“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.”
Cassidy led me into the trails, explaining as we went that we were searching for a geocache, or tiny capsule. They were hidden all over the United States, and you had to solve puzzles to find them.
“Sometimes they have nothing inside, and sometimes they’re filled with little treasures,” she said. “But if you take something, you’re supposed to leave something in its place.”
“The law of conservation of geocaches,” I said.
“Why yes, Mr. Illiterate Jock, exactly like that.” Cassidy smiled at me, her hair fiercely red in the sunlight. There was a little smear of sunscreen below her ear.
“Wait,” I said, reaching to wipe it away. “You had sunscreen on your cheek.”
“Did you get it?” Cassidy asked.
“No, I smeared it bigger.”
“Whatever,” she said. “At least I don’t have sunscreen in my hair.”