Mourning Becomes Cassandra by Christina Dudley

consequences of being a young mom was that I hadn’t bought any new clothes since before I got pregnant with Min; the most I could hope for from my existing wardrobe was vintage-three-years-ago cute.
    It occurred to me that Phyl was roughly my size—a tad taller—and much better dressed, but I didn’t know how she would feel about me rifling through her closet to borrow something. With Joanie I would have raided and pillaged without hesitation, as I’m sure she would do in my situation, but we didn’t wear the same size. In the end I kept my faded jeans but managed to locate a more form-fitting top in a shade of brown, Troy had remarked, that exactly matched my eyes.
    • • •
    With five minutes till school got out, I was sitting on the bench by the entrance, clean and presentable. I’d stuffed a chapter of my novelization in my handbag, just in case I ran into Kyle. Presently students began spilling out, laughing and joking with each other in some cases, sullen and darting away in others. It wasn’t hard to spot Kyle because he emerged on his own, his lanky form hunched defensively as if he couldn’t wait to get away.
    “Kyle!” I hollered, surprised by the surge of delight I felt in seeing him.
    He glanced up, expressionless, but when he recognized me, he made his characteristic, “Huh,” and came over to me. “What are you doing here?”
    “I took the plunge and decided to become a mentor, so I’m meeting my student today. How are you?”
    A shrug. “You working on your book?”
    I nodded, scrambling to open my handbag. “Here, Kyle, you promised to check it out and tell me if it’s crap. It’s just a chapter, and I’m afraid I got intimidated and started with a not-too-technical one, but let me know what you think. I put my email address and phone on the last page.”
    He accepted the pages wordlessly and stuffed them in his backpack.
    “How was school today?” I asked.
    “Sucked, like always. I thought about cutting out again, but I think I want to go out for basketball, and the coach is a real hard-ass. You can’t play if you have too many absences.”
    “Oh! That would be great! I could come watch you play,” I tried to encourage him. “And so could your mentor, if you get one. I met a guy at the meeting who might be okay. He works for a video game company. They put me with a girl named Nadina Stern—do you know her?”
    Kyle’s mouth compressed, and he nodded. He looked around behind him at the students and gestured vaguely at a clutch of girls talking together. “She’s over there.” I peeked nervously around him. No one in that group seemed to be looking around for me.
    “Which one?” I whispered.
    “Blonde, with the loud, squeaky voice.” At just that moment, the blonde smacked the girl next to her and shrieked, “Shut up! Are you shitting me?!”
    I took a deep breath. “Okay, then, I guess I’d better introduce myself. What are your plans?”
    “Kill some time at the library, then do some yard work for the basketball coach. Might have time tonight to read your crappy chapter.” He almost smiled at me and then sloped off. Greetings and leavetakings were just not his thing.
    Time to bite the bullet. It only took about three seconds to walk over to the group of girls, but they must have been on the lookout after all because they were all silent and staring when I reached them. “Hi,” I said. “I’m Cass Ewan, and I’m supposed to meet Nadina.”
    “Were you talking to Kyle Bateman?” demanded a dark-haired girl. “He never talks.”
    “He doesn’t?” I asked. “I mean, I’ve only just met him, and he talks to me, a little.”
    “Nooooo…” said another girl. She had fake black hair and large silver hoop earrings. “He thinks he’s too good for this place or something because he’s not a pothead, but he totally got busted for armed robbery.”
    “We call him Bandit,” put in the third friend, while I tried to contain my astonishment. So that was the