Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps

“So,” Alec asked, “an apology to who?”

“Kiki Legehn,” I replied. “For that seventh grade disaster.”

“Ah, when you shoved her face into a cake while her crush was watching,” Alec mused.

“Aren’t Jon and her still together?”

“Mysteriously.”

We were walking down the road to go see Kiki, our feet occasionally crunching frosty grass. Soon, the plain blue box Kiki called home emerged. Alec and I walked up the drive, and we stopped before the mock wood doors.

I rang the doorbell. Instantly, like it was choreographed, two dogs began barking. The barks were like listening to a subwoofer with the bass turned up. WOOF.

Kiki opened the door, forcing two large Saint Bernards back as they panted happily, tails wagging as they slobbered.

“Hi, what’s-” she stopped when she saw it was us. She stepped back and began to close the door when I caught it with my foot.

“I need to talk with you,” I said.

A moment later, we were sitting in her living room, Alec and I buried beneath mounds of cheerful St. Bernards.

“So, what is it?” Kiki asked.

“I’m sorry for shoving your face into a cake in seventh grade,” I rushed out.

There was a moment of silence, then Kiki started laughing. I looked at Alec in bewilderment as Kiki rolled about in her chair, tears streaming down her face.

“You thought that I hated you because of that? God, no, I got over that ages ago,” she said, wiping at her cheeks.

“Why do you, then?”

“Because you were such a jerk,” she said seriously. “You were always preoccupied, and whenever I tried to be nice to you, you brushed me off. I was there for only a few weeks, and every rumor I was told about you turned out to be true. Cold, standoffish, couldn’t even hold a conversation with you.”

“Oh,” I said.

“I mean god, Asteria. I was the new kid, the one nobody wanted to be friends with, and you couldn’t even bother to say hello. Or answer a freaking question. You were so rude I eventually realized I would never be able to get even a nice remark from you. So I ignored you for years, trying to give you a sense of what it was like being me.

“Then you died, and everyone acted sad for a few days, and it was over. You were just another gravestone, another blip on our radar. It only took Cherie a few days to start talking trash about you.”

Kiki stopped there. Cherie. Another person I had to talk to. She had always hated me, and I never knew why. When Kiki looked up from where she was burning a hole in the carpet with her eyes, I saw they were hard and icy. Just like they had been since seventh grade.

“I need to go.” I shoved the dog off my legs gently and he panted up at me happily. I brushed off dog hair and helped Alectrona with the one who was refusing to let her go.

“Asteria?” Kiki stood up too. She took a few strides toward me. Then, to my great surprise, she hugged me. “Thanks for the apology, even if it wasn’t needed. You know that actually helped me get with Jon?”

“What?”

“Yeah,” she replied, letting me go. “He thought I had done it on purpose, getting you to shove my face in the cake. He said it was hilarious and asked me out a couple weeks later.”

“So it was worth it!” I exclaimed, grinning.

“Hey, Asteria,” Kiki said I walked out her door, “if you want to, you can always come back here.”

“Thanks, Kiki,” I replied.

⚷☽♀

“Who’s next?” Alec asked as we reentered the treehouse. I was curiously aware of her as she sat next to me on a bean bag. She smelled like orange blossoms and chocolate mixed with a scent that was uniquely Alec.

“I’m not sure,” I answered, starting to read a wayward issue of Seventeen she had lying around. “What’s the date?”

“February 20, why?”

“Nothing,” I said. Inside, however, I was floundering. I had been dead a month. In the weird, Alfheim-like place, it seemed like maybe 10-15 minutes.

“What did Kiki mean, that you were cold?” Alec asked, looking me in the eye.

“She meant that I was not very friendly to her,” I replied, stacking up issues of magazines in chronological order and avoiding her gaze. “I was not really paying attention to anything. I was preoccupied, like she said.”

“With what?” Alec pressed.

“Anything and everything,” I said flatly.

“It’s getting late,” she muttered, looking at the horizon. It was the evening, and the sun was setting. Her eyes reflected the purple of the sky.

“You should go home,” I said. “Lots of things to do, I’m sure.”

“You’re right,” she pulled her sweater back on. “G’night, Asteria.”

“’Night, Alec,” I echoed. She climbed out of the treehouse and crossed the yard, entering her house. I watched her for a moment before I shut the door and darkened the room.

There was a beep from the corner, and I pulled up an old watch of mine, a black plastic thing that still worked and could light up. The time read 6:00, and I felt tired.

I pulled the sleeping bag out of the corner and realized it was my own, blue and ratty. I slipped into its cool interior, shedding my blue jacket.

I lay there in the dark, my thoughts anywhere and everywhere. A memory swirled in front of me, and I closed my eyes.