Introduction
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| Same Time, Same Place | Selfless |
A pair of workers in the Sunnydale Funeral Home put the finishing touches on the body of a woman lain out in her casket, and leave for the night, happy with a job well done. The woman is going to look very good for her funeral tomorrow. They turn off the lights on the way out.
A couple of other coffins open, and Buffy and Xander climb out. Buffy turns on her flashlight.
Xander checks his watch. They had been hiding for thirty three-minutes. “Since when do we go to all this trouble for one lousy vampire? Excuse me. One lousy potential vampire?”
“Vampire by vampire,” says Buffy. “It’s the only way I know how.”
Someone starts knocking on the inside of another small coffin. Buffy hurries to open it. “Shh!” she tells Dawn.
Dawn sits up gasping for air. “I think this thing has a fricking child-lock on it.” She climbs out while Buffy tries to shush her again. “You know, I’m not the shortest one here. I don’t know why I had to be in the kid coffin.”
Buffy is there because this is her job. She tells Xander and Dawn they didn’t really have to accompany her if they don’t like being there. Xander and Dawn apologise. They are all feeling a little stressed by the whole Willow situation.
“I mean, she’s here, but not ‘part of the gang’ here,” says Dawn, “and hopefully not ‘under my feet here in another time dimension’ here.” Dawn looks around as if she expects Willow to just pop up.
“There’s Willow, there’s the looming humungo bad, and it’s a school night,” says Buffy. “I should be home in bed, cuddling up to my insomnia and worrying about how I’m going to mess up tomorrow.”
Tomorrow will be Buffy’s first day actually talking with kids in her new job as one of the school’s counselors, and she’s worried about it. “What if their problems are weird and tricky?”
“Well, I think you understate your familiarity with the world of weird and tricky,” says Xander. “This job’s perfect for you.”
Buffy moves over to the open coffin. “Check out perfect me. Taking my sister on an educational outing to the—” She shines her light onto the dead woman.
“Dead body,” says Dawn.
Xander looks at the woman lain out in the coffin. “I don’t know, amateur opinion here, but she looks dead. I mean, like natural causes dead.”
“The paper said she had unusual cuts and contusions on her neck.” Buffy pulls down the woman’s high collar, revealing the sutured up twin puncture marks on the body’s neck.
“She looks…peaceful,” says Dawn.
The vampire opens its yellow eyes. “I am not peaceful!”
“That I can help with.” Buffy plunges her stake into the vampire’s heart. It explodes into dust. “I always thought closed caskets were more tasteful, anyway.” She reaches up and pulls the lid closed on the empty coffin.
Buffy has everything neatly arranged on her desktop. She sits at her desk sharpening pencils.
“Hello?” says a girl.
Buffy looks up and sees a dark haired girl—Amanda—standing by her desk. She is happy to see her. “Come in! Hi.”
Amanda sits down in front of Buffy’s desk. She looks nervous. “Mr. Miller sent me here.”
“Do you know why?” asks Buffy.
“I’m not sure,” says Amanda. “Maybe ’cause this guy was picking on me.”
“I don’t want to talk to you,” says Tomas. He’s a hispanic boy, wearing a sweatshirt with a hood pulled up over his head.
“Okay, that’s fine,” says Buffy.
Tomas turns away, and leans against Buffy’s filing cabinet. “I’m serious. I don’t want to talk.”
“Okay,” says Buffy.
One of the school jocks—Peter—leans against the back of Buffy’s visitor chair and tells Buffy that he really ought to be in biology class, but he felt he had to come speak with her. She asks him what’s on his mind.
“On my mind?” asks Peter.
“Are you worried about…school?” asks Buffy. “Friends, girls, your parents—”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s it!” says Peter. “My parents.”
“So, what about them?” asks Buffy.
“Um, issues of divorce,” says Peter.
“You know, it’s awful being teased,” says Buffy. “But the thing is, you know, with bullies like this, they’re really just—”
“Insecure?” asks Amanda.
Buffy winces, embarrassed to be caught in such a cliché.
“Yeah, everyone says that,” says Amanda. “You know, I’m really tired of everyone being so insecure.”
Tomas sits down in Buffy’s visitor’s chair, but he doesn’t say anything. Buffy sits silently looking at him.
“Divorce is terrible,” says Buffy. “My parents got divorced when I was a kid.”
“My parents are happily married,” says Peter, then he remembers what he’d told Buffy earlier. “It’s hard. I feel left out. But I’m also concerned about girls.” He laughs. “Okay, I’m just bored. Maybe I should get back to bio?”
Buffy smiles, and nods at him.
“You have to stick up for yourself, Amanda,” says Buffy. “You need to show this bully that you’re not going to take anymore of his sh—guff. Uh, any guff.”
“That’s what I did,” says Amanda. “I stuck up for myself. The other day after class, I jumped him in the parking lot, and I slammed his stupid-ass insecure face right into the pavement.”
“You what?”
“I guess that’s another reason Mr. Miller wanted me to see you,” says Amanda. “Do you think I should pound on him some more?”
Xander and Willow walk together along a path by a lake. They think that Buffy is going to be a great counselor.
“I just wish she believed it,” says Willow. “She’s still stressing over the whole dropped-out-of-college, not-actually-qualified thing, plus the salivating Hellmouth underneath her feet, and the whole…”
“‘From beneath you, it devours.’” says Xander. “It’s not the friendliest jingle, is it? It’s no ‘I like Ike’ or ‘Milk: it does a body good.’”
“I know,” says Willow. “It’s going to be bad. It’s going to be real bad, and I wonder, will I… Well, if it comes— when it comes, will I be able to help?”
“I think so,” says Xander.
“I don’t know,” says Willow. “I don’t know what I can do. Frankly, I’m… I’m scared of what I might do.”
“Yeah, I get that,” says Xander. “Figuring out how to control your magic seems a lot like hammering a nail.” He sees the look Willow gives him. “Hear me out. So you’re hammering, right? If you hold the end of the hammer, you have the power, but no control. It takes, like, two strokes to hit the nail in or you could hit your thumb.”
“Ouch,” says Willow.
“So you choke up,” says Xander. “Control, but no power. You could take, like, ten strokes to knock the nail in. Power, control. It’s a trade-off.”
Willow is surprised. “That’s actually not a bad analogy. Except, I’m less worried about hitting my thumb and more worried about going all black-eyed baddie and bewitching that hammer into cracking my friends’ skulls open like coconuts.”
“Right,” says Xander. “Ouch.”
“Sorry. Xander, being back here, I… I don’t know.”
“It’ll take time.” They stop walking and Xander puts a reassuring hand on Willow’s shoulder. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”
Willow braces herself for a moment, and then continues on her own into the cemetery.
Willow places some pebbles on top of Tara’s headstone,1 and kneels in front of her grave. “Hey.” She reaches out her hand and traces the letters of Tara’s name carved into the headstone with her fingertips. “It’s me.”
“I’m scared,” says Tomas. “I don’t want to be left all alone. My brother’s joining up with the Marines.” He takes a deep breath, and blows it out. “You know, if he knew I was making a fool of myself, he’d smack me on my head. I guess I’m just being stupid.”
“Sounds like your brother’s pretty tough,” says Buffy.
“Yeah, you know, he’s a man,” says Tomas. “I’m just all messed up right now.”
“You are not messed up,” says Buffy. “It’s not messed up to worry about your brother.”
“What if he doesn’t…come back?” asks Tomas. “What if he gets blown up?”
“Have you talked to him?” asks Buffy. “Have you told him how you feel?”
“No. No, I don’t want to talk to him,” says Tomas. “I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to talk to him!”
“Okay,” says Buffy.
“Do you understand?” asks Tomas.
“So, Josh, what’s on your mind?” asks Buffy.
“Well, I’m— I’m worried that I’m…gay,” says Josh.
Buffy is a little startled that Josh would just come out to her like that. “Okay, first of all, I think it’s great that you would come and talk to me about this, a-and second of all, you should know that there is nothing shameful about being gay. Nothing!”
“I—I know, it’s just, I’m not positive, so, uh, I was thinking that—why don’t you go on a date with me so I can be sure?” Josh smiles at Buffy.
Buffy puts her fingers on the bridge of her nose, closes her eyes, hangs her head and shakes it.
“It sounds like it’s difficult for you,” says Buffy. “Like maybe your sister makes it hard for you to establish your own identity. You said she’s controlling, she doesn’t let you make your own decisions.”
“Yeah,” says Dawn, “and she borrows my clothes without asking.”
“I understand,” says Buffy. “That must be hard.”
Cassie, a girl with long blonde hair, with purple highlights dyed into it sits in front of Buffy’s desk.
“So you’re not doing your homework?” asks Buffy.
“I guess not,” says Cassie. “It all just seems kind of…whatever.”
“I know high school can seem kind of frustrating,” says Buffy, “but if you just get through it, then you can go to college, or you can join the French Foreign Legion, or anything you want.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not going to do all that stuff,” says Cassie.
“Okay, no Foreign Legion,” says Buffy. “I get that. I mean, all the changing your name and being indentured for all those years and occupying Algeria.”
Cassie laughs. “It’s just that I’m not graduating from high school.”
“Why not?”
“I really like that shirt,” says Cassie. “Where’d you get it?”
“Cassie, don’t change the subject,” says Buffy. “Why won’t you graduate?”
“Because next Friday, I’m going to die,” says Cassie.
“What?” asks Buffy.
“Can we talk about something else?” asks Cassie.
“No!” says Buffy. “We have to talk about this.”
“Just…never mind,” says Cassie.
“Cassie, what makes you feel like this?”
“Feel like what?”
“Like…you want to hurt yourself.”
“Oh, I’m not going to commit suicide, if that’s what you’re saying,” says Cassie. “No way.”
Buffy is confused. “Okay, then— then what are you saying?”
“Look, I don’t mean to be a pain,” says Cassie. “You seem really nice, and I know you’re just trying to help, but I’m wasting your time.”
“No, you’re not!” says Buffy. “This is why I’m here. Cassie, please tell me why do you think you’re going to die.”
“I don’t think it. I know it.” Cassie shakes her head. “I just know.”
“What do you mean you know?” asks Buffy. “Are you saying that someone’s going to hurt you? Has someone threatened you?”
“No! No, I just know that next Friday, I’m going to die,” says Cassie. “Some things I just know. I don’t know how, I just do… Like I know there will be coins.”
“Coins?”
“Mm-hmm. Lots of coins. Weird ones,” says Cassie. “And I know that you’ll go someplace dark underground. I—I—I don’t know.”
“What do you mean underground?” asks Buffy.
“And I know you’ll try to help,” says Cassie. “But you can’t, okay? I got to go. Trig. I don’t want Mr. Corrigan sending me to Principal Wood again.” She gets up from her chair, and picks up her bag and a book she had put down on Buffy’s desk.
“Cassie, please—”
Cassie pauses. “Thanks for being so nice…and I really do like that shirt. You should put a sweater on so it doesn’t get stained. I got to go.”
Buffy gets up. “Cassie, wait, please!”
“Got to go.” Cassie leaves.
“What am I supposed to do?” asks Buffy.
Principal Wood looks up at Buffy from behind his desk. “You did what you were supposed to do. You reported the situation to me.”
“And?” asks Buffy.
“Listen, Buffy, it’s hard. Kids this age, they’re hurting, they’re pissed off, and they say things. Sometimes they say awful things.” Principal Wood gets up from his desk, and goes over to the coffee maker on a credenza in his office. “When I was in high school, I had a thing with this guy, right? Real bully. I kept telling everyone that he better sleep with one eye open, ’cause I was going to bust his ass. Well, I got suspended. Talk like that is taken pretty seriously where I come from.” He pours a couple of mugs of coffee.
“The hood?” asks Buffy.
Principal Wood looks at her. “Beverly Hills… which is a hood.” Buffy looks embarrassed.
Principal Wood hands one of the mugs to Buffy. “Listen, the point is I was talking big because I was scared. I couldn’t bust a move in high school, let alone someone’s ass. Most of the time that’s what it is when these students act out. Fear, pain…”
“But sometimes it’s not just talk, right?”
Principal Wood returns to his desk. “Every time there’s a threat like this, we do the same dance. Inform teachers, search lockers, but we can’t—” He sits down in his chair. “We can’t know what’s going to happen, and we can’t search their brains. We just… We just do what we can.”
“It’s not enough,” says Buffy. “I need to fix this. I don’t usually get a heads-up before somebody dies.”
“What do you mean ‘usually?’” asks Principal Wood.
“No, not since— I mean, I’m sure it’s not usual to get a chance to stop something like… I just— I need to do something, okay? I have to make this better.” Buffy steps toward Wood’s desk in her excitement, bumps into it and sloshes her coffee over the front of her shirt. “Ohh! Oh! Shoot!”
Buffy stops, remembering what Cassie told her.
Dawn puts a book into her locker between classes. She closes her locker door, and sees Buffy.
“I have a job for you.”
Dawn moves through the school library, with a book in hand, pretending to be reading it. She maneuvers closer to a table at which Cassie is sitting with her friend Mike Helgenburg. Cassie is drawing something in her notebook.
Mike asks what Cassie’s drawing. He thinks she should design some matching tattoos for them. “How about like a snake with some fire coming out of its mouth?”
“Or a sexy hula girl that wiggles when you flex?” asks Cassie.
“Yeah, now you’re talking,” says Mike. “Sexy hula girl, but a sexy snake hula girl.”
Mike switches topics. He thinks that Cassie should go with him to the upcoming Winter Formal dance after all.
“What do you mean ‘after all?’” asks Cassie. “I told you I don’t want to go. It’ll probably be lame, anyways.”
“Well, yeah, but lame is funny,” says Mike, “and you know, maybe fun if…you know, we’re hanging out together.”
“We hang out together all the time,” says Cassie.
“Right,” says Mike, “and therefore, we should hang out together at the Winter Formal.”
Dawn interrupts, and introduces herself. She and Cassie are in the same ceramics class. She says that she forgot if they had an assignment from last week’s class.
“Right, um…hey, Dawn,” says Cassie. “Uh, yeah, you know, we did have an assignment, but I didn’t write it down. I think something to do with glazes.”
Mike starts to gather up his books. “As scintillating as the pottery talk is, I’d better actually go study.” He gets up from the table. “I’m Mike, by the way.”
“Hi,” says Dawn. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“Oh, don’t worry about it,” says Mike. “I better go hit the books if I’m going to ace this test. Nice meeting you, though. Cass, I’ll see you later?” He starts out of the library.
“Yeah. Hey, Mike, you’re going to get a ‘B.’” Cassie calls after him.
“Oh, A-plus, baby,” says Mike over his shoulder. “A-plus.”
Dawn sits down in the chair Mike vacated. She looks at the book lying on the table in front of Cassie: Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. “So, um, is that any good?”
“Yeah,” says Cassie. “Actually, yeah.”
“What do you have to read it for?”
“Oh, just for me, I guess,” says Cassie. “I kind of stopped reading my homework assignments. I just read what I want.”
“That’s so cool,” says Dawn. “I’d do that, but my sister would be down my neck in a second.”
“Summers… Hey, are you the counselor’s little sister?”
“No!” says Dawn. “She’s my sister. Lucky me, huh?”
“No, no, she’s really nice,” says Cassie. “I actually just saw her this morning.”
“Oh, really? What about?” asks Dawn. Cassie just shakes her head and looks away. “I-I’m sorry. That’s none of my business.”
“No, I don’t care,” says Cassie.
Dawn switches subjects. She thinks that Mike’s a cutie, and asks if Cassie is going to the dance with him. Cassie doesn’t think so.
“Oh,” says Dawn. “I mean, didn’t he ask you?”
“Only like a hundred and five times,” says Cassie.
“And you said ‘no.’”
“A hundred and six times,” says Cassie. “No, I—I can’t go. I’m not going to be around that night.”
Buffy, Xander and Willow dig into Cassie’s background in the living room of Buffy’s house. Until recently Cassie had been a good student, getting good grades. Her grades have taken a nose dive lately, and her absenteeism has gone way up. When in school she’s been apathetic and depressed.
“So the question is, what changed?” asks Xander.
“Right,” says Buffy. “If she did have some sort of psychic vision, that would explain it.”
“Do you really think this girl is some kind of precog?” asks Willow.
“I don’t know,” says Buffy. “I told you about the shirt, right?”
“Buff, you spilled a cup of coffee,” says Xander. “I’m not saying you don’t have Slayer grace, but it’s not the first time.” Maybe Buffy is trying so hard to help, she’s seeing paranormal where there’s just normal.
“Maybe…” says Buffy. “But maybe not.”
“You want me to check her medical records?” asks Willow.
Buffy picks up a folder off the table. “Her doctor already sent them.”
“Let me see.” Xander takes the folder and starts leafing through it. “Strep throat, ear infections, yeast infections…” He closes the folder. “…none of my business. No real info here.” He puts the folder back down on the table.
“Have you googled her yet?” asks Willow.
“Willow, she’s seventeen!” says Xander.
“It’s a search engine.” Willow turns back to her iBook. “Look. Okay, let’s see what Cassie Newton pulls up.” She types Cassie’s name into the Google search engine. “Hey, look. Check this. She’s got her own site.”2
“A day and a half of researching, and we finally try looking up her,” says Xander.
Buffy takes a look over Willow’s shoulder at Cassie’s web page. “Wow. That’s a lot of poems.”
“Poems,” says Xander. “Always a sign of pretentious inner turmoil.”
Willow starts to read one of Cassie’s poems:
“The sheets above me cool my skin
Like dirt on a mad woman’s grave.
I rise into the moonlight white
And watch the mirror stare.
“The pale fish looks back at me
Pale fish that will never swim.
My skin is milk for no man to drink.
My thighs unused, unclenched.
This body is not ready yet.
“But dirt waits for no woman,
And coins will buy no time.
I hear the chatter of the bugs.
It’s they alone will feast.”
“Okay, death really is on her brain,” says Xander.
Dawn came in the front door while Willow was reading the poem. “We all deal with death.”
“This girl isn’t just dealing,” says Xander. “She’s giving death a long, sloppy word kiss. She has a yen for the big dirt nap.”
“I don’t know,” says Willow. “I mean, a lot of teens post some pretty angsty poetry on the web. I even posted a melodramatic love poem or two back in the day.”
“Love poems?” asks Xander.
Willow looks up at him, and smiles. “I’m over you now, Sweetie. Look, all I’m saying is that this is normal teen stuff. You join chat rooms, you write poetry, you post Doogie Howser fan fic. It’s all normal, right?” She notices the look Buffy is giving her. “Let’s see what other sites there are.”
“You guys are way off track,” says Dawn. “I got a hunch on this one.”
No one pays any attention to her. Willow has found some stuff on Cassie’s father that Buffy wants to take a look at.
“Guys, I’m telling you, I got this case cracked wide open,” says Dawn. “I got the perp fingered. I told you about Mike Helgenburg, right?”
“Uh, that’s the guy that asked her to the dance?” asks Buffy.
“Right,” says Dawn. “The one that keeps asking her to the dance. I’m thinking, who likes to be rejected? Nobody. I’m thinking, some people can’t handle the rejection. I’m thinking—”
“Hey, I got something,” says Willow. She’s brought up Phillip Newton’s police records. “Whoa. Drunk and disorderly, disturbing the peace… There’s a lot of charges here.”
“Her dad’s a drunk?” asks Buffy.
“A violent drunk?” asks Xander.
“We better find out. I have his address right…” Buffy reaches for another file. “…here. Got your keys?” she asks Xander.
“Yeah.” Xander starts to follow Buffy out of the house.
“Guys, I’m telling you, I’m liking Mike Helgenburg for the perp,” says Dawn. “Let’s collar him before he…” Buffy and Xander are already out the door. “…lawyers up.”
Buffy stands on Phillip Newton’s doorstep with Xander, and pushes the doorbell button. She sighs. “Buffy the Vampire Slayer would break down this door.”
“And Buffy the counselor?” asks Xander.
“Waits.” Buffy pushes the button again.
Mr. Newton finally answers the door. He’s looking a little bleary eyed, is a little unsteady on his feet. Buffy introduces herself. “I work at your daughter’s school. I need to talk to you.”
Mr. Newton shows Buffy and Xander into his home. “So is she screwing up her grades again? ’Cause she’s, uh, not the sharpest apple in the barrel.”
Buffy tells him that that isn’t what she’s there about. “We know you’ve been picked up by the police a couple of times. We wanted to know if you still…” She looks at an open bottle, and empty glass on a table. “…drink a lot.”
“What’s that got to do with Cassie?” asks Mr. Newton.
“Frankly, we were worried that you might drink too much…and hurt Cassie.” Buffy looks embarrassed. “That’s all.”
“Oh. Now I see,” says Mr. Newton. “That’s—that’s all. You just come in here in the middle of the night, into my home, and start accusing me of beating on my daughter? That’s all?”
“We just want to make sure—”
“Well, that’s a lie!” says Mr. Newton. “Who told you this? Did Cassie’s mother put you up to this, ’cause I pay my support, okay? To the dime! She just wants to take away the one weekend a month I get to be with my girl.”
Buffy becomes less uncomfortable. “Which is when?”
“What?” asks Mr. Newton.
“Which weekend is it?” asks Buffy.
“I just had her last weekend,” says Mr. Newton. “Look, I… I may not be the greatest dad in the world, but I don’t beat up my daughter!”
“So…you won’t be seeing her this Friday, then?” asks Buffy.
“Not unless my ex-wife gets a personality transplant,” says Mr. Newton.
“Okay,” says Buffy.
“Okay, what?” asks Mr. Newton. “Okay, now you’ll get out of my house?”
“Yeah,” says Buffy, “we will.”
Buffy and Xander walk toward his car, parked in Phillip Newton’s driveway. Cassie steps out of the shadows. “It’s not him. He’s not the one who does it. Thank you for trying, but…I probably shouldn’t have told you anything. You’re making such a big deal out of it and I want it to all just go away.”
“Are you talking about killing yourself?” asks Xander.
“No, of course not!” says Cassie.
“Then fight,” says Buffy. “Try.”
“There’s no point,” says Cassie. “I told you—”
“This doesn’t sound like someone who really wants to live,” says Buffy.
“You think I want this?” asks Cassie. “You think I don’t care? Believe me, I want to…be here…do things. I want to graduate from high school, and I want to go to the stupid winter formal.
“I have this friend, and…it would be fun to go with him. Just to dance and hear lame music. To wear a silly dress and laugh and stuff. I’d like to go.
“There’s a lot of stuff I’d like to do. I’d love to ice skate at Rockefeller Center and I’d love to see my cousins grow up and see how they turn out because they’re really mean and I think they’re going to be fat! I’d love to backpack across the country or…I don’t know…fall in love. But I won’t. I just never will.”
“You will,” says Buffy. “Cassie, you will! You just have to tell us what you know. You have to tell us everything. Please help us!”
“I can’t,” says Cassie. “I just know it’s going to happen. I don’t know…why, and I don’t know how, but something out there is going to kill me.”
Seven boys in red hooded robes chant and circle a brazier in the center of a ring of coins in the school library. They are each carrying a lit candle.
One of the boys touches his candle to the contents of the brazier. The papers in it burst into flames. In the center of the brazier, surrounded by a smaller circle of coins, is a photograph of Cassie Newton.
Buffy sits at her desk in her office, checking out Cassie’s web site again.
“Hey, how are we doing?” Buffy’s startled, and looks up to see Principal Wood. “I’m sorry,” he tells her. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Buffy tells him that’s okay. She’s just a little on edge because she didn’t sleep well last night.
“It’s been a long week, huh?” says Principal Wood. “Well, thank god it’s Friday.” He pauses, and shakes his head. “I can’t believe I just said that. I’ll see you later.” He heads off into his office.
Buffy goes back to reading one of Cassie’s poems.
|
“I sit alone at my window sill, |
Dawn sits at a table in the school courtyard, having her lunch with Cassie and Mike. |
|
“They will be here, trees and sun |
Buffy, Willow, Xander and Dawn sit around the coffee table in Buffy’s living room researching. |
|
“I sit alone and try to love them. |
Cassie sits on her bed, writing in a notebook. |
Buffy moves through the darkened school basement. She finds Spike crouching motionless by a wall, staring into space in front of him.
Buffy waves her hand in front of Spike’s face. He doesn’t react. She snaps her fingers. He still doesn’t move. “Spike, what are you doing?”
“Nothing,” says Spike. “If I don’t move, if I don’t think, if I don’t listen to the voices, then I won’t hurt…much.”
“I need to ask you something,” says Buffy.
“Don’t!” says Spike.
“There’s a girl,” says Buffy. “She’s in danger, and she needs your help, now! Time is running out. It’s Friday, the day Cassie said she was going to die.”
“I can’t—” says Spike. “I can’t hear you!”
“Is there something evil in the school?” asks Buffy. “Down here, maybe? Spike, please, do you know anything?”
Spike sighs. “Yes. There’s evil…down here.” He looks away from Buffy. “Right here. I’m a bad man. William is a bad man. I hurt the girl.” He starts to punch himself.
Buffy grabs Spike’s arm. “Spike, stop it! What did you do?”
“I hurt you, Buffy, and I will pay!” says Spike. “I am paying because I hurt the girl!”
“Spike, no. It’s not me.” whispers Buffy. “It’s a different girl, okay? Her name is Cassie Newton. Please, do you know anything specific?”
Spike doesn’t say anything, and Buffy gets up and starts to leave.
“Hold, don’t leave me,” says Spike. Buffy stops and looks back at him. “Stay here and help me be quiet.”
Buffy looks at Spike for a moment. “I think it’s worse when I’m here.” She turns and walks away.
“Don’t let him hurt the girl,” says Spike.
Mike walks past Principal Wood and one of the school’s custodians checking out lockers, and continues down the hall. Buffy steps out of a cross corridor in front of him. “Where’s your hall pass?”
“No hall pass,” says Mike. “I got a free period.” He tries to step past Buffy.
Buffy blocks him. “You seem kind of upset. Something on your mind?”
“No, not really.” Mike shows Buffy the test paper in his hand. “I got a lousy ‘B’ in Egyptian history. I knew this stuff cold, so that pisses me off.”
“You get pissed off a lot?” asks Buffy.
“No, I—”
“Let me cut to the chase,” says Buffy. “I hear you can’t get a date for the Winter Formal.”
“Uh, well, look, I know it’s your job to talk to kids with problems, but honestly, I don’t have any,” says Mike “I’m fine.” He pauses and Buffy just looks at him. “All right, look, it’s really no big deal. I have a friend that I really wanted to take… I don’t know. I guess she doesn’t see me that way. She makes me crazy.”
“Crazy?” asks Buffy.
“Yeah, sometimes, I just…” Mike stops and looks at Buffy. “Whoa, that’s— that’s funny. You’re Dawn’s sister, right?”
“Uh, that’s right. Dawn is my sister.”
“That’s so weird,” says Mike. “I was just thinking about her. I was thinking, if, you know, Cassie won’t budge, maybe I’ll ask Dawn.”
“You aren’t mad at Cassie for rejecting you like that?” asks Buffy.
Mike laughs. “Nyah. She’s a girl, right? Making boys crazy is, like, her job description.”
Buffy smiles, and nods. Then she remembers what Mike had said earlier. “You’re asking my sister to the dance, and she’s your second choice?”
Buffy is interrupted by a bunch of coins falling out of one of the lockers that Principal Wood is looking in. She gives Mike a final look. “I’ll be keeping an eye on you.”
Buffy goes over to the locker, and picks up one of the coins to look at. She doesn’t recognise the design on it.
“Seems like someone’s got quite a coin collection, huh?” asks Principal Wood.
Buffy looks up at the locker number: 281.
Martin sits in a chair in Buffy’s office. “You wanted to see me?”
Buffy is leaning against her desk. “You have locker number 281?”
“Yeah, why?”
Buffy holds up the coin. “I want you to tell me what this is, and what this has to do with a girl named Cassie Newton.”
Martin shakes his head. “I don’t know. It’s late. I’m going to miss my bus.”
“I know it’s late,” says Buffy. “That’s why I don’t have time to mess around, so you need to talk to me. Now!”
“Believe me,” says Martin, “if I knew anything, I’d tell you. I—I just…don’t…”
Buffy looks down at him. “Do you know why I came back to Sunnydale High?”
“To creep me out?” asks Martin.
“To help,” says Buffy. “I’m a counselor here because I want to help. I know what it’s like to walk these halls and feel lost, alone. I just want to make things better…connect…” Buffy straightens up. “…and I’m going to connect with your face if you don’t stop wasting my time and help me do my job!”
“I— Please.”
“A girl could die!” Buffy glares down at Martin.
“I guess I know who you’re talking about,” says Martin. “She’s some weirdo suicidal poet girl. These guys I know want to mess with her. They’ve got this plan.”
Dawn follows Cassie down the front steps of the school.
“Well, I guess this is good-bye,” says Cassie.
“No!” says Dawn. “I mean, let me walk you home.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it,” says Cassie. “I’m going to my mom’s. It’s kind of far.”
“Far is good,” says Dawn.
“Dawn, I know what’s going on here.”
“What?”
“Buffy told you about me, right?” asks Cassie. “She told you to pretend to be my friend?”
“No!” says Dawn. “Maybe. Cassie, she was scared. She wanted to help you.”
“Well, she can’t.”
“Maybe she can,” says Dawn. “She’s not like you think. She’s got powers…of helping and… Look, she was worried, and now I’m worried and I wasn’t pretending at all. I really wanted to be your friend.”
Cassie laughs. “You are my friend.”
“I am?”
“Yeah,” says Cassie. “Just remember, I’m not as dumb as I look.”
“Hey, Summers!” Dawn turns and sees Peter coming toward them.
Cassie reaches out and takes Dawn by the shoulder. “Listen, Dawn, whatever happens now, it’s not your fault, okay?”
Dawn’s puzzled, but turns back to see what Peter wants. “I was just wondering if anyone had asked you to Winter Formal?” asks Peter.
“What?” Dawn smiles. “Oh, uh, no, not exactly.”
“Well, uh, I was just doing a poll.” Peter laughs and backs away from her. “I’ll see ya.” He turns and heads back into the school.
Dawn shakes her head. “That guy is such an ass.” She turns around. “Cassie? Cassie? Cassie?” Cassie has vanished.
The seven robed boys walk around the circle of coins on the library floor with their lit candles. There is a meat cleaver in the center of the circle. The boys stop circling, and turn toward the center. Peter pulls back his hood. “All present?”
The boys kneel on the floor. “All present,” they respond.
Peter turns away, and lights a torch with his candle. He turns back to the others. “Then we begin.”
One of the kneeling boys snickers.
“Mandel, shut up,” says Peter.
“Sorry, dude.” Mandel suppresses his giggles. “It’s— it’s just so cool. I mean, we’re going to be rich.”
“Yeah, well, keep your shorts on, all right?” says Peter. “We have to do the ritual if we want to score.”
Peter asks another one of the boys—O’Keefe—if he’s taken care of the exits, and he says that he has. “Anybody tries to bust in here is going to get a nasty surprise. I set up this booby trap my cousin Ben always used to do—”
“Then nobody is getting in.” Peter goes behind a bookshelf, and pulls out a bound, gagged and blindfolded Cassie. “And nobody is getting out.”
The other boys are shocked as Peter tells them that this is their sacrifice, but they don’t move to help Cassie.
Peter pulls off Cassie’s blindfold. “It’s nothing personal. It’s just that you have this death chick suicidal vibe going.” He picks up the cleaver and holds it against her throat. “And I figure if you disappear, everybody will just assume you threw yourself in a river somewhere.”
Peter holds out his candle. “Extinguish.”
One of the boys pinches out the flame of Peter’s candle, and then he and the other boys all pinch out the flames of their own. Peter begins the summoning spell.
“Almighty Avilas,
Please accept our sacrifice.
Please appear before us,
O mighty soldier of the dark.
Please appear before us
And grant us with infinite riches,
And we will pay you with our sacrifice.
We kneel before you with the gift of flesh.”
“Okay.” Buffy stands up and rips off the robe she was wearing. “That is going on your permanent record.”
“Wait, it’s the counselor,” says Peter. “What the hell is she doing here?”
Mandel points to one of the other robed boys. “I-it—it was his idea!”
Peter raises the cleaver. “Back off. Get back! Get back, you stupid bitch.” Buffy kicks him in the head, and he staggers back. He raises the cleaver again and rushes at her. “Oh, you’re going to die!”
Buffy kicks Peter in the crotch, and he drops the cleaver and collapses to the floor in agony.
“Do you know how lame this is?” asks Buffy. “Bored teenage boys trying to raise up a demon. Sorry it didn’t show. I bet it’s ’cause you forgot the boombox playing some heavy metal thing like…Blue Clam Cult? I think that’s the key to the raising of lame demons.”
Peter has stopped looking at Buffy. He points behind her. “That lame demon?”
Buffy turns around and sees the seven foot tall horned demon behind her.
Buffy grabs the cleaver and throws it at the demon. It hits Avilas in the shoulder. She charges at the demon, and it swats her away over some book shelves.
O’Keefe looks at Peter on the floor. “Dude, help!”
The demon Avilas pulls the cleaver out of its shoulder and tosses it aside. It steps toward Buffy, who’s still on the floor. Buffy swings a kick at it.
Peter picks up the cleaver and moves toward Cassie. She tries to crawl away from him.
“No!” yells Buffy, and kicks O’Keefe out of her way. She starts toward Peter and Cassie but the demon grabs her from behind and throws her to the floor.
Avilas stomps down on Buffy. She catches its foot, and holds it away. The demon roars in pain, and suddenly pulls away.
Spike is standing behind the demon holding the torch. “Here to help. No hurting the girl!”
Buffy takes the torch from Spike, and tells him to go untie Cassie. She’ll take care of the demon. She swings the torch at Avilas, forcing it back.
Peter raises the cleaver to slash at Cassie’s throat. Spike tackles him. Spike holds Peter down, and punches him. He cries out in pain as the chip kicks in, and clutches at his head. He punches Peter again, and then grabs his own head in pain again.
“Who are you?” asks Peter.
“I’m a bad man,” say Spike. He punches Peter again.
Spike picks up the meat cleaver, and raises it. Peter retreats away from him. “No, no, please!”
Buffy attacks Avilas with the torch, driving it back. She jams the torch into the demon’s abdomen, setting it on fire. Avilas screams as flames engulf its body. It collapses to the floor.
Spike uses the meat cleaver to slice through the ropes binding Cassie’s hands behind her back. He rips the duct tape off her mouth.
Cassie sits up and looks at Spike. “She’ll tell you.” she whispers. “Someday she’ll tell you.”
Buffy goes over to Spike and Cassie. She kneels by Cassie and asks her if she’s okay, Cassie nods.
Peter looks at the demon’s smoldering body lying on the library floor. He crawls toward it. “You can’t be dead! Where are my infinite riches?”
Avilas isn’t dead yet. The charred demon seizes Peter and sinks its teeth into his shoulder. Peter pulls away, and Avilas collapses to the floor and explodes.
Peter puts his hand to his bloody shoulder. “It bit me!”
Buffy ignores Peter, and helps Cassie get to her feet. They start walking toward the door.
“Help! Help me, please. I’m bleeding!” cries Peter.
Buffy looks down at Peter on the floor. “Sorry. My office hours are 10:00 to 4:00.”
Buffy reaches for the library door. “It’s all okay now,” she tells Cassie. “I hope you’re not too disappointed.” She pulls the door open.
A string attached to the door is connected to the trigger of a crossbow. It fires.
Buffy’s hand flashes out, and she catches the arrow inches before it hits Cassie’s head. “See? You can make a difference.” She snaps the arrow in her fingers.
Cassie reaches out and brushes Buffy’s hair. “And you will.” She gasps and collapses to the floor.
“Cassie?” Buffy kneels by her side, and places her ear against Cassie’s chest to listen for a heartbeat. Cassie lies motionless on the floor, her eyes open and staring at the ceiling. “Cassie! Cassie!” Buffy feels at her neck for a pulse. “No! Come on. Cassie. Cassie.”
Buffy kneels beside Cassie’s lifeless body, crying.
Buffy sits on the sofa in her living room with Willow and Dawn. Xander is sitting in a chair. Buffy has spoken with Cassie’s mother. She’s as okay as she can be under the circumstances. There was a history of heart irregularities in Cassie’s family, but she had never told Cassie about it.
“Cassie didn’t know?” asks Willow. “Then it was fate?”
“Then she was going to die no matter what, wasn’t she?” asks Xander. “It didn’t matter what you did.”
“She just knew,” says Buffy. “She was special. I failed her.”
“No,” says Dawn, trying to keep from crying. “You didn’t ’cause you tried. You listened, and you tried. She died ’cause of her heart, not ’cause of you. She was my friend ’cause of you. I guess sometimes you can’t help.”
“So what then?” asks Buffy. “What do you do when you know that? When you know that maybe…you can’t help?”
Buffy hangs up her jacket on the coat rack in her office, and picks up a student’s file. She sits down at her desk, and leafs through it. After a moment she closes the file, and waits.
| Who or What | Where | How |
|---|---|---|
| The demon Avilas | Sunnydale High library | Torched by Buffy |
| Cassie Newton | Sunnydale High library | Heart failure |