Severed Heads, Broken Hearts

by Robyn Schneider

  “Do you have any idea,” she fumed, “how difficult it is to keep a baguette from going stale in a suitcase overnight?”

  This set everyone into hysterics.

  I was decently buzzed by that point, the room spinning gently as I sat on one of the beds with Cassidy curled against my shoulder like a cat. We were playing Fruit Assassin on Austin’s iPad, trying to sabotage each other with renegade swipes. The music was still on, quieter stuff now.

  “Hey,” Cassidy said, putting down the iPad. “Hi.”

  “Hi back,” I said. Yep, definitely drunk.

  “I think Blair likes you,” Cassidy said, biting her lip to keep from giggling. “I’ve talked with her approximately twice ever, so I am an expert in this and trust me, she is probably even in love with you.”

  “Well, of course she is,” I teased. “I’m irresistibly charming.”

  “Oh, you are?” Cassidy grinned. Her face was inches from mine. Her braid had come undone, and her hair tumbled over her shoulders, smelling of mint shampoo.

  And then Toby bellowed, “Fine! You guys can all be beautiful snowflakes! I’m gonna go over here and be an awkward snowflake!”

  Cassidy glanced at me and started to laugh while Toby spluttered indignantly at Sam and Austin, not truly angry. And I felt the almostness of our moment drift away, over the railing of the hotel balcony, and into the shopping center where we’d all pretended to celebrate Cassidy’s birthday dinner. And maybe it was just as well, after all, since I wanted our first kiss to be more than some drunken thing at a debate tournament.

  The party ended around two, everyone making a halfhearted attempt to clean up the evidence before the Wentworth team went back to their own hotel rooms to catch a couple hours’ sleep. Cassidy brewed coffee for everyone in the little coffeemaker, and we drank it out of plastic champagne flutes.

  “Okay, time to figure this out,” Toby said, swaggering out of the bathroom in a hotel robe, his hair wet and his contacts swapped for glasses. “Who’s bunking with whom?”

  Phoebe appeared in the doorway to the other room wearing a towel and flip-flops long enough to announce that she and Luke were sharing a bed in there.

  Sam and Austin looked at each other and shrugged.

  “I don’t mind if you don’t snore,” Sam said.

  “Yeah, same.” Austin shuffled past Toby and disappeared into the bathroom.

  “Either of you want a bed to yourself?” Toby asked Cassidy and me.

  Cassidy glanced at me, but I knew better than to say anything.

  “We’ll just share this one,” she said, patting the duvet. “Captain’s privileges, Ellicott. You get your own bed.”

  And that was how I wound up sharing a bed with Cassidy Thorpe.

  Before I knew what was happening, Cassidy had changed into a tank top and pajama shorts and crawled under the covers. I came out of the bathroom in my boxers and T-shirt, feeling horribly self-conscious. Austin and Sam were already asleep, scooted toward opposite edges of their bed, both of them snoring.

  Cassidy put a finger to her lips and nodded at Austin, whose mouth was wide open.

  I grinned.

  “Hey,” I whispered, “I didn’t bring pajamas. Do you mind if, er, is it okay?”

  I was trying to be a gentleman about climbing into bed with her in my boxers since I’d stupidly underpacked, but Cassidy shook her head and peeled back the covers.

  “Just get in,” she said.

  I sat down, plugging in my phone on the nightstand, an action that felt incredibly grown up when there was a girl on the other side of the bed. And then I felt Cassidy’s hand on my leg.

  “Does it still hurt?” she asked, sliding her fingers over my knee.

  “No,” I lied quietly.

  Cassidy’s fingers traced over my scars, and I could tell she didn’t believe me.

  “You don’t have to worry,” I said. “About kicking me in your sleep or anything.”

  “But I wouldn’t want to.” She propped herself on one elbow, staring at me. “You’ll have to hold me tight, to make sure I don’t.”

  And with that, she rolled over and turned off the light.

  I crawled under the covers, waiting for my eyes to adjust and having the strange idea that Cassidy could see me just fine in complete blackness. The blinds were drawn, and the room was thick with an expectant sort of darkness filled with sleeping bodies and girls wearing tiny blue pajama shorts.

  If I stretched, our arms would touch. The possibility of it, of our skin meeting under the covers, thrilled me. I wondered if she was thinking about it too. And then she sighed.

  “What?” I whispered.

  “Shhh,” Cassidy whispered back, scooting toward me until her head was on my shoulder. “Don’t ruin it.”

  Even though it was late and I was tired, I must have lain there for an hour, frustrated and hard and unable to do anything about it as Cassidy slept with her cheek against my shoulder.

  17

  I WOKE UP the next morning to the chorus of everyone’s coordinated cell phone alarms, feeling like death. My arms were wrapped around Cassidy, and somehow my head was on her shoulder, though I was certain it had been the other way around when we’d fallen asleep.

  “Hey,” I said gently. “Wake up.”

  “Mmmmm,” Cassidy murmured sleepily. Her hair spilled off the pillow in a fierce tangle, and it was so incredibly intimate, waking up with her there, in my arms, that I could hardly stand it.

  From the next bed, Sam groaned.

  “Dude, I thought you were gonna stay on your side!” he complained.

  “That’s so sweet,” I called. “Who was the big spoon?”

  “Shut up, Faulkner,” Austin grumbled.

  Cassidy snuggled against my arm, curling into a ball.

  “Five more minutes,” she whispered.

  “Come on,” I said, nudging her, “you have to get up and iron my shirt.”

  That got her.

  Cassidy’s eyes flew open, and her mouth twisted into a smirk.

  “Good morning to you too,” she said.

  I DON'T KNOW how we managed to get dressed, gather our stuff, and get down to the lobby on time, but we did. I thought Ms. Weng was going to suspect us for sure, the state we were in, but she hardly noticed. There were circles under her eyes and she kept yawning. The jerks from Rancho had probably kept her up half the night with their Beer Pong.

  “Can we stop somewhere for coffee?” Toby asked, and Ms. Weng actually agreed, so by the time we arrived at SDAPA, we were all handling the morning a lot better.

  Ms. Weng drifted off toward the coaches’ lounge, and we headed toward our table in the cafeteria to drop our stuff and wait for the next round to post. The girls left to apply makeup in the bathroom and Toby wandered off toward a quiet corner of the cafeteria, motioning for me to follow.

  “So,” he said pointedly, grinning as though he was accusing me of “nailing it,” “are you two together now?”

  Reflexively, I glanced toward our table, even though the girls still hadn’t returned.

  “I don’t know,” I said truthfully. “Maybe.”

  “You’re certainly acting like it.”

  He was right; we were acting like it. I’d spent the whole night with a girl cuddled against my shoulder like we’d just had sex—a girl I was in love with, and whom I’d never even kissed. And I had no idea what to do about it.

  “Would it bother you if we were?” I asked.

  “Well, I’m not going to fly into a jealous rage or anything, if that’s what you’re worried about.” Toby smirked, but saw that I was serious. “Honestly? I’ve sort of known it was going to happen. She’s into you.”

  “You’re sure?” I asked.

  “No, I want you to make a fool of yourself and actually be rejected for the first time in your life. I’m like the proverbial ostrich that kicks sand in your face, my friend.”

  “Actually, they bury their beaks in the sand,” I said.

  “Just
testing.”

  The third round posted then, before I could say anything, and everyone crushed toward the far wall to get a look. Toby and I pushed our way to the front, finding our last names and school name printed on the tournament roster. We memorized our room numbers, muttering them under our breaths.

  We were walking back to the table when Cassidy grabbed my arm. Her expression was serious, and I noticed that she wasn’t wearing the Gryffindor tie anymore, just a plain school uniform.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Third round is posted.” I nodded toward the wall. “I’ll wait for you so we can walk together.”

  “Ezra,” Cassidy said. “We have to talk. Now.” And I knew that whatever it was she needed to say, it wasn’t going to be good. I followed her out of the cafeteria and into the courtyard. She stopped by this mosaic wall featuring a perfect day at the beach; it was sort of cruel, if you thought about it, putting something like that up in a school. Cassidy looked nervous, which didn’t bode well. And she still wasn’t saying anything. I was suddenly overcome with a heavy sense of dread.

  “You can tell me,” I said. “Whatever it is.” Cassidy tucked her hair behind her ears. She was wearing it down, in loose waves, and it made her look younger, somehow, and more vulnerable.

  “You can’t go to your third round,” she said. “You have to go to mine. I switched us.”

  Whatever I’d been expecting her to say, this wasn’t it.

  This wasn’t even close. I frowned, not really understanding.

  “You’ve been competing as me,” she explained. “The judges don’t see our names, just, like, a string of numbers, so I sent you to my rounds yesterday, not yours.”

  “Wait,” I said, as the full impact of what Cassidy was saying sunk in. “All this time, we’ve been cheating?”

  “No!” Cassidy said fiercely. “I just . . . I’m done competing, Ezra. I left this, and you brought me back. So I figured you’d be my way out of having to really do this. Like I wasn’t really here after all, if you were me.”

  “Yeah,” I said slowly, “but if I’m competing as you, then you’re competing as me. Which is cheating.”

  Cassidy shook her head.

  “I threw the first match,” she promised. “Neither of us is going to make the finals.”

  “It’s still wrong,” I said. “Even if neither of us wins. So, what, I’m supposed to keep competing as you all day?”

  “Basically,” Cassidy said, her chin jutting stubbornly. And then, as if in slow motion, I watched her bravado crumple. Her shoulders sagged, and her eyes welled with tears.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean for you to find out like this. I don’t want to be here, to be a part of this. I thought you’d understand.”

  “Maybe I’d understand better if you told me what this is actually about.” But even as I said it, I knew she wouldn’t tell me. Not there, with last night’s alcohol seeping through our pores, by that ridiculous beach mosaic, as hundreds of teenagers floated past in their blazers and button-downs.

  “Ezra,” she said, “please.”

  I sighed, looking at her. Cassidy’s eyes were liquid, her face pale.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “But neither of us can take back what we did. You signed me up. I switched us. Go along with this and we’re even.”

  “I don’t care about being even,” I said. “Something’s going on with you.”

  “Nothing’s going on,” Cassidy snapped. “You remember the first week of school, how everyone stared at you and you walked around like you wanted to disappear? That’s what being here feels like for me. That’s what I’m acting like. I thought you’d get it. I thought we were alike.”

  “We are,” I said, wondering how she’d done that, made me go from being upset to comforting her. “You’re right, and I’m sorry. Just . . . give me a minute to think.”

  I didn’t use CliffsNotes, or copy my friends’ assignments, or buy term papers off the internet. I was hopelessly moral about those sorts of things. Cassidy had been wrong to switch us, but it was randomized which debaters matched against each other in the preliminary rounds. If neither of us made it to the finals, it didn’t really matter. We weren’t taking anyone’s spot, or using an unfair advantage to get ahead. We were simply switched. So I supposed, if it came to it, it was a moral sort of cheating. And if she’d forced me to cheat, I was the reason she felt like she had to.

  “We have to see it through,” I said. “If we switch back and match against someone we’ve already debated, it would be a disaster.”

  “I knew you’d do this for me, Ezra. I knew you’d understand.” Cassidy pulled me into a hug, burying her face in my chest, and I believed then that she’d eventually decide to tell me what all of this was about, and that, whatever it was, I was probably imagining something far worse.

  I DIDN'T SAY anything to Toby about the cheating. Cassidy and I went off to each other’s rounds that morning and acted like nothing at all was the matter, like the biggest thing between us was that we’d shared a bed.

  Final rounds were posted that afternoon; none of us had made it. Everyone looked at Cassidy in shock, asking who had beaten the unbeatable Cassidy Thorpe, but she just grinned and refused to say anything, as though the joke was so good that she couldn’t bear to share it.

  Except she had shared it—with me. It was my joke too, and I didn’t find it at all funny.

  Cassidy had said we were alike, and I almost believed it. She’d made me feel like I was rescuing her, but the more I thought about it, the more I wondered why she hadn’t simply won the tournament, a final demonstration of why she was this unbeatable champion. And then I wondered if it really mattered. Because every time I closed my eyes, I pictured her nestled against me in that hotel bed, her legs soft and warm against mine, and out of all the things I wanted but knew I couldn’t have, part of me hoped that Cassidy would be the one exception.

  18

  THAT NIGHT I sat at my desk going over Moreno’s corrections on my Gatsby practice essay. The lampposts in Meadowbridge Park had been on for hours, illuminating the honeysuckle bushes. I thought about Cassidy’s flashlight, about how I stood at my window waiting for her room to go dark, and how F. Scott Fitzgerald would have loved that.

  Cooper whined for attention. He’d draped himself across my feet and was chewing on a rawhide bone, holding it vertically between his paws like he was smoking a pipe. I leaned down to pet him, and he sighed.

  “You’re right,” I said. “I know. I’m hopeless.”

  I reached for the switch on my desk lamp and flashed HELLO.

  The lights switched off in Cassidy’s bedroom, and her flashlight flicked on.

  SORRY.

  “She’s sorry,” I told Cooper, because he didn’t understand Morse code.

  He lifted his head as if to say But you already knew that, old sport.

  Her flashlight flickered again.

  FORGIVE ME.

  This time, I didn’t hesitate.

  ALWAYS, I replied.

  MY MOM WOKE me up way too early the next morning.

  “Ezraaaaa,” she trilled, poking her head into my room. “You have company.”

  “Ughhh, what time is it?” I managed.

  “Nine o’clock,” she said. “Really, honey, you’ve been so tired lately. Do I need to call Dr. Cohen?”

  Blearily, I realized that I needed to stop using “I’m tired,” as an excuse to spend time alone in my room.

  “I was up late finishing an essay.”

  “Well, there’s a very nice girl downstairs who wants you to go have breakfast with all of your friends from the debate team.”

  I sat up.

  “Cassidy’s here?”

  “I had her wait in the kitchen with your father. She’s very pretty, honey. And her parents are both doctors.”

  I had this horrifying realization that my nightmares were true: While I was sleeping, my parents had been downstairs grilling the girl I liked
on what her parents did for a living.

  When I dashed into the kitchen five minutes later, still buttoning my shirt, I found Cassidy sitting cross-legged on the tile, scratching Cooper behind the ears.

  “Hi!” she said brightly. “You forgot about team breakfast, didn’t you?”

  “Oops,” I said sheepishly, mostly for my parents’ benefit, since I was fairly certain there was no team breakfast.

  “Can we bring Cooper?” Cassidy asked.

  Cooper lifted his head, halfway interested.

  “To a restaurant?” Mom asked, dismayed.

  “Of course not, Mrs. Faulkner,” Cassidy said. “Everyone’s coming over to my house for pancakes. Our housekeeper won’t mind. It’s just across the park.”

  “Well, I suppose,” my mom said doubtfully.

  The moment we were out the front door, Cassidy holding Cooper’s leash, I raised an eyebrow. “What’s really going on?” I asked.

  “You mean you didn’t believe me?” Cassidy made her eyes go wide and innocent. “Honestly, Ezra, I’m hurt.”

  I followed her toward the pedestrian gate that led out into the park. Cooper bounded ahead, prancing importantly. He had part of his leash dangling from his mouth, and he looked very pleased with himself.

  “There’s sunscreen in my purse, by the way. If you want to borrow some,” Cassidy said, holding open the gate.

  “Why would I want to borrow sunscreen?”

  “We’re going on a treasure hunt. Didn’t I mention?”

  “No, you told me we were eating pancakes with the debate team. At your house,” I said.

  “Clearly that was code for ‘We’re going on a treasure hunt.’ Which is why we need Cooper here. So he can be our truffle sniffer.”

  She turned right on the path, which led toward Eastwood’s hiking trails.

  “All right,” I conceded. “Give me the sunscreen.”

  She dug it out of her purse, and I slathered it on while she played with Cooper. He gave me a look as if to say So this is the girl, old sport.

  “You’re in charge of the GPS,” Cassidy told me, handing me her phone. “Don’t close the app or we’ll have to start over.”