Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board (Weeping Willow High)

by Aarsen, Zoe

  We pulled into my driveway and my chest ached a little when I saw that Mom’s car wasn’t in the driveway. She was probably still on her way home from Sheboygan, quite possibly picking up take-out hamburgers at that very moment. Entering a dark house by myself was my least favorite part of any day. At least Moxie would be happy to see me, even if only because I would let her out to go sniff things in the back yard.

  As I gathered up my backpack and opened the back door of the car to climb out, Olivia said, “So, Hannah still doesn’t have a date for the dance.”

  I froze. Olivia’s tone had gone from funny and joking to threatening just like that, at the change of a topic. How was it possible that it was Wednesday and Hannah still hadn’t worked up the nerve to ask someone? Didn’t she know that Olivia and Candace wouldn’t permit her to attend the dance alone? Going to the dance with girlfriends was fine for girls who weren’t in the popular circle, but it was absolutely not going to be permitted among her own friends by the girl who was sure to be named Homecoming Queen.

  “Has she mentioned anything to you about going by herself? I mean, I know she said she has a dress, but that would just be…” Candace trailed off, looking for the right word. “Pathetic.”

  I shook my head, wanting to distance myself from Hannah’s dateless state as much as possible. “No, she hasn’t said a word,” I claimed.

  “Well, if she says anything, could you, like, discourage her from going to the dance alone? I mean, obviously she can do whatever she wants, but that would be really weird,” Olivia said.

  I let myself into my house through the back door with my keys feeling uneasy despite the fact that I knew Evan’s interest in me would prevent any such conversations about me from being had behind my back. But I knew Olivia and Candace would have turned on me as quickly as they’d turned on Hannah for any little reason. It was stressing me out to think about it, but it was becoming evident that having a real boyfriend was going to be more important in securing my popularity than even winning a Student Government election. Evan had only asked me to one measly dance; he’d given no indication of actually wanting to be my boyfriend.

  Moxie limped over to the back door to greet me, her tail wagging, and I pet her and stepped out into the back yard with her to watch her stretch her legs. The sun was already setting even though it was barely seven o’clock, yet another reminder that summer had passed. Moxie’s attention was captured by something in the far corner of our yard by the back fence, and I wondered if she’d have enough energy to play fetch with one of her chew toys in the yard. I heard the Emorys’ back door open, and felt what seemed like a bolt of electricity shoot through my body when I looked over the fence and saw Trey stepping outside carrying a can of cat food.

  “Hey,” he said unenthusiastically to me, crossing his yard to where we had seen the mother cat with her kittens under the bushes near the fence earlier in the week.

  “Hi,” I said, trying to sound as casual as he had sounded.

  He disappeared as he crouched down to place the cat food beneath the azalea bushes, and I shifted uncomfortably, wanting to say more. “How are they doing?” I called over the fence, wishing I could cure myself of the desire to have Trey pay attention to me.

  A moment passed before Trey stood up again and replied, “They’re alright,” he said, looking right at me over the fence. “One didn’t make it that first night. But the other five are already getting kind of bigger.”

  I cringed. The thought of a kitten not living through its first night of life took my breath away with sorrow for a moment. Grief filled me, as familiar a sensation as hunger or sleepiness. “Which one?” I dared to ask, trying to visualize what the six little balls of fur had looked like on the night I’d seen them. The only kitten I remembered clearly was the fuzzy gray striped one, because Trey had singled it out for attention.

  “One of the black ones,” Trey said.

  For a moment I wondered what Trey had done with its little furry body; presumably he hadn’t left it beneath the bushes with the mother cat and the other kittens. I stopped myself from asking, though.

  “That sucks,” I said, my voice cracking a little. I hadn’t realized I was so close to tears over the loss of a little cat that I’d never even touched.

  Trey frowned for a few seconds, looking down at presumably where the mother cat was beneath the bushes, and then agreed, “Yeah.”

  It wasn’t quite dark out yet, but it almost was, and our solemn moment mourning the death of the kitten was punctuated by the early chirping of crickets. The moon was already high in the evening sky, waxing that week, bright and almost full.

  Trey looked over his shoulder toward his own house for a moment, and then quickly back at me. “That’s weird,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Do you feel that? It feels like someone is watching us.”

  I looked around, very aware in that instant that he was right. It did feel like someone was with us, watching us, just like it had felt in Olivia’s basement the previous Friday night, when we had been playing Hannah’s game. I felt the little hairs on my forearms raise with goosebumps. The feeling was unnerving and made me wish that Trey and I were both at least on the same side of the fence.

  “Yeah,” I admitted. “I feel that, too.”

  Trey looked as if he was about to say something more, but then we both heard the engine of my mother’s car and the flood of light from her headlights blasted the aluminum siding on the Emorys’ house as she pulled into our driveway, country music playing on her stereo.

  “See ya,” Trey waved, dismissing himself at my mother’s arrival. He returned back to his house through its back door, and I clapped my hands to summon Moxie.

  “Moxie! Come on, girl,” I called. My beloved old dog’s ears perked when she heard me call her name, and she limped back toward me as quickly as she could in those days. Behind me, in the house, I heard Mom enter through the side door and set down paper bags on the kitchen table. A moment later she was behind me, poking her head out through the back door as I waited for Moxie to make her way across the back yard.

  “Hey there,” Mom greeted me. “I brought dinner home.”

  “Hamburgers,” I said.

  “How’d you guess?” Mom asked, genuinely surprised that I’d known.

  “Just lucky,” I told her.

  Inside, she unpacked two foil-wrapped stinky sandwiches from the greasy white paper bag and set them down on the table while Moxie licked her lips and started whining. “Was that Trey you were talking to when I got home?” she asked.

  I couldn’t figure out why my mom was so eager to pair me up with Trey. Surely she saw what everyone else in town saw: a guy with smoldering eyes, a permanent scowl, and habit of wearing an army jacket every single day. Not exactly the kind of guy most moms would encourage their daughters to pursue.

  “The Emorys’ have kittens in their back yard,” I said, dancing around the matter of my having been talking to Trey. “There were six, but one didn’t make it.”

  “He could use a haircut, that Trey,” my mother continued, blocking my attempt to change the subject and handing me a plate. “You and Jennie used to always play over at the Emorys’ when you were little. They had that great swing set. Trey took you girls on the school bus for the first time when you started first grade.”

  I unwrapped my hamburger in silence, not wanting to remember back that far. I vaguely remembered the three of us in the Emorys’ yard, pumping our legs on the swings, soaring higher and higher. Jennie used to say she wanted to touch the sky.

  “I always used to think that one of you girls would marry Trey. The three of you were as thick as thieves back then. Mary Jane used to let that boy run wild. He absolutely would refuse to eat the crust on bread whenever he would stay here for lunch, because she always used to cut it off for him—”

  “Mom,” I interrupted her coldly. “I really don’t want to think about it.”

  The words were out of my mouth before I thought
them through, but they were accurate. I didn’t want to remember. It was just too weird, made me too nostalgic, to remember back to what it was like to run up and down Martha Road with Jennie. We roamed the neighborhood during summers when we were kids, and the memories were flooding back of bicycles toppling over, skinned knees, hide and seek up and down the block, climbing over fences.

  Mom made a serious matter out of squirting ketchup and mustard onto her burger and then setting the bun back on its top and patting it into place, trying to prepare her response for me with care. “I’m sorry, McKenna. It’s just that time of year. As soon as the leaves start to change, I can’t help but remember what things were like when you girls were little.”

  Choosing to ignore her, I handed Moxie a significant chunk of the meat from my burger. “I don’t have a crush on Trey. So just… stop thinking we’re going to get together. It’s not gonna happen.”

  Later that night as I waited impatiently to fall asleep, all of my apprehension earlier that week about Hannah and her strangeness had abandoned me, and my thoughts were completely devoted to Trey Emory. In both of my recent encounters with him, I hadn’t thought to look closely enough to see what color his eyes were. Light, I was pretty sure. Green or blue? I couldn’t recall. He hadn’t been wearing the army jacket earlier that night, and I’d been so surprised to see him in the yard that I hadn’t even noticed while we were talking. I was thinking about his biceps, how they had been a little more noticeable than I’d been expecting beneath his tight black t-shirt. I was wondering if he lifted weights, and if so, where, and why he went to such great lengths to hide his jacked arms beneath his ratty jacket.

  I wasn’t thinking about the fact that Olivia had found her dress, but still didn’t have a pair of shoes for the dance.

  CHAPTER 5

  On Friday morning, I stowed my pink cashmere cardigan in my school bag in preparation for the Homecoming game in Kenosha later that night.

  “I’m going to be home late tonight,” I informed my mom in the kitchen, where she was correcting papers submitted by her students with a red pen between her fingers, ready to strike. I took a swig of orange juice straight out of the jug from the fridge.

  “How late?” Mom asked, barely looking up from her grading task.

  “Somewhat late,” I replied smartly. Kenosha was a three-hour drive from Willow, and the game started at seven. Even if it ended promptly at nine, which I was sure it wouldn’t since I knew from past experience that the half-time show would last at least twenty minutes, the earliest I could possibly expect to be home again was midnight. And that was if we didn’t stop for fast food on the way back to town. Which, I strongly suspected, we would.

  “Can you define somewhat?” Mom asked, finally putting her red pen down, adjusting her glasses and looking at me.

  I rolled my eyes, knowing that she was going to make a big deal about my being out past midnight. “I’m going to the Homecoming game with Olivia and Candace. The game starts at seven, but Homecoming games always start late. And it’ll be at least two hours long, and it’s all the way in Kenosha, so the drive back is almost three hours.”

  My mother took a deep breath, not amused with me at all. “So, after midnight is what you’re saying without saying it.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest to suggest my annoyance with her.

  “I don’t feel very good about that, McKenna,” Mom told me. “You know I don’t want to spoil your fun, but that’s really late for a bunch of kids who just got their licenses to be out on the highway. Who’s going to be driving?”

  I hesitated, not really wanting to divulge that we’d be in Pete’s car. Pete’s expensive car.

  “Olivia’s boyfriend,” I replied, not sure my mom would recognize the name if I had said Pete Nicholson.

  “And how old is Olivia’s boyfriend? Old enough to buy beer?”

  It was becoming difficult to resist the urge to groan and tell my mom she was being ridiculous. “Mom. No one is going to be drinking beer. Do you realize Olivia is the Class President? She wouldn’t go around driving drunk. And her boyfriend is not old enough to buy booze, okay? I don’t see what the big deal is. You let me go to the Homecoming game last year with the band and you weren’t a huge freak about it.”

  My mother sighed as if she couldn’t stand to hear another word come out of my mouth. “McKenna, I liked you a lot more before you were fabulous. I want you home by midnight. End of story.”

  I exhaled loudly to let her know that she was ruining my social life. How was I going to tell an entire car full of my friends that I had to be a party pooper and get home before everyone else?

  At lunchtime, our entire table buzzed with excitement. The football team, including Isaac, was loud and obnoxious, obviously getting psyched up for the game that night.

  “Victory! Victory!” Isaac bellowed, manhandling his meatball submarine sandwich to make it look like the sandwich was leading the table in a rousing chant. The other players on the team were roaring with laughter and chiming in, pounding on the table and stomping their feet. The cafeteria supervisors were beaming. Any other day of the year, they’d be handing out detention slips for rowdy behavior left and right, but the day of the Homecoming game, everyone was encouraging the chaos.

  “We should leave no later than three forty-five,” Pete told us. “I have basketball practice for an hour after class, but after that, we should all meet in front of the library.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. Whatever orientation Mr. Dean had planned for those of us wishing to run for student office couldn’t possibly take more than an hour. “You’re going to the Student Government election meeting, right?” I asked Olivia, really wanting for us to attend the meeting together, kind of innocently hoping that she hadn’t been kidding about us running together as a team.

  “I’m not sure,” she said, wrinkling her delicate button nose. “I have a small crisis on my hands. I still don’t have a pair of shoes for the dance tomorrow that matches my dress. I mean, I have a pair of white heels from my uncle’s wedding, but they totally clash. I was thinking about making a mad dash for the mall after school and then meeting you guys at the game.”

  My stomach began to feel queasy. If Olivia wasn’t at Mr. Dean’s meeting, then how serious was she about running for Class President again? What if Mr. Dean wouldn’t let her run because she had so casually disregarded his required meeting? What if Michael Walton saw an opportunity to surge past her and snatched the coveted role of president from her, and I had to spend the rest of junior year listening to his sniveling narrative about the lack of adequate recycling bins in the cafeteria?

  “Oh my god, Olivia, that’s just like the story Hannah told,” Candace announced, her eyes enormous.

  Hannah, at the end of the table, smiled nervously. “The story was just silly,” she murmured.

  It was indeed strange that it was Friday, the day of the big game, just as Hannah had started her story about Olivia’s fictitious death, and Olivia was talking about going to the mall, just as she had done in Hannah’s story. I got a little chill when I remembered what Hannah had told me on the track after Olivia’s party, about how sometimes she saw things.

  “What about the dance?” Olivia asked Hannah suddenly, as if it had only just then, in that second, occurred to her that Hannah had not yet confirmed a date. The topic of the similarities between the day’s circumstances and those described in Hannah’s story was banished. “Who are you going with?”

  Hannah’s face brightened and her eyes sparkled. “Didn’t I tell you guys? I’m going with this guy from my church. He goes to St. Patrick’s in Ortonville.”

  Mischa raised an eyebrow at me and I looked away, not wanting Hannah to observe our doubt. She definitely had not mentioned this mysterious sudden Homecoming date; this was the first we were hearing of it. Olivia, never a skeptic until she had irrefutable reason to be one, looked genuinely surprised. “Really? That’s awesome! What’s his name?”

  “Mark,”
Hannah offered. “Regan. I think he went to public school in Willow until around fifth grade before his parents put him on the bus for private school.”

  “I remember him,” Candace announced in a bored voice. “I remember him in first grade eating uncooked pasta when we were supposed to be stringing it together as necklaces for our mothers in art class. Blond hair, dimples?”

  Hannah nodded.

  “Interesting. I can’t picture what he must look like now,” Mischa commented, peeling dimpled skin off of an orange.

  I tried to remember any blond boys from elementary school in our own grade who had switched to private school at some point, but there were so many names and faces flooding my memories of kids who had moved out of Willow that Mark Regan didn’t come to mind.

  “Cool,” Olivia said with a genuine smile, relieved of not having to chastise Hannah for failing to spark an interest in a boy before the dance. “Is he coming to the game tonight?”