BOOTH BOY

The Worst Day...

The sky cracks open and weeps. I find it fitting in my dark raincoat, turtleneck, jeans and boots. The school lets us all out early so we can attend the ceremony.

Marina and I hold hands and linger at the back of the crowd. My mother goes over to Colby's house in the morning and I stare into my Kellogg's until I start seeing patterns in the milk. Alina can't seem to physically stop talking about it and I sit and listen to her go on and on about how unexpected and unfortunate it all is until I can't stand it any longer.

I go up to my room and get dressed. Then I wait outside on our porch until Marina comes over, dressed in a navy blue knee length halter neck dress and wide blue eyes. "Is it true?", she whispers, almost as if she expects the Benggston's to be standing at the fence, eavesdropping.

I nod and shrug. I guess it's a yes because she shakes her blonde head in remorse. We dont talk about it even as we file out of the school gates with the rest of year 10. We take the school bus for the first time in years and Cassius joins us. "Its all terrible, isn't it?"

We don't disagree.

The ceremony is touching. It rains from the crack of dawn until I crawl into bed and listen to the pitter patter of rain on the veranda roof outside my window. I struggle to fall asleep. I toss and turn and feel sort of like there's a tag under my skin or water in my lungs or a splinter in my veins. Something was where it wasnt supposed to be. Something was broken and things were getting in or leaking out. Something was wrong.

I rouse out of bed and stand there in the dark, staring at my sister, fast asleep under her black and pink covers. She hates those covers now.

Tired of just staring, I slip out of our room, careful to shut the door silently behind me. I head to the kitchen and get myself a glass of cold water. As I drink it down, soothing my dry throat, I almost drop the glass when the scratching sound of a chair pulled across the floor interrupts the silence and I turn to find my sister.

She sits down and folds her arms, "Couldn't sleep?"

I release a deep breath and nod before taking another sip of water. "I was thirsty."

She doesn't waste time. "Did you know him? Like well? Since you're on the cheerleader team?"

I know who immediately."No. Its not like we spoke."

"Do you know his son? I mean they are our neighbours. Its weird how small this town is and we don't know them."

I pull out the adjacent chair and sit down, "No. I don't."

She nods. "Did you see Dad? He came home pretty late today, didn't he?"

I glare at her. How could she change the topic? Someone had died. A father.

"Cancer isn't contagious. Our father isn't going to just die because our neighbours dad did."

She gasps and because I'm watching the table, I see her fists tighten. I picture her face, quite like mine, almost like a mirror that twists your reflection to seem backwards. The narrow nose, the slanted eyes and pronounced lip outline, "How can you say something like that, Lee? Of course that's not what I meant. I just asked."

When I don't respond, she speaks again. "Besides, it's not unnatural for people to be concerned for their closed ones in times, like these, of death and-and loss."

"You sound like me", I state because she does. My cadence, my words in my voice.

"Yeah", she laughs a little,"I guess I spend too much time with you."

I had seen my father. He had been at the ceremony. He came and hugged Quanita Benggston, beautiful and sad, silk scarf over her dark hair and he spoke a few words with the rest of the family before avoiding Mom and disappearing. I don't tell Alina. She worries about the state of their relationship too much.

We stay at the table together long into the morning. The stupid Amazing Grace song is stuck in my head and along with it, hollow blue eyes. He had looked so gutted. People were whispering, whispering about how their family seemed to be taking one tragedy after the other. Whispering I hope he's learnt his lessons. Whispering they'd never guess Coach Benggston was dying. He looked so healthy until the end.

Except he hadn't. Not after Colby lost his shot at Nationals. Not since that summer really. I would know. I was the one paying an unnatural amount of attention.

Eventually, Alina gets up and disappears up the stairs. I rest my head inbetween the crook of my elbow and fall asleep. Mom shakes me awake later in the morning. Dad hugs me extra tight before he leaves for work, even as he avoids Mom's gaze and I only cry two tears while I shower that morning.

I'm not sure why. I wasn't close to the Coach at all, I just needed to cry. The atmosphere seemed to call for it.

Colby doesn't attend school for the next two weeks. I know because I pop by his homeroom every morning and check. It makes me late for my own homeroom but I find myself doing it anyway.

When I do walk past and see him, at the back, head resting against the window, I suddenly have the urge to cry again. In the middle of the hallway. The tears burn my eyes and I speed off to the closest girl's loo before I make a spectacle of myself.

When I burst in, Misty Duval is already there, her eyes wet and I blink at her in surprise, my own tears drying away. "Are you- Are you okay?"

Her bottom lip tremors and she shakes her head, green eyes -pun absolutely intended- misty, "No. Colby just broke up with me. He's not taking me to Prom anymore. He-" and then she breaks down, her words cracking into incomprehensibly blubbering and I awkwardly lope over and wrap her in my arms, rubbing her back and letting her cry all over my sweater.

Its strangely carthatic for the both of us to bond over crying over the same boy.