Sometimes Never, Sometimes Always (26 page)

40. When there’s
drama, you …

I left my bag in the newspaper office, but luckily the school is still unlocked, waiting for the custodian to make his final rounds. I’m pretty sure Darin would have given both me and Eric a ride home, but it’s not that far to walk. As I open the door to the newspaper office, I’m lost in thought—and okay, so most of my thoughts are about Darin. Does he like me? My stomach wobbles a little when I think of him, but is that love? Or
like
? Or … anxiety? All of the above?

There’s only one bank of lights on in the office, which is plenty for me to sneak in and grab my bag. I loop the strap off the spinny chair and onto my shoulder, and in the process, I bump the mouse. The computer screen comes alive.

I’m tempted to check the blog to see if there are any comments yet, since I’m probably never again getting on the computer at home. My post to Drew has been up for about an hour. I hope she sees it; what I wrote reflects a far more hopeful outlook than her dire reading did. The comments on my post to Quitter were positive, and I’m hoping people will give Drew some support too. Maybe then she’ll give me another chance to be a good person, if not a friend.

It would just take a second to check if anyone has commented yet. I log in, my rapid fingers tapping lightly on the keys.

“Cassie?” Britney pops up from behind the divider.

“Britney!” Heart. Lurching. What the … ? “I didn’t know you were here.”

“Yeah.” She giggles. “Hey, have you seen this? This pathetic chick went emo on that weird blog your church is protesting, and they’re commenting.”

I walk around the divider so I can see her screen. “My church?” I can almost feel my pulse in my eyeballs.

“They’ve made like a million comments condemning everyone on earth to hell,” says Britney, giggling again. “The sad part is that every time your church makes a big deal over something like this, the whole town starts passing it around, sharing it, waging their little wars. Getting noticed by the church was the best thing to ever happen to this stupid blogger.” She reads from the post in a breathy, pitiful tone. “
Dear Alone and Betrayed
,” she says. She tries to get ahold of her laughter. “
Sometimes it can seem like everyone is against you, as though there is no one on earth who cares one bit. I know most of us have felt like this. But when I look at the cards before me, I see evidence of hope, even as I feel your pain, stuck there as you are with the eight of swords crossing you. I know you’re feeling trapped and hopeless
.” Britney points at the screen. “Look at that picture. It doesn’t look good for this chick.”

The figure is bound and blindfolded in a river, surrounded by swords. “Those cards freak me out a little,” I say. “Do you think they’re magic?”

Britney makes a dismissive face. “I don’t care if they are or not,” she says. “They’re like those little paper fortune-tellers we all made in middle school. The ones that would tell you what boy likes you and what kind of house you’ll live in, how many kids, all happily ever after.”

“But those were silly.”

Britney shrugs. “Didn’t keep us from making new ones all day long.” She nods at the computer. “I’m sure Divinia’s losing her audience, though, when she tries to make it all happy ending for this loser.” She reads more from the post. “
That ‘friend’ from youth group is here in the cards, and yes, her heart is false. Right now she’s like a camera lens focused on herself, and the rest of the world is a little blurry. It doesn’t mean she can’t learn how to be a friend
.”

Tossing her ponytail, Britney looks up at me. “See? Way too nice.
Bo-ring.
More drama equals more readers. Divinia Starr should write to
me
with her self-promotion questions,” she says.

I laugh, and it isn’t a stretch to make it real. There’s a new kind of confidence in Britney right now.

She scrolls down the page. “Look at all these crazy comments.”

I read the first few, all of which seemed to do the same thing: condemn Divinia Starr to hell for her sorcery and warn the reader of the dangers of reading such filth. “They had a special meeting about this blog,” I say. I can’t believe how many comments there are already.

“Let’s hope they’ll be so distracted by it that they’ll leave the Winter Carnival alone,” Britney says. “Anyway, why are you here so late?”

“I was helping Eric and Darin work on their snow sculpture, but I forgot my bag, so I came back to get it.” It’s the truth, though I still feel my face heat up with a guilty blush. I’m not brave enough to ask her why
she’s
here so late.

Britney nods slowly, but she furrows her brow slightly, staring at the screen. “Not all these comments are from the church people,” she says. “Some of them are from plain old assholes.”

I cringe when I see the mean ones she points out. Okay, so a girl wrote in with a problem, and some of these comments are super rude, like the one that says Drew is
a huge loser and u should be thankful enyone will even talk to u!!!
Another nasty person writes,
u r prolly a lesbian and u shd take a hint … shes not into u!!!!!!
Like last time, once the gate is open on the mean comments, people flood in with all their cruelty. I don’t want Drew to see these. I need to delete the comments, but I can’t with Britney here.

I chew on the edge of my bottom lip. I wonder how soon I can sneak onto the computer at home. Given the Minneapolis fiasco, it really could be never. I might come home and find the computer packed up in a box. My mind races, weighing possibilities. What if I tell Britney about Divinia Starr, that it’s me? She seems different tonight, away from Annika. I could almost like her.

“These comments are disgusting,” I say.

“Speaking of disgusting, OMG, what about Annika’s stupid fake glasses?” Britney closes down the browser.

But I can’t trust her. I smile. “They were all right, I guess.” I’m trying to be noncommittal, avoid getting pulled into some gossip, but Britney narrows her eyes when I don’t immediately support her.

“Hey,” she says after a moment. “Didn’t that girl in
your
youth group give you a bunch of poems?”

Shit
. “Uhhh, no.” Why does Britney leave out the part where Annika stole all of the poems from me? “Well, yeah. I mean, actually, a girl did give me some poems, but they were for the newspaper, you know.” I should stop there, but my panic makes me babble. “But it’s probably not her. I mean, I barely know her.”

Britney only nods. “I’m locking up tonight,” she says. “So if you’d grab your bag … ” She smiles sweetly, that fakey, saccharine glaze returning to her words and actions.

“Yeah, it’s cool.” My voice shakes. “See ya tomorrow.”

But Britney doesn’t return my farewell. As I let myself out of the office, I look over my shoulder to see her swivel to the screen and open up the browser.

41. Your biggest mistake …

I step outside and instantly regret my decision to walk home—it’s cold and dark, and it started to snow while I was in the school. There’s no way I’m calling my mom to come and get me. Walking, even if it results in frostbite, is better than spending a mile alone in a car with Mom right now. But after about four blocks I can’t feel my toes anymore, and my cheeks are so cold they burn. The wind pulls tears from my eyes, and they basically freeze in their tracks down my face. I wrap my arms around myself and huddle on the corner of Franklin and 2nd. Maybe I should text Eric to see if there’s any way that he could get Gavin or someone to pick me up.

I’m trying to decide if my frozen fingers can even operate a phone when a car stops by the curb, the window rolling down. I lean my head over and squint through my slushy eyes.

“You look like a snow zombie, shambling along out there.” Darin quirks an eyebrow at me. “Can I give you a ride?”

“At least you’re not Mrs. Johnson, my old Sunday School teacher,” I say as I climb into the passenger seat of his car. It’s a clunker, and I have to admit not exactly toasty warm, but it’s better than walking. Plus. You know.

“I feel loved,” he says.

“So you’re determined to be my stalker, then? Because just for the record, contrary to what you might have picked up from the media about what girls want, some creepy dude watching me sleep is
not
a turn-on.” Oh my god, did I really say turn-on? Thawing ice drips off my burning face.

“If I was stalking you, don’t you think I would’ve at least picked you up before you got to the freezer-burned stage?” He laughs. “I’m coming from your house now, actually. I drove Eric home, and he invited me to stay for dinner.”

“Dinner?”

“We were waiting on you, but with this snow, I got worried.”

He pulls into what I assume is my driveway. I can’t see—my eyes are open, but my vision is swimming. He’s coming to dinner? He was worried about me? I blink. He’s holding my hand.

“What kind of Minnesota girl is too cool for mittens?” he asks, giving my fingers a brief squeeze with his gloved hand and then pulling away like it’s nothing. Was it nothing?

“I’m not too cool. They’re … ” I pull my heavy mittens from my coat pockets. “Soaked.”

We make an entrance. A snow zombie, a strange boy, and a flurry of flakes swirling in through the kitchen door.

“Is this the boy?”

“Dad, this is Darin. Darin, my dad. Uh, Price Randall.” I shrug.

“Mr. Randall, please,” he says, extending his hand to Darin. “I’m an old-fashioned guy, Darin, especially when it comes to my daughters.”
Ouch
, he’s revoking the first-name rights.

“He’s here with
Eric
.” I push at my dad’s arm playfully, trying to lighten up this moment, but he barely moves.

“Thank you for making sure Cassandra got home safely,” he says. “Twice now.”

“Yes, sir. It was no problem.”

“Not to
you
, anyway,” says my father.

“Dad!” Why is he being such a jerk?

“I don’t have a thing to say to you, Cassandra Jean. Not a single thing.” And he turns away, his arm on Darin’s back, leading him away toward the dining room. I drip on the linoleum
—melting snow and a humiliating rush of sudden tears.

My father hates me. No, worse than that. He doesn’t have a thing to say to me. I wipe a sodden mitten across my eyes, across my nose.

“Cass?” It’s Eric, sock-skidding into the kitchen like we all do when we come in from the long hall with our speed up—even Mom does it. He whispers, “You saw it, didn’t you?”

I look up. A trickle of cold snow slides down my back; my spine shivers. “Saw what?”

“The blog?” His face trades one look of dismay for another. “Oh. You
didn’t
see it.” He pulls my hat off my head and throws it toward the heater behind the kitchen door. “Come on, hurry. I’ll show you. Get that wet stuff off.”

Quickly, with one eye on the dining room where my (disappointed-in-me) father is holding my (wishful-thinking)
boyfriend hostage, I strip off the snowy outerwear and drape
it across the kitchen chairs. “You mean the comments,” I say.

“I mean the catastrophe.” Eric opens the browser. “This is a shitstorm, Cass.”

I run my fingers through my hair. “That’s like, the word of the day.” I scoot the chair closer and check the damage.

At first, nothing seems any different. I skim through the comments—praise Jesus, bad sorcery, evil filth, stay away. The mean comments are still there, anonymous of course, although I can imagine the likes of Blake and Ronnie with their sweaty hands and halitosis, hunting and pecking for the keys to inflict their stupid insults. And then I see it. The catastrophe.

“Where did these poems come from, Cass?” Eric looks down at me. “You didn’t really write these hateful things … ”

“No!” I can’t believe he’d ask me that. “God, no. Of course not. I don’t know … ” This is bad. So bad. “It was Britney. Or Annika, since I think she has the poems … ” I can’t believe this.

Okay. So. The situation. I take a breath to steady myself. After I left the newspaper office, someone posted a series of comments, addressed to Drew, pretending to be me—Cass Randall.
You’re completely disgusting, Drew Godfrey, and your poetry stinks almost as bad as your hair. The thought of us as friends is so ridiculous! Honestly, I’d KILL MYSELF if I had to be your friend, and not to be mean, but I think I’d kill myself if I wrote this kind of lame poetry, too! Just kidding, but seriously, what am I supposed to think when a GIRL gives me poems like these? GROSS!

“How did they get the poems, Cass?” Eric scrolls down, points at the screen. “They’ve plastered them all over the place.”

“Annika stole them from me a while ago. I tried to get them back. I didn’t … ” My eyes are drawn back to the screen. It doesn’t matter. They’re using the poems as weapons, and apparently the whole school is online, looking for a reason to ridicule Drew.