Casey Barnes Eponymous

2



“You like magazines?” she asked.

“No,” he said, “Not at all.” She looked down. A moment passed. “How ya been?” he asked.

“Great,” she mumbled.

He looked around. “You working here?” There was not much of a question mark in his voice. Casey wondered if he already knew the answer.

Mr. Cole came over. “Your friend’s still here.” She turned to look at Leigh, which was unfortunate because he and Mr. Cole did too, which turned out to be doubly unfortunate because Leigh chose that moment to look at Casey and make a cutting motion with her hand across her neck. Leigh stopped as soon as all three pairs of eyes spotted her. She bolted from the library.

He turned to Mr. Cole. “What’s the fine for a book I checked out last year that I lost over the summer?”

Mr. Cole did not respond at first. Mr. Cole was waiting for an explanation as to how or why said book had been lost. But he, of course, did not offer one. Casey’s eyes traveled downward. He was wearing a Ramones T-shirt. “I’m a senior,” he said, “They’re making noise about not releasing transcripts to colleges if we have outstanding library dues.” He rolled his eyes.

They’re making noise. These idiots. These temporary guardians who couldn’t even tell you what country Dee Dee Ramone was born in.

“Five dollars,” Mr. Cole said, “You can pay the principal’s secretary.” He walked back to the desk. Which left Casey standing there with him, alone.

Now, she knew how it had all gone down. She remembered what Leigh told her on the fifth day of school. But she still wanted more than anything for the moment not to end. So she forced herself to breathe. And, then, to lie.

For it was not as if she had not been hoping, expecting, on a certain level, that he would saunter into the library one day. She had even gotten an idea about how to handle it. It was from a girlie magazine she and Leigh read in the aisle of Seven Eleven.

Nothing drives a guy more crazy than knowing a girl who was once his is now with another guy. Even if he was the one who stopped showing interest. It had something to do with the way men are built.

“Sorry I haven’t really seen you around much,” she said, “I’ve been busy the past few weeks.”

His eyes studied her. She had almost forgotten how those eyes seemed like they were staring even when they were not. “That so?”

“Yeah,” she continued, “I kind of met someone.”

For a moment he did not appear to register it. She got nervous. But then she saw the wisdom in that girlie magazine. His eyes got harder. It was subtle, but there alright. He was jealous.

“Interesting,” he said.

She waited for him to say the next thing she was hoping he would. Namely: How dare you? Who is he? Please give me another chance. But he did not. Instead he put the magazine back into the rack and left.





3



Leigh’s second evil act of the day was not to tell Casey what she heard about him the moment Casey came over later. No, Casey had to wait until the end of her visit to hear that. And that would change everything.

After school and before going over to Leigh’s, she came home and rocked out. For Casey’s playlists were only the tip of iceberg when it came to her musical ambitions. That was because she wanted to be a rock star. And not just any rock star either. She wanted to be the most guitar-slaying, album-selling, hotel-room-trashing rock star of all time.

It began when she was thirteen. In that year there was a fateful day when her brother Yull was listening to The Ramones. As she eavesdropped she saw her future as clearly as she heard Johnny’s guitar. She begged Tricia for lessons and, given that her junior high grades were not the catastrophe they would later become, her wish was granted. After six months of lessons and steady practice, she got her first guitar for Christmas. A year later she bought an electric, a Strat, and began to write her own songs. Her first was a folk song about world peace.

“Name two countries currently at war,” Yull said when he heard it. She made a hand pistol and aimed it at Yull.

She soon started writing fast songs in minor chords that ranged in subject matter from the principal’s secret life as an internet pimp to the foreign language department’s secret ties with Al Qaeda. Despite her steady march towards world rock domination, however, there was still one element she had to master. And that was playing her songs anywhere but her basement, and for anyone other than Leigh, Yull, or her neighbor Clayton Gould.

It almost happened, once, at the end of freshman year. Casey was in the basement practicing and Yull was upstairs with a couple of friends. One of the friends heard her, came downstairs, and asked her to play a song. She strummed the opening notes of one. But then she got an image in her head of Yull and his friend laughing at her creation. She took the guitar off, said she had to go to the grocery store for Tricia, and left.

She did not even tell him.

After a few minutes of shredding, she heard the sound of someone leaning on the doorbell. She went upstairs and found Clayton Gould there. As soon as she let him in he went straight to the fridge for a Coke. Sugary beverages were not allowed in the Gould household. He drained half the can in one insubordinate gulp. “Got any new tunes?” She did not respond. “Let’s hear it,” he said.

Clayton Gould was fifteen and five foot five. He would never grow any taller thanks to a tumor he had at eight from Cushing Syndrome. He was freakishly smart. Once he got into a debate with a friend of Casey and Yull’s stepfather over an article in The New Yorker on Afghanistan. Said debate began with a note of patronization on the part of the friend and concluded with him slinking away, tail tucked between legs, Clayton Gould having out-referenced him at very turn. Clayton Gould lived two doors away and attended a private school in the district where students sat on cushions and people from Mensa were guest speakers.

She turned and walked back down to the basement. Once there she picked up her guitar and began playing her newest creation. The song was slower than the typical Casey Barnes fare. It was about him. She wrote it after school began and everything turned horrible. She finished playing. Clayton Gould did not say anything at first.

“Fine,” she said, “I get that it’s cheesy. It was just an experiment in, you know, emo. I’ll never play it again. I have to go to Leigh’s now.”

“As a matter of fact, I thought that was your best song yet.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “It had soul. Not that your song about, what was the one you played last week, the one about the biology teacher?”

“Mr. Raymond.”

“Right,” he continued, “The one about him being reincarnated as a tapeworm, which p.s. I don’t think is possible.”

“You can’t say that for sure.”

“Not that that song didn’t carry more than a modicum of emotional energy. But that one you just played was different.” He paused. “Was it about a boy?” She rolled her eyes. He squinted at her. “Who is he?”

“No one.” Casey never told Clayton Gould about him. She had not told Yull either.

He shook his head. “That song was too good for it not to be about something real. There’s a boy alright.” She ran her hands up and down her fret board in an (impressive) approximation of Yngwie Malmsteen. “But that’s not the point,” he continued, “because until you start playing your sonic creations in front of an audience you aren’t going to be able to get something going with this boy or, for that matter, any boy.”

“What do you mean?”

“Whoever this boy is, he isn’t going to kick start the path to high school superstardom that you’re hoping for.”

“I AM NOT. Anyway he’s, I mean…There is no boy.”

“I may not be female but I do know this: most female creatures our age are under the impression that the boyfriend’s going to get them where they want to go. And I’m here to tell you you’re the one who has to do it. He will follow.”

“Sometimes I think it would be a good thing if you added more junk food to your diet,” she said.

“You know there’s truth in my words. There always is.”

“Please.”

At that moment, Yull entered the room. Noteworthy things to know about Yull Barnes:

1. He was a senior. His real name Daniel was sheared freshman year of high school when deemed “suburban and derivative.”

2. He was a straight A student, president of the Drama and Amnesty International clubs, had gotten a short story published the year before, and was applying early decision to Brown.

3. He was one of the most popular kids at their high school Walton.

4. He was gay. When he came out freshman year he gathered a crowd of friends and told them he was gay and if any of them had a problem with it they were either stupid or latently gay themselves. Since that time he had been hassled exactly two times. The first was by a football player. Yull calmly repeated his mantra. He added that if the football player beat him up it would do nothing to change this perception of him in the minds of other. The football player then turned to another player for support, and the other player walked away. The other football player, as it turned out, had a gay older brother. The other time Yull was hassled was by a nerdy mathlete. Yull repeated his mantra. A month later the mathlete came out.

5. He was magnanimous to, and adored by, everyone. Except to, and by, Casey.

“Where’s my shower gel?” Yull asked.

“Used up.”

“And you didn’t consider asking before you used it up?”

“It was in the bathroom we share,” she responded.

She waited for Yull to say that the shower gel, an overpriced one with acai, was purchased with summer money from the, oh how could anyone forget, paid and prestigious summer internship he did at the Kennedy Center.

“You were adopted from a family that once bred with basset hounds. You know that?” he said instead.

“Careful or I’ll dismember your Ricky Martin doll.”

“I don’t have a Ricky Martin doll.”

“But I bet you want one.”

“Barneses,” Clayton Gould said.

She took her guitar off her shoulders. “It’s time I blow this taco stand.”

“I have to shower and go to a planning meeting for Amnesty,” Yull said, “Let me guess, you’re off to see your crowd of friends at…Leigh’s?”

“The only thing cool about you is that you’re gay,” Casey said. He held up his middle finger and departed the room.

Clayton Gould sighed. “Have you given any thought to what I said about playing your songs in public?”

She stared at him. She shook her head.





4



Leigh answered the door and motioned for Casey to follow her upstairs. When they got to her room she opened the door quickly so they could slip inside. Her mother was down the hall reading.

Once there, Casey saw that Leigh had emptied the entire contents of her bureau onto the floor. She frowned. “Was there a rhyme and reason to this dumping?”

“I still can’t find it.”

“Hmm.”

The summer before, Leigh spent five days visiting her Aunt Eva in Los Angeles. Casey was fascinated with Aunt Eva. She was Leigh’s Mom’s twin sister but Leigh did not meet her until she was twelve, when Eva returned from living abroad in Europe. In her years away Eva became a respected film editor and was now doing the same job in Los Angeles. Eva was outspoken and free-spirited. In Europe she lived with a succession of lovers, including a woman, and was now living with a younger man in Los Angeles. Her freewheeling ways were sharply at odds with those of Leigh’s parents. Leigh’s father was raised Southern Baptist, in Georgia, and was an army doctor at Walter Reid. Leigh’s mother was uptight and ran a shop in downtown Bethesda that sold a variety of scented candles. Since coming back to the states Eva had visited Leigh’s family several times. The visits were always punctuated by a strange tension that centered on the fact that Leigh’s parents disapproved of Leigh’s interest in painting.

That summer Aunt Eva invited Leigh out for a weeklong visit to Los Angeles. Leigh’s parents initially said no. Then, miraculously, they changed their minds and let Leigh go. Eva took her around town and introduced her to a bunch of film industry people. On Leigh’s last night in LA, Eva’s college-aged neighbors invited her to an Arcade Fire concert. Eva told her to go and said she would not tell her parents. Leigh did, smoked pot for the first time in her life, and made out with a white guy with dreads. The ticket Leigh referred to in the library was from that show. It had gone missing.

Casey shrugged and sat on Leigh’s bed. “So what if they find it. Just tell them Eva went.”

“It’s not just the ticket.”

“What do you mean?”

“There was a roach clip clipped to it.”

“Excuse me?” Casey asked.

“I wanted a memento for the first time I ever smoked pot.”

“Whoa.”

Leigh shrunk onto the floor and curled into a ball. “I am so dead.” Casey attempted to shoot her an encouraging smile. Leigh groaned and put her head in her hands. A moment passed. She looked up. “Holy shit!”

Casey looked around. “Did it fall from the rafters?”

“No. There’s something I heard at school today that I almost forgot about.”

“I am not interested in Yull’s latest feat, thank you very much.”

“It has nothing to do with Yull.”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s about Alex Deal,” Leigh said.

Alex Deal. Alex Deal. Alex Deal. Was his name. And it was a name that had not been mentioned between Casey and Leigh since the fifth day of school when Leigh told her something about him, she threw up, and Leigh said they would never speak of him again. Alex Deal who had come into the library that day and who had left. That Alex Deal.

“What about him?”

“He and Melanie Corcoran broke up.”

“What’s your source?”

“Melanie Corcoran herself, in art class. Last period of the day or else I would’ve told you in the library.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me this before!”

“I was stressed about the tick--”

“What, exactly, did you hear?”

“Another girl asked her if she and Alex went to Maxine French’s party over the weekend.”

Casey made a face. Maxine French was queen of the school and, in a crappy taste in music meets hummer limo kind of way, awful.

“Anyone who likes The Ramones would not be caught dead attending a party at that cretin’s abode.”

“He went,” Leigh said, “Melanie didn’t. But they already broke up two days before, which is why Melanie didn’t go.”

“Who broke up with who?”

“Couldn’t tell. All I heard Melanie say was that it’s over.”

Casey beamed. Leigh looked at her suspiciously. “Just because he and her broke up doesn’t mean he didn’t act meanly to you.”

Casey felt panicky as she remembered what she said to him in the library. What if one of the reasons he came in was to talk to her? And there she was, going on about some imaginary beau. Oh. But then again maybe it was a good thing to do. She looked to Leigh for guidance. “I…”

She could not finish her sentence. She knew, from the look Leigh was shooting her, that she would not approve of her obsessing over Alex Deal. “You what?” Leigh asked.

“’Meanly’ isn’t a word. And I have to go. My favorite television program’s on tonight.” She stood. Her mind went back to him. Had it really been that bad, what he had done?

“What program is that?” Leigh asked.

Maybe there was a whole other side to it, one she did not know because they never spoke after everything went down.

“Casey?”

“Huh?”

“What T.V. show?”

“American Idol.”

“You hate that show.”

“I happen to find it inspiring.”

“Bullcrap,” Leigh said, “and if I catch you playing Ishmael to Alex Deal’s Moby tomorrow…”

Casey had no idea which Moby song Leigh was referring to and she did not care. She was too busy thinking about him. Maybe there was an explanation for everything. Maybe he and Melanie Corcoran…Yuck. The thought of it made her feel nauseous. Leigh prattled on. “You did read Moby Dick last year, didn’t you?”

“Of course,” she snapped, “though honestly I think Marilyn Monroe was an influence, despite what my English teacher said.”

“Marilyn Monroe?” Leigh shook her head. “Casey, Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible.” He looked jealous earlier that day. Of that much, at least, she was sure. “Casey?”

All she wanted to do was think and talk about Alex Deal. And since she couldn’t talk about him with Leigh, she could at least think about him. But Leigh was going on and on about Arthur something. She told her she had to go, and got herself out of the house and onto her bike as fast as she could. Then and only then did she allow herself to relive in detail what had gone down with Alex Deal.