A/N: Dedicated to the memory of my friend and classmate Asia Thorpe.
We miss you.
June Fifteenth, 2004
Chapter One
Passings
Nita woke early that summer morning to the sounds of birds cheeping away the last vestiges of night as the sky turned slowly from a flat gray to a beautiful blue-and-orange sunrise. She hugged her knees to her chest and looked at her alarm clock: 7:32 AM.
She stared at the alarm clock incredulously, unable to grasp the fact that she, Nita Callahan, the ultimate sleeper-in, had actually gotten up in time to have breakfast more than thirty minutes before lunch. A grin spread across her face, and she slowly, surprisingly willingly, swung her legs out of bed and went to go dress.
As she pulled on a pair of faded jeans and a gray T-shirt, she paused and listened to the sounds of the house. Judging by the lack of noise and the quiet atmosphere, and the even more surprising absence of the high-pitched TV whine, her family was still asleep.
Huh, she thought. That's weird. Normally Dad'd be up making coffee… or Dairine, at least, watching TV…
Shrugging it off as nothing, she slipped quietly out of her bedroom and padded downstairs.
Exuberantly swinging herself around the end of the staircase, she shuffled into the kitchen, intent on making herself a batch of pancakes, when she stopped dead in her tracks.
Her dad was sitting on the floor next to the kitchen phone, his face in his hands, her aunt Annie beside him, soothing him. Her Area Seniors, Tom and Carl, watched Nita as she took in the scene before her startled gray eyes, and she saw expressions of huge pain cross their faces as she met their gaze.
"What happened?" she inquired nervously.
Her only answer was the hum of the refrigerator. Not remotely comforting.
"What happened?" she demanded, nearing sudden hysterics. "Just tell me!"
She felt someone put a hand on her shoulder, and she spun around to see who it was.
The look on Kit's face as he stared at her was unbelievable. Nita looked around at the assembled people and, her voice going shrill with panic, demanded, "What's going on?!"
Tom and Carl looked to Kit.
Kit looked at Nita's pale face, her wide, scared gray eyes, and shut his own. He couldn't tell her. How could he bring his best friend's hopes crashing to the ground, burning to nothing?
But there was nothing to be done.
"Nita…" he began, his voice shaking uncontrollably. "Nita… we… we just got a call from the hospital."
He gulped as Nita's nails sank into his arm. He forced himself to look at her, and his heart went out to her as he saw the tears dancing in her eyes.
"Don't tell me… no… Kit… please don't tell me…"
"I'm really, really sorry about this, Neets… your mom passed away early this morning."
Dead silence filled the room, then, in the only movement that was made, Nita collapsed into Kit's arms and began to sob quietly into his shoulder.