That was what had scared Ben away.
“Uh-huh,” Rawe said, turning her head to make sure I knew she was yelling at me. “I’m waiting.”
“It’s not my fault I got poison ivy,” I said. I knew she was still angry about that. Angry because she didn’t have proof to punish me, but she wanted to. I guess this was how she was going to.
“Jeez,” Nez huffed. “I’ll tell you two things if it means we don’t have to hike anymore and Cassie stops whining.”
“Wick!” Rawe stopped to yell. “Don’t you dare test me. This forest is five hundred miles across and we will hike every step of it until you speak.” She turned and started walking again.
She wasn’t letting up. I had to say something, but it couldn’t be the thing. It could never be the thing. Besides, I was afraid if I said the thing I would melt into a pile of mush again.
I turned to Troyer. Her forehead looked like it was going to pop out of her skull. Her way, I guess, of saying, Fucking say it Cassie, I’m tired.
“Fine.” I sighed. I looked down at my feet, one boot moving in front of the other.
“Still waiting,” Rawe said.
“I never told anyone I got stood up on prom night,” I mumbled.
“Again,” Rawe said, “I don’t think your chin could hear you.”
Rawe wasn’t going to make this easy. But why should she?
“I said—” I tried to speak more loudly, even though my throat was so dry the words felt like sand. “I got stood up on prom night.”
“That’s dumb,” Nez said.
“Well, it’s true,” I retorted quickly. That was all I was sharing. Rawe could make us walk until my feet fell off. I was keeping my mouth shut.
“You’re going to accept that?” Nez asked Rawe. She was probably hoping I would say something that she could use against me later—something even more embarrassing than what I shared. What must Nez have been through to think it wasn’t?
“And why didn’t you tell anyone?” Rawe asked, still leading us down the trail and thankfully ignoring Nez. Maybe she was happy that for once I’d finally answered her.
“Because it was humiliating,” I said, thinking quickly. “People who get stood up are losers.” I looked at the trail. At least the boys were too far ahead to hear me.
“Well, that’s true.” Nez laughed.
“Shut up,” I said. “No one cares what you think.”
“No fighting,” Rawe said.
“Hey, I’m agreeing,” Nez said. I could see her hold her hands up like someone was aiming a gun at her.
“Wick, is that what you are choosing? You can pick anything you’ve never told anyone,” Rawe said.
“That’s what I pick,” I said. It was the safest. And if I wanted to get deep about it, which I didn’t, that was how it all started, wasn’t it?
“Okay,” Rawe said. “Yell it.”
“What?” I asked.
Nez laughed.
“Yell I was stood up on prom night. It’s the only way you can free yourself from it.”
“I don’t need to free myself from it,” I said.
“Well, I say you do,” Rawe retorted.
“C’mon Cassie,” Nez said. “Loud enough so Ben can hear.”
I lifted my hands up to push her but stopped myself. I turned around and glanced at Troyer instead. Her face was sad, but of course she didn’t say anything.
“I was stood up on prom night,” I said.
“Louder,” Rawe said.
“Yeah, louder,” Nez hissed.
I looked at Nez’s back and repeated it, again and again, until my throat ached. I wanted the sentences to be like bullets going through her pack and her uniform into her perfect brown skin.
I could yell and scream those words easily. What I couldn’t do was even say the word for the thing I had really kept from everyone.
One word that I couldn’t even whisper, that I couldn’t even write down, like Troyer.
If Rawe was right and saying something out loud freed you from it, how would I ever be free from something I couldn’t even admit to myself?
We sat around the campfire, all nine of us: a man, a woman, and seven fuckups against the wilderness.
Probably not the best odds.
The whites of our eyes looked pink in the firelight. Each of us had our lips around a metal mug, our only utensil for the next six days. We slugged at it like it held one hundred sleeping pills. Apparently there would be a lot of drinking, and not the kind I liked, in our future.
We sipped on lip-scalding broth in silence while Nez stared at Ben and he tried not to stare at me.
The fire was pretty sad, like what a homeless guy might have been able to build with the scraps he found in an alley, but we had to keep it small so we didn’t alert anything that we were out here. Anything that included a rescue plane and, more importantly, the grizzly bears Rawe warned us would break us in half like a candy bar.
When we first arrived at the camp that afternoon, Rawe and Nerone had us dig the holes that would be our toilets for the night while they went and “checked the perimeter.” As I worked, I couldn’t help wondering what the clinic had done with whatever was inside me. I’m sure no one dug a grave for it. I don’t think anyone at the clinic said a prayer or did anything special. I think whatever was inside me went into a plastic biohazard bin. Which I guess was supposed to make you feel like it wasn’t just a garbage can, but really it was, just with a fancy sign on it.
I kept looking at Ben. I needed his fucking lighter. I figured we could get a quick smoke in before Rawe and Nerone got back, but Ben was acting like he was Superman and my face was kryptonite.
Perfect fucking timing.
Troyer was working next to me. At least with her I didn’t seem like a total zero, even though that was what I felt like. I felt the way I did in middle school before I realized I could scare people, when I used to be afraid of them instead. Ever since I had come here, ever since that day at the clinic weeks ago, the same vulnerability was just below the surface of my skin. Like someone could reach in and rip my heart out by looking at me. Or not looking at me.
Stupid fucking Ben and stupid fucking boys.
Troyer wrote on a piece of paper and passed it to me. You really got stood up for prom? That was what she chose to ask me about. Not why Ben was pretending I didn’t exist, not why I was fuming, trying to pretend I wasn’t fuming.
I guess being stood up for prom really was that bad—not like Troyer knew what I was comparing it to.
“Yes,” I hissed. “Did you even go to your prom?” I sounded angry, even though I wasn’t at all mad at Troyer. It was easier to be cold than to let people be cold to you. That was something I’d learned from my mother.
The only thing I’d learned from my mother.
Of course, she wrote.
Of course she’d gone to her prom. Eagan had probably even gone to his prom; Eagan who had already fallen in the hole he was digging. That’s what normal kids did, even what abnormal kids did. Total fuckups like me got stood up for their proms, got arrested, and then got in “trouble” and had to do something about it.
Total fuckups liked me scared away total fuckups who were actually being nice to them.
I dropped my shovel and punched deep into my stomach, once, twice, till the pain made me nauseous.
Why do you do that? Troyer wrote. She had noticed. I didn’t think anyone had because no one ever asked me about it. Maybe everyone had noticed but it was too weird to ask me about.
It was definitely too weird to explain.
“Why don’t you talk?” I asked. It was mean, but I didn’t know what else to say. I couldn’t answer her, so I attacked instead.
Troyer ripped a blank piece of paper off the pad and dropped it on the ground next to me. I guess that was her way of saying she wasn’t talking to me anymore.
Fine, now I was totally alone. Even Troyer had deserted me. Not like I could blame her.
I guess I crave loneline
ss. I certainly try to create it. I do anything I can to cover up the loneliness that comes from knowing I had something that would have been connected to me for my whole life and I destroyed it.
I can never be alone enough to snuff that out.
6 Fucking Days to Go
I woke up alone in my tent, which was good considering that was how I’d fallen asleep. I don’t know what I was expecting. That Ben would come and see me during the night? That he would actually not have given up on me, so I could push him away again? At least his attention had been something I could count on, until I’d fucked that up, too.
I should have known I’d push him too far. I push everyone too far.
I looked at the red top of my tent and couldn’t help wondering if this was what the thing inside of me saw before it was no longer inside me—safety and red and soft all around. If it was floating in that light, until I forced it out into the world.
Kind of like me, except I was waiting for Rawe to come wake me up and tell me how far I was going to have to hike before I was allowed to get in here again. The thing that had been inside me had no choice to come back.
I had made the choice for it.
Choice.
Calling what I had to do a choice was a joke. Anyone who described what I had to do as freedom of choice has never had to do what I had to do. There is no choice in it. Who would actually choose what I put that thing inside me through? What I put myself through? What I’m still going through?
I listened to the birds. Felt the sun filtering through the red of the tent. It was going to be another long day of Rawe trying to break open our shells. Well, really just mine. She didn’t seem to be pushing Nez and Troyer the way she was pushing me.
I pictured Rawe like someone at a seafood buffet, a plate of crab legs and lobster tails in front of her. She was wearing a bib, drooling, waiting for my shell to open so she could get her claws into the soft parts I hid from her. The soft parts that probably even she herself hid.
The soft, scary parts Ben had seen at the infirmary. The ones that were too much for him.
“Breakfast in ten,” I heard Rawe call. I knew she’d put her hands around her mouth like a megaphone. Knew her braid was tight, tight, tight.
I unzipped my tent and stepped out, feeling even more bleary-eyed than I had when I was sleeping in the cabin. Newsflash, sleeping on the ground makes you feel like dog shit.
Everyone was milling around the dead fire from last night, waiting for instructions from Rawe and Nerone. I guess it was sort of the way it had been in school, where you would be sitting in the auditorium with your classmates waiting for someone to go up on stage and tell you something you were going to ignore, or in my case, that you would skip out on entirely. Except here Rawe and Nerone had our undivided attention and they were far too boring to deserve that.
“Troyer, Eagan, you’re on breakfast duty,” Nerone muttered.
Rawe stood next to him like they were bookends, one with a square head and one with a pointy head. I guess they weren’t picking our duties without thought. Considering Stravalaci’s past, it was probably a good idea to keep him away from anything he could poison.
“Yes, sir,” Eagan lisped.
Troyer stood there.
“Leisner, Stravalaci, Claire, you’re on tents,” Nerone said.
The three of them grumbled and walked with scuffing feet to the first tent. I thought about my tent. Was there anything inside it I wouldn’t want Ben to see? Why the hell did I care?
That left Nez and me, and I knew before Rawe even said it that she was planning to fuck me royally.
“Nez, Wick, you two go gather some wood,” she said, looking right at me to let me know she knew she was fucking me royally.
“Can I trade with someone?” Nez asked. I saw her look over at Ben, who was taking down Eagan’s tent. At least I didn’t have to see Eagan fumbling and struggling with it again.
I knew she was saying it because of me and not because of the wood, which was fine—I felt the same way. I didn’t have the energy to ask to switch partners, mostly because I knew it wouldn’t make a difference anyway.
“No,” Rawe said, clenching her teeth. Nerone stood next to her and clenched his teeth, too, a united front of different-headed bookends.
Nez and I didn’t move.
“That means today,” Nerone said. “We’re all waiting for breakfast.”
Nez huffed and started walking quickly toward the woods at the north of the camp.
“And get enough for a decent size fire,” Rawe called after her, like she wasn’t satisfied with Nerone having the last word.
Nez was walking so fast I had to run to catch up to her. And I wanted to catch up to her. If I had to go look for wood while other things looked for us, there was no way I wanted to be alone.
It felt immediately cooler when I entered the woods, the shade from the trees coloring everything gray.
Nez stopped and turned to me. “What, are you chasing me now?”
“I wouldn’t have to if you weren’t walking so fast,” I said, surprised that I was actually out of breath.
“I want to get this over with,” she said. “The less time I have to spend alone with you, the better.”
“Fuck off, Nez,” I said.
“Do you ever say anything else?” Nez asked, her lips puckered like my words were something she didn’t like the taste of.
“I never want to say anything else,” I said, then added, “to you.”
“Because you’re jealous,” Nez said.
“Of what?” I laughed.
“Me,” she said. “Ben and me.”
A breeze blew through, whipping her black, black hair in front of her face like shadows. The look of it made me shiver.
“You’re delusional,” I said.
She shrugged. “Ben says you’re jealous and he’s right.”
“You don’t know shit and Ben knows even less,” I said, feeling hot needles start to poke at my hands, trying to force them into fists.
“I see the way you look at him,” Nez said, almost sang.
“I don’t.” I paused. “Look at him.”
She snorted. “We always want what we can’t have.”
A crow cawed and bounded from one tree to the next.
“You suck, Nez,” I said, starting to walk past her. I should have kept walking. I should have ignored her. I never did what I should do.
“I suck?” She laughed. “At least I use your first name, Cassie. Do you use mine? Do you even know mine?”
“I never asked you to use my first name,” I said, spinning to look at her, not wanting to admit I actually didn’t know hers.
“You call Ben by his first name. Ever think about that?” she asked.
“How do you know what I call him?” I asked, immediately feeling silly for it. It didn’t matter. Nez could see right through me. Regardless of how much I said I hated Ben, how much I acted like I wanted him to leave me alone, she was right—I did use his first name.
“You don’t even call Troyer Laura,” Nez said, her voice rising to meet the top of the trees.
“Neither do you,” I retorted.
“But I’m not her friend, am I?” Nez asked. Her face was calm, as still as the sky far, far above us.
“I wouldn’t know,” I said, searching for something to say next. “I don’t know what you are, Nez,” I hissed. If it bothered her so much I was using her last name, I was going to use it so much it made her ears bleed.
“You think you’re so tough,” she said, “but I see you. You’re scared, scared of everyone, scared of yourself.”
“You’re the one who should be scared,” I said, even though her words hit me right in my lower stomach, punched me there, like I usually did.
“Oh really?” she asked. “I know things, Cassie. Things about you.”
“Don’t,” I said, though I’m not sure why. I didn’t have any idea what she was going to say, but for some reason I knew that once she said it, that
would be it.
The last straw.
“I saw your file.” She smiled evilly. “Troyer’s, too. You know it has medical info in it, right?”
“You’re a fucking liar,” I said, like I was responding to any annoying thing that came out of her mouth, but really I felt the woods around me start to spin like I was in the center of a merry-go-round. The trees were the horses, the leaf-and dried-pine-needle-covered ground the beach-ball-colored base. Could Nez be telling the truth? Could what I’d done that day at the clinic be in some “file” that had been forwarded to Rawe? Did that mean other people knew? Ben? Or worse, my parents?
Was that why Ben was ignoring me?
My stomach felt like the hull of a ship riding wave after wave.
“Listen,” Nez said matter-of-factly, “I’m not the one you should be angry with. You should be angry with yourself.”
I couldn’t talk. The hot needles were back in my hands, my neck, my chest. Angry little pricks, buzzing like bees.
Nez looked at me, waiting.
When I didn’t move, she spoke again, the words seeping out. “You should be disgusted with yourself.”
I felt myself zoom over to her like a magnet. I couldn’t help it. I was right in her face, my teeth bared. I said nothing, but I felt a growl in the pit of my stomach that wanted to well up.
“Forget it,” Nez said, turning away from me. “You’re not worth it.”
For some reason, that sentence went right to the center of my chest. The same place I still felt the sting from Aaron’s actions. Felt the pain of being sent here and having my father seem not to care either way. Felt it in the lack of words from my mother for years and years.
Nez bent down in front of a tree to gather some sticks and, without even thinking, I lunged for her. I meant only to shove her, to let her know I wasn’t going to let her fuck with me, that I wasn’t going to let anyone ever again. That was what I’d meant, but instead I pushed her off her feet and she fell. Hard. Hard enough that her face smacked the tree and I heard her nose crunch.
She screeched, loud. So loud her voice broke through the shadows around us like harsh, angry sunlight.
“Nez,” I said, reaching out for her. I hadn’t meant to hurt her, just scare her. Maybe I had sort of meant to hurt her, but really this wasn’t even about her. I tried to pick her up, but she squirmed away from me. Her hands covered her nose like it was going to fall off.
Dear Cassie Page 17