by Cecily Wolfe
“Actually, I think it’s better for you to get back into the swing of things. Moping around here with Sarah certainly won’t help.”
He didn’t look at her when he spoke, as if he knew that her gaze would be disapproving. When she didn’t respond after several seconds, he shrugged.
“Keep moving forward. You know, it’s the best way to get over this.”
Get over. There it was again. Her mother walked up to her and started to rub Cass’s back. Her mother had never rubbed her back before, and Cass didn’t want her to do it now. She didn’t like to be touched except when it came to Kayla and Sarah, or Mia, for that matter. Her parents had never been demonstrative, and it felt fake now.
“I’m going, but not because you just quoted Walt Disney to me.”
She didn’t wait for a response before skirting around her father, listening to the loud whispers behind her as she moved towards the stairs. Did they really think that she couldn’t hear them?
“What did I say?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know what to say, either.”
“Kids are resilient; she just has to work through it. Once school starts it will get better.”
There it was again. It. The it that had taken one of her best friends from her. The it that had ended with her and Sarah and hundreds of others watching as Kayla’s casket was lowered into the ground yesterday, leaving Kayla’s mother sobbing into the front of her husband’s suit jacket and Kayla’s sister standing alone over the hole in the cemetery, staring down at the rose-pink box that held her sister’s body, shaking as a sudden wind blew against her small figure.
Her dark hair had fluttered behind her like a thick ribbon.
Sarah and Cass had talked about Paul at the funeral home, about his absence, about Paul’s father’s long discussion with Sarah’s father. Her father had told her that he had wanted advice on handling Paul’s behavior, which amounted to nothing more than staying in bed and refusing to communicate.
“You might have been a better person to talk to about how it feels to be the one on the receiving end of that situation,” her father said, smiling sadly over some leftover Chinese the two of them had been sharing over the past two days. After the funeral, her father had asked if she wouldn’t mind coming back home for the night, and Sarah hadn’t.
She loved Cass and wanted to be with her, but she knew her father needed her as well. She hadn’t thought too much about what it would be like to live away from home, from him, when she went to college, not like Kay and Cass had, their future plans full of words like freedom and control. Maybe she and her father were too close, too dependent on each other, and maybe this would make leaving more difficult when the time came.
Her phone vibrated before she could respond to his claim, and since she had set the notifications to vibrate only for phone calls, with texts and emails ignored, she reached over to where it was plugged into the kitchen wall.
“Hey,” Cass spoke to her before she could, and Sarah could tell that Cass was tired although she was trying to sound more upbeat than they had felt all week. “Mia has been texting us, and she is kind of upset that you aren’t answering. I told her you just had your phone turned off, and that it wasn’t personal or anything. I would never tell her why we aren’t looking at texts.”
Sarah looked at her father. He had stopped eating and was listening. She shook her head the smallest bit, then gestured towards his bowl. He looked down and started to eat again, but she knew he was paying attention.
“Okay, I’ll just text her and start from there so I don’t have to go through the rest of them. Just from what you said . . .”
Cass hadn’t told her exactly what the recent texts said, but gave her an idea of how nasty, how bizarre, how inexplicable they had been. Sarah didn’t care what anyone thought, but she didn’t think it was right for anyone to say bad things about Kayla when Kay wasn’t here to defend herself.
And Paul - well, he wasn’t standing up for her, and he should be. Did he think that he loved Kayla more than she and Cassidy did? She had never had a problem with Paul, not when he had treated Kay like a princess and Kay had loved him nearly as much, but if Sarah had to get up and continue living, what right did he have to choose not to?
“Why don’t I bring her out to the Dairy Delite tomorrow?” she had asked, the idea suddenly coming over her. Who knows what was going on at Kayla’s house, with relatives hanging out, Kay’s mother crying, Mia sitting around alone.
Hopefully Sarah was wrong and Mia was getting some kind of attention in the midst of it all, but in case she wasn’t, she thought it might be good to get her out. Kay had taken Mia for ice cream many times, and while Sarah couldn’t replace her, she hoped that she could still be a good friend to Mia in her stead.
“You’re going in, aren’t you?”
Sarah knew that Cass needed the money, and while the owner would have been understanding if Cass took some time off, it didn’t make much sense for her to bail.
“If that soccer bitch shows up, though, I don’t know if I’ll be able to fit through the sliding window to get my hands around her neck before she could get away.”
If Sarah could have laughed, she would. Cass was the one most likely to swing a fist, and maybe there was a part of her who wished that it had been her and not Sarah to yank a handful of hair from Riley’s head before the men had pulled Sarah off her.
The rush of adrenaline had pumped through her for a good hour after the drama had died down, and Sarah couldn’t remember a time when she had felt so vindicated. Kayla would have been thrilled and appalled at the same time, Sarah thought now, and after she said her goodbye to Cass, she opened a new text to Mia, offering to take her for ice cream the next day. Mia responded immediately.
So much food here, but no ice cream
Sarah remembered how people had brought food to her house after her mother died. The trays of lasagna, foil rectangles of brownies getting hard on the kitchen counter.
Lasagna?
So sick of it!
“I’m going to take Mia for ice cream tomorrow when Cass is working.”
Sarah didn’t look up as she texted Mia, but explained to her father what she had planned.
“Kay wouldn’t want her to be alone like this.”
When she had confirmed a time with Mia, she lifted her gaze from her phone and found her father with tears in his eyes.
“Like you were alone?”
She shook her head, and he cleared his throat, blinking until his eyes were clear.
“I have an early meeting, so I’ll be in my office. Just take the keys and if you need some money, you can go ahead and take it from my wallet. Just keep in touch while you’re out, okay?”
She started to nod, then looked from her phone to him.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“Well, people are saying things, texting . . . stuff about Kayla that isn’t true.”
He held out his hand and she shook her head again. He didn’t move.
“I mean it, Sarah. Give me your phone.”
Sarah knew that he wasn’t going to like what he found, but she also knew that he wasn’t going to take no for an answer so she held it out to him. She watched his face as he scrolled through the texts, his eyes narrowing and his lips pinching together.
“What in the hell . . .”
He stood up suddenly, her phone in hand, and walked around the table to where she sat.
“Why didn’t you tell me? I can’t even believe what these people - these kids - are saying. It has to stop.”
Sarah opened her mouth but nothing came out. She had no idea what to say. What could she say? What could anyone say to that?
“I don’t even know who most of them are. Those numbers - I don’t know who it is. I just . . . I just don’t respond. Isn’t that what everyone says to do with bullies, not respond? Ignore them and they’ll stop?”
She didn’t mean to sound sarcastic, and she wasn’t sure that she did, but her father
flinched as if she had slapped him. It was true, though, what they had all been taught about bullies and how to handle them.
It didn’t work, but teachers didn’t listen, and since she had never had a problem with it to bring to her father, she wasn’t sure how he would react if she had been bullied. Well, she thought, now I know.
“This is slander. Cruelty. Hate. We’re reporting this to the police.”
As if she hadn’t been talking to the police all week. Her father started pressing buttons on his phone, and she felt herself zone out as his voice began explaining the texts to whoever he had been transferred to.
Saturday was warm, and fall might have been close at hand but summer still breathed reminders of long days lounging on Sarah’s patio by the pool and walks through the park, slow and careful in consideration of Kayla’s knee, which had presumably healed but still gave her trouble.
When Sarah and Mia arrived at the Dairy Delite, the lines at both windows were at least eight deep, so they leaned against the trunk of Sarah’s car, their arms crossed over their chests, elbows touching.
“Pretty soon you’ll be as tall as me, then even taller.”
Mia looked over at Sarah’s legs.
“Someone has to show me how to shave my legs.”
Sarah stood up straight.
“What?”
“Audrey and Julia told me I have to start shaving my legs.”
Of all the things for Mia to worry about. Why didn’t Kayla’s mother talk to her about this? Kay probably would have. Her mom had never been good with personal stuff. When they had all gone into middle school, Kay showed Cass and Sarah a set of books her mother had left on her bed, about periods and sex and boys.
They had been amused and horrified, then a few years later, admittedly more interested.
“I’m guessing these are other cheerleaders, right?”
Mia nodded, her gaze intent. Sarah fought the urge to shake her head.
“If they want to cut their legs up, let them do it. It’s not important. If they hassle you again, tell them to mind their own beeswax.”
Sarah saw the hint of a smile in the curve of Mia’s lips, but the expression didn’t reach her eyes. Sarah knew that Kayla’s parents hadn’t been happy that Mia wanted to be a cheerleader instead of following Kayla’s footsteps into soccer, but Kay had encouraged her, and the three of them had attended Pee Wee football games to support Mia’s efforts.
When the girls were younger, Sarah had often braided several heads of hair before a game, but now that they were older, they were doing their own hair or helping each other. Mia liked to wear hers in a high ponytail that bounced when she jumped, a big, floppy green bow sailing in the air along with it.
They were a cute group of kids, but obviously not as cute as they used to be.
When Cass stepped up and slipped her hand into the crook of Mia’s elbow, Sarah leaned into Mia and for a moment it felt as if Kay was there with them. She looked at Cass and saw her swallow hard against the tears that filled her eyes.
“Hey, I know it’s your break, but we need ice cream.”
Sarah interrupted the moment, feeling ungraceful and irreverent, but when she saw the smile on Cass’s face, she breathed a sigh of relief.
Day Eight
Sunday
Voices downstairs, plaintive and tearful, woke Sarah on Sunday morning. She and her father attended church on Christmas and Easter, and sometimes she went with Kay or Cass to their churches when she spent the night, but as far as she and her father were concerned, Sundays were for sleeping in, waking at some point to share coffee and read or doze quietly together, sometimes on the patio by the pool.
She pulled a pair of jeans on over her pajama shorts and tugged a t-shirt that was hanging over her desk chair over her head, recognizing the voices as she slid her arms through the sleeves.
She couldn’t help but wonder why they had asked for his advice, or what else they wanted now. It wasn’t like they were friends. She stepped carefully down the stairs, taking her time and listening carefully as Paul’s mother’s voice cracked on a sob now and again, and his father cleared his throat between pleading and explaining.
They both sounded as if it had been Paul who had . . . who was gone, and not Kayla. She knew she shouldn’t be sneaking around, but she also knew that her appearance would most likely stop any conversation.
Adults did that, as if she couldn’t tell that the tone and volume of their voices changed immediately when she was noticed, but she didn’t worry about it too much, not like Kay had. Kay was always concerned about what was being said if it might have something to do with her, probably because her parents were so focused on appearances.
She and Cass hadn’t talked too much about Paul since Sunday, but when his father came to calling hours and the funeral without Paul or Paul’s mother, they had somehow, silently agreed not to make too much of it.
As much as Sarah wanted to hide in her room, away from the whispers she couldn’t help but overhear, both before she put a stop to Riley’s comment at the funeral home, and after, away from the stares, both pitying and questioning, away from a future without Kay, she knew how much that would hurt her father and Cass. And Mia.
“I can’t stay, I have a family . . .”
Paul’s father was whining about his wife and a baby, and his ex-wife was openly crying. Sarah didn’t want to hear any of it, but she really didn’t want to overhear without making herself known. Shouldn’t these people have life, at least their own lives, figured out?
How could they help Paul when they clearly had no grip on themselves? She wanted to ask Paul’s father what Paul was to him, if not family? She didn’t, of course, because that wasn’t who she was. She also wasn’t the girl who grabbed Riley’s shining mane of hair at the funeral home and pulled like she meant it.
And she had. She wanted to hurt Riley like she’d never wanted to hurt anyone before. Maybe she wasn’t who she thought she was, or she was becoming someone else. Someone who acted first, and thought later.
“Oh, hi.”
She tried to sound nonchalant as she turned the corner into the living room, where she had spent the night wrapped in her mother’s blanket on the sofa only a few days earlier. All three of the adults were standing close together, and her father looked tired but calm as he held his hands out as if to invite Paul’s parents to join that calmness.
Sarah knew that she was intruding and wanted nothing more than to move by them all quickly and hide in the kitchen, but Paul’s mother reached out with a trembling hand and grabbed at Sarah’s arm. The woman probably didn’t mean to pinch her, but she held Sarah’s flesh between her thumb and index finger and pulled hard, bringing tears to Sarah’s eyes.
“Oh, honey, I know you’re sad, too.”
Her resolve to pass by them as quickly and unobtrusively as possible failed as Paul’s mother’s pale face, her breath hot and threatening, pressed too closely against her own. Her father was suddenly there, his arm around Sarah’s shoulders, and guided her away from the woman, speaking to Paul’s parents as if he believed they might run away if he didn’t reassure them.
Sarah wished they would run away, and leave her and her father alone.
“Excuse us, I’ll be right back. Why don’t you have a seat?”
Her father gestured towards the sofa with his free hand, and Paul’s mother backed up and practically fell onto it. His father stood still, watching her father with a pleading gaze. No wonder Paul was a wreck. She didn’t speak, even after they were in the kitchen and her father had released her, moving towards the coffee maker.
