Dreamland (22 page)

“I'm trying to understand what she meant about keeping her life her own, about boundaries,” I heard her say to Boo Christmas day as they cleaned up the kitchen. My father was parked in his chair, watching a game, with Stewart dozing on the couch, one hand on his stomach. “But this is
Christmas,
for goodness sake.”

“She's coming around,” Boo said reassuringly.

“She seems to think that we controlled her somehow, that we were too involved in her life.” I could hear my mother washing dishes, the water splashing. “And now, I guess, we're not. Or something.” And she sighed, again, that low, sad Cass-sigh I'd heard daily since the summer.

Cass's gifts sat under the tree until we dismantled it. My mother, always fair, had even bought one—small, but still there—for Adam. Then they were moved to the hall closet, still in their brightly colored paper and ribbons, and stacked behind the vacuum cleaner.

When she had finally called, about a week into the New Year, I was lying in my bed, sleeping after another late night, as well as a fresh wrist-wrenching bruise, courtesy of Rogerson. I knew it was Cass just by the way my mother's voice jumped from its normal, polite hello to a gasp of excitement I could hear clearly through my door and down the hallway.

“Happy New Year to you, too!” she cried out, and I could hear her moving around, looking for my father so she could get him on the extension. This was harder for him. He'd get on the line and listen, talking to Cass only when prompted, and then in short, formal sentences, his voice low, as if she was someone he knew only formally. “How are you, honey? How was your Christmas?”

I could hear her going through the kitchen to my father's study, her heels clacking across the floor. I rolled over and closed my eyes.

“Oh, yes, we had a wonderful time. You missed the blueberry pancakes. But you were on our minds. It just wasn't the same without you.” A pause, and then she whispered, “Jack, it's Cassandra. Pick up that extension.”

My mother made affirmative noises as Cass described her Christmas, and then I heard my father say, “Hello, Cassandra.”

“Oh, it's so wonderful you called!” my mother chirped, her voice so full and happy. I pulled my pillow over my head trying to block out the sound.

“How's the weather up there?” my father asked, and it was quiet as Cass responded. “Well, that's New York in January for you.”

“It's been lovely here,” my mother added. “What? Oh, she's fine, so busy. Her cheerleading is just going wonderfully, and she's so caught up with school and this new boyfriend of hers, Rogerson, she's busy every night. She's just
wonderful.”

I reached up and examined my wrist, feeling the tenderness right by my watchband.
Wonderful,
I thought.

“I'm sure she'd want to talk to you,” my mother went on, and I could hear her starting down the hallway toward my room, the cordless in her hand. “I think she's still sleeping, but I can—”

I pulled the pillow tighter, letting my body fall slack just as she opened the door a crack, peeking in.

“Caitlin?” she whispered. “Honey?”

I stayed perfectly still, concentrating on breathing evenly: in, out. In, out.

“Oh, my,” my mother said softly, “she's still asleep. She'll be so sorry she missed you.”

I waited until I heard the soft click of the door shutting again before I opened my eyes. Her voice faded as she walked back to the kitchen, still cooing as she took in Cass's every word.

The truth was, I didn't want to talk to Cass. So far everyone who had noticed
something
was different in me had been distracted enough by their own problems—Rina with Jeff, my mother with Cass, even Corinna with Dave and her work—that they accepted my easy explanations about falling or clumsiness and didn't look too closely. The only one who acted as if she might have sensed something was Boo, but she'd never try to pry it out of me. It wasn't her style. So it was easy, in photography class or over dinner, to ignore her thoughtful glances, to sidestep her questions with the standard dinner table answers:
Fine. Busy. Nothing special
.
I'm just tired.

But my sister was different. We were too alike, and I was scared that she'd be able to tell something was wrong with one word, one sentence, instantly guessing everything. And I couldn't be found out, not by Cass. She was the strong one, the smart one. She would never have let this happen to her.

I reached under my mattress and pulled out my dream journal, flipping through a few full pages to find the first blank spot. And as my mother laughed and trilled from the kitchen, soaking up every bit of Cass she could, I talked to my sister the only way I had left.

I went to Corinna's one afternoon in late February to smoke a quick bowl before practice and found the entire house dark, a bunch of candles lined up and lit on the coffee table. She was on the phone, pleading with the power company and chain-smoking.

“I understand that,” she said, handing my bowl back to me. Without the TV on, it was strangely quiet: I could hear their cat purring from across the room. She was sitting on the couch with her checkbook and a calculator, crying and trying to figure out what happened to the money that was supposed to cover the bills. “But I've always paid them before. I mean, I specifically remember giving the money to my boyfriend to deposit, so I don't see how—”

I lit the bowl and breathed in deep. Corinna was listening, shaking her head. She grabbed another Kleenex out of the box on the table and wiped at her eyes impatiently.

“Yes, okay. Fine. Thank you.” She dropped the phone on the coffee table and raised her hands to her face, covering her eyes. Her bracelets slid down her arm, clanking against the ASK ME ABOUT SIMPLY SOUP-PERB COMBOS! button on the front of her uniform.

“I hate this,” she said, her voice muffled.

“I'm so sorry,” I said.

She looked up at me, half-smiled, and reached out to pick up her cigarettes. “Did you know that today in L.A. it was seventy-two degrees? In the middle of winter?” She sighed. “It's like a paradise out there.”

“Sounds nice,” I said. “But I'll miss you when you go.”

She put the cigarette in her mouth. “You'll come visit. We'll go to the beach, and find movie stars, and get a tan in the middle of February.”

“All right,” I told her. “I'm there.”

“I wish I was, right now,” she said. “It's like all I think about anymore. All I want, you know? Just to be there.”

I nodded, but to me California was so far away as to not be real, just like so much else these days.

I was late for practice as usual, and when I walked in everyone was waiting for me.

“Caitlin,” Chelsea Robbins said. “Glad you could join us. Have a seat; we need to talk to you.”

I blinked, hard, and started to walk over to the bleachers. Everyone except Rina—who was pretending to be preoccupied with tying her shoe—was watching me. They were all in their practice clothes, shorts and T-shirts, bright white Nikes with white socks. I was in sweats. Even when I was in uniform, I always wore tights and a sweater—I couldn't remember the last time I'd let anyone see my arms or legs bare.

This would have been bad even if I
hadn't
been stoned. With that added element, however, it was all I could do to sit down and remain calm as all eyes stayed on me.

The cheerleading intervention,
I thought, looking around me at all those perky faces, staring at me flatly as if I was a specimen about to be slapped on a slide.
Here we go.

“Caitlin,” Chelsea began as she sat down, folding her hands in her lap, “we thought it was time we discussed what you see as your role in the future of this squad.”

All those eyes, on me. I swallowed, and it sounded louder than God.

“My future,” I said.

“Yes.” Chelsea's lips were pink and glossy, and she pursed them a lot when she talked. I had not noticed this before. “It's no secret that your participation and commitment of late has been, well, lacking. Am I right?”

There was a low murmur from the pack as everyone agreed.

“You show up late, you have no energy, you barely make it to games,” Chelsea continued, ticking each reason off on a slender finger. “You don't attend squad functions. And there's been some speculation that you may ... have some kind of problem.”

More murmuring. Eliza Drake nodded her head, her ponytail bouncing. The lights in the gym were so bright and I could hear them buzzing, like a swarm of angry bees about to sting. I looked up at them, wincing in the glare.

Problem,
I thought.
You don't know the half of it.

“Caitlin.” Chelsea was losing patience. Beside her, Lindsay White, whose teen modeling career had been lost when I fell on her, rolled her eyes. Bitter. “We wanted to give you a chance to respond. To make your case.”

I looked around at them, all so pretty and healthy, the best and the brightest. I saw Rina, looking sadly at me, and Eliza Drake, who had lost those nagging fifteen pounds and was ready to make top of the pyramid again. And then I thought of Corinna, crying in the dark at her house as the sun went down and it grew colder and colder.

“Caitlin,” Chelsea said as she shook her head, her ponytail bobbing from side to side, “don't you even
care
anymore?”

I didn't belong with these people. I never had. Next to my life with Rogerson and the ongoing struggle to avoid full contact, cheerleading seemed even sillier and more unimportant than ever. It was like another world, another language that I'd hardly learned and already forgotten.

This question seemed ludicrous to me. Of course I didn't care. If I did, I wouldn't be hiding a bruise on my arm and one on my back. I wouldn't be shrouding myself in long sleeves and chain-smoking, watching myself shrink down to nothing as I tried to be invisible.

They were all still watching me.

“No,” I said bluntly to Chelsea Robbins and her pink, pink lips, then lifted my eyes to look across all their faces. “I don't.”

I could feel them all reacting to this as I walked down the bleachers and started across that shiny gym floor, where I'd done a hundred cartwheels and climbed atop so many pyramids what seemed a million years ago.

“Caitlin,” Rina called after me. “Wait.”

But I was already gone, pulling my arms tight against my chest as the door slammed shut behind me.

I walked out to my car, got in, and locked the door. Then I sat there, in the empty parking lot, and cried. It was the worst kind of sobbing, the kind that hurts your chest and steals your breath. No one could hear me.

I couldn't believe I was upset about being kicked off the cheerleading squad, since I'd hated it right from the start. But it wasn't just that. It was that at least while I was on the squad I had some semblance of a normal life: my old life. But now, I was just a girl with a boyfriend who beat her, who smoked too much. I was drowning in broad daylight and no one could tell.

I was due to meet Rogerson at my house right after practice, at six sharp, so I had time to take the long way home, following Rina's driving and crying path. When I passed Corinna's, all the windows were dark and her car was gone. I thought of her coming home that night to a pitch-black house, holding her hand out in front of her face as she found her way to a candle and a match. The dark might not be so bad when it was everywhere, even outside.

I drove out to the lake, then back into town through Rina's old neighborhood, pausing for a minute in front of her second stepfather's house to curse him, just like she did. Then I headed home, taking my time, and passed my house, driving up the street to hang a right and pull into Commons Park.

I hadn't been there in years. The slide and the swing set were new, but the sandbox—where Cass had reached out with a shovel and changed my face forever—was the same. I went and sat on its edge, reaching down to scoop up a handful of the grainy, wet sand, imagining the layers beneath it, full of lost buttons and action figures and Barbie shoes, all buried and fossilized like dinosaur bones. There was something of mine here, too.

I reached up with my finger and traced the scar over my eyebrow, remembering when that was the greatest hurt I'd ever known. When I closed my eyes, I pictured my mother carrying me all the way home, and my father holding my hand while the needle dipped in and out, outlining the arc of my scar. And finally, with my own memory, I saw the way Cass's expression changed whenever her eyes drifted across my face, taking it as hers as much as my own.

That had been a different time, a different hurt. I couldn't even remember that pain, now.