That Night

by Cecily Wolfe

  The house had been unlocked and open to anyone the day and night of the party, and there were a lot of people there Danny hadn’t seen before. He knew most of the people there from school, and even if he didn’t know them well, he at least recognized them. The others, he wasn’t sure, but his brother had met a lot of people at college, especially when he was rushing his fraternity, and who knew how many people had passed on the word about a party.

  Danny hadn’t really paid that much attention until Paul and Kayla showed up, because he knew that if Kayla was there, Sarah would show up at some point. She and Kay and Cass were practically inseparable, and had been since they were all kids, even as far back as kindergarten. Even back then Sarah had been little and quiet, but there had been something in her eyes that interested him, as if she was hidden like a jack in the box waiting to spring out at everyone at just the right time.

  Time and again he had watched her, because he didn’t want to miss her when she did come to life. It sounded creepy when he thought about it, as if he had been stalking her all these years, but it wasn’t like that. He thought that a lot of people didn’t see her, not really, and she liked that. She wanted to stay under the radar, the quiet one in the triumvirate, just as Cass was the pushy one, and Kay the leader.

  Sarah was smart and beautiful and he knew that she would do great things one day, and he only hoped that he would be there to see it. He never expected that the first great thing would be beating the hell out of one of his teammates, and he was still thrilled each time he remembered the sequence of events that led to their shared suspension from school.

  He went into the house quietly, listening for voices, but heard, first and foremost, someone crying in the kitchen. It didn’t sound like his mother, but he was still worried and moved in that direction before a policeman intercepted him.

  “How’re you doing today, Danny?”

  Danny narrowed his eyes at the officer, who now stood blocking his way.

  “Yeah, just trying to find out what’s going on here. My dad said we don’t have to talk to any of you without our lawyer.”

  The cop nodded and crossed his arms in front of his chest.

  “Not trying to get anyone to talk, not today. Just bringing some news.”

  Danny walked around him, and the officer didn’t try to stop him. He found two more officers sitting at the kitchen table, as well as his brother. His brother had his head down, resting on his arms, and was crying. Danny realized that the sound he had heard when he came into the house was unfamiliar because he had never heard his brother cry before.

  How, in seventeen years, had his brother never cried around him? He looked at the cops and they both nodded to him as he approached his brother, who might have been his twin for all that they looked alike. Only eighteen months separated them, after all, and they had been close until his brother had started college last year, and spent more and more time with his new friends even though he still lived at home.

  “Hey,” he reached a hand out to touch his brother’s shoulder, afraid but not sure why. For once he felt like the older one, perhaps because his brother sounded like a little boy, the sadness in his cries unfailingly sincere.

  When he lifted his head to look at Danny, Danny was shocked by his expression. The self-confident grin was missing, of course, and the voice that came out of his brother’s mouth was choked and broken.

  “I invited him myself, Danny. This is all my fault. I didn’t know he would bring anything like that, but I invited him. This is all my . . .”

  Danny interrupted him.

  “Stop it. We don’t say anything without a lawyer.”

  He turned to the policemen, who were all watching, even as their heads were lowered as if in respect for his brother’s tears.

  “Why are you here? We’re not talking without our parents and a lawyer.”

  The two sitting at the table looked at each other, and one of them shrugged.

  “He’s an adult, and if he chooses to talk, that’s up to him. Besides, we aren’t investigating him, or you, or anyone else now.”

  Danny turned to the one who was standing and narrowed his eyes.

  “What news were you talking about?”

  The officer straightened up and cleared his throat.

  “We’ve arrested someone, a Devin Baker, in connection with the death of Kayla Hunter. We have evidence to connect him with the event, and that is really all I can say at this point. No one else is suspect, and that is what we came to tell you all.”

  Devin. One of his brother’s friends, apparently. The officer’s use of the word ‘event’ bothered him, though, even as he felt a small measure of relief that his family was no longer under investigation.

  “Event? Is that what you call it when a girl dies? An event?”

  The officer tilted his head, looking at his coworkers, and the two sitting at the table stood, joining him.

  “We’ll see ourselves out.”

  The three men left, and Danny sat beside his brother as the older boy dropped his head in his hands, his shoulder shaking under Danny’s hand.

  Day Thirteen

  Friday

  Fridays were for pep rallies, and Cass overhead a lot of kids saying how happy they were to have two assemblies in one week.

  “Man, getting out of class so much the first week. Can’t beat that.”

  Their voices were distant but clear, and she wondered how long she would last before joining Sarah on suspension. The looks were less frequent now, as if these few days had made Kayla’s memory drift farther from everyone’s minds.

  Did no one care anymore, or was it easier just to move on, as if it had never happened, as if she never existed?

  “Cassidy, there’s a note for you to go down to the guidance counselor’s office.”

  She hadn’t even seen the student come into the classroom with the small pink slip, but she caught the gazes that followed her as she picked up her backpack and stepped forward to take the paper from the teacher’s fingers without a word.

  Screw them, she thought, knowing that they were watching her. She wished they would just say whatever it was they wanted to say, rather than waiting to whisper behind her back. What the hell could they say, anyway? She hadn’t done anything to talk about, and if they wanted to say something about Kay, well, they could bring it.

  Usually Sarah and Kay were there to ground her when her temper rose, but neither of them were beside her now, and she was starting to feel as if she had nothing to lose.

  “Just get through today,” she imagined Kayla reassuring her. “Ice cream tomorrow. I’ll even have some, if you still have that no sugar added butter pecan.”

  She smiled to herself as she walked down the hall towards the front offices. Kayla had loved that ice cream, and even though it wasn’t something she felt she should be eating, the no sugar added part had allowed her to feel a little less guilty.

  She always spent extra time running and working on drills Saturday mornings, so she thought if she was going to eat anything unacceptable, Saturdays were the day to do it. Once Cass convinced her to have it as a milkshake, and after that, Kay wouldn’t eat it any other way.

  “You’ll be an old lady without teeth, drinking your no sugar added butter pecan ice cream,” Cass would laugh. “It’s such a terrible addiction.”

  Her smile faded with the memory. They had often spoke of what the three of them would do when they were old, since it was a given that they would be friends always, sworn to the death. They just hadn’t considered that death would separate them so soon.

  The guidance counselor was an overworked woman with several hundred kids to deal with, but Cass imagined that this was the first time she had to handle a drug overdose. The girl who had talked to her at the assembly, Nika according to the entry in her phone contacts, had spoken of other instances, but those were at another school. Cass didn’t pay that much attention to the news, but surely if someone had overdosed in the area, there would be some kind of talk
about it.

  “Thank you for coming, Cassidy. Have a seat.”

  She had only been to the counselor’s office once, when the required visit for college prep information came around during junior year. She had stopped by for her fifteen minutes of attention, told the woman what she wanted to do with the rest of her life, and was handed a packet of papers full of registration materials for college entrance exams and information on state schools.

  She tried to hand them back to the counselor, but the woman had refused to take them, telling Cass to have a look and be sure she wasn’t disregarding any of her options, as if the Air Force and nursing weren’t acceptable goals.

  Traveling the world helping people - yeah, not acceptable.

  “How are you?”

  Oh, man, this was going to be bad, she thought. Of course the woman wanted to talk about Kayla and feelings, that sort of thing, and Cass just wasn’t up to it. Wasn’t anything personal? Did being a kid mean you didn’t have privacy, even when it came to feelings?

  “Fine.”

  The woman, whose dyed red hair was parted unevenly and swept back on one side with too much hairspray, frowned.

  “You can be honest with me. It had to be difficult, losing a close friend like that.”

  Like that? What did that mean?

  “Yes, but I’m busy, moving forward, you know.”

  Oh, shit. Did she actually say that? Kay used to joke around about the Walt Disney saying that was in one of Mia’s favorite movies, the one about time travel where the kid was actually the father. Cass couldn’t keep track of the storyline, but the quote was prominent and attributed to Disney.

  It was a joke, but also made sense. She just didn’t appreciate her parents throwing it at her. Something about the words felt sacred between the four of them, the three and Kay’s mini-me, who had always aspired to be part of their group.

  She was now, Cass considered.

  “Well, that is good to hear, but we have to deal with our feelings in order to do that.”

  Cass stood up. She just couldn’t do this, not now, not ever. She didn’t know what it was guidance counselors learned in college, in those textbooks and lectures that probably taught them how to be sympathetic and appear to care, even if and when they didn’t.

  They couldn’t care all the time, could they? Wouldn’t that be exhausting?

  “I really have to get to class. I can’t screw up my grades, not if I want to get into the Air Force.”

  She had to get that dig in, just to be sure the counselor knew that going into the military wasn’t a second choice to college, or less selective. She wasn’t sure why she cared what the woman thought about her plans, but a part of her did. The woman began to sputter something, her eyes wide, but Cass turned away and opened the door, closing it behind her.

  She headed to the closest restroom, taking advantage of the teacher’s expectation that she was at the counselor’s office. She had some time to kill before she would have to make it to her next class, and she wanted to just relax with some music, just to take the edge of the counselor’s annoying questions.

  What was it like to have a job where you got paid to get up in people’s business? Did you go into the profession with a love of gossip, even if you knew you weren’t supposed to talk about what you heard while you were working?

  She knew that the counselor was supposed to keep everything confidential, but she also knew how adults talked about each other, used each other, and wondered if the woman ever shared the more interesting details of her job with her family or friends. She could probably do it without using names, but what if the information was passed around, and it left no doubt who it was about.

  If she said anything about Kayla, it would be obvious, since no one else had overdosed on anything, at least not while Cass had been old enough to know about it.

  She heard the footsteps in the hall as they grew closer, and the female voices low and intent.

  “But if she was in bed with him, were they naked? Was she like, cheating on Paul, or what?”

  Cass stood beside the large rectangular mirror, the shine of it blurry in her vision. The girls didn’t know she was there, obviously, and when they walked through the open space into the restroom, they looked up and found her smiling. They stumbled on each other and started to back away, but she had dropped her backpack by then and ran at them.

  Paul was starting to feel more guilty than sad. After a few hours on an IV in the ER, he felt better physically, as if a switch had been turned on inside him, but he felt bad about that, too. He supposed he was just going to feel bad in general, in one way or another, either sad or guilty or just lousy, and wondered if he would always feel like this.

  Once this outpatient therapy business was over, and he could just be left alone again to stay in the cocoon of his room, would he stop eating and drinking and living again, giving himself over to dreams of Kayla and the life he had planned for them to live together?

  Spending entire days at the hospital was tiring, especially when the group therapist was alternately chipper and pushy. Or both at the same time.

  “Come on, now, I know you have some feelings in there to share!”

  She was young and he wondered if she had someone forgotten how to be human somewhere between her high school years and college graduation. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-four or so, and he started to worry that he might forget, too, by then. What if he did? What would he forget?

  Not Kayla herself, that could never happen, but would he have moved on, had other relationships, played ball, finished college? It was hard to think that far ahead, when he didn’t even want to think about going home that afternoon, just to face an evening without Kayla to spend it with.

  It was the first week of their senior year of high school, and they should have been complaining about homework, about sports practice and pressure from coaches, about college applications, all between kisses and hand-holding, whispers of intention and hope.

  The group wasn’t just for teenagers. It was something about depression, although he wasn’t sure what the program was actually called, and there were more adults than kids his age. One was a housewife who appeared to be going through some sort of identity crisis as her three children were now all in school, a college dropout who was upset with himself for failing his parents because they had been paying for his classes, and another was a girl not much older than he was who couldn’t eat.

  There were more, but these were the three that stood out to him the most, although he wasn’t sure why. All of them had stopped being able to function, whether it was to attend school, go to work, or take care of everyday chores and needs that others expected from them. He hadn’t realized how much work it was to take care of little kids, or how anyone could feel like they weren’t worthy of food.

  He hadn’t been eating, that was true, but it was just because he didn’t care. He hadn’t been hungry. The girl in his group, who had long dark hair that was unwashed, talked very little but it was clear that she didn’t believe she deserved to eat.

  There was a whole big mess in the group therapy room, and it was incredibly annoying that the person who was supposed to lead them into normalcy was an annoyingly perky woman who probably never felt sad a day in her life.

  “We can’t just be quiet in here, this is about opening up, and sharing experiences, so we can see that we aren’t alone. It helps to put our feelings into words instead of holding them inside. When we get back from lunch, we can work at letting those feelings out, okay?”