Dear Cassie

by Burstein, Lisa

“So is talking too fucking much,” I yelled up to the front of the boat. My voice echoed off the metal of the canoe and the water below us.

  “Ben said you were feisty.” Leisner said. I could hear the smirk in his voice.

  Feisty? I’d been called a lot of things in my time, but feisty was not one of them.

  “Ben’s an asshole,” I said, staring at the back of Leisner’s curly blond head and picturing myself drop-kicking it.

  “He said you’d say that,” Leisner added.

  “Can we please stop talking about Ben?” I kept paddling. My arms already ached, water splashing underneath us as the canoe moved forward.

  “Who’s talking about Ben?” Leisner joked.

  I pulled my paddle out of the water and soaked him with it.

  “You’re lucky you’re a girl,” he said.

  “You’re lucky you’re not,” I said.

  “Be careful, you guys,” Eagan said. “I’m fairly sure this boat is at least twenty years old. Do you know what happens to metal as it ages?”

  “Maybe Ben will come save you, Cassie.” Leisner laughed.

  I felt fear splash up from my stomach to my chest. Leisner bothered me in a way I recognized, which meant I was screwed. As much as I wanted to deny it, annoyance was not at all what I felt for Ben.

  I looked out at the lake. Ben and Nez were in the lead, the sun making them seem like shadows of themselves. I needed to stay the hell away from him.

  “It’s a long row to the dock,” Leisner said. “What do you want to talk about, Cassie?”

  “I don’t,” I said, paddling so hard my hands burned.

  “We could sing,” Eagan said. I could hear the saliva flying out of his mouth as he said it.

  “Start singing and I drown you,” I said.

  “You don’t have it in you,” Leisner said.

  “Well, maybe not when it comes to him,” I said, flicking my chin up at Eagan, “but you’re a different story.”

  “I’m right here,” he said, stopping mid-row to turn to me.

  I allowed the anger to build—fire starting in my chest, flames licking out to my arms and hands. I wanted to take my paddle and whack his knowing smile so hard that it landed in Ben and Nez’s boat.

  I had managed to keep myself in check the whole time I’d been here, but Leisner was different. I deserved my fist in my stomach as a painful and constant tattoo needle, but he deserved my fist in his face because he was an ass-clown.

  “I knew it.” Leisner laughed and turned back around.

  I paddled harder, picturing the water as his stupid jock face. I was annihilating it in my mind, splitting his skull, breaking his nose, cracking his teeth.

  “Let’s sing the name song, Eagan,” Leisner cooed. “I’ll start. Cassie, Cassie bo-bassie, banana-fana-fo-fassie, all talk no action-assie, Cassie. One more time …”

  “Shut your blow-hole, or I’ll shut it for you.” The fire moved into my eyes. That’s how it feels. I think it’s why people call anger blind. You can’t see anything but red covering your target. You can’t feel anything but searing force pushing you.

  “I think we all know, including Ben,” Leisner said, indicating him out in his boat with Nez, “that you won’t do anything.”

  I stood up. Leisner didn’t notice; he started singing again—still mocking me—his blond-curled head bobbing up and down like someone juggling a soccer ball on his knees.

  The canoe teetered as I edged toward him. He was so high on himself, he didn’t even notice me standing behind him, breathing, waiting, trying to decide what to do. I tapped him on the shoulder, still unsure. I waited. It would all depend on what he said when he turned around.

  “Look, Eagan, I caught a Cassie with my song,” Leisner said, his smile greasy. “I figured she was easy, but—”

  “I asked you to shut up,” I said quietly. That’s another thing about anger; it makes you calm when you let yourself do something about it.

  “Sit down! You’re going to capsize the boat!” Eagan screamed.

  “She’ll sit,” Leisner said. “She wouldn’t want to do anything she’d regret.”

  I already had too much I regretted to let this one go.

  I don’t feel anything when I grab for someone, just a rush of relief, like when you are desert-thirsty and take that initial drink. So at first I didn’t even notice that I’d pushed Leisner—that I’d launched him airborne—until he reached out to steady himself and we both fell into the water.

  It was so cold when I hit, it felt like twenty thousand self-induced punches to my stomach with an icicle.

  “Boy and girl overboard,” Eagan yelled.

  I was in the water, bobbing, trying to keep it out of my mouth.

  “You are so dead,” Leisner said, water bubbling up around his head.

  I treaded as best I could. I was so angry, I’d forgotten I couldn’t swim very well—that I should not have been pushing people around on a canoe. That without my brother, there was no one to be sure I made it back to shore safely. My life jacket was holding me up okay, but it was clear that it had a shelf life and mine was expiring. I reached for Leisner. I didn’t know what else to do.

  “You look like a wet dog,” he said, his smile bobbing on the water. “A wet bitch.”

  “You look like a naked, upside-down female synchronized swimmer in need of a wax,” I spit through the water. “Desperately.”

  “You’re on your own now, tough girl,” Leisner said, swimming past me and pulling himself back into the canoe.

  Eagan was reaching his paddle out to me, but I was too far away to grab it. I looked at the shore—the water fishy, muddy in my mouth, starting to fill my ears. Rawe and Nerone stood there. They hadn’t moved, hadn’t even yelled. I was surprised one of them hadn’t jumped in.

  Of course, I hadn’t yelled help yet, either. I didn’t know if I could. Was I really stubborn enough to let myself drown rather than admit I needed it?

  I felt arms surround me, pulling me up, my mouth free of the water.

  Ben.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I asked, but I didn’t fight him even though he was touching me again, all of me, and was still technically male.

  “Saving you,” he said, droplets of water sticking to his eyelashes. “You looked like you were drowning.”

  “I’m wearing a life jacket, moron,” I said, but I still didn’t struggle away from him. It was just like Leisner said: Ben had come to save me. Could everyone see something between us? Something I was trying so hard to contain?

  Never again.

  I heard another splash—Nez jumping in. She flailed, but it was clear she was faking, at least to me.

  “Looks like you have a real damsel in distress,” I said.

  “She told me she was on her school swim team,” Ben said, squinting in the sunlight.

  “She’s probably just trying to get your attention,” I said, watching her swim closer to us even as she pretended to struggle, her black hair whipping and splashing like a fish flipping on a line.

  “You weren’t?” he asked, his arms still tight around me, the kind of tight that makes it hard to breathe but has nothing to do with being held and everything to do with who you are being held by.

  “I fell in,” I said. His body still stuck to mine in the way only bodies can stick.

  “Do you want me to let you go?” he asked.

  I wanted to say, Yes,say, Never touch me again,say, Why do you have to be the kind of guy who jumps into Port-O-Potty–colored lake water to save me? but I couldn’t. I leaned into him, letting his strength keep us afloat, letting myself stop fighting him for just that second, knowing that once I was out of the water, I could pretend I hadn’t wanted any of it.

  “First you, then Nez,” he said, pulling me over to the boat. He secured me with one arm, swam with the other, my mouth on his shoulder, on his wet hair.

  “I think you lost something,” Ben said to Leisner, treading on the side of our canoe, one of his arms stil
l around me.

  “Nope, we’re all set on skanks,” Leisner said.

  “Fuck you,” I spit, the red filling my vision again.

  “Are you okay?” Eagan asked.

  “I will be when I get back in this fucking boat,” I said, pulling myself up, the water splashing behind me.

  “Next time you try to drown someone you should probably make sure you can swim first.” Leisner laughed.

  “I’d be scared for next time,” I said, picturing it: my fist, his face, the brittle crunch of cartilage.

  I sat in my seat, wet and cold, Ben’s eyes on me.

  Nez started to scream for him, to flail more forcefully, but Ben didn’t move.

  “She’s going to forget she’s supposed to be drowning if you don’t get her soon,” I said, anything so he would stop staring, anything so he would go away and I wouldn’t be tempted to jump back in.

  “I guess I’ll get my thank-you later,” Ben said, swimming toward Nez, to someone who could definitely admit she wanted his arms around her.

  I shivered and looked out at the water. The sun sparkled on it like millions of paparazzi snapping flashbulbs. Taking pictures of me, the outside of me. The part I couldn’t hide.

  The only part I know I can ever let Ben see, no matter how he makes me feel.

  23 Fucking Days to Go

  Waking up in the morning is different here. I don’t have coffee to revive me. I don’t have my brother hocking up loogies in the bathroom next door and forcing me to go bang on the wall to tell him to stop being so fucking disgusting. I don’t have my open pack of smokes waiting on my nightstand, luring me with their exposed brown butts.

  I only had Rawe kicking the side of my metal cot so hard it rattled and grunting, Ten minutes till morning calisthenics. Try not to fall into the lake between now and then, then leaving the cabin to do whatever it was she did for the ten minutes we got ready for morning calisthenics.

  Nez and I had already done our punishment pushups, three hundred apiece on the shore when we got back, the fishy sand sticking to our wet uniforms, to our mouths and noses; I still had sand in my teeth.

  I stared at the ceiling and thought about Rawe. Maybe she left every morning so she didn’t have to watch us. Watch our eyes open, blink once, twice, and realize it wasn’t a nightmare. Deny our zombie movements as we put one leg in our brown jumpsuits then the other, while we tried to forget that we had another long day ahead of us doing things we were bound to hate, things that were supposed to make us better, even though no one ever told us how.

  Or maybe Rawe left the cabin to get a break, because Nez was so fucking annoying.

  Nez got out of bed and stretched. She reminded me of a cat, would probably lick herself clean if she could reach. I put my hands into the water bucket and tried to ignore her, splashing my face wet but not clean. I wiped my skin with the washcloth, scrubbing the smell of dead fish and lake water from my eyelashes, from under my fingernails. Unfortunately the water in the bucket didn’t smell much better.

  I heard Nez yawn, one of those long, drawn-out yawns that sound like you’re saying yahhh, making a big deal about how tired she was. Then she yawned again, louder, longer, probably because no one said anything about her first yawn—not that Troyer could have and not that I would have.

  I knew Nez was yawning because she wanted an audience. She wanted to tell us why she was so tired, but she didn’t have to. She’d gone to the boys’ cabin again last night. She’d made a big deal about telling us while we wrote in our Assessment Diaries before lights out that Ben had asked her to come. We were supposed to be writing about what scared us, but considering what I had realized about Ben the day before, I didn’t write anything because I was having trouble topping it.

  Luckily my head was still in the water bucket when she started talking.

  “Wow, last night with Ben was amazing,” Nez said.

  The rotten swell of jealousy came up from my stomach and I tried desperately to ignore it. Ben had saved me yesterday, but clearly he wanted more, and since he wasn’t getting it from me, I guess he got it from Nez.

  I guess she gave him his thank-you.

  I felt sick.

  I forced myself to look at Troyer. She was brushing her hair and ignoring us. I wanted her to turn to me, to mouth that Nez is a fucking liar.

  “Did you hear me?” Nez asked as she put on a lime green bra and matching underwear. We hadn’t done laundry yet and I had no idea how this girl could still have clean underwear, especially considering how much time she spent making it dirty.

  Troyer stopped brushing and pretended to launch her hairbrush at Nez. Maybe she wasn’t ignoring us.

  “Nez, we don’t care,” I said. I wiped my face one more time and dropped the washcloth in the bucket with a splash, only thinking afterward that Nez might have used it to clean up when she snuck back in last night.

  I felt myself involuntarily shudder.

  “Well, I don’t care if you care,” Nez said, turning around and fixing her black eyes on me. “I need to talk about it. It was very, very special and also,” she whispered, “super hot.”

  “How did you not wake up Nerone?” I said with a lilt in my voice that I hoped let her know I sort of didn’t believe her.

  “He sleeps like he’s been dead fifty years,” she said, explaining my skepticism away. “I mean, I was definitely screaming and he didn’t wake up.”

  I looked over at Troyer. She was writing furiously on her pad and not looking up. I guess you had a lot of feelings to get out when you didn’t talk all day. Of course, she could have been writing Nez is a bitch over and over, filling each line on the page, like a kid being punished in school.

  “Thanks for the fucking update,” I said, trying to act like I didn’t care, but I did. I shouldn’t have, though. If Nez were with him maybe he would leave me alone. And isn’t that what I want?

  I walked back over to my cot to get dressed. It was good I had no plans to be with Ben or any of the other boys stuck at this camp—any other boys ever—because they were all bound to have whatever diseases Nez did. It was clear she probably had enough that Troyer would wear out her pencil writing them all down.

  “Please don’t swear,” Nez said. “I’m talking about beautiful, magical things here.” She took a deep breath, sounding very swoony.

  “The only magical thing about you and any of those boys knocking boots is that it shuts your mouth for five minutes,” I spit. I was tired of hearing the way Nez threw sex around like it didn’t matter.

  It did matter. I knew what it could do, what it could make you do.

  I felt my hand go to my stomach involuntarily and punch, once, twice, three times.

  “B-T-Dubs,” Nez said, completely oblivious, “Ben is so not annoying. He’s actually super cute.”

  “He’s all yours,” I said, the punches to my stomach making me nauseous. I turned away from her and continued to get dressed. I didn’t know Ben well, but he didn’t seem like he would fall for Nez’s bullshit. I guess when you’re in a place like this you’ll do anything you can to forget you’re here.

  Even Nez.

  “My only complaint is that he smells like an ashtray,” Nez said, sounding like she was critiquing a restaurant.

  I turned around mid-dress and looked at her, my jumpsuit half on, the arms hanging at my sides. The fabric was still damp with lake water, still covered with sand. This was interesting information. “How can he smell like an ashtray if we’re not allowed to smoke?” It had been seven days since my last cigarette and while I didn’t crave them in the same anxious, needling way, it didn’t mean I wouldn’t take one if it were offered, especially if someone here had them.

  “We’re not allowed to do a lot of things, but that didn’t stop me.” Nez paused and pursed her lips. “Or Ben.”

  “I don’t think a fifty-foot wall of nuns could stop you,” I said.

  I left Nez bragging to Troyer. I had to use the bathroom, and it was the kind of day where peeing on
the side of the cabin wasn’t going to do it. Not that I ever liked using the pit toilet. Basically, I felt like I was in a metal coffin filled with shit—and the last time I was in there I saw a spider on the ceiling with a body as big as an avocado. The whole time I was trying not to sit, I was also trying not to stand. But it’s not like I had a choice.

  The way I didn’t have a choice about most things at Turning Pines.

  I found Rawe in front of the cabin on her knees, facing toward the sun. Her eyes were closed and her hands were palm to palm at her chest like she was praying. Her mouth was moving but not making sound. She was praying. What was she praying for? Who was she praying for?

  Hopefully not Nez.

  Or me.

  I still hadn’t figured out why Rawe was here beyond her paycheck. Why would anyone choose to be in a shitty cabin with three fucked-up girls for thirty days? Three fucked-up girls who totally didn’t want to be here. Three fucked-up girls who hated her because of who she was, who hated themselves, who hated so much, there was no room for anything else.

  I tried to walk by without her noticing, but the boots they gave us were not made for sneaking around, probably by design. It made me wonder how Nez hadn’t been caught yet. Maybe she was paying Rawe in sexual favors.

  “Morning, Wick,” Rawe said, not turning around. Her black braid was as tight as ever, the hair in it probably suffocating from lack of air.

  I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say back, because she was kind of being nice and I wasn’t used to it. Not from Rawe. If she used my name, it was in command, not in greeting.

  “Morning,” I said. What people say when they see someone on the street that they don’t know but who is nice enough to say, Morning, like an old man with a hat that he tips.

  I was surprised Rawe was even talking to me. Not that I wanted to talk to her, but when I heard I was going to rehab, I was kind of expecting to be forced to confide my feelings to someone. So far I had only been confiding to myself.

  “Care to join me?” Rawe asked, patting the ground next to her, calling me like a dog.

  “I came out to use the bathroom,” I said. Was she asking me to join her or telling me to join her? I wasn’t sure. If I didn’t, would there be more pushups? I had to use the bathroom too badly to do pushups. I had to use the bathroom too badly to do anything.