Dear Cassie

by Burstein, Lisa

“When you’re ready to tell me, you will,” she said. I could tell she was talking about more than me being out here alone. She was talking about everything.

  If it was anyone else I would have scrunched up into an angry ball and told them I would never fucking be ready to tell them anything, but for some reason I couldn’t say that to Troyer—having her offer to listen, I felt a wash of relief.

  She stood up and grabbed something out of her pocket, putting it in my palm. “Here,” she said.

  It was a pack of matches: so small, so flammable, so my pilfered cigarettes’ BFFs.

  “Where did you get these?”

  “It’s better if you don’t know,” Troyer said, standing. Then she sort of bowed and walked into the woods. I watched the back of her white-blond head moving back toward camp, a ghost floating in the trees.

  I looked at the matches. I could smoke whenever I wanted. I could start a fire if I dared to. I could do anything. One thing I’d learned in my time here was that in the wilderness, fire was power.

  But beyond that, Troyer would listen when I was ready. Even without the matches, she had given me power.

  4 Fucking Days Left

  I woke up to the sound of rustling leaves and cracking branches outside my tent.

  Ben.

  I didn’t know what time it was, but the absence of light and the sound of only crickets and owls aside from Ben’s boots let me know that as far as time was concerned, we had progressed past midnight and into the next day. I would take that. It meant I was hours away from not having to be by myself anymore.

  I unzipped the tent and stepped into the night before Ben could say anything. I wondered why. It wasn’t like me, and I felt like a total asshole, but it’s tough to play hard to get when you’ve been in solitary confinement for the last ten hours.

  “You came back,” I said, my mouth, along with my body, doing stupid, girlie things that made me feel like an asshole. Rawe was right: being in solitude was changing me. It was turning me into a total drooling dork.

  “I told you I would,” he said, his flashlight buzzing past me and over the inside of the tent like an angry bee. “Where’s my pack?”

  “It’s inside,” I said, pointing behind me.

  His flashlight finally landed on his pack and he reached around me to pick it up.

  “Do you need to get back or something?” I asked. He seemed anxious, which was my only guess as to why, unless Nez had poisoned him with the terrible truth about me.

  He reached inside his pack, like he was trying to make sure everything was there.

  “I didn’t steal anything, if that’s what you’re worried about,” I said. I thought about the note in his Assessment Diary, I knew you liked me. It made me step back from him.

  Maybe when he got here he was expecting me to jump into his arms and say, I do like you, I do. Maybe that’s what he was all worked up about, but I didn’t think any amount of solitude would bring me there, even if I was sort of thinking it.

  Ben pulled out his notebook and shook it at me. “Did you read this?”

  “No,” I said, probably too quickly.

  “I would have read yours,” he said, balancing the notebook in his hand, his lips turning up at the corners.

  There was his smile.

  “Well, I’m not you,” I said, not giving in that easily.

  “You did,” he said, moving his face closer to mine. “I can tell.”

  “How?” I laughed. Having him that close made my neck feel hot. Made my hands feel cold. “Did you memorize the way the pages were folded over?”

  “No,” he said, “it’s the way you’re looking at me. The way you acted when I first got here. You’re being nice to me.” He tilted his head back like he’d figured something out, like he’d figured me out.

  I felt my whole body tense. I had been nice to him. I had wanted to see him. “Oh, so that’s why you were acting like a dick,” I said, hoping he didn’t notice that I paused before I said it.

  “I was acting like you usually do,” he said. “So yeah.” He smiled. “I guess that makes me a dick.”

  “Seriously, Ben, fuck you,” I said, keeping my arms tight at my sides, afraid if I moved them I might touch him. “I’m not being nice to you.”

  “You were. For you, that was nice,” he said.

  He was right, but there was no way in hell I was about to admit it. “By the way, you didn’t let me win anything. I beat you. I know it’s hard for your macho brain to accept.”

  He smirked; the realization that I had seen his note made him stand inches taller.

  “Like it’s hard for your macho brain to accept that you like me,” he said, stepping closer, so close that I could feel the heat off his skin. “That I like you.”

  Words caught in my throat. I looked out into the woods behind him. The trees were like black skeletons in the dark.

  He was still so close to me. “I think you owe me a secret.”

  I looked at him. If Nez had gotten to him he already knew my secret—the only secret that mattered. There was nothing I could tell him that would surprise him, except maybe that I did like him. But considering he was within millimeters of me and still had both his balls, that might not be a secret at all.

  “I don’t owe you shit,” I said, my lips tight.

  “If you don’t want to tell me, you can show me your notebook,” he said. He pointed at the tent. “I know it’s in there.”

  “Forget it,” I said, strengthening my stance, letting him know the only way he was getting into my tent was in a body bag. There was no chance I would show him my notebook. I had been stupid and had put everything into it. Had vomited my words all over it, the things I wanted to keep from everyone and the one thing I was still denying to him. That I did like him. Even if he had all the evidence he needed that it was true.

  “I can stay up all night,” he said, walking over and sitting against the tree we’d slept under the night before.

  The tree. The place where I entertained visitors out here in the middle of nowhere.

  “So can I,” I said, grabbing my notebook out of the tent and sitting down next to him.

  “Then I guess we’re in for a long wait,” he said, leaning back, getting comfortable.

  I held my notebook tight to my chest. I considered that if I really could tell him everything, it would have been better than him reading it, but he was asking for more. He was asking me to let him in, really let him in. I didn’t know if I could.

  We sat there in silence, not even smoking. We waited, like our notebooks were pistols that we’d kept in our holsters. We were cowboys in a duel trying desperately not to fall asleep. Eventually I couldn’t take the silence anymore. Silence when you’re alone is one thing, but silence with someone sitting next to you is enough to make you sick—especially when that someone sitting next to you is someone that you kind of like, and who most definitely drives you crazy.

  “You said you would have read mine.” I sighed. Not that he had asked me to defend myself, but I guess I wanted to let him know that I was no more interested in him than he was in me, or whatever. Because that’s what this was about.

  “Okay, let’s have it,” he said, holding out his hand.

  “No way,” I protested. “I didn’t really find out anything other than that you are obsessed with some guy named Andrew and that you maintain your masculinity by telling yourself that you let girls win.”

  “Andrew is my brother,” he said, ignoring my other comment. “My older brother.” He put his notebook down and lit a cigarette, like he was getting ready to talk.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “You don’t have to tell me.” It made me think about my brother, how he would have liked Ben.

  “If you think that’s you being nice, think again.” He blew smoke out angrily. “I didn’t leave my pack here by mistake. I want to tell you, I want you to tell me, but as usual you have to make everything difficult.”

  I turned to him, but I couldn’t talk. He was so dir
ect. So available. So never giving up. Maybe I was scared to hear what he wanted to tell me. He had almost been to a place like this once and still did something to be sent to Turning Pines. Whatever he did had to be pretty fucked up.

  “Fine,” he said, “if you don’t want to know, it’s your turn.” He put his hand out palm open, like my words were going to sit on it.

  I took out a bra-smashed cigarette and lit it with one of Troyer’s matches. I went cross-eyed to look at the flame, wanting to focus on that instead of Ben staring at me, looking for any way in—a prowler trying to get into a locked house.

  “You’re really not going to tell me,” he said. “After everything.”

  I inhaled smoke, still not saying anything. I knew my answer, but it felt nice to let him think I was the kind of person who might have told him. Who would have felt safe enough to. I wondered if I would ever be that kind of person. At least if he was still asking, I knew Nez hadn’t told him yet.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. The ache in the pit of my stomach came fresh and new, without a self-inflicted punch. It wasn’t even about saying the word. It was about him looking at me differently once he’d heard it. Right now he thought I was strong, fierce, and angry. That was the Cassie I wanted to be. The Cassie he wanted.

  When I’d cried, it had freaked him out. I couldn’t let him see that Cassie again. I didn’t want to be that Cassie again.

  “If you don’t tell me, I’m going to kiss you,” he said.

  “You know what will happen if you try,” I said, even though him not asking for once was kind of hot.

  “I mean it,” he said, turning to me.

  “You are signing your death certificate,” I said, not moving.

  “Get ready,” he said, starting to lean in.

  I pushed him. “Try it and I bite your tongue off.” The cigarette bobbed in my lips as I spoke.

  “I hadn’t even thought of using tongue,” he said, leaning toward me again, “but thanks for the suggestion.”

  I watched his face, his eyes, and his lips, my heart flickering like a flame.

  “Last chance,” he said, grabbing the cigarette out of my mouth.

  “Are you fucking serious right now?” I asked, my eyes on the cigarette. It was in his hand and not in my mouth and he was still breathing. Maybe I did want him to kiss me. Maybe I needed him to make me so I didn’t have to admit wanting to.

  Ben didn’t answer, just stubbed out our cigarettes and threw them up above and far past my tent.

  “What the fuck, Ben?” I said. Even though him doing that made the ache in my stomach turn to butterflies—hot, sticky butterflies.

  He sat in front of me, put his hands on my thighs, and leaned closer, so close that our noses were touching. So close that I could feel his heartbeat through his forehead, as fast as one of his drum solos.

  “Don’t do it,” I said, but there was nothing behind the words.

  “Then tell me,” he said, his breath hot on my lips.

  His mouth inhaled the words I couldn’t say. I felt his lips hit mine like someone had pushed him into me.

  And I pushed back … I pushed back.

  We kissed for seconds, minutes, our lips hot in the cold night, our hands grabbing for anything in the darkness.

  He stopped and looked at me. “I didn’t think you’d kiss me back, Cassie.”

  “I guess I let you win,” I said. It was hard for me to breathe. It was weird, but when I was kissing him, my mind wasn’t wandering the way it sometimes would when I was with other boys. I didn’t even think about the clinic. About how what might happen between us had the power to send me back there. All I thought about were his lips. How I wished he would kiss me so hard that not only would I stop thinking, but I would forget my name.

  “I’ve been waiting to do that for a long time,” he said.

  “I’m still not going to tell you,” I said playfully, or at least what was playfully for me.

  He leaned in again, put my cheek in his palm. “You’ll tell me,” he said, “but not tonight. We have better things to do.”

  For once I agreed.

  When I woke up against the tree, I smelled smoke. Not like a campfire that has been put out smoke, but smoke that makes you cough smoke. Smoke that made you crave oxygen like you couldn’t get enough. My eyes were barely open and I could hear and feel the flames before I saw them: engulfing my tent, the ground underneath it, and the trees around it.

  Another ten minutes and it would have been Ben and me who were on fire. Another ten minutes and Rawe would have felt like shit for the rest of her life. I covered my mouth and coughed like it was my job.

  It was dawn. I could tell that even with the smoke in the air and the fire turning the sky red. Quickly my brain attached it to the cigarettes that Ben had thrown the night before.

  “Fuck, Ben,” I said, shaking him. My notebook lay next to me like a discarded stuffed animal. He was using his as a pillow.

  “What?” he asked, coughing. He jumped up, which seemed like a good idea, and one I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t thought of.

  I hopped up, too, and stood next to him, our backs flat against the tree.

  “What the hell did you do?” he asked, speaking loud to be heard above the rumbling of the fire. He put his arm over his mouth and coughed again. I could see the red reflecting on his skin.

  “Nothing. I woke up to this.” I covered my mouth with my hands, but the smoke was still coming. The heat felt like it was burning the hair on my arms. “It was probably that cigarette you threw.”

  “That cigarette wasn’t lit,” he said, like his denying it meant anything considering the fire-breathing dragon staring us in the face.

  “Well, Mr. Science, obviously it was,” I said, wondering why we were still standing there, knowing it was only because we were both stupid and stubborn and didn’t want it to be our fault.

  “We have to put this out,” he said.

  “With what?” I asked. “You got a hose on you?” A huge smoldering branch fell and smashed my already burning tent into pieces like an apple smashed with a hammer.

  I screamed, the kind of scream that embarrasses you when it happens.

  “Fuck, Cassie,” Ben said.

  “Yes, Ben, fuck,” I said. There was nothing we could do; the only water we had was in the canteen, which was in what used to be my tent.

  “We need to get out of here. We need to tell Nerone and Rawe. We need to warn them,” Ben said, his thoughts coming fast. He grabbed my hand and led us into the woods and away from the fire. He started running and I followed him, the heat dissipating as we moved farther and farther away. He kept turning to make sure I was keeping up, but other than that, I couldn’t see anything but the back of his hair bouncing up and down as he ran.

  A few paces before camp Ben stopped and looked at me. We were both bent over and out of breath.

  “What?” I asked. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting him to say, but it was certainly not what he did.

  “I want to tell you about Andrew,” he said.

  “This is not the time, Ben,” I said.

  “When is the time?” he asked.

  “Listen, if you want to tell me your fucking secret, then just tell me,” I said. I was uncomfortable. I didn’t want to think about why, but I knew. I could feel myself caring about what he was going to say next. It was a scary feeling.

  “He didn’t do anything to me,” he said, exhaling. “I did something for him.”

  I waited.

  “I lied for him,” he said.

  I waited some more, but he didn’t say anything else.

  “Big deal,” I said. I’d lied for my brother a ton: when he was late for curfew, when he’d broken the back window with his baseball, when my mother’s car had less gas than it had when she’d last driven it. Of course, I knew none of those lies made up for what I’d burdened my brother with. But I knew about lying for a sibling. I knew my brother knew about it, too.

  “No,” he said, “th
at’s why I’m here.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said, even though I thought I sort of did, but that’s what people say when someone is telling you something and you know they aren’t done.

  He exhaled, pushing his breath out like he’d just put something heavy down. “He stole a car, but it wasn’t the first time. It wasn’t the first time he’d done anything, and he’s over eighteen so I stole the car,” he said. “I stole the car,” he repeated, “just like I slashed that guy’s tires the last time.”

  “Wait,” I said, my brain going clickety-clack as I put his sentences together. “So you’re saying you’re not even supposed to be here? There’s nothing wrong with you?” The last words spilled out fast. Faster than I meant them to, but I was able to stop myself before I kept going, before I added like there is with me.

  “I wouldn’t say that.” Ben laughed. He didn’t get that it made him different from me, separate from me. Whatever was between us couldn’t be because he was not a fuckup. He was a good guy who did something because he loved his brother, like my brother had.

  “But you’re not here because of anything you’ve done,” I said, feeling myself pull away from him. His allegiance to his brother was definitely something I could relate to, but not being a total fuckup like me, well, that was something else.

  “You’re no worse than I am,” he said, like he could see it.

  But he was wrong. I was. I was here for something I’d done and for everything I’d done. He was a good person and I suddenly felt disgusting standing next to him.

  I could feel him leaning in to kiss me. I pushed him away. “No,” I said.

  “I told you the truth. Why are you mad if I told you the truth?” he asked.

  “You don’t understand,” I said, feeling my voice crack. I couldn’t even control it. My notebook was stuffed in my back pocket and with his admission I knew it would stay there. I could never tell him. He was too far from the kind of person I was for him to to ever understand. “You’re not like me,” I said quietly, “and when you find out who I really am, you’ll leave.”

  “If you don’t trust me by now, you never will,” he said.

  It was true that he’d done plenty to make me trust him, and I did, but I liked him, too, and that made me not trust myself.