overalls, said as she made her rounds, dropping off the latest
“Yeah,” said her friend, a pudgy junior wearing tights, short-shorts, black patent-leather ankle boots, and an inch of mascara on each clumped-up eyelid. “I was hoping she couldn’t have kids. You know, for the kid’s sake.”
“Totally,” Redhead said.
Most of the congregating among students was done in the common area between the classrooms in any given pod. Along one wall were lockers of varying sizes—larger for those who were lacrosse team members and had unwieldy pads, sticks, and gear; smaller for those who didn’t have anything they needed to store but wanted a place to linger.
It was far from status quo the first day back from winter break. Katelyn’s death gave the school guidance counselors the opportunity to go into grief-counseling mode. And while they were genuinely sorry to lose a student, it sure changed up the onslaught of “I could be pregnant” or “school is too hard and I want to drop out” sessions that tended to bunch up after the holidays.
The day back from a break marked by a teen’s death meant a seemingly endless train of sobbing girls into the counselors’ offices.
Most started the preamble to their crying jags with the same words: “I’m so upset about this. It isn’t fair. She’s the same age as me.”
Hayley, Taylor, and Beth didn’t give voice to the same concerns as others. They were sick about what happened and felt they had a genuine connection with the dead girl. Their friendship with Katelyn might have evaporated since middle school, but they still felt a keen loss.
“I hated a lot about her,” Beth said in the commons. “She had no style. She wasn’t exactly fun anymore. Still, who knows, maybe she’d have turned into someone cool if she hadn’t died.”
“There was something always a little sad about her,” Hayley said. “I feel like we all kind of dropped her when maybe we shouldn’t have.”
Taylor agreed with her sister. “I know I did.”
Beth scowled and rummaged around in her purse for some lip gloss. It had been five minutes since her last application. “You two are such goody-goodies. She didn’t want to be friends with us. She was too wrapped up in being Katelyn of the
“More like fifteen,” said Taylor, not even trying to be ironic.
A junior the trio barely knew came up just then. “Sorry about your friend,” she said.
All glossed, Beth answered, “We’re devastated. We can’t talk about it.”
“Take care,” the girl said. “Sorry.”
Beth looked at Hayley and Taylor. “Did I seem devastated?” she asked. “Just a little?”
“Just a little,” Taylor said as the three went off to class.
Later that morning, the Treasure Trove espresso stand put up a small sign asking for donations for Katelyn’s family. The school principal, a petite woman with dangerous nail-gun heels, kindly told them it wasn’t an altogether good idea.
“But we wanted to help,” said the kid foaming the milk.
“Yeah,” said the girl pulling the espresso shots. “She was a soy drinker, totally organic. You have to respect that.”
“Yes,” the principal argued, “but the manner of her death …” She attempted to choose her words carefully. “Katelyn died of, because of …,” she said, looking at the big Italian espresso machine.
“Oh,” said the foamer. “I get what you’re putting down.”
The shot girl apparently didn’t. “Huh?”
“An espresso machine killed Katelyn,” the foamer said. “She was electrocuted in the tub.”
Finally, the look of awareness came to the student’s face. A light switched on. The coffee girl got it.
“Yeah,” she said, quickly pulling down the sign. “We shouldn’t collect money.”
The principal gave the pair a quick nod and walked away over the shiny polished surface to her office at the front of the school. She looked through the windows of the first pod’s reception area. A small group of girls, some who might not even have known Katelyn but who got caught up in the sad drama of a dead girl, had amassed.
Taylor Ryan was one of those girls, waiting to talk with the grief counselor. She understood that Katelyn’s death was a tragedy and there was no bringing her back, but the pain of it was a knife point to her heart.
She wanted to tell someone that she could feel Katelyn’s presence all around her. She felt that whatever had happened to Katelyn in that bathtub had the hand of another person in it somehow.
She just didn’t want her sister or Beth to see her there.
LATER THAT AFTERNOON, Hayley and Taylor slowed as they walked in the vicinity of Katelyn’s locker. A few members of the Buccaneers’ cheer team congregated nearby, chatting about their holiday. Tiffany, a senior, had a tan and was bragging about her “awesome” Hawaiian vacation and the hot swimsuit that she bought in a boutique in Maui. When the twins approached, she smiled.
“She was a friend of yours. Sorry,” she said.
“She was a friend. She wasn’t a really close one, but thanks,” Hayley said.
As the cheer squad moved aside, they revealed the beginnings of a makeshift memorial. A few grocery-store bouquets past their pull dates were slumped on the gray linoleum floor. Someone had taken a photo from Katelyn’s Facebook profile, blown it up, and written in very careful print:
The fact that they’d used an exclamation point was odd, but most of the kids in school couldn’t punctuate anything properly so it probably wasn’t meant to signify that Katelyn’s resting in peace was something exuberant. Hayley thought it could have been worse.
YAY! KATIE’S ON PERMANENT BREAK!
HAVE A FUN TIME IN HEAVEN!
YOU GO (DEAD) GIRL!
Hayley stopped her train of thought as the buzzing of the other girls abruptly ceased. Starla Larsen, wearing black pants and a black cashmere sweater, joined the group in front of Katelyn’s locker.
“Sorry about Katie,” Taylor said. She resisted the urge to actually give Starla a hug because in that moment it just didn’t seem right.
“Yeah, we both are,” said Hayley, who didn’t hug Starla either.
Starla, for the first time in recent memory, looked terrible. Terrible for her would have been pretty good for a lot of other girls. Starla Terrible was quite noticeable nevertheless. Her skin was pale—in fact, very pale, especially next to the ultra-tanned senior, Tiff.
“It was a big shock,” she said, making a sniffling sound, although it didn’t appear that she had any need for a tissue. Though she had first-class designer bags under her eyes, it was pretty clear she hadn’t been crying. “We weren’t as close as we once were, but I loved her very, very much.”
Tan Tiff put her arms around Starla. “Let’s go somewhere we can talk and grieve,” she said to the others hanging around Starla. “I want to show Baby Girl the photos from my trip too.”
“Thanks, Hayley, Taylor,” Starla said, disappearing down the hallway.
Hayley turned to her sister. “Is it just me or what? Starla had dropped Katie. Those two haven’t spoken for months, and she’s saying she
“Guilt, maybe?” Taylor suggested.
Hayley thought for a moment. “It could be guilt, or maybe it’s revisionist history.”
“Dunno,” Taylor said. “She looked tired for sure, but sad? Not so much.”
“She didn’t look sad at all,” Hayley agreed. “She doesn’t seem one bit upset, and what’s this ‘Baby Girl’ crap?”
“Cheer talk,” Taylor said, inserting her finger in her mouth, the universal sign for puking. “Worse than the twin talk we made up when we were little.”
Hayley laughed and the girls blended into the mass of Axe-drenched boys and makeup-laden girls moving like a single living organism into the doorways of classrooms.
“Please remind me never to go to another pep rally,” Hayley said.
