fiction by kate gargo
Could Have Been Anyone
I deceived myself into believing that the summer before high school would be the same as always. I would scramble onto my bike in the dewy breeze, pedaling furiously along the path to Cassie’s house, past the moldering stump that once boasted the teeming maple where she fell and broke her arm when we were ten, past the chain link fence where the apoplectic terrier used to live, its mandibles snapping at us as it crisscrossed its yard. I’d take a sharp left at Carlisle Meat Market, where we bought technicolor candy buttons in sixth grade, gently coaxing the drops of sugar off their paper backing with our tongues, then one more left and I’d be at Cassie’s house, where our days together were sprawled out, limitless. By the time I noticed the earth’s tilt stealing a bit of sunlight each day it was too late, and everything was irreparably changed.
Most days we’d stumble down the wooded path behind her house into the ravine, spongy moss beneath our feet. The air was wet and floral, like a woman climbing out of a bath. Cassie insisted on snaking through the culvert behind the paper mill, acclimating to the swampy aroma as we crawled deeper into the tunnel. My ears rang as the air thinned, stomach somersaulting in the staticky dark, but Cassie would take my hand and tug me along, unafraid. My heart thumped frantically in my chest until, at last, the exit appeared, just a pinprick of distant light for us to rush toward. We’d collapse into the ditch, dizzy and laughing, our eyes burning as they adjusted to the daylight.
From the culvert we’d head north to the cemetery, cottonwood fluff sloughing off trees and clotting the winding paths among the tombs. Cassie would make us stop to watch a group of boys a few years older than us. I’d feel a strange sense of dread as the boys grinded their skateboards against the concrete planters encircling a statue of the Virgin Mary. She’d slather a glistening shellac of strawberry gloss along her lips, pouting toward the boys as they smoked cigarettes in the distance. My stomach churned from the saccharine rank of her lip gloss mixed with the smoke. We’d lean against the cool stone of a mausoleum, Cassie watching the boys while I watched the shadows tremble beneath the trees, the air syrupy slow like some dream.
“Why do you do that?” I asked her one day, after the boys had skated off.
“Do what?”
“Put on all that lip gloss. Your lips look sticky.” As I said this, Cassie pursed her lips together, rubbing some of the lip gloss off.
“Oh, hush, Meg. Your lips look chapped.” Cassie tossed her head back. “Did you hear that Ian Borchardt got caught climbing the old railroad bridge, but he outran the cops?”
“Ian’s the tall, skinny one?” I asked, looking toward the Virgin Mary statue where the boys had been skateboarding.
“Yeah. He’s going to be a junior. Do you think it’s true?”
“I guess,” I said slowly, “if he did, well, that seems really dangerous, doesn’t it? That bridge is scary, it looks like it’s about to collapse into the river.”
Cassie rolled her eyes but was smirking. “Everything looks scary to you, Meg. Want to go back to my house? I think my mom bought pizza rolls.”
Cassie moved to Carlisle in third grade, causing ripples in the social ecosystem of our quaint elementary school. She was taller, faster, and braver than anyone else in our class, even the boys. She moved from Minneapolis and said that at her old school, everyone called teachers by their first names. She said that she used to take the city bus all by herself. It was just her and her mom, and she said she was allowed to use the stove and could make herself Kraft dinner, scrambled eggs, and grilled cheese sandwiches. When Mandy Abbots, the most popular girl in our grade, kicked woodchips at me and teased me for being an ugly crybaby, Cassie sauntered right up to Mandy and slapped her straight across the face. Not one ball bounced, nor one jump rope smacked as Mandy glared up at Cassie, clutching her cheek in disbelief.
“You better watch yourself, stuck up bitch,” Nine-year-old Cassie hissed, undetected by the playground attendants but at a register all of us fellow kids could hear. Then, turning to me, “Megan, right? Come on, let’s get out of here.” Cassie chose me, when she could have chosen anybody, a fact that always made me feel different than the rest, special.
“So, Ian, the skateboard guy?” Cassie said as she dumped an avalanche of frozen pizza rolls onto a cookie sheet, “I found out he’s in a band and they’re playing at the open mic at that coffee shop downtown tonight. It would be cool to check that out.”
“There’s no way my mom is letting me hang out at a coffee shop at night,” I said.
“Just tell her you’re sleeping over. She doesn’t have to know. We both know my mom won’t care.”
“I don’t know, Cass,” I said tentatively.
“What are you freaked about? We’re basically in high school, this is what high school kids do.” Cassie slid the tray of pizza rolls into the oven. I slumped in my stool at the breakfast bar.
“High school. . . yeah, you’re right. Okay then.” At that, Cassie came over and hugged me.
“Thank you! It’ll be fun. I’ll help you get ready, okay?”
Cassie’s house was much larger than my family home, she and her mom living in an old, dark Victorian concealed from the street by a row of cedars. Since their arrival in Carlisle, rumors had circulated that Cassie’s mom killed Cassie’s dad for his money. Each time I heard kids muttering about this, I’d proudly tell them off, eager to defend my friend. Cassie never mentioned what really happened to her dad, and I never dared ask.
Cassie’s house was adorned with ornate décor. It was the kind of stuff I’d see in the windows of sleek boutiques, so foreign from the clearance rack and garage sale tchotchkes cluttering the shelves of my house. Cassie and I used to play dress up in her mom’s extravagant walk-in closet, tucking our bodies between the hanging linens and silks, deeply inhaling the lingering perfume. Cassie would put on a blue chiffon dress, the straps falling from her sharp shoulders. I’d wear a tweed blazer and we’d spin around in front of her mom’s oak cheval mirror. No matter how hard I squinted my eyes, I couldn’t quite pretend the clothes fit me, or that I was anything other than some grubby little kid. Cassie, in contrast, even in the too-large dress trailing across the floor, looked like a movie star.
Now, Cassie dug through her own dresser, handing me a black tank top and denim shorts to wear. I put her clothes on, the worn cotton top soft like a baby blanket against my skin. Cassie then sat me down, taking sections of my hair in her hands, combing out the knots and releasing them into loose curls. We scampered across the hall to the master bath, Cassie sitting me on the toilet and rifling through her mom’s many assorted pots and tubes of makeup.
“Look up,” she said, using her thumb to push my chin up, “now, look down.”
I followed Cassie’s instructions, the reflections of the fluorescent bathroom lights glimmering in her hazel eyes. I didn’t want to go to the coffee shop and waste more time watching a boring group of boys from a distance. Still, I liked Cassie closely considering my face, her own face in a slight frown as she decided between eyeshadow colors. The brushstrokes on my skin sent a crescendo down my spine.
“You girls are sure someone else’s parents can drive you home later? I’m going out, I won’t be able to pick you up.” Cassie’s mom said that evening as she dropped us off downtown. I had no idea what other parents would possibly be driving us home. My mom thought I was at Cassie’s house, watching a movie.
“Yes, mom, we’re fine.” Cassie rolled her eyes.
“Well, alright then. Be smart, Cassandra. Megan, I know you’ll look after her.” Cassie’s mom furrowed her brow at us, and I suddenly felt very self-conscious about the makeup we were wearing. Cassie pulled me by the hand down the sidewalk as I waved to her mom. She was wearing a short black dress and combat boots she had gotten at the mall a month ago. She looked grown up, shoulders swung back as we made our way to the coffee shop. I still felt like that little kid in the tweed blazer from when we used to play dress up.
Still, it was a bit thrilling to be at a coffee shop on a Friday night, the warm summer sky slipping into a pink, smoky dusk. The coffee shop was dark and loud, some older guys already playing music on the dilapidated stage. The tall boy that Cassie kept talking about, Ian, was in one corner of the room, sitting on a tabletop and surrounded by a group. Cassie and I sat in the opposite corner. The weird older guys finished up and the boys we’d see in the cemetery took the stage. Ian played drums in a three-piece punk band, the words “WURM MEAT” etched onto his kick drum in bold black lettering. Strangely, Cassie hardly watched them play at all. She went to the bathroom, talked to me over their music, looked around disinterested. Their music was sloppy and whiny and by the end of their set my ears were ringing.
“Let’s go outside a sec,” Cassie said as the boys finished playing. The sun had finally slid behind the river bluffs, long, blue shadows blooming like bruises beneath the trees. Here and there, a streetlamp flickered. The boys were in the alley out back, smoking by the dumpster.
“Can I have one of those?” Cassie asked. The boys and I all stared at her.
“A cigarette?” the long-haired bassist asked. Cassie shrugged.
“Yeah, I’m all out. Can I borrow one, maybe?” Cassie asked again. I shrank behind her. I couldn’t figure out what to do with my hands, crossing and uncrossing my arms like two doomed, flapping fish.
“I don’t know, are you old enough to be smoking?” Ian asked her with a grin.
“Are you?” Cassie replied. The other guys “ooh-ed” teasingly at her response. Ian handed her a cigarette, then lit it for her. Cassie took a drag, her chest heaving slightly as she suppressed a cough. The smell made my stomach churn.
“What about your friend here? Or is that your little sister?” Ian asked Cassie, gesturing to me.
“Friend. I don’t think she wants one,” Cassie said.
“I definitely don’t,” I replied.
“I’ve seen you around, you’re the Graveyard Girls,” Ian said to us. Cassie gave me a little smirk and shrugged again, fumbling some more with the cigarette.
“We’ve seen you, too. I mean, we hang out there sometimes,” Cassie said. “I’m Cassandra, this is Meg.”
“Freshman?” Ian asked.
“Something like that. Anyway, we’re just hanging out, looking for something to do.” Cassie threw the cigarette butt to the ground and made a show of stomping it out, like she was squashing a spider.
“Well, Graveyard Girls, how do you feel about the cemetery at night?” Ian asked. I clasped my palms together, trembling slightly, willing Cassie to look at me. She didn’t.
“Sure. In fact, we know a shortcut, if you’re not chicken shit,” Cassie said.
“Alright then. We just have to load our stuff into our buddy’s car and we’re ready to go,” Ian said, and they headed back into the coffee shop to retrieve their equipment.
“Cassie,” I said. “I don’t want to go to the cemetery right now. It’ll be creepy, it’ll be trespassing. We don’t even know them.”
“Shh, it’s going to be fine. We’re just going to go for a walk like we do every day, only now it’s at night. Everything else will be the same.” Cassie rubbed my shoulder, the tightness in my chest subsiding slightly. “I didn’t sound stupid just now, talking to Ian, did I?”
“No, not stupid. Why?” I asked.
Cassie exhaled noisily, brushing her hair out of her face. “Okay, good. I don’t want them to think of us as some dumb kids, you know?”
“I guess. Is that why you smoked the cigarette?”
“I don’t know what came over me. Did I look like I knew what I was doing?”
“Sure, you’re a natural Cass. You looked like you’ve been smoking since the day you were born.” At that, Cassie hit me playfully in the arm.
“Oh, shut up. Okay. We’re just going to go for a little walk, get to know them. Cool?” Cassie craned her neck around the corner, searching for the boys.
“A walk, sure. But when you said you knew a shortcut, you don’t mean-” Before I could finish, the boys were back, and we all followed Cassie into the dark.
It only took a few blocks for me to confirm my fears. Cassie had us cut through our old elementary school playground, the boys stopping to wrap the swings around the frame, then brought us back behind the paper mill to the culvert.
“If we crawl through here, we’ll end up at the train tracks by the cemetery,” Cassie told the boys.
“Badass, dude!” the guitarist said. I wasn’t fond of the culvert during the day, but at least I had Cassie to help pull me to the other side. Now, she walked alongside Ian, their shapes indecipherable in the dark, just voices echoing against the damp concrete.
“This would be the perfect spot to murder someone,” the longhaired bassist’s voice called out. The others laughed.
“Speaking of, Cassandra, didn’t your mom like, totally off your dad?” asked the guitarist. I felt a familiar rage on Cassie’s behalf course through me, but before I could say anything, she gave a small laugh.
“Maybe she did,” Cassie said noncommittally.
I thought maybe this was a dream. I was dreaming. When I’d wake up, I’d be back in Cassie’s bedroom, her hair tangled in mine, and I’d tell her about the dream over Cheerios and the golden morning light before heading down into the ravine together, just the two of us as chickadees scampered in the trees. I was feeling wobbly, my thoughts coming to me like a radio stuck between stations. Finally, the exit emerged in the distance. As I panted toward it, my brain cleared up.
“That was wicked,” Ian said, a little out of breath. We passed through the lychgate, shaggy yews towered over the path we walked, the oldest, crumbling headstones shining in the moonlight. The boys rode their skateboards, the hollow scraping of the wheels resonating through the cemetery. I figured the nearby neighbors would hear them, call the cops, and I’d be grounded for the rest of my life.
“Psst—Meg,” Cassie whispered to me.
“Cass! They are being really loud, we’re going to get in trouble,” I whispered back.
“It’s okay. They do this all the time. So, Ian wants to show me something down by the old convent. Are you okay up here with Aaron and JJ?” Cassie asked me.
“You’re joking, right? I literally didn’t even know their names until this very moment. It’s late, can we just go back to your house?” I looked up at her through the dark.
“I don’t want to go home. Just be cool. Listen. Ian, I really like him. He’s different than most people, you know? Please Meg.” As Cassie spoke, something curdled in my gut. The boys lit another round of cigarettes.
“Go on then. I’ll be at your house, waiting for you.”
“Come on Meg, stay!”
“No, it’s fine. I’ll see you later, okay?” I left the cemetery, hoping Cassie would turn back and follow me, but she didn’t. When I finally dared a backward glance, all I could see were the silhouettes of the two boys on their skateboards. Cassie and Ian were gone. I took the longer, above-ground path back to Cassie’s house, snuck in her back door, tiptoed up to her room, and sobbed into the pillows on her bed, overwhelmed by the smell of her, still clinging to her quilt.
When I woke up, Cassie was there, bathed in the morning glow from her east window. It hadn’t been a dream. Her long eyelashes cast shadows on her face. I wanted, more than anything, for it to have been a dream. We still woke up, had Cheerios, but it wasn’t the same. Cassie was giddy, bouncing her leg at the breakfast bar while we sat with our cereal.
“He took me down by the grottos behind the convent. He kept saying how mature I was, how he couldn’t believe I was only a freshman. Then, right before sunrise, he kissed me! Nuns could have been watching!” Cassie wasn’t eating any of her cereal.
“Wow, Cass, that’s great. Not the nuns watching but uh, the rest of it. Really great,” I said.
We walked down into the ravine, Cassie still chattering about Ian as my skull throbbed. Little tributaries wrapped along the rocks at the bottom of the ravine, snails meandering in the murky streams. We stopped a moment and watched the snails, their fragile, glimmering shells and soft bodies fumbling along the terrain.
“So, Ian wants to hang out again tonight,” Cassie said, tensing her shoulders. I could tell all her stories had been leading up to this point.
“Oh?” I asked, bracing myself.
“What do you say? It’ll be a group again. I don’t want to go alone.”
I stumbled over a protruding tree root, losing my footing for a moment. “You go, you don’t need me there.”
“I do need you there. And JJ thought you were cute! Imagine if we both had older boyfriends when school started?”
“I don’t care if JJ thought I was cute. What if we get in trouble?”
“You always jump to the worst-case scenario! I need you there, it’s important you’re with me. Please?” Cassie put her hands on my shoulders, her big eyes baring down on me.
I sighed. “Fine, I’ll come, but if we get in trouble Cass, I swear.”
Cassie hugged me. “Thank you! Nothing bad is going to happen, I promise.” When we headed back past the snails again, the sun had dried up most of the trickling water. Some of the snails had made it to other shadowed puddles. The snails that stayed in place dried up and died, leaving their shells behind. I pocketed a shell, something heavy catching in my chest.
After much urging over the phone, my mom begrudgingly allowed me to sleep over another night at Cassie’s house. Cassie’s mom agreed without hesitation and hardly looked up from her magazine that evening when Cassie lied about going to a friend’s house a few blocks away. We escaped into the summer evening, cicadas complaining along the tree-lined terrace as we made our way to the park to meet up with the boys.
“You know Cass,” I said slowly, “The lying about where we are, the sneaking around at night, smoking that cigarette. . . isn’t that a lot, like a great length to go to for some guy?” We were encroaching on the park, its fountain an illuminated beacon in the distance.
Cassie shrugged. “I don’t think it’s too much. This is just what you do when you like someone, you go to great lengths, you know?”
“I’ll take your word for it. Hey, there they are.” Ian and JJ were skateboarding toward us. Ian jumped off his skateboard at the sight of us and swung an arm over Cassie’s shoulder. My face felt very hot.
“Graveyard Girls! You up for a little adventure?” he asked.
Cassie shrugged. “I suppose. Ready Meg?” I shrugged back at her, trying to affect her aloofness. We followed the boys through the dark streets, down a river bluff to the old train tracks.
“Ever been up there?” Ian asked, gesturing to the crumbling trestle bridge over the river. Crickets cried out from the underbrush as the river slapped against the bridge’s ancient pylons. Suspended high above the tracks was a decrepit control house, accessible via a rusty ladder.
“Can’t say that I have,” Cassie said nonchalantly, but her eyes betrayed her, darting around, while she bit her lip. Still, she followed the boys, and I followed her, the ladder cool against my sweaty palms. The control house was musty, the floorboards spongy beneath our feet. The walls were heavily graffitied, words and images indecipherable. The entire bridge swayed in the breeze and my heart felt trapped in the churning shipwreck of my stomach. Cassie and the boys sat on the little landing outside the control house, their feet dangling in the air. I clung to an inside corner, desperate to get my bearings.
“Wow, you can see so much of the city from here,” Cassie said.
“Not bad, huh? I want to climb up on the roof, check out the view up there, but I can’t figure out how,” Ian said.
“Or you’re too weak to do it, more like,” JJ said. To that, Ian leapt up and grappled the wall of the house. He made it up a few feet before sliding down.
“Screw you man, I’d like to see you try,” he said, sitting back down and placing a hand onto Cassie’s thigh.
“Is that how the cops almost caught you? Climbing up there?” Cassie asked.
Ian grinned. “They weren’t even close. I outran them like it was nothing.”
“Wow,” Cassie said, “My boyfriend, the fugitive.”
“Well, not boyfriend, since you’re just a kid. You’re fun and all, but, you know, a summer thing. You’re cool, I’m sure you get it,” Ian said, patting her on the shoulder.
“Yeah, totally,” Cassie said, turning her head away from Ian. I noticed for a moment her eyes were shimmering. Something strange surged in my chest. The rank of the moldering wood and rotting fish swam around my head, overtook me, and suddenly I jumped from the corner, climbed around Cassie and the boys, leapt for the support beam, and scrambled to pull myself up. From there I reached for the metal roof, fingers burning as I gripped with all my might, pushing up from my legs like I would when I climbed trees with Cassie as a kid, until I had successfully thrust myself onto the roof of the control house. Cassie and the boys looked up in amazement.
“She sure showed you, huh dude?” JJ said to Ian, who slugged him in the chest.
“Megan, what are you doing? Get down, you’re going to get hurt!” Cassie shouted up at me. For a moment I didn’t say anything. It was cool and breezy up there, the river dark far below us. It really was quite the view. The old mill looked miniscule across the river from me. The university’s stadium rose up from the trees like an illuminated monolith. Little cars sputtered along the road toward downtown.
“I want to go home,” I said at last, “and I want you to come with me, Cass.”
She looked up at me, then back at the boys. “I mean, it is late. We should go, then.”
“Come on, the night’s just getting started!” Ian cajoled, grabbing her playfully by the shoulder.
“No, Meg’s right. We’ll catch you later!” Cassie said. With that, I carefully slid down from the roof, landing in a crumpled heap in front of the three of them. Cassie and I clamored down the ladder, followed the tracks back to shore, and headed toward her house in the dark. Neither of us talked for a long time.
“You must think I’m so stupid,” Cassie said at last. She was crying, the streetlights shimmering in the streaks down her cheeks.
“No, Cass, not at all! It’s his loss. You’re special, you know?” I grabbed her hand and squeezed it tight as we walked the rest of the way back to her house.
“I can’t believe you climbed up there. I’ve never seen you do something like that before! You really made Ian look like a moron,” Cassie said.
I shrugged. “I’m not sure what came over me.” There was a swoop deep in my gut, like missing a stair in the dark, a feeling that would take a few years yet for me to fully name. We snuck back into Cassie’s house and headed to bed. I stared into the dark for a long while, trying to match my breath to Cassie’s, watching the crest and fall of her chest.
“You know, my mom didn’t murder my dad. I don’t even know how that rumor started,” Cassie said after some time.
“Oh?”
“Yeah. My dad’s alive, I just don’t talk to him. He has another family.”
“Your parents are divorced?” I asked.
“Not divorced. Never married. My dad was my mom’s boss. They had an affair. He had kids almost her age already. But she got pregnant with me and, I guess she wanted to keep me, I don’t know, so my dad paid to keep her quiet.” The predawn birds shrieked as the palest gray light crept into the bedroom. Cassie’s eyes fluttered open and shut.
“Did you ever meet him?”
“Once. I found his address in my mom’s stuff and took the bus to his house in the suburbs. Mom doesn’t know. When I rang the doorbell, he answered. It had to be him. He was the tallest person I’ve ever met. He didn’t recognize me at all, I could have been anybody.” Cassie buried her head into my chest, and I held her close.
The sun properly rose in the sky, the birdsong outside reaching its zenith. I thought Cassie had finally fallen asleep when she stirred a bit, mumbling, “Things are going to be better when we’re older, right Meg?”
“Sure Cass. It’s all going to be different. We just have to grow up a bit more is all,” I said, staring out the window as the sun snuck over the evergreens.
Kate Gargo (she/her) is an emerging poet, fiction writer, and essayist. She has a BA in English - Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire and is currently pursuing an MA in Professional Poetry Writing from the University of Denver. Kate received honorable mention in the Association of Writers' 2022 Intro Journals project. Her work focuses on the confluence of grief and joy, trauma, and coming of age. She currently lives in a dilapidated Victorian home in the upper Midwest.