Dad looks at me, measuring Emery’s words with my face. Scanning my eyes the way he does the answers to his students’ tests. Right or wrong? He believes her. I see it, though his voice is skeptical. “Really,” he says.
Emery gleefully gives the play-by-play of the competition, certain not to leave out my pissy post-beam stomping around. She magnifies my split-decision floor routine–“I swear, the judges had tears in their eyes”–and describes the soccer team’s ruckus. “32.225,” she concludes, licking chocolate from her fingers. Really. No shame. “With two falls and a floor routine with no real tumbling.”
“And an improvised bar routine,” I add. For the first time since the meet, I almost feel happy.
Dad raises an eyebrow.
“My vault was legit,” I say.
“Oh, yeah. A real crowd-pleaser,” Emery says.
“Did you know about this?” Dad says to Mom.
Mom wipes a glass with more concentration than usual, a slip of a smile on her face.
SHE CALLS ME when I’m asleep. I answer with the cool clearness that arrives when the only light in your room comes from the waxing moon.
“What are you up to?” she says.
“Sleeping. You?”
She sighs. “Nothing, really.”
She waits for me to continue the conversation. I wait, too. I watch the white glow on the pink carpet.
“Unbelievable about Marcos, huh?” she says finally.
My fingers tighten around the phone. “I guess so.”
“I can’t believe you went after those guys like that. What the hell were you thinking? You knew we were overmatched.”
Of course, Cass. Make it seem like I’m the wrong one.
“I warned you about Marcos,” she continues, and I imagine her eyes staring up at the ceiling, crafting all of her evidence. “These were the consequences. There are some risks that aren’t worth taking. You have to know when to bail out.”
Yes. All my fault.
This time, I’m not buying it.
“Hello?” she says.
“What would you do if I got hurt?”
A sharp inhalation. “What did they do to you, Savs?”
“Let me get this straight.” I am not burning. I am cool as the moon’s white glow, and just as clear. “You leave me in the woods. You wait twelve hours to call me. And you don’t ask if I’m okay.”
She exhales, long and shaky. “I went to get help.”
“So that’s how my dad appeared in his Spandex glory yet never saw you along the way?”
The silence extends for so long that I almost hang up, because goddammit, I’d rather she come up with an excuse than admit that she left me with no intention of helping.
“I’m sorry.” Her voice hitches like she might cry.
Don’t budge.
“I couldn’t think. I couldn’t do anything. The whole thing felt surreal. I’m sorry.”
That’s the closest she’ll give me to the truth, and even if that’s the way it went down, it’s still not enough.
“After all the times I’ve been there for you, Cass, I really thought you’d be there for me. Just this once.”
She’s quiet.
Both of us let the moment stretch until my eyelids droop. Then she says, “I thought you’d be there for me too with everything that’s happened.”
Eyes wide open. “Every time I try to have a real conversation, you blow me off.”
“Because I don’t want a goddamn conversation!” I hold the phone away from my ear. Her voice quiets, but not by much. “Don’t you understand? I just want to move on. I thought you’d get that, but you don’t. It’s all about your gymnastics and all about your boyfriend, and you don’t want to listen to anything I have to say about either of those.”
“You kept telling me to stop!” I no longer care that I’m yelling or that my parents might hear. “You never supported me.”
“Of course I did. I didn’t want you to get hurt,” she says. “I am looking out for you. Even if today wasn’t my shining moment.”
I don’t know what to believe anymore. Cassie’s perception of the truth, or my truth? Looking back now, the way she talked to Beth and Marcos under the guise of looking out for me seems extreme. She didn’t have to tell off Beth because I couldn’t make it to her birthday party. She didn’t have to be so cold to Marcos, the person who pulled her from freezing water. She’s wanted all of me, and yet at the same time, it’s not enough for her.
“You don’t need to protect me,” I say, “which you demonstrated so well today. I’m capable of making my own mistakes.”
“You’re the one who wants to freaking talk about our feelings every five seconds,” Cassie says. “Why did I do this or that or the other thing? God, Savannah, that’s what I have therapy for. I’m still trying to figure it out myself. You were supposed to just…” She falters. “Just know. You always knew me better than anyone.”
A pause.
“Well, I guess not anymore,” I say, and hang up the phone.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
I SUFFER THROUGH Monday morning with only Marcos’s texts to go by. Did your knee hurt as much as my head does? he writes. The verdict: concussed, stitched up, and with his elbow popped back into place. He assures me there’s no need to visit him and that he’ll be back in action in a few days. It seems too far away.
When I walk into AP Chem to find Cassie’s seat empty, my palms sweat and I itch to text her. Where are you? Are you okay? She didn’t go looking for me, yet that doesn’t stop me from wanting to search for her.
I send a message to Juliana instead. Do you know where Cassie is?
She responds immediately. We’re on a field trip at the MoMA. She’s quiet. Keeping an eye on her.
I’m not sure how to reconcile the aching in my head and heart, as if our fight on the phone left me emotionally hungover, with the same blaze of disappointment that made me hang up. I don’t know if it’s right to feel relieved and angry at the same time.
Of course the entirety of Ponquogue High School knows what happened this weekend, although their accounts vary. “I hear you kicked some serious ass this weekend,” Jason Kortis says to me approvingly as I fumble my way through the chem lab. “I always knew there was a bad-ass within you.”