Free The Lighter Side of Life and Death by C. K. Kelly Martin Page A

camouflage my earlier lack of discretion. The last thing I ever want to do is make her feel bad about what happened, and even with everyone watching and listening, I just can’t let that situation stand.
    “I didn’t mean
‘no big thing,’
” I apologize as she stares down at the table.
    But every time I try to fix this it just makes things more wrong. Kat’s angry gaze swings back to me and I know I’ve stepped over the line again. One minute I feel like I can finally relax and the next she’s ready to tear my head off. Her entire face is red and her fingernail’s digging into her thumb. If we could turn down the cafeteria background noise you’d hear her blood boiling.
    I stop talking altogether, drum my fingers on the table and try to look harmless. Unfortunately Kat’s not having it. She jumps out of her chair and heads for the exit, Sondra and Michelle five steps behind her.
    “What did you do?” Jamie asks hotly.
    “I didn’t do anything.” Jamie’s probably never heard me sound more serious but he’s shooting me this awful look, like he’s caught me torturing his nonexistent pet rabbit.
    “She wouldn’t do that for nothing.” Jamie gestures to the exit. Seconds later a spark of recognition lights up his eyes and I’d rather skip this next part but Jamie’s already there. He slumps back in his chair, his mouth slack. “Fuck me,” he says quietly. He wraps his hands around the back of his neck and stares at me. “It was the night of the party, wasn’t it?”
    I don’t deny it. I don’t speak.
    “Holy shit,” Jamie whispers.
    “We’re not going to talk about this, Jamie,” I command. Close as the three of us are, this is between Kat and me alone. I should never have opened my mouth about it within earshot of anyone else.
    “Why am I the last to know everything?” he snaps, eyes bloodshot.
    “You’re not.” Is that why he’s mad? I thought it was because of Kat. “I don’t understand why you’re so upset.”
    “Of course you do.” Jamie scowls. “You’d be exactly the same in my place.”
    That’s not true. I wouldn’t be happy but I’d keep my mouth shut about it.
    “Why’s she so mad at you?” Jamie continues. His face is contorted into this weird aggressive mask that gets my back up. It’s not like he had a chance with Kat; it’s not like we fucked him over somehow. “What’d you do to her?”
    It’s such a nasty accusation that I could almost hit him for it. Who does he think he’s talking to?
    “What did you do?” he repeats, and this time it’s more of a whine but my pulse is racing. The back of my neck’s twitching tooand I drop my jaw and stare at him. We’ve known each other forever and I’ve never been angrier with him than I am at this exact moment.
    “You need to calm down, Jamie.” My voice has an edge to it that’d cut you clean in half. “You need to stay out of it. Whatever did or didn’t happen has nothing to do with you and you should know …” I drop to a whisper. “I’d never do anything to Kat that she didn’t want.”
    I shove my chair back and get to my feet. Jamie looks away. Meanwhile Y and Z are pretending not to notice what’s going down and I stride out of the cafeteria and along the hall, my right hand clenched into a fist. Out in the fresh air a couple guys are playing Frisbee behind the parking lot and I stand around and watch them for a couple minutes. One of the guys has taken his shoes off and I swear, he’s like a frigging Jedi Master with the Frisbee, a complete natural. It calms me down a little to see.
    I don’t want to think about what Jamie just said to me and I don’t want to replay Kat’s exit. I don’t want to do anything except stand here watching these guys play Frisbee until everything goes back to normal.
    Then this senior girl with straight black hair and punk boots stalks out and stands next to me. I don’t know her name but she squints at me and says, “You were in that school play a few