by Cecily Wolfe
“We just want to understand what happened.”
Cass couldn’t answer her parents because she didn’t even know herself. The police had asked, but at least they realized that questioning them in the middle of the night after trying to revive Kayla (after Paul and Sarah had tried to revive her - Cass had stood there talking to the 9-1-1 operator, stumbling through an explanation and probably stalling the response time) might not have been incredibly productive.
The detective had apologized for grilling them in Danny’s front yard while the other kids watched, whispering, crying, pointing as the paramedics carried Kayla’s body out of the house. Paul had turned his back, his head down and arms limp at his sides, and Cass had wanted to reach out and rest her hand on his shoulder.
“It’s best to get information as soon as possible after something traumatic happens, when it is still fresh in your mind,” the detective explained. It was still fresh, Cass thought now. She was certain it always would be, the image of Kay falling into Paul’s arms, the careful way he held her close to him as he rested her on the bedroom floor.
Were his parents questioning him now, too? She didn’t know his parents like she knew those of Sarah and Kayla, so she had no idea what might be going on at his house.
She remembered a time during sophomore year when Paul and Kayla had broken up briefly, and how Paul had stood staring off in the distance in the lunch line as his friends talked around him, oblivious to his feelings. He had always been devoted to Kayla, and while Cass knew that Kayla loved him, Paul’s infatuation with Kayla was on a completely different level.
She wished she, Sarah, and Paul could just have some time alone together. Even if nothing was said . . .
“I’ll make an appointment tomorrow morning with the pediatrician,” Cass’s mother said to no one in particular. Cass’s bedroom absorbed the statement, as neither her father nor Cass responded. Her mother looked between the two of them uncomfortably.
“Well,” she sighed and looked pointedly at Cass’s father, who had turned from the window and glanced quickly at Cass before nodding at her mother.
“Yes, well, I know this is tragic, and the loss is new, but you’re young, and time does heal.”
What was he saying? She squinted at him, watching his face contort as he struggled to find more words of wisdom to impart.
“I’m really tired,” she offered, an out for him as well as her. She knew that if she heard one more platitude, one more lame-ass, overused inspirational saying that had nothing to do with the reality of losing Kayla, she would start screaming.
She might not be able to stop.
Both of her parents took a deep breath as if they had escaped something terrifying. She wondered if they had ever lost someone close to them. All four of Cass’s grandparents were living, and she didn’t think her parents were close to them anyway.
Was there anything in their experiences that could give them insight into what she was feeling? If not, couldn’t they just leave it - leave her - alone?
“Of course, I’m sure you are. Just let us know if you need anything.”
As the door clicked shut behind them, Cass rolled over on her bed and reached for her phone from underneath her pillow. The flashing light beat red red red against the palm of her hand, and when she swiped her fingers on the screen the picture of Kayla, Sarah, and her that Paul had taken during last spring’s school field trip to a Shakespeare in the Park play shone brightly.
He had taken it as he walked behind them, the three of them with their arms around each other, their matching jean jackets engulfing them so it was hard to tell which jacket belonged to which girl. Sarah had braided Cass’s hair with flowers as they had watched the play, and in the chill damp air Kay’s legs had been cold as they sat tangled together on the giant comforter Sarah’s father had given them to use.
Paul had brought a smaller blanket and as he sat close by with some of his basketball teammates, kept an eye on Kay to be sure her legs, left bare in her favorite red dress, were covered by his blanket. Cass stared at the photo a few seconds longer, remembering the cotton candy scent of Kayla’s body spray and the bees that had hovered close.
Cass had hassled her about wearing it, knowing that they would be outside all day, but Kay had only smiled and glanced at Paul.
“Cotton candy is someone’s favorite.”
She had caught Paul’s eye and the two had shared a secret smile. Cass couldn’t be jealous, not when Kayla was so happy. Kayla wasn’t always happy, but no one was. Now her parents and the other adults who had been talking to them, at them, for the past few hours were acting as if Kayla’s happiness had something to do with what happened.
With her death.
Cass swiped again and sucked in a breath at the string of texts that filled the screen.
R u ok
What happened?
Call if u need me
Don’t do drugs
Wtf she’s a good girl
Preggers
What?
She clicked on that last one and didn’t recognize the number. How had this person gotten her phone number? Her fingers tapped on the keys, slower than usual as her hands shook.
Screw you
She stopped before hitting send and backspaced, deleting both words. It wouldn’t help to give the message the dignity of an answer, but she would find whoever it was and set them straight. If she had to use her fist to do it, she would.
She began tapping again.
Love u
The message to Sarah sat on the screen after she sent it, waiting just as she was, but she knew that Sarah’s father would have most likely kept her from her phone, maybe wisely, considering what messages Cass had received. Sarah would be livid at the insinuations, and while most people saw Sarah as quiet and harmless, Cass knew that if Sarah found the person who sent the preggers message before Cass did, they might be in worse shape for it.
She closed her eyes and turned the phone face down on her chest, the bright photo of her and the two closest people to her in the world pressed against her heart.
Sarah sat in the corner of the sofa with her mother’s faded pink blanket tucked around her. Her father had brought hot chocolate soon after the police left early that morning, when her father had opened the door half-asleep, unsure who was there or why. Sarah was supposed to be spending the night at Cass’s with her and Kayla, and Sarah’s father had no reason to believe she wasn’t safe and sound at her friend’s house.
Sarah had stood between two police officers, shivering under a scratchy wool blanket someone had draped over her shoulders, and when her father saw her, he grabbed her and hugged her close. Once they were inside her house, he had walked her over to the sofa wordlessly, easing her onto the cushions and grabbing the nearest blanket to switch out with the one that did not belong to her.
He had left her then, taking the hushed yet intense conversation to the kitchen, and while Sarah faded into an exhausted sleep, she could hear her father say, no no no repeatedly, the echoes of his refusal to believe what the officers were telling him carrying her into unconsciousness. When she woke, her father was sitting in the recliner beside the sofa, his coffee cup full but the lack of steam telling her that it had been resting for some time.
His gaze was somewhere across the room, perhaps on the wall where Sarah’s school pictures paraded in a step by step bottom to top arrangement, but she didn’t think he saw the photos. She wiggled just the smallest bit, which drew his attention, and he offered to make her a fresh cup of hot chocolate, which she didn’t really want but thought he might need to make for her.
When her mother died her father had slept for days, and Sarah, just beginning second grade, had burned her hand making macaroni and cheese from a box while his heart and mind wrestled with the loss of his wife, who had been his high school sweetheart. A teacher noticed the burn and children’s services became involved, and while Sarah vaguely recalled the physical pain of the event, she remembered the greater fear
that she might lose her father as well as her mother.
A social worker came to school and took her out of class to speak to her about how her life at home was, and how her father treated her.
“I don’t like her hair. It’s so poofy.”
Cass had followed her into the restroom after lunch the same day that the social worker visited, and Sarah knew that she was talking about the social worker, who looked like she had lost a wrestling match with a round brush and her blow dryer that morning.
Sarah couldn’t help but smile, and the tension of the day, of the weeks that had followed her mother’s death, eased enough for her to admit her fears to Cass.
“She says I might have to live with someone who can take care of me better. But I don’t want to live anywhere else.”
Kayla had rushed into the restroom then, panting.
“I dropped all my stuff in the cafeteria and you guys were so fast,” she huffed, smiling. She was always rushing, always late. She took the few steps that separated the three of them and wrapped one arm around Sarah and one around Cass.
“My mom says it’s rude to invite yourself to people’s houses, but Sarah isn’t people, are you?”
Sarah had cracked the smallest smile as the tears fell down her cheeks, and she tasted the saltiness of them at the corner of her mouth. Cass had watched Kayla with interest, wondering what she was up to now.
“Let’s go to Sarah’s and just, you know, be there.”
Looking back, Sarah could see how Kayla’s suggestion, and their visit, had helped awaken her father, as the three of them begged him to help them bake cookies, and then subjected him to several episodes of My Little Pony. The lifelessness in Sarah’s house had contributed to her father’s depression, and the activity that afternoon inspired him to seek help, as well as to fight to keep Sarah.
He had stopped apologizing for those terrible weeks years ago, but Sarah knew that he would never forgive himself. She also knew that he was the best person to understand what it was like to lose someone she loved.
She wrapped her fingers around the hot chocolate and brought the mug to her lips, and although it tasted like dust in her mouth, took a long swallow, making the effort as her father had struggled to do so long ago.
Day Two
Monday
The impersonal phone call went out to every phone number attached to registered students in the high school directory on the first day of school, two days after Danny’s party. Paul heard the buzz of his phone and ignored it, just as he had ignored every attempt at communication since failing to save Kayla from whoever had given her the drug Saturday night. Failing to save her from whatever would have given her the idea that accepting that offer was what she needed at that moment.
The knock on his bedroom door came only seconds after his phone finished buzzing, and since he hadn’t bothered to lock it, his mother opened it without waiting for him to respond. To be fair, he hadn’t been responsive in general, so he couldn’t blame her for not giving him much of an opportunity to answer.
“No school today,” she said, her voice slow and careful as if she was approaching a wounded animal, one that might bite if provoked. He nodded without looking at her. To her credit, he thought, she didn’t make any derisive or impatient noises when he didn’t speak, but he imagined that she would eventually grow tired of it.
He didn’t care.
“I’d like to leave your door open, if that’s okay,” she continued. He shrugged.
“I just want you to know that your dad is coming up to visit. We’re both worried about you.”
His dad? Well, so what? The man had a new wife, a new baby, and all it took for him to look back at his old family, his first kid, was this.
This.
Paul took a deep breath and kept his eyes on a spot on his wall near a bulletin board where he kept photographs of himself and Kayla, a documentation of all the years they had spent together, of his love for her, of his unspoken hopes for a lifetime creating more memories. He couldn’t look at the board itself, though.
Not just yet.
He heard his mother’s footsteps fade away, down the hall and then the stairs, and then it was quiet. It was the first day of their senior year, and if Saturday hadn’t happened, he would be standing in front of the coffee maker right now, stretching, then searching for a travel mug that wasn’t dirty to use for his second cup after his first had been gulped on the way to the bathroom before a shower.
Kayla never cared how he dressed, and he had always enjoyed the advantage he had over so many other boys with girlfriends who either hassled them for what they wore or bought clothes for them and dressed them like dolls. Still, he knew that she had a preference for green to bring out the color in his eyes (is that too romantic, she would ask, as they whispered together, foreheads touching, their lips just about to meet), and had several shirts in the hues she preferred.
He would be thinking, as always, of their future, of the next few months as they completed high school, decided on colleges, as he fought with himself over how to tell her that he wanted to marry her as soon as she would agree to it. Was it too much, he would worry, to bring that up?
It wasn’t as if he didn’t want her to earn a degree and enjoy her time in college, find a career she loved, do what made her happy - he just wanted to be there with her along the way. He wanted to be a part of what it was that made her happy, and never let her forget how much she was a part of his own happiness.
His mother often mentioned her concern that he and Kayla were too close, too young to be together so much. He just figured she was jealous that there was another woman in his life besides her, and while he was sorry that her own marriage hadn’t worked out, he had his own life, his own love, now.
He had, until Saturday night.
Cass hadn’t checked her phone since yesterday, but watched it for the light to change color and alert her that Sarah had responded to her text. Cass’s father was at work, her mother talking on the phone helping to make home health care arrangements, part of her work from home job.
Hopefully she would be busy all day, too busy to continue saying the same standard platitudes to Cass. Adults must have some manual that gives them set answers to how to deal with their kids, she thought, imagining that everyone else from school was getting some version of the same lecture about . . .
About what?
So far Cass’s parents had been talking about drugs, but what did everyone think else happened to Kayla? From those texts she read on Sunday, there could be, as always, all kinds of theories and rumors. What did preggers have to do with it? If Kayla had been pregnant (which she wasn’t) how did a one-time mistake, taking drugs from a stranger, play into that scenario?
“Why don’t you take a shower, it might make you feel better. We could go out and get some of those pancakes you like so much.”
She hadn’t heard her mother come into her room, but it only took her a second to respond.
“Pancakes?”
She knew her mother was just trying to make her feel better, but the idea of pancakes was ridiculous, even disrespectful. God, did her mom not even think before she opened her mouth?
“I’m trying, Cass. I just don’t know what to do, and you can’t wallow in your room forever.”
Cass shook her head and kept her eyes on her phone.
“I’m not hungry.”
Her mother sighed.
“Well, you can’t just stay in here all the time. It’s not healthy.”
Cass didn’t feel like that merited a response. Healthy wasn’t really a concern of hers right now. Sarah, however, was. The notification light on her phone blinked from red to purple, and she grabbed it, sitting up straighter and shaking her head at her mother again.