That Night

by Cecily Wolfe

  Sarah and Cass had been following any news of Devin’s case, and had been told that it would probably move slowly and not to worry too much about it, as he was staying in county jail while he awaited trial, since his parents refused to bail him out. That was a relief, at least, knowing he couldn’t run away and avoid punishment.

  “There’s a statement, from him and his attorney. It’s all over the place online. I just didn’t want you to see it, as a surprise. Not a good surprise, either.”

  His hand was still on her wrist as she started to shake. The teacher came up behind her and rested a hand on her back.

  “I’ll give you two a few minutes, okay? I’m going to visit the restroom.”

  She looked pointedly at Sarah, as if she was trying to warn her, then turned away to leave them room, closing the door behind her. Sarah moved her hand from underneath Danny’s gentle grip and reached for her phone.

  Day Twenty-Six

  Thursday

  Paul woke in a sweat from a disturbing dream within a dream where Kayla had been looking for him, calling frantically as he watched her, but she didn’t see or hear him as he responded and rushed to her, standing right in front of her as she kept yelling, growing more upset as her efforts increased.

  When he woke, she was there in bed beside him, his arm underneath her and her face close to his. Her eyes were dark and accusing, her voice cool and distant.

  “Why didn’t you find me?”

  Her body was cold against his skin and he was appalled at the revulsion he felt at her touch. When he rolled over and nearly fell out of bed, he awoke sticky and hot, his hair stuck to his forehead in a damp mess. Holy shit, he thought, shaking as he wrapped his arms across his chest and held onto his shoulders, willing his breathing to slow down and his thoughts to make sense of what had just happened.

  Could he make sense of it? Damn, it felt like something out of a horror movie, but worse, the disgust that washed over him in a wave when he realized how cold she was, how her weight, settled on his arm, so close to his own body, repulsed him. It was wrong.

  How could he ever feel that way about her?

  As he stumbled into the hallway towards the bathroom, he heard voices in the living room downstairs, and groaned audibly. Whoever it was, he didn’t want to deal with them. He wouldn’t have wanted to talk with them before, but especially now.

  He heard his mother’s footsteps on the stairs, as familiar as his own, and ducked into the bathroom, locking the door behind him. She knocked on it almost immediately.

  “You have two visitors. They’ve just arrived, but I don’t think you want to keep them waiting.”

  Paul shook his head and pushed his hair from his face. His skin looked blue and he wondered if there was something wrong with the lighting. He had to be at the hospital in an hour, so whoever it was, they would have to be quick, and it would have to be after he took a shower.

  Why was his skin blue?

  He wrestled out of his boxers (why were they so difficult to get around his feet?) and stepped into the shower, the spray hitting his face for just a few moments before the overwhelming need to vomit made him lean against the wall as he bent over, knowing that there was nothing in his stomach, and anything that came up could be washed down the drain. He heaved a couple of times, then rubbed a hand over his face and turned his open mouth towards the spray, filling it with hot water and spitting down towards the drain, away from his feet. He ran his hands over his stomach and ribs, and wondered at how sharp the bones were beneath his skin.

  Was his skin still blue, or had he washed it away?

  He took his time without consideration for whoever was waiting for him as he brushed his teeth and put on a shirt from a pile on his dresser as well as the same shorts he had been wearing the last few days, left on the floor again last night, before taking the stairs, staring at his bare feet. They were blue.

  Kayla would have laughed and called him a Smurf. The thought of her laughing, the memory of her smile, brought one to his own face, and the two people standing before him as he turned the corner to face them looked at him with confusion.

  “Oh, hi, uh, I was just thinking that Kayla would say I looked like a Smurf,” he explained in a rush. His basketball coach and the team captain, Jay, who had been a friend and teammate for over ten years, stared at him. Jay looked at Paul’s mother, as if searching for guidance. She swallowed and licked her lips before speaking.

  “And why would she say that, Paul? You aren’t wearing blue.”

  He held out his hands, as if he was offering them something.

  “My skin, it’s blue.”

  No one spoke, and he looked at his fingers. They were pale and pink, without a trace of blue on them. Oh, damn.

  “Uh, I guess it was because of the shower. Cold shower, to wake up.”

  The coach nodded without conviction, and Jay tried to smile, the corners of his mouth twitching the smallest bit.

  “Hey man, we just wanted to come and see how you’re doing. Not trying to rush you, or anything.”

  Jay spoke but didn’t move closer to Paul, while the coach stepped forward and slapped his palm against Paul’s shoulder.

  “Anything you need, let us know. You know about open gym, weights, practices. A few months until tryouts, but still, when you’re ready to come back, we’ll be here.”

  It was good to know, Paul thought, but he wasn’t sure how much he cared right then. About basketball, about school. And why wasn’t his skin blue any more?

  “Okay, sure,” he offered, hoping that would be the end of it. He had to find out why his skin was changing colors. It had to be important, didn’t it?

  “I’m going to talk to your mother for a minute, okay? Nothing personal, just wanted to give her some details on the upcoming season, some college information.”

  The coach gestured towards the kitchen, where Paul’s mother stood watching. When had she gone into the kitchen?

  “This sucks.”

  Jay caught his attention with the bluntness of his expression and words, and Paul turned his head from the back of the coach as he walked towards his mother to look at his friend.

  “Yeah. That’s about the extent of it.”

  The other boy shook his head and looked out the window, obviously awkward in spite of their long acquaintance.

  “I’m not trying to be all emotional or anything, but I can’t believe it. It’s not right. We all miss her, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think you don’t miss her the most. You know what I mean?”

  Paul nodded. He did, and he knew he should be thankful that Jay had stopped over, he was kind of distracted by the color thing. Had Kayla done this, from inside his dream?

  Was that even possible?

  “I don’t want to ask if you’re okay, because there’s no way you could be. I don’t want to go all High School Musical on you or anything.”

  Paul had to smile at that, a genuine smile that came from a long line of memories going back to elementary school, when all the girls were obsessed with that movie, and the basketball sayings came into use for the boys from their own viewing of the film, whether they admitted it or not, or the girls’ references to the songs, dances, and conversations that stood out to them.

  Get your head in the game became a commonly used admonition during practice, and when they went to state for the first time in middle school, the father of one of the players, who was also a coach and the parent of two daughters, screamed it at the team after two of his own players ran into each other because they were distracted by a balloon a child in the bleachers had released.

  As it floated towards the ceiling, a lot of spectators were strangely fascinated by its ascent, and the two players, watching for a few brief seconds, stumbled into each other. Neither boy played in high school, but students still told them to keep your head in the game on a regular basis. They would never live it down, but Paul thought that both of them enjoyed the continued connection to the sport and the team that they were back
then.

  “I’m working on it,” Paul reassured him, nodding. “I’ll be back to school next week, maybe open gym, too.”

  Jay smiled in relief. Paul wondered if he had expected to find Paul crying, or unable to respond. He wasn’t sure what rumors were being spread about him, and he didn’t care, but clearly Jay hadn’t been sure how he was going to react to a visit, or what condition Paul would be in when he did.

  Paul figured he probably didn’t consider that Paul would be rambling on about blue skin and Smurfs. That was something to add to whatever gossip was making the rounds.

  The coach returned with his mother at his side and Paul had a strange feeling that they seemed a little too friendly. They weren’t touching each other, but his mother seemed more relaxed, and his coach smiled at her before turning to Paul and Jay.

  “Well, we have to head into school.”

  He reached out to shake Paul’s hand, and Paul watched his own hand carefully as he extended it, making sure it wasn’t blue again.

  “We’ll see you soon, right?”

  The coach lifted his eyebrows, then smiled again when Paul nodded almost imperceptibly.

  “Good, good.”

  He was a no-nonsense sort of man, and Paul had always appreciated that aspect of his personality and coaching style, but never so much as he did right then.

  When they both left, his mother tilted her head towards the garage.

  “We’d better get going.”

  He wasn’t sure what time it was, but she was probably right. Tomorrow would be his last day at outpatient, and then he would have to attend weekly counseling sessions, maybe twice weekly, until it was decided that he could cut back. He wasn’t sure who decided this, or if it was a consensus between his counselor, psychiatrist, and his mother. He didn’t know if they would listen to his opinion, especially if his skin was turning blue, and then returning to its regular color.

  He had been tan over the summer, at least towards the beginning, when he and Kayla had gone for long afternoon picnics, celebrating the end of the school year, her recovery from surgery and the promise that her knee would be better so she could play in the fall. They had gone to the park near the elementary school where she had jumped rope with Cass and Sarah, where he and his friends had played basketball and kickball, with a heavy quilt Kayla’s mother had found at a rummage sale.

  It was worn and soft, and made it easy to relax as they lay beside each other on the grass. Sometimes she was a little goofy from her pain meds, but he liked how comfortable she was, unconcerned about the future, hopeful that her injury was healing and she would be able to continue playing. Sometimes she would talk about taking a break, her eyes pointedly looking everywhere but into his own, but in those early summer days, she had been there with him, in the moment, and he was sure she would want to stay with him forever.

  Everyone in group was quiet, as usual, until a new patient decided to unload on them all. He started swearing and calling them all sons of bitches, but when the counselor asked him to stop using profanity and focus on expressing his feelings, he sat back for a moment and then, to Paul’s surprise, apologized. Paul had learned to expect anything during group.

  “And Paul, is there anything you’d like to share with us this morning? You’ve come a long way from your first few days, don’t you think?”

  Paul looked around at the others in the room. Some of them had been there when he started, a few were new this week, and a couple had begun their session on the same day he had.

  “Do we know what happened to Gail?”

  The counselor was taken aback by his question. Clearly she hadn’t expected it, and they weren’t supposed to disclose information about other patients. Paul wasn’t even sure why he asked about the girl who couldn’t eat, not since her parents sent her to inpatient.

  The counselor looked down and in that brief instant when she raised her gaze to his, Paul understood that Gail hadn’t made it. He looked at the two men who had been there when Gail had pulled her trick.

  “Damn,” one of them said.

  “Now, I’m not permitted to disclose any personal information about her, so whatever you’re thinking, I haven’t said a word.”

  How often did this happen, Paul wondered, when the counselor couldn’t say anything, but still did. It would be impossible not to, he thought, when he or she knew that the patients in the group had an genuine concern for another one who was no longer with them?

  “Do you have something to share with us, Paul? You have one more day, so I’d suggest you take advantage of your time here to work through whatever you have going on in that head of yours.”

  Paul knew she was trying to be persuasive and inclusive, but a part of him wanted to keep his mouth shut, to say that he was fine. It was always easier to say that, here, or in the real world, instead of letting anyone know how you felt. Most people really weren’t interested anyway. She was getting paid, though, and he thought for moment before responding.

  He might as well make her work for her paycheck, at least today.

  “My skin is blue. Sometimes. I mean, when I woke up this morning, it was blue. Then after I took a shower, it wasn’t. And my dead girlfriend was in my bed this morning, and she was cold and mad and when I woke up, my skin was blue.”

  The counselor’s eyes had grown wide and she began to write something on the legal pad she balanced on her knee.

  “Do you feel like hurting yourself or anyone else?”

  He shrugged.

  “If I knew it was a way to be with her, I think I could do anything right now.”

  Was that an admission of something, of some intent? He watched her shuffle though a stack of papers on the desk just as a girl, new that week, spoke up in disbelief.

  “Blue? Like a Smurf?”

  He smiled as the counselor pressed the intercom button on the phone and asked the receptionist to contact Paul’s psychiatrist and ask him to come in as soon as possible.

  Day Twenty-Seven

  Friday

  Everyone wore green and white, as they had every other Spirit Day in the school’s history of Spirit Week, the athletes in their uniforms, club and group members with whatever pins and sashes and other identifying materials prominent on their shirts. Cass hadn’t bothered. She didn’t belong to anything or anyone except Sarah and Kayla, and the three of them had always coordinated their costumes for each day of Spirit Week, ending with Kayla’s soccer uniform on Friday, with Cass and Sarah as her foils, with white skirts and green shirts to her uniform of green shorts and a white shirt. It was the only day of the school year that Cass voluntarily wore a skirt.

  Inevitably, a boy or two would flip the skirt up, and even though she wore shorts underneath, she would give him a slap or shove for daring to invade her privacy like that. It wouldn’t do any good to report it, because something like that was usually considered a boys will be boys infraction, no harm, no foul. In turn, the boys who dared to do it would never tell on her for hitting them, because they couldn’t really defend their actions.

  With the ASVAB scheduled and her future with the Air Force within reach, Cass should have been able to rest assured that her days of dealing with this kind of bullshit were numbered, but still, she wore her most comfortable pair of jeans instead of her usual skirt that Friday, knowing that Sarah was forgoing their coordinated outfits as well.

  Her mother seemed thoughtful that morning, as if she had something on her mind, and barely registered Cass’s presence in the kitchen until Cass turned to leave after making a mug of instant coffee.