Casey Barnes Eponymous (2 page)

“Yeah right,” Mr. Cole snapped.

Out of the corner of her eye, Casey noticed the target looking
around the library.
 
She had not yet
come up with an apt way to describe the third and last song.
 
Its purpose was more abstract than those
of the others.
 
Once she labeled it
A college song.
 
The songs she chose for the third slot were more moody and cerebral than
the others, the kind of music she imagined college students played while
talking about Russian philosophers.
 
But then it occurred to her that not everyone’s vision of college was
the same.
 
What if some people read
‘college song’ and thought about frat houses and televised football games?
 
The third song was, thusly and simply,
the third song.

3. A third song - “Maybe Not” by Cat Power.
 
Cat Power, aka
Chan (pronounced Shawn) Marshall had a voice like salted caramel.
 
The lyrics of “Maybe Not” were about
freeing your mind.
 
The album was
called
You Are Free.
 
The target’s eyes came to rest on Casey.
 
She looked away.
 
Leigh, who knew about her playlists,
raised an eyebrow.

“I want you out of here when I get back,” Mr. Cole said to
Leigh.
 
He stalked to the other side
of the library, where he spotted a kid attempting to hide a contraband iPod in
his jacket flap.

“My ticket’s gone missing,” Leigh hissed.
 

Casey frowned.
 
She
knew right away what Leigh was talking about.
 
It had to do with her act of rebellion
the summer before.
 
“What do you mean?”

“It was in my duffel,” Leigh began, “I threw it in there when I
packed on the last night.
 
But now I
can’t find it.”

“Don’t sweat it.
 
No
one ever finds anything when they’re bugging.”

“I wasn’t bugging!”
 

Mr. Cole started to walk back.
 
“You better go--” Casey began to say,
but she did not get any further with her sentence because he entered the
library.
 
She froze.
 

Leigh turned.
 
As
soon as she saw what caught Casey’s eyes, she looked at her.
 
“Pretend you didn’t see him.
 
Look the other way, grab a book, and
don’t make eye contact.”
 

Casey did not budge.
 
“Case,” Leigh said.

The blond girl approached the desk.
 
This was usually the part where the
targets asked Casey if she slipped the list into their books, she said yes,
they asked why, and she told them to just listen to the songs.
 
But as the girl got closer and began to say,
“Did you put…,” Casey walked away from the desk.

“Don’t,” Leigh pleaded.

She was already halfway to him.
 
He paused inside the library door to
check out the magazine rack.
 
She
reached his side.
 
And for the first
time since the school year began, they spoke.

 
2

“You like magazines?” she asked.

“No,” he said, “Not at all.”
 
She looked down.
 
A moment passed.
 
“How ya been?” he asked.
 

“Great,” she mumbled.
 

He looked around.
 
“You working here?”
 
There
was not much of a question mark in his voice.
 
Casey wondered if he already knew the
answer.
 

Mr. Cole came over.
 
“Your friend’s still here.”
 
She
turned to look at Leigh, which was unfortunate because he and Mr. Cole did too,
which turned out to be doubly unfortunate because Leigh chose that moment to
look at Casey and make a cutting motion with her hand across her neck.
 
Leigh stopped as soon as all three pairs
of eyes spotted her.
 
She bolted
from the library.
 

He turned to Mr. Cole.
 
“What’s the fine for a book I checked out last year that I lost over the
summer?”
 

Mr. Cole did not respond at first.
 
Mr. Cole was waiting for an explanation
as to how or why said book had been lost.
 
But he, of course, did not offer one.
 
Casey’s eyes traveled downward.
 
He was wearing a Ramones T-shirt.
 
“I’m a senior,” he said, “They’re making
noise about not releasing transcripts to colleges if we have outstanding
library dues.”
 
He rolled his
eyes.
 

They’re
making noise.
 
These idiots.
 
These temporary guardians who couldn’t
even tell you what country Dee Dee Ramone was born in.
   

“Five dollars,” Mr. Cole said, “You can pay the principal’s
secretary.”
 
He walked back to the
desk.
 
Which left Casey standing
there with him, alone.
 

Now, she knew how it had all gone down.
 
She remembered what Leigh told her on
the fifth day of school.
 
But she
still wanted more than anything for the moment not to end.
 
So she forced herself to breathe.
 
And, then, to lie.

For it was not as if she had not been hoping, expecting, on a
certain level, that he would saunter into the library one day.
 
She had even gotten an idea about how to
handle it.
 
It was from a girlie
magazine she and Leigh read in the aisle of Seven Eleven.
 

Nothing drives a guy more crazy than knowing
a girl who was once his is now with another guy.
 
Even if he was the one who stopped
showing interest.
 
It had something
to do with the way men are built.

“Sorry I haven’t really seen you around much,” she said, “I’ve
been busy the past few weeks.”
 

His eyes studied her.
 
She had almost forgotten how those eyes seemed like they were staring
even when they were not.
 
“That so?”
 

“Yeah,” she continued, “I kind of met someone.”

For a moment he did not appear to register it.
 
She got nervous.
 
But then she saw the wisdom in that
girlie magazine.
 
His eyes got
harder.
 
It was subtle, but there
alright.
 
He was jealous.
 

“Interesting,” he said.
 

She waited for him to say the next thing she was hoping he
would.
 
Namely:
 
How dare you?
 
Who is he?
 
Please give me another chance.
 
But he did not.
 
Instead he put the magazine back into
the rack and left.

3

Leigh’s second evil act of the day was not to tell Casey what
she heard about him the moment Casey came over later.
 
No, Casey had to wait until the end of
her visit to hear that.
 
And
that
would change everything.

After school and before going over to Leigh’s, she came home
and rocked out.
 
For Casey’s
playlists were only the tip of iceberg when it came to her musical
ambitions.
 
That was because she
wanted to be a rock star.
 
And not
just any rock star either.
 
She
wanted to be the most guitar-slaying, album-selling, hotel-room-trashing rock
star of all time.

It began when she was thirteen.
 
In that year there was a fateful day
when her brother Yull was listening to The Ramones.
 
As she eavesdropped she saw her
future as clearly as she heard Johnny’s guitar.
 
She begged Tricia for lessons and, given
that her junior high grades were not the catastrophe they would later become,
her wish was granted.
 
After six
months of lessons and steady practice, she got her first guitar for Christmas.
 
A year later she bought an electric, a Strat,
and began to write her own songs.
 
Her
first was a folk song about world peace.

“Name two countries currently at war,” Yull said when he heard
it.
 
She made a hand pistol and
aimed it at Yull.

She soon started writing fast songs in minor chords that ranged
in subject matter from the principal’s secret life as an internet pimp to the
foreign language department’s secret ties with Al Qaeda.
 
Despite her steady march towards world
rock domination, however, there was still one element she had to master.
 
And that was playing her songs anywhere
but her basement, and for anyone other than Leigh, Yull, or her neighbor Clayton
Gould.

It almost happened, once, at the end of freshman year.
 
Casey was in the basement practicing and
Yull was upstairs with a couple of friends.
 
One of the friends heard her, came
downstairs, and asked her to play a song.
 
She strummed the opening notes of one.
 
But then she got an image in her head of
Yull and his friend laughing at her creation.
 
She took the guitar off, said she had to
go to the grocery store for Tricia, and left.
 

She did not even tell him.
 

After a few minutes of shredding, she heard the sound of
someone leaning on the doorbell.
 
She went upstairs and found Clayton Gould there.
 
As soon as she let him in he went
straight to the fridge for a Coke.
 
Sugary beverages were not allowed in the Gould household.
 
He drained half the can in one
insubordinate gulp. “Got any new tunes?” She did not respond.
 
“Let’s hear it,” he said.

Clayton Gould was fifteen and five foot five.
 
He would never grow any taller thanks to
a tumor he had at eight from Cushing Syndrome.
 
He was freakishly smart.
 
Once he got into a debate with a friend
of Casey and Yull’s stepfather over an article in
The New
Yorker
on Afghanistan.
 
Said
debate began with a note of patronization on the part of the friend and
concluded with him slinking away, tail tucked between legs, Clayton Gould
having out-referenced him at very turn.
 
Clayton Gould lived two doors away and attended a private school in the
district where students sat on cushions and people from Mensa were guest
speakers.

She turned and walked back down to the basement.
 
Once there she picked up her guitar and
began playing her newest creation.
 
The song was slower than the typical Casey Barnes fare.
 
It was about him.
 
She wrote it after school began and
everything turned horrible.
 
She
finished playing.
 
Clayton Gould did
not say anything at first.
 

“Fine,” she said, “I get that it’s cheesy.
 
It was just an experiment in, you know,
emo
.
 
I’ll never
play it again.
 
I have to go to
Leigh’s now.”
 

“As a matter of fact, I thought that was your best song yet.”

“Really?”

He nodded.
 
“It had
soul.
 
Not that your song about, what
was the one you played last week, the one about the biology teacher?”
 

“Mr. Raymond.”

“Right,” he continued, “The one about him being reincarnated as
a tapeworm, which p.s. I don’t think is possible.”
 

“You can’t say that for sure.”

“Not that that song didn’t carry more than a modicum of
emotional energy.
 
But that one you
just played was different.”
 
He
paused.
 
“Was it about a boy?”
 
She rolled her eyes.
 
He squinted at her.
 
“Who is he?”