Evie bites her lip and looks so scared she might cry. Beyond her, Jennifer collapses on the sand. Leelu kneels over her, saying something I don’t need to fully hear to know she wants to make sand sculptures next.
I could probably do the jump if Sanders coached me, but I can’t just leave Evie behind.
“What if we go watch?” I ask her. “And judge the way he jumps, like the Olympics?” Evie is obsessed with the Olympics. Gymnastics is her favorite, but she really likes all of it. Even the weight lifting.
“That’s exactly it,” Sanders agrees.
Evie looks up at him from under her eyelashes. “Same scoring system?”
“Whatever you say.”
“Come on.” I stand up.
“But what’s the criteria?” Evie wants to know.
I let Sanders answer her, and go up to the umbrella to tell Maritza where we’re going. She immediately insists on coming, too.
“Sissie, over here!” Leelu calls, finally seeing me.
“We’re doing Teamer Cliff,” I tell her.
“Me, too.” Sand clings to her brown knees as she stands up.
“No, you can’t,” I say, firm. “Stay here with your friends.”
I turn my back on my sister to cross the stretch of beach between here and the cliff. It’s only about fifty yards, but the whole way Maritza anxiously reminds us what to do if we get caught in an undertow. I don’t want her concern to freak Evie out all over again, but she seems too caught up in talking to Sanders about his dive plan to notice.
“He’s actually nice,” she tells me, once we’re positioned on the rocks, closely but safely enough to see Sanders when he comes down. Maritza’s a little farther off in a shady spot, but where she can still see all three of us.
“He was my favorite person in camp,” I answer.
She looks at me, doubtful. “Usually boys are so loud or so gross. I don’t understand why Aja always wants to hang out with them.”
“You don’t like River?”
She shrugs. “He’s okay, I guess. It’s her I don’t like when River’s around.”
I nod, understanding completely.
“I’m sorry about what happened with all that, by the way,” she says, quiet. “I mean, you know, Tyrick.”
I’m unsure how to respond, since I don’t want this to turn into an Aja-bashing conversation. For one, Evie’s her best friend, but also, suddenly talking about Aja again makes me miss her.
“She still won’t talk to me,” I concede, shielding my eyes from the sun to search for Sanders in the trail of people moving up the side of the steep formation.
“But you said you didn’t want to hear from her. She thinks she’s giving you space!”
I guess I did say something like that in the last text I sent.
“Are you and Sanders gonna start going out?” Evie asks before I say anything.
“What?”
“That’s why you wanted us both to come today, right? So you could see him but it wouldn’t seem like a date? It’s okay if it is. Just promise you won’t stop hanging out with me one-on-one, okay? I hate that.”
I’m sad she thinks she has to ask, though it does explain some things. If Aja, like me, truly needs friends around to be allowed on anything that could be considered a possible “date,” it makes sense why she got mad that I didn’t want to see Tyrick anymore. I’m not sure I’d have acted how she did about it, but I suppose if I were Aja I would’ve gotten upset, too.
But it’s still silly for Evie to think I want to go out with Sanders.
“Evie, having a boy as a friend isn’t the same thing as having a crush.”
She scrunches her nose again. “But they’re so obnoxious. All they care about is blood, boogers, and comic books. And they want to do things like that.” She gestures to Teamer Cliff. I look again too, and spot Sanders waving at us from the top, only three people away from his turn.
I wave back to him and he smiles wide. Evie’s right—boys can be obnoxious. River certainly was with all that revolting talk at the mall. But Aja herself proved that afternoon that girls can be just as gross. Plenty of boys like things other than violence and snot, anyway. And I know from personal experience that they can be just as nice and helpful as girls, whether you’re writing about sword-wielding ninjas or not.
“I guess it isn’t as simple as us versus them,” I tell her. “Not if you’re open to it, anyway.”
“You’re so smart.”
She’s not looking at me, but watching as Sanders approaches the edge, bends his knees, and takes his jump. It’s a perfectly fine, average-person leap, but halfway down, he somehow turns his body around and enters the water in a straight-arrow perfect dive.
“Let’s do it,” Evie says, strong.
“What?”
She nods toward Sanders. “Let’s jump.”
“Are you serious?”
She stands up, wiping rock dust off her bottom and looking determined. “It’s not really that high. And Sanders is right about it being safe. We’re going to be in eighth grade next year, and then high school. Maybe it’s time for me to stop being such a chicken about everything all the time.”
“Evie, are you for real?”
“Maybe not,” she laughs. “But hurry up before I freak out and change my mind.”
I obey, and we head across the pebbly part of the inlet’s beach. When Sanders gets out of the water to join us he raises his arms over his head in victory. We climb the rocky trail together, Sanders pointing out the best places to step. The path is steeper and rockier than I expect, and I consider going back for my shoes, but Evie keeps pushing steadily ahead of me, so if she’s not turning back, I can’t, either. Near the top—the part that always looks scariest to me—Sanders shows us places to put our feet and hands, almost like a natural ladder.
It’s nowhere as bad as I thought.
“Wow,” Evie says when we finish climbing up.
“Told you,” Sanders says.
“How do we go?” Evie asks him, watching the people ahead of us jump off.
“It’s not as scary as it looks,” he assures us, “but you can’t think about it too hard. You have to just do it to find out.”
“Like freewriting,” I say, moving into line with Evie. She’s staring ahead at the edge like she’s an action hero making a life-or-death decision, but I know she’s going through with it.
“Just do it to find out,” Evie repeats when it’s our turn, and without any more thoughts or words, we step to the edge, and jump.
Leaping: for Evie
“It’s not as scary as it looks,” he said. “But you can’t think about it too hard. You have to just do it to find out.”
Leaping flying trying new things, jumping away from all my worry and sadness, plunging into the scary blue of the abyss that turns out to be only a cool embrace to enfold me and lift me back, back to the surface where we can look up and see how far we fell, tracing the air with our eyes the distance we’ve come, that long terrible fall that wasn’t so terrible. As you look up in wonder at it and yourself, perhaps you spot the girl you were before the jump, the one you left at the top. The one you discarded to become someone else, or just you, different, here in the water, trying new things and making new friends, unable to imagine or remember what it was like to be afraid. Even the thrill in your stomach as you dropped is gone, transformed by the fall and the water and the smiles of your friends into something so happy it dissipates into the bubbles around you. It doesn’t have to be us versus them, I said, and she jumped, and took me with her, and now she’s changed and I’m changed but we’re still together, the same friends but both of us somehow different.
The next morning Dad’s at the kitchen table, but not in his racquetball clothes.
“Aren’t you playing?” I ask.
He stands, moving stiffly after our park adventure yesterday. “The Fosters will be here soon to pick your sister up for her playdate with Reed. I thought afterward you and I might spend some
time, just the two of us. So think about what you might want to do.”
He leaves the kitchen and I watch after him, surprised, but immediately full of dread. I wasn’t rude yesterday, but I’m sure he noticed how much I was avoiding Jennifer. Probably he wants to get me alone to lecture me about how I need to be nicer to her. There’s only one thing I can think of that will throw Dad off enough to keep us from having that conversation, and that’s shopping. I’ve wanted more interesting outfits anyway, and after talking about Aja with Evie I remember the perfect place. I rush back for my phone, looking for the Plato’s Closet bookmark I made when Aja mentioned it when we went to the mall at the beginning of the summer. Though taking Dad on my first thrift store trip might be crazy, at least it will give us something else to focus on instead of how much I dislike his girlfriend.
Without argument or protest, when I suggest the outing, Dad says it sounds fun. And instead of lecturing me in the car, he wants to play our old music game, where he chooses a song by someone classic like Bill Withers or Otis Redding on the stereo, and sees if I can guess who it is in the first twenty seconds.
We don’t get a lot of rounds in, because Plato’s Closet isn’t far away, but it is definitely in a different neighborhood than ours—one with coffeehouses, food trucks, tattoo shops, and lots of cool-looking high schoolers milling around in the sunshine. There’s a giant mural of horses transforming into birds along one whole wall of a building, and across the street there’s a line of shops selling vintage furniture and clothes. I’m exhilarated and intimidated both at the same time.
“Like law school days,” Dad says, looking around. “This the right place?”
I can only nod. The combination of this cool neighborhood and Dad’s playfulness is throwing me off. Dad holds the shop door open for me, smiling excitedly. I want to smile back too, but as soon as my eyes adjust to the dark interior after being in the bright sunshine outside, the first thing I see is Cheyenne Taylor—Kendra Mack’s second-best friend— standing at the rear of the store. She has her back to us, studying a rack of shoes, but I recognize her by her long, wavy blond hair and her matching giraffe legs. Those, and the odd-looking denim bag that apparently Kendra made Cheyenne stop wearing the first time she brought it to school. I have no idea what someone like Cheyenne is doing in a place like this, but I definitely don’t want her seeing me. There’s no way I can give her even the slightest opportunity to make any snide comments about diaries, or Cassie, especially not in front of Dad.
“Fee, I think you’ll be more interested in what’s this way,” Dad offers, when I try to duck behind the nearest rack. Which turns out to be men’s jackets.
I follow reluctantly, trying to keep as many wildly dressed mannequins between me and Cheyenne as possible. Though Cheyenne is the opposite of Izzy—the nicest one of Kendra’s friends instead of the meanest—I’m sure she’d blab that I was here with my father to Kendra. And to Cassie.
Dad’s oblivious. “So what is it you’re looking for?” he asks, flipping through a bunch of tank tops, like he’d have any idea what to get me. Before the Divorce, Dad always left the clothes shopping to Mom, unless we needed something for a special occasion. Since then he’s taken Leelu and me to get a few basics—jeans, say, or new shoes—but we’ve never done this kind of shopping before. The kind where you’re just looking and waiting for something fantastic to jump out. Now with Cheyenne here, it feels like the most horrible and embarrassing day to try it for the first time. I’m tempted to tell Dad this wasn’t what I was expecting and we should just leave, but if I do he’ll ask me why—probably too loud—which would only bring more attention over here.
I shrug, keeping an eye on Cheyenne, who has moved over to the sunglasses. “I don’t really know.”
“Dresses? Tops? Maybe something like this?” Dad holds up a pair of orange pleather leggings.
Of course he’s going to be mortifying.
“Okay, okay,” he says, seeing my face. “Serious. I get it.”
To keep some distance between us, I move to a separate rack of shirts. If Cheyenne does see me, she at least won’t see me with my dad. He doesn’t seem to mind at all, and starts searching in earnest. I find it hard to do the same thing very well while keeping an eye on Cheyenne, though. After several fumbling moments, where I’m mostly accidentally pulling things off their hangers, Dad comes over holding seven or eight different tops. They’re all in my size, and—even more surprising—are the kind that will fit into the artier, non-Cassie wardrobe I’m dreaming of.
“Wow, Dad.”
“This one I thought would go with that new beret of yours.”
I hold up the black tank top. The metallic sheen of the fabric feels a little too punk rock for me, but I’m so caught off guard that he noticed and remembered my new hat, I take the whole pile from him.
“Well, go see if I’m right.”
I crane my neck to give the entire store a careful, sneaky look. Cheyenne must have left when I was examining Dad’s choices, because she’s nowhere. So I relax a little, and even let Dad follow me to the dressing rooms. As soon as I pull on the metallic tank top in my curtained stall, it’s clear it is too punk (and a little too big), but I decide to show Dad anyway since he was so excited. Plus, it might give him a better idea of what to pick next round.
Right as I pull back the curtain, there’s Cheyenne, walking past.
“Oh.” She stops so that we don’t ram into each other. When she realizes who I am she tucks her thick blond hair behind both ears, looking surprised, and guilty. “Fiona. Do you shop here?”
My whole body is going through that fight-or-flight thing we learned about in biology, but in between flashes of panic, I picture me and Evie yesterday, jumping even though we were scared. And it not being that bad.
“This is my first visit,” I somehow tell her, calm as possible.
Her face lights up and she touches my arm in confidence. “There’s so much great stuff, right? My sister used to work here. She’d bring home the coolest outfits, because a lot of times people just leave bags of what the shop rejects in the parking lot. Too lazy to go donate it somewhere else I guess, but that meant she brought whatever she wanted home for free.”
I nod, like I get it, but mostly I can’t believe Cheyenne is being so nice to me. Or is admitting that her sister wears, essentially, other people’s trash.
“She’s home from college now,” she goes on. “We like to come here for nostalgia. Anyway, that top is cute. But it’s probably a little big. No offense.”
I look down, still not having any idea what to think or say. “Thanks.”
“The best days to shop here are—oh. Hang on.” Her phone is blaring an old Iggy Azalea song from the depths of her denim bag. “Hi, Kendra Mack,” she says, bright, without even checking the screen. I remember their stupid “unspoken” rule about calling each other by first and last names. “What’s up?”
For privacy, Cheyenne lets the heavy curtain of her hair fall back in front of her face, and ducks into the closest empty stall. Not knowing what else to do, I go out to show Dad the top—he agrees with Cheyenne that it’s too big—but when I come back she’s still talking.
“Ugh, I know,” I overhear. “So gross. But when Sienna’s home she gets to do whatever she wants, and you know Janice still won’t let me stay at home alone. So that means I had to get dragged here.”
I change back into my own shirt as quickly as possible, and take my stack of untried-on tops back out into the store. I tell Dad I decided I want to find skirts or bottoms to go with them before trying the rest on, which he doesn’t seem to mind. We’re still at it when I see Cheyenne finally slide out of the dressing room, looking disappointed. Confused by this crazy contrast in one of Kendra’s friends, I can’t help watching her with some of Cassie’s and my old Harriet the Spy action as she goes over to another tall, blond girl flipping through dresses. Cheyenne says something to her sister, who makes a face and starts to protest, until Cheyenne says som
ething else, something about “I’ll pay you back”—and they both leave, neither of them looking very happy.
“Friend from school?” Dad asks, noticing me staring.
“No,” I say, trying to focus again on the skirts in front of me. But to be honest, after what just happened in the dressing room, I don’t know what to call Cheyenne anymore at all.
Chapter Seventeen
Monday night at Mom’s, another weird thing happens. Leelu’s gotten out our list, and is asking Mom for her opinions on what last things are most important as summer ends.
“Oh, that reminds me,” Mom says, reaching for a pencil. “I thought about Hearst Castle.”
“Really!?” Leelu and I say at the same time.
“Serena mentioned it the other day. Sounds like Tess has got the travel bug in her again, now that she and Howie are really married. They’re taking Cassie and Lana on a road trip for their belated honeymoon. I think Hearst Castle is one of the stops.”
“Like Sleeping Beauty!” Leelu cries.
I fix an interested half smile on my face while Leelu speculates with Mom about how great it would be to live in a castle, so long as there weren’t as many thorns, but really I’m fighting the weirdest feeling. Cassie is off somewhere with her newly married grandparents, and I didn’t know the first thing about it. We haven’t even talked about her new cousin, but apparently now they’re all on a vacation I’m totally ignorant about. She could be anywhere in the state, and I had no idea.
I tell Mom and Leelu I’ll be back in time to help with dinner, and head to my room.
You were half gone from my mind—a dandelion with only a scrap of fuzz left, needing only one more final breath to scatter the rest of you to the wind—but I look now across the grass of my feelings and there you are, popped up all over the place, a dozen different puffy heads and more there and there and there: weeds of you that require the most powerful poisons to kill. Even though I’ve found new flowers better than simply weeds with which to fill my garden, suddenly the air is full of you again, and you stick to my hair and my clothes, unshakable.
This Is All Your Fault, Cassie Parker Page 13