by Sarah Dessen
“I don’t know,” I said again. My stomach was starting to hurt.
“Well, we’ll figure it out later,” she said, beaming and waving the paper at me before she disappeared down the hall. I knew she was pulling the Scotch tape out of the drawer by the stove, centering the paper on the fridge in the exact same spot where Cass’s soccer/ student government/Debate Club/Yale schedule had always been. The only reason I’d even tried out was to do something different from Cass. But here, in the end, I was following her again.
I looked out my window to Boo and Stewart’s. They were cooking dinner. Stewart was peeling carrots and talking, while Boo stirred something on the stove with a long wooden spoon, a glass of wine in her other hand. And I wished again that I was their daughter, just once, sitting in that kitchen eating spicy greens, peeling carrots, and just being me.
One time, when I was about eight or nine, Boo was watching me at her house. I had my Barbie bedroom/carrying case and was dressing my Barbie for a big date with Ken, who was half-naked on the floor waiting for me to find his blue velour pants.
“So what’s your doll’s name?” Boo asked me.
“Barbie,” I said. “All their names are Barbie.”
“I see,” she said. “Well, I’d think that would get boring, everyone having the same name.”
I thought about this, then said, “Okay, then her name is Sabrina.”
“Well, that’s a very nice name,” Boo said. I remember she was baking bread, kneading the dough between her thick fingers. “What does she do?”
“Do?” I said.
“Yes.” She flipped the dough over and started in on it from the other side. “What does she do?”
“She goes out with Ken,” I said.
“And what else?”
“She goes to parties,” I said slowly. “And shopping.”
“Oh,” Boo said, nodding. “She can’t work?”
“She doesn’t have to work,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Because she’s Barbie.”
“I hate to tell you, Caitlin, but somebody has to make payments on that town house and the Corvette,” Boo said cheerfully. “Unless Barbie has a lot of family money.”
I considered this while I put on Ken’s pants.
Boo started pushing the dough into a pan, smoothing it with her hand over the top. “You know what I think, Caitlin?” Her voice was soft and nice, the way she always spoke to me.
“What?”
“I think your Barbie can go shopping, and go out with Ken, and also have a productive and satisfying career of her own.” She opened the oven and slid in the bread pan, adjusting its position on the rack.
“But what can she do?” My mother didn’t work and spent her time cleaning the house and going to PTA. I couldn’t imagine Barbie, whose most casual outfit had sequins and go-go boots, doing such things.
Boo came over and plopped right down beside me. I always remember her being on my level; she’d sit on the edge of the sandbox, or lie across her bed with me and Cass as we listened to the radio.
“Well,” she said thoughtfully, picking up Ken and examining his perfect physique. “What do you want to do when you grow up?”
I remember this moment so well; I can still see Boo sitting there on the floor, cross-legged, holding my Ken and watching my face as she tried to make me see that between my mother’s PTA and Boo’s strange ways there was a middle ground that began here with my Barbie, Sabrina, and led right to me.
“Well,” I said abruptly, “I want to be in advertising.” I have no idea where this came from.
“Advertising,” Boo repeated, nodding. “Okay. Advertising it is. So Sabrina has to go to work every day, coming up with ideas for commercials and things like that.”
“She works in an office,” I went on. “Sometimes she has to work late.”
“Sure she does,” Boo said. “It’s hard to get ahead. Even if you’re Barbie.”
“Because she wants to get promoted,” I added. “So she can pay off the town house. And the Corvette.”
“Very responsible of her,” Boo said.
“Can she be divorced?” I asked. “And famous for her commercials and ideas?”
“She can be anything,” Boo told me, and this is what I remember most, her freckled face so solemn, as if she knew she was the first to tell me. “And so can you.”
So now I found myself a cheerleader, using pom-poms and pyramids to forge my way into new and unbroken territory. I wondered again what Cass would think of me: would she be disappointed, like Boo, or ecstatic, like my mother. If I knew my sister, she’d be a little of both.
Every year for as long as I could remember, my family and Boo and Stewart have had an end-of-summer cookout to celebrate Labor Day. This year, with Cass gone, I wondered if we’d stick with tradition or just let it go. It was hard to say. In the end, it was my mother who made the call.
“Well,” she said to Boo the weekend before, over coffee, “I suppose Cassandra would be gone anyway. Freshman orientation started on the third.”
As she said this, she glanced over to the fridge, where the Yale calendar still hung next to Cass’s junior prom picture and the grocery list. It was the one reminder of Cass’s thwarted college plans that she hadn’t taken down yet.
“Exactly,” Boo said, taking another grape out of the bowl in front of her and tossing it into her mouth. “Besides, it’s bad luck to mess with tradition. And I have a wonderful new recipe for eggplant pasta salad that will knock your socks off.”
My mother smiled at this. “I suppose I’ll make my ambrosia salad,” she said, stirring her coffee with a clink of her spoon. “And Jack can handle the steaks, like always.”
“Stewart will make his famous tempeh fajitas,” Boo added. “What about you, Caitlin? What can you make for us?”
I thought about this: My biggest traditional contribution was usually lighting the grill. Cass had been famous for her chocolate-chip cheesecake. It was the only thing she could make, and it was always a huge production, involving her taking over the entire kitchen. She’d bang pans, mumbling and cursing to herself, before finally emerging with a somewhat lopsided, always delicious dessert. As a vegetarian dish, it was loved all around, unless Stewart was in a vegan cycle, which just meant more for the rest of us. The image of Cass in the kitchen with her face smeared with flour, using a spatula to shoo us all out of the kitchen as we tried to help her, always symbolized—more than the pool closing, cooler nights, and homework—the end of summer to me.
In the end, I made coleslaw; it was, after all, a summer dish. My mother turned on the bug light, Boo brought a huge bouquet of the last of her zinnias and cosmos, and my father flipped the steaks on the patio and drank beer with Stewart, who had pre-cooked his fajitas to avoid any meat-tempeh interaction.
My mother and Boo took their wineglasses and went for a stroll in the yard, already discussing fall bulbs, while I went inside and turned on the football game for my father, who could half-watch it while keeping an eye on his steaks. The bugs were out in force, and since Stewart had a conscientious objection to the bug light, he winced, as if in pain himself, each time it claimed another victim.
“Well, I hear we have quite a team this year,” said Stewart, trying to make conversation. He knew nothing about sports and had lost our respect years ago by asking how many points a basket counted for while watching the second half of an NCAA Final Four Game.
“Quarterback’s good,” my father said, poking at a steak with a fork. “But the defensive line needs help. A good rushing team and we’re in trouble.”
“Ah,” Stewart said, nodding. A bug flew into the light—BZZZT!—and he sighed. “Right.”
“What’s that score say, Caitlin?” my father asked me, squinting through the patio door.
“I’ll go check,” I said, picking up my Coke and going inside. “Ten-seventeen. Nebraska’s up.”
“Good,” my father said, flipping another steak.
I
was standing in front of the TV, watching the offense get organized, when Stewart said, in a lower voice, “Is there any news about Cassandra?”
I glanced outside at my father, who didn’t even flinch at the sound of her name. We’d all been acting like things were fine. It was just another Labor Day, I was already back at school, Cass was at Yale—I mean, there was her schedule up on the fridge.
“No,” my father said in his press-conference, news-sound-bite voice. “Nothing new.”
Stewart nodded, rubbing his hand over his chin. “I know this probably doesn’t help,” he said. Stewart, who prided himself on Being Fully in Touch with His Emotions, was the complete polar opposite of my stoic father. “But you know, I took Boo away from her family when she was eighteen. We were just kids, of course, and it was stupid, and it took years for her parents to forgive me.”
My father flipped another steak, then pushed down on it, hard, with the spatula. A bug flew into the bug light, dying a loud, noisy death.
“But I took good care of her,” Stewart went on. “And I know that Adam is doing the same for Cassandra. She’s such a smart girl. She wouldn’t be with anyone who’d do anything less.”
My father, with those nerves of steel, didn’t react to this except by one, solid nod. Outside, I could hear my mother laughing, her and Boo’s voices getting closer.
“Well,” my father said, glancing in again at the game as a quarterback ran down the field, dodging and twisting, ducking and rushing, all the way to the end zone. “I hope you’re right.”
They were quiet after that, with just the sizzle of the steaks and the bug light buzzing every few minutes. It was getting dark outside, and the food was almost ready. So I went into the kitchen, watched the sun set, and ate ambrosia salad with my fingers at the end of this, another summer.
CHAPTER FOUR
My making cheerleader changed my mother’s life. She showed up at all our early exhibitions and games, wearing one of many Jackson High School sweatshirts and pins, clapping and cheering so loudly I could always hear her over anyone else. She organized our bake sales and car washes, packed snack bags full of apples and Rice Krispies Treats for away trips, and had my uniform dry-cleaned and pressed promptly after each game. She had finally found something to concentrate on that was familiar and busy in the strange silence of Cass being gone. She was almost happy. And that should have been enough for me to keep at it.
But the truth was, I hated cheerleading. Whatever zest and pep the other girls had that made them cartwheel, high kick, and smile constantly was missing in me, like a genetic or chemical malfunction. I felt like an impostor, and it showed.
Because I was the lightest of all the girls, it was decided early on that I would be the one at the top of the pyramid formation we did in our big cheers. This also led to me being hated with a passion by Eliza Drake, who because of the birth control pill had put on about fifteen pounds over the summer—mostly in her hips and butt—and was subsequently bumped to a lower, supporting position. She could have been on top, for all I cared. I was scared of heights, and climbing up all those backs to be lifted to stand, with someone grasping the backs of my knees, made my head spin. All I could think about was toppling down, falling head over feet to crash on the gym floor just as the marching band trampled over me playing “Louie Louie.”
When I was up there, wobbly and light-headed, I always thought the same thing: After this game, I quit. But then I’d look out in the stands and see my mother beaming up at me, waving and wearing the same proud smile my father had the night Cass kicked the winning goal, bowed her head to accept her Homecoming Queen crown, or stood up for human rights on local TV. In all my life, going for the bronze, I’d never gotten a look like that before, and I knew if I quit, it would break her heart. It was like I’d somehow thrown her a lifeline, without even meaning to, and to let go right now meant she’d fall back into missing Cass and just drown.
But I was not my mother’s only new hobby.
“What is this?” Rina whispered to me one afternoon when we stopped by my house after school en route to a game. I’d forgotten my cheerleading sweater again, just as I was always forgetting something crucial—regulation socks, matching ponytail holders, pom-poms. I was learning this sport had too many accessories for my taste: It was like being Barbie.
The this Rina was referring to was my mother’s new Victorian decorating scheme, which consisted mostly of wreaths, sprigs of dried flowers hanging from the walls, and various knicknacks—thimbles, tiny tea sets, families of glass swans—cluttered on every flat surface. The worst, however, were the Victorian-era dolls she kept ordering from QVC, all of them with porcelain white skin and spooky eyes. They came with their own stands and were suddenly just everywhere: in the living room by the magazine rack, on the credenza, with a pack of swans, and even in the guest room, where they were lined up across the bureau, staring blankly at the closet. Sometimes when I couldn’t sleep I’d think of them there, just staring in the dark, and shudder all the way down to my toes.
“I told you,” I said to Rina, “my mother’s going through some kind of weird adapting phase.” She was out, for once, probably buying more ceramic plaques shaped like apples and houses to hang on the walls.
“What?” Rina said.
I shook my head. “I don’t know.” I opened my bedroom door to see a Victorian-style teddy bear sitting on my bed. He was wearing spectacles, a bow tie, and a period vest. Another QVC special.
“Man,” Rina said in a low voice, walking over and picking it up. “Get out the Prozac.”
“Shut up,” I said, grabbing my sweater off the chair. “Let’s just go.”
There really was no stopping my mother. Boo had tried, convincing her to take that pottery class at the Community Arts Center on Tuesday nights. The teacher was a woman artist with dreadlocks and a tattoo, and my mother reported to us in a worried tone that she did not shave her legs or underarms. This did not, however, seem to hinder her ability to teach my mother how to make lopsided bowls, ashtrays glazed with smeared reds and greens, and a ribbed tall vase for me that leaned like the Tower of Pisa.
I truly believed that my mother thought she could replace Cass if she filled the house with enough clutter. But no matter what she brought in there was still something missing, which led to more swans, dolls, sprigs, tea sets, ashtrays. My father sighed when he saw the UPS truck pulling away, frowned over the credit card bill, and when my mother was out or not looking, turned the dolls in the living room to face the wall.
“There’s something unsettling about all this staring,” he explained sheepishly when I caught him one night, crouched by the magazine basket, furtively rearranging the dolls. He looked embarrassed to be even holding one in his arms, the School Marm, her book and slate stuck to her hands with heavy-duty wire.
“I know,” I said. But by breakfast the next morning she, the mother with two children, and the baby in the christening dress were all turned back the right way, as if they’d done it themselves during the night.
My father missed Cass, too, but his loss was more subtle. Things kept coming from Yale: Obviously we were still on the mailing list, so the parents’ newsletter and fund-raising requests arrived with regularity. My mother left them on the table by the door without comment and I’d figured my father was throwing them away, until I went into his office one day to look for a pencil sharpener and found them all neatly stacked in a drawer, envelopes not even opened.
The truth was, I was trying not to look too hard at anything. Not at myself, the swans, my mother mouthing the cheers along with me, the crooked ashtrays, the tired look on my father’s face when another Yale bulletin came in the mail. It was easier to just float along as if sleeping that whole first part of the year, going through the motions and staring like one of those ghostly dolls, waiting for something to wake me up.
It was a game night in October, right around Halloween. We were playing our biggest rival, Central High, at home, and the crowd was huge. We�
�d been working on a big halftime number for a couple of weeks that involved not only a pyramid but some heavy-duty dancing, a can-can line, and a row of subsequent backflips. This was a Very Big Deal, at least for everyone else.
We were up at the half, and the squad had gone back to the dressing rooms to change into our purple-sequined tops, which my mother, of course, had helped to design and sew. Everyone was nervous as we stood waiting to run out onto the field from the opening under the bleachers. I was cold and convinced that I would blow my backflip as I’d done in practice just the day before, when I landed with a resounding whump on my back, knocking the wind out of myself. I just lay there, feeling oozy and strange as I stared up at the rows of retired basketball jerseys, fluttering from the ceiling overhead.
“You’ll be fine,” Rina said to me now, grasping my hand and squeezing it. Rina, of course, loved cheerleading. She was a natural. We had still been in pre-season when she started dating the quarterback, and she was the clear crowd favorite, eliciting cheers—mostly male—just for walking out onto the field. Eliza Drake hated her, too.
The band started playing “My Girl,” the squad theme song, and I knew Boo was in the stands, her face twisting, disgusted. The girls in front of me began psyching up, jumping up and down and shaking their pom-poms, as we all started running down the slope to pop out onto the field to the cheers of the crowd. There was a pack of people that was especially into the cheerleaders—mostly guys, girls who hadn’t made the squad, and parents—who were sitting right at the overhang where we came out, and as we ran forward they chanted each of our names.
“Eliza!” they yelled, and Eliza Drake did an impromptu handspring, showing off.
“Meredith!”
“Angela!”
“Rina!” And the crowd went wild, screaming and cheering, as Rina turned around and waved one pom-pom, smiling at her public.