Severed Heads, Broken Hearts

by Robyn Schneider

  31

  I DROVE HOME that evening with the strange impression that whatever had happened between Cassidy and myself wasn’t about us at all. It was about her brother. His sudden death—the way she’d left school, moved home for senior year. It was like she was trying to find some place where she could escape from the fact that it had happened, or perhaps come to terms with it.

  So many missing pieces of Cassidy Thorpe clicked into place. The boys’ clothes she sometimes wore, the ghostly house, the concerned lady pulling her aside at the debate tournament, the desperate way she’d made sure to lose.

  I knew what it was like to have people stare at you with pity. For everyone’s gaze to follow you through the hallways as though you were marked by tragedy and no longer belonged. And I could understand why she hadn’t wanted that. Why she would have kept her brother’s death to herself. Why she would choose a town where she barely knew anyone, and a boyfriend who knew how broken felt.

  Suddenly, I realized what an unforgiveable dick I’d been at the psychiatrist’s. No one’s dead, I’d told her. I couldn’t have picked a more horrible thing to say if I’d tried.

  And then it occurred to me: It wasn’t that Cassidy didn’t want to date me, she just didn’t want to tell me. But now I knew. I knew why she seemed so deeply miserable sometimes, why she’d pleaded with me to just let it go.

  It had all started the night of the homecoming dance. She’d been fine before then. Even on Friday, when Mrs. Martin had us plan an ideal vacation, and Cassidy had gotten carried away telling me about this art concept hotel where you slept in coffins. Actually, yeah, that was pretty morbid.

  “But if we stayed there, we wouldn’t be able to share a bed,” I’d said. “A coffin. Whatever.”

  “Oh, we’d figure something out,” Cassidy had assured me, putting her hand on my leg even though we were right there in Spanish class.

  It was only the next day that everything had curdled.

  So there Cassidy was, on the afternoon of the homecoming dance. Maybe she’d started to get ready. Painted her nails or whatever it is girls do. Cut the tags off her dress. Picked up the phone after I’d made that joke about getting her a lei. And then she’d remembered something. The anniversary of her brother’s death? No, it hadn’t been long enough for that. Maybe she’d forgotten something instead. His birthday? Some tradition they had? And suddenly the dance didn’t matter anymore, nothing mattered except the fact that he was gone and he wasn’t gone because she couldn’t escape his death no matter what she did.

  So she’d gone to the park, because Cassidy liked parks, because that was where she went when things needed to be said or thought through, and that was where I’d found her. It had gotten dark and she hadn’t realized, and then it was too late to explain the truth that she’d been hiding from everyone for so long. She hadn’t expected to get close to anyone at Eastwood, and now that I was there, what could she say so that I’d leave?

  So she’d lied. Of course she’d lied. I’d caught her off guard and she didn’t have time to make it good. So it was her boyfriend she was there with, and I was just an amusement. It was a lie inspired by the very story I’d told her about how Charlotte and I had ended, and she hadn’t realized how completely it would shatter me. She’d tried to take it back—changed her mind—but I was already leaving. And when she’d finally had the courage to go back to class and face me, she hadn’t been able to face me at all.

  I played this explanation over in my head as I drove home against the purpling sky, past the endlessly pristine golf courses that lay between Eastwood and Back Bay. If I’d gotten it right, then Cassidy had pushed me away because it was easier than explaining that her brother was gone, and there was nowhere else to run to pretend that it hadn’t happened. If I’d gotten it right, then we were never meant to break up that night in the park, and we were both hurting because of it.

  MY FATHER STOPPED me when I got home.

  “Come on in here a second, champ,” he said, beckoning me into his home office with a schmoozy grin.

  I shrugged out of my backpack and took a seat on his sofa. The scent of dinner cooking drifted in from the kitchen—it smelled suspiciously like Italian food, which couldn’t be right.

  “Is Mom making lasagna?” I asked hopefully as my father tabbed between multiple Excel files.

  “Gluten free.” He swiveled his chair around to face me and steepled his fingers.

  “Maybe it tastes better.” I somehow managed to keep a straight face.

  “First step: lasagna; next step: pizza,” my father said, winking. And then he crossed his ankle over his knee, and got down to business. “I hear you’ve been keeping busy these days.”

  “College applications,” I said. “It’s easier to get them done at the library.”

  He said he was happy to hear I was being proactive about my future, and I nodded and listened while he launched into one of those endless stories about his good old days as chapter president of Sigma Alpha Epsilon. When he finished, he beamed at me, waiting I suppose for me to confirm my ambitions to follow in his footsteps like we’d always planned. But I didn’t.

  Instead, I told him I was thinking of going East. I named a string of schools whose brochures I had stashed in my desk drawer. His eyebrows went up at a couple of them, and I didn’t blame him. Mentioned history, English, chemistry. Mentioned that I thought I could do better than state college, and that I wanted to at least try.

  “Well, I’m surprised,” my father said, scrutinizing me. “You’ve grown up a lot this year, kiddo. You’ve had to, and I’m sorry about that. But I’m glad to see that you have a plan.”

  “You mean you’re okay with it?” I asked, hardly daring to believe it.

  “I don’t presume to speak for your mother.” He smiled wryly. “But I think it would be good for you. And of course my old fraternity has chapters at most schools.”

  I laughed, for once finding one of my father’s pseudo-jokes funny. And when my mom called us in to dinner and stood beaming over a platter of only mildly healthy-tasting lasagna, we finally had something to discuss besides light fixtures.

  AFTER DINNER, I drove over to Toby’s house.

  “Hey,” he said, ushering me into his bedroom. He was wearing glasses and pajama pants, and it reminded me of when we were little, the two of us sneaking around the house at night when we were supposed to be asleep.

  He passed me an old N64 controller, the see-through one we used to fight over, and put in a game without asking. It was some retro Mario I’d given him for an elementary-school birthday back when it was the cool new thing, and we sat there and played it, like we had a hundred times, secret levels and all, except this time felt different.

  “Do you want to see the article?” Toby finally asked.

  I told him I did, and he pulled it up on his computer.

  Sure enough, Owen Alexander Thorpe. Graduated first in his class from the Barrows School, gone on to Yale, and then Johns Hopkins for medical school. He’d died at twenty-three, unexpectedly, from a sudden cardiac arrest caused by a thromboembolism. I’d picked up enough from my time in the hospital to know what that meant: Owen had died of a broken heart.

  There was a picture, too, a cheesy tourist shot, taking up half of the screen. I could see the Eiffel Tower in the background, the ground slick with rain, some strangers still under their umbrellas. Owen was smiling in this embarrassed way, his blond hair flopping into his eyes, Cassidy’s particular shade of blue that evidently ran in their family. A scarf was around his neck, and his arm was slung around someone who had been cropped from the picture. I could see the corner of a trench coat, the edge of a shopping bag.

  To his credit, Toby let me sit there staring at his computer screen for a good long while. It was only when his neighbor’s lights came on, splashing through his bedroom window, that I looked up, remembering where I was.

  The house across the street had turned on their Christmas lights. Toby and I looked out the window horr
orstruck by the pair of twelve-foot-tall glowing inflatable snowmen that had ballooned out of nowhere, bookending a neon nativity. Someone had climbed onto the roof and used dozens of strands of lights to spell out “HAPPY BDAY JESUS” in flashing red and green.

  “It’s not even Thanksgiving,” I said.

  “They could have at least gone to the effort to spell out ‘birthday,’” Toby observed, shutting the blinds. “So, what are you going to do?”

  I sighed and raked a hand through my hair.

  “Um,” I said. “Knock on her door with flowers?”

  It sounded pathetic even as I said it. Like I was giving her some belated funeral bouquet.

  “Yeah?” Toby asked doubtfully.

  “Ugh, I don’t know,” I said wretchedly. “Look, I love her. Loved her, whatever. And if I can make things right between us—because I just really, completely miss her and think she misses me, too—then I’m going over there and knocking on her damned door.”

  “This is Cassidy we’re talking about.” Toby raised an eyebrow, trying to convey the full gravitas of the situation. “She called you a washed-up, podunk, unoriginal townie.”

  “I remember,” I said drily, hoping Toby was going somewhere with this that didn’t contribute solely to his own amusement.

  “And you want to show up at her front door with flowers?”

  I winced, catching Toby’s point immediately.

  “Okay, bad plan,” I muttered.

  “What you need is a lawnmower and a boom box,” Toby suggested. “Or a TARDIS. You could build her a TARDIS, invite her to come away with you on an adventure.”

  I knew Toby wasn’t serious, but something about that last part got to me. An adventure. Cassidy had given me one once, as an apology for the debate tournament.

  “You’re not even listening to me, are you?” Toby complained.

  “Nope.” Because a strange idea had started to take shape in my mind, something that certainly couldn’t be considered ordinary. I knew how I was going to win her back.

  THE NEXT MORNING, I woke up at dawn. I put on dark clothes and slipped out of the house while the whole world slept. Just as the first lights began to turn on in Terrace Bluffs, I crept back home.

  It was too early to take a shower, and I was afraid I’d wake my parents, so I scrubbed off the dirt and paint as best I could with a damp washcloth and changed into something more presentable.

  I waited, and I paced, and when the clock hit seven, I couldn’t stand it any longer. I crept downstairs and was tying my shoes when Cooper padded into the foyer. He cocked his head at me and whined.

  “Shhh,” I told him.

  What’s this about, old sport? his eyes seemed to say.

  “I’ll be back. I’m just going to see Cassidy,” I whispered.

  At the mention of her name, Cooper perked up and whined louder.

  “Stop that! You’ll wake up everyone!”

  But it was no use. Cooper followed me to the front door, letting out another insistent whine.

  “Do you want to come with me, Cooper?” I asked in exasperation. “Is that it? Either you come, or I don’t go?”

  He started turning circles at the word “go,” so I gave up and went to get his leash.

  “You have to be good,” I told him, clipping it onto his collar. “I’m serious. I’m not supposed to be walking you. You can’t tug the leash or anything.”

  I had the impression that he understood, because when I let him out the front door, he stopped to wait for me, as though sensing that it was a special occasion.

  The streets were empty, and gray with fog, which I’d been hoping would burn off, but no such luck. The pavement was damp, and the windshields of the cars we passed were beaded with condensation. Even the gate to Meadowbridge Park was slippery.

  Cooper sniffed indignantly when he realized we were headed across the wet grass, but I told him that he was the one who’d insisted on coming along, and he dutifully pranced through it with his nose in the air, making me laugh.

  I wasn’t laughing when he shook the water out of his fur at the other side, though.

  “Cooper!” I scolded.

  You asked for it, old sport, his expression seemed to say.

  I sighed and supposed he was right. And the more I thought about it, I was glad I’d brought him along, since Cassidy had always adored him.

  When her house came into view, I breathed a sigh of relief. I’d half expected him to have disappeared, but he was still there, adorning her front lawn with magnificent irony: my tumbleweed snowman.

  He was about five feet tall, with button eyes and a piece of licorice for a mouth. An old scarf around his neck fluttered in the breeze. He sat there, still slightly wet from the spray paint. A snowman in a town where it didn’t snow, made by a boy who couldn’t wait to leave, and given to a girl who had never belonged.

  Toby had been right—now wasn’t the time for flowers. Now was the time for grand gestures. The time to build a snowman out of tumbleweeds.

  Cooper stared up at me, wondering why we’d suddenly stopped, and I whispered for him to wait. He cocked his head and then relieved himself on a neighbor’s rosebush.

  The fog was thinning, finally. We were across the street from Cassidy’s house, and I pictured her coming out the front door in her pajamas, her hair mussed from sleep, grinning with delight when she caught sight of the snowman.

  I took out my phone and dialed her number. Waited three rings. Four.

  And then a sleepy, murmured hello.

  “Come outside,” I told her.

  “Ezra, is that you?” she mumbled.

  “If you’re not standing on your front lawn in five minutes, I’m ringing the doorbell until you do.”

  “You’re not serious,” she protested.

  “Doorbell,” I threatened. “Outside. Five minutes.”

  And then I hung up.

  “Time to hide,” I told Cooper, but he wouldn’t cooperate with me at all.

  He was acting strangely, his ears perked, body rigid, hackles raised.

  “Come on, Coop,” I urged, tugging his leash. “You’ll give us away.”

  Finally I managed to coax him across the street, behind a parked car, just as Cassidy slipped out of her house.

  She’d thrown on jeans and that green sweater she always wore. She looked so beautiful—so vulnerable—hugging her arms across her chest in the gray light of early morning as she padded down the front walk.

  She was frowning, and then she caught sight of the snowman and laughed. It was the happiest I’d seen her in a long time.

  “Ezra?” she called doubtfully.

  “Yeah, hi,” I said sheepishly, joining her on the lawn.

  Cooper rubbed his nose against her leg, and she yawned, scratching him behind the ears.

  “Hello, gorgeous,” she cooed. “Did you make me this snowman?”

  “He did,” I said. “All by himself. He dragged me here so I could call you to come see it.”

  “It’s wonderful,” Cassidy said, and then she bit her lip, her expression serious. “Here, I’ll help you take it down.”

  For a moment, I didn’t think I’d heard her correctly.

  “You’ll help me take it down? I just spent all night making the freaking thing.”

  Cassidy sighed. Stared at the grass. Pulled her sleeves over her hands.

  “I didn’t ask you to,” she muttered.

  “No, you didn’t,” I said angrily. “God, I’m trying to apologize for what I said, okay? I’m trying to give you something interesting and weird and wonderful so that maybe you’ll finally talk to me about your brother, and you want me to take it down?”

  “I want you to take it down,” Cassidy said coolly, her eyes darting up to meet mine. “And I told you to let it go. I told you it was better not knowing.”

  “Evidently I didn’t listen.”

  “Yeah, evidently,” she said, mocking me. “Now if you’re not going to help get rid of this snowman, please, just
—please leave.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Come on, Cooper, we’re going. Cassidy doesn’t want to talk to us right now because she’s mad I figured out why we broke up.”

  “You didn’t,” Cassidy called after me. “You just found the riddle.”

  But I was sick of riddles, and I was sick of Cassidy’s unpredictable moods, and I was sick of never, ever being good enough for her.

  I slammed open the gate to the park, and Cooper promptly sat down on the sidewalk, refusing to budge.

  “This is the last thing I need,” I told him. “I can’t drag you. You have to walk.”

  Cooper glared at me, like maybe he thought I should go back there and help Cassidy wreck another thing I’d mistakenly thought she’d wanted. Finally, he got up and followed me into the park.

  The haze still hadn’t burned off, and it was almost impossible to make out the bright blue of the swing set, much less the other side of the park.

  “Ezra!” Cassidy called, and I turned, squinting back at her across the park. She was at the gate. She hadn’t let me walk away after all.

  “Ezra, run!” she screamed, her voice tinged with panic.

  And then I saw the coyote.

  It was enormous, five feet long at least, gliding soundlessly through the fog.

  “Run!” she screamed again, but I couldn’t, and part of me knew that the coyote could sense it. I stood frozen in terror, watching that huge animal stalk toward me through the amorphous fog.

  And then Cooper let out a ferocious bark and yanked his leash from my hand. He bounded toward the coyote, snarling and barking, his leash dragging behind him over the damp grass.

  The two animals were scrabbling for purchase at each other’s necks, locked in fierce combat at the lip of the sandbox, while we both watched helplessly.

  I limped toward them, Cassidy’s screams turning into choked sobs as she pressed her hands over her mouth. But what chance did Cooper have? A sixteen-year-old poodle against a wild coyote?

  “Get out of here!” I screamed at the coyote, but there was already so much blood. The coyote’s jaws were locked around Cooper’s throat, and Cooper was bleating, making these horrible whining noises, and my heart was pounding, and all I could think was no, this isn’t possible, this can’t be real.