by E. M. Fitch
Ryan grabbed for Cassie’s hand. She laced her fingers with his, smiling at him. He ducked his head and pressed a sweet kiss to her knuckles. Over his lowered head, her eyes drifted toward the open door. A restless forest lay just beyond the scorched soccer field. From here, you couldn’t tell what pattern the burn marks lay in, all you could see was blackened smudges etched throughout the otherwise green grass.
The sound of the door slamming behind her caused Cassie and Ryan to both whip their heads around. Someone yelled out, “Leave it open, for the love of—” Mr. Rossi cleared his throat loudly before the offending student could finish, but he did gesture for the teacher standing nearest the door to prop it back open. Several sighs of relief went up from the back of the room.
Principal Rossi called everyone to attention. The students settled into quiet states of agitation. They were on edge, but not unsure. They all knew what was coming.
Principal Rossi described the vandalism on the soccer field as an “intricate prank.” He spoke about the graffiti on the side of the school, as though everyone sitting in front of him hadn’t heard about it already. He placated, telling them not to worry, but that the school did need to know who had done it. He kept his tone soft, reassuring, but everyone could see where he was leading.
“So if we don’t find out who did this, and soon, the current bans will stay in effect at school,” he said, gesturing to the right side of the stage. The curtain that had hung still ruffled. “Now if you’ll all please pay kind attention to—”
“Hold up!” a boy from across the room yelled. Cassie thought he was a junior, but she wasn’t sure. It was difficult to pinpoint the exact location of the words. “So if no one fesses up, tennis is canceled all season? That’s crazy!”
Mr. Rossi wasn’t quick enough to deny it. Shouts started up from every end, surrounding Cassie.
“What about the Prom?”
“This sucks!”
“For some frigging graffiti and a stupid prank? Are you kidding me?”
“I need my extracurriculars for college!”
Students booed and hissed and a few threw crumpled up balls of paper which got Mr. Rossi out from behind the podium and pointing down into the crowds. Behind him, a uniformed officer Cassie didn’t recognize calmly walked across the floor and to the podium. His uniform was the same as Officer Gibbons’. Cassie’s attention broke. She swept the large room for her friend. She didn’t see him.
She saw something else though, a tiny brush of pink, fluttering through the open space around her. It caught her eye and she followed it, a tiny butterfly floating through open air. Her eyes were drawn to the weaving forest beyond the soccer field. It was so hard to tell if it was just the wind, or something other … that caused the trees to dip and pitch like that. She blinked, refocusing on the auditorium, seeking that tiny butterfly that fluttered about.
The butterfly landed on the stage curtain nearest to Cassie. A blip of pink, flexing and fluttering his tiny wings, against the deep red fabric.
What should have been beautiful sent of shiver of dread down Cassie’s spine. The officer started speaking. The students settled into disgruntled silence, not wanting to miss whatever other travesty would be inflicted unjustly upon them.
The police officer wasted no time.
“We’re instituting a curfew.” He continued speaking over the uproar that burst from the students. “Until the issue is resolved. Eight PM is the new town-wide curfew. All citizens aged eighteen and younger will be at home or fined if caught out after hours.”
“This is complete bullshit!” one student yelled.
A girl near Cassie whined, “Can’t one of you without a social life just take the bullet for the rest of us?”
The officer kept speaking as though no one had interrupted him. He stressed that the curfew was the town’s idea and that safety was “the most important thing.” He spoke deliberately, asking the students to only congregate in well-lit, designated areas, warning them away from parking lots, empty lots, and graveyards. Jon turned with a meaningful look toward Ryan. Both frowned. He ended a speech that Cassie couldn’t even hear half of with the assurance that they already had a few “promising leads.”
At the mention of possible culprits, the students did settle into an uneasy stillness. Discreet looks were cast into the section of students wearing darker clothing, Ami and Lexi in their midst. A low murmur started up through the crowd. Cassie caught a few of the words.
“Like most of us could even design anything that good … ”
“Can’t believe they haven’t just arrested her yet.”
And the more pervasive, terrifying question: “Where did they even get the blood they used?”
Mr. Rossi took to the podium again to say that the rest of the morning would be spent listening to a lecture on safety, given by a teacher from the Health Education department. A short, round woman that Cassie recognized but had never had as a teacher, walked toward the podium. She was decidedly more cheerful than either their principal or the police officer and the students listened with half an ear as she started in about safety in non-controlled settings.
Jon and Ryan talked in low tones over the lecture.
“I don’t care what he says, I’m not going to stop hiking.”
“I thought they thought it was one of us? What’s with the stranger danger routine?”
“It’s just like when the carnies came through,” Samantha whispered. Cassie worked hard to not make eye contact. She didn’t think anyone really believed her about that anyway.
“Sam, not again,” Jon groaned. “Those were just a few ugly, messed-up guys. The carnival left, they left.”
“But it’s just like—”
“No, it’s not!”
Something fluttered in the space by the short teacher’s ear. Another butterfly, a blue one this time. Cassie cast her gaze around the wide, open air of the auditorium. The pink creature was there, waiting on the still curtain. She looked to the open door, cringing against Ryan, unsure but suddenly worried that Aidan might just be standing there, watching her. And why not? He was invading all her safe spaces lately.
But no, the door frame was empty. Something was off though, something beyond the door. The sky looked darker, though not by clouds. Something else, something large but made up of pieces, was blotting out the weak sunlight.
She heard them before she saw them, a flapping and rush of wind on feathers that was deafening when it filled the space of the auditorium. Birds, hundreds of crows, flocked into the room through the open doors, joining a growing swell of butterflies.
Screams drowned out the caws. The ground shook, vibrations sped up Cassie’s legs as hundreds of students stood and started climbing over each other to get to the doors. The Health Ed teacher screamed, her arms up over her head as birds swooped down at her. Across the space, Cassie’s father ran from the corner in which he stood and slammed one of the doors closed. Mr. Rossi puffed to get to the second. Before he could get it shut though, something slammed into it from the outside. A goat, a large white goat, burst through. His head lowered as he butted open the door, and he charged Mr. Rossi, horns down.
The principal screeched and ran toward the stage. The goat caught him on the backside and sent him sprawling up the stage steps to a mingle of cheers and screams.
Cassie got swept up in the crowd of her section, pulled toward the aisle by both Rebecca and Ryan. The birds circled madly in the center of the auditorium, only a few breaking off here and there to dive at the people dashing past. Shouts echoed off the walls, reverberating in the air. Cassie got caught in a scrum at the door, losing her grip on both her friends as students pushed and pulled their way through. The hall was flooded with people, most running toward the lockers and away from the creatures that were beginning to follow. A few crows made it out of the gym and now flapped and screeched down the hallways, chasing the running students.
Mr. Rossi was the last one out of t
he auditorium, his shirt untucked from his pants, his face red. He wheezed as he struggled to draw breath.
“You okay?” Cassie jumped as a hand grabbed her arm. It was her father. She nodded, pushing her disheveled hair out of her face. Something slammed into the closed door behind Mr. Rossi and he jumped, turning and kicking the door when it shook again. From beyond, the stray goat bayed.
“You see?” he yelled, turning to face the remaining student body. Every person lining the halls turned to look at him. “You see what you’re doing? This is why we need a curfew and this is why we need police officers speaking at assemblies!”
“How could any of us have possibly done this?” a student shouted. “It was a group of freaking birds and a wild goat!”
“We were all in there, too!” another boy yelled. Several people were crying, dabbing at scratched forearms with the ends of their shirts. One girl sat on the floor, her head between her knees, breathing hard. A couple guys laughed.
Mr. Rossi straightened taller than Cassie had ever thought possible, his face a mottled puce. “Enough! Homerooms. Everyone. Now!”
“Did you see that goat send Rossi flying?” Stephanie asked, laughing. “Pow! Right up those stairs!”
“Shit, Allen,” Lara muttered. “So not funny. Who can we force to fess up for this, you think?”
“For the goat or the paint job?”
“Either. Both. Who cares? So long as practices get started again. This track shit is weak. We have a game next Thursday.”
Cassie ignored the back and forth. Coach Kelly had arranged it so the students on the softball team could be excused from study hall to use the track. Lara and Stephanie both had study hall at the same time as Cassie, fourth period. For the foreseeable future, Cassie would be spending that time lapping them on the track.
“Move it along, guys,” she muttered, standing. She pulled her leg up behind her, stretching one quad with a gentle rocking motion before switching to the other. Her eyes were drawn to the marred grass she would be circling for the next forty-five minutes, Aidan’s gift to her. She started her jog before the other two had even finished tying their laces. The track surrounded the Varsity soccer field, a quarter of a mile around. Cassie took it slow for the first two laps, jogging at her ease, Stephanie and Lara chatting away beside her.
The soccer field and track were all encased by a chain-link fence. Nothing too high, only up to Cassie’s chest, but it was enough to keep runaway balls from flying off field and rolling down the steep hill into traffic. It wasn’t a busy road that ran alongside the school, except during certain times of the day. At the start of the workday, the road was packed, and every afternoon cars would line the asphalt. Just now, like most other things in town at this time of day, it was empty, only the occasional car whizzing past.
The fence was high enough to make Cassie feel caught inside it, too, trapped in Aidan’s path. She picked up her speed after the first half mile, outpacing Stephanie and Lara by half a track length. She could no longer hear their conversation behind her. The cold air rushed by in comforting whispers. The air chilled her skin but the movement brought a prickle of sweat to her hairline. Her muscles burned and she welcomed it, welcomed the escape from the stagnant fear in which she had been stuck. When she was running, even around the burnt-up soccer field, she felt free.
She wanted that feeling, longed for it, in her everyday life. It wouldn’t come back on its own. She wouldn’t feel safe until Aidan was gone. She just didn’t know how to make that happen. One thing she did know, ignoring him wasn’t working. It was only making it worse.
It had to be Aidan that sent the animals scurrying into the school like that. Why? Cassie had no idea. She wasn’t sure if it was a plea for her attention, an attempt to scare her, or perhaps the animals just fleeing from the malevolent force that was once again taking over their woods. Maybe it all was just “some freak accident,” like her father had said when explaining his day at work to her mother over dinner.
It was naive to hope that, Cassie knew. But the alternative, the thought that things were coming to a head with Aidan, was terrifying.
The idea of confronting him caused her breath to freeze in her lungs. She missed a step in her run and stumbled forward, catching herself before she face-planted.
“You okay, Cap?” Lara shouted breathlessly from behind. Cassie nodded but didn’t turn, keeping her face forward.
She had convinced the rest of the creatures who had kidnapped Laney, (because no matter how willingly Laney had gone, Cassie couldn’t think of it as anything but a kidnapping) that she didn’t see them. She had convinced Laney herself of this. Once Laney believed it, they had gone. Nearly all of them. If Cassie broke now and spoke to Aidan, would that bring them all back?
It wasn’t just the thought of seeing her best friend again, changed but alive, able to reach out and touch Cassie, hold her again and tell her she was going to be okay. It wasn’t that thought that caused Cassie’s chest to collapse in on itself. There was more. What if they all came back? What if Jude came back? How many more of her classmates would he want to take and hurt? How many girls would turn up on the side of the road with heart failure if Cassie finally acknowledged Aidan again?
Cassie ran until her legs burned, until the interior of her throat was raw from dragging cold air through her teeth. Lara and Stephanie had already collapsed on the side of the track, huffing and wheezing as they lay flat on their backs. They must have completed the two miles Coach Kelly assigned. Cassie hadn’t even kept a count of her laps. She knew she hit two miles a while back.
“Hey, Harris!” Lara called out as Cassie neared. “Take it easy, will ya?”
“Yeah,” Stephanie added. “You’re making us look bad, Captain.”
Cassie slowed as she approached her teammates. “I’m gonna take a last cool down lap,” she said. She kept it slow this time, warring in her mind.
Ignore him. Don’t. Ignore. Don’t.
She sang it like a mantra, in and out, pacing her breath. At the end of the lap, she still had no idea what she should do.
“Is it weird that we’re meeting here?” Samantha asked, looking around the small circle of friends. Cassie shrugged as Ryan shook his head. Jon leaned against the large, obvious headstone. The cemetery grounds were still dusted with frost. Sludgy piles of dirty snow had iced over in the dips and valleys of the uneven earth, leaving the impression of scattered, small pools of filthy water. They looked like mini stagnant swamps, frozen in polka dots around the scattered stubs of gravestones.
“Well, that cop did say to avoid strange places,” Rebecca said, though she threw her jacket over a nearby flat stone in the rock wall and sat down on top of it anyway.
“Even mentioned graveyards,” Samantha added. Her gaze darted from the headstone behind her boyfriend to the tree line, scanning the nearby forest. If Cassie didn’t know better, she would have thought Samantha was also on the lookout for Aidan.
“This is our place,” Jon interjected. “They closed down the school after the last class. Cops are crawling all over any other place in town. And our parents, mine especially, are all freaking twitchy. They don’t want me going anywhere.”
“So they’re cool with the local haunted cemetery then?” Rebecca asked, smiling slightly. The Gray Lady’s headstone commanded an unconscious presence behind Jon, like a sixth member of the party. Or maybe that was just the ghost of Laney, always so present, especially in her graveyard.
“No, they’d flip,” Jon finally answered, leaning over the backpack he had propped against the base of the headstone. He had it open and was rummaging around inside. Cassie thought the bag would be sodden by the time he picked it back up; Jon had dropped it just at the edge of a slush pile. Her feet were already damp. Even with the weak sunlight struggling through the branches, it was cold. She crossed to Rebecca, nudging her over and sharing a corner of her jacket. “But I don’t want to hang around my house today and they don’t get home fr
om work ‘till six.”
“Thank goodness,” Samantha muttered. Jon shot her a suggestive glance that Cassie wished she hadn’t seen. The look suggested there were many afternoons that Samantha and Jon had taken advantage of the empty house. As Jon straightened back up with a brown paper bag, Cassie had a fleeting moment of wishing she had an empty house every once in a while. Her gaze darted to Ryan, and her face heated. Her boyfriend wasn’t looking at her though, his eyes were on the brown paper bag Jon was now holding out, the shapes inside familiar.
“Drink? Anyone?” Jon asked.
“Jon,” Ryan growled in a low warning. “Really?”
“Just soda,” he said, defensively. He pulled out a pack of root beers and tossed one at each of them, leaving the sixth teetering on the Gray Lady’s monument.
Maybe it was strange that Cassie felt so at home in Gray Lady’s cemetery. Maybe it wasn’t. She did feel like it had all started with her, Lizzy Palmer, and Laney’s unnatural obsession. The root beer was warm and fizzy as it slid down her throat, a pleasant contrast to the cold air that surrounded her. Everything felt slightly unhinged. No softball practices to hide in, no after-school activities. Prom was still a few months away but already there was talk about canceling it. Worst of all, the tension in the hallways at school had been unbearable. So maybe it was weird that the five of them found comfort hanging out in a secluded graveyard, and maybe it wasn’t.
“They won’t keep the after-school stuff on hold forever. They can’t,” Rebecca reasoned. She popped the top on her soda and took a swallow. “People have scholarships riding. Wasn’t Lawrence looking good for a golf ride? I thought I heard that.”
“What about you two?” Samantha asked, pointing at Rebecca and Cassie. “Captains, right? Scholarship offers could be on the way for you guys, too.”
Rebecca nodded thoughtfully, sipping again but not answering. Cassie didn’t even bother. It didn’t matter. School activities could start again or they could not, it was all a big show. It wasn’t any of the kids at the school messing with everyone’s head. It was Aidan and there was no way to explain him to anyone.