For Clem

She'd been sad to miss it, on the night. She'd thought about going, enjoying the festivities, the warm crush of people, hot cider, maybe, and laughter with her friends. Of course, that had been before...everything, really; before the frantic texts and calls, before the whispered conversations in the hallways at school, the rumors flying about who was fine, who'd been stung, who was hurt. Who'd been killed.

After that, Flavia wasn't quite as sad to have spent the night at home.

It had been at lunch today, the stories still flying from table to table--I heard Pablo lost all his toes, can you even believe it? I heard Angie McConnell has a piece of Todd Chad and she's keeping it in, like, a shrine or something--that she heard a familiar name float up out of the general furor. "Not the Clementine in the year below us?" she'd asked her friend, suddenly, surprising herself at her own worry.

"Yeah, her, the little kid, wears that old baseball hat all the time," Helena confirmed. "I heard she got stung a bunch and, like, twenty people stepped on her afterwards."

It's not as though we're friends, really, Flavia thought, walking home.

We helped each other pick out costumes at that odd store, and I've waved hello at her in the hallway when I've seen her between classes, came next, as she opened the kitchen cupboard and put a box of tea in her satchel, before walking out the front door again. She might not even want any sort of visitors at all.

They were feeble excuses, taking her all the way to Chelsea Cloisters and up to the sixth floor. And since she was here already, it couldn't hurt to knock on Clementine's door.

So she did.