That Night

by Cecily Wolfe

  Cass thought about how unfair it was, that Sarah’s parents had been so good together, but her mother was dead, and her own parents just seemed to hassle her and argue with each other about what other people thought about them. Kayla’s parents didn’t argue as much, but they were worried about everyone else and what they, and their daughters, needed to do to fit in, to make the right friends.

  It didn’t make sense that Sarah’s mother should have been taken from her husband and daughter, just like it didn’t make sense for Kayla to be taken from them. She took a deep breath after wiping the tears from her face, and thanked Sarah’s father before turning to the door and letting herself out, walking quietly to the hammock beside Sarah’s to lie down and close her eyes.

  Day Ten

  Tuesday

  Danny was terrified.

  His father had always told him that boys shouldn’t cry, and while he had cried like most of the other kids had over Kayla’s death, his tears now were for himself. His phone was full of horrifying texts about the party, about him, including threats and personal insults that went beyond anything he had ever imagined. The police had asked to look at it, but his father had refused until they had produced a warrant, the same day they brought one that allowed them to search the house and everyone’s cars as well.

  If anything happened to him, Danny figured, the cops knew that there were these threats, and he tried to reassure himself that they would know who did it. That didn’t make sense, though, and when he thought about it, he only became more upset. The officers had taken his phone and given it back to him, saying only that if he had any trouble with anyone, he should call.

  A detective gave him a business card, and he stuck it in the corner of the mirror in his bedroom. What if he needed to call when he was at school, he suddenly worried as he pulled a t-shirt over his head, grabbing the card and shoving it into the back pocket of his jeans so he wouldn’t forget.

  His hands were sweaty and the card was damp because of it. He hoped it wouldn’t get mushy and unreadable in his pocket.

  “Damn it. Damn it to hell!”

  He covered his face in his hands and tried to talk himself down. Just like being worked up before a game, he thought, although it wasn’t anything near the same. He took one, two, three deep breaths, blowing the air out slowly and carefully each time, his eyes closed as he focused on the simple act.

  There would be a lot of questions, and his father and his father’s attorney had told him not to answer any of them.

  “Don’t say anything. Just ignore it.”

  Ignore it? Were they kidding?

  “If they say anything nice, like they’re sorry, don’t say thank you.”

  He hadn’t understood that.

  “It might be taken the wrong way, as an implication of something.”

  What the hell did that mean? Danny hadn’t asked any more questions, because he knew that neither man would be able to tell him anything helpful. If there was nothing to hide, there shouldn’t have been any reason to refuse to answer questions, even if he did know the answers.

  The police had taken a few things from the house, but he wasn’t sure what they were, just baggies of different sizes with items inside, and they had talked a lot while they searched his brother’s car. His brother was supposed to go to class today, too, but their attorney had advised him to stay home.

  No one was saying that his brother had anything to do with what happened to Kayla, but as far as Danny was concerned, whoever gave that drug to her had to have been one of his brother’s friends, not his. He didn’t know anyone who would have those kinds of drugs.

  Getting high was one thing, and not even something he would do. Not with football on the line.

  When he had calmed himself down enough to go downstairs and face his family, his mother was the only one in the kitchen. She had a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon waiting for him, but he realized that he wasn’t hungry. He hadn’t been able to eat much during the past week, and he knew she was concerned.

  “Just a few bites, that’s all. I know it’s a rough day for you, but it is for everyone, so just do the best you can.”

  She was so different from his father, who only accepted winning as proof of the best he could do. He couldn’t wait to get to practice after school and get some of this stress off his chest, focus it into the physical exertions that he pursued without a second thought after years and years of playing.

  “Yeah, thanks,” he told her as he sat, pleased as she rewarded him with a smile. He looked at his father and his brother’s empty chairs, and she nodded.

  “They had a meeting with the attorney, and left early. I’m sure your father will explain whatever they find out when you get home from practice.”

  The eggs turned slimy in his mouth and he struggled to swallow them before he pushed his chair back and stood up.

  “I have to go. I think I need to get there early, you know, just in case I can’t work the combination on my locker like every other year.”

  It was true. Every year he had difficulty unlocking his locker, and was inevitably late for class several times over the course of the first week because of the time he spent wrestling with it. Sometimes he had to go to the office so the secretary could come and use the master key to open it, and she was always annoyed with him because of it. Like he was doing it on purpose.

  Yeah, that made sense.

  His mother couldn’t argue with him, since it was a good idea to head off any problems before they started, maybe in more ways than one.

  Sarah thought she should be more worried about the first day of school without Kayla than she actually was. Normally she didn’t like how crowded the halls were, the noise, the gossip - all that high school was famous for. Kay was popular and Cass was well-known, which weren’t necessarily the same thing, and for different reasons.

  Their friendship wasn’t something that everyone understood, especially those who hadn’t grown up with them, but they didn’t care what anyone else understood or knew.

  There was something about knowing that Kay wasn’t going to be there today, or any day, that made Sarah feel as if she would be more visible, but not in a good way. That should have made her concerned, she figured, but she wasn’t.

  She remembered how Riley’s hair had felt twisted in her hand, the girl’s face in the palm of other hand, held tight as she pulled hard against the thick bunch of hair, pulled harder than she needed to in order to get the green and white bow clip out of it.

  She almost smiled at the thought of what Kayla would think, of Sarah hurting someone, hurting a girl who had called Kayla a terrible name that wasn’t true, a girl who was supposed to be Kay’s friend and teammate. Kay hadn’t been aggressive off the field, but if anyone had tried to hurt Sarah or Cass, she would have defended them in any way necessary.

  She had left her father with a stack of papers on the kitchen table, his coffee untouched as he shuffled through them, sighing.

  “If you need to come home, have the school call me and I’ll let them know it’s okay. Just don’t go anywhere without telling me, though, okay?”

  She nodded, wondering where he thought she might go, but when she pulled out of the driveway, she started towards Kay’s house rather than the school. Kay didn’t have a car of her own, and Cass and Sarah would take her to school when they each had access to their parents’ cars. Sarah’s father often let her use his, since he worked from home and usually didn’t need it, so she was used to going to pick up Kay then Cass before heading to school.

  Cass’s father had insisted on driving her to school today, though, so Sarah was alone for the entire drive, which had never happened before. Ever. Driving by Kayla’s house couldn’t hurt, though, she thought, but when she drew closer, she thought better of it and pulled into a driveway to turn around.

  She wondered if Mia was in school today, and if she had lighted any sparklers yesterday without her sister to help her.

  Her father had given her phone back, af
ter the police had looked through the messages and took some notes, explaining that she should call them immediately if she received any threats.

  Why would anyone threaten her, she wondered, taking the business card the detective handed her and tucking it into the inside pocket of her purse.

  The phone had been plugged into one of the electrical outlets in the kitchen since, and she hadn’t checked it until that morning. Cass could always call her father’s phone if necessary, she had thought, but she hadn’t thought of Mia. Cass could just come over when she wanted, but Mia had no way to get in touch with her.

  Damn it, she thought.

  How could either of them forget about Mia for even a minute?

  When she pulled into the school parking lot, noticing that only a few cars had arrived before her, she took a moment to tap out a brief message to Mia, telling her that she was sorry but she hadn’t been checking her phone, and if she needed anything, to call. She added three hearts, three because there had always been three, three of everything to reflect the three of them.

  She didn’t look at the texts, refusing to acknowledge any negativity about Kayla. People could say what they would, and it wouldn’t change the truth. It wouldn’t change who Kayla was. Who she had been.

  Sarah’s messenger bag was a ratty canvas tote that her father had been trying to replace for years. Her affection for it was cause for good-natured teasing from Cass and Kay, but it held up well and there was something reassuring about its familiarity.

  She held it close against her as she walked towards the building, looking straight ahead until she heard a deep voice she didn’t recognize behind her.

  “Not in our school.”

  She turned and squinted as the sun blocked her view.

  “What did you say?”

  It was one of the football players, alone when they usually hung around in packs, like wolves. She didn’t remember his name, but he was easily three times her size, and while he wasn’t threatening her, it wouldn’t take much of an effort on his part to hurt her if he wanted.

  “Nothing personal, but we don’t want that kind of reputation. I’m just saying, if it was just your friend, okay, but you, and the other girl, if you were all doing it, just don’t do it here. Some of us . . ."

  Before he could finish, Sarah was on him, shoving him so hard that he fell back against his car, knocking the breath out of him as she started hitting, swinging her fist against his face. He was too stunned to stop her before she punched his jaw several times, but when he grabbed her arms and pushed her away, someone else was there, someone as large as he was, and not pleased with how he was holding Sarah.

  “Don’t touch her,” Danny growled, stepping between the two of them so the other boy had to release his grip on her. Sarah pushed Danny, as if she didn’t understand that he was trying to keep her from getting hurt.

  The words she was saying, he thought, weren’t anything like he had ever heard from her mouth before. Cassidy, sure, but Sarah?

  “She is out of control, man.”

  Sarah reached around and slapped at the boy, who tried to slide against the car and away from Danny.

  “Hey,” Danny put an arm around her, as if to shield her from his teammate, who shook his head.

  “Is she on drugs, too? Man, we don’t need that shit around here.”

  When Danny took a swing, the boy didn’t see it coming, but as the boy fell to the pavement, Danny turned and saw Sarah smile for the first time since Kayla’s death, and knew they were both in trouble.

  Day Eleven

  Wednesday

  If Cass wasn’t so tired, she would be thrilled that Sarah had earned herself a suspension for fighting with one of Danny’s nameless, faceless teammates. Sarah, who had never even had a detention before, and Danny, along with the boy they had both punched, had three days out of school according to the zero tolerance policy in the district.

  The boy’s parents hadn’t said one word that Cass knew about, probably because Danny had told everyone what he had said about Kayla, Cass, and Sarah. Most people knew Kayla from her leadership of the state championship girls soccer team, and while the circumstances of her death were questionable, talking crap about her on the first day of school after it happened wasn’t cool.

  The football coach had taken Danny into his office before his parents came in to talk to the principal, and Cass had a feeling that football practice would somehow not be included in the suspension, although it should have been. She didn’t care, not about football, or soccer, or the dumb kid who mouthed off.

  Sarah was on a roll, and Cass wondered if she’d be able to stop her if she had to. If she wanted to.

  She had been spared a lot of attention yesterday, as everyone talked about the fight, about the idiot who started it. Some of the other football players nodded to her in the hall, but she wasn’t sure what it was supposed to mean and wasn’t interested in finding out. She didn’t know how she expected the day to go, but she had believed that Sarah would be with her and the two of them would get through it together.

  Everyone seemed to give her space, some offering sad smiles, others completing ignoring her as they had since grade school. Talking to any of them would be too much of an effort anyway, she thought, yawning through most of her classes and hardly paying attention at the announcement over the PA system before the last bell.

  “Tomorrow we will have an assembly first thing in the morning. All of you are expected to attend. Grief counselors from the local hospital will be sharing information on how we can all cope with the recent death of one of our own students, and if you feel the need to talk to one of them privately, they will be available throughout the day. Thank you.”

  Cass had sat frozen in her seat as the guidance counselor’s voice hummed through the speaker, her gaze on the white board at the front of the room. The math teacher had written remedial equations from algebra as he reiterated material they learned years before but mostly forgot over the summer.

  When the letters and numbers failed to make sense, she looked around and noticed several faces staring at her, as if they were waiting for a reaction. She stared back, unblinking, and they looked away, some whispering together, some staring down at the stacks of books and notebooks on their desks.

  What did they expect her to do? Why was her response so interesting to them?

  And why the hell were they having an assembly? She was going to strangle Sarah for leaving her to deal with this, and as she had started a text to her at home that night, wondered if Sarah would even see it. Cass had blocked every number that had sent her a nasty text, and while it had taken some time, there were fewer now, and she had told Sarah she could do the same with her phone. Sarah just shrugged.

  “It’ll stop sometime. I don’t really care, anyway. You can call, Mia can call. There’s no one else.”

  Sarah didn’t care about the texts, but if anyone said something to her face, well, they had better watch out. Cass sighed. Sarah’s father hadn’t even been angry about it, not like hers would have been. It sure wouldn’t make her parents look good if Cass got suspended, for whatever reason, even if the principal felt bad about the punishment like he had with Sarah and Danny.

  Sarah said he actually apologized to them for having to reinforce the zero tolerance for fighting policy under the circumstances, and that Danny’s parents weren’t mad, either. Cass had gone to Sarah’s after school and was shocked at the bruises on Sarah’s arms from where the boy had grabbed her.

  “You should see his face,” Sarah grimaced when Cass asked if her arms hurt. “He looks like someone dropped a concrete block on it.”

  “From Danny?”

  “From me,” Sarah has said, quietly but with pride.