Casey Barnes Eponymous (7 page)

She forced herself to breathe.
 
“I’m starved.
 
The ladies in the lunchroom wouldn’t
confirm that the hamburgers don’t contain canine so all I’ve had today’s a bowl
of cereal.”

“I haven’t had a hamburger from that place in two years,” he
said.

“I knew there was a secret to your youthful glow.”
 

He smiled.
 
“Let’s
go.”

As Casey followed him out the front door she might have seen,
out of the corner of her eyes, the figure of one Yull Barnes standing ten feet
away.
  
She did not turn to
confirm said sighting.

10

As he pulled out of the parking lot he plugged an iPod into the
car and fiddled with it.
 
Casey took
it from his hands.
 
“I’ll do the
honors.”
 
Then she had a better
idea.
 
She took her iPod out and
cued up “Bustelo” by Ratatat.
 
He
nodded.
 
She nodded back.
 
He eyed her at a stop sign.

At a pizza place in downtown Bethesda, he paid for their slices
and they sat.
 
Two girls in
cheerleading outfits from another school entered.
 
He glanced their way.
 
Casey bit her lip and commanded herself
to think of something clever to say.
 
“I’ve seen
A Clockwork Orange”
was what came
out.
 

He looked from the cheerleaders to her.
 
“What?”
 

“I said I’ve seen…” It hit her that she had uttered the kind of
thing people say when they’re trying to get other people to think they’re
cool.
 
“There’s a porn movie called
A Cockwork Orange.”
 

Now she had his full attention.
 
“Is there?”

She had no idea whether or not there was a porn movie called
A Cockwork Orange,
and it took her no more than a nanosecond
to realize that her second statement on things Clockwork Orange-related was ten
times worse than the first.
 
He
watched her expectantly.
 

“The guy behind the counter reminds me of the guy with eyeliner
in the original.
 
You know, the guy
with the stick who wears white.”

Casey had not seen the original either. But once Yull was
watching it in the living room and Casey entered for about twenty seconds
before Tricia called her back out because her homework was not done.
 

He cocked his head to one side.
 
“Yeah.”
 
The ‘yeah’ lacked his usual self-assurance.
 
Ah ha.
 
Alex Deal had not seen
A Clockwork Orange
.
 
Casey felt more confident.
 
He glanced at the cheerleaders again, and then pushed his empty paper
plate away.
 
She still had a half a slice
on hers.
 
“Wanna get out of here?”
he asked.
 

The Strat and a drum kit were set up in his basement.
 
He picked it up and began to play.
 
Casey sat down on the couch.
 
She debated telling him she played
guitar.
 
But what if she did and he
asked her to play something and he didn’t like it?
 
Her stomach tightened.

But then again (By then he finished playing the first song and
launched into a second.
 
He did pause
in between songs to shoot Casey an expectant look, to which she responded “That
was really good.”)
 
Then again, what
if she didn’t tell him she played guitar and they fell in love and he found out
she had been hiding it from him?
 
Would it be like one of those moments on TV when one half of the main
couple’s dark secret comes out and the other half of the main couple says, and
really they say it every time, “It’s not the secret, it’s that you never told
me,” when in fact the viewer knows, hell even the actors know, that of course
it’s the secret that’s bothering the person so much. That’s why the boyfriends
slash girlfriends keep them secret all along.
 

Would it be like one of those moments?
 

He launched into a third song.
 
Come now.
 
Her secret wasn’t one of those
secrets.
 
Anyway she could always
play cover songs for him.
 
She would
tell him she played when he finished.
 
Except that when he finished the third, he launched into a fourth.
 
And she was beginning to think all his
songs kind of sounded alike.
 
After
the fourth song he came over, sat down, and she opened her mouth to speak.
 
He leaned in and began to kiss her.

Casey and Sex
.
 
While in tenth grade it may not have been the biggest tragedy in the
world to still be a virgin, it was not great if one was aiming to be the next
female Mick Jagger. So, yes.
 
She
was, painfully, still a virgin.
 
The
year before she made out three times with her guitar teacher Leo.
 
He was two years older and a student at
a rival school.
 
She even planned,
after makeout session number two, when his hands made contact with her you know
what, to lose her virginity to him.
 
But it was somewhere during session number three that she realized not
only was Leo boring but had an uninspired music collection and tasted like sour
milk.
 
She could not lose her
virginity to him.
 
Alex Deal,
however, was a different story.

He took her hand and led her to the couch nearby.
 
He removed her shirt.
 
She hesitated.
 
“Something wrong?” he asked.
 

“Not at
all.”
 
But in fact at that moment she
realized it might be a good idea to play hard to get.
 
Alex Deal was clearly used to girls as
easy as Sunday morning.
 
She inched
away.
 
“This has been choice but I
really have to go.”
 

For not
exactly the first time that day he looked puzzled.
 
“Huh?”

“I have a
test tomorrow.”
 
As soon as it was
out of her mouth she regretted it.
 
A test?
 
How geeky was that?
 
“I mean, hemophilia.”
 

Casey was
obsessed with hemophilia.
 
Her
history teacher Mr. Karp kept mentioning it when he talked about European monarchs.
 
He even showed the class a clip from a
movie in which a French king was dying of hemophilia and sweating blood.
 
Except, the king was actually dying from
having received a poisoned book in the mail and because Casey was not entirely listening
she attributed it to hemophilia on the test they had the next day.
 
Mr. Karp was not happy about that.

“Hemophilia?”
Alex Deal repeated.
 

Casey nodded
solemnly.
 
“From inbreeding.”

“Are you
saying you and Yull are inbred?”
 

“Not
me.
 
Just Yull.”
 

He stared.
 

“Just
kidding, though if you want to spread that rumor and blame it on a game of
telephone gone horribly awry, that’d be fine by me.”
 

A moment
passed.
 
“What are you talking
about?” he asked.
 

It was
then that Casey realized that the conversation had spun a bit out of
control.
 
“Our neighbor’s in the
hospital with hemophilia and I told her I’d walk her dog.
 
I really have to go.”

“Oh.”
 
He looked down.

“But I
wouldn’t mind continuing this sometime.”
 

“What
about your boyfriend?”

“Um,” she
said.
 
He looked at her, a bit too
sharply, and she wondered if he knew.
 
“I mean, he’s awesome.
 
But
he goes to another school and he’s always really busy with his traveling soccer
team and sometimes it’s hard.”

“I see.”

A long, awful moment passed
in which she wondered whether she had ruined everything.
 
But then he spoke.
 
“I wouldn’t mind continuing this
sometime too.”

Hallelujah.
 
Neither
the original Leonard Cohen song that regardless of its title was melancholic, nor
the Jeff Buckley cover that despite a more harmonious feel was still less than
jubilant.
 
Just simple,
old-fashioned, let’s par-tay, hallelujah.

11

He did not come into the library the next day.
 
It was not like he said he would.
 
All he did after she ended their makeout
session was walk her upstairs and drive her home.
 
On the way they talked about the merits
of Goldfrapp’s live shows.
 
Then at
her house he kissed her again and said he would see her at school the following
day.

As soon as Casey entered the house Yull came out of his
room.
 
“What were you doing with
Alex Deal?”
 

She ignored him and headed to the basement, where she took her
cell phone out of her bag.
 
In the
course of her two hour date with Alex Deal Leigh had sent two text
messages.
 
1. How’s it
going?
 
2. Do not have sex with him today.
 
There is no source of female knowledge in the world that says this would
be a good idea.
 
She sank
onto the couch and selected Leigh’s name.
 

Yull followed her.
 
“What were you doing with Alex Deal?”

Casey
allowed herself to savor the moment.
 
It was the first time ever Yull had
demanded to know details of her social life.
 
Most of the time the curiosity strain
ran in the other direction, though because she would never admit to this she
relied on Leigh to share whatever she heard.
 
“And why exactly is that any of your
business?” she asked.

“Because
you’re my sister and I know more about Alex than you do.”
 

There was
something in Yull’s voice that made Casey pause before hitting Leigh’s
name.
 
Rather it was the lack of the
two things that were always there: hostility and sarcasm.
 
He sounded serious all of a sudden.
 
Whatever.
 

“If you’ll
excuse me I have to make a phone call now,” she said.
 

Yull
rolled his eyes.
 
“Tell Leigh I say
hello.”
 
He left the room.

At any rate the next day, once her library period ended, Casey
could not help but feel disappointed.
 
There was even a text message from Leigh asking if Alex Deal had come to
see her.
 
She did not reply.
 
There were, after all, three more
periods to go in the school day.
 
He
was probably waiting for the passing time between one of them to come to her
locker, say hello, invite her for pizza and then to his house for another
makeout session.

By last period of the day, a hellish English in which Casey
again sat with Sukh the Sikh and Catherine Hightower and listened as Catherine
prattled on about project ideas for
Beowulf
, she
began to feel sad.
 
Exactly
twenty-four hours ago she had plans with Alex Deal.
 
Now the only plan in her life was a
project on
Beowulf
.
 
Oh cruel cruel fate.

“Casey!” Catherine Hightower said, “Did you hear, like, a word
I said?”

Casey looked at her.
 
“Start with a Feist song.
 
‘I
Feel It All’ would work.
 
The dance
remixes of that one are pretty killer too.
 
Then venture out to Band of Horses.
 
‘Our Swords.’
 
Might feel a
bit grungy for a couple of bars but by the end of it you won’t be nearly as
freaked by all the schoolwork you have to complete in the next week.
 
And for a third song I’d try something
by The Helio Sequence. That’ll help your nails grow back.”