by Cecily Wolfe
“Oh, Sarah, is that sarcasm I hear?”
They both signed on a quiet laugh, as if they felt uncomfortable allowing themselves to laugh too much. Sometimes it happened, Cass knew, like it did when she had to clean up her mess at the Dairy Delite, but it felt wrong, as if it shouldn’t be happening.
How could there be anything in her that wanted to laugh, when Kay had been gone only a couple of weeks?
“I know that’s her job, but damn, she doesn’t listen. She just wants me to fit into some idea she has of what I should be feeling or thinking or whatever.”
“Sounds typically adult.”
Yeah, it did, Cass thought.
“So when we turn eighteen will we suddenly look around at the younger kids and treat them as if we have some vast awareness of what’s going on in their heads? Like we know better?”
“I hope not.”
Sarah rolled her eyes as she looked at Cass, her car now parked in the school lot and her keys tucked away in her messenger bag.
“What’s up with him?”
Cass tilted her head towards the sidewalk, where Danny stood watching them. He was rubbing the side of his face with his hand, as if there was something he was trying to wipe off. Sarah shrugged noncommittally.
“I don’t know. He’s just upset, I mean, you can’t blame him, for being upset. I don’t think Kay would blame him.”
Cass leaned back in her seat, watching Danny. Clearly, he was nervous. About the arrest? About seeing Sarah? About what everyone in school thought about his family now?
“He did stand up for her with me, and he helped us at the party. But . . . I still feel like there’s something he could have done. I just don’t think that it’s right that I do. That I feel like that.”
Sarah looked straight ahead through her windshield as she spoke, as if she was talking to someone outside and not to Cass.
“Does he text you?”
Cass hoped that Sarah would have told her if Danny had been texting her, but maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe she thought Cass would be mad if he did. She didn’t have any business being mad at Sarah if she was interested in Danny, but this was a little more complicated than if Sarah liked someone else, a boy not involved.
Sarah shook her head.
“No, I mean, I don’t know. My dad checks my phone. He tells me when I have anything from you or Mia.”
Cass knew Sarah’s dad was still watching out for anything threatening to report to the police, but if Sarah hadn’t told him to let her know about any texts from anyone besides her and Mia, well, that said something. She felt a small measure of relief. Danny was crazy about Sarah, and it wasn’t as if he was a bad person, but Cass worried that if the two of them were together it might make all of this harder on Sarah. Or maybe she was worried that it would make it harder for her.
She closed her eyes and made herself speak.
“If you like him, I won’t hassle you about it. If you want to go out with him . . .”
“Wait, what? Who says I want to go out with him?”
Cass blinked and tried to figure out what was happening.
“Do you like him? It kind of seems like you do, that’s all. I don’t think it would be a bad thing if you liked him, and I just want you to know I won’t give you a hard time over it if you do.”
Sarah was still, her hands and eyes on the steering wheel.
“I don’t know. It’s too much to think about right now.”
She sighed.
“I feel like I shouldn’t like him, but he really hasn’t done anything wrong. So, that doesn’t make it any easier to figure out.”
They both looked at Danny, shuffling around on the concrete as other students walked by, some speaking to him, some looking away. It didn’t seem to bother him too much when they ignored him, even those who used to hang out with him. The football players didn’t seem to have any problem with him, even though he had beaten up one of their own just last week.
He didn’t smile at anyone, but nodded and spoke briefly if they approached him. Cass watched as he waved weakly at his football coach, who, in the grand tradition of football coaches, was the gym teacher.
“Let’s do this,” Sarah said suddenly, and opened her door before Cass could respond. She watched Danny’s expression as he noticed Sarah walking towards him, his smile unsure. Sarah turned after a moment and stared at Cass, waiting. Cass picked her backpack up from between her feet, pushed her door open, and joined them.
Cass had been right about the guidance counselor, and Sarah understood immediately why Cass had been so annoyed. She wondered what Paul was doing in therapy all day, every day. Did those counselors act like this?
“I talk to my dad, so I’m good. I don’t need anyone else right now.”
The woman frowned at her, as if she were a small child who had said something wrong but adorable. Sarah didn’t feel adorable.
“Oh, come on now, you can be honest. You can talk to me, that’s what I’m here for.”
She smiled now, as if that explanation would make Sarah open up to her and spill all her secrets. As if she had any.
“Seriously. I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but I’m missing physics. It’ll be hard to catch up if I miss the notes.”
Although she had been suspended for three days, her teachers had given her the assignments she would miss along with notes to complete them, although her suspension was meant to include class work, which would result in a failing grade for anything she would miss.
Just like football practice for Danny, however, that had been allowed in her case, on the down low of course. The football player she and Danny fought missed assignments and practice, and his parents, clearly not of the same stuff as Mia’s cheerleading friend’s mother, had not complained.
“Tell me about that fight last week. What did the boy say to make you so angry? Do you have anger management issues?”
Sarah sighed. She wanted to be like Cass, to stand up and leave, but she had the feeling that this woman would come after her again and again until she pulled something satisfactory from her.
“No, I don’t. I’ve never hit anyone before Riley.”
The woman’s eyes were wide as she relaxed back into her chair. Did she enjoy hearing everyone’s personal business?
“The girl at the funeral home, right?”
Sarah nodded.
“And this girl, as well as the football player, said something that provoked you?”
Sarah nodded again.
“Otherwise I never would have hit anyone.”
The woman nodded in return, and Sarah watched her lips purse into a thoughtful expression.
“And what did they say?”
Sarah narrowed her eyes at her.
“I’m sure that what was said here on school property was documented. Don’t you have my file?”
She could see her file on the desk in plain sight, but the woman didn’t take her eyes off her.
“I think it would help if you repeated it, to experience it again.”
What?
“I really have to go. I don’t see how this is helpful.”
She did stand up then, and the woman jumped up quickly, dislodging the small pillow that had been resting behind her back.
“Oh, no, no, I still have something to ask you. Let’s forget about the fight for a moment.”
Sarah sighed. Okay, sure, she thought. Let’s do that.
“We would like to have a memorial event for Kayla, and would love your input. You and Cassidy were her best friends, and you both would know best what would represent her.”
Sarah sat down again before she realized she had done it. What the hell?
“No,” she said firmly. “Absolutely not.”
The stink of hair spray wafted too closely in front of her face as the woman bent close to her.
“Just a celebration . . .”
“There’s nothing to celebrate. She’s dead, and you should all leave her alone.”
Sarah shoved
the woman away from her and stepped around the chair, pushing the door open. The office helper, who looked to be all of fourteen, watched her with frightened eyes. Sarah hoped her fear was based on her actions right then, and not from anything the girl may have heard about Kayla or the party.
She took the pink slip that had been delivered to her as she was preparing to leave her first period class and scribbled the time on the line beside the request time, filling the empty space and turning to leave before she missed physics altogether.
Day Seventeen
Tuesday
Taco Tuesdays had once been the highlight of Danny’s week. The football team always leaned on the razor’s edge of trouble as they shoved tacos into each other’s faces, entertaining the cafeteria crowd with their performance until one of the lunch monitors would approach, smiling, and they would start to clean up their mess.
As long as they stopped when they were supposed to and didn’t leave a wreck for someone else to clean up, it was all good. Tacos were easy, though. What if you left a wreck that couldn’t be cleaned up, in real life?
What if it wasn’t actually your wreck, but you felt like you could have stopped it, and you knew others thought that you should have been able to stop it, too?
Danny sat quietly, absorbed in his thoughts, and the rest of the team was more subdued as well. Last week, Taco Tuesday had been the first day of school for the year, and knowing why, knowing that a fellow athlete, the best soccer player the girls team had probably ever had, was gone forever, had cast a long shadow over the school and the players.
Today wasn’t quite as bad, and a few of them joked around about what the cheerleaders might have them do during spirit week, and which girls the guys without girlfriends were going to ask to go to the Homecoming dance with them. Danny didn’t pay too much attention.
The cheerleaders always made the football players dress like cheerleaders on Friday of spirit week, make-up and wigs included, and usually had them do something stupid on another day, like wear flip flops or sombreros, which wasn’t very practical and usually led to crushed toes and all kinds of trouble in the hall between classes.
It was tradition, though, and no one fought it. Danny wondered what was worth fighting over. Sarah was worth it. He had always thought so.
“Hey, man. Looking good in practice.”
The captain, who had been Danny’s teammate since Pee Wee days, spoke gently to him as he walked by, resting a hand on his shoulder. The guys had been treating him carefully, as if he might break, and he wasn’t sure if he would rather they acted as if nothing had happened. That wouldn’t be right, though, he considered, because it had.
A lot had happened.
He had to focus on making things right between him and Kayla’s friends, especially Sarah. And Paul.
If Paul was in school, they could stick together, and Danny could help him. He wasn’t sure how or what he could do, but he’d be there when Paul needed him. He wondered if Paul knew he’d been suspended for fighting, if anyone had told him how Sarah had totally kicked ass. He almost smiled.
He didn’t know Kayla that well, but he knew enough that he thought she would be proud of Sarah for standing up for her, and for herself. Kayla didn’t seem to be the kind of girl to take any crap, but she also wasn’t one who got any, either.
Everyone liked Kay. Danny knew that most people liked him, but they also didn’t know him. He didn’t have anyone close like Kayla did with Sarah and Cassidy. He had grown up with them all, watched those three girls stick together no matter what, holding hands even when some kids whispered that doing that meant that they were lesbians.
He remembered Cass sneering at an older girl back as they had just started their freshman year, when the girl called her a dyke after watching her walk into the school holding hands with Sarah.
“What if I am?”
Cass had walked by with her head held high, and the girl, called out in front of everyone, stood with her mouth open in stunned silence. Danny remembered Sarah’s secret smile, and his faltering surety that they weren’t gay. It only mattered to him because he had watched Sarah for so long, and if she was with Cassidy in that way then he didn’t have a chance.
He had moped around through classes and football practice, waking up a bit only after overhearing Paul and Kayla talking as they huddled at his locker, which was only a few lockers down from his own.
“I don’t care what anyone thinks, you know that.”
Kayla’s voice was firm and sure, but Paul sounded upset.
“I don’t like it. I mean, I don’t care that you hold hands, that’s up to you, but when somebody says that, and you aren’t.”
Did that mean Kayla wasn’t bisexual, which is what some people said when they saw her whispering with Cassidy and Sarah, since they knew she was with Paul, too, or did it mean that none of them were gay?
Danny was confused but interested, so he kept still, listening.
“Of course we aren’t, but who cares what anyone says.”
Danny turned away when Kayla pulled Paul close, and he knew they were kissing, the locker door hiding their faces. He could hear their breathing change, Paul’s voice low and tender, and walked away and quietly as he could. He was relieved in a way he hadn’t imagined he could be, his head full of thoughts of Sarah in his own arms someday as he whispered his feelings to her.
He thought of that now, of how he had thought he had so much time to win her over, and now there was less than a year before they would be separated by college and he would never have a chance to tell her, to show her, how he had felt about her for so long.
He didn’t want to scare her away, or make her think that this was about his guilt over Kayla. There was plenty of that, guilt, but his affection for Sarah, his desire to protect her, to get to know her better, had been a thing of its own long before the party.
“Hey, man.”
A kid he didn’t know very well sat across from him. He was by himself, and Danny looked around to make sure he was talking to him and not someone else. The rest of the football team was clearing their trays and trash and moving around, and didn’t seem to notice the guy.
Danny looked back at him and shrugged.
“Yeah?”
It didn’t sound very polite, but Danny wasn’t too concerned. Obviously this kid wanted something. Why else would he just show up? He expected some kind of shit about the party, about his brother’s friend, and he hadn’t really gotten it.
Maybe, he thought, this was it.
“Hey, just checking to see what’s up. I know about the arrest, and just wanted to know, well, maybe you’ve got someone else.”
Danny narrowed his eyes. What did that mean?
“Someone else?”
The kid, who looked very ordinary in a navy polo shirt and jeans, a haircut that didn’t stand out, and a silver ring on his little finger, held his hands out, palms up, as if in a peace offering.
“Dude, your brother knows people, obviously. Just wanted to know if I could do some shopping, you know?”
Danny stood up and leaned over the table, but before he could grab the kid’s shirt, there was a scuffle behind him and Sarah was at his side, her small hand curled around his arm. Cassidy was beside her, and everyone on the football team who was still at the table had moved behind the kid, who was now surrounded by several boys at least twice his weight.
