Staircase #2
“I’m positive,” Cassidy said, already pushing herself up from the floor with a sudden burst of energy that felt intentionally loud, trying to kick the heavy atmosphere out of the room.
“We’ll leave at nine. Seren, tell your dad I am saving the day.
What kind of papers do you have to sign? Rich people stuff?”
I shrugged, “I have no idea.” I pulled my phone back out to text my dad. “Thank you, Cassidy, for taking me. You’re a good friend.”
As I hit send, I looked back over at the kitchen.
Zane had put the dish towel down and was looking out the window again, his reflection caught in the dark glass.
He was right there. I could have walked over and put my arms around his waist, could have pressed my forehead against his spine.
But the distance between the couch and the sink felt like miles of dark staircase, and I did not know how to step onto it without falling.
When the morning came, it didn’t have the same sort of ease that most of our mornings have.
Usually, Zane wakes up before me, and the sound of the water falling in the shower pulls me from whatever dreams I had temporarily been living in.
Zane makes coffee while I get ready, I put some of his cologne on my wrist. He puts the coffee in my blue travel mug.
There’s always music playing. I put three granola bars in his backpack because I know he’ll get hungry but will only take one.
I know it won’t be enough. We kiss. And kiss, and kiss and kiss and kiss.
Zane and I usually have peaceful mornings together. Today, we were both off. Me, because I was about to enter a haunted house. Him, because I was about to enter a haunted house and he wasn’t going to be the one leading me through it.
He stayed in bed longer than usual, tracking the shadow of the window frame as the sun crawled up the wall.
When he finally got up, he didn’t head for the shower.
He went straight to the kitchen. I sat on the edge of the mattress, pulling my socks on, listening as he set my blue travel mug on the counter.
There was no music playing. Today, the only soundtrack was the radiator, which had settled down from a train impression into a low, metallic hum.
When I walked into the kitchen, the coffee was steaming.
He was leaning against the counter, his hands buried deep in the pockets of his gray hoodie.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hi, babe.”
I stepped into his space, reaching out to wrap my arms around his waist, pressing my cheek right against the center of his chest. His heart was beating steady, a solid thud against my ear.
His arms came around me, burying his face into my hair, holding me with a kind of protective urgency that felt less like a good morning and more like a deep breath before a jump.
I was always comforted by his arms, but today, less than usual.
The air was still filled with the things we’d left out on the table the night before.
Henry was still sitting in the sixth chair.
“I’ll be okay,” I told him. “You don’t need to worry. Nothing bad is going to happen.”
“Do you feel okay?” Zane asked, not touching my words. His voice was rough against the top of my head.
“Yes. It’s just the papers to sign. And whatever is in those boxes.” I pulled back just enough to look up at him. “I’ll be fine, Zane. It’s just my dad’s house. I survived eighteen years there. I don’t want you to feel guilty when your life has to come before mine. That’s not fair to you.”
He looked down at me, his thumb tracing a slow line across my jawbone.
He looked like he wanted to say a thousand things, or just one extremely specific thing that he couldn’t find the vocabulary for.
He hated the boxes. He hated that my dad’s house was full of traps I had to step over, and he hated even more that I was right.
He couldn’t put his life on hold just because something made me uncomfortable.
“I wish we could be done with West Bridge. I wish you didn’t have to go back there,” he muttered. “That town was never good to you.”
“I know,” I breathed, my hand was the one putting pressure against his, this time. “Maybe one day. We can convince our parents to retire somewhere else. Somewhere fun, like Costa Rica. That would be a better place to visit.”
“Call me when you get there,” he said softly. “And call me when you’re leaving to come home.”
“I will.”
He leaned down and kissed me. It was not the sweet, lingering sequence of kisses from our usual Fridays.
It was deep, a little desperate, his hands shifted to the back of my neck to hold me still against him, like he was trying to imprint himself onto my skin before the road took me away.
When he pulled back, his forehead lingered against mine for a second.
“Be safe,” he whispered.
“Always.” I reached past him, took three granola bars from the pantry, and slipped them into the side pocket of his backpack where it sat by the door.
Right on cue, a loud, obnoxious honk echoed from the street below. Cassidy’s car. The horn sounded like a dying goose, completely breaking the silence of the apartment.
Zane let out a short, breathy laugh. “Your chariot awaits.”
“Don’t study too hard,” I said, grabbing my coffee.
“We want me to study hard, Seren. I need a decent job so I can pay for flights to Costa Rica the next time you need to sign paperwork,” he countered, stepping forward to open the apartment door for me.
I walked down the concrete stairs toward the street, the weight of my mug in my hand. Zane’s ghost was locked in his suitcase. Mine were waiting for me two hours away.
Once I got into Cassidy’s car, and we were headed down the highway away from North Haven, I was starting to wonder who was doing who a favor.
Cassidy had the music blasting, her window open, her hand making waves that matched the beat in the rushing air.
She seemed more like we were going on vacation, and not just to our hometown that liked to torture me.
“You look like you’re going to an execution,” Cassidy yelled over the wind.
She didn’t look over at me, her eyes fixed on the highway ahead, but she reached out and flicked the volume knob down a couple of notches.
The indie-pop beat receded, leaving us with just the roaring white noise of the interstate.
“Relax, Seren. We’re still an hour out. Save the impending doom face for when we cross the county line. ”
“I don’t have an impending doom face,” I lied, taking a sip from my travel mug. The coffee was hot and sweet, and exactly the way Zane always made it.
“You do. Your left eyebrow goes all flat, and you hold your coffee like someone is trying to steal it from you.” She took her hand out the window, letting the air resistance drop her arm back into the car, and checked her rearview mirror.
I looked at her sideways. Cassidy was wearing an oversized knit sweater that looked like it belonged to O, her curls piled into a messy bun on top of her head, yet somehow, she still looked effortlessly elegant, the way she always did.
But she looked lighter than she had last night.
She was the one who kept the perimeter around Zane’s grief.
I was not sure exactly why she was the one who fenced it.
Maybe it was because while she knew Henry and they were friends, he didn’t shape her the way he shaped Zane, Gavin, and O.
I leaned my head against the cool glass of the window. The trees along the highway were that blinding May green, the kind of color that feels too bright after months of winter gray. The kind of green that belongs to the hummingbirds from my porch.
“It must be nice,” I murmured, watching the white lines on the asphalt blur into a solid stream. “Knowing exactly what is waiting for you when you get back. No surprises.”
Cassidy was quiet for a mile. The humor didn’t leave her face, but it shifted.
I had come to learn this duality of Cassidy, though it took me a while.
When I first met her, she was always still.
She was always calm. She was patient and loving and kind.
And, of course, she still is all those things.
But Cass is also funny, and vibrant. She is witty and sharp.
It felt like she could only be those things when the ground beneath her was solid.
Like she could only shine when she knew her friends were okay, too.
It took me longer than it should have to understand that was the way grief moved through her.
First, O’s and Gavin’s and Zane’s. Then her own, then mine.
When the ghosts were haunting, she shifted.
Maybe they didn’t throw her things around while she slept, so the only thing she could do was help pick up everyone else’s stuff off the floor.
“There are always surprises, Seren,” she said softly, her eyes navigating a semi-truck in the right lane.
“Even with the people you have known since you were in braces. But… yeah. It is nice. It’s the only place where I don’t have to pretend I know what I’m doing with my life.
” She glanced over at me then, just a quick flick of her eyes before looking back at the road.
“Your dad’s better than he was. That’s something.
You know that, right? Even if he texts like a Victorian ghost who just discovered a Nokia. ”
“He’s texting because his lawyer told him he had to,” I said, the defense mechanism clicking into place automatically.
“As for the boxes, he doesn’t want them, Cassidy.
He just knows he can’t tell me that. He wants the space in his office back.
He wants to clear out the reminders, so he doesn’t have to look at them anymore. ”
“Maybe,” Cassidy said, not pushing it. She knew where my bruises were. She’d helped me paint over some of them. “But you’re going anyway.”
“Because of the papers,” I insisted.