Ex Tombstones

The doorbell rang and Kayla grinned. She opened the front door and the night air slipped in, chilling her skin.

"Hey, guys!" she said, seeing Jeanette and Star on the porch.

Star, as usual, hid in her fur-trimmed hood. Even standing on the enclosed porch out of the chilled wind, she was moving constantly as if trying to get her blood pumping faster.

If you looked at Jeanette standing next to Star, you'd never guess both girls were from the same climate. Jeanette wore a black leather jacket, a small Boston pin clasped to the front. Her hands were bare, two plastic bags hanging from her wrists.

"Warmth!" Star shouted, barreling past Kayla.

Kayla looked over Jeanette's shoulder and to the driveway. She only saw Star's black Chevrolet Nova. "Cheyenne come with you guys?"

"Cheyenne," Jeanette said, "Is a no-show." She walked in, and Kayla shut the door. They headed to the kitchen. Jeanette set her bags down on the kitchen island, shoving aside a bowl of fruit. "I called Cheyenne and she said she wasn't coming."

"She hasn't talked to Kevin yet," Star explained, pulling out of the bar stools at the island. "And he's been at my house half the night." She slid out of her coat and set it on a stool next to her. "I think Chey's hoping he'll call and they'll make up and everything will be okay."

Kayla sighed. "Well, hopefully they will make up, but they've never broken up before. This seems serious, don't it?"

"I tried telling her that," Jeanette said. "But she didn't want to hear it."

"You guys still want to light the fire, then?" Kayla couldn't keep the hint of disappointment out of her voice.

"Of course." Star pushed her blonde hair off her shoulder. "I want to lay this down as soon as i can."

"And i made Ex tombstones out of paper," Jeanette said. "I figured we could burn them." She pulled out three tombstones out of an envelope and laid them on the table. One said Kevin, one Dean and one David. They were made out of heavy black cardstock and the names were done in gothic lettering with silver glitter.

"These are so cute!" Star picked up Dean's and fingered his name. Some glitter came away, sprinkling onto the moss-colored countertop.

"They aren't supposed to be cute!" Jeanette said.

Star shrugged. "Well, they are."

"Leave it to Star," Kayla said, "to find something cute in something that's supposed to be slightly morbid."

"She would think a demon was cute if it had good hair," Jeanette said.

"Hello, I'm like, totally right here you guys!" Star waved her hands in the air.

"Come on, i figured we'd do this in the sunroom." Kayla led them to the back of the house. The walls and ceiling in the sunroom were made entirely of glass, so the sky was overhead, stars shining brightly in the clear night. There were candles lit all over, the flames reflecting off the glass walls. Kayla had moved all the wicker furniture back to make a place for a roasting pan in the corner of the room. She'd taken the big floral cushions off the wicker chairs and set them around the pot.

"For burning things," Kayla explained, nodding at the roasting pan.

"Of course." Star smiled.

Jeanette sat on one of the pillows. "Well, let's get started." She grabbed her two grocery bags and started unloading them. There was a whole gift box full of letters, a hair scrunchie, a t-shirt, an envelope full of photos, and a sock.

"What is all that stuff?" Star asked, grabbing the envelope of pictures.

"Everything that your brother gave me. Or, if it reminded me of him, i threw it in the bag."

Kayla poked the sock with her finger. "And this reminded you of him?"

Jeanette snorted a laugh.

"He left it at my house," Jeanette explained.

Kayla raised her eyebrows. "Oh, i see."

"What did you bring?" Jeanette asked Star.

Star grabbed her purse and dug inside. She pulled out a brochure to the high school's last art show and one picture of Dean playing the drums in the garage that she had obviously taken herself.

"I know," she said, looking at her pile, then Jeanette's. "I had a pathetic relationship with Dean."

Kayla shook her head. "I think the boyfriend was more pathetic than the relationship." She was pretty sure Star suffered from the I'm-not-good-enough syndrome, what Kayla's parents called self-criticism. But no matter how many times Kayla or Jeanette or Cheyenne told her how pretty she was, she always thought she could be thinner or have better skin.

Of course, Kayla's friends were constantly telling her how pretty she was, and she never seemed to have enough confidence to talk to guys. Maybe she was suffering from self-criticism, too.

Kayla took a box of matches in her hand. "I'll start the fire. I have the fire extinguisher close at hand, just in case something goes wrong."

"I'm so fuckin' ready for this," Jeanette said.

"Throw your letters in," Kayla said to Jeanette. "That'll get the fire going."

Jeanette dumped the letters out of the box and into the roasting pan. Kayla struck a match, the sulfur filling her nose. She threw it in and the flame burned a hole into one of the letters. Soon they all were lit up. "Now, throw in something else," she said. "We'll do the tombstones last."

Jeanette didn't hesitate. She chucked things in without looking and was done within a minute. Star threw in the brochure first but then dwelled on the picture of Dean.

"Come on, Star," Jeanette said.

Star gave Dean's picture one more look and threw it in.

♥♥♥

She let out a long sigh. Why hadn't Kevin called or something? Was he deliberately avoiding her? She double checked the messages on the answering machine. Still nothing. She called his phone and the machine picked up right away.

"You reached Kevin. Leave it after the beep." Beep.

"Kevin, call me."

♥♥♥

The first thing Cheyenne noticed when she walked in the front door of Kayla's house was the smell of something burning, then the scent of cinnamon and apples. She ran through the house, checking every room until she got to the sunroom. There were candles all over the place and a fire burning in a big blue roasting pan that her friends sat around.

Cheyenne froze over the threshold and took it all in. "Are you guys practicing witchcraft or something?"

They all looked at her and laughed.

"Yes, we're putting a hex on Kevin," Jeanette said.

"Don't do that!" Cheyenne shouted, hurrying into the room. Not that she believed in witchcraft or magic or anything. But with Jeanette, anything was possible.

A boy Jeanette really liked dumped her in middle school and, to retaliate, she bought a spell book from a used book store and cursed him. The next day at school, he fell in a mud puddle before lunch and sprained his ankle in gym class. If she were being honest, Cheyenne found it a little suspicious.

"She was kidding," Kayla said. "Jeanette."

"What?"

Jeanette was always goading Cheyenne. If anyone was a pain in her butt it was Jeanette, but she loved the girl.

Pulling her jacket off, Cheyenne sat on one of the pillows in the front of the roasting pan and peered inside. Pictures crinkled from the fire. There was a sock smoldering and a t-shirt burning in two places.

The burning smell was coming from the pot, and the apple and cinnamon must have been the red candles around the room.

"So what exactly are you doing?"

"Laying the Ex to rest." Star licked her glossed lips. "Did you come to lay Kevin to rest?"

She swallowed hard and pulled a breath in through her nose. Why hadn't he called her? He never went this long without returning her phone calls. She felt helpless and restless. She just wished she could fix it, like now.

Jeanette held up a tombstone-shaped piece of paper that had Kevin's name on it. "We wouldn't leave you of the fun. Here."

Cheyenne took the paper. "This is dumb." She stood up.

"Sit down," Kayla said. "You don't have to do it if you don't want to. But it's really helping Star and Jeanette."

"We weren't technically broken up yet, you know." but the more she talked about it the more she doubted her own words. They'd never fought like this before. Or uttered the "we're done" words. they weren't the on-again/off-again kind of couple.

And the longer the silence between them stretched, the more she began to believe they were, in fact, broken up. It seemed wrong, through, to burn a tombstone with his name on it. Doing it might jinx them and they'd never get back together even if there was a chance.

"Why don't you just keep it for now?" Kayla said. "If you get back together, throw it away. If... well, just keep it."

Cheyenne nodded and slid the paper in her purse. She'd throw it away when she got home, after she finally talked to Kevin. Because he had to call, didn't he?