Dear Cassie

by Burstein, Lisa

  What I let him get away with had been my choice, not his. Otherwise Amy would have had her own rumors circulated by Ruthie Jensen about being pregnant and wanting so badly to believe it was a rumor.

  Wanting so badly to take back every kiss and touch and sigh.

  “You were screaming in your sleep,” Nez said.

  I sat up and watched her brush her black hair so that it shone like a wet rock. We hadn’t showered in days and her hair still looked beautiful. Girls like her and Lila needed to be killed.

  “Thanks, Nez,” I said. “’Cause I don’t have ears.”

  “Well, you woke me up and not that I asked Troyer, but I’m going to guess you woke her up, too.”

  I looked at Troyer. She shrugged. It was the most she could do to defend me against Nez.

  “We had to wake up anyway,” I said, rubbing my face and trying to force out the stare of Aaron’s blue, blue eyes. My stomach felt empty. As empty as Aaron’s eyes. I put my hand into my sleeping bag and punched it over and over, until I could barely breathe, until Rawe came out and told us to get dressed.

  Putting on my uniform, I stared at the welts that were starting to form, as red as the skin of a screaming newborn.

  I could see it, just pulled out—so alive, so raw, so feral.

  Maybe it was mine, maybe it was someone else’s, but I knew it was crying for the mother I knew I could never be. Wanting anyone to hold it, to love it, to make the pain and fear that was flooding it now that it was out in the world go away.

  Just like me—a lump of crying skin and bones, an open wound grasping at anything except the people around it who want to help.

  16 Fucking Days to Go

  My body hurt so much it was hard to fall asleep. That day we dug a new pit toilet. When Nez complained about it, Rawe told her it was either that or we dug out what was in the current one. Well, that was only after Rawe had given us the choice of digging out a toilet or sitting in a circle with her and talking about our feelings. Digging a hole all the way to China that would eventually be filled with our shit was definitely a better deal.

  The work was hard, backbreaking. Never before I came to this place could I use the term backbreaking to describe anything. Here, it was pretty much an everyday occurrence. The boys did not join us that day. Probably digging out their own new pit toilet. Or maybe Nerone was sadistic enough to make them dig out their current one.

  I was dirty, sweaty, and I couldn’t help thinking that like everything else I had been forced to do since I’d been here, that I deserved this. Actually I probably deserved worse. I deserved to attempt to dig through a sidewalk with a child’s beach shovel.

  I saw it, the one I would have bought for my little boy or girl—yellow, plastic, small enough to fit in the hands that had been inside me, that had touched parts of me I would never see.

  Even in the dark, I stared at the ceiling of the cabin, trying desperately to doze off, trying to ignore the searing pain in my back and shoulders, the fresh coat of dirt that once had been the ground and now covered my body.

  I must have eventually fallen asleep, because later that night I could feel someone watching me. I figured it was Nez, so I reached out into the darkness to smack her. But it wasn’t Nez. My reaching hand hit a boy and boy parts.

  A boy part.

  I opened my eyes, ready to scream like I was getting paid for it, when Ben covered my mouth.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I hissed through his fingers. He tasted like dirt. I suddenly wished a very big wish that the boys had spent their day like we had, digging a new pit toilet.

  “Be quiet. You want to get us busted?” he whispered.

  I jerked my head.

  “Can I let go of your mouth now?” he asked.

  I nodded, but angrily. I guess he could tell.

  “You sure?” he teased.

  “Fuck yes,” I hissed.

  “See?” he said, his hand still tight to my mouth. “That’s why I can’t let go.”

  “I will bite you,” I said, starting to growl.

  “Promise,” he said, finally letting go.

  I sat up and wiped my mouth. “What the fuck?” I whisper-yelled. Of course, I didn’t really have the right to, considering I had been standing above his bed, doing the same to him, minus the soft bondage, a day before.

  “Come on, I want to show you something,” he said.

  “If it involves taking off your uniform, I’m not interested,” I said.

  “You haven’t even bought me dinner yet,” he retorted. “Of course, I’m not really hungry.”

  I felt my face burn. How could he embarrass me so easily? Make me feel everything so easily?

  He didn’t move.

  I looked over at Troyer. I could tell she was awake but trying to act like she wasn’t. “I’m not going anywhere with you,” I said.

  “You sure?” he asked, still smiling.

  “Take Nez,” I said.

  We both looked over at her. She was sleeping, snoring like a fucking lawnmower. Like a fucking lawnmower with asthma.

  “Sexy,” I said, looking at Ben.

  “I want to take you. That’s why I’m standing above your bed and not hers,” he said.

  I didn’t respond. I couldn’t. All I could do was feel him saying that in the bottom part of my stomach, like I had when he’d said I was pretty, not just once but twice, making sure I’d heard it. When had I become such a sap? Again the boy had rendered me speechless. I did not like this pattern.

  “I have cigarettes.” He took out the pack with a flourish.

  I could see the plastic wrapper that covered it glint in the darkness, like it was winking at me. “Where are we going?”

  “It’s a secret,” he said.

  “I hate secrets,” I said, looking down and realizing that my boobs were totally showing through my shirt. I pulled the sleeping bag up over my chest.

  “Do you want to fight, or do you want to smoke?” he asked.

  I looked at him. In the dark of the cabin, he was a blurry shadow. “Wait for me outside. I have to get dressed.”

  “I can turn around,” he said, smiling that big smile again.

  “You can also go fuck yourself,” I said.

  “You better not be messing with me,” he said. “If you’re not out in five, I’m leaving. I’m not going to wait out there all night like some asshole.”

  “Who said you were an asshole?” I laughed.

  He turned from me, tiptoed over to the other side of the cabin, and jumped out the window. At least I had gotten the last word for once.

  I put on my uniform and pulled my hair back in a rubber band. My bi-daily shower was definitely not doing the trick. It was stringy, felt as greasy as fries fresh from the fryer. I put on my boots. I looked over at Troyer, expecting a note to shoot out from under her sleeping bag, but she was still pretending she was asleep.

  Fine, whatever, Troyer.

  I met Ben on the porch. He was waiting with his flashlight on, aimed at the ground.

  “So, give me one,” I said, holding out my hand.

  “Can’t you wait until we’re not inches away from the cabin?” he asked. He walked in front of me down toward the lake. I clicked on my own flashlight and followed him.

  “No boats,” I said. “There is no way I am getting in a boat with you.”

  “Don’t worry, Cassie,” he said.

  Like I could ever listen to a guy when he told me that, but I continued behind him anyway.

  “Okay, we’re away from the cabin.” I stopped on the trail and pointed my flashlight at the back of his head.

  He turned, reached into his pocket, and handed me a cigarette.

  “I want more than one.” My hand was still out and waiting.

  “One now, and more when we get there,” he said.

  “Where’s there?” I asked.

  “I told you, it’s a secret,” he said.

  “I’m not doing anything with you if that’s what you’re afte
r,” I said, the cigarette unlit and hanging out of my mouth.

  “I’m not after anything,” he said.

  “That would be a first,” I said. Since when did a guy take you somewhere in the dark if he didn’t want something?

  I guess that was what sixteen days without MTV got you—insane paranoia.

  I waited with the cigarette in my mouth, the night sounds all around us, that cold wet air that only comes out in the dark. Finally, he flicked the lighter. The area in front of his face lit up with the flame, his skin glowed orange. I leaned in and let him light the cigarette, let him touch my hand to steady it, let myself believe that was the only reason I was letting him touch my hand.

  I took a long drag; the smoke made me lightheaded. I liked it. “Thanks.” I exhaled, feeling the stress of this place blow out of me with that smoke. A small portion of it, anyway.

  He put the lighter away.

  “You’re not having one?” I asked.

  “I hate smoking and walking,” he said.

  He was right. Smoking and walking sucked, but I was too eager to smoke to have remembered that. I took another long drag, even though my head was already buzzing.

  We kept walking on the lake trail, the bullfrogs croaking. There was also a humming in my ears from the nicotine.

  It could only be from the nicotine. It had nothing to do with being outside, at night, alone with Ben. It had nothing to do with Ben coming to the cabin and taking me instead of Nez and it definitely had nothing to do with the stars above us shining like they were the sky’s tiara.

  I stopped on the trail and looked up, taking them in, when all of a sudden bright colored lights exploded in the sky—fireworks, one after another, on top of each other, huge kaleidoscopes of light, sparkling rainbow spiders.

  “How did you know?” I asked, my voice going softer, like if I talked too loudly they would stop. It was so beautiful after weeks of so much ugly.

  Ben turned to look at me, the colored lights in the sky turning his skin pink, blue, green. “I’m magic.” He shrugged.

  I geared up to tell him to fuck off, because that was some corny-ass shit, but then I realized that he really kind of was. In that moment he was able to actually make me forget being me.

  “Why didn’t you bring Nez?” I had to ask. Fireworks? On a lake? What was more panty-dropping than that?

  “I told you,” he said. “I didn’t want to bring Nez.”

  At least he hadn’t said, I wanted to bring you. Even if we both knew that was what he meant.

  “But why?” I said, still not convinced. I felt sick that I was asking. Felt sick that Aaron made me doubt everything, even something this simple, this perfect.

  “Stop asking so many questions,” Ben said, walking toward the lake again.

  We reached the beach, the sky a tie-dyed shirt of colors, reflecting off the water.

  “Did you bring me down here to remind me that you saved me or something?” I asked.

  “I’m pretty sure I haven’t totally saved you yet,” he said, sitting in an Adirondack chair.

  I felt my breath catch in my throat. Speechless yet again, I sat next to him, wondering why he’d chosen me to save and keep saving. My chair smelled like suntan lotion and wet bathing suits. I put my cigarette out in the sand.

  “A beach and fireworks usually bring up happy memories. There isn’t much here that does that,” he said.

  “I guess,” I said.

  “So?” he asked.

  “Now you want to know my memories. What’s next, my Twitter password?”

  He didn’t speak, just watched me.

  I looked out at the lake. “It makes me think about my brother, Tim. When I was a kid, we’d light off sparklers on the Fourth of July. The only stuff we were allowed to use in New York. I was so stupid back then, I thought if we attached them to my butt I could fly up in the sky. We tried it one year—I think I was eight and he was fifteen. I didn’t end up in the sky; I ended up in the emergency room. I still have a scar.”

  “That’s not really a happy memory. Funny”—he smiled—“but not happy.”

  “Compared to my others,” I said, “it is.”

  “I knew there was a reason I liked you,” he said. “You’re honest.”

  “I hate lying,” I said. “Hate that it’s something we have to do,” I added, realizing I had done far too much of it to be allowed to just say that I hated it.

  “You going to show me your scar?” He laughed.

  “Only if you want to kiss my ass,” I said.

  “Amazing, huh, Cassie?” He whistled, looking up.

  It was. It really was. It was magic: the fireworks reflecting off the lake, the sand under the chairs, the water lapping the shore.

  I could let myself feel that.

  But there was also the stuff I couldn’t let myself feel. The heat that filled my skin when Ben got close, the shiver in my chest when he spoke to me, the way his touch made everything else vanish.

  The way he could get me to talk about my brother, about me. The me I was before this place, before there was someone else inside me.

  My hand went to my stomach. Why was I thinking about that now? Here?

  “You should listen to me more often,” he said, handing me two more cigarettes.

  “No offense, Ben, but I don’t listen to boys anymore,” I replied, amazed that I’d said it to him.

  “All boys, or just ones who make you nervous?” he asked.

  “All boys,” I said, staring at the sky.

  “But I do make you nervous,” he said.

  He knew the answer, so I didn’t bother responding. “I had some things happen to me before I came here that have nothing to do with how I feel about you,” I said, even though that was a lie. What had happened with Aaron had everything to do with how I felt about Ben. Why I couldn’t feel anything about him.

  “How do you feel about me?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure yet,” I said. I was surprised that I hadn’t said I hated him. That I didn’t feel like I had to say it.

  “I would try to kiss you,” he said, “but I’m afraid you’d kick me in the balls.”

  “I probably would.” I laughed, the sky filling with noisy color like paint launching from a giant popcorn popper. “But like I said, it wouldn’t be about you.”

  “I guess I’ll have to figure out how to make it about me,” he said, taking off his boots and socks and standing. “Come on.”

  “There is no way I am getting near that water again,” I said.

  “I’ll make sure nothing happens to you,” he said, holding his hand out to help me up.

  I looked at his palm, open, waiting, just wanting to hold mine. For once, I didn’t think about anything except that there was a cute, sweet, smart-ass boy standing in front of me with his hand out.

  I pulled off my boots and socks and took it.

  We stood at the lakeshore, our hands still clasped, the water licking our feet, fireworks decorating the sky.

  I turned to him. He was looking up, his mouth open in wonder like he was trying to swallow the moment.

  It was definitely one worth keeping.

  Fucking Halfway Through

  The good news is today was a shower day, complete with new bars of white, white Ivory soap and fresh, clean towels. I should have known that could only be followed by bad news, and it came in the form of a three-mile run around the campgrounds.

  Leave it to Rawe to finally let us get clean and then make us sweat like pigs.

  I guess it made sense, though, since that was kind of what she was doing with our Assessment Diaries. All day we were allowed to have our minds clear and clean, focusing completely on whatever task was right in front of us, and then at night she forced us to shovel out all the crap we had hidden in there and run around in it.

  Tonight the subject is the people in our lives before we came here. I’m not about to fall for Rawe’s shit again and write about Aaron, so instead I picked Lila and Amy.

&nb
sp; Lila would fucking die in this place; my guess is Amy would, too. But somehow I’m surviving. I still haven’t figured out how. I still haven’t figured out why I even want to. Maybe the fact that I don’t really care is why, or maybe surviving is a relative term.

  I don’t necessarily miss Lila and Amy, but I do miss having them on either side of me. Not even what they said, or that they laughed at all my jokes, but that they were there.

  I guess Troyer is here. She is my only friend here. I guess Ben is here, but I can’t even let myself think what Ben is. My friend, I guess, who maybe wants more. Who I hope won’t get tired of wanting more.

  If Lila were here, Ben would probably like her. I mean, everyone did. Well, everyone with eyes. If I were a guy, I would probably like her, too, a hell of a lot more than I did as a girl. I know it bothers her. She would tell me shit like that when she was drunk. Tell me that she wished guys stopped liking her just for her looks.

  Lila’s parents, really her mom and stepdad, weren’t around a lot. Not in the same crybaby way Amy got about her dad, but in the Here is a can of ravioli for dinner, I’ll be home later or tomorrow kind of way.

  Lila acted like she didn’t care. She never really mentioned it at all. But they were always gone, working double shifts, or meeting friends at the bar, or sometimes not even telling Lila where they were.

  I wasn’t sure if her parents being truly gone or my mother being mentally gone was worse.

  Lila used her parents’ absences to throw wild parties and Amy and I were at all of them. After Amy came around it was rare that I was ever alone with Lila anymore. When we were invited to Lila’s house, Amy was always sitting cross-legged on the floor of Lila’s room when I got there, her gray eyes aimed on Lila, like she had grown out of the floor and Lila watered her every so often with a few words and a smile.

  But one night, the night Lila and I never talked about, Amy wasn’t there yet. She had to go to temple or something with her dumb parents and wouldn’t be over till ten. So it was Lila and me, trying to hang out without Amy. It didn’t feel right. We were acting the way you act with someone after you’ve had a fight, that tentativeness. It was weird that it felt weird, considering we’d started out as just the two of us.