Dear Cassie

by Burstein, Lisa

  I dribbled, once, twice, the cigarette still dangling the whole time. “You got a light?”

  He smiled. “You beat me in one on one,” he said, “I’ll give you a light.”

  “Come on.” I bounced the ball back to him. “I’m not in the mood to play games.” I knew I was talking about more than just the basketball court.

  “You want a light, you play me and win,” he said, dribbling the ball in front of me. “Or are you chicken?”

  “I could probably find a lighter in that shed,” I said, stalling. I knew how to play basketball okay. I’d played with my brother and he was pretty good, but I’d never played against anyone else. Especially someone who so obviously wanted to kiss me and liked getting close enough to my face to remind me of it constantly.

  “I think a game of ball would be faster, don’t you?” he asked.

  “Against you?” I laughed, putting the cigarette behind my ear. “Definitely.”

  “Let’s see what you can do, Wick,” he said, pretending to throw the ball in my face and then catching it, that annoying thing that boys do that reminds you they are stronger and faster than you are.

  “I want more than a light if I win,” I said. “That’s not enough.”

  “But that’s what you want right now, so …” He spun the ball on his finger.

  “I want four more cigarettes,” I said, holding my stance.

  “Two,” he said.

  “Three,” I responded.

  “One.” He smirked.

  “Two,” I said.

  “Deal,” he said.

  I took my position in front of him—my hips wide, my legs shoulder-width apart. I rocked back and forth, ready to do whatever I had to with that ball to get my cigarette lit and get me two more.

  “Well, look at you, Cassie Wick,” Ben said, sort of sighing, sort of whistling, definitely surprised that I even knew enough to stand that way.

  “I’m going to kick your ass.” I smirked.

  “I doubt it,” he said, dribbling the ball between us. Each hit on the pavement felt like he was moving closer to me, felt like my heart was bouncing up into my throat.

  “My brother’s team at the Y went to the state championship,” I said, my face contracting.

  “But did he win?” Ben asked, pushing past me with a spin move. He faked me out and took a shot. It sank with a swish.

  “Hey, cheater,” I yelled to the back of his head. “We didn’t even start yet.”

  “I say when we start,” he said, his teeth white in the moonlight.

  “Fine,” I said. “One-zero. What are we playing to anyway?”

  “Three,” he said.

  “That must mean you’re scared,” I said, dribbling the ball. “You might as well surrender.”

  “You haven’t even done anything yet for me to surrender to,” he said, his voice thick with the words. I could see his eyes. They went right to my lips.

  I needed to move. I faked him out with a bounce pass to myself, left him flailing for the ball behind me. My shot hit the rim but went in.

  “We’re tied now, asshole,” I said.

  “Impressive,” he said, catching the rebound. “That won’t work again.” He moved closer to me so I could guard him. His face so near mine as he dribbled that there was no air between us. I could see sweat reflecting the moonlight on his forehead.

  “Are we playing, or are you staring?” I said, the breath from his nose hot and sweet on my face.

  He bounced the ball through my legs, caught it on the other side, and launched it in before I could even turn around. “Two-one,” he said. “One more and you’re screwed.”

  “How proud you’ll be when you’ve beaten a girl,” I said, going under the basket to grab the rebound. I dribbled slowly, like that part in the movie where the hero is going to make the winning shot.

  “How proud I’ll be when I beat you,” he said, matching me step for step. He tried to slap the ball out of my hands.

  I switched the ball into my other hand, spun around, and sank another shot. “Now that’s all talent,” I said. I felt myself smile, relax, that buzzing feeling you get when you do anything correctly with a ball—hit it, sink it in a hole, launch it in a basket.

  “Look at you,” Ben said, dribbling, and he was. Up and down, his eyes moving from the tops of my boots to the tip of my head. It was like he could see inside me. I could feel him melting through the skin on my chest, through my muscle, my rib cage, until he could see my heart jumping like it was on a trampoline.

  “Maybe we should call it a tie,” I said, suddenly desperate to get my cigarette lit and get the hell out of there.

  “Scared?” he asked, one eyebrow up.

  I faked him out and grabbed the ball. Fine, he didn’t want a tie, but I wanted to end this game, needed to end this game. I ran past him and sank a lay-up.

  “I win,” I said, but I honestly didn’t care about that. I just wanted the time I had to spend face-to-face with him to be over.

  “You tricked me,” he said.

  “Never let your guard down,” I said, as much to him as a reminder to me. I stuck my cigarette in my mouth, waiting for him to light it, but he didn’t at first. He watched me, my lips and then my eyes.

  “Ben, we’re going to be sent home soon,” I joked, anything to make him stop looking at me.

  “Fine,” he said, “I’m not a scammer.” He flicked the lighter and brought it to my mouth. My hands were tight behind my back. No way was I risking possibly touching his skin again.

  He walked over to the grass next to the court, lay down, and lit his own. “You going to stand there like a weirdo or smoke with me like a civilized person?” he asked, his cigarette protruding out of his mouth like the turret of a castle.

  “I’m fine over here,” I said.

  “You want those two cigarettes,” he said, “you’ll come and join me.”

  I walked over and sat next to him. I did want those two cigarettes.

  “I love the way grass feels at night,” Ben said. He was still lying down. He pulled up his pant legs and pushed up his shirtsleeves.

  “So can I get those now?” I asked, inhaling and exhaling quickly, my legs wrapped up like a pretzel.

  “Patience,” he said. “What’s the rush?”

  “I want to make sure you don’t fuck me over,” I said.

  “Then you don’t know me at all,” he said, reaching into his pack and giving them to me.

  “Thanks,” I said, swallowing something else I was going to say.

  “You should try it,” he said, patting the ground next to him.

  “What?” I asked quickly. Was he saying I fucked people over? Then he didn’t know me at all.

  “The sky looks pretty awesome from down here,” he said.

  “Listen, if you’re trying to get me to lie down next to you, you can forget it.” I took another long drag, blew the smoke out. It was the same color at the clouds above us.

  “Cassie,” he said, his cigarette a perfect straight line. “It’s not always about you.”

  “Whatever,” I said, pretending I didn’t feel him saying that in my stomach. I had been so stuck in my head lately that it really had been all about me: what I was going through, what I felt. Maybe he was right. Maybe it didn’t have to be.

  I lay down on the grass, making sure to leave an arm’s length between us. I rolled my sleeves up, the grass tickling my elbows. I rolled up my pants, the moonlight turning my legs ghostly white.

  I could feel every blade of grass on my cold skin—thousands of them, millions, like each bright green piece was having sex and making tons and tons of baby grass.

  I punched my stomach. How could I turn even a thought about grass into sex? Into babies?

  Would I ever think about anything else?

  “How did you even get cigarettes in here?” I asked, desperate to say something. To close up the silence that was actually starting to feel comfortable between us.

  “I’ve got more skills
than you give me credit for,” he said.

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “It means I’ve been threatened with being sent to a place like this before,” he said. “It means I know how to get away with things because of it.”

  “Why the hell would you do something again if you knew you were getting sent to a place like this?” I asked. I really wondered.

  I’m still not sure what Turning Pines is doing for me, but I do know I will do whatever it takes not to come back.

  “I guess I’m fucked up.” He laughed. “Considering the way you keep shutting me down and I keep coming back for more,” he said, “I obviously don’t learn my lesson.”

  I felt the skin on my face prickle with heat. I looked at his profile, his cigarette sticking out of his mouth like one of the trees in the woods that surrounded us. Maybe he was fucked up. Maybe he was even more fucked up than me. I wondered what he could have done.

  I wondered if he would do it again.

  “Why?” I asked. “Why do you keep coming back for more?”

  “I think I can make you happy,” he said, his eyes on the sky. “I also think you’re funny as hell.”

  “Thanks,” I said, “but I’m pretty sure I’ve never been happy.”

  “Exactly,” he said, putting one arm behind his head.

  We lay there and smoked another cigarette, not talking, listening to the nighttime sounds and watching the clouds move over the moon like facial hair.

  “Is tonight the night you’re going to let me kiss you?” he asked, turning to look at me, moving his whole body closer.

  “Who said I would ever let you kiss me?” I asked.

  “Ever is a very long time,” he said.

  “You can hold my hand again if you want,” I said, feeling so stupid as I did. There was no way I was pure enough to pull it off.

  Since when was holding hands enough for me—or too much for me? The pregnancy had taken me too far. The only safe place to go was back to zero.

  “I should probably hold out for a hug,” he said, “but I’ll take what I can get.” His hand was warm, fit in mine like the last piece of a puzzle.

  “Sorry,” I said. I wished I could give him a hug, and at the same time I wanted to kick him in the nuts, because I knew if I gave him a hug I was done for.

  I was kind of already done for.

  “Wow, almost a full minute and you’re still holding on,” he said.

  “Don’t push it,” I said. The sound of crickets all around us was like a room of cats purring at once.

  He turned to me. “I’m not going to be the one to give up, Cassie.”

  It was too much. All of this was too much. I had to get out of there.

  “I should head back,” I said, letting go of his hand.

  “So, no hug,” he said, not moving.

  I stood. I guess I thought he might say something else so I waited a moment, then another. Maybe I wanted to say something else, or maybe I did want to be near him. Be close to someone who might possibly understand me just because he was as messed up and broken as I was.

  I started back toward my cabin.

  “Hey, Cassie,” he called.

  I turned to look at him, his skin white on the grass.

  “You want a rematch, you know where to find me,” he said.

  I put my hands on my stomach. I knew our next rematch wouldn’t be at basketball. I knew if we had a rematch, I might not be strong enough to win.

  10 Fucking Days to Go

  I woke up this morning trying to scratch my own skin off. I was either allergic to Ben or I had lain in something that had turned my skin to hot needles of itch. Considering the way I was itching, it was possible I’d been cloned with it. I thought back to the night before, Ben and me on the grass, holding hands, staring at the clouds in the sky and smoking.

  I guess there was more underneath us than just grass. Fuck me for not listening to Eagan when he was geeking out about poisonous plants on our last hike. Not that I could have seen whatever it was in the dark anyway, but craaaap.

  Troyer sat up in her bed and looked at me. Her big, empty face asked, what? I itched too badly to answer. My arms and legs were on fire. It felt like oven-baked itch ants were crawling everywhere I had rolled up my uniform.

  Stupid Ben.

  Stupid me.

  This was not worth two more cigarettes. Not worth being close to him.

  I was still in my bed scratching, Troyer staring at me, when Rawe came out of her room. She was morning-ready in her uniform, her face rigid, her braid tight.

  “Ten minutes until breakfast,” she said, walking into the middle of the cabin. She bent down to tighten her boots. Her braid fell over her shoulder, a black rope.

  Nez stretched in her bed and glanced over at me, her eyes moving from my legs to my arms with each attempt of mine to keep ahead of the itch. I’m sure I must have been hopping around like I was having an epileptic fit, like a piece of bacon in a frying pan.

  Nez’s eyes continued to dance in their sockets as she followed the wild thrash on my cot. She mouthed, Fleas. Sucks to be you, and stuck out her tongue.

  I wanted to get up and punch her in the face, but I couldn’t stop scratching. I couldn’t do anything but S-C-R-A-T-C-H.

  Rawe pulled herself back up, taut like a rubber band. She was on me instantly.

  “What’s the deal, Wick?” Her expression was pinched.

  “Nothing,” I said, stopping my itch-fest for as long as I dared to try to prove my point. Little pin pricks of heat pushed up through my skin. All I wanted to do was douse them in water, flames, cold Greek yogurt, anything to make it stop.

  “Doesn’t look like nothing,” she said, chewing on the inside of her cheek.

  “Looks like fleas,” Nez said, laughing.

  Troyer jumped out of her bed and ran to Nez’s side of the cabin. I couldn’t blame her. Fleas would have made me do that. If I could have peeled my skin off and left it on my bed, I would have run over to the other side of the cabin, too.

  “I don’t even want to say what you look like, Nez,” I said, tightening my mouth and trying not to scratch, but it was clear I was losing that battle.

  “Fleas wouldn’t make you itch that much,” Rawe said, shaking her head. “You are itchy, aren’t you, Wick?” She stepped closer to my cot.

  “No,” I said, still not scratching, even though I thought I might pass out from the lack of it.

  “Let’s see,” Rawe said, holding out her hand.

  “I told you I’m fine,” I said, attempting to sit on my arms. “When’s breakfast?” I guess I was even more stubborn than Ben gave me credit for.

  “You going to show me?” Rawe asked, “or are we going to sit here all day watching you try not to turn your skin to confetti?”

  I finally held out my arm. There was nothing else I could do. I had lost before our standoff even started.

  Rawe held it lightly by the wrist, spun it one way, the other, and dropped it back on my cot.

  “Anywhere else?” she asked.

  I pulled my legs out of the sleeping bag and showed her. They didn’t look as bad as my arms. Just my luck, the body parts I could scratch simultaneously were in better shape than the ones I had to count on one itchy arm for.

  “Poison ivy,” she said.

  Fuck me.

  Now that my secret was out, that she knew, that everyone knew, I started scratching again, my nails going at my skin with the force of a cheese grater.

  “How’d you get it?” Rawe asked, looking at me through the slits of her eyes then looking across the cabin at Troyer and Nez.

  “We don’t have it,” Nez said, her voice louder than it needed to be. “Well, at least I don’t.” She eyed Troyer and moved away from her.

  Troyer shook her head hard—hard enough that she probably should have been wearing a helmet.

  “I don’t know,” I said. My go-to answer for anything I didn’t feel like answering. Well, that and fuck you.

&
nbsp; “You must have come in contact with a plant,” Rawe said, using her world-renowned sleuthing skills. “The question is where, or more accurately, when?” She continued to look at me, waiting for me to tell her more.

  Waiting for me to confess to the suspicions she’d been having.

  “Maybe I got it while I was up in that tree yesterday,” I said, scratching again. I couldn’t stop scratching even with her watching. Even with Nez beaming from her cot.

  “Get dressed,” Rawe said. “We’re going to the infirmary.”

  “There’s an infirmary? Like with a nurse?” I asked.

  “No,” Rawe said, sounding tired, “like with calamine lotion.”

  That was all I needed to hear. I got up. It was totally obvious to anyone with eyes that my arms and a portion of my legs were the only part of me covered with the rash.

  “Interesting pattern,” Rawe said.

  I got dressed quickly, even though the fabric made everything itch even worse. I didn’t want Rawe to keep staring at my rash waiting for me to admit something. That had to be what she was waiting for, because she had no proof.

  “Okay, you two,” Rawe said, turning to Nez and Troyer. “Clean the cabin while I’m gone.”

  “I want to go to the infirmary. I want medicine,” Nez whined, pleaded.

  “Nez,” Rawe said, her warning shot.

  “Why do we have to stay here and clean up this ship hole of a cabin while Cassie gets to lounge around in calamine lotion?” Nez asked. “It’s obvious she got this last night, without us.”

  I looked at Nez, trying to squeeze her mouth shut with my stare. “I’ll give you a reason to go to the infirmary,” I mumbled.

  Troyer stood with her arms wrapped around herself like she was afraid my skin would fly off and come in contact with her skin.

  “I’ll deal with Wick,” Rawe said, looking at me. She held the cabin door open, waiting for me to walk out of it. “Today, Wick,” she added when she felt she’d waited long enough.

  I scratched as I followed her out onto the porch. I kept scratching as I followed her to the infirmary—honestly, I couldn’t stop. I wished I could rip her braid off and use it to scratch my skin like a Brillo Pad.

  “So,” Rawe said, “do you want to tell me how this happened?”