Cass and Sarah might not care what anyone thought, but Kay wasn’t there to defend herself. Caring about Kayla’s reputation was important in ways that their own weren’t, and for her sake as well as Mia’s, they knew they had to go in.

  The room, full of people sitting on metal folding chairs talking and nodding to each other, seemed to focus on the two of them as they stepped through the open door, and Mia, tucked tightly between her parents in the front row, sat up straighter when she saw them, her jaw set and chin up as if braced for battle.

  Sarah’s father had kept two chairs for them beside his, and Sarah had sat beside him during a service that had felt too short but seemed too long. She wasn’t sure if it made sense to feel that way, but her feelings didn’t always make sense. Cass sat beside her and they held hands, knowing that if Kay had been there, she would have been holding hands with one of them as well, maybe both of them, sitting between them with her heart still beating, still devoted to the two of them like they had been back when they rode the school bus together.

  Inseparable.

  Mia was still watching the two of them, her dark eyes wide and unblinking, and Cass nodded to her almost imperceptibly. Mia relaxed into her father’s embrace, his arm across the chair behind her body, and Cass wondered at the idea that she, Sarah, and Kayla had ever been so small.

  Sarah was still little compared to most of the girls their age, and often mistaken for someone younger, but after last night, Cass was sure that no one would ever cross her, even if they had considered her an easy target, or at least one who would offer little resistance, in the past. Sarah’s phone had blown up after the incident, and Cass’s as well, but she knew that Sarah wasn’t even reading her texts.

  Cass skimmed them, just in case there was something legitimate or important, but she knew why Sarah was avoiding them in their entirety.

  Not the first

  Why she special

  Same old same old

  The texts were growing strange and sometimes incomprehensible. Cass wasn’t sure what the one referring to the way Kayla died as something that had happened before, or that was old news. She didn’t remember anyone else in town having trouble with heroin. Alcohol, yes. Pot, sure. Kids drank and lit up at parties, and it seemed as if everyone knew someone with a drinking problem.

  Sarah’s father used to drink to help him sleep, but after counseling, he stopped, and his occasional beer revolved around watching football games or reading on the patio after mowing the lawn. Cass had a cousin who had spent time in rehab after failing his first quarter at college by drinking day and night, but there might have been more to it.

  It didn’t make sense for anyone to claim that this had happened before, or that Kayla, their Kayla, wasn’t special, even if she wasn’t the first to be taken by this drug. This drug that somehow had ended up at Danny’s party and in Kayla’s hands, or maybe someone else’s hands, someone who had persuaded her that using it was a good idea.

  Someone who just might get away with killing her.

  Day Seven

  Saturday

  Cass was supposed to be working at the Dairy Delite today, as she did every Saturday, but she hadn’t slept well without Sarah and she considered calling off. It would be hard to face anyone, but she needed the money. She wasn’t ashamed, but she was sure that if some girl showed up and mouthed off, she wouldn’t get off as easily as Sarah had if Cass attacked her.

  Making derogatory comments at a funeral home was one thing, but at the ice cream stand, well, that was standard small town bullshit. Unfortunately, it was going to happen now or later, so she pulled a pair of shorts on under her long sleep shirt and headed downstairs, thinking that dealing with her parents and their awkwardness over the situation, as they called it, might be worse than a day at work.

  Her mother was stirring instant coffee grounds into a faded ceramic mug when Cass stepped into the kitchen, turning so quickly that the brown liquid sloshed a little over the side of the mug. Cass stopped herself before she shook her head.

  “You’re going to work today? It’s good to see you making an effort to get over . . .”

  Get over. Was that what she needed to do before pulling the lever on the soft serve machine? Before she went back to school, graduated, went into the Air Force? Things that Kayla would never do, things Kayla would never share with her?

  Cass’s father suddenly appeared in the room, scratching at the back of his head. Cass wondered if he thought that would somehow make him figure out what he should say. She just wished they would stop saying anything.