Page 24 of Fade into You

“Hi,” she murmurs, her voice low and exhausted. She sits across from us on the sidewalk, her knees and elbows forming all these pointy angles I’m still not used to.

“Did you bring lunch?” I ask her, noticing her lack of a brown paper bag. “Want some of my sandwich?” I hold out my plastic baggie.

She eyes it suspiciously, then shakes her head. “I can’t eat. I’m too upset.”

Jessa and I exchange a glance, both of us maybe thinking the same thing: they broke up.

“Why?” I ask.

“It’s so unfair,” Kayla says. “Dade got in-school suspension for the rest of the day.”

“What did he do?”

“He didn’tdoanything, Bird!” Kayla snaps at me. “God.”

“Well, what happened?” Jessa tries, and it’s the first time Kayla actually looks at her.

“We were just walking down the hall, not doing anything wrong, and that teacher who looks like Ricki Lake stopped us and literally walked him to the principal’s office.”

“But why?”

“The stupid coat,” Jessa mutters.

“It’s not stupid,” Kayla argues.

The trench coat. Right. Itisstupid. But I don’t say that. “I mean, he knows it’s against dress code this year. Can’t really blame them for—”

“Whose side are you on?” she shrieks at me. “It’s not Dade’s fault two psycho mass-murdering kids in Colorado had the same fashion sense. He was wearing trench coats before it was ever a thing. I don’t see why he should be punished for something that has nothing to do with him.”

“There’re no sides, Kayla,” I start, and look to Jessa for some support. “It’s just…”Wrong.

“Besides, that thing was like a year ago,” she continues. “Something like that would never happen here and everybody knows it.”

“You don’t know that. Nobody knows that!” Jessa finally says, nearly yelling. “And no, it wasn’t a year ago. It was five months ago, and Dade knows how goddamn stupid and insensitiveandagainst the rules it is, and if you actually cared about him, you’d tell him to stop too.”

Jessa barely has enough air in her lungs to finish her sentence, her voice shaking by the time she gets to the end, and I have the strongest urge to reach out and put my arm around her. I know it’s a sore spot for her. We talked about Columbine in journalism, she spoke up about how people can just snap, how it scared her because someone seems fine or a little odd, and then all of a sudden becomes violent. I don’t think she meant to say so much because after she did, and the silence in the room expanded, she looked like she wanted to gather all those words up and swallow them back down.

I get it. I know we’re all supposed act like it’s so unimaginable here, that kind of sheer violence happening in a place we’re supposed to be safe, at the hands of people we’re supposed to know and trust. But itisimaginable now. And the proof stares us in the face every morning when we have to walk through the metal detectors. Or witness random locker searches, police with German shepherds now periodically stalking the halls. Or during lockdown drills where the teachers look at us like any one of us could be the enemy. They make sure we’re all locked in—as if the shooter couldn’t blow the locks off the doors, or shoot through the windows. Maybe we’re supposed to pretend that we weren’t all horrified at the news footage forever imprinted on our brains. Just talking about it now makes me feel a little queasy.

I start to reach my hand toward Jessa, but she jumps to her feet, picks up her Discman, and slings her bag over her shoulder, all in one catlike motion.

“Jessa?” I call after her, unable to follow up with what I really want to say, which is,Don’t go.

“See you in class,” she tells me, and then she’s stomping off toward E building, pulling her headphones up over her ears.

When I look back, Kayla has my sandwich bag in her lap and is picking microscopic pieces of crust off my bread. She mutters, “Good riddance.” Then looks up at me, rolls her eyes in Jessa’s direction, and says, “What a freak.”

“Hey!” I shout, shocking even myself.

She jumps, kohl-lined eyes wide. “Whoa. What did I miss? Since when are you all chummy-chum with Jessa?”

“I don’t know,” I mumble, but then—fuck that, Kayla should hear this. “Actually, Idoknow. I guess we’ve figured out we have a lot in common, being third wheels to you and Dade all the time.”

“Okay, retract claws, please.”

“No, it’s true, Kayla. You’ve been b-bailing on me since I got back, and yes, okay, I get that you have a boyfriend, but not every minute has to be spent with him, you know.”

“You sound like Paige and Brianne.”