fml (24 page)

“Forget them,” I said. “It's just you and me talking.”

“Fuck you.”

“If you're lucky,” I said. Cassie frowned. “Wrong time for jokes. Got it.” I wiped my sweaty hands on my jeans. “Remember that night at Pirate Chang's?” Cassie nodded. My memories of that night were high fidelity; Cassie's might have degraded, so I reminded her. “You bet me I couldn't sink the shot at the eighteenth hole, but I did. You bet me a kiss.”

“I remember, Simon.” Cassie looked exhausted, and not just from the party. “So what?”

“I didn't kiss you at mini-golf because I was scared. Scared of you, scared of the future, scared that I'd accidentally suck your face off.” People laughed but I ignored them. “You have no idea how much I regret screwing that up.”

Cassie's bottom lip quivered like she was going to fire off another retort, but she didn't. “That was a good night,” she said.

“The best.” Cassie's anger began to disintegrate so I pushed onward. My five minutes were up, but Sia didn't rush to stop me. “I know that you did all this—the party and everything—because you're scared. But you can't be afraid,
Cassie. Otherwise, you'll spend the next three years wishing you could go back in time and do it all over again. You can't change who you are. Putting on a sexy dress and trashing your parents' house isn't going to make facing the future any easier. No matter what, Cassie, you're perfect.”

“Is that how you really feel?” she asked. God, it was like I'd been waiting for her to ask me that my whole life. I'd been so lost, waiting for Cassie to find me, and now she finally had.

I nodded, unable to form words.

“Stay there.” Cassie kicked off her shoes and descended the steps into the pool.

My moment of glory was sweeter than I'd ever imagined. Kids I'd known for years, some of whom I'd known my whole life, hooted and hollered at my triumph. I watched Cassie swim toward me, smiling up at me. And then hands grabbed my ankles and yanked my feet out from under me. I didn't have time to fight back as my knees ground into the porous faux rock, tearing through my jeans and into my skin.

“You're dead now, asshole.” Blaise and Fat Duke pinned me to the back of the rock.

An hour earlier I would have pissed myself, but finally telling Cassie how I felt had given me confidence I'd never known. Instead of flinching in anticipation of the punch I knew was coming, I said, “Do your worst, Blaise. But remember this day. It's the day you became what everyone always figured you'd become: a mouth-breathing Neanderthal with nothing to look forward to but drinking lukewarm cases of
Keystone Light at the beach and beating up people smaller than you.”

I'm not sure if what I said to Blaise made any impact, because I hadn't finished speaking when Coop yanked Blaise off balance and shoved him into the hedges. Coop brushed himself off and stood prepared to fight.

“You can take me, Duke,” Coop said. “But I know about locker 237.” He touched his finger to the side of his nose and smiled.

Fat Duke turned pasty white and ran.

Blaise tried to get back to his feet, but he was so drunk that he tripped over low branches and fell back into the bushes, cursing and yelling. No one bothered to help him. In a way, I felt bad for Blaise. Unless he became a better man, high school really was going to be the best years of his life.

“I thought you were done with me,” I said to Coop.

Coop shrugged. “You looked better in the skirt.” He slapped my arm and said, “Juliet's waiting.”

Shit! I'd forgotten about Cassie. I scrambled back up the waterfall, my knees burning like crazy, bloody and torn. When I got to the top, Cassie was treading water below me. I descended the side and pulled her up. Cassie's black dress stuck to all her curves, making it difficult to concentrate on anything but how amazingly perfect she was.

“Isn't Romeo supposed to be the one who climbs the tower?” Cassie asked.

I shrugged. “We're updating the story.”

“What happened to you?” Cassie pointed at my skinned and bloody knees. They burned but I was too busy for pain.

“I was jumped by some Capulets behind the waterfall.” I hiked my thumb over my shoulder to where Blaise was still trying to extricate himself from the dense hedges.

Cassie laughed. “I never liked him. I heard he made some kid drink a cup filled with all these different liquors.”

“Yeah,” I said.

Then it was just Cassie and me. Sure, there were all those other people—watching, waiting for me to make a fool of myself—but fuck 'em. I didn't know what to say, what Cassie expected me to say.

“I wished you'd kissed me that night,” she said.

I was blown away. For years, I'd figured that the kiss had been little more than a bet to Cassie, that she'd probably been relieved when I'd chickened out. But I'd figured wrong.

“You can kiss me now,” she said.

“Yeah?” I'd been reduced to one-word answers. When I'd asked Natalie to come to the party with me, I'd decided that it was time to let go of the past and move on with my life. Obviously, that hadn't worked out, and here I was, about to kiss Cassie. Again.

Then I did.

I kissed Cassandra Castillo. No more waiting, no more talking, no more fear. I closed my eyes, put my lips to her lips, and kissed her.

The earth didn't move, the sky didn't light up with spontaneous
fireworks, I didn't see my future with Cassie spread out before me like a slow, winding road. None of the things I'd expected to happen happened. I'd fantasized about kissing Cassie for longer than I could remember, and yet now, I felt nothing. It was a good kiss, a nice kiss. Cassie had soft lips that tasted a little like peanuts and she knew just what to do with her hands.

I should have been ecstatic. Over the moon. I was standing atop a rock, in front of a couple hundred of my peers, kissing the girl of my dreams.

Only, this was real life, and I'd finally woken up.

“Simon?”

I looked toward the house, scanning the crowd for the one person I'd been thinking about while I kissed Cassie. But Stella was gone.

“Simon, what's wrong?”

Cassie was looking at me like I'd slapped her in the face. I felt like a dick. I'd been such a moron, but it had taken kissing the girl I'd loved forever to realize that forever isn't so long after all. That love isn't always what you think it ought to be.

“You're perfect, Cassie,” I said. “Just not perfect for me.”

I turned to climb down off the waterfall when Eli sucker punched me in the nose and I fell backward into the pool, his grinning mug the tombstone that leaned over my watery grave.

Movies will make you think that when you're about to die, your entire life flashes before your eyes so that, if you live, you'll know all the mistakes you made and be able to spend the rest of your days fixing them and being the man you were meant to be before you made some bad choices and turned into a magnificent asshole.

That's all bullshit, of course. After I hit the water and began to drown in Cassie's pool—a victim of my misguided need to save Cassie from the drunken machinations of Blaise, who'd only wanted to soak Cassie as revenge for punching him in the face and ended up nearly killing me instead—my life did not, in fact, flash before my eyes. I panicked, I swallowed a gallon of chlorinated water that one of Sia's actors had very likely peed in, I even looked up Cassie's skirt, though the water blurred out all the good bits, but I didn't watch any of Simon Cross's funniest home videos as my oxygen-deprived brain slowly shut down.

What I did do was black out. And the next thing I remembered with absolute clarity was making out with Cassie. She was sitting
on top of my chest, bouncing up and down while she kissed me. Before I opened my eyes, I thought about how I'd dreamed of kissing Cassie for years and that the reality was pretty much a letdown. Cassie kissed like she was having a go at hoovering off my lips with her mouth.

Cassie kept yelling my name and I wondered how she could be kissing me and talking to me at the same time. Maybe when she kissed me, we developed spontaneous ESP. I could hear her in my mind and she could hear me.

Then she wasn't kissing me anymore. My chest burned. Cassie was stabbing me with a sword made of wasps. My lungs screamed. I had to breathe, but Cassie was on me. She wasn't kissing me, she was stealing the air from my body, slowly starving my cells.

I tried to fight back but my limbs wouldn't move. Someone was restraining me.

“Simon!” Cassie called again. But I knew it wasn't in my mind this time.

When I tried to ask Cassie how she could kiss me and speak at the same time, no words came out, but I turned to the side and coughed. Suddenly nothing in the world was more important than breathing. Than getting whatever Cassie had put into my lungs out. Someone slapped my back and I hacked so hard I felt my lungs tear. When I was able, I dragged in the deepest breath possible, unsure whether Cassie was going to try to steal it from me again.

And then I opened my eyes.

Cassie stood over me, her face ashen, tears running down
her cheeks. Coop and Ben knelt at my feet. I'd never seen either look more scared. But they weren't the ones I really saw. It was Eli Horowitz to my left. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and asked me if I was all right.

“What the fuck?” I said weakly. My chest felt like someone had hit me with a car. And was that rum I tasted?

“Don't talk,” Cassie said. “Eli saved you. You were drowning and he gave you mouth-to-mouth.” She sounded awed. Scared. My life hadn't flashed before my eyes, but I was willing to bet Cassie's had.

“Blaise?” I asked.

Coop tried to talk but he couldn't. Ben said, “That freshman chased him off. Kid's got balls. But if I see Blaise—”

“Yeah,” I said. I tried to stand up, but I didn't have any strength in my legs so I propped myself up on my elbows.

Cassie wiped her tears with the back of her hand. “Simon. About what you said—”

Coop threw up his hands. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Coop, chill.” Ben put his arm around Coop but Coop ducked it.

“Don't tell me to chill,” Coop said. “Simon nearly died; he needs to go to the hospital.”

I managed to sit up all the way. “Coop, just give us a minute. Just a minute, I swear.”

The guy was my best friend for a reason. No matter what he said or what I did, Cooper Yates and I would always be friends. “Whatever.” Coop and Ben went back into the house.

But Cassie and I still weren't alone. Everyone who'd come out to see Sia's version of
Romeo and Juliet
had decided Cassie, Eli,
and I put on a far more entertaining show. “Let's go over there,” I said, pointing to the couch. “It's more private.”

“Private” was clearly a relative term to describe the patio, but it was our best option short of going inside, which I didn't feel strong enough for. After all the abuse my body had taken, I figured I was going to need a year to recuperate.

Eli stayed by the pool as Cassie helped me totter over to the couch, but he made it clear that we weren't through. I felt like a douche. He'd saved my life and thought I was going to repay him by stealing his girl.

When Cassie and I sat down across from each other, she touched my hand and looked into my eyes and liquefied my carefully planned speech. I forgot everything in that moment. Cassie was sweaty and flushed and the night had been unkind, but she was still beautiful. Still the girl I loved.

“Simon,” Cassie said. “What's this?” She turned over her palm and revealed the blue golf ball. I'd lost track of it when I'd taken a header into the deep end.

“You know what it is,” I said.

“And?”

I sighed. “And it belongs to you.”

Cassie turned the ball over in her hand. It was the proof that I loved Cassie, and I saw the recognition of that in her eyes.

“Do you love me?” Cassie asked in a voice so near a whisper that a stiff breeze could have snatched it from me. I didn't need to answer her question to hold up my end of our barter; Cassie held my reply in her bruised fist.

“Yes,” I said anyway. Because I had to say the words, and Cassie had to hear them. “But there's someone who loves you more.” I looked over my shoulder at Eli.
Romeo and Juliet
had resumed, and he was pretending to watch.

Cassie frowned. “Eli?” This was not the direction Cassie had expected our conversation to take. I was triumphant. I'd proven my love to her, but it wasn't enough anymore.

“He loves you, Cassie.” I took Cassie's hand and held it between my pruney fingers. “I can't begin to know what you're going through right now. All that stuff with your parents and your house. But Eli—he knows who you are even if you've forgotten, and he'll be there for you no matter what.” I couldn't believe I was talking about Eli Horowitz, my nemesis. He'd stolen Cassie from me in ninth grade and I was sending her right back into his arms.

Cassie didn't appear to believe it either. She'd seen only half of what I went through to get to her, but that half was pretty impressive, and it was inconceivable that, in my moment of triumph, I'd concede.

“I thought you loved me.”

“I do. I probably always will.”

Without another word, I stood up. Adrenaline alone kept me from collapsing into a bag of bones and allowed me to walk away with my dignity mostly intact.

For me, the party was over. Sure, it would probably go on until the cops showed up or Cassie realized that she'd only thrown it to get back at her parents for ruining her life, but I had had enough.

As I marched inside, people opened a path for me. They
weren't going to do song and dance numbers in my honor, but my peers seemed to look at me with a newfound sense of respect. I didn't need to be Superman or SIMON CROSS. Plain old Simon was good enough.