CASSIDY AND I never told anyone where we’d gone during Teacher Development Day. We hadn’t sworn to keep it a secret or anything, but it felt strangely private, tangled in the things I’d confessed and in the brief moment when she’d pressed her lips against my cheek. Somehow, though, Toby could sense that something had passed between us, and he was less than thrilled about it.
“That’s why I drove her home,” he explained in the lunch line on Friday. “It’s . . . she’s not what you think. She’s unpredictable.”
“Then stop trying to predict that she’ll wreck me,” I replied, paying the lunch lady for my sandwich. “What’s this about, anyway? How well do you even know each other?”
“Biblically, Faulkner. We know each other biblically.”
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
“Well, our teams hung out sometimes. We invited each other when we had room parties,” Toby said. “And there are these little flirtations that happen—debate-cest or whatever you want to call it. She’d act like she couldn’t get enough of someone for about a day, and then she’d lose interest completely. She leaves a trail of broken hearts, and she either doesn’t realize or doesn’t care.”
I took my change from the lunch lady.
“That’s the problem? Remind me never to tell you what goes on at tennis camp,” I said, grabbing some napkins.
“I’d make a dropping-the-soap joke, but I sense that the lunch ladies won’t appreciate it.” Toby picked up a Styrofoam container of “General Chicken” and gave it a dubious sniff before handing over some crumpled dollar bills. “There’s something different about Cassidy this year, and I don’t know what’s changed, but I have a bad feeling about it. Now what do you think? Is this chicken in general, or some specific type of chicken they’ve neglected to identify?”
“It looks disgusting.”
“Obviously. But does its disgustingness remind you of anything?” Toby pressed hopefully. “General Tso’s chicken, perhaps?”
I glanced at it again.
“It’s generally disgusting chicken,” I informed him.
“Hmmm,” Toby regarded it sadly. “I think you’re right.”
I SPENT THE weekend digging myself out from beneath a pile of work. Moreno wanted a “practice essay” on Gatsby, which apparently differed from a real essay, most likely in a way that didn’t exist. Coach Anthony wanted fifty key terms by Tuesday, handwritten, to prevent us from using copy-paste. And I had a take-home quiz in Calculus. The only bright point was Sunday night, when Cassidy finally flashed Morse code at me from her bedroom window.
HI, she said, flashing it twice. HI HI.
I still remembered Morse code from my Cub Scout days, and I reached for the switch on my desk lamp and flashed HI back at her, wondering and half hoping that she’d ask me to slip out and meet her in the park.
But her window stayed dark after I replied, even though she knew I was there, watching. So I went to sleep thinking of her, of the curve of her back in a light cotton dress, of her hair twisted up into its crown of braids, of her, leaping from the zenith of the plastic swing set and clearing the sandbox, turning a neat lap around the whole of Eastwood, California, while I stood there, trapped in the dreariness of it all, numbly watching.
TOBY CALLED TWO practice sessions for the debate team after school that week. We matched up for mock debates on Tuesday, and I got paired with Phoebe. Cassidy played judge, sitting cross-legged on Ms. Weng’s desk and toying with the fringed ends of her scarf.
Toby had just taught me how to flow, or take notes, the day before, and I was still using one of those photocopied grids with the arrows drawn in. It made me feel remedial. The only good thing was that Phoebe, whom I’d suspected would crush me, wound up being surprisingly terrible at debate, and had only competed at one tournament so far. After our closing statements, we handed Cassidy our notes and went over to examine the trophy case in the back of the classroom.
The most impressive ones were a few years old at least; the legacy of students long graduated. What had once been a championship team had become a nerdy hangout destination, with its participants seeking fun rather than glory. I couldn’t imagine such a thing ever happening to our school’s tennis team—or any sports team, really. You’ll have fun if you’re winning, my dad used to say, as though it was possible to control such things.
“Any of these recent?” I asked Phoebe, nodding toward the case.
“A couple. The hilariously little one is Toby’s. And the plaque is Sam and Luke’s, they’re actually decent team debaters when Sam doesn’t get carried away with his Republican agenda.” She laughed slightly. “You’re surprisingly good at public speaking, you know.”
“Yeah, well, you may have a decent delivery, but your flow’s a mess,” Cassidy said, climbing down from Ms. Weng’s desk and passing back our notes. Mine looked like her pen had hemorrhaged all over it, while Phoebe’s only had a few marks.
“And you’re the opposite,” Cassidy continued, frowning at Phoebe. “The outline’s solid, but your delivery is unconvincing. Come on, let’s see how you two do with a different topic.”
We practiced until four thirty, when Austin had SAT prep and I had to get out of there for PT, only I said it was the dentist. I know physical therapy’s nothing to be embarrassed about, but it still sounded bad: “therapy,” as though I needed professional help to function.
At least it was just PT, not one of those trauma counseling sessions the hospital had insisted upon after the accident. Those I couldn’t stand, but thankfully I was down to like once a month with Dr. Cohen, the world’s biggest douchenoodle of a clinical psychologist. Seriously, his teeth were so white that they probably glowed in the dark.
So I sheepishly drove over to the medical center, where I spent an hour on the stationary bike and treadmill, listening to the sample debates Toby had given me on audio file and trying not to wonder about Cassidy. She acted as though she’d never gotten upset over my signing her up for the debate team, and I couldn’t understand if she’d just overreacted, or was hiding her anger.
Maybe it was like Toby had said, and she was just unpredictable. But I doubted it. Because, every night around eleven, from the other side of Meadowbridge Park, Cassidy’s bedroom window would darken, and her flashlight would blink the same greeting at me in Morse code. Always HI. HI HI. Nothing more. A beginning of an unfinished conversation that I didn’t have the guts to take control of.
I went to sleep every night that week waiting for whatever it was between the two of us to start traveling at the speed of flashlights, but it never did. As always, she left me wanting more, and dreaming of what it would be like if I ever got it.
15
THE TOURNAMENT WAS being held at SDAPA, the San Diego Academy for the Performing Arts. It was one of those Mission-style campuses, all white adobe arches with mosaic tiles. I half expected to be able to hear the crash of the surf from the parking lot.
We were running late, on account of the traffic, and barely had time to change. Cassidy, Phoebe, and I had to grab our garment bags and change in the bathrooms while the rest of the team, who had worn their suits to school, rushed to make check-in.
All around us, the campus had become a frantic hub of students in business suits and private-school uniforms. We passed two guys wheeling file boxes stacked three high and bungee-corded together, and a girl who was reciting a monologue at a brick wall. The whole place had a desperate, last-minute air of preparation that reminded me of the morning I’d sat the SATs.
I changed into my suit, which, I had to admit, did fit a lot better than the ones I’d rented for formal dances. The girls took longer, and I spent a few minutes standing awkwardly outside the bathroom like some sort of bodyguard, waiting for them.
“Awww,” Phoebe said when they finally emerged, “someone looks adorable in his suit.”
“Lies. I look like a senator,” I complained, tugging at my collar.
“A liberal senator,” Cassidy assured me. “The kind who has a sex scandal with a high-class prostitute.”