The Lions basketball team took the court, and then they took the game. The second half was a blowout.
Afterward, both the girls’ and the boys’ basketball teams met the Lions Dance Team in the gymnasium lobby, letter jackets on over their jeans.
“Victory party at the Wheel?” Gillian yelled above the happy din.
A few calls of “Yeah!” and “We should call ahead, tell them to make all the pizza they have,” and “Nick’s house after?”
Kelsey didn’t take the time to change out of her uniform. She gave a few more pats on the back and ducked out a side door to the parking lot.
Through the dark, Kelsey heard, “Where are you going, Maxfield?” Under a streetlight, she could see one of the forwards from the boys’ team.
“So tired,” she called back. “Tell Gil and Ingrid I’m heading home, will you?”
“Have it your way!” he said, and went back inside.
It wasn’t that Kelsey didn’t want to celebrate. She did, very much.
But it was morning in Afghanistan.
After she had texted Davis, her phone had buzzed again, with a Skype message from Peter. She told him she would be online in an hour.
As the car started up, she hooked up her phone to the Subaru’s speakers, and selected the first track of one of Michelle’s playlists, where she had found the track her team had danced to tonight. The playlist was mostly filled with bands named “The” and plural nouns. The Breeders, The Strokes, The Turtles. She didn’t know if she liked the actual music, or just liked the idea of Michelle listening to it, her hair escaping the windows as she hummed along. Probably both.
At home, she opened Michelle’s laptop to three missed calls from Peter, and now a fourth rang out. Kelsey let down her hair and threw a sweater over her dance team uniform before she answered, watching his face fill the screen.
“Good morning,” she said.
“Good evening,” he replied.
“You look chipper.”
He lifted a tin mug. “Thanks to this watery Nescafé we call coffee here.”
Kelsey gave him a sympathetic look. “You miss La Prima Tazza, don’t you?”
“Ha! Not that chocolaty stuff you drink.” That’s right. Michelle and her hot chocolate. He continued, “Give me a Styrofoam cup of 7-Eleven drip and I’d be golden.”
“Well, if we had one of those machines from Willy Wonka, I’d send you a cup.”
Peter looked puzzled, his lips turning up into a confused smile. “What machines?”
“You know, the machine that takes the candy bar into the TV, then dissolves it into molecules and transfers it into the other TV?”
Peter put his hands in a prayer position. “I have a confession to make.”
“What?”
“I have never seen Willy Wonka.”
“What?!”
Peter laughed at her disbelief. Kelsey realized her mouth was wide open and she snapped it shut, blushing. “I know you don’t watch much TV, but Willy Wonka is, like, a classic film.”
“It always freaked me out. The little orange men? Come on.”
They used to freak Michelle out, too. Kelsey couldn’t help but feel a little smug. “They’re supposed to freak you out. They scare the characters into doing the right thing.”
Peter, who had been sipping his coffee, spit it out all over his lap. Between laughs, he said, “I was going to say that’s the wrong way to go about it, but then again, I’m in the army, so that might be hypocritical.”
As Kelsey laughed, watching him clean up, she heard a click behind her. “Kels?”
She turned around.
Gillian stood in the doorway, letter jacket over her arm. “You can’t say no to pizza.…”
Kelsey snapped the laptop shut. But she wasn’t fast enough.
“Was that—?” Gillian walked into the room, pointing at the computer. “Who was that?”
“No one,” Kelsey said, which was the wrong answer. Any answer felt like the wrong answer.
“That was Michelle’s boyfriend,” Gillian said, her eyebrows furrowing. “The soldier.”
Gillian had seen Peter the night of their party through Michelle’s door. But that wasn’t the problem. The problem was how guilty she looked by hiding him. Oh no.
“Yeah, but—” Kelsey began. She could feel tears coming on. She blinked them away.
“Kelsey. Calm down.” Gillian’s head tilted, puzzled. “Why did you end the Skype call?”
“You startled me.”
Gillian’s lips pursed. She didn’t buy it. She was a smart girl.
“So what’s up? What were you guys talking about?”
“Just Michelle stuff,” Kelsey said. She gave the long sigh she gave her parents when she didn’t want to talk, but with Gillian, her breath came out uneven and forced.
“That must be tough,” Gillian said.
“Yeah.”
“You want to talk about it?” Gillian asked.
“Not right now.”
Gillian made a dismissive hmm. Kelsey usually told Gillian everything. But where could she start when the beginning was the end of Michelle?
“He’s—he’s not taking it well,” Kelsey continued.
“Well, at least you all were laughing when I came in,” Gillian said slowly, not meaning a word. “When did you tell him?”
Kelsey could feel the air get more still, muffling her. “I—soon, I mean, recently…”
“He didn’t find out from the news?”
“He hasn’t read it.”
The details dawned on Gillian, now visible in her face, tightening it.
She had figured it out.
“He doesn’t know?”
Kelsey tried to breathe through her nose. “Know what?”
“Don’t play dumb. You were talking to Michelle’s boyfriend.”
“It’s not a big deal.” But Kelsey’s jaw, which had started shaking, said otherwise.
Gillian took a step toward her. “Does this soldier guy not know that Michelle is gone?”
Kelsey stared at the carpet. The more she lied, the worse she looked. So she didn’t lie. “No. He doesn’t know.”
“Does he know he’s talking to you?”
A pause. “No.”
Kelsey finally looked her best friend in the eyes. They were still narrowed, but just as much in question as in anger. “Why the hell would you do something like that?”
When Kelsey opened her mouth to speak, she found her throat was caught again. The tears were back. “I didn’t know how to tell him,” she got out. “I’m sorry. I know it’s bad. But I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to make things harder on him than they already were. He’s putting his life on the line, you know? And—”
Gillian shook her head, as if she couldn’t bear to hear anymore.
Kelsey wanted to go further, to explain, but she knew the words would make it sound even worse. She had never stated the facts this way, not even to herself: With Peter, I can pretend it never happened. And I like talking to him. He makes me laugh. We were having fun.
Gillian’s voice brought her back. “I know you miss Michelle, but this is crazy. You have to stop.”
Kelsey sat back down at her desk, and looked up. “Of course. Yes. I will.”
“Kels. You’re playing with fire.”
“I’m not doing it to hurt anyone,” Kelsey offered.
Gillian scoffed. “Oh, yeah? How does Davis feel about that?”
Kelsey said nothing. A hardness formed inside her. It was the initial shock that ruined it. She had no time to plan for something like this, an interruption like this. “Davis has nothing to do with it. You don’t understand.”
“No, I really don’t,” she snapped.
“I’ll stop.” Then, at her back, Kelsey pleaded, “Please don’t tell anyone.”
Gillian turned, her eyes roaming around the room, trying to process. “Yeah.” She nodded, but she couldn’t look at Kelsey. She didn’t want to look at Kelsey. “See you Monday.”