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This writing was accepted for publication in the 84 page perfect-bound issue... Down in the Dirt magazine (v111) (the October 2012 Issue) You can also order this 5.5" x 8.5" issue as an ISSN# paperback book:

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Fireflies

Cassia Gaden Gilmartin

    The hem of my dress is torn by the time the music stops. I don’t know how the yellow stain got there, or how my tights managed to tear like a ravine opening and leave the skin of one knee exposed. The disco lights flicker out and the main light turns on. I shut my eyes against it. When I open them, I know my friends will be smiling at me – faces caked with make-up, deathly pale underneath, like painted ghosts. I know I’ll have to smile back.
    “Kayla?” The voice is needlessly loud, like she hasn’t figured out the music has stopped playing.
    I squint up at her and see nothing but black, kohl-rimmed eyes, a dark pit where her mouth should have been. The air behind her is crowded with silver dust. I mumble something about needing a drink of water, and try not to feel their eyes on me as I push through crowds to reach the door.
    I’d hoped the air would be clean outside, but it’s full of cigarette smoke. The smoke trails up from crowds of laughing teenagers, making patterns in the sky. When Mom smoked I used to tell her what I saw in those patterns, strange things like fish with legs or a river flowing uphill. I can’t see pictures in the smoke from these laughing boys’ cigarettes. I don’t even want to.
    There’s only one figure I want to see. My best friend is standing by the far wall, hunched in on himself. Where everyone else is dressed as if it’s high summer, his heavy coat seems to weigh him down.
    “Kayla.” My name sounds so much gentler when he says it, the harsh “k” softened somehow. He doesn’t speak my name like it’s a question, the way everyone else does. There is no pressure to answer him.
    “I wish I hadn’t had to come here.” I kick a leaf from the ground, and watch it flutter back into place. There’s a tear running through it, nearly all the way from the tip to the stem. If I touch it again, it will break. I leave it be. My hands clench into fists as I try not to move.
    “They wouldn’t have made you come out tonight,” he says, “if you’d told them.” In all the time we’ve been friends, he’s never been angry at me. But his voice is tight now, choked with a feeling I can’t recognise, don’t want to recognise.
    Sarah used to sound that way, when she was still with us.
    “I know.”
    I don’t realise how strange I sounded until he looks at me, questions chasing each other through his eyes. Then I realise I spoke too soon, as if someone would punish me if I didn’t force the words out on time. I couldn’t help it. I was thinking about my sister. About the way she used to smile when she came home from the gym, her whole body still trembling from the strain, as if she was proud of some great achievement. And how fast I used to run up to my bedroom when I heard the bathroom door lock behind her after mealtimes. The sound of her retching, so loud I felt certain she would tear herself apart. And how, when I look in the mirror now – ten days after her funeral – I realise I look just like her.
    He says nothing more. I place my hand against the wall and let my fingers spread out, opening and opening.
    And then I see them. Little points of yellow light against the night sky, darting back and forth. I don’t understand. As soon as they’re getting somewhere, they always turn back the way they have come.
    “I haven’t seen those in a while.”
    His eyes search the expanse of sky above us. “Seen what?”
    “Fireflies.” As a child I used to trap them in empty jam jars. I’d watch them bash against the glass, until their lights went out.
    He frowns. “Did you ever try catching them when you were little? I tried, but I was useless at it.”
    “Yeah. I tried, too.” I don’t say that I was better at it than he was, or that I feel strangely guilty now – now that I realise, at that age, they never seemed like living creatures to me.
    Behind us, a girl in a black sequined dress is running, laughing with her friends. I know before she does when she’s about to fall. I see her eyes widen, hear the shout of pain as her knee hits the ground. I see her friends lift her up, and try not to watch the trail of blood slide downwards.
    “Do you think it hurt?” I ask. “When we caught them, I mean.”
    He answers right away, faster than I was expecting. “I’m pretty sure they’re too small to feel anything like that.”
    “You think so?”
    He offers me no answer. I tremble. Not just because of the cold, though the chill of the night air has crept inside me now. I feel like I’m freezing from the inside out. I can’t see them yet, but I know they’re coming. I can hear their laughter, the clack of their shoes hitting the pavement. They’ll be looking for me – those strangers I’ve made myself call friends. I thought I could do this, but now, I can’t face them.
    “Sorry. I have to go.” In the moments I’ve spent here, my voice has shrunken. Now, it sounds just like Sarah’s.
    I turn to leave, but his hand on my shoulder pulls me back. “Be careful.”
    I can read his thoughts, clear as day. He’s thinking about the box of tablets he found under my bedside table when he visited our house two weeks ago. Thirty pills. The website I visited told me that would be enough. Back then, I really meant to use them, to get the hell out of this world. But then Sarah got out of here first, and all I could think was that one of us had to stay.
    My fingers move to the ripped hem of my dress, trace the line of torn lace towards the ground until I can’t reach any further.
    “I will.”
    I wonder if he can read my thoughts, too. As I turn my back to him again, the fireflies crowd around us. I’ll stay, I tell myself, and I pray the thought reaches him. I’ll stay.

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