Chapter Twenty-four
“Positive you don’t need some permit for this?” Mom asks, watching me line up pencils at the kitchen table.
“Mom, it’s not daycare. It’s teaching.”
She regards me dubiously as I rip open a stack of yellow lined-paper notebooks.
“This is the polite boy, with the abs?”
“We’ve been through this. Yes. Nic’s teammate. I’m helping him pass an English test. No abs involved.”
Mom’s hovering. She never hovers. She has to know what’s up with Nic and Vivien, but I’ve never seen her show it by word or glance—not when Nic comes in at the crack of dawn after “dinner at Viv’s,” not when Vivie and Nic vanish into the bedroom when Grandpa Ben is out and I’ve got Em. Why do I get the suspicious eyes?
I guess because I’ve never brought a boy home. “Nic’s teammate” sounded nice and distant and official . . . but kind of like a lie. Not the real story. Like every other way I define Cass.
Mom, who never gives me sharp looks, keeps studying my face. I consciously try not to blush.
She realigns the placemats on the table. Nic, Grandpa, Em, 244
244
Mom, me . . . one two three four five. Mom frowns, readjusts number five.
“Mom. It’s tutoring. Not a date. What are you worrying about?”
“Nothing, Gwen. Just making sure.”
After a series of firm knocks, Cass shifts back on his heels outside the door, wearing dark jeans and a button-down cobalt-blue shirt. His face is faintly flushed and freshly shaved—there’s a tiny cut near his chin. Still damp, his hair appears to have been recently combed. Basically, he comes across as though he’s taken trouble with his looks.
Not good. I might have changed four times, but he has no way of knowing that. There’s no concealing his tidiness—he looks like someone who might have a bouquet of flowers hid-den behind his back.
“You didn’t need to dress up,” I tell him immediately.
Glancing down at his shirt, he raises his eyebrows. “This was the only thing that was clean. And not pink.”
“Oh. Well. Come in.”
He strides in, looking around curiously at our combined kitchen/living room/workout room/playroom. His face is expressionless. All the soaring ceilings and expensive lighting and artwork at his house, all those rooms . . . and look at us.
Sagging Myrtle and worn, peeling wallpaper and a few of Emory’s creations taped up, along with a photograph of Rita Hayworth that Grandpa Ben is way too fond of, and some of Nic’s exercise routines posted in sequential order high along 245
245
the wall. Also Vovó’s solemn portrait/shrine and a pin-the-tail on the donkey game that we put up for Em’s birthday and haven’t taken down because it helps him with fine motor skills.
“I like this. A lot of personality.”
“Isn’t that what guys say about ugly girls?” I snap.
“Is this a bad time or are you just randomly pissed off?” He scrubs his hand through his hair, and it flops back into disar-rayed perfection once he’s done.
“I’m not randomly pissed off. I’m—”
Randomly pissed off.
I’d been fine two minutes ago. Now I’m totally uptight. Not a date. Just tutoring.
Cass has moved around me to the table where I’d laid out the yellow lined pad and pencil, opening up his backpack, the same one he had on the beach with Emory. That softens me immediately. He slaps a copy of Tess of the D’Urbervilles down on the table and grins up at me, looking through his lashes.
Long lashes. Why do boys get those when girls are supposed to need them?
“So, we sit here?” He pulls out a chair, piles into it, rests his elbows on the table, looks up at me again.
“Uh, yeah. Here’s fine. My room is kind of small and it—”
Is my bedroom. Has a bed.
Just then, Mom comes out of our room, stopping dead, as though she hadn’t been expecting anyone.
Cass leaps to his feet, extending a hand. “Hello, Mrs. Castle.
I’m Cass—Cassidy Somers. Gwen’s agreed to give me some Lit 2 help.”
246
246
Mom stares at his hand for a moment as though she has no idea what to do with it, much as I do when Cass makes one of his super-polite moves. Then she gingerly extends hers and Cass shakes it. As they do, I get a whiff of some sort of lemony-spicy scent.
Aftershave?
Cass is wearing aftershave.
Ha. He did put in an effort. Now, this gives me a little thrill, when seconds ago I was upset by the thought. I’m becoming more bipolar by the minute. Maybe because the aftershave is fighting with the perfume I put on, from a bottle Vivien gave me four years ago. Which has probably expired and is emitting toxic fumes and scrambling my brain.
“Well, yes, then.” Mom takes possession of her hand once again. “I’ll just—get back— Would you kids like a snack or anything?”
Like what, Mom? Milk and cookies? Frozen Lean Cuisine?
“Nah, thank you, I just ate,” Cass says. “Thanks for letting us do this here, Mrs. Castle.”
He really is insanely polite. He sounds like a teenager from a fifties sitcom . “Golly, gee, Mrs. Castle, you sure are swell.”
“Our pleasure,” Mom returns, rising to the occasion. “Make yourself at home, Cassidy. I’ll just get back to work. You two won’t even know I’m here.”
Work? Now?
She goes to the kitchen closet, pulls out the vacuum cleaner, attaching the filter. Then she turns it on and assaults Myrtle the couch, who I imagine is wearing an expression of upholstered surprise. We’ve pretty much given up on doing anything to 247
247
maintain Myrtle. The vacuum cleaner sound roars through the room like a jet plane.
Cass seems to be suppressing a smile. He taps the cover of Tess, calls over the roar, “I guess we should get started. I have some questions.”
“Fire away,” I yell. Mom is laying into the part beneath the cushions in a kind of frenzy. I can hear these clanking sounds as things that belong nowhere near a vacuum cleaner get sucked up anyway.
This has to be her way of being a chaperone, but honestly, what does she think is happening here? We’re going to leap on each other in a frenzy of lust after talking Thomas Hardy— always such an aphrodisiac—brush aside the pad and pencils and Do It on the table?
Now I’m remembering Cass tipping his forehead against mine, perspiration sticking us together, his hand cupped around the back of my neck, one of mine flattened against his racing heart.
I clear my throat and focus on his paperback copy of Tess of the d’Urbervilles. It’s easy to see he barely read it. The spine is uncracked, there are no notes or turned down pages or under-linings.
“Yeah,” Cass shouts, upping his volume slightly as the vacuum cleaner starts to cough out a Fabio hairball. “This is the book I didn’t even get a third of the way through. I hated every single character in it.” He hunches over a little bit, picking at a tiny gap in the corner of the cover, making it larger.
“Everyone does,” I tell him. “It’s like the Classic No One Loves.”
“Honestly? But we still have to read it.”
248
248
“Yup.”
“Why? They’re just people behaving badly.”
“People behaving badly is, like, most of literature, Cass.”
He squints at me. “I guess. And life. Maybe.”
“Maybe,” I concede. What are we saying here?
“That Angel Clare dude is a complete prick.”
Mom’s now moved on to the rug, and has sucked up something that’s rattling around frantically. Talking is like trying to be heard standing on a jetty in a hurricane.
Angel who? Oh, right, Angel Clare. The hero of Tess, which I reread last night just to be in practice even though it’s number one on my list of Books I’d Like to Throw Off the Pier. “I thought you didn’t read the entire book.”
“SparkNotes,” he admits, again with that embarrassed expression.
“Hey, we’ve all done it. Just to supplement, of course.”
He shrugs, with a smile. Mom jams the nozzle of the vacuum cleaner under his feet. He lifts them up obediently. I duck my head under the table.
“Mom. Do you have to do this now?”
She flips the deafening vacuum cleaner off, says quietly, “Sorry. You know how I am. Can’t stand a mess.”
“Try to survive this one until we’re done,” I whisper.
“Sorry, honey,” she responds in a normal voice Cass is sure to hear. “Didn’t realize you two wanted to be alone.”
“We don’t— Ow!” Attempting to raise my head, I’ve smacked it on the underside of the table.
“You okay?” Cass reaches out to touch my hair, succeeding in covering my hand as I’m rubbing the spot. He tightens his 249
249