Dana looks like she might say yes. But: “No. You’re edged.”

“I’m not.”

“Kit,” Dana says. “You pussy!”

“Okay, fine. Yes. I guess it freaked me out. I keep imagining the night they went to her house.”

“Yeah, not a nice story. I think you’re supposed to listen to Whitney Houston’s ‘One Moment in Time’ the night before a big game, not some story about a freak.”

“Let’s not call her that.”

Dana makes to say something, to make fun of Kit for caring about the fictional bogeywoman.

But she doesn’t. She gets it instead.

“Yeah, sure, okay. You’re right.”

They walk slowly back to the others, the creek running the opposite way.

“Guess what,” Dana says.

“What?”

“Daphne.”

Kit looks to her just as Dana socks her in the arm.

“I actually said it that time,” Dana says. “You haven’t gone crazy. Not yet.”

But Kit says, “Are you thinking about her too?”

Dana shakes her head. Smiles. But close friends know. And Kit wishes she hadn’t asked.

“I’m thinking about how we got a year left together,” Dana says. “And it makes me sad as shit.”

Kit stops walking. “What are you talking about?”

Dana stops too. But it’s not easy, having these conversations, even with best friends. Saying the kinds of things people always wish they’d said to their loved ones before losing them.

“Come on, Clutch. I’m not the college type. My grades are half yours. And yours are shit! I’m not crying, I get it. And who knows what kind of dickheads you’ll run into at college and what amazing shit might happen for me back here. Hey, I might even move to Chaps, end up spending my life cheering up all those girls we just totally destroyed.”

She smiles but, again, close friends know.

Kit steps closer to her. Dana almost looks frightened by it. But Kit hugs her anyway.

“I love you, dude,” Kit says. “And I always will. And you’ll always love me. And that?”

Dana has a tear in her eye, but she finishes her best friend’s sentiment anyway: “Is fucking that.”

They hold their embrace. They both squeeze the extra bit that says this one means something. Their English teacher, Mrs. Royce, once told them it was okay to know when you were inside a memory-to-be, when you were living what would one day be a landmark moment in your life. And they know this is one of those moments. Of course they do.

The friends pull apart and smile and wipe their eyes dry.

“Pussy,” Kit says.

“Wimp,” Dana says.

Then Kit says, “Well it’s nice to think of regular ol’ unsettling shit for a second instead of Natasha’s insane stories.”

Dana looks up the creek.

“Fuck Natasha.”

Kit nods and the two friends head toward the others, but it’s not completely lost on Kit that, while it is indeed nice to focus on familiar worries, the last thing she referenced, after all, was Natasha’s story about Daphne.

Walking, she feels the birds shift at the base of her neck, but the heat of the sun is greater than the heat they produce and the anxiety ebbs.