Dear Cassie (6 page)

“That’s Eagan with the braces,” Ben said, pointing to him running by. “Well, Patrick Eagan, and the other one is Leisner, or Kurt.”

“Who cares?” I said.

“You’re as pleasant as ever,” Ben replied, tapping his foot. His boot clanged on the bleacher below. I could tell he was doing it like a drummer would, like he had a bass drum sitting in front of him. He was such an ass.

Troyer wrote something on her pad and passed it to me. It said,
He’s cute
. I crumpled the note and stuffed it in my pocket.

Never again.

“Who’s that?” Ben asked, stopping his concert.

“Troyer,” I said.

“What’s her first name?” he asked, looking over at her.

“Why would I ask?”

“Why
wouldn’t
you?” he said, and his face went screwy. “I mean, you’ve been here long enough.” He turned to me with those wide brown eyes again. In the dark I could only see the whites.

“She doesn’t talk,” I said, looking at my hands. They were in fists on my thighs.

“You could still ask her name,” he said. He looked over at Troyer. “What’s your name?”

Troyer wrote something down on her pad and passed it to him.

“Laura,” he said, showing me the paper in his flashlight beam. “Her name’s Laura.”

“I might not know how to make you disappear,” I said, rolling my eyes, “but I do know how to read.”

“So Patrick is here for Adderall addiction and Kurt got caught breaking into a competing high school to steal their athletic equipment,” he said, ignoring me.

“What are you, a game show host?” I asked. I didn’t care why anyone else was here. All I cared about was making it through the next twenty-five days without killing someone.

I guess he knew how to make
me
disappear, because he continued. “That’s what the running is about, is all. They have a lot of energy to expel.”

“I guess Nez does, too,” I said. I turned and looked at the cabin, but it was quiet.

“Stravalaci, Andre—he’s the one inside with your friend,” Ben said.

“I doubt she cares what his name is,” I said. I didn’t bother adding,
And she’s not my friend
,because I still wasn’t quite sure what Nez was.

“You should probably tell her to stay away from him,” Ben said.

“Nez can take care of herself.” I paused and looked at Troyer. “Well, tonight I guess she needed some assistance, but usually she can.”

Troyer’s hand went to her mouth and she giggled.

Ben ignored my joke. “Stravalaci brought a gun to school,” he said, his skin looking pale. “Said the only thing that stopped him from using it was that a teacher saw it in his pants pocket. That’s about as fucked up as it gets.”

“He probably said that to scare you,” I replied.

“I’m not scared,” Ben said. “I might not have done something that fucked up, but I’m not scared.”

I realized maybe that was what was driving me so crazy about Ben. He wasn’t scared. Not of Stravalaci, not of asking Troyer her stupid name, not even of me.

I needed him to be scared, so he stayed the hell away.

“You gonna tell me about Square Head now?” I asked. “I mean, since you feel like it’s your job to narrate this bullshit.”

“Oh, you mean Nerone?” Ben asked, pointing at the cabin behind him with his thumb.

“Yeah, the charmer who drove us here.” I looked at him, could feel my lips smirk. “What’s
his
first name?”

“He never told us.” Ben shrugged. “He’s kind of a dick.”

“Shocker,” I said.

Troyer wrote something on her pad and held it up.
Why are you here, Ben?

“I’ll tell Cassie if she asks,” Ben said.

“Cassie doesn’t care,” I said, even though I kind of did. Whatever Ben had done, it didn’t appear to have broken him. Not like Troyer was broken. Not like I was. I could feel him looking at me, but I didn’t turn, just watched the boys running around the field. How were they not tired? Hadn’t they hiked ten miles that day like we had?

“Laura,” Ben said, leaning over me, so close that I could feel my heart in my ears, “you like it here so far?”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I asked.

Troyer snorted.

“Lucky you,” Ben said, tilting back. “You have an audience now.”

Troyer got up and walked to the center of the field. She sat cross-legged like she did on her bed, but the boys kept running around her.

“So, you wanna know why I’m here?” Ben asked.

“How many other ways can I say no?”

“I want to know why
you’re
here.”

“Why?” I flashed my flashlight in his face like a cop might, wanting to piss him off because he was pissing me off. “Seriously, what is your deal?”

“I’m trying to figure out what makes you tick,” he said, knocking his knee into mine, slowly, carefully like he wanted me to know he was touching me. There was no way I couldn’t know it. I felt my chest tighten; my skin pulsed.

“Good luck with that,” I said. I knocked his knee back, but not playfully. Hard. I hoped I left a bruise.

“I also think you’re hot,” Ben said.

I could feel him staring at me, like he wanted to watch the words hit my heart. My face felt smothered. My throat went dry; my neck and chest burned.

“Yes, Cassie, I just called you pretty,” he said, still staring.

“Go to hell,” I said, my hand to my stomach, ready to hit, but it was shaking.
I
was shaking.

“Usually people say ‘thank you’ when someone gives them a compliment.” He ran a hand through his hair, a move that had probably worked on a lot of other girls. It would not work on me.

None of this would work on me.

“It’s not a compliment; it’s a line,” I said.

“It’s not a line if it’s true.” He smirked, his lips open like they were waiting for something. “You’re welcome.” He touched my knee as he got up, so gently it made me sigh. I coughed, attempting to hide it.

At least he left before I had to respond, because for once in my life, I was fucking speechless.

He joined Patrick and Kurt on the field. They played a weird kind of tag, two of them chasing the other, and then once the two caught the one, they broke off and chased the other one. Troyer sat in the middle of the field, not even noticing them, her eyes closed, her palms facing up on her legs.

I punched my stomach again and again, because Ben had touched me twice, and I had let him. Because his touch made my body react, even though my mind was telling me not to. I kept punching because I wanted to make myself remember that letting a boy in only ended in pain.

25 Fucking Days to Go

R
awe spent the morning giving us a big long lecture about how we should use our Assessment Diaries like road maps for our lives. Look at each choice and every decision that led us here and attempt to see where we could have veered another way.

A better way.

What’s weird is I wouldn’t change what happened on prom night. I know people would say,
But if you hadn’t gotten arrested then none of this would have happened,
and while that’s true, I’d pick another night to go back and erase until the paper ripped.

The night I met Aaron and fell for his stupid crooked-toothed smile and
I’m hot shit
swagger. The night I let myself get sappy and fooled because I was so lonely, because I had nothing but a pizza-shop shit job and jail to look forward to.

Because his blue eyes were so blue and his Zippo was so silver and shiny.

I was working at Pudgie’s Pizzeria and was on dough that night. Covered in flour, I probably looked like a clown, white faced and silly. I also had that sharp, rancid smell of yeast in my hair and under my fingernails. And even though I was covered in flour, I still had to manage the counter because everyone else I worked with was in the back room drinking stolen beer from the cooler.

I could hear them laughing while I rolled out the dough for a sheet pizza, a big white rectangle that I poked tiny pinholes in with a fork. I would have liked to be drinking stolen beer from the cooler, but after the arrest, my mother did a sobriety check every time I came home. Which was beyond ironic, considering my mother’s breath could have gotten me drunk.

Before I was allowed to enter the house, I had to stand in the middle of our front yard and touch my finger to my nose. Then I had to say the alphabet backward and walk in a straight line like I was on a tight rope and stand on one foot. I must have looked like a human yard flamingo.

When Aaron walked in, I remember it being hard not to look at him. He had long, sunset-orange-colored hair, wore a pair of jeans that were down to strings on his knees and fit him like he slept in them. He was extreme-sports cute. That kind of guy who doesn’t care if he breaks his cute face, who if he knew he was cute would try to break his own cute face.

When he walked up to the counter all I could think was,
Why the hell am I wearing a bakery?
But then I wondered why I even cared I was wearing a bakery. I wiped the flour from my cheeks and the front of my shirt.

“Welcome to Pudgie’s. Can I take your order?” I automated.

“You can try.” He smiled. He had a crooked tooth. It poked out over his bottom lip like a fang.

I stared at him. He probably wanted me to laugh and I might have, if it had been two months ago—before prom night. I might have if I were drinking one of those stolen beers in the cooler.

“Large Pepsi and a slice of four-cheese with onions and peppers,” he said.

I cut him a slice and filled a large cup and handed it to him, the ice clinking inside. He put his hand around mine as he grabbed it, left his fingers there long enough for me to know he wasn’t doing it by accident. Long enough for me to pull away, but for some reason I didn’t. Maybe it was because he was the first teenage boy besides my brother I’d talked to in weeks, or maybe it was because his eyes stayed right on mine like targets. Like blue, blue lasers.

“You’re Cassie, right?” he asked.

“That’s what my name tag says.” His hand was still on mine. I finally pulled my hand away like I had burned it, and I almost spilled his drink.

“Cassie Wick?” he asked, bringing the cup to his mouth and taking a squeaky sip from the straw.

“How the hell do you know my last name?” I asked, folding my arms over the pizza-sauce-stained apron that covered my chest.

Instead of answering, he said, “I’m Aaron Chambers.”

“Who the fuck cares,” I said. “How do you know my name?” Maybe one of the assholes I worked with was playing a trick on me. They always made fun of me for not being able to get wrecked with them, because I was stupid enough to get arrested for what they weren’t afraid to do in the break room every night while they were supposed to be working.

“You don’t know who I am?” he asked, putting his drink down and leaning on the counter like he was planning to stay a while.

“Should I?” I was going to kill those assholes in the back room. Maybe even call the police on them one night when I wasn’t at work, so
they
could be stupid enough to get arrested. So they would realize it wasn’t about being stupid, it was about being doomed.

“I’m one of the guys who stood you up for prom,” he said, taking another sip of his soda. It was good I wasn’t taking a sip of it, because I probably would have spit it out, right in his face.

“Well, fuck you, then,” I said.

He smiled.

I didn’t.

“I came to apologize,” he said.

“Not to me,” I said. “You were Amy’s date.” I picked up a rag and started wiping the counter. I was afraid if I didn’t do something with my hands I would strangle him. “Go apologize to her.”

“I want to apologize to you,” he said, smiling again, his crooked tooth coming down over his bottom lip.

“I don’t need your apology,” I said, still cleaning the counter. My cheeks started to burn.

He put his hand on the wrist that held the rag and squeezed.

“You probably want to let me go before I make you,” I hissed.

He didn’t move. “I know everything that happened that night,” he said.

“Wait,” I said, my head starting to spin with fear. “Did Brian send you here to kick my ass or something? Because you can tell him Lila’s the one who stole his shit.”

“I know,” he said. “Brian knows.”

“So now we’re back to how I don’t need your apology,” I said, my anxiety turning to anger again, the heartbeat in my ears changing from the pounding of running feet to machine-gun fire. I pulled my wrist free, left the counter, and went back to my bucket of dough. I grabbed a baseball-sized glob and started rolling it out on a pastry board, smacking the middle of the dough harder than I had to, to get it started.

“Who says?” Aaron asked, leaning even farther over the counter, grabbing onto the shelf on the other side to hold himself up.

“You’re not supposed to be back here,” I said, still pounding on my dough.

“Who says I was Amy’s date?” he asked, hanging halfway into the kitchen like a kid on a jungle gym.

I rolled my eyes but didn’t turn to look at him. “Lila. Lila said you were Amy’s date.”

“Oh,
Lila
,” he said, making his voice sound fake haughty. “Well, I guess she knows everything.”