Dear Cassie

by Burstein, Lisa

  “I’d pick up your duffel if you don’t want fleas,” Rawe said, looking down at it.

  Fleas. I pictured them crawling like ants on a giant hot dog. I picked my bag up and smacked at it like it was on fire.

  “This won’t be easy,” Rawe said, making the words heavy with meaning. “This program is part wilderness survival skills, part personal rehabilitation.”

  All torture.

  “We are the first group to be housed at this particular camp, so we get the unique privilege of rehabilitating it as well.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “It means you’ll be fixing up the grounds and structures for future participants.”

  Slave labor.

  “It will be hard work. A lot of times you’ll want to quit, but you know what will happen if you do, right?”

  I nodded. It didn’t matter what they were going to put us through—I couldn’t quit. Quitting would send me right to the jail time I’d avoided. She didn’t need to remind me about that—it wasn’t so much that I was afraid of going to jail; I dreaded the way my brother would look at me the morning I went in.

  “We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow and another long day after that and so on,” she said. “Any questions?” Her diamond-hard eyes looked me up and down, seemingly wondering whether I had what it took to make it through.

  I was pretty sure the answer was no.

  “Is it just the two of us?” I flashed forward, this straight-laced woman with boot-eyeholes up to her chin and me for twenty-nine more days. It would be enough to turn anyone back into an addict—not that I was an addict. I knew I’d been sent here for a very different reason.

  They say Karma is a bitch. I guess mine was turning out to be a bitch with fleas and a bony slave driver.

  “Nez and Troyer are in the cabin,” she said, walking toward what I thought was a storage shed.

  I followed her. From behind, her hair kind of looked like a skunk tail.

  The “cabin” looked like a shack built by a homicidal maniac—you know, the place he keeps his blood-splattered murder tools and rotting corpses. The door creaked as Rawe opened it—that a room you enter and may never leave creak. It was small, had three cots and an open door that led into a room at the back of the cabin, which I hoped was the bathroom. I hadn’t peed since I’d left Collinsville.

  “Nez,” Rawe said, pointing to one cot. A dark-skinned girl, either Indian or Native American, was smacking out a sleeping bag. Her uniform fit her way better than Rawe’s did; it was clear she was the kind of girl that everything fit better. She had dark eyes that seemed to have no pupils and hair that fell down her back like spilled black paint.

  “Troyer,” Rawe said, pointing to a girl sitting up on her cot with her eyes closed. She was all Barbie-doll blond bangs. Her skin was covered in goose-bump-sized acne. At least, I hoped it was acne.

  Troyer was also wearing the same uniform that Rawe wore. I looked at the empty cot, where a folded brown uniform lay—probably already crawling with fleas.

  “Wick,” Rawe said, pointing at me.

  I guess those were our introductions. Rawe turned off the one dirty, naked light bulb that stuck out of the ceiling like a nose. Both Nez and Troyer clicked on their flashlights.

  “I’d like you to diary for thirty minutes about why you are here,” Rawe said, “an introduction to your leaving that part of your life behind.” She handed me this notebook and a pencil, then walked to the small room at the back of the cabin and closed the door behind her. I guess it wasn’t the bathroom.

  “Diary?” I said. I wanted to ask where the bathroom was, but considering what the place looked like, I was also afraid to.

  “Assessment Diary,” Nez said. “Write whatever, they don’t read it. It’s for you.” She mooed the word, then lay on her stomach and started to write.

  I looked at Troyer. She was still sitting upright in the middle of her cot with her eyes closed.

  “She doesn’t talk,” Nez said, chewing on her pencil. “Do you?”

  “Usually,” I said, sizing up Nez. If she was worse than me, I wanted to know it.

  “Thank cheese and crackers,” she said, her legs scissoring behind her. “I was going crazy. Not that we’re allowed to talk, but it’s nice to know you’re not mute.”

  “She’s mute?” I said, looking back at Troyer, still motionless on her cot. The way we were talking about her, I wondered if she was deaf, too.

  “Hasn’t said a word in the last six hours, not even to Rawe,” Nez said.

  “Diary and lights out in thirty,” Rawe bellowed from behind her closed door.

  Nez stuck out her tongue and went back to writing. I guess she wasn’t worse than me, because that definitely wasn’t what I would have done.

  This is going to be a very fucking long twenty-nine days.

  28 Fucking Days to Go

  I woke up from a dream about Aaron. One of those dreams that you know is a dream while you’re having it, which is good because you wouldn’t be doing what you were doing if it were real.

  We were parked in his father’s black convertible, kissing. Actually, we were doing more than kissing. We were doing the thing that led to the thing that led me to Turning Pines. If I wasn’t dreaming and he’d tried to kiss me, I probably would have pummeled his face in. But I was dreaming, so I kissed him and put my hands in his long auburn hair and felt that pull in my lower stomach—an ache like someone had caught it with a fish hook and was tugging me closer with each kiss. I felt the sky above us humming, the Zippo in the pocket of his jeans smacking at mine.

  I woke up with my face in the pillow, Troyer snoring next to me. For someone who didn’t talk, she snored like a mother. I touched the part of my stomach below my belly button. Sometimes I feathered it lightly like a scar and sometimes I punched it to make it hurt. I was punching it that morning when Nez caught me.

  “Do that in the bathroom,” she said from her cot. She leaned up on her elbow to look at me.

  The “bathroom.” There was one. But turned out it was fifteen paces behind the cabin—a pit toilet. If I hadn’t been about to piss my bed, there was no way I would have gone out there alone, at night. But I had, and awful can’t even begin to describe it.

  “I’m not doing anything,” I said, wondering why I cared what this girl thought. I didn’t care what anybody thought—I was Cassie Wick. Well, not anymore. Now I guess I was just Wick.

  “Whatever,” she said, purring on the r like a cat. “I don’t care, but if Rawe catches you, she’ll make you do two-hundred pushups.” Her black eyes flashed at me like fire coals.

  What did she think I was doing? I was punching myself, punishing myself. Doing what I deserved because of what I had done. Maybe only Rawe was allowed to punish us.

  Troyer groaned.

  “Holy shish kabob, she makes noise,” Nez said.

  Troyer picked up her pad and scrawled on it: Shut up, I’m trying to sleep. She held it toward us like a surrender flag.

  “Shut up yourself,” Nez said.

  Nez reminded me of someone—me—but with a squeaky-clean mouth. I watched her, her hair like crow feathers against the white pillow. I already knew what I was capable of, and I wouldn’t want to be in a cabin in the woods alone with me.

  I guess I’d have to figure out what she was capable of.

  Troyer scribbled on her pad and held it up again: You’re not supposed to talk.

  “Well, you’ve got that covered,” I said, looking at Nez. There was no way I was letting her think she was the leader. Not that I was, but it definitely wasn’t going to be her.

  Nez laughed, pulled her sleeping bag up to her chin, and leaned forward. “You see any of the guys yet?”

  “I rode in a van here with one,” I said, laying back and looking at the ceiling, where urine-colored flypaper hung from it like streamers. I covered my mouth and gagged.

  “How was he?” Nez asked, her head still poking out of her sleeping bag.

 
I put my hands behind my head and thought about it. “Annoying,” I said.

  She sighed. “I mean, like, how did he look?”

  “Annoying,” I said again. Then I reconsidered. Though annoying was the first thing that came to mind, he was also cute—cutest boy in a boy-band cute, but doing everything he could to deny it. Maybe that was why I needed to think he was annoying.

  I could never let a boy be “cute” again.

  Never again.

  Troyer scribbled something on her pad, then seemed to think better of it and crossed it out.

  “More for me.” Nez got out of bed and stretched. Her arms and legs were lean, the color of caramel.

  “Is it time to get up?” I asked. I assumed Rawe would come out blaring a trumpet or something.

  Nez shrugged.

  I looked at Troyer. Her head was covered with her pillow.

  “So is there a shower, or what?” I asked. A shower was exactly what I needed to wash away the fantasy of Aaron’s fingerprints, the illusion of his lips. The things he’d done to con me into believing he actually cared.

  “There’s a shower house,” Nez said, “but Rawe has the key. You can use that for now.” She pointed at a bucket full of water, with a washcloth hanging over the side of it, in the corner of the cabin.

  “What am I, an elephant?” I said, realizing that it actually would have been better if I were. At least then I could have used my trunk to get to the hard-to-reach areas.

  “Good thing there’re no mirrors,” Nez said, rolling up her sleeping bag.

  No mirrors? Lila would have a shit fit. Lila. Who knew where she was now? She was smart enough to take off before she could be sentenced, before she could be sent to a shithole like this.

  “So, why are you here?” Nez asked, changing into her uniform. She was wearing a hot pink bra and matching underwear. I guess bras weren’t considered weapons, though the way Nez looked in hers, I was pretty sure she’d used it as one before.

  I’d known this question was coming and I had been ready to answer it, but I guess I thought I‘d be asked by some doctor in a tie, not by some girl in a custodian’s uniform and porn-star underwear.

  I was here because I’d been arrested for marijuana possession on prom night. We were driving around in my Civic smoking it. I was trying to stay on the road, even though I felt high enough for my car to rise up into the clouds. Lila was bitching about missing her one and only prom and Amy was sitting in the backseat feeling sorry for herself.

  I just kept driving, wondering if I would ever have the guts to wear my dress again, ever have the guts to let someone who actually showed up for our date see me in it. Ever have the guts to be the kind of girl who would pick out a red dress for herself.

  Then the sirens went off behind us and we got arrested and we went to court and blah, blah, blah, I’m here. There’s stuff that happened in the blah, blah, blah—a lot worse than the stuff that happened on prom night—but that’s not something I’m ever going to talk about.

  “Pot,” I said, even though part of the reason I thought I was here and not at some resort-style rehab was because of what happened with Aaron—everything that had happened with Aaron—the blah, blah, blah. I wasn’t religious, but my parents were, and all I’d ever learned my whole life was that doing things like I had done got you sent to hell—and, well, this was it.

  “B-o-ring,” Nez said, brushing her hair.

  I didn’t bother asking why she was here. I didn’t care. I just put on my brown uniform and made my bed. There was nothing else to do.

  Rawe came out of her room a few minutes later and let us know she was giving us the day off from wilderness training to get acclimated.

  Get acclimated. She sounded like Amy—that I’m better than you smart person way of talking, using words you would never use. Couldn’t she say get settled or get your shit together? Maybe she couldn’t say that because we would never feel settled, would never have our shit together.

  Unfortunately getting acclimated meant being forced to cut up more wood than I have ever seen in my life. It was piled like a garbage-dump-size beaver dam in the middle of an old soccer field. The goals were still there but free of their hammocks, and there was a whitewashed building with a padlock on the door at the far end of the field. It looked like a mess hall. It looked like it had a bathroom with a flush toilet. I wondered if I would ever be allowed to use it.

  “Grab an ax,” Rawe said. She looked even more severe in the sunlight. The skin on her face was transparent blue-white, so thin it was like I could see her skull underneath.

  There were seven stumps lined up with an ax stuck in each one like a sandwich toothpick. I didn’t want to grab an ax. I’d never grabbed an ax before. I’d never even seen one in real life.

  “Company coming?” Nez asked.

  “The boy’s camp is going to help,” Rawe said.

  Great, so that would probably include Ben. I wondered if he would turn chopping wood into some kind of drum solo or, even worse, a way to make me start thinking about Aaron again.

  “Rawrrrr,” Nez growled, clutching her chest like a black-and-white-movie star. She was like Lila on steroids—steroids laced with Ecstasy.

  Troyer walked over to one of the stumps, pulled out an ax, and held it. I wasn’t sure if she’d left her pad in the cabin or if she just had nothing to say.

  “You guys ever cut wood before?” Rawe asked. I felt like she probably should have asked that question before she ordered us to grab an ax.

  “Yeah, all the time back at the ranch,” I said, and then I wondered why. There was no one here I wanted to make laugh. No one like Amy who laughed at everything or Lila who laughed as long as the joke wasn’t about her; no one like my brother, who I could make laugh with a look.

  “Excellent, Wick,” Rawe said, clapping her hands together like cymbals. “You can start.”

  I stood there and stared at my ax, speared diagonally out of the stump like a penguin butt sticking out of the water, and realized words were probably going to mean little in a place where you had to live up to them.

  “Any time,” Rawe said, her shiny left boot tapping.

  “I’ve used an ax,” Nez said, saving me. “Lots.”

  “Good,” Rawe said. “Teach them.”

  Nez’s face melted into a smile. “Can I teach the guys?”

  “Nez,” Rawe said, in the kind of voice it seemed that Nez had heard already, because she walked toward the stumps without protest. “All of you,” Rawe said, looking at me.

  I followed Nez and waited.

  “Put a log in the center of the stump,” Nez said, picking one up and balancing it like a baby block. Her eyes shot to something across the field.

  The boys’ camp was marching out in a line. They walked with high knees behind Square Head, wearing the same paper-bag-brown uniforms we wore. It was Ben, a skinny kid with braces, a heavy-set kid with curly hair, and a guy with tattoo sleeves down his arms.

  “Sweet odds,” Nez said, whistling under her breath.

  “They’re all yours,” I said. “Just watch your lips on the one with the chain-link fence on his face.”

  Troyer seemed to pull her neck into her chest like a turtle.

  “Nez, more teaching,” Rawe said, standing behind us. She sounded angry enough for fire to be coming out of her nose.

  Nez held the ax high and wiggled her butt.

  “Nez,” Rawe spat. “One more and it’s three-hundred pushups.”

  “What? It’s my technique,” Nez said, rearing the ax back and splitting in two the wood in front of her. It sounded like the crack of a bat at a baseball game.

  I waited while Troyer lifted her ax. She closed her eyes when she swung, but she hit. When the log cracked down the middle, she opened her eyes with the surprise of a little kid seeing her birthday cake all lit up in front of her.

  “Wick,” Rawe shouted, “your wood is going to start growing again. Let’s go.”

  I heard the boys march up behind us.
I heard Square Head tell them to halt. He seemed a lot more army-like than Rawe did. I hated to think it, but he kind of reminded me of my father.

  I lifted the ax; it was heavier than I thought it would be. I reared back like you might at one of those carnival games with a bell and smacked. The ax bounced off the wood and forced me back, splaying me right on my ass.

  I could hear the guys laughing, could hear Ben laughing. The skin on my face seared.

  “Silent,” Square Head bellowed. But they were still snickering.

  “Again, Wick,” Rawe yelled.

  I sat there for a moment, my tailbone throbbing. What was I doing? I didn’t belong here. This seriously sucked. Even Troyer could chop wood, and she couldn’t even talk.

  “Wick,” Rawe said, in the same voice she’d used on Nez.

  I got back up, but my legs felt shaky. My ass burned. I stood in front of my stump.

  The boys lined up beside us. Ben was directly next to me; he’d pulled his hair back in a red bandana. He held his ax high. I didn’t want to watch him, but I couldn’t help it.

  I wanted to see him fail.

  I watched his arms go up and then down, splitting the wood like he was wielding a karate chop.

  “Hot,” Nez whispered, her eyebrows wiggling.

  Ben saw me watching him and winked. I looked down at my uncut log.

  “Want some help?” he asked, then stuck his ax into the stump in front of him. He moved it so fluidly, so not like how I moved mine.

  “Not from you,” I snarked.

  “You don’t seem like the kind of girl who would take help from anyone,” he said, his brown eyes as sharp as his ax blade as he picked it up again.

  “Then why the hell did you ask?”

  “Because I’m not just anyone,” he said, picking up a log and splitting it so hard I felt the ground shake.

  I tried to remember to breathe.

  I tried to remember that this might be how things started, but it wasn’t how they ended.

  “He likes you,” Nez said.

  “Who cares?” I said. I felt my stomach cinch up like a drawstring waistband. I didn’t care what any guy thought of me—guys could like me or hate me, but they were never touching me again.