by Aarsen, Zoe
Unable to control my curiosity, I raised my window and whispered, “What are you doing?”
I heard rustling, and then suddenly Trey was standing upright again, his flashlight dancing across the aluminum siding of my house until it came to rest on my face. Instinctively, I shielded my eyes.
“One of the stray cats my mom feeds had kittens back here,” he whispered back loudly. I could barely hear him over the crickets chirping.
“Hang on,” I called out quietly. I pulled a cardigan off the back of the chair at my desk and slipped out the back door of our house through the kitchen. Outside, I opened the gate to our own back yard and then opened the gate to the Emorys,’ joining Trey in the chilly dark next door. He was crouching again, leaning over with his flash light on but resting in the grass, pointed away from whatever he was inspecting. His black faded t-shirt rode up his back revealing his bumpy spine and just the tiniest bit of the top of his butt. I caught myself blushing for even looking to see if his butt was showing, grateful that at least it was dark enough that he wouldn’t notice my shame.
“There are six of them, I think,” he whispered at me without turning to face me. I squatted down next to him to try to get a look. Sure enough, a small calico cat was stretched out beneath the Emorys’ white azalea bushes, which were still oddly in bloom since warm weather had stretched so far past the end of August. “Look at the little gray one.”
There were six furry blobs, possibly more, snuggled up against the mother cat, nursing. The calico cat blinked at us with bored gold eyes. The kitten in the center was gray with tiger stripes.
“How did you know they were back here?” I asked quietly, not wanting to alarm the mother cat.
“I heard meowing from my room,” he replied. “I thought about bringing some cat food out here but it might freak out the mother cat if I get too close.”
We watched in silence for a few minutes, mostly relying on the light of the crescent moon. I thought about how odd it was that we were inches from each other, our elbows ever-so-slightly touching, actually having a conversation after years of carrying on our acquaintance in silence. The strangest thing was that it felt almost like we knew each other well. Like it was the most natural thing in the world for us to both be peeking under his mother’s flowering bushes at midnight.
“You should leave a can of food back here for her,” I urged him finally. “Just don’t put it too close under the bushes.”
“Good thinking,” he agreed, and slowly stood up. He walked across his back yard and silently entered his own house through the back door. The layout of the Emorys’ house was identical to that of ours; all of the houses on our street were built in the Eighties by the same architectural firm. They were all carbon copies of each other, except for the handful of houses on Martha Road that had invested in second-floor additions over the last thirty years. When he returned, he had already opened a small can of fancy cat food, and rejoined me near the bushes to set it down a few feet away from the mother cat. The smell of salty salmon caught the mother cat’s attention, but she made no attempt to abandon her tiny kittens to investigate its source as we watched.
“I’m afraid to leave them out here alone for the night,” he admitted finally with a small laugh.
“Cats have kittens in suburbia all the time and they’re just fine,” I assured him, not even really believing my own words. Wisconsin was filled with plenty of nocturnal wildlife that might pose a threat to an immobile mother cat with six kittens to defend. In our own yard next door, before our dog Moxie got old, she was constantly killing invaders and dropping their carcasses on our back stoop. Rarely did my mother bring her back into the house after an hour in the yard and not find evidence of the dog’s hard work: a dead possum, a dead raccoon, a dead squirrel, or a dead chipmunk.
“I might sleep out here,” Trey announced suddenly. “Just to scare critters away, you know? There’s no way I could try move the cat and the babies into the house.”
I agreed with him; moving the cat into the house would be impossible. I was humored, but touched, that he went back into the house again and returned with a camping sleeping bag and a pillow.
“Aren’t your parents going to think it’s weird that you’re sleeping outside without a tent?” I asked. I had stood up, ready to return to my own house because I was starting to get really cold, and I had seen my mom shut off the light in our living room, most likely signifying that she was turning in for the night.
“My parents already think I’m really weird,” he said matter-of-factly with a shrug.
We stood eye to eye, and I was bursting with things to say in that moment. Trey Emory, the guy who Hannah thought might shoot up the high school student body, cared enough about a stray cat and her newborn kittens to sleep outside in the yard. It was totally weird of him. But also totally endearing. What else did I not know about the boy who slept fewer than fifty feet from my own bedroom every night? We stared at each other without exchanging a word for at least a minute, and none of the comments boiling up in my chest made their way up my throat and onto my tongue.
“Be careful,” I encouraged him, daring to reach out and pat him lightly on his upper arm.
“Yeah, okay,” he agreed.
I looked back over my shoulder on my way toward the gate leading me out of the Emorys’ yard just once, and saw him already busying himself with the task of spreading out his sleeping bag a few feet away from the bushes. My heart swelled for a brief moment before I remembered that I had an actual, real text message from Evan Richmond on my mobile phone in my room. I was going to Homecoming with one of the cutest boys to ever graduate from Weeping Willow High School. I couldn’t be bothered with any kind of silly crush on my next door neighbor.
In the morning, my first impulse of the day was to peek out the window to see if Trey was still outside. But I had slept in a little late; the sun was already high in the sky, and it looked like Trey had already rolled up his sleeping bag and headed indoors.
I spent the day trying to banish him from my thoughts, but couldn’t shake the hunch that something significant had happened between us under the moon in his yard, just as undeniably as something strange had happened in Olivia’s basement on Friday night.
CHAPTER 4
On Monday morning, life returned to a state of normalcy.
It officially felt like fall that morning, with dry leaves blanketing the sidewalks I followed on my way to school. The sweet smell of autumn was in the air. In the course of just two days, the season had changed. It felt odd that just three days earlier, we’d been swimming in the Richmonds’ pool. Summer was now definitively over.
Before classes began, Olivia approached me in the hallway.
“My brother said he’s taking you to Homecoming,” she said, and I cringed, unable to tell if she was happy or upset about that. “It’s cool.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. “Really? Because if it’s not, I can ask someone else. Honestly, Olivia. If it’s going to be weird for you, I’ll ask Dan.”
Dan, with his buzz cut and endless freckles, was all the way at the end of the hall, out of earshot. He had already gathered up his books for first period and told me to have a good morning.
“Don’t be silly! Of course it’s cool. You and my brother make a cute couple. Candace might be a freak about it, but ignore her. Evan thinks she’s a wind bag.”
Having Olivia’s blessing made me feel much more at ease about going to the dance. “What about Mischa?” I asked delicately. “Do you think she and Amanda might think I’m stepping on Michelle’s toes?”
Olivia wrinkled her nose. “Michelle already has a new boyfriend at the University of Minnesota. I wouldn’t worry about that.”
In the cafeteria at lunch time, conversation had returned to the Homecoming game on Friday in Kenosha and whether or not we’d all take the bus across the state to cheer for our team. The verdict was that we would go to Kenosha because Candace was insistent that we support Isaac, but we would not stoo
p so low as to ride the bus with the gross freshmen and unruly sophomores.
“I can drive,” Pete offered. “We can fit five in the Infiniti.” He looked around our table and counted heads with his finger. “One, two, three, four, five,” he said, pointing first to his own chest and then to Olivia, me, Candace, and Jeff. Although Jeff was tall and played basketball with Pete, he wasn’t especially cute or funny. I had a feeling that by the middle of the week, Olivia would pressure Pete to make Jeff ask Hannah to Homecoming just so that no one would be left out.
“Amanda and I have to ride with the cheerleaders on the bus,” Mischa informed Hannah. “You can ride with us if you’d like. It’ll be fun.” Hannah sat at the far end of the table eating yogurt and nodded.
I had never been to a football game as a spectator before. As a member of the color guard, I had always sat with the band in my unattractive blue uniform, waiting for performances on the field. It had never really occurred to me before that I might one day sit up in the stands eating hotdogs and popcorn with the cool crowd from school. While I wasn’t much of a sports fan, the thought of the Homecoming game and riding to Kenosha in Pete’s car put butterflies in my stomach.
After lunch, I walked back to my locker with Candace, who had been uncharacteristically quiet for the past hour. Of our small group of friends, I was probably the least close to Candace, but our lockers were along the same wall in the same hallway, so from time to time I found myself walking alongside her, usually with little to say.
“I’ve been meaning to tell you something,” she said in a low whisper as soon as the others had walked down the hall in the other direction toward their own lockers to exchange books for the afternoon session of classes, “about Friday. There was something weird with the story Hannah told about me when we were playing that game.”
I stopped walking for a second, so startled by the abrupt way in which Candace had gone from cheerfully making plans for Friday night in the cafeteria to instantaneously serious when she brought up Olivia’s party, returning me to the state of discomfort I had experienced on Friday in Olivia’s basement. Maybe I hadn’t been the only one who’d felt a little too scared to have fun during the game.
“Yeah?” I asked, not wanting to volunteer my own unpleasant memory of the party.
“Hannah said during all that stuff about being in the water that I went out into the waves far away from my brothers. I don’t have any brothers. I have two half-brothers from my dad’s second marriage, but I’m pretty sure I’ve never mentioned anything about Dylan and Jordan to Hannah. I mean, they live in Green Bay. I barely ever see them.”
I frowned. I had known Candace since kindergarten and I didn’t even know that her dad had two sons with his new wife. Both of Candace’s parents had remarried and I only knew about her younger half-sister, Julia, who was in eighth grade.
“That is weird,” I agreed, wondering if I should confide in Candace about my own astonishment surrounding Hannah’s knowledge of the red Prius that had been parked in the Richmonds’ driveway the night of the birthday party.
Just then, I looked up to see Trey approaching us. My involuntary reaction was to smile and raise my hand to wave, but a nanosecond after we made eye contact, he looked away and walked past me as if I didn’t even exist. I blushed, humiliated. I had definitely overestimated whatever we had shared in his back yard, and I was ashamed at the force with which my heart was beating inside my ribcage. Fortunately Candace hadn’t noticed my momentary distraction; her eyes followed Trey down the hall.
“Nice,” she whispered to me conspiratorially with a wicked grin.
We reached my locker and Candace lingered while I twisted my combination open, her books pressed against her chest. Her focus returned to Hannah and the events of Friday night. “Do you think Hannah’s been like, spying on us? I even went through my Facebook account to see if maybe she saw pictures of them, but I don’t have any up there.”
Just like that, I realized that Candace’s concerns about Hannah were rooted in regular everyday life, not in the realm of supernatural powers, as mine were. It was ridiculous of me to think that maybe Hannah had ESP or some kind of special communication with ghosts.
“Maybe someone just told her,” I suggested. “Like Olivia.”
Candace frowned, unconvinced. I could understand why. Olivia didn’t concern herself with the details of anyone else’s life. She existed in her own little perfect world, blissfully ignorant of the trivialities of everyone else’s plights. “I don’t know. I just think it’s weird.”
Hannah was in my first class after lunch, U.S. History, taught by Mr. Dean. Mr. Dean had been a teacher at Weeping Willow High School for so long that on the first day of junior year, he had squinted closely at my name and asked if I was any relation to Krista Brady, my cousin who had graduated ten years earlier.
“Class, I know that around this time of year the only election on anyone’s mind is for Homecoming Court. But I’d like to remind you that Student Government nominations are due this Friday, and I’d like to encourage all of you to consider running for class office,” Mr. Dean said. He was the faculty administrator for Student Government, overseeing the elections and assigning tasks to the four officers of each class. Student Government was something that rarely crossed my mind; Olivia was always our Class President, and Michael Walton, a brainiac on the Mathlete team who everyone knew would eventually be our class valedictorian, was always Vice President. Tracy Hartford, the biggest gossip in the junior class, was always Secretary, and Emily Morris had been Treasurer since freshman year.
When the bell rang and I was gathering up my books, Mr. Dean said, “Miss Brady? Can I have a word with you?”
Hannah raised her eyebrows at me on her way out of class, wondering why I had been singled out by Mr. Dean for a one-on-one.
I approached Mr. Dean as he erased his notes from our class on the chalkboard. We were still studying the Revolutionary War, beginning our study of U.S. History from the top. Our homework assignment over the weekend had been to write an essay on Thomas Paine’s pamphlet, Common Sense, and I hadn’t done a fantastic job, since I’d been so preoccupied with thoughts of Trey, Evan, and the strangeness of Olivia’s party.
“Yes, Mr. Dean?” I asked.
“I wanted to ask if you’d given any thought to running for the role of junior Class Treasurer,” Mr. Dean said. “I think you’d be a natural.”
I was confused as to why he’d think I’d be a natural at anything. The only class in which I really ever stood out as exceptional at all was art, and I didn’t have any reason to think that elderly Mr. Dean with his suspenders and bow ties was swapping stories with Miss Kirkovic, the far younger and cooler art teacher. Besides, I had already overheard that Jason Arkadian, who was one-half of our high school’s measly debate team, had turned in a nomination form with five signatures in order to run for the office. Jason was hardly as popular as guys like Pete and Isaac, but still, people knew who he was. He’d never been called fat, hadn’t lost a twin in a horrific tragedy that everyone in town had heard about. Basically, I had a hunch that a victory over him would require a lot of work.
“I am terrible at math,” I assured him. “I don’t think I’d do a very good job of managing class finances.”
“But you seem like a resourceful young lady,” the old man countered me. “The junior Class Treasurer is a very important role. You’d be in charge of raising funds for the junior class trip.”
Every year, during the first week of May, the junior class boarded school buses and went on an overnight trip to either Chicago or Minneapolis. The previous year, the junior class Student Government had organized a daffodil sale and a chocolate sale, both of which had underwhelmed, and the funds raised had fallen so short of the goal that kids each had to contribute two hundred dollars to partake in the trip. I didn’t really want to entertain the idea of running in the election, but Mr. Dean’s suggestion that I try already had me thinking about all those leaves I’d seen on th
e ground on my walk to school that morning. I could organize a student service to rake leaves and shovel snow, the two tasks that everyone in Willow needed help with most urgently.
“I’ll think about it,” I assured him, and rushed off to meet Hannah, Candace, Mischa, and Olivia for gym class.
In the hallway outside the history class room, Cheryl was waiting for me patiently. I genuinely felt disgusted with myself for the way in which I had been treating her since the beginning of the school year. Cheryl was so mild-mannered, so genuinely sweet. She was the kind of girl I was sure would come into her own away at college; she’d find an intellectual boyfriend and finally be recognized for her academic potential. But in high school she was a girl with big clunky glasses and the wrong style of jeans.
“Hey,” she said shyly. Poor Cheryl. I hadn’t officially put the brakes on our friendship but she knew the score. I sat with my new friends at lunch and had partnered with Mischa in Chem Lab instead of with her, at the time insisting that Mischa really needed my help whereas Cheryl would get a good grade in Chem Lab on her own. “I was wondering what you were doing on Friday. My mom got tickets to the Lamb and Owl show in Madison, and I was thinking maybe you might want to go.”