Dear Cassie

by Burstein, Lisa

  I guess this was how she was dealing with me. At least she wasn’t yelling, but I knew her voice was soft because she wanted me to talk to her. Really talk to her. I kind of wished she were yelling.

  “I don’t know,” I said again.

  “You’re lying,” she said, but she didn’t look at me. “I get that you don’t want to open up to me, but you need to understand that each time you choose not to, you make it harder for me to help you.” She kept walking, marching really, like she wanted me to have to struggle to keep up with her. Which I was.

  I looked down and scratched at the parts I could as we walked.

  We moved up toward the soccer field. I was hoping that Ben had relocked the equipment shed, or I might have had to not answer some questions about that, too. Not like an open equipment shed automatically equaled poison ivy, but it did equal something.

  “You don’t want to tell me what happened, fine,” Rawe said. “Just do not do whatever you did again.”

  It seemed like I had gotten out of this a little too easily, but maybe Rawe figured that the result of what I had done was punishment enough.

  For as much as I itched, it might have even been too much.

  We didn’t talk the rest of the walk. It was hard to speak anyway because I was SO ITCHY. The kind of itch where it is all you can feel. Like I felt when I found out I was pregnant—not itchy, exactly, but where it was all I could feel. So consuming that there was nothing else, only that, like a cannonball balanced on my chest.

  We reached the infirmary, a building the color of a nurse’s hat with a blood-red cross painted on it. Rawe pulled the key out from around her neck to unlock it, but it was already unlocked. She looked at me like I might have the answer, but my mouth stayed shut.

  Rawe pushed open the door. We heard voices inside.

  “Not your best day, Claire,” Nerone grumbled.

  “Yes, sir,” Ben said.

  “Well,” Rawe said, turning to look at me, her eyebrows going up so high they hit her hairline. “Wonder why they’re here?”

  She wasn’t asking like she really wondered, she was asking like she knew the answer. Like she knew that Ben was here for the same reason I was.

  That we were both here because we had been together.

  Nerone turned to us as we entered the room. “Oh, another one, huh?” he asked, seeming far less surprised than Rawe had been.

  “Yeah,” Rawe said, stretching out the word. “Some kind of epidemic.” Her words hung in the air like the smoke from a just fired gun.

  Ben had the rash on his arms, legs, and back. He was in his boxers—blue plaid—and even though I could tell he was in pain, he also looked pretty pleased with the fact that I had to see him this way. He didn’t seem embarrassed, though I could feel my cheeks light up like fireflies.

  Ben had managed to get poison ivy everywhere, which meant he had taken off his whole uniform after I left him last night. Maybe he really was totally fucked up.

  Nerone was wearing latex gloves and slathering him with Pepto-colored lotion. If I didn’t want to basically take a potato peeler to my own skin, I might have made a joke about Ben being covered in girlie-pink, but damn I wanted that cream. I wanted to swallow it and have it come out my pores.

  “Is there a reason why both of you have poison ivy?” Nerone asked. Even if he wasn’t surprised it didn’t mean he didn’t care.

  “I already asked Wick,” Rawe said, like I wasn’t standing in the room with them. Still, she had no proof that we had been together last night, but our seared-red skin was a pretty decent clue.

  “The first one of you to speak up is immune from punishment,” Nerone said tightly. It was hard to take him seriously in his gloves covered with pink.

  Ben looked at me. I could bust him, but he could also bust me. Both our mouths seemed ready to say something, but neither of us did. I would never do what Amy had done to me. I wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for what Amy had done to me.

  “Uh-huh,” Nerone said, his jaw pulsing.

  “What are you going to do with him?” Rawe asked, pointing her chin in Ben’s direction.

  “Lock him in one of the exam rooms till he’s no longer contagious. All we need is a real epidemic,” Nerone said.

  Rawe went to the medicine cabinet and found another bottle of calamine lotion. There were ten of them, stacked side by side like a grocery store shelf.

  “Ben’s already showered,” Nerone said. “Make sure she cleans up first. It’s important to get the resin off or, well … Leprosy,” he whispered.

  I looked at him. My mouth was open wide enough to catch flies.

  Nerone laughed long, loud. He might have hit his leg, too, if his hand wasn’t covered in pink lotion.

  Asshole.

  Rawe pointed to the bathroom. “Don’t even think about locking it,” she said, her face turning as red as the welts on my body.

  I walked in and closed the door. Not only was there a shower, but there was a pretty white porcelain toilet. If I’d known poison ivy would have been enough to get me the use of a real bathroom, I’d have gotten it the very first day.

  Considering they had enough calamine lotion to paint a little girl’s room, it must have meant they knew poison ivy was an issue. Maybe they should have tried removing it from the camp before we got here. Of course, if you were stupid enough to lie on the ground with no clothes on, I guess you deserved it.

  Ben had made me that stupid.

  The water hit me, warm, heavenly. My body relaxed. It was too bad my skin felt like it was on fire, or I would have stayed in there for hours.

  I got out of the shower, dried off, and put on my bra, underwear, and the robe that was hanging on the hook. The water helped the itching a little bit, but it was still there, wrapped on top of my skin like a web. When I opened the bathroom door, Nerone was still slathering Ben with calamine lotion. Either Nerone was really enjoying himself, or Ben was in bad shape.

  “Okay, Wick, undress,” Rawe said.

  Ben looked at me. I could tell he was trying to stifle a laugh.

  “Um, here?” I asked, holding tight to the robe, even though it was probably dirtier than the floor we were standing on.

  “Oh, right,” Rawe said, like she had forgotten there was a difference between boys and girls. “Come on.” She took me into one of the exam rooms and closed the door.

  She looked at me and waited.

  “I can do it myself,” I said.

  “I’ve let a lot slide this morning,” she said. “Let’s finish this.”

  I took off the robe and closed my eyes as her latex glove–covered hands slathered me in lotion. It was cold, soothing, amazing.

  When she was finished, she took the gloves off, flicked them in the trash can, and handed me the bottle.

  “Now,” she said. “Try not to touch it. The more you touch it, the worse it gets, and it spreads.”

  “Okay,” I said, holding the bottle close to me. I was still in my underwear and bra. I must have looked like someone at the beach who was only afraid of certain parts of her getting sunburned.

  “Your Assessment Diary is on the counter,” she said.

  Couldn’t forget this now, could she?

  “Here.” She handed me a small white pill and a cup of water. “Take one of these. It’s a steroid so it will help with the swelling. I’ll come to check on you later.” She washed her hands in the sink.

  “You’re leaving me? Alone?” I asked.

  “I’ll lock you in,” she said, pushing the little pieces that had come out of her braid off her face. “It’s a precaution for forty-eight hours.”

  “Forty-eight hours,” I repeated, like I couldn’t believe it. I felt anxiety build, traveling up from my toes to the middle of my chest where it sat on my heart, knocking around with the force of something falling down the stairs.

  “You’ll be safe here,” Rawe said, like she could see what I was fighting so hard to keep in.

  I opened my mouth to talk, bu
t I couldn’t. My throat was dry. My windpipe felt like someone was squeezing it shut. Tears started to form in the corners of my eyes. I wasn’t even sad. Why was I crying?

  Because Rawe was leaving me?

  No, because Rawe was leaving me here.

  It didn’t make sense and then all at once I knew.

  The thing I had tried so hard to keep in—to never, ever talk about, write about, think about. I was sitting in it, the place where the thing that happened because of the thing that happened with Aaron happened.

  I was in the exact surroundings of the after.

  The place where I’d been broken.

  This room reminded me of the clinic. Smelled like it, looked like it. Had the cream-colored walls that were supposed to calm you, the waxy black floor, the white, white sheeted bed, the cabinets filled with instruments to take care of whatever “problem” you were there to solve. Surely it wasn’t as sterile, but that was it, and I really didn’t want to be locked inside here.

  Not for half an hour and certainly not for forty-eight.

  “Can’t I stay in the cabin?” I pleaded quickly. “I won’t touch anything.” I felt my body start to shake, each of my joints rocking on its axis. I tried to slow my breathing, but it came out in gasps.

  “What’s wrong?” Rawe asked.

  I looked down. The floor was blurry from the tears. They felt as hot as my itchy skin.

  “Wick?” she asked. “Talk to me.”

  I looked up and tried to focus on her. I was not going to do this. Not in front of her.

  “Nothing,” I said, too upset to even realize I was answering her previous question. I dried my eyes and willed my body still. Doing anything to show her I was fine with her leaving me, because I was afraid I would crumple up into a ball on the floor if I didn’t.

  She watched me. “It’s okay,” she said, reaching out for me.

  “Don’t,” I said, pulling away from her touch. If I let her I would lose it. I didn’t do losing it, as much as my current actions made total bullshit of that statement.

  “I want to help you, but I can’t if you don’t want to be helped.” She looked at me and waited. I almost spoke and then I saw her eyes, wet like mine with pity, but people didn’t feel sorry for me. I felt sorry for people.

  “What?” I spit angrily. “You’re locking me in, so lock me in already.”

  She breathed through her nose and shook her head in that way people do to let you know you’ve disappointed them. “You’ve already locked yourself in,” she said. She walked out the door and closed it behind her. I heard the bolt turn, the sound as heavy as a boulder falling.

  The day my brother drove me to the clinic was hazy, from the drugs they gave me, from the sick shame I felt about what I had to do.

  I don’t remember much of it. I remember the pain, an empty ache, like the howl of a cavern in my guts. I remember my brother sitting in a chair next to the bed I slept on at the motel we drove to after. The bed with the too-thin comforter and sheets that were so rough they felt like sandpaper.

  Each time I woke up moaning, my brother was next to me with a wet washcloth for my forehead. In the night, his silhouette was like the trace of a pebble thrown in a pond. But he was there, like always. My brother, the only man I could count on.

  I didn’t even want to tell him, but I needed someone over eighteen to drive me to and from the clinic and there was no way I was telling my parents. I wasn’t sure how much more they could punish me beyond what they already had, but I knew they would figure something out. My mom would figure something out.

  I also knew they would have made me keep it, which would have meant that my mother would have to help raise it and there was no way I was putting someone else through that.

  When I told him he started to cry, which made me start to cry. It was late, almost midnight, my mother already passed out in her bedroom. Tim and I were in the dark living room with the crappy half–grandfather clock we had that ticked and ticked filling the silence that only held our tears. At that moment it made me think of the heartbeat in my belly that I was asking my brother to help me snuff out like a spent cigarette.

  He asked and asked and asked who the father was so he could go and castrate him, but I never told. The thing in my belly and fuck-face Aaron and I were the only ones who knew I had been stupid enough to sleep with him.

  Now, only Aaron and I knew.

  I think the weirdest part of all of it was how routine it appeared to be to everyone but my brother and me. The nurse at the clinic acted no differently than the guy who gave us our room key at the motel. I guess both of them were only doing their jobs, regardless of what doing that job meant.

  I guess that’s what Rawe is doing when it’s the three of us and she has to “stay on script.” To be honest, it’s easier to deal with. I would much rather have someone holding me at arm’s length than trying against all odds to hold me.

  I blinked, once, twice. I had to get it together. I had to calm down. Even if this room did look and smell and feel like the clinic.

  I heaved myself up on the bed and sat in the corner of it. Pulled my knees up to my chest, bent my head down so my mouth rested between them. Nothing could touch me if I sat this way. The only trick was not to move.

  There was a knock on the wall.

  “Anybody home?” Ben asked. Even when he was covered with an itchy, pus-filled rash, he was still fucking adorable.

  “Go away, Ben,” I said.

  “I can’t; I’m locked in,” he joked.

  I looked up at the ceiling. It had the same fluorescent lights as the clinic. The ones that sounded like a mosquito trap and made your eyes water if you stared at them.

  Yes, it was the lights that made my eyes water.

  “Aren’t you itchy?” I said, scratching at my own arms. I was surprised Ben wanted to use any part of his energy talking to me, when he could have used it annihilating the little pinches of itch all over his skin.

  “Sure, but I’m also bored,” he said. “I can compartmentalize my feelings.”

  “How?” I talked into my knees. They were rough, prickly hairs covering them like porcupine needles.

  “What else do I have to do?” he asked.

  I couldn’t answer. My arms felt numb, my chest ached. I was pretty sure I was having a panic attack and I had forty-eight hours to go.

  “Cassie?”

  “I can’t breathe,” I said. I felt nuts. No wonder there were so many crazy people in insane asylums—it was because they were all forced behind closed, locked doors. All forced into rooms that left them with nothing to do but think.

  “Just try to stay calm,” the wall said. “Everything is going to be okay.”

  “It’s not,” I said. His words should have made things better, but they were making things worse. Probably because I knew nothing would ever be okay. Whatever I had tried desperately to leave behind that day at the clinic was here now. And maybe it always would be.

  “I’m here, Cassie,” he said.

  I covered my ears. “You, you want to hurt me,” I said, the tears coming again and I wasn’t even looking up at the lights.

  “What are you talking about?” he asked.

  What was I talking about? What hole had this room pushed me into?

  This room, this stupid fucking room.

  “I just don’t like being alone,” I said. I could taste soap on my knees. It was my attempt at some kind of explanation, because I couldn’t explain.

  “You’re not,” he said. I could hear him scratching at the wall, making circles on it like someone might in water.

  I pictured him being able to break through, to come in here and comfort me with the words I kept telling him I didn’t want to hear. But he was locked in, too.

  I lay back and stared up at the ceiling, the same way I had in the clinic, from one corner to the other and back again. Anything to not have to see the doctor with his surgical mask covering his mouth and nose, like a monster hiding the scariest parts o
f his face.

  “Cassie? You still there?” Ben asked.

  “Where the hell else would I be?” I asked.

  “You’re just so quiet,” he said.

  “I don’t want to talk, Ben. Talking last night is what got me here.” It was true; I was finally starting to let him in. Was this the universe telling me not to? Was God punishing me again?

  Would I ever stop being punished?

  “Does this have to do with the stuff that has nothing to do with me?” he asked.

  I closed my eyes, tears rolling and hitting the tops of my ears. I was shaking so hard my teeth were chattering. Why was I afraid of a room?

  But I knew it wasn’t the room. It was how it was making me feel. How it was taking the anger I had built up to fight my sadness and shattering it.

  “How about I try to guess what happened?” he asked.

  I wiped my eyes and nose. “Knock yourself out,” I said, letting myself focus on his voice.

  “You were abducted by aliens,” he said.

  “No,” I said, tears still flowing.

  “You’re really a demon,” he said.

  “No.” I felt myself laugh, one of those cry-laugh combos that makes you start to cry harder.

  “You were forced to perform in a circus by your demented uncle,” he said.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” I choked the words out through growing sobs. I knew Ben was just trying to make me feel better, make me laugh, but it was obvious he didn’t take what had happened to me all that seriously.

  Not that he could have known how serious it was. Not that until I was locked in here had I allowed myself to feel how serious it was.

  “Why are you crying?” he asked.

  “I’m fucking sad,” I said, in full-on snot-faced cry. “I’m really, really fucking sad.”

  “You sound sad,” he said.

  Luckily Ben couldn’t see me, but he could hear me. He knew I was crying. I could tell in his voice that he was afraid I couldn’t stop.

  I was afraid I couldn’t stop.

  “Wow, Ben, you’re a fucking genius. When we get out of here remind me to call the Nobel Prize people.”

  “Cassie,” he said, “I—”

  “No, you’re seriously amazing. You can tell when someone is having a fucking mental breakdown, what they act like when their heart has been stabbed with twenty thousand acid-covered metal toothpicks.”