“Life is the tragedy,” she said bitterly. “You know how they categorize Shakespeare’s plays, right? If it ends with a wedding, it’s a comedy. And if it ends with a funeral, it’s a tragedy. So we’re all living tragedies, because we all end the same way, and it isn’t with a goddamned wedding.”
“Well, thanks for that. That clears everything up nicely. We’re all prisoners. Wait no—we’re living tragedies, just passing time till our funerals.”
Cassidy scowled at this, but I didn’t care. I was furious with her for being there, for being miserable, for refusing to explain.
“No one’s dead, Cassidy,” I said harshly. “I can’t decide whether you’re just crazy, or a liar, or someone who likes hurting people. You’re all riddles and quotes and you can’t give me a straight answer about anything and I’m tired of waiting for you to realize that you owe me one.”
I hadn’t meant to go off like that, and I wasn’t exactly using my indoor voice when I said any of those things. Cassidy studied the carpet for a long moment, and when she glanced up at me, a tropical storm was churning in her eyes. Two tears slid down her cheeks.
“I don’t owe you anything,” Cassidy sobbed, “and you’re right, I do wish we’d never met.”
She rushed past me, taking the stairs, where she knew I couldn’t follow.
“Yeah, well, so do I!” I called after her, not meaning it but not caring.
The door to the stairwell banged shut in response.
I took a deep breath, and ran a hand through my hair, and kept my shit together long enough to go back into that doctor’s office and calmly tell the receptionurse that it was probably best if I rescheduled.
30
THERE’D BEEN ANOTHER sighting on the hiking trail behind Meadowbridge Park, and the coyotes were all my parents talked about, eclipsing even the subject of whether or not they should return the new light fixture in the downstairs guest bathroom, which had arrived with a slight imperfection in the glass.
Even my friends made jokes about it, with Phoebe in particular relishing how, and I quote, “deeply ironic it is that our school mascot, a supposed emblem of pride, has become emblematic of our collective fear.”
Some of the tennis guys at my old lunch table had taken to making fake wolf howls, and Connor MacLeary landed himself two days of in-school suspension for it, which we all found hilarious, because the school was literally forcing him to skip class.
There was a debate tournament that weekend up in Santa Barbara, and of course I wasn’t going. Sign-ups had been weeks ago, back when we were all still obsessed with the homecoming dance, and Cassidy hadn’t wanted to. I hadn’t pressed her on it, since I figured we’d probably spend the weekend together. But one interesting thing Toby told me was that the Barrows School was on the tournament list. I assumed Cassidy had known that back when she’d suggested we both sit this one out, that the way she avoided certain things was another part of this maddening mystery.
Toby went all out, wearing his suit to school on Friday, swaggering through the quad with this purple pocket square and peacock-printed tie, and even Luke and Sam joined us sheepishly at lunch, sporting matching American flag pins in their lapels. It felt wrong, the six of us, like we were two groups that had never been a cohesive whole. And it was strange, thinking that Cassidy had been the glue connecting us.
“Still here, Faulkner?” Luke sneered.
“Still doing that terrible impression of Draco Malfoy?” I asked.
Everyone at the table cracked up, and even Sam was trying not to laugh. Luke muttered something under his breath, dragging Sam off to the breakfast line.
“It’s sort of sad, when you think about it,” Austin mused.
“What is?” I asked, figuring he was probably talking about some video game.
“How no one ever invites Luke to anything because his brother’s a cop. Man, he takes it so personally.”
“Whoa. Please be a human being more often,” Phoebe begged.
“What’s the point? I’m never going to make the leader boards.” Austin shrugged philosophically, retrieved his phone from the pocket of his suit jacket, and returned to his game.
“So Faulkner,” Toby said. “Anything specific you want me to ask the Barrows School when I see them at the tournament?”
“I guess about last year?” I suggested. “About what happened?”
“Well, it’s your call.” Toby put on his sunglasses and leaned back to catch the sun. “You know her better than anyone.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him I was starting to think I didn’t know her at all. And that maybe whatever Toby found out wouldn’t help anything. Because the thing was, after what had happened at the medical center, I wasn’t sure if we were worth fixing. And I didn’t know what answers would make me know whether I even wanted to try.
I kept seeing it over and over again in my head, Cassidy’s eyes filling with tears as she announced that she wished we’d never met. The way her hair streamed behind her as she ran away from me, confident I wouldn’t follow. The stupid lie I’d shouted after her.
We’d been so good together once, and then we’d rotted, like some corpse with a delayed burial. I read somewhere that the hair and fingernails on dead bodies don’t actually grow, it just looks like they do because the skin contracts as the body dries out. So it’s possible to lie even in death, to deceive people from beyond the grave. I wondered if that’s what this was. If I was staring at the rotting corpse of what Cassidy and I had once had, wrongly convinced there was still life in it, grasping onto an uninformed lie.
I watched my friends climb into the team van that afternoon, their luggage filled with baguettes and liquor and Fruit by the Foot, and then I went home and played this useless video game with the sound off so I wouldn’t miss it if Toby called.
MY MOM MUST have felt sorry for me, because she let me sleep in on Saturday. I finally got up around noon, after having decided that, as far as monogamous relationships go, I could probably do worse than marrying my bed.
Since all of my friends were up in Santa Barbara, I wound up at the library again, halfheartedly working on college applications but mostly checking my phone like a madman.
There was no point in bothering Toby, since he’d have debate rounds all day, and I found myself wishing I’d gone to the tournament. I pictured Austin with his endless supply of entertaining YouTube videos, and Phoebe passing out contraband snack foods (“nineties nostalgia guaranteed”) and even Sam rolling up his sleeves to mix massively intoxicating cocktails. And Toby, with his thrift-store suit and stubborn insistence that we call him “O Captain My Captain.”
The girls next to me in the library had been talking loudly, so I’d resorted to headphones. Which is why, when my phone rang, I almost missed it.
“Yeah?” I said, lunging for it.
“Dude, you missed a sick party!” Toby sounded incredibly caffeinated, like someone should have pulled him away from the Red Bull two cans ago. “Ah! Faulkner! You should have come! Everyone wishes you were here. Except Luke, because last night he got so drunk that he peed the bed.”
“How much pee are we talking?” I asked, gathering my things. The girls sitting nearby gave me an odd look, which I supposed was justified.
“If his bed was the gulf, this was an oil spill.”
“You are a magnificent friend for telling me this.” I passed through the turnstile, nodding to the girl who always let me through without ID.
It was cloudy outside, not so much overcast as overcome by fog. It happened sometimes. A huge beast of a cumulous would swallow Eastwood whole, and for a day or two we’d live in the belly of the cloud, unable to see more than five feet in front of us.
Toby drew out the story of Luke’s hour of shame, and I stared at the fog and listened to him laughing over how Luke had not only peed the bed, he’d peed the bed in another team’s hotel room. I laughed along once or twice, because I knew I was supposed to, but I was starting to get the feeling that Toby wasn’t telling me something.
“How bad is it?” I blurted.
Toby paused. We knew each other too well, and I knew that silence. It was a serious one.
“I talked to some people on the Barrows team today,” he said, trying to play it off.