This Is All Your Fault, Cassie Parker

by Terra Elan McVoy

  “Didn’t tell me what?”

  Her mouth twists to the side. “Didn’t tell you what happened yesterday, with your diary. It wasn’t really Izzy, anyway. More like . . .”

  She doesn’t want to say it, and I don’t need her to. The apologetic agony in her eyes as we move into the hall makes it plain: more like Kendra Mack.

  Immediately I want to sink against the wall, and huddle in a moaning, humiliated heap. If Evie already knows about my diary this early in the morning, then it means pretty much everyone in the entire seventh grade could, possibly more. But if Kendra and Izzy really have my diary, the last thing I need is someone catching me bawling in some video on their phone.

  “I heard it from Blake,” Evie explains. “She told me Jordan was on the bus with them when it happened. Kendra had your diary and she and Gates were . . . they were messing around.”

  Her vagueness only makes me panic more. “What did they do?”

  “Well, you know what a show-off Kendra is.” Evie tries to downplay. “Always so dramatic.”

  “And?” I demand, picturing Kendra and Gates pitching my diary all over the bus, batting it to everyone on board. When she hesitates, I put my hand on her arm. It is thin and cool and the exact color of dried-out pine needles. “Evie, the homeroom bell’s about to ring, and I need to know what I’m walking into.”

  She looks at the ceiling as though the words will be written there for her. “She was reading parts of it out loud.”

  Something takes over me, and I start walking down the hall, fast. Evie’s calling out, but I’m already a span of lockers away from her.

  “I’m fine.” I wave behind me. I think I even smile. “I’ll talk to you more in chorus, okay?”

  My feet are walking one-two-one-two fast and hard, though I’m not sure where to yet. Because if Kendra has really read my diary out loud on the bus, there’s absolutely nowhere I can hide.

  In homeroom I go straight to my desk and sit down, not looking at anyone but not not-looking, either. There’s no way to know who exactly has heard about this, or what parts of my diary got read aloud. Everyone in this room could know my secrets, and I want to dissolve. First, there’s all the sad and miserable stuff I wrote during the Divorce, which would be embarrassing just because it’s so pathetic, but what’s much, much worse is everything about my crush on Tyrick. Every tiny thing he’s said, what he’s worn, how his voice makes me feel like I’m listening to one of Dad’s playlists full of old crooners. I try to take deep breaths, tell myself maybe only a few people on Kendra’s bus know, plus Evie and her friend. It probably isn’t as bad as I can imagine.

  But even if only a few people know, Cassie rides the same bus as Kendra Mack. She was most definitely there when this happened. So why didn’t she warn me last night? Even if her own phone battery was dead (which happens all the time), she could’ve used Tom’s, or her mom’s, or else emailed me at least. She can’t have thought it would be better to tell me in the morning. And if there was some bizarre reason why she lost all ability to communicate, how come she wasn’t there waiting for me when I got off the bus? Why did it have to be Evie who found me first?

  And how did Cassie let any of this happen to begin with?

  I slip out a pen and a piece of paper while Mr. Jackson calls roll to write a note to drop in Cassie’s locker first thing. Probably she has a reason for all of this, but if I’m going to make it through this nightmare, I need to hear it from her right away, so that we can figure out what to do. I’m confused, and upset, and trying not to feel mad, so it’s hard to decide how to start. As I’m considering the right words, Isabella in the desk behind me taps me on the shoulder.

  “Hey, Fiona,” she whispers, trying to sound serious but failing. “I saw you writing some more secrets, and I thought you might want to use this.” She giggles, and so do a couple of other kids around us, because she’s holding out a pencil.

  I glare at her and crumple up my note to Cassie. Why she didn’t tell me isn’t so important; I just need my best friend to help me deal with all this, and fast.

  Isabella’s not the only one with the mortifying pencil idea. Between homeroom and third period, at least twenty people ask me if I need to borrow one, or pass one across the room, to put on my desk. As soon as I sit down in English, somebody tosses one against the back of my head, which is even more crushingly awful because I can’t stand up for myself. If I did, Tyrick would definitely turn around to see what’s going on. All I can do, the entire class, is write over and over in my English notebook, Please don’t let him know. Please don’t let him know. Please please please don’t let him know, and if he doesn’t yet, please don’t let him find out. Since I recorded so many careful notes about him in my diary, it wouldn’t take a whole lot more reading for somebody to figure out who Pencil really is. The idea of Kendra discovering my crush is bad enough, but if Tyrick heard even a fraction of what I wrote about him since spring break, I’d have to change schools.

  Luckily, I make it to fourth period with at least that secret intact, if not my pride. The second I walk into class, though, Sage Hayden, who sits up front and is always making nasty jokes, says, “Hey, Fiona, I know a better name for your secret lover boy that starts with a p, too. It ends with an s and rhymes with—”

  His friend hits him on the back of the head before he finishes, but I know the gross word he means. They both start laughing, and I do my best to ignore them—and the three girls who try to hand me pencils as I walk to my seat.

  When I sit, Edgar McCutchins slips a note on the side of my desk before I even get my bag set down. I don’t want to see, hear, or read one more mean or snarky thing today or ever, but Edgar hasn’t folded his paper well and part of it gaps open. I catch only a couple of words: apologize, and a question.

  Edgar is quiet, and a little smelly, and doesn’t have enough friends to be mean to much of anyone, so I go ahead and read the whole thing.

  Excuse me Fiona, but I want to apologize for the way you’ve been treated, and also ask you a question. I’m sorry someone took your diary from you, but I couldn’t help overhearing about it, and your anonymous crush. I was just wondering if it might be me? I would be flattered, wouldn’t tell anyone, and would of course say yes.

  I blush so hard, there’s no way my skin’s dark enough to keep people from seeing. All I need on top of everything else today is people thinking I like someone as awkward and hygienically challenged as Edgar.

  Thank you, Edgar, I write back on a clean sheet of paper, so that I can destroy the note he gave me. But absolutely not. I underline not four times, give it three exclamation points, and hand it back to him, before putting my head down on my desk and wishing I could suddenly transform into the kind of kid who sleeps through class, just to make time go faster until it’s lunch, where at least I can find an answer—and a solution—from Cassie.

  Chapter Four

  I bolt so fast out of my desk at the end of math that I nearly take it with me. I still need to get my science books for after lunch, but I skip my locker and go straight to the cafeteria, so I can sit down at our table before too many other people get in there. Including and most especially Kendra.

  I take out my favorite book, Little Women, and pretend to read, but secretly I’m watching every person who comes through the door, feeling dashed and disappointed each time it’s not the familiar face of my best friend, even if she may be a lousy one right now. At the first glance of Kendra’s long curly red hair I sink as low in my chair as I can, praying the fiercest prayer I’ve ever prayed that she will not come over here and say something to me in front of the entire cafeteria.

  But she doesn’t even glance my way. Instead she chatters with Cheyenne as the two of them glide over to their table at the front of the lunchroom. Izzy and Neftali follow behind without looking around either, as though this is just another normal day for them. After a few minutes, they all jump out of their seats, but it’s only to wave Gates and Billy over, like they haven’t seen the
m all day.

  After a few tense moments of waiting to see if one of them will head my way, I finally let go of the death grip I’ve had on my book. It loosens even further when Cassie finally jerks open the cafeteria door, although the look on her face (part worried, part resigned, and part—mad?) gives me pause. Probably my own face is doing similar things though, so when our eyes connect mostly I feel relieved. She’s seen me, she’s coming, and I know even if we have to have a difficult conversation about what happened, we’re going to figure it out.

  Which is when Kendra and her big, pink, lipsticked mouth shouts out, “Hey, Cassie Parker—where you going?” Like Cassie’s supposed to have been sitting with them the whole time.

  At first Cassie glances around as though this is a trick (which is what I think too), but then everything goes into slow motion as she pauses and takes a longer look at Kendra’s table. She keeps walking one or two more steps toward me, and I think she’s decided to ignore them, but then her eyes change and she gets this strange blank look on her face, before reassembling it into a smile, squaring her shoulders, and turning

  back

  around

  to sit with them.

  I’m so stunned, I think maybe my heart has stopped. I tell myself she’s walking over there just to give Kendra the piece of mind she should have yesterday, but no. Cheyenne scoots over to make room while Izzy grabs an empty chair from the next table, and Cassie happily settles in with the same girls who stole my diary and read it out loud. The ones who laughed at me, and made my private thoughts a joke for our entire grade. She is sitting with them and she is looking satisfied with herself, and I wish a hole would open up in the ground and swallow me right there.

  “Is this seat taken?” a voice says over me.

  It’s Edgar. Who is apparently ignoring my message from math.

  “Um, I—” I look down the table to Yel, Daria, and their other basketball teammates for help, but there are at least four empty seats between them and me, and we’re not friends anyway. “I have to do some reading,” I say lamely. Edgar doesn’t need to know I’ve already read Little Women three times.

  “All right,” Edgar says, and then sits down anyway. So there’s nothing left for me but to try to find comfort in Marmee, Jo, and the March girls, while Edgar eats in silence, his mildewy-laundry smell filling the space between us.

  When the bell finally rings, though, I remember my next class is science—with Cassie. I take my time putting my uneaten lunch carefully back into my bag, hoping maybe she’ll come over from Kendra’s table and explain all of this, but she walks right out with them and doesn’t look my way. The cafeteria clears out around me, but I stay sitting there, shocked and numb.

  “You find your book?” Mr. Olansky is pushing in chairs at the table next to mine.

  “Pardon?”

  He points to the trash cans. “You know. Yesterday? Hey, you feeling all right? Looks like you might need the clinic.”

  There’s nothing Ms. Desir can offer me in the clinic to make me feel better about any of this, but at least there I won’t have to face Cassie in science. I nod weakly, and let Mr. Olansky walk me down the hall, carrying my backpack for me the whole way.

  I don’t have to fake feeling sick to my stomach, so Ms. Desir lets me stretch out on a cot and put a damp cloth over my eyes through fifth period. As I lie there in the cool white room, I replay the last few days in my head over and over, trying to think of anything I might have done or said that would make Cassie act like this. We’ve had such a fun week, at least in my mind. She was super excited about Disneyland yesterday and she was so sweet to meet me at the end of school. Was I not thankful enough? In my worry, was there some distressed comment she made that I missed?

  Or is this some elaborate plan of Cassie’s to get back at Kendra for taking my diary in the first place? Is she spying on them, looking for the best kind of revenge? It still doesn’t make sense why she couldn’t have told me about it, especially now that it’s clear they read stuff out loud about Pencil, but maybe she has her reasons? To make it seem more real?

  I just wish I knew what she knew. What else, what else did they read yesterday? Was it just the Pencil nickname thing? Or did she recite one of those embarrassing sonnets I wrote with all the vocabulary words from our project—the one we were assigned to together that made me start liking him in the first place?

  My head swims with this through sixth period, which Ms. Desir lets me keep lying down for too, but I know I can’t get out of my final class. I have to get to chorus, and I have to hear from Evie what more she might know.

  “Fiona, are you okay?” Evie asks me right away.

  I shrug, not sure how to answer.

  “Just that—I heard—you know, Cassie. And lunch today. Jane told me that she was sitting with Kendra Mack.”

  “Evie, what else did Blake tell you? About what Kendra read on the bus.”

  “I don’t think it was that much.”

  “Besides the—” I stop as a couple of altos come up and get their music folders. They walk away, giggling, and I drop my voice to an even lower whisper. “Besides the pencil thing, was there anything else? Anything specific?”

  I can tell Evie feels torn. “Kendra was mad you said something about her in there, I think. And Gates is passing around some poll. About boyfriend nicknames.”

  A horrible thought occurs to me: that Kendra might’ve read something about Lagoon, too. How Cassie and I started watching Doctor Who in an attempt to understand Cory and his friends better. That Cassie has been playing more video games with Tom.

  “Was there anything else, Evie? You have to think. Anything, maybe, about Cassie?”

  Aja comes in right then, startling both of us. “That Cassie is a big fake,” she says, dropping her handwoven shoulder bag among the rest of the backpacks. “Fiona’s way better off.” When she holds up her hand for me to high-five, bangles slide and clink down to her elbow, and her dark gaze is fixed on my less-sure one. “Can’t abide the haters, Fee. Gotta shake little flies like that right off.”

  She hooks her arm around my shoulder and walks with me and Evie to our section before joining the rest of the altos. While I can’t high-five anyone over what’s happened, and this new nightmare that Kendra might’ve read something about Cory—or worse, Cassie—maybe having someone like Aja suddenly on my side could make things a tiny bit less terrible.

  At the end of school I fast-track it to the pickup loop without speaking to or looking at anyone. The second I get into the car, Maritza offers to take me and Leelu out for frozen yogurt, somehow knowing right away I’ve had another bad day. Once I register what she’s said, I see Leelu’s poor little cheeks are streaked with tears. It helps me switch at least momentarily from Humiliated Outcast to Strong Big Sister. Ever since the Divorce, Leelu’s had these temper tantrums, sometimes over the littlest things, and she’s needed a lot more help from me to get through them. Mom says it’s because she’s sad and angry about her family getting split up but doesn’t know how to say it in clear ways, and that we need to be more patient with her. The truth is, though, comforting Leelu has comforted me a lot in the last year, too.

  While we wait in line at the yogurt machines, I keep Leelu close, and listen while she pouts out something about not being picked for tetherball in PE today. It pales in comparison to my own middle school horrors, but I hum the chorus of Leelu’s old favorite, “Let It Go,” anyway, hoping we can both channel a little Elsa toughness.

  But Leelu’s scowl only deepens. “Stop making fun of me,” she growls, heaping way too many Oreo crumbles on her yogurt.

  “I’m not making fun of you.” I gently take the spoon from her. “Tell me what’s so bad about having to do tumbling with everyone else instead.”

  Her brows pull even closer together. “On the mats everyone can see your underwear.”

  Maritza tries not to laugh as she pays for our yogurt. “Not if you’re wearing pants, silly.”

  Leelu’s eyes
widen in earnest. “Uh-huh. Simone had on leggings and a long shirt and you could still see the band when she did her somersaults. Everyone was laughing because there were purple elephants on it.”

  “Well, that wasn’t very nice of them,” Maritza says when we sit down. “She was only enjoying herself and her exercise. There isn’t anything to make fun of about that. Besides, elephants are majestic, and purple is the color of royalty.”

  Leelu’s not convinced. “I still don’t like tumbling. What if it happens to me?”

  “There are worse things than being laughed at,” I say, although I know better than she thinks how bad it does feel. “Maritza’s right, it isn’t nice, but”—I think of Aja—“you can find friends who won’t think it’s funny. They’ll take your side and help you feel better.”

  I pull my chair closer to Leelu, so our knees are touching and I can lean forward to press my forehead against hers. “We’ll make sure every morning that your underpants aren’t showing too, okay?”

  She shuts her eyes, still sad.

  Maybe we both need something to look forward to. “What if we have a slumber party this weekend, huh? Will that take your mind off things?”

  She keeps her eyes closed but nods just slightly enough for me to feel it.

  I sit back up. “Hey, Maritza?”

  “Yes, my sweet.”

  “Would it be okay if I invited friends over on Friday? For a slumber party?”

  “We’ll check with your father, but with me it is all right. I’m assuming they will come directly after school?”

  “If that’s okay?”

  Leelu sits up straighter too. “Can we play TVD?”

  TVD stands for “True Voice Dancing”—a game she made up involving our old karaoke machine, a judge’s panel, dress-up clothes, and what she calls ballroom dancing, but is really just gliding around Dad’s polished stone floors in socks.

  “If they want to,” I say. Aja would probably be good at TVD, actually, if she doesn’t think it’s too little-girlish.