Dear Cassie

by Burstein, Lisa

  “It means you make the cast of Jersey Shore look like prudes,” I said.

  “Jealous,” Nez smiled, fanning herself with her letters.

  I ignored her, picked up the envelope, and looked at my hands. The areas around my nails and on my palms were cracked and bleeding from rock climbing that day. They looked like they were made out of bloody wax paper. I wiped them on my uniform; it was dirty anyway.

  Troyer was already reading, her face hidden behind a stack of stationary pages. I wondered who her letter was from. Maybe she had a boyfriend at home. What a catch, a girl who couldn’t bitch at you.

  I looked over at Nez. She had turned away from us and was lying on her stomach reading one letter at a time.

  I opened my letter. Inside were two envelopes: one from my brother and one from someone else. The only someone else it could have been was my mom or my dad.

  Crap, what the hell did they have to say to me?

  Rather than find out, I opened my brother’s first.

  I unfolded the letter. In the middle of the page were three lines:

  You can do this.

  You will do this.

  I love you.

  Sometimes I wished I could meet a boy like my brother and sometimes I wondered if my brother was the only boy I would ever meet like him.

  I sniffed the paper, hoping to catch a whiff of cigarette smoke, wanting to do anything other than read the letter that I knew had to be from one of my parents. What the hell were they going to say? It certainly wouldn’t be as nice as the letter from my brother. It probably wouldn’t even have the word love in it.

  I pushed the paper against my nose but couldn’t smell anything. My brother smoked, always had a cigarette dangling out of his mouth, but the paper smelled of nothing. It was sad to realize that it had traveled so far that his smell had worn off.

  Troyer turned to me, my nose still to the paper.

  “What?” I asked.

  She stared at me. I knew her look asked, You know you’re smelling paper right?

  “I miss my brother,” I said as explanation, but I’m sure that didn’t really make sense, even though it might have been the first true thing I’d said since I’d been there.

  She blinked slowly and went back to reading her own letter, which was many pages, written on both front and back. It was like whoever had written to her was so used to doing all the talking when she was around that he or she felt the need to still do all the talking even when she wasn’t, even when it was in writing.

  I braced myself and opened the other envelope. Whatever my parents had to say, at least they weren’t here. I unfolded the letter. Loopy girlish cursive covered the page. Not my mom’s writing, certainly not my dad’s. I recognized it, but not enough to make the connection without looking at the bottom of the page to see who had signed it.

  Amy.

  It was from Amy.

  Snitch-rat Amy.

  The last time I talked to her was the day I was sentenced. The first time since the arraignment that my mother, father, and I had gone anywhere together. The last time we had gone anywhere together.

  We were waiting in the judge’s chambers. His crimson-haired assistant had already come in and told us he was stuck in a meeting and would be with us momentarily. Right, I knew that meant he would be with us whenever he damn well felt like it. I knew that meant, Your future can wait. None of us was talking. My mother was rolling an unlit cigarette between her fingers and my father was cracking his knuckles, one by one, like they were walnuts.

  I had to get out of there.

  “I’ll be back,” I said, leaving before I could hear either of my parents respond.

  I went out into the hall and lunged for the nearest bathroom. I went into the stall and sat without even taking off my pants. I breathed, in and out, in and out, trying the technique my brother had shared with me for keeping myself calm. The one he used when he and his fellow soldiers were, as he put it, in the shit. It didn’t work. I flushed out of habit and when I came out I saw Amy at the sink drinking water like she had a camel in her stomach.

  Without even thinking about it I pushed her, hard—hard enough that she screamed. I held her against the wall. She squirmed under my grip and I watched her, as helpless as a potato bug that had been turned over. I was going to punch her. I was going to kill her. I wanted to take her big, fat, snitch mouth and break every pretty tooth in it.

  She was the reason I was even meeting with the judge. The reason I was here with my parents wondering where the hell I would spend the next month of my life. My lawyer had told me that she had signed some confession that made the fault “rest” on Lila and me. When my mother asked him what the fuck that means, he said, “It means we need to make a deal.”

  Rehab was going to be my deal.

  Amy’s face was priceless, her mouth open wide, her eyes darting, like I was holding a knife instead of a fist. I was ready to hit her, but then she brought up Ruthie Jensen spreading around that shit about me and I let her go.

  Mostly because I couldn’t breathe; her words were like the punch I hadn’t gotten off.

  To change the subject, to kill the subject, I’d told Amy the lie about throwing a Pepsi in Aaron’s face and telling him to get lost.

  I put my hand to my stomach and read her letter.

  Cassie,

  I hope you’re doing well. (Yeah right.) I am trying to move past prom night and the arrest but there is something I feel like I need to tell you in order to do that. (What the fuck is this?) Remember when we were in the bathroom the day we were sentenced and you talked about that guy Aaron? (Oh fuck.) Well, I lied to you. I did know him. I was sort of his girlfriend, I guess. (No fucking way.)

  I felt my hands fist on the paper, squeezing so hard, so angry, so tight.

  He tried to get me to turn myself in. He tried to get me to do a lot of things. I guess he made me do a lot of things. (Oh don’t I fucking know all about that. Fuck me, that fucking bastard.)

  Anyway, I’m sorry. I probably should have told you that day, but I was embarrassed that I fell for it. That I believed anything he said. I want you to know that most of the reason I signed that confession was because of what he did to me, was because I was tired of being used by everyone. I know it didn’t turn out the best for you and so I’m sorry. If I could go back I would have done things differently, probably a lot of things.

  Amy

  My teeth were clenched so hard that my jaw felt like it might dislodge. I ripped the letter once, then again and again smaller and smaller. I guess I was grunting because Nez turned from her Penthouse letters and sat up.

  “Who spit in your Cheerios?” she asked, cocking her head to the side like someone had put her in a cubist painting.

  I couldn’t even respond. I ran from the cabin, slammed the door so hard behind me that it screamed on its hinges. I sat on the ground. I felt like I might cry, but I wasn’t going to. I had allowed myself to handle what had happened with Aaron, allowed myself to deal with it as a mistake, as something that was out of my control. But now, I realized that it was something completely in his control. That he knew exactly what he was doing—and he did the same thing to Amy.

  I felt sick. I threw up the trail mix, punched my stomach again and again and again until I couldn’t breathe. Aaron hadn’t just fooled me, he had fucking fooled me and I had fallen for it.

  Fuck.

  I heard the door to the cabin open. Rawe walked out. I wiped my mouth and turned away from her.

  “You okay, Wick?”

  I wanted to say, I’m fucking fine, but I wasn’t. I wasn’t. “Don’t worry, I have my Assessment Diary for times like this,” I snarked. That was what it was for, right? Pouring our shit ton of feelings into it so Turning Pines could claim it was doing something to make us better.

  “You can talk to me if you want,” she said, coming up beside me and touching my shoulder. Part of me wanted to fall into her and part of me wanted to break her hand. I couldn’t decide which to do
, so I didn’t move.

  “Right,” I said, my eyes on my boots. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t see.

  “When it’s the three of you,” she said, her hand digging into my shoulder trying to get me to look at her, “I’m on script, but when we’re one on one, I’m here to listen.”

  My eyes were still on my boots.

  “I get it,” she said. “There are all these things inside you. Being here you feel them starting to come out and you don’t know how to deal with them. It’s like someone is pouring you a glass of water and it’s full, full, full and then it’s overflowing and you just keep screaming, ‘Stop, stop, stop.’”

  I looked at her. She was right and I hated it. I hated her for finally being nice to me when I most needed it. For all the people before her who never were.

  I left her there and went back to the cabin. I didn’t know what else to do but write. I put my pad on my lap and carved into it—fuck, fuck, fuck, over and over and over—the word I used as a shield and a bullet.

  The word I used as a mantra.

  Fucking fine, fucking okay, since nothing else is working, I’ll fucking write the thing that led to the thing that brought me here. I’ll finally burden this journal with the words that are true, even if I can’t say them.

  Weeks before the day with Amy in the bathroom, the rumor Ruthie had been spreading about me came true. When I found out, I couldn’t admit it right away. For two weeks, I told myself I must have counted wrong. But when a whole month went by, I knew my period wasn’t just late, it was ridiculous.

  Aaron was supposed to come and see me at Pudgie’s that night, like he always did during my break, so we could do the thing that did the thing I was now dreading was true. I knew I couldn’t see him, so I told him I was staying home sick. I needed to know before I could see him again. I needed to know if I could see him again.

  That night, instead of meeting Aaron in his black convertible and driving to the park and moving into his warm leather backseat, I went to the drugstore across the street from Pudgie’s and bought a pregnancy test. I’d never thought about it until that night, but I guess it wasn’t a coincidence they were in the same row as the condoms. Maybe that was their way of warning you.

  Apparently, I didn’t get the message.

  I paid for the test with my head down and carried it in a lunch-size paper bag to the McDonald’s next door. I walked in to that familiar McDonald’s smell, fries and ammonia. I fought back the nausea that was high in my throat.

  I went into the bathroom, locked myself in one of the stalls, and tried not to think how pathetic that was while I peed on a stick. I stood on the toilet for ten minutes while the test percolated—so no one could see me—while I waited to see if my shitty life was about to get exponentially shittier.

  I had some time to think during those minutes. Some time to read the things written on the stall. Things about girls to call for a good time, about being sweet and wiping the seat. I thought about how my mother must have felt when she found out she was pregnant with me. She couldn’t have had any idea that one day, the baby she’d be having would be standing in a McDonald’s bathroom waiting to see if she was going to have a baby. Wishing she was not going to have a baby.

  A baby she couldn’t have.

  A baby I knew now was made with a boy’s lies.

  The alarm on my cell beeped. It echoed in the stall as I got down off the toilet and picked up the test. It wobbled in my hand like it was one of those old thermometers that people were meant to shake. Like my mother standing over me as a child, while she told me I better not be sick because her bus route wasn’t going to drive itself so she could stay home with me.

  I looked at the test. It had a blue plus sign and a circle on it. I didn’t even have to look at the box to know I was totally fucked. My head buzzed like there was a jet engine between my ears. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t see and I had to be back at work.

  Soon.

  Now.

  I wrapped the test up in a tissue and threw it in the trash. It had done its job—tell me I was royally screwed—so what did I need it for anymore?

  That night after work my mother picked me up like she always did. Her car was running while she waited in Pudgie’s parking lot, the headlights on, like she didn’t even want to waste the time to turn them off. I knew it was because she couldn’t wait to get out of there, so she could get home and drink.

  I got in the car and tried not to think that there were three of us in there instead of the usual two, that there had been three of us in there for a whole month and I didn’t know it.

  “I’m out of smokes,” my mother said, staring out the windshield. She didn’t usually say hello, so this was not surprising.

  I didn’t respond. The only thing in my head was, Holy fuck, I’m pregnant. Fuck me. Fuck me for letting Aaron fuck me.

  I’m sure I looked white, whiter than I usually did, even with Pudgie’s dough flour all over me. I’m also sure I was shaking, not that my mother would notice anyway because she was out of cigarettes. She didn’t notice anything when she was out of cigarettes.

  “I hope you don’t have to piss or anything, because I’m stopping on the way home,” she said, pulling out of the lot.

  I still didn’t respond. I guess I was afraid to. Anything I could say would seem stupid considering what I was dealing with at that moment. How could I ask her why she didn’t stop off on the way to pick me up instead, now that there was something growing in my belly? I put on my seat belt. When I clicked it shut, I couldn’t help feeling my stomach. What was in there? A little me, a little Aaron. I looked at my mom. A little my mom?

  God, I hoped not.

  My mother turned out of the parking lot, her face as taut as a pulled-back rubber band. She was chewing on her lip, which meant she had been out of cigarettes for a while. I thought about having a cigarette when I got home, about being alone in my room and smoking as many cigarettes as I had left in my pack out my bedroom window, maybe even burning the insides of my wrists with them so I could feel something, but then I remembered the warning about smoking during pregnancy being harmful to your baby.

  I was pregnant. I had a baby.

  “I’m stopping here,” my mother said, pulling into Gas-N-Go. She didn’t really need to tell me, but maybe she’d noticed how silent the car was and felt like she had to say something. At least I didn’t have to.

  I’d been to Gas-N-Go before. The place was a hole, but it was pretty lenient when it came to carding. Of course, no one was going to card my mom. On her best days her skin looked like a rotten potato.

  She didn’t ask me if I wanted anything, simply slammed the car door and left me in the parking lot. Not like she usually asked me, but I guess it seemed weird because I was pregnant now. Not that she knew it, but pregnant women needed things, didn’t they?

  She took her keys with her, leaving me sitting in the dark, quiet car. No music or A/C for me, but maybe she was afraid I would drive away. That night I might have considered it. I could just go. Drive far away and never look back. Maybe my baby and I could make a life for ourselves in North Dakota or some other state with two words besides New York.

  Aaron, that fucking bastard. Of course, this wasn’t entirely his fault. We used protection, but obviously it didn’t protect me. I felt myself start to cry, hot, fast, and furious, like the steam coming from a whistling teapot. I never cried. I didn’t even cry on the night I was arrested. Lila cried like a fucking drama queen and Amy seemed too scared to do anything but stare at her nails.

  But I was crying now, and that scared me more than anything because it let me know how scared I must truly have been.

  I needed to get home, to lock myself in my room and get under my covers and suck on my unlit cigarettes.

  What was taking my mom so long? I tried to look through the front window and into the store.

  I saw my mother up at the counter. There was no one in front of her, she was already holding her cigarettes, so why didn’t
she pay for them and get outside so we could go? I looked closer. She was talking to someone, yelling at someone.

  Amy.

  I went for my seat belt. Amy. I hadn’t seen her since our arraignment. I missed her. Missed how I knew she saw me, like someone strong. Like someone who could defend herself. Like someone who didn’t fucking cry. Then I stopped.

  What was I going to tell her? And what would she say back? Considering she was working at Gas-N-Go, she had her own shit to deal with. Considering she was talking to my mother right now, she had more than her own shit to deal with.

  And looking back, what I hated to realize was that Aaron had been part of it.

  He probably used her, just like he used me. Or maybe he’d liked her and I was the one getting used. Either way, knowing what I know about them now, I am glad I didn’t go in to see her.

  I watched as my mother continued to yell, and I couldn’t help wondering why she never yelled at me. Why was she picking Amy to yell at? I looked down at my lap. I didn’t want Amy to see me. All I needed was for her to look out there. For her to look at me and know something was wrong. Know something was very wrong.

  Know that something happened to me that I could never take back, no matter what I did.

  Know that she had been this close to being me, but was somehow stronger.

  18 Fucking Days to Go

  I waited to wake Troyer until I could hear Nez snoozing. Luckily, Nez was very tired. I was very tired, too, but Nez was even more so. That day we’d learned how to pitch a tent and while Nez claimed she could easily make a boy pitch a tent in his pants, actual tent-pitching was beyond her. While trying to put hers up she had looked like someone dressed as a ghost on Halloween, with the tent as the bed sheet. She flailed around underneath it, like she couldn’t find the eyeholes.

  As much as I would have liked it to be because Nez was an idiot, it wasn’t her fault. We weren’t allowed to use those easy pup tents that even someone without hands can put together. Our tents had lots of metal pole pieces and parts and stakes that looked like giant nails. By the end of the day Nez had almost said a real, actual swear word.