Dear Cassie (16 page)

I could let myself feel that.

But there was also the stuff I
couldn’t
let myself feel. The heat that filled my skin when Ben got close, the shiver in my chest when he spoke to me, the way his touch made everything else vanish.

The way he could get me to talk about my brother, about
me
. The me I was before this place, before there was someone else inside me.

My hand went to my stomach. Why was I thinking about that now? Here?

“You should listen to me more often,” he said, handing me two more cigarettes.

“No offense, Ben, but I don’t listen to boys anymore,” I replied, amazed that I’d said it to him.

“All boys, or just ones who make you nervous?” he asked.

“All boys,” I said, staring at the sky.

“But I
do
make you nervous,” he said.

He knew the answer, so I didn’t bother responding. “I had some things happen to me before I came here that have nothing to do with how I feel about you,” I said, even though that was a lie. What had happened with Aaron had everything to do with how I felt about Ben. Why I couldn’t feel anything about him.

“How do you feel about me?” he asked.

“I’m not sure yet,” I said. I was surprised that I hadn’t said I hated him. That I didn’t feel like I had to say it.

“I would try to kiss you,” he said, “but I’m afraid you’d kick me in the balls.”

“I probably would.” I laughed, the sky filling with noisy color like paint launching from a giant popcorn popper. “But like I said, it wouldn’t be about you.”

“I guess I’ll have to figure out how to make it about me,” he said, taking off his boots and socks and standing. “Come on.”

“There is no way I am getting near that water again,” I said.

“I’ll make sure nothing happens to you,” he said, holding his hand out to help me up.

I looked at his palm, open, waiting, just wanting to hold mine. For once, I didn’t think about anything except that there was a cute, sweet, smart-ass boy standing in front of me with his hand out.

I pulled off my boots and socks and took it.

We stood at the lakeshore, our hands still clasped, the water licking our feet, fireworks decorating the sky.

I turned to him. He was looking up, his mouth open in wonder like he was trying to swallow the moment.

It was definitely one worth keeping.

Fucking Halfway Through

T
he good news is today was a shower day, complete with new bars of white, white Ivory soap and fresh, clean towels. I should have known that could only be followed by bad news, and it came in the form of a three-mile run around the campgrounds.

Leave it to Rawe to finally let us get clean and then make us sweat like pigs.

I guess it made sense, though, since that was kind of what she was doing with our Assessment Diaries. All day we were allowed to have our minds clear and clean, focusing completely on whatever task was right in front of us, and then at night she forced us to shovel out all the crap we had hidden in there and run around in it.

Tonight the subject is the people in our lives before we came here. I’m not about to fall for Rawe’s shit again and write about Aaron, so instead I picked Lila and Amy.

Lila would fucking die in this place; my guess is Amy would, too. But somehow I’m surviving. I still haven’t figured out how. I still haven’t figured out why I even want to. Maybe the fact that I don’t really care is why, or maybe
surviving
is a relative term.

I don’t necessarily miss Lila and Amy, but I do miss having them on either side of me. Not even what they said, or that they laughed at all my jokes, but that they were there.

I guess Troyer is here. She is my only friend here. I guess Ben is here, but I can’t even let myself think what Ben is. My friend, I guess, who maybe wants more. Who I hope won’t get tired of wanting more.

If Lila were here, Ben would probably like her. I mean, everyone did. Well, everyone with eyes. If I were a guy, I would probably like her, too, a hell of a lot more than I did as a girl. I know it bothers her. She would tell me shit like that when she was drunk. Tell me that she wished guys stopped liking her just for her looks.

Lila’s parents, really her mom and stepdad, weren’t around a lot. Not in the same crybaby way Amy got about her dad, but in the
Here is a can of ravioli for dinner, I’ll be home later
or tomorrow
kind of way.

Lila acted like she didn’t care. She never really mentioned it at all. But they were always gone, working double shifts, or meeting friends at the bar, or sometimes not even telling Lila where they were.

I wasn’t sure if her parents being truly gone or my mother being mentally gone was worse.

Lila used her parents’ absences to throw wild parties and Amy and I were at all of them. After Amy came around it was rare that I was ever alone with Lila anymore. When we were invited to Lila’s house, Amy was always sitting cross-legged on the floor of Lila’s room when I got there, her gray eyes aimed on Lila, like she had grown out of the floor and Lila watered her every so often with a few words and a smile.

But one night, the night Lila and I never talked about, Amy wasn’t there yet. She had to go to temple or something with her dumb parents and wouldn’t be over till ten. So it was Lila and me, trying to hang out without Amy. It didn’t feel right. We were acting the way you act with someone after you’ve had a fight, that tentativeness. It was weird that it felt weird, considering we’d started out as just the two of us.

Lila was sitting at her vanity doing her makeup when I walked in. I think she was always doing her makeup. There was a tall glass filled with clear liquid and ice at her side. It clinked when she picked it up and took a long drink. Other people might have assumed it was water, but I knew it was vodka. I knew where her stash was, so I poured myself a glass, too, filled high. I sat on her bed, my boots hanging off the side. I did
not
sit on the floor. That was Amy’s spot.

“It’s a burden to be so beautiful,” Lila said after I got settled. Not
Hello
, not
What’s up bitch
?

It had been a long time since I’d heard Lila complain in that way about how she looked. I guess it was because Amy was usually around and Lila would never say that shit in front of Amy. Lila hid that shit from Amy, because she knew it would make Amy lose her shit.

I never usually responded, so maybe that’s why Lila said that shit to me. Maybe it was also because of how we met. How, back at Dante Nelson’s party, I walked in on her screaming while some asshole writhed on top of her and held her arms. How I didn’t even think when I grabbed the lamp off the nightstand and bashed him in the head with it.

How he slithered to the floor, knocked out, and she jumped from the bed, her jeans still around her ankles, to hug me.

That was what Lila meant when she said shit like that.

I sat on the bed and watched her reflection. I took a gulp from my glass, so long it made my throat burn and my eyes wince. From the look on her face, I knew this was going to be a long night.

“I wish I could make it all go away,” Lila said to her reflection.

Sometimes I thought Lila was more fucked up than Amy. Well, I was sure she was, because she would say things like that. And I knew she would keep talking, keep spiraling down and down if I didn’t say something.

“Your face again?” I said, jumping ahead. I wanted to get to the end of this conversation, even though I knew how it ended. The same way it started, with Lila staring at herself and wishing for something else to be looking back. In such a different way than other girls did. In a way only Lila could twist around.

She nodded, her chin pointed out, which let me know she was posing.

“So do something about it already,” I said, taking another drink. I was tired of Lila burdening me with shit like this and never doing anything about it. So maybe I was calling her bluff.

“I don’t know how to be ugly,” she whined.

“You’d probably be nicer,” I murmured.

She actually turned away from herself to look at me. This was serious. “I’m nice,” she said, attempting to defend herself, which let me know she didn’t really believe what she said.

“To who?” I asked.

She thinned her lips. “Well, you’re a bitch, too,” she said.

It was true. I really couldn’t tell her anything about being nice. I couldn’t really tell her anything about anything.

“Hello?” she said, pushing for a response. When Lila wasn’t staring at herself in the mirror, she was usually forcing you to look at yourself and do some judging.

“At least I own it,” I said, grasping, because that was not entirely true. What I had done was accept the place the world had given me. It was either be a bitch or roll up in a ball and cry like Amy. I would much rather be a bitch.

“That doesn’t make it better,” Lila said, stirring the vodka in her glass with her pointer finger.

“Whatever,” I said, taking another slug, wanting the buzz to fill my ears.

I guess this was why we rarely talked when Amy wasn’t around—all our conversations ended up here. Lila and me dueling about who sucked more because we knew we both sucked. But really, Lila knew what we could never tell anyone, that when it came down to it, when I needed to defend a helpless girl I barely knew, I didn’t suck at all.

She tilted her head back. “But would people like me more?”

I knew the answer was no, so I didn’t even bother saying anything. Lila got a pass because of her face. I wasn’t sure what she would get without it. No, actually, I
was
sure: she would get nothing.

Just like I got.

Lila turned away from me and added more shadow to the purple, shiny powder that was already there. She relined her lids below with black. Even for her, it was a lot of makeup. It was possible she had been sitting at the mirror putting makeup on for hours. Possibly even overnight, considering how bloodshot her eyes were.

“Lila, enough,” I said, trying to bring her back to earth. “You’re not even going out.” I should have told her she looked like she had two black eyes, because she did. Well, two purple eyes.

“People are coming here and they expect something when they see me,” Lila said, looking deep into the mirror. It was possible she was on something. Something more than alcohol, but I was kind of afraid to ask.

I lit a cigarette. Lila and I never got along great, even before Amy, but we had a history, we shared a secret. It was easier to blame it on Amy’s arrival, but that was the truth. We tolerated each other. Maybe because we were both the kind of people that people tolerated. I guess Amy put up with us because she was the type of person who didn’t know what else to do but tolerate.

“You know I hate it when you smoke in here,” Lila said.

“You know I could give a shit,” I said, blowing out smoke.

“Whatever,” she said. “Give me one.”

I launched the cigarette over to her. She turned to catch it and lit it, watching her reflection. At least she’d finally stopped putting on makeup. I was afraid her face was going to fall off from the weight.

“You going to step away from that mirror for a second, or is it your date for tonight?” I asked, trying to get back into our routine of giving each other crap. Anything was better than the weirdness that was flying around in Lila’s mind right now like a bird with one broken wing.

“I wish,” she said. “At least with it, I know what I’m getting.” Lila lifted the cigarette she was smoking to her cheek. Turned it cherry-side in. “Sometimes I wonder what this would feel like,” she said.

“It would fucking hurt,” I said. Trying to give her crap wasn’t working. I guess she wasn’t coming back yet. I guess she was still out to sea on the insanity ocean.

“No,” she said. “I mean after, to have something like that on your face.” She held the cigarette an inch from her pink, pink cheek. It was possible all the makeup she was wearing would cause her whole face to go up in flames.

“No way in hell you could handle it,” I said, trying to sound like I couldn’t care less, even though my heart had gone as cold as the fall air coming through her open window.

“I’ve never had to handle it,” she said. “Maybe that’s my problem.” She moved the cigarette a little closer. I was sure she could feel the heat radiating on her cheek, but she held it there like it was the black eyeliner pencil she had used earlier and she was about to add a fake beauty mark.

“Enough, Lila,” I said. If she was about to mess up her face, there was no way I was going to sit there and watch.

“What do you care?” she asked, putting the cigarette back in her mouth and taking another drag. “What does anyone care?”

“That doesn’t mean you should mangle your fucking face.”

“It doesn’t mean I shouldn’t, either.”

This was definitely a different Lila. Maybe it was because Amy wasn’t there, or maybe she was far drunker than I’d thought. It was also possible she really was on something else. Lila always talked about how Brian could get stuff, stuff that would make your mind and the walls melt.

“You’re not scaring me if that’s what you’re trying to do,” I said.