Casey Barnes Eponymous (6 page)

“I got this one,” she said.
 
He looked from her to Alex Deal.
 
His face softened.
 
God, Casey hated the way adults got you
just when you did not want them to.
 
He backed away from the scanner.
 

Alex Deal reached the checkout counter. He handed the book and
his student ID to her.
 
His eyes
lingered.
 
“How’s it going?”

She shrugged as she held the book under the counter to scan
it.
 
She slipped the list into the
front cover of the book.
 
“You know.”

She handed him the book.
 
He looked her up and down.
 
“Joe Cocker?”

For a moment she was confused.
 
Then she remembered she was wearing a
Joe Cocker T-shirt.
 
Oh what those
eyes did to her.
 

She nodded.
 
“Ever
heard of him?”

“Of course.
 
Has
your new guy?”

She saw it again, in the eyes: A hint of irritation.
 
Alex Deal was jealous.
 

“Of course,” she said.

He looked her up and down.
 
“Ciao.”
 
He walked out.
 

She was disappointed, even if his leaving was a reasonable
consequence of her telling him about her imaginary boyfriend liking Joe
Cocker.
 
But then again he had her
list.
 
And she had a feeling
something else was going to happen as a result of that list.
 
She just didn’t realize how quickly it
would happen.

8

Math class was built over the gates of hell.
 
It began freshman year when, upon
entering Walton, Casey scored freakishly well on her math proficiency
exam.
 
That in turn caused her to be
placed in a math class with sophomores and juniors.
 
She bombed the first few tests but her
mother insisted she stay in it and hired a math tutor, a calm Indian doctoral
candidate named Raj, whose diligent efforts scraped her through the year with
passing grades.
 
But that was the
year before.
 
Raj had gone off to
Chicago and Casey failed the first quiz of the year.
 
To make matters worse, Maxine French was
in her math class.

Awful, queen of the school Maxine French.
 
Was a junior.
 
She had long buttery hair and a face
that if not classically beautiful was always coiffed to perfection.
 
Her wardrobe was a pricey argument for
school uniforms.
 
Yet despite
factors pointing to Maxine being a specific kind of girl, Maxine never scored
lower than a 94 on her report card.
 
And, in addition to being captain of the cheerleaders, Maxine was
cellist in the classical music ensemble and president of the French club.
 
The year before she was out for the
entire fall semester studying with an exchange program in France.
 
Maxine, of course, loved Yull.
 
Whenever she saw him in the hall she
shrieked and kissed him on both cheeks.
 

But woe was the fate of those Maxine chose to pick off.
 
That year there was Genevieve Sayer,
unceremoniously kicked off the cheerleading squad when she started dating Brad
Hayes, whom, Genevieve claimed, Maxine liked too.
 
Maxine of course refuted the claim.
 
As she liked to remind everyone, she was
taking a break from relationships after ending it with her college-aged
boyfriend, who in reality was a loser.
 
Not only did he have a DNJ (dude nose job), but he faked a knee injury
after he got kicked off the football team for lack of ability.
 
Regardless Maxine scored points for
dating an upperclassman when she was not and more still for the vast sexual knowledge
he bequeathed her along the way.
 
Most
people at Walton viewed Maxine French with a mixture of jealousy, reverence,
and disdain.
 
That meant she had
everyone’s attention most of the time.

The math teacher Miss Kinsey assigned Casey the seat behind
Maxine.
 
Because of this she did not
dare cheat in math.
 
But that day,
emboldened by her run-in with Alex Deal, she snuck a peak at Maxine’s pop
quiz.
 
Maxine did not seem to
notice.
 
As soon as the quizzes were
passed back up Casey returned to daydreaming about Alex.
 
But when class ended she saw Maxine
linger at the desk of Miss Kinsey.
 
Casey headed towards the back door of the classroom.

“Casey,” Miss Kinsey said.
 

She stopped and turned.
  
Maxine was gone.
 
“Oh hey Miss Kinsey you know I’d love to
hang and all but I have history next and Mr. Karp talks about the 60s whenever
he’s in a bad mood.”

“Excuse me?” Miss Kinsey asked.

This was not untrue.
 
“Mr. Karp was some variant of hippie back in the day and sometimes we
hear about it.
 
But the thing is,
when he talks about it, it doesn’t, like, make me want to be a social activist
or long for a purer time.
 
I mean
Abbie Hoffman killed himself and Jane Fonda married Ted Turner.”

“They got divorced.”

“Good point.
 
Either
way, I feel like I’m in a highway rest station when Mr. Karp talks about the
60s, n-o-t
not
inspired to change the world.
 
And if I arrive late to class, it might
put him in a bad mood, which in turn could bring on one of those talks.”

“I only need a moment of your time, Casey.”

She sighed and approached Miss Kinsey’s desk.

“Maxine says you cheated off her on the pop quiz today.”

 
“Why Miss Kinsey!”

Miss Kinsey fished the two quizzes out of the pile and held
them next to each other.
 
After a
minute she looked up.
 
“The answers
are identical.”
 

“Well maybe that’s because Maxine and I have the same stellar
teacher.”

Miss Kinsey frowned.
 
“I find it suspicious that your answers are the same when you flunked
the first quiz of the marking period and never do your homework.”

 
“Has the thought
occurred to you that maybe Maxine’s the one who cheated?”

“No.
 
I’m going to
give you a zero on this test and call your parents after school today.”

“My Dad’s dead.”

Miss Kinsey stared for a moment.
 
“I’ll call your mom then.”

In the hall outside the room, Casey was considering how
difficult it would be to slip a large, freshly chewed wad of gum on Maxine
French’s seat the next day when she heard it.
 
“Hey.”
 

She froze and then turned.
 
Alex Deal was standing ten feet behind her.
 
He was holding the playlist she put in
his library book.
 
“You put this in
the book I checked out?” he asked.

A moment went by.
 
“Yeah.”

“Rehoboth Mix.”

She shrugged.

“What’s your new boyfriend gonna think about that?”

She exhaled.
 
“I
don’t know.”
 
Which was true.

He smiled.
 
“Do you
give song lists to a lot of people, or am I special?”

“I give them to a lot of people.”

“So I’m not special, then?”

“I’m not sure.
 
It’s
been a few weeks since we hung out.
 
And now I have a new boyfriend.
 
It’s hard to remember whether or not you’re special.”
 

She never played poker before, but she had a feeling that if
what she just said had been a hand, it would have trumped everything.

“How about,” he said, “you come over after school, we tune
guitars, and I show you whether or not I’m still special?”

9

“Are you dying?” Leigh asked.
 

They were at Casey’s locker in between eighth
and ninth periods.
 
She had one more
torturous class to go until she would meet up with Alex Deal.
 
She had a feeling Leigh said something
about death but the end of her existence was not an immediate concern and she
was too nervous to focus on anything but matters of the moment.
 
“Do you have any cherry chapstick?”

Leigh shook her head.

“Why not?”

“Don’t worry,” Leigh said, “you look good today.
 
You washed your hair last night, right?”
 
Casey nodded.
 
The late bell rang.
 
“Call me the second you get home,” she
added.
 

“Are you sure you don’t have chapstick?”
 

Leigh shook her head.
 
“You look fine.
 
Don’t sleep
with him.”

“OMG Leigh.
 
This
isn’t television.”
 

Leigh shrugged and took off for class.

Casey did not hear a word Mrs. Edwards, her English teacher,
said.
 
English was the last period
of the day and Casey, as well as motivated students, often had trouble focusing
last period of the day.
 
But on that
day, she did not hear a word.
 
At
one point Miss Edwards even asked her a question, but her eyes remained on the
window.
 
Sukh the Sikh, whose Dad
was another World Bank person, poked her when Mrs. Edwards repeated her
name.
 
“She’s talking to you.”
 

Casey looked at Mrs. Edwards.
 
“Can I please use the bathroom?
 
I’ll be able to concentrate more
effectively once I’ve gone.”
 

“Fine,” Mrs. Edwards said.

She took an extra long time at the sink, using water to smooth unruly
hairs as she bit her lips until they turned bright red.
 
By the time she returned to English the
class had mercifully been split into project groups.
 

Mrs. Edwards told Casey to join Sukh and high-strung school
newspaper editor Catherine Hightower’s group.
 
This in turn provoked an uncensored look
of horror from Catherine.
 
Casey
tuned out again once she sat down.
 
Sukh might have said something about the project being a dramatic
interpretation of
Beowulf
, Catherine might have
asked Casey what she got on the first essay of the year.
 
Casey did not really know.

The bell rang.
 
Everyone around her hustled to get their stuff together and get out. But
Casey found herself moving slowly.
 
She
had, all of a sudden, a wave of something that felt like nausea.
 
A moment passed.
 
She fished inside her bag for her iPod.

She considered the Strokes song she listened to that
morning.
 
Then another idea hit
her.
 
“Your Ex-Lover Is Dead” by
Stars.
 
Stars were Canadian indie
rock.
 
They also played in Broken
Social Scene, but while Broken Social Scene was music to play when you wanted
people to think you got French films, Stars was more poppy.
 
The song was about exes running into
each other at a party.
 
It had a
soaring orchestral middle section and a girl and boy singer and it was one of
Casey’s Monday morning standbys.
 
She put it on as she walked to her rendezvous.

He was waiting next to the front door of the school checking
his cell phone.
 
They were not
supposed to have cell phones in school.
 
But there was Alex Deal, scrolling through messages on his mere feet
from the principal’s office.
 
He
looked up.