Dear Cassie (31 page)

Well, you can count how many Fucking Days are left.

I
woke up in an empty bed. It made me wonder if the night before in the bathroom had been a dream. I lifted my head—no sound coming from the shower, no light coming from under the bathroom door, just the soft snore of Nez sleeping in her bed next to me. It was still dark. Maybe Troyer had snuck out to get a soda. I felt her side of the bed, but it was cold. If she’d snuck out it had been a while ago.

I looked over at the love seat where Rawe slept—it was empty. She must have noticed Troyer was gone, too. Crap. I pictured Rawe out in the hotel hallway calling Troyer’s name. Would Troyer even answer? Or would she sit with her knees up to her chest next to the soda machine, hoping for just a few more seconds alone?

Even after last night, I still didn’t think of her as Laura, but I guess that was because we now knew each other so well that names and their meaning made no difference.

The hotel room door opened. Light from the hallway pierced the bed, sheets glowing white for a moment as the door was propped open then closed. I lay back down quickly but watched as Rawe tiptoed to the love seat. I guess that meant she hadn’t found Troyer. She was trying really hard to be quiet, but that wasn’t easy to do in hiking boots, so she bent down to untie them. Why was she still even bothering to wear them?

“Where’s Troyer?” I whispered into the dark hotel room. I knew it was no surprise to her that Troyer was gone if she was awake.

“Shhh,” Rawe said, pointing at Nez. Not like I would have cared ordinarily, but I definitely didn’t care at that moment that Nez was sleeping.

“Where is she?” I asked louder, like I could already kind of tell from the way Rawe was acting that maybe she wasn’t just missing; I needed Rawe to tell me what I didn’t want to hear.

“Nez is sleeping,” Rawe said.

“Not anymore,” Nez said in a raspy voice.

“So where is she?” I asked, looking at Rawe. It was pretty obvious, even in the dark, that she was trying not to look at me.

“Wick,” Rawe said, “we can talk about this later.”

“Just tell me,” I said, even though I knew what Rawe was going to say next. Even though I didn’t want to hear it, I was asking for it.

“She went home,” Rawe said.

I felt the ache in my stomach and immediate nausea. Why didn’t Troyer wake me up? The one person in the world who it seemed had kind of understood me felt like she could leave without even saying good-bye.

And, worse than that, the one person I had finally, really let in was gone.

“She left you a note,” Rawe said, walking across the dark hotel room to hand it to me.

I took it from her and flicked on the light that was stuck by a brass arm to the wall above the nightstand. It was a piece of paper from Troyer’s Assessment Diary—just plain notebook paper like all of us had. She’d folded it down so small that the edges were sharp.

“Oooh, love letters,” Nez said, in bed with her back to me. “Feel free to highlight the interesting parts for me for later, because like I said, I’m sleeping.”

“Screw you, Nez,” I said. I stared at the note. I was glad she hadn’t left me with nothing, but it seemed ironic that Troyer was going to have the last word.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what it would be.

“Turn the light off,” Nez said. She covered her head with her pillow.

“You’re awake anyway,” I said.

“Not by choice. Just because your girlfriend left you a note doesn’t mean I need to be awake, even if your lady parts are.”

“Fuck off, Nez,” I said.

“Hey,” Rawe said, finally jumping in. I always wondered why swearing was the last straw with adults. I guess it was because they were the sucker punch of words. “Nez, go take a shower.”

“It’s the middle of the night,” Nez whined, her hair all around her head like a shadow.

“No, actually it’s morning,” Rawe said.

I turned to the clock. It read five a.m. in angry red numbers. Five a.m. meant it was my last day. It meant tomorrow I would be sent home. Unless I was unlucky enough to get an earlier flight like Troyer had.

Nez got out of bed and slammed the bathroom door behind her.

“I didn’t read it,” Rawe said, indicating the note that was still folded in my hand.

“Thanks,” I said, because I couldn’t think what else to say.

Rawe watched me while I opened it. Indicating that even if she hadn’t read it, she was still interested in seeing what it said via my face. I tried my best to keep my mouth tight as I opened the note, fold by fold by fold, and read:

You need to forgive yourself

It wasn’t addressed to me and it wasn’t signed, which made me wonder if Troyer had written it as much as a reminder for herself as for me. That was it, one line in the middle of a sheet of paper.

I knew it was true. I knew that last night was the first step. Without her, I just wasn’t sure what the
next
step was.

“You okay?” Rawe asked.

“Fine,” I said, folding the note back up, as tight as Troyer had.

“Do you still want to use marijuana?” Rawe asked, like we had just been talking about that.

“What?” I asked, dropping the note on the bed. It fell like a rock.

“I’m trying to see if our program worked,” Rawe said, like that made more sense. “Do you still want to use marijuana?”

“If the program worked?” I laughed, but not because it was funny.

“I’m supposed to ask,” she said.

“And you’re choosing now?”

“We’re alone,” she said, looking at the closed bathroom door. “And it’s not like you were open to any of my other invitations to talk.”

Awesome. She hadn’t sent Nez to the shower to punish her. She’d sent her to the shower to punish me.

I shook my head. “Marijuana, no.” I couldn’t help laughing again. Prom night seemed so far away now. I was a different girl then. That was the girl she should have been asking, not me.

“Great.” Rawe smiled. Her smile wasn’t soothing or pleasant. It kind of made it look like there was no skin left on her face.

“Yeah, great,” I said. I picked up the note and unfolded it and refolded it.

“There’s something else?” Rawe asked.

Maybe she had read the note.

“You keep asking me to talk,” I said. “What about you?”

“We’re not talking about me,” she said, what all adults say when they are too afraid to answer your question.

“What are we talking about?” I asked.

“Okay, I’ll tell you my name,” Rawe said.

“Not good enough,” I said.

“You haven’t heard it yet.” She crossed her hands over her knees.

I waited.

“Fanny,” she said.

“Fanny Rawe,” I replied.

“Yup,” she nodded. “Bad, right?”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it.

“School was—” She paused and flipped her braid from one shoulder to the other. “Not fun.” She smiled her skin-ripping smile, looked down, and rubbed her hands against her thighs like she was gearing up for something. Like what she was about to tell me was something she needed generated energy to say. “People don’t really like me much,” she said, still looking down. “I guess I work with kids like you because your reasons for hating me have nothing to do with me personally.”

It was weird, but hearing her say that reminded me of what I did with my words and fists and anger. I was afraid people wouldn’t like me, so I made them hate me. I made them fear me.

“I get it,” I said.

“I know there are things you don’t want to tell me,” she said. “I understand, Cassie, I do. I just hope you’ll choose to tell someone, someday.”

“Thanks,” I said.

She smiled, like she was surprised that I hadn’t shut her down again. I guess I was, too.

“Words aren’t magic,” Rawe said, “but talking, opening up can be.”

“I know,” I said and I did. Rawe might be the one saying it, but it was Troyer who made me understand. Rawe meant well, but she wasn’t cut out for this like Troyer was. I guess Troyer had her parents’ genes. Wherever she ended up, I hoped she decided to do something to help other people, because she was good at it.

The bathroom door opened and we jumped.

Nez walked out and looked at Rawe, at me. It was obvious the words we had said were hanging in the room like smoke, making the room smell.

“You guys done making out or what?” Nez asked, twirling her towel into a turban on top of her head.

“Yes,” Rawe said, getting up, stopping to squeeze my shoulder and then entering the steamy bathroom. “We’re done.”

I opened the note that Troyer gave me. Rawe might have thought I needed to talk to someone else to heal, but I knew I needed to start with myself. I needed to say and keep saying three words.

I forgive you.

When Nez and Rawe left the room to have their own
Are you cured?
talk, I picked up the phone on the nightstand and dialed my brother’s cell. I had to have some idea of what was waiting for me when I landed.

“Tim, it’s me,” I said when he answered in his
This better not be a telemarketer or I’m going to kick someone’s ass
voice.

“Cass, where are you?”
Cass
. My brother was the only one who ever called me Cass.

Ever.

“Some hotel,” I said. I looked at the pad on the dresser. Actually it was the
Holiday Inn at the Arcata Airport
. I wondered how many other people had used this phone in the same way I was—to figure out what was waiting for them on the outside. Maybe a guy who had been kicked out of his house for cheating on his wife. Like me, he was trying to figure out what shit was waiting for him if he was actually allowed to go home.

Except I was more than allowed to go home, I was being fucking forced to go home.

“Are you back?” he asked.

“No,” I said. I was surprised by the question and wondered how he wouldn’t know that. Maybe more had changed than I thought.

“Tomorrow,” I said. That word had a different meaning now. I remember having said only that to him when I saw him at the breakfast table the day before he took me to the clinic. And now again,
Tomorrow
. When you said it like that, you didn’t want it to be tomorrow.

“You need me to pick you up at the airport?” he asked. I guess that meant there weren’t other plans to come and get me, not that I was surprised.

“If you want,” I said, even though I did want him to, needed him to. I thought about the $40 in the wallet that would be returned to me tomorrow. Half of it would be gone if I used it to get to my parents’ house via taxi and once I got there, what would happen if I showed up alone?
Hi, I’m home, or whatever.

“You staying with Mom?” my brother asked, like he could feel my hesitation. Yes, he knew me that well. He knew my parents that well.

“Where else am I going to stay?” I asked. Sure, I had thought about it, but the answers all came up empty. I had no one else and as sad as that was, I was still trying to find
anywhere
else to go.

“You could stay with me,” he said.

“What? Like in your room?” I joked, even though I could tell something was different. He was different.

“No, Cass, like in my whole apartment.” He laughed.

“Since when?” I asked, playing it cool, even though my insides felt like they were buzzing like a phone. Maybe going home wouldn’t be bad at all. My brother and me in our very own apartment. It would be the perfect place to hide until I figured out what the hell I was going to do with my life.

“Yeah.” He paused. “I moved in with Marcy.”

I stayed quiet on the line, trying to connect the dots. Marcy had been my brother’s girlfriend since he got back from Afghanistan six months ago. I’d met her a few times and she reminded me of a Cocker Spaniel. Had hair the same color and texture and the same expectant face, like she was always waiting for someone to say something she could get excited about. I didn’t think they were serious enough about each other to move in together, but maybe they had gotten that serious in the thirty days that I’d been gone. Maybe my being gone made him realize he needed to get his own life, allowed him to get his own life.

“She would be totally cool with you crashing here,” he quickly added, like he was trying to cover up the words he’d just said.

“Oh,” I said, knowing I needed to say something. There was a difference between crashing and living. Crashing meant a month tops—a month to figure out what the hell I was going to do next. Awesome.

That’s what this last month was supposed to have accomplished and I’d only gotten as far as realizing I needed to forgive myself. It took thirty days to get there. Who knew how long it would take to figure out
how
.

I picked up a pen and drew a circle on the
Holiday Inn at the Arcata Airport
pad, kept outlining it over and over until it bled through to the next page.

“I thought you liked her,” my brother finally said.

“I do,” I said, still drawing that circle. But liking someone and living with her are two different things.

“Awesome,” he said, “this is perfect.” I could hear the nod of his head, his hundred-watt smile through his words, but he had a real, steady girlfriend now, so of course he was happy. Like I had been with Aaron before, well, before.