Helena glanced, concerned, at the figure on the steps as she sat down beside him. The dusk haze hovered in the air around them but did not settle. A few fireflies let out a feeble glow, flying slowly as if disconcerted by the noise. Helena tensed as the commotion of the school dance and the fluorescent lighting flooded out beneath the metal doors. Funny, she had not thought it would bother her tonight.

Her tangled mess of red hair hung above her elbows, and her blue-grey eyes glinted with a soft intensity as she glanced once again at the boy beside her, who was attempting to look bored. But the way he sat bowed down toward the ground, and tilted his head away from Helena when she came, made her guess the truth. For pain was not unknown to her, and sadness no stranger.

“Were you at the dance?” Helena asked softly, her voice dampened by the heavy air.

The boy looked up, startled. “For a little while.” His green eyes burned into hers for a moment, and then he quickly turned away. “Were you?” he added as an afterthought.

“Yes,” Helena hesitated. She had been there, true, but she had not felt present.

Words faltered, and they sat in strained silence.

“It’s June 1st,” the boy broke the silence, his thoughts bursting out like shaken soda. “June 1st, June 1st, June 1st.”

“The last day of school,” Helena said.

“The day my mother died,” the boy countered.

The silence was excruciating. They listened for the sound of the faint breeze in the pines, but it didn’t come. Perhaps there was no breeze at all; or perhaps it could not be heard over the noise of the crowd inside.

The boy, who had been lost in his memory, seemed to recall the presence of Helena. Embarrassed, he stood up to go.

“I’m sorry,” said Helena, rising, her dark blue dress swirling slightly above her ankles. “My parents aren’t dead, but my sister …” she faltered. “She’s always in the hospital …”

The crowd inside the school roared as a different song started playing. Helena shuddered.

The boy looked at her and turned away. He imagined her in the hospital, in one of those white beds in one of those white rooms. But the brightness hurt his eyes, and he despaired. Helena saw his eyes, which he had lifted up to the clouds, and pitied him. She had felt that way once, that no one, nothing, could help her. That she would die blinded from false light. Suddenly she felt a surge of something in her soul, and she knew that she would not let him go.

“Wait,” said Helena suddenly. “You’re not alone.”

“I am alone,” he said, aggravated.

“No, listen,” she insisted.

“To what?” he inquired, green eyes flashing. “To them? They understand nothing.”

“Just listen,” said Helena, but his fists clenched and his body shook.

“And what good will it do?” he cried. “She’s gone!”

The insufferable hovering air fell at last and cooled the steps where they stood facing each other.

“She’s gone,” he repeated quietly.

“But not to you,” Helena urged. “If you listen, you can hear her voice.”

Slowly, the boy tilted his head to listen. He smiled sadly. Helena thought she felt a raindrop fall upon her cheek, and she looked up in surprise. The clouds had parted; it could not be raining. She lifted her fingers to her eyes in surprise and found tears there. She knew her sister would be gone soon. But her cheerful face would always smile up at her, saying as she often did, “Me and you? We’ll always be together, Helena. Cross my heart.”

The boy smiled shyly and took Helena’s hands, which were limp. “Come,” he said. “Let’s dance.” And he led her away from the door and the noise and the fluorescent light and into the soft grass, which swayed almost imperceptibly in the dusk breeze.

And many fireflies shone.