Casey Barnes Eponymous (3 page)

“No one.”
 
Casey never
told Clayton Gould about him.
 
She
had not told Yull either.
 

He shook his head.
 
“That song was too good for it not to be about something real.
 
There’s a boy alright.”
 
She ran her hands up and down her fret
board in an (impressive) approximation of Yngwie Malmsteen.
 
“But that’s not the point,” he
continued, “because until you start playing your sonic creations in front of an
audience you aren’t going to be able to get something going with this boy or,
for that matter, any boy.”

“What do you mean?”

“Whoever this boy is, he isn’t going to kick start the path to
high school superstardom that you’re hoping for.”

“I AM NOT.
 
Anyway
he’s, I mean…There
is
no boy.”

“I may not be female but I do know this: most female creatures
our age are under the impression that the boyfriend’s going to get them where
they want to go.
 
And I’m here to
tell you you’re the one who has to do it.
 
He will follow.”

“Sometimes I think it would be a good thing if you added more
junk food to your diet,” she said.

“You know there’s truth in my words.
 
There always is.”

“Please.”

At that moment, Yull entered the room.
 
Noteworthy things to know about Yull
Barnes:
 

1. He was a senior.
 
His real name Daniel was sheared freshman year of high school when
deemed “suburban and derivative.”
 

2. He was a straight A student, president of the Drama and
Amnesty International clubs, had gotten a short story published the year
before, and was applying early decision to Brown.

3. He was one of the most popular kids at their high school
Walton.
 

4. He was gay.
 
When
he came out freshman year he gathered a crowd of friends and told them he was
gay and if any of them had a problem with it they were either stupid or
latently gay themselves.
 
Since that
time he had been hassled exactly two times.
 
The first was by a football player.
 
Yull calmly repeated his mantra.
 
He added that if the football player
beat him up it would do nothing to change this perception of him in the minds
of other.
 
The football player then
turned to another player for support, and the other player walked away.
 
The other football player, as it turned
out, had a gay older brother.
 
The
other time Yull was hassled was by a nerdy mathlete.
 
Yull repeated his mantra.
 
A month later the mathlete came out.
 

5. He was magnanimous to, and adored by, everyone.
 
Except to, and by, Casey.

“Where’s my shower gel?” Yull asked.
 

“Used up.”

“And you didn’t consider asking before you used it up?”

“It was in the bathroom we share,” she responded.
 

She waited for Yull to say that the shower gel, an overpriced
one with acai, was purchased with summer money from the, oh how could anyone
forget, paid and prestigious summer internship he did at the Kennedy Center.

“You were adopted from a family that once bred with basset hounds.
 
You know that?” he said instead.
 

“Careful or I’ll dismember your Ricky Martin doll.”

“I don’t have a Ricky Martin doll.”

“But I bet you want one.”

“Barneses,” Clayton Gould said.
 

She took her guitar off her shoulders.
 
“It’s time I blow this taco stand.”
 

“I have to shower and go to a planning meeting for Amnesty,”
Yull said, “Let me guess, you’re off to see your crowd of friends at…Leigh’s?”
 

“The only thing cool about you is that you’re gay,” Casey
said.
 
He held up his middle finger
and departed the room.
 

Clayton Gould sighed.
 
“Have you given any thought to what I said about playing your songs in
public?”
 

She stared at him.
 
She shook her head.

4

Leigh answered the door and motioned for Casey to follow her
upstairs.
 
When they got to her room
she opened the door quickly so they could slip inside.
 
Her mother was down the hall
reading.
 

Once there, Casey saw that Leigh had emptied the entire
contents of her bureau onto the floor.
 
She frowned.
 
“Was there a rhyme
and reason to this dumping?”

“I still can’t find it.”

“Hmm.”

The summer before, Leigh spent five days visiting her Aunt Eva
in Los Angeles.
 
Casey was
fascinated with Aunt Eva.
 
She was
Leigh’s Mom’s twin sister but Leigh did not meet her until she was twelve, when
Eva returned from living abroad in Europe.
 
In her years away Eva became a respected film editor and was now doing the
same job in Los Angeles.
 
Eva was
outspoken and free-spirited.
 
In
Europe she lived with a succession of lovers, including a woman, and was now
living with a younger man in Los Angeles.
 
Her freewheeling ways were sharply at odds with those of Leigh’s
parents.
 
Leigh’s father was raised
Southern Baptist, in Georgia, and was an army doctor at Walter Reid.
 
Leigh’s mother was uptight and ran a
shop in downtown Bethesda that sold a variety of scented candles.
 
Since coming back to the states Eva had
visited Leigh’s family several times.
 
The visits were always punctuated by a strange tension that centered on
the fact that Leigh’s parents disapproved of Leigh’s interest in painting.

That summer Aunt Eva invited Leigh out for a weeklong visit to
Los Angeles.
 
Leigh’s parents
initially said no.
 
Then,
miraculously, they changed their minds and let Leigh go.
 
Eva took her around town and introduced
her to a bunch of film industry people.
 
On Leigh’s last night in LA, Eva’s college-aged neighbors invited her to
an Arcade Fire concert.
 
Eva told
her to go and said she would not tell her parents.
 
Leigh did, smoked pot for the first time
in her life, and made out with a white guy with dreads.
 
The ticket Leigh referred to in the
library was from that show.
 
It had
gone missing.
 

Casey shrugged and sat on Leigh’s bed.
 
“So what if they find it.
 
Just tell them Eva went.”
 

“It’s not just the ticket.”
 

“What do you mean?”

“There was a roach clip clipped to it.”

“Excuse me?” Casey asked.
 

“I wanted a memento for the first time I ever smoked pot.”

“Whoa.”

Leigh shrunk onto the floor and curled into a ball.
 
“I am so dead.”
 
Casey attempted to shoot her an
encouraging smile.
 
Leigh groaned
and put her head in her hands.
 
A
moment passed.
 
She looked up.
 
“Holy shit!”
 

Casey looked around.
 
“Did it fall from the rafters?”

“No.
 
There’s something
I heard at school today that I almost forgot about.”

“I am not interested in Yull’s latest feat, thank you very
much.”

“It has nothing to do with Yull.”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s about Alex Deal,” Leigh said.
 

Alex Deal.
 
Alex
Deal.
 
Alex Deal.
 
Was his name.
 
And it was a name that had not been
mentioned between Casey and Leigh since the fifth day of school when Leigh told
her something about him, she threw up, and Leigh said they would never speak of
him again.
 
Alex Deal who had come
into the library that day and who had left.
 
That Alex Deal.

“What about him?”

“He and Melanie Corcoran broke up.”

“What’s your source?”

“Melanie Corcoran herself, in art class.
 
Last period of the day or else I would’ve
told you in the library.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me this before!”

“I was stressed about the tick--”

“What,
exactly,
did
you hear?”

“Another girl asked her if she and Alex went to Maxine French’s
party over the weekend.”
 

Casey made a face.
 
Maxine French was queen of the school and, in a crappy taste in music
meets hummer limo kind of way, awful.

“Anyone who likes The Ramones would not be caught dead
attending a party at that cretin’s abode.”

“He went,” Leigh said, “Melanie didn’t.
 
But they already broke up two days
before, which is why Melanie didn’t go.”

“Who broke up with who?”

“Couldn’t tell.
 
All
I heard Melanie say was that it’s over.”

Casey beamed.
 
Leigh
looked at her suspiciously.
 
“Just
because he and her broke up doesn’t mean he didn’t act meanly to you.”

Casey felt panicky as she remembered what she said to him in
the library.
 
What if one of the
reasons he came in was to talk to her?
 
And there she was, going on about some imaginary beau.
 
Oh.
 
But then again maybe it was a good thing to do.
 
She looked to Leigh for guidance.
 
“I…”

She could not finish her sentence.
 
She knew, from the look Leigh was shooting
her, that she would not approve of her obsessing over Alex Deal.
 
“You what?” Leigh asked.

“’Meanly’ isn’t a word.
 
And I have to go.
 
My
favorite television program’s on tonight.”
 
She stood.
 
Her mind went
back to him.
 
Had it really been
that bad, what he had done?

“What program is that?” Leigh asked.
 

Maybe there was a whole other side to it, one she did not know
because they never spoke after everything went down.
 

“Casey?”

“Huh?”

“What T.V. show?”

“
American Idol.”

“You hate that show.”

“I happen to find it inspiring.”

“Bullcrap,” Leigh said, “and if I catch you playing Ishmael to
Alex Deal’s Moby tomorrow…”

Casey had no idea which Moby song Leigh was referring to and
she did not care.
 
She was too busy
thinking about him.
 
Maybe there was
an explanation for everything.
 
Maybe he and Melanie Corcoran…Yuck.
 
The thought of it made her feel nauseous.
 
Leigh prattled on.
 
“You did read
Moby Dick
last year, didn’t you?”

“Of course,” she snapped, “though honestly I think Marilyn
Monroe was an influence, despite what my English teacher said.”

“Marilyn Monroe?” Leigh shook her head.
 
“Casey, Arthur Miller wrote
The Crucible.
”
 
He
looked jealous earlier that day.
 
Of
that much, at least, she was sure.
 
“Casey?”