Of the Trees(48)

“She’s showering for work,” her dad said, folding his paper and tossing it into the garbage bin. “She’s going to stick to day shifts for a while, be home after school for you.”

“She doesn’t need to,” Cassie said. Her breathing hitched in that awful way it did when she was overwhelmed. She cleared her throat until the feeling passed. She didn’t look up from her hands, twisting together on the surface of the table in front of her. Her father didn’t answer.

The silence in the kitchen stretched, becoming uncomfortable. Her mother’s greeting when she entered the room a moment later felt forced and too cheerful. Her father didn’t speak again until they were both in his car and about to pull out of the driveway. The police cars were gone now. They had left for good last night, though it must have been after Cassie had fallen asleep.

“You sure?” he asked, pausing at the end of their driveway even though the street was dark and empty. Cassie nodded, her features glowing green in the dashboard light. “It’s not going to be a good day today.”

Cassie looked at her father, saw the grief and pain etched on his face. Jessica’s death would do that to a lot of parents, Cassie thought. Remind them all of the mortality of children. “I know. But it’s not going to be better by tomorrow.”

He nodded, accepting that stark truth, and pulled out of the driveway.





What bothered Cassie most was how annoyingly normal the school looked. The brick remained the same, one spot looking cleaner from where a set of bloody eyes had been scrubbed off. Students trickled in from the parking lot, shoving each other and sipping coffees. The devastation that Cassie felt all weekend, the sorrow that still weighed her down, wasn’t permeating every facet of her school. She didn’t know what she expected: weeping, loud and attention-seeking sobbing maybe. But it just wasn’t there.

There was a small collection—pink and white teddy bears, flowers, a few candles—propped up at the base of the large oak tree that overhung the softball field. Cassie drifted over to it. She could feel her father watching as she left him in the parking lot. A scattering of notes was stapled to the tree, hastily scrawled bits of paper that read how missed Jessica would be, how wonderful she was, what a great friend, student, peer she had always been. They made Cassie want to vomit.

It felt artificial and forced. Who were these people? Did they really know Jessica?

Did you? a sadistic voice in her head whispered.

But no, she did. Cassie had played softball with Jessica Evans since she was five years old. Every spring, seven days a week and twice on the weekends, they worked together, played together. Jessica always brought sunflower seeds on game day; she loved to suck the salt from them but never actually ate the seed. She hated the color pink and teal ran a close second. In sixth grade, she had this terrible haircut that her mom insisted she get, and she hated it so much she cut her own hair to try and fix it. She pulled out the scissors in the bathroom on picture day, and Cassie had been horrified, but Jessica had just laughed, remarking, “Won’t my mom be surprised when she orders my pictures?”

She was tempestuous and fierce. Bitchy and forward. And now she was dead.

The notes stuck to the tree fluttered against the rough bark. The fake fur on the teddy bears and stuffed animals, the petals on the dying flowers, they all ruffled and then stilled. Cassie pulled her jacket more firmly around herself, knowing she should be cold but not quite able to feel it. She pulled her bag from her shoulder, digging around until she found her stapler and a loose sheet of paper. She scrawled her own message on the paper, her pen digging trenches through the faded blue lines. Using a closed fist, she punched the stapler to the tree, catching her paper in between.

Larger than the other messages, fiercer and angrier —just like Jessica would have been at the sight of the pink and white teddy bears—sat Cassie’s message.





SHE WAS MY FRIEND


It was all Cassie could think to write. Stepping back, she thought maybe it was the most honest thing there.

She turned to move toward the front door, half expecting her father to be standing there, still waiting for her. He wasn’t. Laney was. She stood, just at the edge of the parking lot, watching Cassie. Her brow was wrinkled in consternation. Her mouth bobbed open. Before she could speak, Cassie shouldered her bag and moved past her.

She entered the school without a backward glance.





Inside the school, it was in no way normal. Everything felt loud and rushed, more crowded and closer. Cassie felt claustrophobic in the halls for the first time ever. Was the ceiling really always that low? There wasn’t normally that many people in the halls between classes, surely. And weren’t the halls wider?

The classes took forever to settle down, with students whispering among each other. Cassie kept quiet in her seat, her focus on her teachers or in her notebooks. She could hear them talking about her, but there was nothing she could say.

“Wasn’t Harris there?”

“Ask her.”

“Not me! I heard she was busy anyway.”

Amused sniggering.

“Did you see that picture?” The group of boys behind her cracked up laughing.

Great.

Cassie gritted her teeth, squeezing her pen between her fingers. If it had been a pencil, she was sure it would have snapped. On top of everything else, thanks to Jon and his stupid picture, she was a documented slut now, too. Just wonderful.