I sat up in my room until Dad had gone to work, then I went downstairs and out into the yard. I was hoping you would still be at work. But I timed it badly, or you came back early, I don’t know. Maybe all the concession stands had tons of stuffed animals and you got to go home.
Anyway: you were just walking from your pickup. Shane was in a bar somewhere, presumably—drinking with the other lifeguards.
****, I thought, when I stepped out into the yard and you turned and saw me.
“Hey!” you said, running over. “Are you okay? Jesus, Cass. You went with your dad and then you just disappeared, for like three days … I thought maybe … I mean … did he hurt you?”
“No. Yes. No. I just … went to stay with a relative for a while.”
You looked stricken. “I’m so sorry, Cass. I didn’t know … I didn’t realize … how angry he was.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“He’s throwing me out, you know that?” You sounded incredulous. “I have till the end of the week to find somewhere else.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry. Really.” I started to cry, despite the drugs that Dr. Rezwari had reintroduced fogging up the window of my world again, making everything soft and blurred.
“But we can still see each other, right?” you said. “I mean, when he’s at work—I can pick you up, we can go to the pool … or to the warehouse …”
I nodded. “Uh-huh.” Please don’t remember what day it is. Please don’t ask where I’m going.
You smiled. “Good. Good.” Then you seemed to realize that I was leaving, that I had been crossing the yard when you got back. “You going out? You need a lift?”
“Um. No. Thanks.”
“Where are you going?” you asked. Fake-casual.
“Um,” I said. Even at this point, after your declaration of 100 percent, I was afraid to tell you how messed up I really was.
I’m still afraid, to be honest. I’m afraid you’re reading this and resolving to run as far from me as you can go, to Mexico, to the South Pole, to anyplace but Oakwood and any girl but me. Still, I have to try, don’t I? I mean, you’re 100 percent on my side, or you were, when you told me that. But I’m 100 percent on your side too. And I need you to know it.
Anyway.
You nodded. Nodded in this really unsurprised way, like, “I thought so.” You closed your eyes and breathed out, long and hard.
Which was maybe the moment at which my heart broke a little, though I don’t expect much sympathy from you. I don’t deserve much.
“Sorry,” I said.
You didn’t say anything.
Your radio crackled.
“714? Sorry, we actually need you again, if you’re still sober enough to drive. Dippin’ Dots emergency.”
You glared at the radio.
“You’d better get to work,” I said.
You saluted sarcastically like I was an Army officer commanding you and half smiled, though I could still see the hurt and confusion in your eyes, which broke my heart into even smaller pieces, and then you got in the F-150 and drove away.
I walked to the bus.
How could I have known that you would tell your boss you’d had a couple of beers already?
How could I have known you would follow me?
What comes after, you already know. Part of it, at least. The part I wanted you to see.
I went to group at the bowling alley. You don’t need to know what we talked about; it was more of the same stuff. Voices. Aggression. Accommodation. Dr. Lewis asked how we were, and he made me talk first, so of course he’d spoken to Dr. Rezwari, so I had to humiliate myself by talking about the bomb I had placed under myself by lying to her, by lying to my dad, and all the fallout, the dirty ash fallout, coating everything, the drugs, the suspicion in my dad’s eyes always now, the guilt.
The stupidity of it.
You’d have thought I’d have learned my lesson about lies, right?
DR. LEWIS: It sounds like Dr. Rezwari has your best interests at heart.
ME: Maybe. But I don’t feel like I do.
GROUP: (faint laughter)
ME: I break everything.
DR. LEWIS: Now, that’s not true.
THE VOICE: No, that’s true.
Then at the end, I hung back. I hung back because I wanted to leave with Dwight—I wanted to ask him if he’d told on me to my dad.
So we came out onto the street together.
And that was when I saw you, in your truck, across the street. A little farther down, south toward Hudson; I registered you in my peripheral vision, kept my eyes rigidly forward, like I hadn’t seen you, like I had no idea.
It was as if the atmosphere got cold all of a sudden, like Dwight and I had stepped into a current of air, one of those weird eddies you get in the ocean, snaking barrels of iciness, boring through air, though, instead of water.
I shivered.
And I want you to know, I want you to know right now, that I wasn’t thinking clearly. I was back on the drugs, smaller doses, but still—I was still looking at the world through plate glass, separated from it; held at bay.
“Take Dwight’s hand,” said the voice.
“No,” I said. “Oh, and come back after six.”
“Okay, then tell the boy all about me,” said the voice. “About group.”