Stay With Them Tonight

I got my skates, size sevens, and went to sit down between Kelly and Katie. We were all a little more quiet than usual, but we started discussing the worst possible situations that could happen tonight when Jason and Ryan came to my house. Katie thought someone might bring the whole tablecloth crashing to the floor like in a movie. I thought a random dog might crash through a window and eat all the food. Kelly scoffed at both of us, but I felt slightly better knowing things probably wouldn’t get that bad.

We were only going to stay at the rink until about three, when I would drop everyone off and hang out with my sister for a while.

When we stepped out onto the ice, I held onto Katie and Kelly on either side of me, because both of them had a lot more experience skating than I did. I was wobbly, and when they let go of me to literally skate circles around me, I crashed onto the ice on my side.

They started laughing, and I couldn’t help it, beginning to laugh myself. Katie went to pull me up, but she pulled back to hard and fell on her butt. She got up without any trouble at all, but I couldn’t lift myself off the ice at all. They were doubled over laughing as I crawled over to the wall to pull myself up.

“You guys suck,” I called, walk-skating around the perimeter with one hand on the wall. They laughed some more, and came over to me.

“Next time try to fall on your butt,” Kelly said, skating backwards. Katie wasn’t as good, but I made her look like a professional.

“Why?” I fell again, this time landing on my butt like Kelly said. My teeth crashed together, and I almost bit my lip. “I’m not going to be able to sit for a week!”

This time they and the wall successfully helped me up, but my fingers had frozen slightly from the cold. I held my hands closer to me, trying to copy them and their side-to-side swaying to move.

“Your butt is the most padded part of you.” Katie said. She skated by me, and I picked up speed a little. I had about two and a half hours to get the hang of this.

Kelly laughed as she came up behind me with Jason and Greg at her side. Ryan was going the wrong way around the edge, coming at us from ahead. “Allie doesn’t really have much of a butt,” Kelly said. We had an endless argument about her having no chest and me having no butt.

“I do so have a butt.” I came out farther away from the wall.

“Whoa, we’re talking about Allie’s butt now?” Ryan said as he reached us.

By now, we were an oddly shaped blob of people travelling about 2 miles an hour around the perimeter of the large rink. Greg and Katie had my hands again, and Ryan was pushing me from behind while Kelly and Jason circled us, being the best skaters of the group.

We were laughing when my foot flew out from under me, sending me crashing back. I felt Ryan try to catch me, but failing, and I instinctively tightened my grip on Katie and Greg’s hands. Katie flailed and knocked Kelly off-balance, while Jason quickly got out of the way.

The five of us were sprawled across each other, me half on Ryan and Katie across my legs, her and Greg still holding my hands, and Kelly having fallen on top of Katie.

I suddenly felt my face, the only warm part of my body, and knew I was blushing. I looked over at Jason who had remained unscathed, who wasn’t trying to hide the fact that he was laughing at us.

“Maybe we need to get Allie some pads,” Greg suggested. The others found this extremely funny, and my face got even redder. I hit his arm but was tried to keep a straight face.

Two more hours of this?

*****

I winced as I untied my skates, Cass standing next to me. She had decided to come by since I wasn’t answering my cell (I had fallen too many times for it to be safe to stay with me).

She was talking to everyone, looking older to me now that she was in college. I mean I knew her when she stole my favorite stuffed lion when I was four. Not that I remembered it much, but my family told me I made a huge fuss over it for weeks. (It was my favorite!)

Her blonde hair was longer and slightly darker than mine, coming around her face in soft waves and down her back. Her eyes stood out, that startling shade of brown that was really honey or butterscotch or something barely brown at all.

Kelly had been excited to see her, and everyone else had been crazy and their usual curious selves. If Cass liked everyone, she could tell my parents she liked them, and they might feel better about me being out with them, although my parents had met everyone here.

They had met everyone but Rachel . . .

I finally pulled my skates off while my friends were telling Cass about my various falls and bruises I had gotten today. She wasn’t surprised, to say the least.

“I’m done! I said, everyone laughing as they had finished long before me. Greg and Katie walked out and got into their cars, while we piled into mine and Cass went to her little Focus. We loved our Fords.

I dropped Kelly off, and Jason and Ryan got out when I parked in my driveway. I waved to them, Ryan giving me a friendly hug as Cass called someone in the front yard. I couldn’t catch the exact conversation, but it seemed like they were being pretty serious. I walked up behind her, and she turned when she heard me.

“-neighbors over soon. I think you should wait.” She paused for a second, a tiny smile forming. “Bye, then.” She hung up, sighing and snapping her phone shut quickly.

She turned to me, a smile now fully on her face, although I still thought her mind was somewhere else. “Friend from school,” she explained.

“Ahhh. So do you want to talk while you get your room situated?” I asked.

“Actually, I probably won’t be moving back, so I talked to Mom and Dad about just turning my room into a spare room and putting my stuff in storage. I’ll take some of it back with me, but most of it will either go in the garage or something.”

“Oh.” I hadn’t thought of the possibility of Cassie not coming back. “You’re still going to live here though, right? Like in the town?”

She smiled. “I don’t have any plans to move to Arizona permanently anytime soon.” We walked inside and found Mom in the kitchen, already preparing food.

“Mom, we have like three hours until anyone gets here,” Cass raised her eyebrow, the thing I could never do. Like I usually did when she raised her eyebrow around me, I pushed it down with my forefinger. She laughed and it was just like old times.

“I missed you, Allie!” she hugged me hard, and I giggled, hugging her back.

Dad walked in, beaming at us. He went to the pot on the stove, making something.

Everything smelled really good, but I didn’t want to stick around to find out what we were having. My parents were like teenagers when they were together in the kitchen, and trust me, it was quite scary. Cass seemed to be thinking the same thing, so we went up to my room.

“So, who’s that guy?” She reclined on my bed, stealing all of my pillows. I pushed her towards the wall and grabbed a pillow before she could keep it.

“What guy?” I rolled to face her. I looked at her face, which seemed to glow more than it usually did. She was really beautiful, in a way I knew I wasn’t.

I was told I had more classic beauty, while she had modern beauty. It wasn’t that I was a beauty at all, just that they couldn’t very well call Cass a beauty and call me average, which I was.

Cassandra had the striking face, with high cheekbones and large eyes and full lips. In comparison, I had smaller, wider eyes, hardly any cheekbones discernable, a short button nose, and a smaller mouth. We stared at each other for a few minutes before she remembered the tiny start of a conversation.

“Guys, actually. The ones next door. How did you meet them?” I closed my eyes, wondering if she would believe I was falling asleep in the next few minutes.

“Uh. I babysat them.” Something soft hit my face, and I grabbed it. She had thrown a pillow at me.

“No, really!?” she asked, sitting up next to me.

“No, really, I did!” She wrinkled her straight nose at me. In one way I felt halfway inferior around her. She was more like my dad, having his height and eyes and out-there personality. She was just under 5’7,” but she felt a lot taller than that, larger because of her huge personality.

On another hand, I knew we loved each other unconditionally, and I knew I wasn’t completely ugly. I just wasn’t different, unexpected, like she was. It wasn’t time to break out a pity party and the suicide hotline, but I always had to remember I wasn’t just her paler shadow.

“I was asked to go over and babysit three boys. They are two of them.” She still looked skeptical. “The youngest is six. His name is Danny, and he’s adorable. But I got over there, and met Ryan and Jason. I don’t really know why I had to go over. They were okay, and besides Danny maybe starving or dying of food poisoining, those guys are pretty good at taking care of him. Ryan, for sure.”

“Which one is that? The one that you hugged?” It felt like before, the only difference being that before she'd left we always talked about the guys in her life.

“Yep. He’s fantastic. But what have you been up to?” She laid back down.

“Well, school is great,” she told me excitedly. “My classes are all good, and everybody’s really amazing.”

“Cass, are you blushing? Is there a guy?” I wasn’t surprised. She attracted guys like flies to poop. Okay, ew.

“Not really. Hey, let’s watch some TV.” I frowned at her. “Downstairs.” She hurriedly climbed over me, and was out the door before I could even sit up.

“Come on, Al!” she called. I heard her rush down the stairs and rolled my eyes. She was definitely avoiding mentioning some Arizonian guy in her life.