“I want one,” I said.
“No ‘please’?” he asked, his voice almost purring.
I looked all the way to the front of the line at Nerone. Luckily, he was too far ahead to hear us and was reciting some marching call that no one was responding to.
“You’re not serious,” I said.
“I think ‘please’ is the least you could say, Cassie,” Ben added, lingering on my name.
“What does that mean?” I asked, even though I figured he meant that I hadn’t thanked him for saving me, at least not like Nez supposedly had.
“Your choice is between ‘please’ or what I really want to know,” he said.
Super. It was worse than that—we were back to him pestering me about why I was here. Ben was nothing if not insanely fixated.
“Fine, please,” I said, so fast it was like I barely said the word at all.
“Hmmmm …” he said, acting like he was thinking about it. “No.”
I felt my stomach roll. He wouldn’t have said yes, no matter what I did. He’d just wanted to make me say please.
Asshole.
He started to smack his thighs and whistle like those fucking birds.
“Why do you want to know why I’m here so badly?” I asked, even though it would have been simple: pot, arrest, the whole long prom night story. But I didn’t want to tell him that. Because I knew it was a lie, knew there was more to why I was here. The reason that I carried, so massive it felt like it could bend me in two, pummel me to dust.
The reason why no matter how much I denied it, I was scared of Ben.
I couldn’t deny that after what had happened with Aaron, boys scared me a little. Not because of what they could do, but because of the out-of-control things they made me do.
“You’re not telling me your secrets,” he said. “Why should I tell you mine?” He stopped and turned around to look at me. Maybe he wanted to see my face, or maybe he wanted me to see his. I tried to walk around him and he blocked me. I turned. Leisner and the rest of them were at least a quarter of a mile behind us. There was no escape except to talk.
“Move,” I said. I tried to walk around him, but he was as unmovable as the tree trunks that lined the trail.
“Say please,” he teased, leaning toward me.
“One more step and you’ll be begging me,” I said, starting to form a fist. I couldn’t stop looking at his lips. My skin burned like the sun above us was in my blood. I needed to stay the hell away from him, even though he had something I wanted so desperately. Even though I couldn’t stop thinking about how his arms had held me tighter than they needed to in the lake.
“You really think you could beat me up, don’t you?” he asked.
“Of course,” I said, my hand still a tight fist.
“Tough and beautiful, a lethal combination,” he said.
“You’ve got the lethal part right,” I said.
“Less talking more hiking,” Nerone yelled, only noticing us when we stopped and our voices rose. “Each word I hear will be an extra half mile.”
“If you want the cigarettes, come and get them,” Ben whispered. “They are under my mattress waiting for you.”
“I take that as a challenge,” I said.
“Take it however you want. It will still mean you’re coming to my cabin at night.” Ben shrugged, a sucks to be you move, and started walking again.
I am getting those cigarettes if I have to kill him to get them.
It is clear that killing him is becoming my only safe option.
20 Fucking Days to Go
I’ve been sparing this journal some of the crap we have to do. I mean, I am bored out of my gourd as it is, so I’m doing my best not to have to relive all of it. There is very little of what I’d expected rehab to be—which is good; it’s not like I wanted people talking to me about my feelings.
Each night Rawe just gives us a lecture on some aspect of our fucked-up lives and tells us to write about it, which, Screw me, I just realized is actually sort of working.
There is a lot of hiking, marching, waiting in line. There is a lot of trying to forget. There is a lot of watching Nez talk and watching Troyer not talk. There is a lot of walking past locked buildings that I know have flush-toilets and running water inside and not being allowed to enter them. There is a lot of smelling my armpits on days Rawe doesn’t let us shower and then wishing I hadn’t. There is a lot of pretending that Ben isn’t getting to me even though he is.
But mostly, there is a lot of wondering if I’ll ever feel better even after I leave this place.
If this is what I am now—a girl who used to know who she was, who used to be able to make people afraid of her, but is now only scared of herself.
Of what she will do if she lets one more boy in.
Rawe led us up the hill to the stables. Even though the horses were long gone, it still had that stable smell. Like fresh dirt and sweet hay right up your nose. Like dirty hair. I wished the horses were still there. I hated a lot of things, but I loved horses. How big, beautiful, graceful, and calm they were.
How unlike me they were.
My brother loved riding and would take me sometimes when I was a kid, boosting me up into the saddle. I would hold onto the horn in front of me and the horse would start walking under me like magic.
Like a magic earthquake.
My brother and I would ride trails, him in front, the clomp of horse hooves on the ground. His horse would swish its tail every so often at a fly, one side of its butt moving up while the other moved down like a seesaw. Back then it was easy to pretend we were in a fairy tale, in another time. And it was easy to believe while we were riding those horses, as magnificent as dinosaurs.
Now, I was just in an abandoned stable, waiting to get the hell out of this place.
We walked from the dirt-covered ring to the stables and Rawe turned on the lights. They made that humming noise that lights that haven’t been turned on in a while make. They were bright and made me squint with the realization that the empty, smelly stable had better lights than our own cabin did.
We were being treated worse than horse shit. Fossilized horse shit.
Rawe handed us each a rake and pointed us to a stall. Mine had a burnished wood sign hanging on it that read PEANUT.
“I don’t do horses,” Nez said, her lips tight.
“I thought you did everything,” I said.
Nez stuck her tongue out at me.
“The horses are long gone, Queen Nez,” Rawe said, doing a fake bow. “Rake out the hay.”
Troyer lowered her head and entered her stall.
“Why are we doing this?” Nez asked, holding her rake upright next to her.
I guess I was glad she asked and I kinda wondered why I hadn’t. It was just the kind of question I ordinarily would have snarked out, either loud enough for Rawe to hear or under my breath. But I hadn’t even thought to say anything. I just took my rake and entered Peanut’s sad old stall. Was I changing without even realizing it, like Rawe had said? Or was I tired, so incredibly tired in my body and in my mind that I couldn’t even be baseline normal Cassie?
Or had I lost her before I even got here?
“I’ll be back in twenty minutes, so you better hope you’re done,” Rawe said, slamming the stable door behind her.
“What’s her problem?” Nez asked.
“Who knows?” I said. Rawe was acting like a completely different person than she had been the day I found her praying. Maybe she wasn’t that person. Or maybe for some reason, she was only that person with me.
I started raking. The hay was high, as high as grass that hadn’t been mowed in weeks. It crunched under my feet as I thought about Peanut. He was probably a pony, a light brown pony that all the campers must have loved and fed apples and carrots to.
When I was a kid and my brother and I would ride, that was what we would do: watch as the orange carrots we fed our trail horses were crunched and crunched and disappeared into their big, spongy
mouths. We would pat them as they chewed, their fur as soft as a dog’s ear. I might not have missed being home, but I guess I missed my brother.
I heard Nez and Troyer in the stalls on either side of me, also raking. Nez was grunting, like she was hooking up with the hay, and it made me wonder why she hadn’t complained yet that the boys weren’t there. She hadn’t even snuck out since the night she was with Ben, or had claimed to be.
As I raked, I couldn’t help thinking about the kids who’d gone to this camp, whose parents came to watch them ride on visiting weekend. They probably had the kind of parents who would always tell them they were awesome, even when they sucked. I had the kind who told me I sucked when I sucked. I couldn’t even remember a time they told me I was awesome, but maybe that’s because I never was. Maybe that was because my mom was too busy drinking instead of talking and my dad was too busy killing other people’s children with army-issue weapons.
“This stinks,” Nez said over the stall, in her typical Nez way.
“You stink,” I said, in my typical Cassie way.
Troyer said nothing. I was beginning to wonder if part of the reason she didn’t talk was because she didn’t want people to figure her out, didn’t want to have a guy like Ben make it his daily mission to.
“I’d much rather be rolling in the hay than raking it,” Nez joked.
“How about we work for a change?” I said. I actually liked raking and thinking about Peanut. How I would have liked to ride Peanut and brush her blond mane. I probably would have liked going to this camp. I might have turned into a completely different person if I had.
“If I don’t talk, who’s going to?” Nez said over her heavy breaths. “All you do is swear and all Troyer does is drool.” I knew Troyer could hear Nez from her stall, but she didn’t stop working, didn’t even act like she could hear her. I listened to Troyer’s rake move along the floor of the stall, scratching at dirt and hay.
I ignored Nez, matched Troyer’s movements.
“I’m trying to stay sane,” Nez said. “What are you trying to do?”
“Get the hell out of here,” I said, still raking. My shoulders burned like they had the day we split all that wood. The hay was as heavy as the snow I had to shovel from our driveway when my brother conned me into doing it for him.
“Just make sure you don’t lose it before then,” Nez said.
“Just make sure you don’t trip over your vagina before then,” I said.
“At least I know how to use mine,” Nez said.
There was no way she could have known what had happened before I came here, but when she said things like that, it was like she did.
“This sucks,” I said, slamming my rake against the hay below me. “Fuck,” I spit.
“Why do you swear so much?” Nez asked.
“Because I like it,” I said, not turning to look at her. “Why do you sleep around so much?”
“Because I like it,” she replied.
“It’s fucking disgusting,” I said.
“So is swearing,” she said. “It’s like swallowing the whole pit toilet and then spewing it out again.” Her words were like tea—calm, warm.
God, I hated Nez in a way that I never hated Lila. Nez was definitely as vain as Lila, but there was something else about her, something where just hearing her voice could make my skin crawl.
I heard the stable door open: a heavy, dusty creak. “Troyer, Wick, tack room,” Rawe yelled. “Nez, you finish the stalls.”
“All of them?” Nez wailed.
“You have other plans?” Rawe asked.
“You have to be flicking kidding me,” Nez said, huffing.
Maybe Rawe did actually care.
Troyer and I followed her into the tack room. Saddles and bridles hung from the wall. A desk, empty except for a shiny cowboy belt buckle paperweight, sat in the center.
“Dust,” Rawe said, handing us two rags. “Don’t move anything, don’t touch anything. Don’t take anything. Understand?”
“Yeah,” I said. I wanted to ask her how we were supposed to dust without touching anything, but Rawe had been nice enough to remove Nez from our lives for a short time. That had to be worth me keeping my mouth closed. I also wondered what there was to take. I wasn’t really in need of a saddle. But maybe I could use the bridle to shut Nez the hell up.
“Troyer?” Rawe asked.
She nodded, just once, fast and sharp like the blade of a guillotine going down.
“Okay,” Rawe said, leaving us to work. “You have ten minutes.”
I started on the saddles. They hung on wooden dowels adorned with golden labels, a girl’s name on each of them.
A girl’s first name.
Troyer started dusting the top of the desk. “At least this is better than hiking,” I said, realizing that even in a room with someone who didn’t talk, I felt the need to make conversation. I hated to think it, but maybe Nez was right. Maybe we did have to do whatever we had to do to stay sane.
Not that anything I had tried yet appeared to be working.
Troyer looked at me, then back down at the desk. She picked up the belt buckle paperweight and held it in her hand.
“My brother and I used to horseback ride,” I said as I shined one of the labels. Rachel. A girl with a saddle. A girl who probably didn’t smoke pot, who probably didn’t get arrested and then fall for stupid boys who made her feel more stupid, who made her do stupid things she could never forget.
Troyer looked up but didn’t write on her pad. Maybe she didn’t have it with her and maybe she didn’t care that my brother and I used to horseback ride. I mean, why would she? It was the first time I’d even bothered to think of it in years.
Troyer wasn’t listening anyway, so I stopped talking and dusted. The smooth leather of the saddles started to shine like caramel under my rag. They were English saddles, the kind that rich kids used. This was probably a rich kids’ camp. A rich kids’ camp that some poor messed-up kids were now cleaning. Rachel was probably at an Ivy League college right now. One like maybe Amy would have gone to if she hadn’t started hanging out with Lila and me. Even before all this, I knew an Ivy League school was the kind of place I would never see.
Rawe stuck her head in the tack room door, her white skin stark against the worn, dirty wood. She spoke like her words were a snare drum. “Troyer, come help Nez load up this hay. Wick, finish up, grab the rags, and turn off the light when you’re done.”
I watched Troyer leave. From behind, her blond hair reminded me of what Peanut’s mane might have looked like.
All alone, I took the chance to sit in the desk chair. I wiped my forehead—it was covered in sweat. My hands were dusty. Dirt crusted in my nails. Without a shower in two days, this was clean now. Without a cigarette, this was relaxing now. I looked in the desk drawers, opened each one slowly and quietly so Rawe wouldn’t hear, but they were all empty.
I don’t know what I was hoping for, maybe that the equestrian counselor was a smoker and left her smokes behind on the last day of camp.
I got up, pushed the chair back in, and noticed the belt buckle paperweight was missing. I looked on the floor, thinking that Troyer must have knocked it over while she was cleaning, but it wasn’t there. Had she swiped it? Maybe that was why she was here. Maybe that was why she was afraid to talk.
I might not be able to figure her out, but I know who I am taking with me to steal those cigarettes from Ben.
19 Fucking Days to Go
We were crunching on our allotted afternoon snack of trail mix—the shitty kind without chocolate chips, because, hey, we are being punished—when the letters came. In plain white envelopes like we really were in prison. Rawe gave Troyer and me one each, and then handed Nez a stack as thick as a deck of cards. Maybe all her sexual partners had written her specially to thank her for giving them gonorrhea.
“I didn’t even know we were allowed to get mail,” I said, looking at my envelope. I recognized the handwriting; it was from my brother.
Nez got letters from hot boys. I got a letter from my brother.
Aaron truly had ruined me.
“Well, someone in your family read the manual,” Rawe said, “even if you didn’t.”
“I read it,” I said, because I was feeling argumentative. Really, I had figured I could learn the rules when I got here, that I would have more than enough time to learn them when I got here. I should have read it. Then I would have known I was coming to the Nazis’ idea of a relaxing vacay.
“Great,” Rawe said. “I guess you missed the section on approved mail, and also the one on approved language.”
Nez laughed.
I shrugged.
“Twenty minutes to read,” Rawe said. “Then we start the dinner fire.”
She went into her room at the back of the cabin with her own envelope, maybe from someone who knew her by her first name, like the people who had written our letters knew us. In that moment I realized that I didn’t even know Rawe’s first name. I probably never would.
The dinner fire sucked. If we couldn’t start it, and by we I mean Nez, Troyer, and me, then we didn’t eat. There had been several nights we didn’t eat. I considered leaving the rest of my trail mix for later just in case.
“I’m definitely going to need longer than twenty minutes,” Nez said, rifling through her letters.
“You better get started then,” I said. I considered adding “shut the fuck up and” before “get,” but I wasn’t in the mood to fight with Nez. I had my own letter to read.
“What the hell do you know? You got one letter and it’s probably from your mommy and daddy,” Nez said. “Like Troyer’s.”
Troyer looked up from her envelope and gave Nez the finger.
“Say it or I can’t hear you,” Nez said.
Screw you, Troyer’s lips said, but no words came out.
“It’s from my brother,” I said.
Nez bounced on her cot and looked at me excitedly. “Is he hot?”
“Do you ever turn off?” I asked.
“So that means he’s not,” she said, frowning.
Dear Cassie Page 8