Sam and I turn back to the mammoth bones. It’s my favorite thing in here.
“Sorry about Mika,” Sam says with a sigh. “She tends to … get involved.” I hold back a knowing laugh. “Just to be clear. I’m not behind this.”
I turn to him. “Does that mean you don’t want to be here?”
“What? No! I only meant—” Sam stops, takes a deep breath, then calmly starts over. “What I mean is, as much as I love Mika … I don’t need anyone’s help to ask you out.”
“That’s fair,” I say.
We turn back to the glass. After a moment, Sam’s phone chimes. A second later, mine does, too. We look at our messages.
I look at him. “Is yours also from Mika?”
“Yeah.”
“What does your text say?”
“She says I should nix the exhibit and ask you to dinner.” He looks at me. “What about yours?”
“She says I should say yes.”
It’s impossible not to smile. Especially for Sam. “Shall we, then?”
Sam holds out his arm. I link mine with his. And we leave the Ice Age and mammoth bones behind us.
Eventually he finds the courage to invite me out more often. And so do I. While we start spending more and more time together, Mika is never out of the picture. I learned you can’t get to know one without getting to know the other. They were like siblings that way. We drive to school together, have lunch at the same table, share a group chat, and go on the occasional road trip. The most memorable road trip we took was to Spokane, where we snuck into a pub to see a battle of the bands contest. It also happened to be our worst.
The music is so loud I can’t hear anything. I stand in the back near the bar, holding my water. Sam’s friend Spencer is supposed to be going up any minute now. Their band is called the Fighting Poets. I asked them earlier if it was a reference to Emily Dickinson, but they said “No!”
Sam has been chatting for a while with some guys we met earlier. I look around for Mika, but it’s too crowded here. Maybe there’s a line at the bathroom. I should have gone with her. Now I’m just standing here, keeping to myself, trying to block out the obscenely loud music.
And then it happens.
A man comes up behind me. His hands slither around my waist.
Shock moves through me and I feel sick to my stomach. I spin around.
“Don’t touch me.”
He’s younger than I thought he would be. Probably in college. He has this nasty smirk on his face I want to slap off. I can’t tell if he’s drunk but that doesn’t matter.
Sam appears.
“What’s going on here? Are you bothering her?”
“Is that your girl?” the guy slurs. “Why don’t you tell her to chill out.”
Sam instinctively shoves him away from me. But I wish he hadn’t. We’re seventeen and not allowed to be in here. I don’t want to cause a scene.
The guy finds his balance. He shoves Sam back with double the force, and Sam goes stumbling back into some stools and falls over. Everyone around us has turned to see what’s going on. Sam picks himself up and comes back for more, this time more furious.
I grab his arm.
“Sam. Don’t.”
This is when Mika shows up. She must have seen everything from a distance, because she’s shouting at the guy, telling him to apologize.
I’ll never forget what happens next.
The guy throws a punch at Sam, but Mika catches his arm like an arrow. She holds a strong grip on the guy’s wrist, which seems to surprise everyone—especially him. This is the night I learned Mika helps teach a women’s self-defense class at the YMCA. Mika twists his hand to the point of breaking it, sending him to his knees.
“So you like harassing girls,” Mika shouts. “Apologize!”
“Alright! Sorry! Now let go!”
But it didn’t matter whether he apologized or not. Mika lifts her other hand and delivers a final blow, sending him to the floor. I remember everyone around us cheering. Mika taught me that same move a few weeks later.
There are so many moments I wish I could relive again. Especially the smaller ones. The quieter ones that we often don’t think about. Those are the moments I look back and miss the most. Us sitting on the floor in Sam’s room doing homework together, or watching movie musicals in Mika’s living room on the weekends. Or that time we decided to grab blankets and bring them to the backyard to watch the sunrise together, for no reason. We stayed up all night, talking about what we wanted to do ten years from now, waiting to see that burning red glow curve along a dark sky, oblivious to the significance of seeing another day. And oblivious to a future when one of us would be gone.
CHAPTER EIGHT
NOW
I wake up the next morning to a text from Mika.
Hey. I’m outside.
I rub my eyes and blink away sleepiness. What’s she doing here so early? As I think about this, a gasp escapes me as I remember. The candlelight vigil! I was supposed to meet her last night and help out. But I fell asleep and completely forgot. She probably came here to talk face-to-face. I need to respond.