That Night

by Cecily Wolfe

  Cass knew that Danny hadn’t asked Sarah to the dance. She was surprised at first, but then, not so much. Just because Danny was interested in Sarah - no, more than interested - didn’t mean that he wanted to go to the dance, and even if he did, he had to know that Sarah wouldn’t want to. In spite of every teen movie ever made, not every girl was thrilled at the idea of school dances and being asked to them. Sarah had never been a participant in any big social occasions, and Danny, who had watched her for years, knew it. Cass was glad that he hadn’t put Sarah in a position to turn him down, knowing that Sarah’s feelings for him were still conflicted.

  According to Instagram and Snapchat, Danny’s performance during the football game last night was cause for celebration, and while Cass hadn’t been checking social media too closely because she knew that there would be some negativity that might tempt her to actions that would threaten her opportunity with the military, she scrolled through her Instagram during her lunch break at work and found a photo of the girls soccer team, or at least some of the team, from last year, with Kayla in the middle of the small group.

  It had been posted by the cheerleading captain, a girl she never would have followed before that week, but after the girl sought out her account and followed her, she did the same in return, and now, Kayla’s radiant smile shone on the screen.

  Sparklers for Kayla tonight at the bonfire #wemissyoukayla

  It had been posted earlier, perhaps when the girl was getting her hair done for the dance and was whiling away the time on her phone. The photo was from the school website and could be downloaded by anyone, and Cass didn’t think that the cheerleaders had attended any soccer games in order to have taken any pictures like this, anyway. There were over a hundred likes on the post already, along with comments, and while there were several that were hidden, she could see that the ones visible were positive.

  For some reason, the plans for a low-key memorial at the bonfire worried her, as if someone would say or do something that would ruin all the good memories Kayla’s classmates had, leaving them with the bad taste of the manner of her death. Maybe, Cass thought, she was worried for nothing, and just prepared for the worst. Sarah wasn’t as concerned, but Cass knew that she wasn’t in favor of a big production that would be less about Kay and more about the attention the person with the initial idea would receive. Cass was prepared to avoid Stephanie, but Sarah was pretty sure that Stephanie had made herself look bad enough already and wouldn’t try to do anything for attention tonight.

  Cass hoped she was right.

  There was no reason for either of them to be late to the bonfire, since they didn’t go to the dance, but at the last minute, as Cass pulled out of Sarah’s driveway, Sarah mentioned Paul.

  “Maybe we could stop by his house, let his mom know that people are asking about him, that we hope they get his meds straightened out.”

  Cass nodded.

  “My dad was on an anti-depressant for awhile after my mom died, and he had some side effects, but blue skin was not one of them,” Sarah noted with a small laugh.

  He had mentioned, though, when they discussed Paul’s difficulties, that his dreams had been strange. None had encouraged him to end his life, though.

  They made an awkward but brief stop at Paul’s house, standing in the doorway as his mother encouraged them to come inside.

  “No, thanks anyway. We’re going to the bonfire.”

  His mother sighed and closed her eyes.

  “He always says that the bonfire is more romantic than the dance. I know he looked forward to spending it with Kayla each year. Oh, I’m sorry, girls, I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  Cass looked at Sarah, and they both saw the tears standing in each other’s eyes.

  “It will be a long time before something doesn’t upset us, so it’s okay. It just happens, you know?”

  As they drove away towards the high school, Sarah suggested that they each light an extra sparkler, one from Mia and one from Paul.

  “Why didn’t I think of that?” Cass asked. “Oh, because you’re here to do it for me.”

  She was smiling as she searched the parking lot for an empty space, and finding none, pulled the car onto the sidewalk. If the cops wanted to give her a ticket while she was celebrating her best friend’s life, so be it.

  Food was already strewn across tables, and Cass imagined that the number of boys here had been responsible for the mess. It was the same every year, and the PTA parents always cleaned it up as the night turned into early morning. Couples were standing close together, some sitting side by side in fold-up chairs brought from home, hands held tight against the chill.

  Clusters of kids stood talking, the usual school day groups gathered together, separated from the other congregations, and as she and Sarah poked at a bag of giant marshmallows, Cheryl, the cheerleading captain, stepped up beside them. She didn’t have her usual posse in tow, and her perpetual perkiness was missing. She looked tired, and Cass wondered if something had happened at the dance to upset her.

  “I have the sparklers ready and can pass them around whenever you guys are ready.”

  Sarah asked what Cass was wondering.

  “Is something wrong?”

  Cheryl looked down, then up at them with a sigh.

  “I’m Homecoming queen.”

  She paused, as if she expected one or both of them to say something, then continued.

  “If Kayla was here, I wouldn’t be. It’s not my crown to wear.”

  She turned with a wave, beckoning them to follow, and they walked around the giant bonfire, the heat overpowering enough to make them take a step away. Cheryl bent down and reached behind a lawn chair to pull out a backpack, which she set down on the chair and opened, the zipper loud in the silence that stretched between the three of them. When she opened the first large box of silver sticks, she pulled two out and offered them to Cass and Sarah.

  “Oh,” Sarah explained, “We each need two. One for Paul, one for Mia.”

  Cheryl’s mouth fell open the smallest bit.

  “Damn, why didn’t I think of them?”

  She held the first two together and turned to Cass, and after Cass took them, pulled two more out for Sarah.

  “I’ll pass the rest out. Light yours whenever you want, you don’t have to wait for the rest of us.”

  She lifted the backpack and walked away. As Cass and Sarah watched her approach a group of kids who looked as if they had been waiting for her, they turned to the fire, and tentatively leaned the tips of their sparklers into the flames.

  A few miles away, asleep between the crisp white sheets of his hospital bed, Paul was dreaming of a Kayla who took his hand in her own soft, warm one, a Kayla who smiled and beckoned him to follow her, and as her red dress twirled in an arc behind her, he did.

  That Day

  Saturday

  Kayla knew that she was going to be crabby today. Another night with little sleep and a lot of pain, and she wanted to go to Mia’s game later. Maybe she should try to take a nap, but she knew her parents wouldn’t approve. It was a bad example for Mia, and besides, she was too old for naps.

  A group of ten-year-old cheerleaders was going to annoy her if she couldn’t get past this hazy feeling and the ache in her knee, but she was out of pain meds and her parents and doctor didn’t want her to keep taking them, anyway.

  “You don’t want to become an addict,” her mother had warned when she asked the doctor for another refill. “That happens, even to people like us.”

  What the hell did that even mean, people like us? Kayla had wanted to ask. The doctor has assured her that the pain would get better with time, if she continued the exercises she learned in physical therapy and didn’t overdo it. She hadn’t wanted her mother to go into the examination room with her, because no matter what she said, her mother either contradicted her or made her concerns look trivial, but of course her mother insisted on being present.

  Her knee looked better and wasn’t swollen or vi
sibly damaged, but damn, at three am she wanted to take a hammer to it. None of the over the counter pain meds put a dent in the ache that throbbed through her body, beginning with her knee and somehow pulsing like a current so she couldn’t focus on anything else.

  School was going to start in a few days, and she couldn’t imagine sitting in class and taking notes, keeping up with all the AP assignments, with this distraction, never mind the lack of sleep. Soccer practice loomed over her like an impossible nightmare. She missed playing, but couldn’t see how she would be able to run, never mind kick. Why wouldn’t her parents listen when she told them how it hurt? Just because the doctor and physical therapist said that the pain should be minimal, it didn’t mean that it was.

  Sometimes she thought she was being too sensitive about it, and maybe the pain wasn’t all that bad. Losing sleep consistently over the past few weeks since her prescription ran out wasn’t helping her to think clearly, so that had to be contributing to her perception of the pain.

  Paul had listened when she cried about it, he had been sympathetic, just as Cass and Sarah had been, but none of them could do anything besides ask if she needed help. Paul would carry her books for her when school started, she knew, even if it made him late to class. Cass and Sarah would drive her to school, and probably fight with Paul over the honor.

  She smiled, thinking of the three of them arguing over who got to drive her around. She couldn’t have conjured better friends than Cass and Sarah if she was able, and in less than a year they would be separated, but only by physical distance. She had every intention of staying close to them, and visiting when she could. Her attempts to define her relationship with Paul, however, had been tricky over the past year, and her love for him had never wavered as they took time away from each other at her insistence.

  It wasn’t fair to keep doing that to him just because she was stressed out about everything and didn’t want to think about his reaction when she didn’t choose the same college as he did, even though that was months away. She knew she would feel guilty, and maintaining a long-distance romance while starting college and playing soccer would be too difficult. Maybe she was too lazy, she considered. A lot of couples had long-distance relationships, and if she really wanted to make that work, she wouldn’t be focusing on the ways that it wouldn’t.

  She sighed as her stomach growled, and she left her room to go to the kitchen and grab a Diet Coke to go along with her guilt. Mia was shaking a spoonful of sugar over a piece of heavily buttered toast, the grains spreading all over the plate and the counter as well as the bread. Kayla laughed and stepped over to help Mia with the cinnamon Kayla knew her sister would want to add next.

  “Gotta wreck the place, don’t you?”

  Mia smiled up at her, and Kayla tugged on one of her braids.

  “Do you need Sarah to come fix your hair?”

  Mia shook her head.

  “Whatever you want to do with it is fine.”

  Kayla pursed her lips in an exaggerated frown.

  “Don’t say I didn’t ask.”

  Her efforts at styling Mia’s long, thick hair were nothing compared to what Sarah could do. Even at their age, Sarah braided Kayla and Cass’s hair, sometimes on request and other times, just because they were together and she felt like doing it.

  Kayla would pull Mia’s hair into a high ponytail and tie a bright green ribbon around the elastic. Mia always liked the green bow because it matched the one on Kayla’s hair clip.

  Kayla sat down in one of the kitchen chairs and rested her unopened soda can on her knee.

  “Does it hurt?”

  She scrunched up her face at the icy cold on her skin as she thought about how she should answer Mia’s question.

  “Just a little. Mostly aches, but that should go away soon.”

  Mia didn’t look convinced, and Kayla pulled her close into a hug, appreciating the concern on the younger girl’s face.

  “I’ll be okay. I’m always okay, right?”

  Mia wrapped her arms around Kayla and held her tight.

  Paul’s texts about the party were full of the need for reassurance that she would be there. They needed to talk, he insisted. Somewhere private, and both of their houses weren’t an option. She knew that he was worried that she was going to break up with him for good, and the frantic tone of his questions made her feel even more guilty. She didn’t understand how a party would offer them any privacy, unless he meant for them to find an unoccupied bedroom and lock the door.

  She knew he would never pressure her into doing anything but talking, but she also worried that she would lead them that way, because she did love him, and a part of her wanted to be with him for just a little while without worrying about the future. Sleeping together would just make it harder when they did break up, though, wouldn’t it?

  She was thinking too much, and while she always had a tendency to do so, the less sleep she got the more everything seemed to loom large in the forefront of her mind.

  Cass and Sarah were going to meet her at the party, and since it was at Danny’s, a kid everyone knew and liked, it should be safe. There were parties and then there were parties, and Snapchat told the story of the latter. Kayla didn’t think this would be one of those parties, but honestly, you could never tell. Well, she’d go, she and Paul would talk and she would just go along with whatever he said, at least for now. She was too tired to do otherwise.

  Once her friends arrived and found her, she could hang out with them and ideally, leave. She had planned on driving to the party herself, but Paul texted her during Mia’s halftime performance to offer to pick her up. She was in no condition to argue and just typed ok in response. Her parents hadn’t been able to come to Mia’s game because of some social thing with her father’s job, but Kayla didn’t mind sitting in the bleachers by herself, watching Mia jump and cheer.

  Sometimes Cass and Sarah would come and they would yell Mia’s name when the commentator introduced the cheerleaders during halftime, or when the dance performance was over. Neither one could come today, but she could count on them to meet her tonight. With any luck, she would fall asleep at the party and have a good excuse to leave early with them, and maybe she could sleep over.

  She imagined relaxing into one of the hammocks on Sarah’s patio and hugged her arms around herself. If she could just find some way to get some sleep. Even just for one night. At this point, she thought as she scratched at a bump along her hairline, her gaze on Mia as her little sister gave one of her teammates a high five, she would do just about anything to get that.

  Just about anything.

  The End

  About the Author

  Cecily Wolfe is a librarian in Cleveland, Ohio, where she lives with her two teenage daughters, both of whom are published authors and excellent cooks, which is perfect, since she herself can hardly boil water. They share a home with several cats and more books than they can count.

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