Sometimes Never, Sometimes Always (24 page)

When my phone rings, I jump, practically out of my seat. I can’t figure out what that sound is.
Kayla.
I slide my finger across the screen. Wait, what? It’s my mom. Oh god. I pick up.

“Hello!” I make my voice seem like the voice of a girl who’s spent the last few hours playing board games with Drew’s aunt and uncle. Miss Scarlett in the conservatory with a candlestick. For a minute I forget that it’s almost two in the morning and I’ve been sleeping on a bus on my way to running away or something.

“Cassandra, good heavens! Where are you?” Mom’s voice is near panic. Near panic, over me.

“Mom, I’m fine. What’s going on?”

“When did you last see Kayla?”

Oh god. Kayla. The truth is my only option. “About an hour and a half ago,” I say. “Tell me.”

“She was arrested. She was drinking and driving, and …
some other things. She told the cops your name, said they had to find you and make sure you got to her sister’s all right. She was a mess, but they pulled her over before she got into an accident and got herself killed or something.” Her voice crumples into a sob. “Cassandra, where are you? Why aren’t you with Drew? What the …
heck
did you think you were doing?”

“I’m on a bus, Mom. I’m on my way home. But my battery’s dying. I—” I switch off the phone. “Damn.”

“What’s up?” Darin looks like he has to crawl up out of a few layers of sleep. He straightens his spine and tips his head back and forth a few times.

“Kayla got picked up by the cops and told them about me, so that was my mother on the phone.” The words describing the situation emerge calmly, matter-of-factly, but none of it has penetrated my sense of unreality. The dream images of tree forts and risky freedom begin to dissolve.

“Frantic, enraged, or murderous?” The corner of his mouth curls up, but his eyes are kind, that same steady concern.

“A mix of all three, I think, rolled together in a dusting of prayer.” I turn my phone over and over in my hands, wondering about my eventual homecoming. “I think I should prepare some last words, in any case.”

“You could read your Song of Myself.”

“You
would
have to bring it back to that stupid poem.”

“I’m kidding,” he says, but it’s okay. I mean, he’s not really kidding. I do have to write this freaking poem. And judging by the depth of the shit I’m in right now, passing English may be an actual life-or-death situation.

37. A warning you
should have heeded …

My mom is so angry she can’t even speak to me. That’s got to be it. When I walked through the front door early this morning, she hugged me silently but didn’t speak. Not even a prayer crossed her lips. My dad was nothing but a shadow looming in the hall, an angry presence that receded as I slipped into my room. I stayed in bed as long as I could, waiting for them to order me to get up and go to church, and now I’ve really got to pee, except that involves leaving my bedroom and facing her wrath. I listen at the door, shifting positions, trying to figure out the locations of my family members, but the house is silent, inscrutable.

At last I run for it, on tiptoe—I accidentally catch the tie of my robe in my bedroom door, but I make it to the bathroom without encountering anyone. It’s late, though, and they never miss church. Is it possible they left me home? I twist the lock on the door and take full advantage of my position of safety, treating this moment as a sort of Last Toilet. I take a hot bath, exfoliate, and even paint my toenails a sparkly purple. I moisturize my face carefully, staring into the mirror while my fingertips make tiny circles on my cheeks, concentrating deeply as though I could occupy my entire brain with lotion. I’m waiting for her voice, for my mother to call me out of the bathroom and in for my sentencing.

Will I have time to eat first? Do I dare hope for a Last Breakfast as well? I stand with my hand on the doorknob, steeling myself, and then I stride down the hall toward the kitchen, dead girl walking.

“Isn’t this a new tactic?” says Eric. The sound of his voice startles me; my heart lurches into a faster rhythm, then slams on the brakes when I see my brother, alone, perched on the edge of one of the tall stools at the counter, leaning over a plate of cheese and crackers. “They’re gone, Cass. They left, Dicey too, in the van.”

“Did they ask you to come?” This makes no sense.

Eric makes a triple-decker sandwich and holds it up close to his eye. I can see his focus change as he looks at me past the sandwich. “Not a word,” he says. “They’re gone.”

Gone. Certainly not what I expected to happen, but may-be it’s all in their master plan—leaving me in suspense until I beg them to punish me. Some parental torture device my dad picked up while reading a child psychology magazine.

“They were mad?” I ask this because I need to make conversation, not because I need to know the answer. Of course my parents are mad. But I’m not ready to come right out and say what’s really on my mind: Was it him who wrote to Divinia Starr about giving the boy he loves a ring?

And if he answered “yes”? Would I change Divinia’s response? For some unknown girl, I was supportive yet cautionary, but when I think about that pee in the snow, about the black eye that Eric still won’t admit came from some asshole’s fist, I worry about that complicated ending I glimpsed in the cards. What if something bad will happen if Eric professes his love for Gavin in public? Something really bad? And then what about all those jerks who wrote the nasty comments on the blog—when I didn’t know they might be talking about my brother, it seemed almost amusing, but now I’m angry. They had no right to talk about him like that, like he’s some desperate and manipulative person just because he’s in love. I wonder if I should tell him, if I could explain the cards and why I didn’t tell the whole story in my post. I think once again about that other Cassandra, whose true prophesies were disbelieved. What if he won’t believe me?

Or what if he does believe me, and then it’s the
change
he makes that’s actually the cause of the cards being wrong. If you listen to a warning and avoid the danger, then the warning becomes false, right? And maybe I could see all of this, untangle the web of cause and effect, if I were better at reading these stupid cards, but I’m only a beginner. Maybe I shouldn’t be reading them at all. Maybe I’m going to do damage, like Eric said, not because the cards themselves are tools of the devil, but because my own ignorance is.

“Everybody’s talking about that tarot card blog,” Eric says. Is he reading my mind now, too? “I mean, everybody. Even Mom knew about it.”

“It’s the stupid church,” I say. “They’re up to something.” And then I remember. “That’s right. Drew said they were having a meeting today after church, and she said it was at least partly about the blog.” The voices, my parents murmuring in their bedroom, must have something to do with my blog. “They’re going to pull some kind of power play with the school, some kind of stupid protest like they’re trying to do with the Winter Carnival, and once word gets out about what happened with Kayla … they’re going to cancel the carnival.”

Eric looks up from his last piece of cheese. “What?”

“Well, for starters, Kayla got
arrested
.”

He nods, to show he’s heard this, but his face registers some shock even as he does. It’s still fresh, this news.

“She’s the carnival organizer, and the church has been trying to shut it down for months now. Either this whole blog thing will divert their attention, or it will fuel their heavenly duty to rid the entire world of anything resembling fun.”

Still. My brain seizes on a wisp of a thought. If they cancel the carnival, they cancel the snow sculpture contest. And if they cancel that, Eric won’t be giving Gavin a ring, and if he doesn’t give Gavin a ring, Blake and Ronnie will leave him alone, and … crisis averted!

“I’m starting to change my mind about it,” says Eric.

“About the Winter Carnival?” Wait—if he changes his mind now, does that negate the reading? Or is it a
part
of the reading? True, or False? Destiny, or Free Will? Sometimes, Never, Always? Maybe I should look at the cards again, do another reading. Maybe I should
stop
doing readings.

“No. About the blog,” Eric says. “I think maybe I overreacted. They’re just cards, right? It’s an advice column, and advice is meant to help.” He stands up, meticulously brushing every crumb into his hand and into the sink. “I mean, those cards, you know, the church is … well, I’ve been talking with someone about things like that. Things I believe and things I thought I had to believe. Allowing a few contradictions, you know?” He grins—two dimples—because he knows how crazy faith makes me.

“Yeah?” I wonder if I can ask him who that someone is, whether his change of heart has anything to do with the reading I did. Whether those contradictions have anything to do with Gavin. “I’ve got a few readings I’m working on,” I tell him. “I guess, since everyone’s gone … do you mind if I work on them now, in case Mom and Dad kick me off the computer forever?”

Eric looks thoughtful. “You know I’m only looking out for you, sis.”

Again with the big brother protector act. Which
reminds
me: “I can’t believe you interrogated Darin.” I swat his shoulder, but I can’t keep the smile from my face. “He’s just this kid. In my English class.”

“He’s a cool kid.” Eric tips his head toward the computer. “Do your thing, Cass. I’ll let you know the second I see their car.” He takes a can of vegetable juice out of the fridge.

“He’s a weird kid,” I say, but Eric’s leaving the room and I don’t know if he hears me. “I was going to live in his tree house,” I say. I log into Divinia’s email.

There are two hundred and seventeen messages. Comments, questions, condemnations.

I’ll never even have time to even skim these, not if I want to get any readings done. I let my eyes wander down the subject listings. And stop.

Youth group “friend” only using me? Pls help!

I double-click.

38. A time you had
good intentions …

I tried to help her when she was struggling. I even shared some of my personal poetry with her. It seemed like we were becoming friends, but in the end it was more of the same—I’m used and abandoned. I’m not going to get into details because they’re too depressing, but I’m tired of it, Divinia. I’m tired of being alone.

Youth group friend. It has to be from Drew.

I can’t stop thinking about it.

“This is your fault, Cassie.” Annika shoves her chair away from the work station and spins toward me. “It’s your church attacking the carnival.”

“I’m not in charge of my entire church.” I try to sound like none of this is bothering me, but I’m sure it’s all right there on my face.

“You should be,” she says, obviously annoyed but trying to act like she’s joking around. “What else are we paying you for?” She turns back to her computer.

My parents came home yesterday completely riled up about the blog. My dad stomped in and the first thing he did was check our browsing history to be sure none of his family members had logged into Divinia Starr. Then he put us all through the third degree.

It should have been harder, lying to them. If I were a truly good person, my voice would have trembled; my eyes would have fallen to one side out of shame. Instead, I found the words tumbling off my tongue easily as I feigned innocence. It didn’t matter—even though their indignation was momentarily derailed, both of my parents left me to understand that they were
not
happy about my weekend escapades and there would be
severe consequences
as soon as they agreed on what they would be.

It’s weird, though. For the first time in my life, I’m not really concerned about anyone’s approval. This blog is all mine, and I don’t care what kind of histrionics my stupid church throws out into the universe. The Internet is free, and my blog is staying put. It’s helping people, and if giving advice is the devil’s work, then there are an awful lot of busybodies in the church who had better say a double dose of prayers each night.

As far as the concert goes, I’ll take the punishment they dole out, and I really do feel bad about all of it. I feel bad about Drew, and I feel bad about lying to everyone, and I even feel bad about Kayla. I sort of wish she hadn’t told the police to track me down, but getting caught was probably the best thing for everyone, in the end. Now that the truth is out, Drew won’t have to lie to my parents anymore—which also makes me feel a little bit better about her email to Divinia Starr. Except then I feel worse, because obviously Eric was right and Drew really did mind having to cover for me.

God, this whole thing got so complicated—and all for nothing, really. The whole reason I said I’d go was to prove something to Kayla, and of course that shouldn’t be the way best friends work, and I can’t figure out where along the way everything got broken. The only good part was Darin showing up.

Darin.
Okay, so I have to admit, hanging out with Darin was amazing, even without the tree house. Amazing enough to endure all this trouble? Am I a terrible person if I think so? I take a breath to steady myself and try to drag my focus back to the article I’m formatting.