Telling

by Marilyn Reynolds

  “Maybe Dorian would like to see me again if I called him and told him he could see Tangle,” Robbie said.

  “You’d better only see Dorian at school,” I told Robbie.

  “Yeah, but he’s never going to play with me again!” Robbie said, getting louder with each word. “And he’d like Tangle, so then he’d like me. I’m going to call him right now,” he said, climbing out of my bed.

  I grabbed his arm.

  “That’s not a good idea,” I told him.

  “Yes, it is! Dorian loves kitties!”

  “Yes, but Dorian can’t come over anymore,” I told him.

  “Why not? Why not?”

  “Because!” I yelled at him. “The Sloanes hate me and I hate them and none of us can ever even see each other again!”

  “I’m going to call anyway!” he yelled. “You’re not my boss! You’re not my boss! YOU’RE NOT MY BOSS!”

  He went running to the hall phone, picked it up, and started dialing. I ran after him, grabbed the receiver from him and slammed it back. Daddy came out of their bedroom, rubbing his eyes.

  “What’s all this commotion about so early on a Sunday morning?” he asked.

  “Cassie’s bossing me around and I want to call Dorian,” Robbie said.

  “Cassie’s right, Robbie, you can’t call Dorian.”

  Daddy reminded Robbie of how Angie had treated me, and said that Fred had treated me even worse, and that we were never to go to the Sloanes’ house again, and that none of the Sloanes were ever to come to our house.

  “Try to be friends with Dorian at school,” Daddy said. “It’s not Dorian’s fault his parents are like that. But school’s the only place you can see him . . . Come on now, help me fix pancakes.”

  I went back to my room to check on Tangle. I felt sorry for Robbie, but I felt great about how I’d completed my counseling assignment. In fact, I could hardly wait for the next session with Dr. Shipper.

  Chapter

  17

  Guess what?” Mandy asked, out of breath from running to meet me as I turned the corner to school.

  “Guess what for me, too,” I said.

  “What?” Mandy asked.

  “I got a baby kitten Saturday. Come see her after school ― she’s so cute!”

  Then I remembered Mandy’s guess what.

  “What?” I asked her.

  “Aunt Betty, remember my rich Aunt Betty? She’s going to let me have a swim party at her house on Saturday. You know, a ‘let’s get ready for summer, school’s out’ party. You’ve got to help me, Cassie. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  I didn’t know if Mandy’s Aunt Betty was really rich or not, but she sure was richer than anyone else we knew. She lived in a big house up in the Heights. She had a swimming pool, hot tub, dressing rooms, and a sort of recreation room with a kitchen, all in her backyard. Oh, yeah, and a shuffle-board game in one cemented area and a brick barbecue in another.

  “We can invite twenty-four kids, and we can start at 1:00 in the afternoon. We can bring stuff to eat for dinner, and dance in the rec room, and we don’t have to end the party until 11:00. Isn’t it great, Cassie?”

  I had to admit, even though I’m not often enthused about parties, that this one sounded pretty good.

  During English we started making lists of people we’d invite, and lists of food we wanted to have. Marlow, in his last-week-of-school tieless shirt, handed back some term pa­pers. I got a C- with a note saying how much more he’d ex­pected from me. I guessed that meant I’d end up with a C in English. I’d never had less than a B in English before, and I dreaded taking my report card home this time. I hoped my parents wouldn’t get all freaked out about my grades and want me to go to summer school or something.

  I put Jason first on my invitation list, and Mandy put Eric first on hers.

  We didn’t have to do anything for gym the last week of school ― just show up and sit around. Mandy and I finished the lists during gym. We ended up with fourteen girls’ names and only ten boys.

  “Do you think we should keep it more even?” Mandy asked. “Like not invite two of the girls, and maybe invite that creep, Herman?”

  “No. I think we should invite people we like. What girls would we leave off, anyway?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe Sheila. But we couldn’t really leave off Sheila and invite Pam. And we couldn’t leave off Pam and invite Terri. Besides, I don’t really want to leave Sheila out. I like her.”

  “Yeah, me too. And I don’t really want to invite Herman. You know how he always walks up behind girls and pulls their bra straps. He’d be gross at a swim party,” I said.

  I had a terrible thought, but I tried to put it out of my mind.

  We decided not to try to keep things even. So what if we had more girls than boys?

  During science, when I was bored, the terrible thought came creeping back into my brain. I’d have to wear a bathing suit in front of all those kids and Jason! How embarrassing ― my flat chest and big butt on display. I could wear my extra-large, long sweatshirt over my bathing suit most of the time, but I couldn’t swim in that. Maybe I should just not go swimming at the party. No, that would be boring ...

  “Give her your science book, Cassie,” Julia said, poking me in the back.

  I looked up. Mrs. Wilson was standing beside me, waiting for my book. She’d been going down each row, collecting books. I fumbled around in my book bag while she looked down at me. I handed her my book. She flipped through the pages, checked the binding, and made a little mark beside my name on her book list, then moved back to Julia.

  When I saw Dr. Shipper on Wednesday afternoon, the first thing she asked about was the assignment.

  “I got a kitten!” I told her. “Mom would never let us have pets and I always wanted one, and this time she said it was okay.”

  “Tell me about it, Cassie. Why did she let you have a pet this time, when she always said no before?”

  I told her how I’d arranged with the little girl to take the kitten back within two weeks if my mother thought it was too much trouble. And how I arranged with Grammy to bring Tangle with me this summer, and how Robbie and I had set things up so it was easy to clean up after Tangle.

  “So, even though you told me you didn’t know anything you wanted to have happen for yourself when we talked about the assignment, you had a very strong desire for something, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, I did. I just didn’t remember it until I saw those little kittens. And then I knew how much I’d always wanted a kitten.”

  “Why didn’t you think of that in here, when I asked you about what you wanted?”

  “I don’t know,” I told her. “I guess I’d just kind of put it out of my mind. I didn’t think I could ever have a pet, so I didn’t think about it.”

  “That’s part of our task here together, Cassie,” Dr. Ship­per said, “to get you to know what’s going on inside of you, so you can deal with things important to you. You’ve had a lot of confusing feelings over your experiences with Fred Sloane, and one very natural response to confusing feelings is to try to put them out of your mind. But that doesn’t really work, because those feelings show themselves in other ways.”

  Then Dr. Shipper shocked me by how much she seemed to know about me. She asked me these questions that I think she already knew the answers to.

  “Did you take more baths after this man first touched and kissed you?”

  “Yeah, all the time. Well, not baths usually, but showers.” Then I remembered how I’d taken a scalding hot bath the night that Fred had caught me in his hallway.

  “And baths, too,” I said.

  “Why do you think you took more baths and showers at that time?”

  “I guess I felt dirty,” I said.

  “Did all of that washing make you feel clean?”

  “It helped,” I told her, “for a while, anyway.”

  “But it didn’t make those feelings go away?”

  “No. I guess
it didn’t, really, ’cause I kept having to take more and more showers.”

  I didn’t say this, but right then I was feeling like I could hardly wait to get home and take a shower, even though I’d taken one in the morning before I went to school.

  “Did you wear heavy clothing, even when it was warm out?” she asked.

  I nodded, thinking about my jacket. It was hot out right then, but I missed my jacket.

  “I have a favorite jacket that I wear all the time. Daddy says I have to stop wearing it because it’s summertime almost, and I’ll roast to death.”

  “Do you want to stop wearing it?”

  “Kind of. I mean, it is hot, and it looks funny to be wearing a big jacket when it’s about ninety-eight degrees in the shade. But I like wearing it, too . . . It’s safe,” I said. I didn’t even know why I said that.

  “Safe from what?”

  “From people. From touching and looking,” I said.

  We talked for a long time about those things, and I ended up confessing that I didn’t want anyone at the swim party to see me in a bathing suit, especially Jason. We talked about being embarrassed, and about how probably everyone else going to that party had some of those same feelings, and about trying to like myself.

  “What do you like about your body, Cassie?” Dr. Shipper asked.

  “It works pretty good,” I told her.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I’m good at soccer, and I like to run, and I’m strong. I can beat my seventeen-year-old cousin at arm wrestling.”

  “What do you like about the way you look?”

  “Not much,” I said.

  “Choose something,” she told me.

  “Well . . . I’m not fat.”

  “No fair,” she told me. “It has to be something you are, not something you aren’t.”

  “Okay. I have good legs,” I said. But I didn’t really want to say it. It sounded conceited.

  The buzzer went off. “Here’s your next assignment. Bring me a list of at least ten other things you like about yourself. Anything. I’ll see you Monday, before you go to your grandmother’s. Right?”

  “Right,” I said, and left.

  All year long I’d been looking forward to going to Grammy’s, and now I was beginning to think of all I’d miss. I’d miss Mandy. And I wondered if Jason would still like me when I got back. I might even miss these counseling times.

  Friday night Mom and Daddy and Robbie and I all went shopping together. Robbie and I got clothes for the summer. I got three new pairs of shorts and three tops, a pair of sandals and a bathing suit.

  Before I went to bed that night I tried on my bathing suit again and stood in front of the mirror. I was not Miss Universe. I tried to see something I liked, so I could put it on the list for Dr. Shipper. I had a flat stomach. I liked that. And my legs were okay. And my arms. I had good arm muscles from volleyball and tetherball. I was kind of surprised to see that I was not exactly as flat-chested as I had been when I stood in front of my mirror a few months ago. Sort of a big butt, though. Average face. Oh well, I thought, it would have to do. I liked my new bathing suit a lot, so that helped.

  The party was great. Once I got in the water I forgot about being embarrassed. Eric and Jason and I raced the length of the pool and back. I won.

  Later, Julia said to me, “Don’t you know you’re never supposed to beat a guy at anything if you want him to like you?”

  “I just swim faster,” I told her.

  “But you should pretend you can’t,” she said.

  “I’m not into pretending,” I told her. It surprised me, because I never disagreed with Julia about stuff like that. I think it surprised her, too. She just laughed.

  We played volleyball and shuffleboard and then we barbecued hot dogs. Later we danced. Some of the other guys asked me to dance, and I did. But all of the slow dances I danced with Jason. We danced real close, and after someone turned the lights down low, he kissed me, more than once. It felt good. Somebody liked me and I liked him. It was easy to kiss him.

  “Will you give me your grandmother’s telephone number and address before you leave?” he asked. “Maybe I can call you, or even come see you sometime. Would that be okay?”

  I said it would. I walked away right then, in search of a pencil and paper. I just left Jason standing there. That prob­ably wasn’t too cool. When I came back he was talking to Julia, but as soon as he saw me he came over to meet me. I gave him the slip of paper, and we started dancing again.

  Mandy and I spent the night at her aunt’s house so we could clean everything up the next day. We talked a long, long time after everyone left. I asked Mandy to come spend a week with me at the beach. She said she would. It was kind of a tradition.

  “Eric’s going away this summer, too,” she told me. “I hope he still likes me when he gets back home.”

  “He will,” I told her. “All of the boys like you, so why should he be any different?”

  “They don’t either,” she said. “Probably more boys like you than like me.”

  “Me? Nobody likes me but Jason,” I said.

  “Then why did all of those guys ask you to dance?”

  “They wanted someone to dance with, and I was there.”

  “I can’t believe you, Cassie! There were about a hundred girls standing there, but guys kept asking you to dance. I know for a fact Tommy Parson likes you!”

  “He does not! He hardly even knows me!” I told her. “The better to like you, my dear,” she laughed, throwing her pillow at me.

  “Well, what about Jimmy Morland? Everyone knows he likes you!” I yelled, and threw the pillow back at her.

  We went through the whole list of guys at our school, who liked who and who they didn’t, and who liked them. Later I thought about Mandy saying that probably more guys liked me than liked her. I couldn’t believe I would ever be as popular as Mandy. Maybe I was more popular than I thought, though. A lot of guys did ask me to dance. I danced more than Julia did. When I realized that, it surprised me.

  Just as I was drifting off to sleep, Mandy said, “What’s it like to kiss Jason?”

  “I like it.”

  “Can you feel his braces?”

  “No ― just his lips. What’s it like kissing Eric?”

  “Heaven,” she said.

  I threw my pillow at her again, and we started a real pil­low fight this time, using all four of the big down pillows in the frilly guest room where we were supposed to be sleeping. The strange thing about a pillow fight at Mandy’s aunt’s house was that no one even heard because the house was so big. Mandy’s aunt slept upstairs at one end of the house, and we were downstairs at the other.

  In the morning, after we finished our clean-up job, Mandy’s aunt drove us to Mandy’s. Later we walked back to my house. “We have to go the long way,” I told her.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t want to walk past the Sloanes’ house.”

  “Why not, though? Do you think they’d come after you if they saw you?”

  “No. I just don’t ever want to see them again,” I said.

  “You sure used to like them,” she reminded me.

  “Things change.”

  Even going the long way, though, when we reached the corner of Fairview and Main, Tina and Dorian were there, Dorian on his tricycle and Tina standing on the back. I knew they weren’t supposed to be there. Angie never let them go down to Main Street. I hadn’t wanted to see them, but once I did, I liked them. I couldn’t help that.

  “Hi, Tina. Hi, Dorian,” I said.

  They just watched us. They didn’t say anything.

  “You’re not supposed to be up here by this busy street,” I said. “You’d better go home.”

  “You’re not a nice girl,” Dorian said to me.

  I felt tears sting my eyes. “Get on home, Dorian,” I said. He just sat there on his tricycle.

  “Go for it, you little brat!” Mandy yelled, running at him. He pedaled towa
rd home as fast as he could go, with Tina clinging to his back.

  Summer was the way I wanted it to be ― quiet and peaceful and safe, with lots of swimming and lots of sun. I was alone a lot, I mean, as far as friends and stuff, but I really didn’t mind. Once Mandy came and stayed with us for five days. And Lisa came down every weekend. Mom and Daddy, too, came nearly every Sunday. Mostly, though, it was me and Robbie and Tangle and Grammy.

  My birthday was August 20, and Mom and Daddy drove down that evening to help me celebrate. We roasted hot dogs over a fire on the beach, and Daddy and I raced from the fire ring to the lifeguard station. I almost beat him! I couldn’t believe it. He made a big deal about how my legs were twice as long as they had been in June, and everyone made a big deal about how I was a teenager.

  Later, we sat around the fire and roasted marshmallows. Robbie fell asleep on Mom’s lap. Grammy wrapped a beach towel around him and walked him, still sleeping, back home.

  We watched the fire for a while, then Daddy said, “Re­member how Angie Sloane said you were no different than the others?”

  “Yeah, I do,” I told him. “I still wonder about that some­times.”

  “Apparently what Trudy told us about men following a certain pattern, going after girls of a certain age, was true for Fred,” Mom said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “It seems he’d been pulling the same thing with his boss’s daughter that he’d been pulling with you,” Daddy said.

  “Carmen?” I asked. “Do you mean Carmen?”

  “I guess that’s her name. She’s twelve. Mr. Casteneda’s only daughter. Do you know her?”

  “Yeah. She was in my gym class last year. We played soccer together.”

  “What a coincidence,” Mom said.

  “Anyway,” Daddy said, “the daughter had been doing some work at the muffler shop during the summer. You know, addressing envelopes for ads, running errands, that kind of thing. Well, one day last week, Mr. Casteneda stuck his head out of his office just in time to see Sloane standing behind Carmen with his hand inside her blouse. He went nuts. He picked up a tire iron and chased Sloane out of the shop and down the street, yelling all kinds of things at him in Spanish. The cops came and hauled them both in.”