“You shouldn’t have done that,” I said. “I mean, stealing? God, Devin.” I shook my head. “If you needed money, I would’ve lent it to you.”
She pouted. “What, dig into your guitar fund?”
“Yes,” I said. “If it meant you wouldn’t shoplift.”
Devin shrugged. “I can get money from my father. This is just more fun.” She winked at me. “Don’t you think?”
“Uh, no.” I said. “Not fun at all. Don’t do it again, okay?”
Devin saluted me. “Aye, aye.”
“It’s not funny.”
“It is a little,” she said. She held up her thumb and forefinger and pressed them to about an inch apart. “Maybe this much?” She was still smiling, and it was clear that she was proud of herself. She was actually proud that she stole that lip gloss. She didn’t care one bit that she had broken the law.
“What if you’d gotten caught?” I said.
“With this?” she said, holding up the gloss. “It’s so small. Do you honestly think one of those sales clerks would report me? What do they make, like five dollars an hour? It’s not worth the trouble.”
The chocolate aftertaste in my mouth grew sour. “Just return it, Devin. Tell them it was a mistake— you forgot to pay. No harm done.” I reached into the pocket of my cargo pants and pulled out a few dollar bills. “Seriously I’ll lend you the money.”
Devin’s eyes narrowed. “Are you kidding?” She backed up. “I got away with it.”
I dug my hands back into my pockets. The rest of my chocolate bar lay hidden inside, safe. It was a comforting thought, more classic fat-girl behavior, but still. I ran my hands along the smooth wrapper. “Well, if I were you, I would. I mean honesty’s the best policy, right?”
“Really?” she said, raising an eyebrow. “Look at you, playing all innocent, Cass Kirschner,” she said. “As if you didn’t just secretly scarf down a chocolate bar.”
“I…” My cheeks grew warm, and I stopped myself from saying anything else. I squeezed what was left of the candy bar between my fingers. Warm, soft chocolate oozed out onto the lining of my pocket.
AFTER
“I’M TELLING YOU SOMETHING’S WRONG with her,” my mother says. She’s speaking in a low voice down the hallway from my room, but my mother couldn’t whisper for all the free cosmetics on earth. “She won’t leave her room unless I force her, and she’s acting, well, bizarre. She won’t even play her guitar, and you know, I usually have to pry that thing away from her.”
It doesn’t take a nuclear physicist to figure out that she’s speaking to my father. They don’t talk much—a few phone calls here and there to discuss child support and plane tickets. So I’m actually surprised that he’s on the other end of the phone since I’m not visiting anytime soon.
“Well, of course she has a right to be upset. The whole thing is incredibly disturbing. Yes.” She’s quiet for a moment, obviously listening to my dad. “No, no idea at all.”
“To be frank,” she says, “a little crazy. She had, I don’t know, a meltdown. When the detective was here. Really, Jonathan,” she says. “A meltdown.”
Is that what it looked like? Let her think that, I guess. Better that my mother think I had a meltdown than she know the truth. The insane truth? That some part of Devin is still actually here, that she’s haunting me. And the more I think that, the more I think maybe I am crazy. Oh, my God, I wish I were crazy. Crazy would at least make sense.
“Well, maybe you want to talk to her,” my mother says. “She doesn’t listen to me—you know that,” she says, her voice rising.
I roll over again on my bed. I’m not getting on the phone with my father. We were close once—we played guitar together, duets and stuff. Before he hopped a plane and landed three states away in a condo complex filled with single parents, retirees, and too much potted greenery. Before he decided he needed to “find himself,” which is so clichéd, it’s embarrassing. I don’t hate him, but that conversation, the one my mom is suggesting, isn’t going to happen.
“I’m trying to get her out of the house. She’s getting weird, moping around all day.”
Yeah, Mom. Thanks for your support.
“No,” she continues. “She won’t leave the house. Stubborn as her father,” she says, getting in her digs where she can. “Well, of course it’s more than that,” she adds, sighing. “Obviously.”
There’s a long pause. I scratch an itch on my forehead, then stretch my legs. My back is starting to hurt but not enough to motivate me off my bed. In a strange, twisted way, I’m kind of glad that my parents are actually talking. This might be the longest conversation they’ve had in, like, eons.
“Fine,” she says. “You can talk to her…. No, really,” she says. “I’m putting you on the phone with her, Jonathan. It won’t kill you to parent once in a while, or do you have a golf game?” There’s another pause. “Well, there are things I resent, too,” she says.
My parents can’t not fight, and it’s a relief for me to hear them. I’m comforted by the familiar rhythm of their bickering. It reminds me of a time not that long ago, when it actually bothered me. When their fighting and the too many folds of flesh on my body were worth being upset about. When my world made sense, even if I didn’t like it that much.
I hear my mother’s footsteps coming down the hallway. She’s still in her heels from work, so her clomps are extra loud.
“She’s involved with boys now,” she says.
I turn my lip around between my teeth. She sounds so teen therapist when she says it. So “How does this make you feel?” So “Let’s try to figure out what this means.”
“I don’t know,” she says. “The boy called the house.” She pauses. “No, she won’t talk to him. She was out with him the night it all happened, and I think she’s traumatized. Bad timing, I guess.” Another pause. “I don’t appreciate that. I didn’t have trouble with boys at her age. You, of all people, should know that.”
Gross, too much information. Even in my current, messed-up state I realize that.
More silence from my mom. “Maybe you should talk to her,” she finally says. “I’m putting your daughter on the phone.” She’s right at my bedroom door. “What?” she says. “Now wait a minute.” Her footsteps disappear again down the hallway.
I’m not getting on the phone with him anyway. In all fairness to my father, even if he were here, even if he’d never left us, this is not something we can talk about. Not something that he or anyone else would ever understand. What could I possibly say? My best friend is haunting me. What could he possibly say? You deserve to be haunted, but it’s tee time, so I’ll catch you later. I roll onto my pillow and shut my eyes.
CLUNK! I scramble to a sitting position and scan the room. Nothing. What was that? I hear it again. CLUNK! The noise is against my window. CLUNK! CLUNK! It’s coming from outside. Devin? My heart hurls itself against my chest. She’s back again. She’s outside. She’s… I jump up and run over to the window. Our front lights are out, but, from the light of the street lamp across the street, I can see his shape. My heart slows. Marcus is in the overgrown rhododendron bushes, tossing rocks at my bedroom window. My body unclenches. I press my face against the glass, and he waves.
He’s looking up at me, almost not blinking, and even with very little light, I lose myself for a moment and marvel at how good-looking he is and at the fact that he’s standing outside my window. My window. What crazy, misguided forces of nature had their hand in this little bit of fortune? In another time this would be so Romeo and Juliet. He motions again. He wants me to open the window.
My heart is beating faster now. I shouldn’t talk to him. God, there are so many reasons why I shouldn’t— I know that. But, oh, I want to. My mother is down the hallway. What if she hears us? I shake my head and mouth, “I can’t.”
Marcus moves closer to the house. “Come on,” he mouths. “Please.”
I take a deep breath. We are so not Romeo and Juliet, and I so don’t
deserve the tragic romance of this scenario—but I unlock my bedroom window and pull it open. I lean against the cool screen.
“Hey,” he says. He tries to whisper, but I’m high above him in my window—my Capulet balcony—so his voice carries.
“Hey.”
“Sorry about the rocks,” he says, shrugging. “I tried to use small ones.”
“It’s okay,” I say. “We already have holes in the screen.” I stick my finger through one of them and wiggle it around.
Marcus smiles, and I melt from the normalcy of it all. I wish it were a few weeks ago—I’d have given anything for this back then.
“So, uh, how are you?”
I shrug. “You know.”
He nods a couple of times. “Sure, okay. I can’t even—I mean—it’s gotta be hard.”
“Yeah.”
“At Devin’s house, you looked, I don’t know”— he licks his lips—“different.”
I am different. Marcus sees it because he sees me. No one can be the same after what I did. Every last molecule rearranged. “It was cool of you to go,” I say.
“Not really.” He looks at me and shrugs. “I had an ulterior motive.”
My heart makes a sudden motion. “Oh.” Dumb, I don’t even know what to say.
Marcus stuffs his hands into his pockets. “I called a few times.”
This time I nod. “I know. I’m”—I push some hair behind my ear—“I’m sorry. I haven’t been, you know.”
“Yeah, I figured.” He looks up at me, then down again at his feet.
My mother’s still arguing with my father. I keep an ear on the door—that could go on indefinitely or end in an abrupt hang-up. There’s no way of knowing. I am poised for the dash back to my bed.
Marcus looks around, then back up at me. “Cass, I need to talk to you.”
My stomach’s all in a tangle. There’s nothing more to say; we can’t go back. It’s done. “Why?” I say, even though I know the answer.
“Because, I think, well”—he nods again—“we need to talk about what happened.” His eyes flicker. “Cass, there’s a detective. He came to see me.”
Of course he did. Detective Williams isn’t playing around. He’ll get to all of us. “I know. Me, too.” And I also know that he’ll be back. He’d been freaked out by what had happened to me that afternoon—who wouldn’t have been? But he also wasn’t buying the grieving-friend routine.
Marcus nods as if he’s thinking things over. “I told him, I mean, I told him everything I could. There’s only so much—you know what I mean?”
I haven’t eaten, but something sour is pushing its way up from my stomach. I guess now Detective Williams knows more than I wanted him to. “We can’t change what happened.”
“Yeah, but—” He looks around. Then he looks up again at me. “Can you come down?”
I want to come down but not to talk. I want to run to him, curl into him, and let myself go. It’s beyond tempting. I shake my head again. “My mom’s right down the hall. She’s talking to my dad.”
“How’s that going?” he asks.
“How do you think?”
He nods sympathetically—he gets that. He gets me. God, my heart literally hurts.
“Tomorrow?” he says. “Maybe somewhere else a little less”—he tilts his head—“complicated?” There’s hope in his voice. Hope. I almost remember that feeling.
I breathe in again. “I don’t think so.”
My mother’s heels clomp back down the hallway. “Hold on,” she says. “I’m putting you on with her right now.”
“I gotta go,” I say.
“Cass, wait.”
I let my hand linger on the screen for just the smallest of moments. Then I turn away and jump back into my bed, my heart racing from the effort.
My mother walks in, but I’m ready for her. I lie silent and still. I hold my breath.
She moves into the room until I feel her leaning over me, watching me. The scent of her perfume hangs in the air, and her breath is warm on my face. I’m reminded of when I was little and would pretend to be asleep because it was past my bedtime and I didn’t want to lose dessert the next night. She reaches down and touches me just slightly on the shoulder.
But I don’t move. I’m that good.
Before
“SO, DO YOU LIKE IT?” Devin twirled around in her room, supermodel style, holding the shirt up to her chest.
“Did you steal that, too?” I asked.
She shot me a look. “No. I bought it with my mom.”
“It’s nice, I guess.” Devin was small, but the shirt looked like it would fit a first-grader. Like it should have a glittery rainbow on it.
“That’s it?” she said. “It wasn’t cheap.”
“It should’ve been,” I said. “How much fabric is there anyway?”
She laughed. “It’s supposed to be fitted, as if you didn’t know that.”
I smiled back despite the fact that I’d never be able to wear that kind of a shirt, except as maybe a headband. “You’re not really going to wear that, are you?”
Devin rolled her eyes at me. “Of course I am,” she said. “It’s summer. Light and breezy, I say.”
“You sound like a tampon commercial.”
She frowned. “You sound like you need a tampon.” She turned away from me and faced the long mirror hanging inside her closet door. “I had to beg a little for this shirt. Mom finally gave in but yammered on again about how I should still be babysitting.”
“You did pretty well in your heyday,” I said. “You were good at it.”
“I was, wasn’t I?” she said, almost thoughtfully. “Who has time for that anymore?” she frowned. “It’s fine when you’re a kid with nothing else to do on the weekend. I’ve got better things going on now than wiping butts and noses and reading bunny books at bedtime.”
“Like shoplifting?”
Devin scowled. “Let it go, Cass,” she said. “You’re getting really annoying with that.”
“Just saying.” I shrugged. “Babysitting’s not so bad.”
“Oh, yeah, I forgot you still do that. The McKenna kid, right?”
“He’s sweet. It’s fun, actually.”
She shook her head. “You would think that.”
I blinked a few times. “Since when is earning money not cool?” When I finally hold that new guitar, I’ll have earned it—it’ll be all mine. When we were younger, Devin and I used to pool babysitting funds. We’d buy candy, bracelets, lip gloss. These days, though, I never told her what I had in the bank. If I did, I’d be paying for everything.
She changed the subject back to her. “Okay, you made it clear you don’t like my outfit,” she said, folding up the shirt and placing it back inside her dresser drawer. “What are you wearing Saturday night?”
I shrugged again. “I don’t know.”
“Cass, are you kidding? We have a date in three days.”
“I thought it wasn’t a date.”
She frowned. “You know it is.”
“Fine,” I said, “but it’s your date. I’ll be lucky if I don’t die of boredom listening to Marcus Button-Down, the Wing-Tipped Wonder.”
“You are so negative, Cass. Just because your mother hates men doesn’t mean you should.”
“I don’t hate men,” I said. “And neither does my mother.” She really didn’t, actually. She just hated my father.
“Whatever.” Devin shook her head, then brightened. “I can come shopping with you,” she said. Her voice floated up an octave to that happy place where the skinny girls lived. “It would be fun. We haven’t done that in forever. It’ll be like old times. Remember how we used to try on all those clothes at the same time and totally piss off the salespeople?”
“Right,” I said. “All the saleswomen at Lola’s practically had wanted posters of us in the dressing rooms.”
“All those white sweaters at once,” she said. She waddled from side to side. “Stay-Puffed Marshmallow Girls!”
<
br /> She gave me a fist bump. We laughed together again, and for a moment I was lighter. Shopping with Devin was a blast before she was this Devin. We’d buy matching T-shirts or sweaters, and I didn’t care that we weren’t the same size and that my shirt or sweater bulged where hers lay flat. That was all before Devin had something to say about everything I wore. She wasn’t the old Devin anymore, and we couldn’t wear matching clothes, and I would never, ever go clothes shopping with her again.
“Thanks,” I said, “but I’m going with my mom later this week.” Ginormous lie. I hated shopping with my mother just as much as I hated shopping with Devin. I was all about closet shopping. It’s what I always did. It was amazing what I could find buried at the bottom of mine, when I looked hard enough.
“Really?” she said, raising an eyebrow.
“Yes, really.”
“Just don’t wear those.” Her eyes found their way to my cargo pants, with the natty drawstring and crease lines in the thighs.
“I wasn’t planning to,” I said. Though of course I was.
“Sure you weren’t,” she said, smiling. She walked toward me, then sat down beside me on the bed. She took a few strands of my hair into her hands and ran her fingers through them. It was sweet almost, like when we were younger and would braid each other’s hair. I was warm all over, and my muscles unclenched.
“Listen, Cass,” she said, leaning in. She let go of my hair, and it fell back onto my shoulder. “Do yourself a huge favor. Put on a little lip gloss and get something to wear that doesn’t have drawstrings and pockets. Play up the guitar thing. Some guys like rocker chicks.” She paused and tilted her head. “Maybe you’ll even have fun.”
I smiled and nodded and grasped tightly onto the bedspread. I squeezed and squeezed and squeezed until the skin on my chewed fingertips burned, and then I squeezed some more.
AFTER
“WE WON’T BE HERE LONG,” says my mother. “I just need laundry detergent.”
Devin Rhodes is Dead Page 7