Sometimes Never, Sometimes Always (12 page)

He slides the cards out in a little fan, face down, and looks at them. “Did you do that one reading you mentioned, then?” He says it so nonchalantly, like I was going to ask the tarot whether I should have a sandwich or cereal for a snack.

I nod. I can’t take my eyes away from his face, from that awful bruise. “Who did that to you?”

“Ran into a branch.” He flips over a card. The Ace of Swords. “Is this a good one?”

“Bullshit.” I take out the guidebook. “It’s obvious, Eric.”

“Obviously good?”

“Obviously punched.” I tap the book. “
Strength, power, victory, love.
Good things. Now tell me who did it.”

He inhales slowly, flipping the card away toward the computer desk. “I don’t like this, Cass, these cards.”

“Come on, Eric. I know you. You believe in God, and I get that, but you can’t convince me you believe in everything Pastor Fordham says. You can’t believe there’s such a thing as—”

“Dark magic?” Even his thin attempt at a smile disappears. “I don’t know, Cass. I mean sure, obviously there are things I have to question, things about the Bible I can’t believe, but that’s because there’s a good reason not to believe. Stuff like this, though … these cards. This is messed-up stuff. It may not be sorcery like they say, but I can still see plenty of good reasons to avoid them.”

I think about the reading I did, all those pictures of sunshine and rainbows and happy families. Right. I reach up and jab my finger into his cheek, which is purple and swollen. He doesn’t flinch. “I saw the car. I saw what they did.”

“It was nothing,” he says, brushing my hand away. “I wish you’d stop.”

“Stop what? Stop caring? Stop wondering which asshole punched my brother in the face and pissed all over his boyfriend’s car?”

He sets the deck on the edge of the computer desk and shakes his head. “Stop messing with these cards,” he says. “Stop trying to be someone you’re not.” He walks all the way down the hallway without looking back.

I remember his cards; I think of his face. And then I sit back down, double-check the time, and type up my very first reading.

18. Your first crush …

English class is different now. My finger tingles where I scrubbed off Darin’s smiley face, and even though I know it’s only my imagination, I keep running the tip of my thumb across it. I’m dreading today because we’re supposed to be working on the final drafts of our songs of ourselves, due tomorrow and shit, but when I slide into my seat and Darin shakes his hair out of his eyes, it’s hard to deny the grin that forces its way onto my face.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey.” Okay. So I can think of worse opening lines. Certainly there are better ones, but I can’t find coherent words, at least not while his gray eyes are focused on me.

“Write anything yet?”

“Um.” See? I knew I could do worse.

“I thought maybe I could help. You know, give you some ideas.”

“What about your own poem?” He doesn’t even have a notebook. Like usual, the only thing Darin seems to have brought with him to class is that ever-present black pen.

“Oh, that.” He waves his hand. “I’m already failing this class for the semester.”

“My parents would kill me.” I feel a million shades of stupid for that remark, but it’s true. My mom has a stroke if I get a B+ even on my midterm progress report. She makes me go around with a little note asking for extra credit; I have to get each teacher to sign it like I’m in middle school or something. If I got a C, she’d probably enroll me in summer school. Or maybe she’d ship me away to some crazy Christian all-girls school. In eighth grade I got a B- on my report card in Public Speaking, and I was grounded—seriously grounded, with heavy labor every day and no phone or Internet—for an entire quarter until the next grades were out.

But Darin just nods. “I did some research,” he says, reaching into his back pocket.

“On what?” On Whitman? I lean closer to see the crumpled page he brings out on the desk.

“On Cassandra,” he says. “The mythical Cassandra, from ancient Greece. Or ancient Troy, actually.”

Wait—he was researching
me
? Okay, my name, but still. “Didn’t she get killed in the Trojan War?” Something about Troy, anyway. “Was it something with the horse?”

He frowns. “Well, yeah, a bunch of bad stuff happens to her, I guess. But that’s not the cool part.”

“Obviously.” I laugh.

“Yeah. So, she was given a gift of prophesy from Apollo,” he says.”

“She could predict the future?” I think of the tarot, and my hands start to sweat.

“Sort of. I mean, she could, but then she pissed Apollo off somehow and he cursed her.”

I remember this story now. “Oh, yeah, she refused to sleep with him.”

“So everything she prophesied was true, but the curse was that nobody would believe her until it was too late.” Darin tosses his shaggy hair back from his face and fixes me with those eyes again. “Can you imagine how crazy awful that would be? To see all these terrible things, like your own death, or the death of everyone around you? And to have nobody believe you when you try to stop it?”

“Yeah.” I grip the cool metal legs of the chair with my clammy hands. “That would really suck.”

“So maybe you could write something about that,” he says.

“What?” For a second, I almost think he somehow knows about the blog—about my ridiculous fortune-telling. But he couldn’t know. Nobody knows about it except Eric, and he wouldn’t tell anyone. “What are you talking about?”

He shakes his head. “I—I don’t know, exactly. It’s just that … Dawkins says you should figure out something special about yourself, and you say there’s nothing. And he says to make something up, but this other Cassandra always told the truth.” He tosses his hair again, but it settles right back into the same tousled mess as always. “What if you wrote the truth? About yourself. Tell me … I mean, tell your readers the truth about you.”

“That’s the whole problem,” I say. What if the truth is something I haven’t figured out yet? I could tell all kinds of truths in this poem, I suppose, but none of them would be worth reading about. None of them are mine alone. I don’t know why I keep coming back to this—why I don’t write about fostering pigs or listening to Kayla’s favorite bands or watching her boyfriends do skateboard tricks on the library steps. If I’m going to celebrate myself and sing myself, it feels like I should
know
myself, like that Internet survey. I should know the answers. “There’s nothing to tell.”

“Maybe I don’t believe you,” he says. “Maybe nobody will.”

19. A secret you
wish you didn’t know …

All they talk about, pretty much, is each other—the “popular” kids. Today is the last day to work on this issue; it goes to the printer today, and it’ll come out sometime tomorrow morning. I’m wrestling with widows and orphans and fonts while Annika and Britney gossip about everyone at school.

“You know why she’s switching schools, don’t you?” Britney shakes a bottle of pink nail polish. She’s been shaking it for at least ten minutes. I wonder if she’s actually going to do her nails, or if she just likes to have something to do with her hands while she talks behind people’s backs.

“Is it about that whole mess in the locker room?” Annika asks. “Because that was a mistake, actually. Jamie told me personally that they meant to put that deodorant on Drew’s lock, not Jillian’s.”

“No, it’s more than that. And I don’t even know how you think you can believe anything Jamie says, after what she wrote in that note about Dane.”

I roll my eyes. This is tiresome. I wish Jenny would come back from rehab or whatever. I take out my headphones and stick them in my ears, but my music won’t play. Stupid battery is dead. Oh well. I leave the headphones in because I’m too lazy to take them out.

“It doesn’t matter. You can’t tell anyone,” says Britney, her voice low but still audible. “Promise me.”

“I promise! Duh! About Jillian?”

“Her dad
molested
her!”

“OMG! No way!”

“I’m serious. And she’s going to stay with her grandma, who’s making her go to the Catholic school. She has a therapist and everything!”

“That is so sick!” Annika squeals, then slaps her hand over her mouth. “I know I shouldn’t laugh, but ewwww! I totally knew something was weird about her, too!”

“Shhhhh!” I can feel Britney’s wide, vacant eyes on the back of my head. “You can’t tell
anyone.
”

Annika laughs, but more softly. “She can’t hear us. She’s got her music on.” She raises her voice a notch. “Right, Cassie?”

I don’t react. I continue deliberately linking text boxes from the front page of the paper to their continuations on later pages. It’s not that I want to keep listening to their stupid conversation, but I can’t handle them knowing I’ve been listening, either. It feels wrong, hearing them talk about people like this, and I wish my music were playing right now, so loudly I could truly claim ignorance of these awful gossip sessions.

“See?” Annika giggles. “Besides, Cassie doesn’t care about Jillian screwing her daddy.
She’s
only got eyes for that Neanderthal comic book girl. Kayla with the weird dinosaur.”

“Do you really think?” Britney sounds uncertain.

“Oh, she’s totally a lesbian. Look at the way she dresses.”

They’re talking about
me.
I have to fight to stay focused on the screen, which is now blurry. I will not cry in front of these stupid, shallow mean girls.
Will not.
My hands want to curl up into fists, but I keep them on the keyboard, thumbing shortcuts to place a new ad into the space at the bottom of page four. There’s an empty spot. I’m supposed to fill it with an image of the Gordon Golden Gophers or maybe a reminder about the upcoming Winter Carnival. Instead, I blink back tears and type in the url for my new blog.

I make it look like one of those plain little business card ads, with my name in the center—
Divinia Starr
. I pause.
Mystic and Medium
. Silly, a little, but I don’t have a lot of time here to think. I tap my fingers on the keyboard, thinking of a slogan, but my head isn’t in the best place, so I type
You know you’re curious!
below the web address and save the ad. Ha. It sounds like porn.

Glancing over my shoulder at Annika and Britney, whose heads are still bent close together sharing scandals in fake-shock stereo, I open the browser and click over to my site so I can add a few details to my post—a fake reading about a boy who wants to know if the girl who sits next to him in English class would go out with him—before it goes live. I wish I could make my answers kind of clever and cryptic, like little riddles, but I’m afraid I’m not a good enough writer for that. And I’m not nearly a good enough tarot reader. I read through the draft, adding a few details from my memory of the cards and a few from my imagination. What does it matter if I embellish a little? The boy doesn’t really exist. I plug in a card from Eric’s reading—Temperance, the winged angel figure with the triangle. It’s visually interesting, and the meaning fits my advice to go for the girl.
A perfect union
, said my guidebook.

I’m adding tags to my post when Britney says his name: Eric Randall. I keep my head from snapping around. They have to realize he’s my brother, right? We have the same last name, the same high forehead, the same unruly brown hair.

“ … gave Eric a black eye, you know.” Britney’s voice is so soft I have a hard time catching the words.

“What’s their problem?” Annika says, slightly louder.

“I don’t know, but there’s going to be trouble.”

“That’s so disgusting, though, you know? Nasty.”

“I know. I can’t even believe they’re telling people. They’re so freaking gross.” Britney laughs with that awful wind-up laughter that all of the mechanical girls use around Annika.

My face burns. The computer screen in front of me grows dim and swims in front of my eyes. I can’t believe they’re talking about my brother like this. Okay, so I guess it’s not so surprising—it’s not like I’ve never heard gay bashing before, but, like, I thought we were beyond this at my school. I mean, did they really call my brother and Gavin
nasty
? They’re the ones who are nasty.

I punch my index finger against the mouse button, publishing my post, and then close the browser and send the newspaper file to pdf. I want to get out of here, away from these vacuous backstabbers.

“That’s the worst part,” says Annika. “The fact that they’re actually
bragging
about
urinating
on Gavin’s car. Like, grow up, losers.
Obviously
they have a deep-seated feeling of inadequacy to be overcompensating like that.”

“Right?” Britney laughs again.

Wait. Okay, so Britney and Annika think the
other guys
are the disgusting ones? And they know who they are? I pull my headphones out of my ears.