Page 33 of Losing the Rhythm

“Yeah, yeah. Just get ready to study. Is Cadence on her way?”

Paxon looked at his phone. “She said she’ll come after she has dinner with Micah’s family.”

“Jealous. I want to eat dinner with Cadence,” I said.

Seth chuckled. “We eat with her nearly every day. Let her have some fun.”

“Maybe it’ll make her feel better,” Justin said as he claimed his spot on the floor by the coffee table. He frowned at the binders that were stacked there.

“She’s definitely been more spacey lately.” Cadence’s sad face came to mind. The way she was always looking around, the darkness shadowing her eyes, how she was so overly cautious that people could easily mistake her as a mute. How she always catered to us. “I want to see her smile.”

There was a moment of dead silence in the room as my words wormed their way into everyone’s thoughts.

“She really hasn’t smiled much in a while, huh?” Paxon said, rubbing at his neck as he looked down.

Seth cleared his throat and finally spoke in a low voice. “I can’t comprehend it. When I think about everything that has happened to her, I feel like I should be watching an action-packed movie. Not her life.”

“This is bullshit,” I said. “We need to fix this.”

“What are you going on about?” Bryan asked. “Fix what exactly? How?”

“Her smile! We need to get her smiling more.” I thought long and hard. This has been on my mind for a while now. What I wanted and what I should do to get it.

“I don’t think that’s anything we should force her to do,” Bryan interjected. “If she doesn’t want to smile or laugh, then we shouldn’t make her do it.”

I glared at Bryan. “Idiot. I’m not saying make her do it. I want to give her reasons to do it. Genuinely. From her heart.”

“It’s Halloween month. There are a million things we can do for her that should be fun,” Seth said thoughtfully.

“Dates!” I nearly yelled as excitement flooded through me. A million and one ideas came to mind as I thought about all the fun I could have with her. Taking her out on dates flooded me with more excitement than I knew what to do with. “How about we all take her out on a date. Show her what October has to offer.”

“That might work.” Seth seemed to think it over and then he broke out in a smile. “A date with Cadence. I like it.”

There was some mumbling as everyone seemed to think over the idea.

“We do the same for each other whenever we’re down. So we should do it for her too. She’s down. A lot has happened to her. We should do what we can to help her,” Paxon said.

“We should make it memorable,” Seth added. “I like this idea. We can fill her brain up with a lot of good memories and thoughts instead of the bullshit that has been surrounding her lately.”

“It’d be fun to take her to a pumpkin patch farm,” Paxon said.

I perked up. “Oh! A haunted corn maze. I love those.”

“There are also smaller events going on until the end of the month. I heard about a Halloween costume competition that could be fun,” Bryan said.

“Oh, the Halloween food competition should be coming up soon,” Justin added in.

“Let’s do it,” I said, feeling pumped now. We were definitely going to give her great reasons to smile. “Now. The last biggest question we have left: How do we decide who gets to take her out first?”

We all looked at each other and the challenge for victory filled us with determination. Things were about to get interesting.

“We better figure this out before she gets home,” Seth said.

We all murmured our agreement. I couldn’t let them win. I wanted to have the first date with Cadence.

Chapter Ten

I was pulling into Seth’s driveway when my phone rang. I looked at the caller ID before answering.

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