Dear Cassie

by Burstein, Lisa

  I forgive you.

  When Nez and Rawe left the room to have their own Are you cured? talk, I picked up the phone on the nightstand and dialed my brother’s cell. I had to have some idea of what was waiting for me when I landed.

  “Tim, it’s me,” I said when he answered in his This better not be a telemarketer or I’m going to kick someone’s ass voice.

  “Cass, where are you?” Cass. My brother was the only one who ever called me Cass.

  Ever.

  “Some hotel,” I said. I looked at the pad on the dresser. Actually it was the Holiday Inn at the Arcata Airport. I wondered how many other people had used this phone in the same way I was—to figure out what was waiting for them on the outside. Maybe a guy who had been kicked out of his house for cheating on his wife. Like me, he was trying to figure out what shit was waiting for him if he was actually allowed to go home.

  Except I was more than allowed to go home, I was being fucking forced to go home.

  “Are you back?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. I was surprised by the question and wondered how he wouldn’t know that. Maybe more had changed than I thought.

  “Tomorrow,” I said. That word had a different meaning now. I remember having said only that to him when I saw him at the breakfast table the day before he took me to the clinic. And now again, Tomorrow. When you said it like that, you didn’t want it to be tomorrow.

  “You need me to pick you up at the airport?” he asked. I guess that meant there weren’t other plans to come and get me, not that I was surprised.

  “If you want,” I said, even though I did want him to, needed him to. I thought about the $40 in the wallet that would be returned to me tomorrow. Half of it would be gone if I used it to get to my parents’ house via taxi and once I got there, what would happen if I showed up alone? Hi, I’m home, or whatever.

  “You staying with Mom?” my brother asked, like he could feel my hesitation. Yes, he knew me that well. He knew my parents that well.

  “Where else am I going to stay?” I asked. Sure, I had thought about it, but the answers all came up empty. I had no one else and as sad as that was, I was still trying to find anywhere else to go.

  “You could stay with me,” he said.

  “What? Like in your room?” I joked, even though I could tell something was different. He was different.

  “No, Cass, like in my whole apartment.” He laughed.

  “Since when?” I asked, playing it cool, even though my insides felt like they were buzzing like a phone. Maybe going home wouldn’t be bad at all. My brother and me in our very own apartment. It would be the perfect place to hide until I figured out what the hell I was going to do with my life.

  “Yeah.” He paused. “I moved in with Marcy.”

  I stayed quiet on the line, trying to connect the dots. Marcy had been my brother’s girlfriend since he got back from Afghanistan six months ago. I’d met her a few times and she reminded me of a Cocker Spaniel. Had hair the same color and texture and the same expectant face, like she was always waiting for someone to say something she could get excited about. I didn’t think they were serious enough about each other to move in together, but maybe they had gotten that serious in the thirty days that I’d been gone. Maybe my being gone made him realize he needed to get his own life, allowed him to get his own life.

  “She would be totally cool with you crashing here,” he quickly added, like he was trying to cover up the words he’d just said.

  “Oh,” I said, knowing I needed to say something. There was a difference between crashing and living. Crashing meant a month tops—a month to figure out what the hell I was going to do next. Awesome.

  That’s what this last month was supposed to have accomplished and I’d only gotten as far as realizing I needed to forgive myself. It took thirty days to get there. Who knew how long it would take to figure out how.

  I picked up a pen and drew a circle on the Holiday Inn at the Arcata Airport pad, kept outlining it over and over until it bled through to the next page.

  “I thought you liked her,” my brother finally said.

  “I do,” I said, still drawing that circle. But liking someone and living with her are two different things.

  “Awesome,” he said, “this is perfect.” I could hear the nod of his head, his hundred-watt smile through his words, but he had a real, steady girlfriend now, so of course he was happy. Like I had been with Aaron before, well, before.

  Like I had almost been with Ben.

  Hopefully Marcy wouldn’t turn out to be a total slime wench who would chop my brother’s heart into cat food. Hopefully my brother had really finally found someone who would treat him the way he treated me. He deserved it. I didn’t want to ruin it and I knew if I moved in with them, I would probably ruin it.

  No, I would definitely ruin it, but where else did I have to go?

  “I’ll talk to her about it tonight,” he said.

  “Sure,” I said, agreeing on the surface, agreeing because I had no better options, but inside I was tired of being a burden to him. That was never clearer than when he finally had the chance at a life.

  “We can work it all out tomorrow when you’re home,” he said before he hung up.

  Home.

  It’s Mom and Dad’s house or my brother and Marcy’s apartment. Home doesn’t exist.

  The End Fuck

  Rawe was finally in her civilian clothes: high-waisted jeans and a denim button-down that made her look like she was ready to head to a rodeo. My time here was over, not like I needed Rawe’s mom-jean-assed reminder in my face while she packed up her duffel.

  Fanny Rawe’s fanny saying good-bye in the way only it could.

  She didn’t even take the shuttle with me to the airport. Instead she walked me to the entrance of the hotel, shook my hand, and wished me luck. I tried not to think that I kind of really needed a hug. Not necessarily from her, but from anyone.

  But this was what I got: my earrings, my brother’s dog tags, and my cinnamon gum, followed by a handshake, Good luck, and her mom-jean ass walking away from me.

  I knew that was what people said to you when your life was so shitty they didn’t know what else to say. It’s not like they could really say, Have fun, or, See you around, so they said, Good luck, like your life was magically going to improve from the truckload of suck it had been just because they told you that.

  Like Rawe had said, though, words weren’t magic. If my life was going to improve, it was up to me now.

  Words hadn’t been magic when Nez and I said good-bye, either. There was no Abracadabra, we’ve been through a ton of shit together and now I finally like you. There was just Later, Cassie and Later, Wynona, though I had to admit it was progress we used each other’s first names.

  Ben and I hadn’t said good-bye. Not that, considering the way I’d left things, he would have gone out of his way to find me. But he’d been so constant, relentless, even. It felt strange that he’d left a hole on the end. Of course, if I really thought about it, that had been my fault.

  I didn’t want to admit it, but I was a girl who’d given up when I got here and was still giving up. Even when faced with the possibility of something good, I gave up, because it was easier than knowing it wouldn’t last.

  I guess it was for the best. Ben was dangerous, the kind of boy who made me feel.

  I waited for the squat little van that was going to start my journey home. Maybe I would take the airport shuttle and make my flight and maybe I wouldn’t. Rawe was gone and she didn’t care. I was not her problem anymore. I wasn’t anyone’s problem anymore.

  The shuttle pulled up and stopped. The helpful guy took my duffel and threw it on the rack. My earrings were back in my ears, my brother’s dog tags were back around my neck, and I was chewing the recently returned cinnamon gum—sticking it in my mouth like French fries. My saliva was thick and sweet and made me feel like I was going to puke. I wanted to feel like I was going to puke. I wanted to feel anythi
ng other than the chilly fear I felt when I thought about what I might find when I landed.

  Sure, my brother, but would Marcy be with him? Would he have told her anything about me? Would he have told her everything about me? Would she give me the same sad look the squeaky-white-shoed nurse did when she walked me down to the exam room? If my brother told her, she would.

  I knew it was the look I would get every time she saw me: when she was getting me a blanket, a towel, making me eggs, treating me so much better than I deserved to be treated because she felt sorry for me.

  I felt my brother’s dog tags, cool from the air conditioning. I wondered if I would have to give them to her now.

  I was the only person in the van. I could have gotten rid of the driver and taken his Holiday Inn Airport Shuttle all the way to the ocean. I pictured it parked on the beach. I would have started a bonfire, a new life, alone on the sand. It wasn’t the worst idea I’d ever had—well, aside from the grand theft auto part.

  The van stopped at the airport’s passenger drop off and I got out. The helpful guy handed me my duffel bag, and I gave him a dollar even though I only had the $40 I’d come here with. I probably should have kept it in case things with my brother and his girlfriend went south.

  Considering things until that point, how could I expect my life to go any other way? It was south and deeper south. It was the South Pole and hell.

  I checked my duffel bag at the curb, walked into the airport, and looked up at the screen, searching for my gate. Even after having been back in society for two days, it still felt odd. All these people going places, living their lives, probably not crumpling into a mess of skin and sobbing when they got behind closed doors. Or maybe I was wrong. Turning Pines had taught me that there are a lot of different kinds of fucked-up people. It could only mean there were a lot of them.

  They were all just dealing with their shit like I was. Some of them were just better at hiding it.

  I found my gate number and started toward it, even though with each step I took, my mind was asking me the same question over and over. Was I really doing this? Really going home?

  I could keep asking, but the truth was it didn’t matter. I had nowhere else to go.

  There was more than an hour until my flight. The gate was empty, just black leather chairs lined up in rows. Even the little desk up at the front where everyone went to complain was deserted. The screen behind it didn’t even have my flight listed yet. Maybe my gate would change and I wouldn’t even notice. Maybe I would get lucky enough to miss my flight. Yes, that would have felt lucky today.

  An earthquake without fatalities but rendering the airport nonoperational would have felt lucky today.

  I wasn’t tired, but I lay down on one of the benches and closed my eyes, listening to the sounds of the airport around me. The nasally voice over the intercom asking people to pick up white courtesy phones, the wheels of suitcases whirring, the sound of babies screaming and people murmuring to each other that they hoped that baby wasn’t on their flight. And of course worse than all that—the sound of planes taking off. Planes that would eventually become the sound of one plane.

  My plane.

  I felt someone flick my nose. This person would be killed. Annihilated. My eyes shot open. My hands went immediately to fists.

  “Don’t say it.” Ben held up his hands. “Fuck off, Ben,” he said, moving his arms like a conductor indicating we were going to recite it together.

  “Yes, that,” I said, sitting up and rubbing my nose. I was acting like I couldn’t care less that Ben was standing in front of me, but I was relieved, the wall around my heart melting with warm, sweet heat. He had come to say good-bye.

  “We meet again,” he said, sort of fake bowing, still trying to be cute. The thing was he didn’t have to try that hard. He did look cute all cleaned up and ready to go home.

  We were both in our street clothes, jeans that were as dark as the night had been at camp and T-shirts, but we were the same people we had been in the woods—the same lost people who found something in each other and were still trying to figure out what it was.

  “Yeah, well, this is the only airport,” I said, not knowing what else to do except to make my lips shoot out stupid small talk. I now understood why sometimes people just talked about the weather or the long line they were standing in. It was because intimacy was hard. Saying real things was hard and sometimes saying nothing was hard.

  Especially when there was so much to say.

  “Right,” he said, nodding, waiting.

  “So,” I said.

  “Well,” he said.

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Exactly,” I said.

  I just needed to say good-bye to him, but I couldn’t stop thinking about our kiss. I hoped it was only on my mind because he was standing in front of me. I hoped this wasn’t a new addition to the thoughts I couldn’t stop. If so, there were way too many boys stuck in my head.

  “This is dumb,” he finally said, putting his hands in his back pockets and rocking on his heels.

  I was glad he had the guts to point that out, because I didn’t. He was right. There were a lot of things we needed to say to each other and they weren’t one-word niceties. Not that I would have been willing to admit any of those things before he did.

  “The thing is, Cassie,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck in that way guys do when they are exasperated, “I don’t really know what else to say. You don’t want to hear what I have to say.”

  “I do,” I said. I did, but I also knew it wasn’t fair for me to keep asking him to tell me, give me, reassure me, when I wasn’t able to respond with the same.

  Ben stood, waiting, maybe for me to jump into his arms, maybe for me to punch him in the nads.

  I understood that, with me, it was hard to know what to expect.

  “What am I supposed to do? We’re leaving.” I felt my eyes start to burn. I closed them. I was not crying, no fucking way, not again.

  “I know,” he said.

  “So, whatever this was—” I moved my hand back and forth between us. “It’s not anymore. Can’t be anymore.” My stomach felt queasy. It was wrong and I knew it, but I also knew it was necessary.

  “We were a was?” he asked, those brown eyes of his trying to say a million things.

  “No, Ben,” I said, “we are a was.”

  “Who says?” he asked. He leaned down and kissed me and I let him, his lips taking me away from the airport and back into that night in the woods when it was just him and me, our lives on a beautiful pause that started and ended when our lips touched. He stroked the side of my face, barely touching it, like he was afraid I would wake up.

  But I stayed in the dream. My abdomen filled with a yearning, an ache that might have made me fall to my knees if I were standing. I kept kissing him until the thought of him being so close to me, and soon being so far away, made it hard to breathe.

  “You said you didn’t want to hurt me again, so don’t,” I said, pulling away from him and touching my mouth. But I could still feel his lips there. Still wanted to feel them.

  “You could come with me,” he said.

  “You’re joking, right?” I asked. We’d known each other for a month. It was crazy for me to go with him. It was crazy for him to want me to. There was no way he could mean that.

  Even though it sounded so good.

  “This is sad,” he said. “This is not how I wanted this to end.”

  He’d said it: end. The word I knew would come eventually. At least it was coming now.

  “How did you want it to end?” I asked because I wanted the fantasy. I knew I couldn’t have the reality, so I needed that at least.

  “I didn’t,” he said, looking down. “I wanted you next to me. That’s pretty much it.”

  It was what I’d wanted, too. Why was I still too scared to take it?

  “You make it sound so easy,” I said, picturing it in my mind. We were in a gar
age, he on his drum set, me sitting in front of the bass drum, so close I could feel the thump of it. Just listening to him play and not thinking, not wanting anything else but him next to me.

  I hated Aaron for taking that away from me. I hated myself for allowing him to. But there it was. He had. Even with a boy like Ben, who was nothing like Aaron, who had proven it by getting to miles less than first base for most of the time we knew each other, he had.

  “It should have been,” he said, shaking his head and turning. Was I really going to let him go? Considering we both had different planes waiting for us, different lives waiting for us, was it even my decision?

  “Ben.” I didn’t know what I was going to say, but I didn’t want him to go.

  “Cassie,” he said, his back still to me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “For what?” he asked.

  I wanted to go to him. To kiss him again, right there in the middle of the airport like two people in the movies. If only it could be a movie so it could have ended there—with us kissing, with us not having to answer all the unanswered questions.

  “For being me,” I said.

  “And you are?”

  “Scared,” I said, the word coming out shaky.

  His eyes flicked to mine. “That’s not you,” he said. Then he walked out of the gate and away from me.

  I guess this really was the end.

  I sat there and told myself I wouldn’t do anything until someone else came to the gate. Made a weird game of staying put. It was a good excuse, but the truth was my body hurt too much to move. It was the ache I’d felt at the clinic, multiplied exponentially, and I knew it was because I’d lost something I wouldn’t have the chance to care about—again.

  After ten minutes, I finally got up and went into the bathroom to splash cold water on my face.

  The bathroom was empty. Good news, considering I couldn’t deny it was possible that I went in there to do more than splash cold water on my face. I felt like maybe I was going to cry.

  I stared at myself in the mirror, trying to fight the sting. It had been a long time since I really looked at myself. Even at the hotel I scurried out of the bathroom after brushing my hair, probably because I was afraid to. Afraid of seeing the girl I had become. I’d turned pale, thin, certainly not someone who had been in the wilderness for a month. Honestly, I looked more like someone who had been underground for thirty days.