Lay Me Down

11. One more thing.

{Kadee}

The thing was, the morning after she'd been out with Jon she'd been so completely depressed she could barely drag herself out of bed. She had texted her girlfriends to come over and they spent the day eating jube-jubes and a bucket of cookie dough, binging on onscreen drama like the heroines of one of those rom-coms. By 4PM she was bloated and had a headache. It wasn't warm enough for their pool to be uncovered, but they changed into bikinis and took themselves poolside to soak up the early summer sun. As she listened to her girlfriend's bubbly conversation, she felt her worries melting away. This felt way more right than the previous day and a half with Jon. Surely stressing over that much drama was just not good for a person. She needed to stick to the lighter side of things.

So on Sunday morning, when Kurtis came out of worship practice and crossed the foyer towards her, smiling his smoky smile, she gave him a smile in return that crinkled up the corners of her eyes, thrilled to the ends of her fingers. If there was one boy in her world who was untouchable, who only gave time to the prettiest, most put-together girls, it was Kurtis Klassen. And today he was giving time to her.

She was making flirtatious conversation with him at the coffee bar in the church foyer when Madison gave a small squeal.

"Oh my god, what is he doing here?"

Their whole group turned to look and Kadee glanced past Kurtis' shoulder and froze. Cary was slouching behind Pastor Pete across the foyer, looking rumpled and completely out of place in the clean, bright foyer. Her eyebrows shot up to her hairline and she almost laughed. Of course, he was found, what had they been so worried about?

Madison was practically in hysterics, hanging onto Kadee's arm and hiding her face in her shoulder. "I never-in my whole life-oh my god-when he bled all over like that-right in class-right behind me-"

And the rest of their group was buzzing:

"That's the guy-the guy who cut his arm open-"

"Seriously, is that him?"

"Like right in class with everyone there-"

"Maddie saw it-"

"I heard he's done it before-"

"He pulled that huge knife on Todd-"

"I heard he's on drugs like all the time and that's why-"

Kurtis' brother Todd elbowed his way through the group to get a cup of coffee. "What's the skid doing at our church?" He watched Pastor Pete and Cary going out the front doors with a sneer on his lips. His face was still faintly shadowed with yellow around his nose where Cary had punched him.

Kadee conveniently forgot she knew the answer, raising an eyebrow at him. "I was about to ask you the same question," she said.

"Har har," Todd made a face at her, and she leaned her elbows on the coffee bar, meeting his eyes coolly, until his face warmed and then she turned a smile up to Kurtis.

"Want to blow this Popsicle stand?" she said in a voice just quiet enough for him to hear. "There's definitely more interesting things we could talk about."

He looked down at her, amused. "'Blow this Popsicle stand'? Do people still stay that?"

"People who watch a hundred cop movies with their brother still say that," she said stubbornly.

"I love cop movies," he said, still with that private smile just for her. "Soon as the show here wraps up-it's a date."

{Mel}

Anxiety was Mel's daily companion. She went through the motions of church service in a daze, with something caught like a bone in her throat. It was real. Cary was their responsibility now. They were living month to month, and she couldn't think of how to make their grocery budget stretch any further than it did already.