Sometimes Never, Sometimes Always (7 page)

“Cassieeeeeeeee!”

“Speak of the devil.” Kayla purses her lips around a fresh coat of black lipstick and rolls her eyes.

“You’re coming to work at lunch tomorrow, right?” Annika touches my arm, almost possessively. Her perfume is so bright, so instantly recognizably
her—
an exclusive atmosphere that makes me giddy. In spite of my professed scorn for all of the Vomit Vixens, Annika’s intoxicating, a little. I imagine what it would be like to have my own scent, a signature in the air around me that would announce to the world who I am. Or maybe to remind myself.

“We have to get this issue ready to go by Thursday,” says Britney. Even though both girls want the same thing, her eyes are softer than Annika’s, less confident. “You can stay after school on the nights we need help, right?”

“Of course she can! I’ll even give her a ride home.” Annika bats her eyes at me until I nod yes, then rewards me with a winning smile. No need to tell them about youth group until there’s a conflict. “You’re amazing, Cassie!” she adds as they depart, leaving me feel like I’m spinning in their wake.

“How can two ridiculously tiny people feel like an entire swarm?” I’m standing, reeling, next to our locker as Kayla spins the lock. She looks a little pissed, actually, but that might be her normal face. It’s hard to tell sometimes with her.

“A plague of locusts, more like.” Her voice is dark.

“I thought you guys were like this.” I hold up my crossed fingers.

Kayla tugs a bag of gym clothes out of the top of the locker and shoves a bunch of junk that comes out with it back in. “Yeah, well, you know how it goes with those girls. You’re in until you’re not. Queen Annika has decided to hate all over
Tyrone Thesaurus Rex
, so now we’re mortal enemies.” She slams the locker shut, ignoring the fact that I am waiting to get in. “It’s complicated and shit.”

“So they’re not printing it? What are you talking about?
Rex
is brilliant.” I actually have no clue what her comic is about, but she has assured me many times that it’s brilliant. Something about a dinosaur with a big vocabulary and a plot that parallels the Oedipus story. “Everyone loves your comic.” I, for one, know my lines as best friend.

“They don’t get it. No one does. The philistines.”

I almost ask her if I should quit working on the paper. It seems the natural thing to do—the act of solidarity. It’s in the script. It’s the drama of our friendship. But then it occurs to me: Why should I quit just because Kayla isn’t into it anymore? Okay, so it was all her idea for me to do this in the first place, but still. Now it’s mine, this chance, and even though I haven’t officially done anything yet, what if I actually
enjoy
being a part of the paper? Maybe it’s something I’m good at. I’m not her puppet. Or worse, her puppy, trailing after her heels.

Has it always been this way? This one way? I can’t picture it, sometimes—I can’t see our friendship in the past. I can’t put the pieces into their places to see the whole picture. Instead of connections, events drawing us ever closer, which is what I imagine when I think about best friends, I remember being sort of peripherally tossed into the seats next to each other. Twin outliers. Maybe I’m the only one who could be friends with someone who spends more time muttering into her ink-stained pages than confiding secrets. Maybe she’s the only one who could be friends with me. But … maybe not.

The night I was born, the last night of the year, there was a new moon. My dad drove to the hospital all hunched over the wheel of our car, peering through the dark night. My mother hoped I would be born on New Year’s Day because then my picture would be in the newspaper and I would win a big basket full of prizes from the local merchants. I would be a fresh sign of new beginnings—the promise of change. Instead, I came into that dark night at exactly 11:56 and became the last baby of the old year. Like I was born into a quietly fading history.

I don’t want to be popular, not exactly. People like Annika and Britney—they aren’t real. They can’t be real, I suppose, or they’d be vulnerable. But maybe I can find the real beneath the act, you know. Maybe I need to be more … I don’t know.
Active
about making the connections.

Kayla wouldn’t quit the paper for me.
I realize this even as I realize that it’s what she expects from me, or maybe she doesn’t even bother to expect it, doesn’t even question it, the same way she always walks ahead of me and never looks back to check if I’m following. It’s not her fault, like it’s not Eric’s fault for not being able to choose a birthday gift for me. It’s me. I’ve conditioned them all to expect me to follow along, to form myself into their ideas of who I should be.

As if to prove my point, off she goes without waiting for me to get my stuff out of the locker. I watch Kayla walk away, hoping she’ll pause or look back, but she doesn’t.

Whatever. I shrug and go back to gathering my stuff for homeroom. I don’t notice Drew until she speaks.

“Cass?”

I jump, rapping my elbow on the door of the locker. “Oh. Hey.” I check the wall clock, hoping I can tell her I have to rush, but oddly enough, I still have seven whole minutes until the tardy bell. “Did you need something?” I wince because it sounds too mean.

But Drew doesn’t react, just takes a step closer. Her cheeks are pink, and she’s chewing on the side of her index finger. Her cuticles are ragged—I look down and compare them to my own. I can’t help it. I’m relieved that my nails look better than hers. And then I feel guilty for even comparing.

“I was thinking,” she says. “Wondering, like, if you had read my poem yet. I was thinking … ” She lapses into an uncertain silence. She’s too close.

I nod. “And?” There’s an entitled impatience in my voice that comes in part from how I feel about Kayla right now. I’m sick of trying—to be a nice person, to be a good best friend, to be interesting. I’m sick of it.

Her bottom lip drops open a little and I regret the tone. “Sorry, Drew,” I say quickly. “I … I don’t mean to snap at you. I just … need to go ask a question about my pre-calc homework.” It’s a total lie. “Do you still want me to show the poem to Annika and Britney?” Why am I asking this when I have zero intention of doing it? Isn’t it meaner to keep on acting like I’m her friend, when I hate being near her? I start walking toward the math room. I hope she doesn’t follow me all the way there because I don’t even have my math book, much less a question about the homework.

“So you liked it?” Her face brightens.

Oh god. I feel like the scum of the earth, basically. And now I’m going to lie to her some more.

“It was really heartfelt. Really … nice rhymes.” I smile at her, trying to be generous. I feel bad for her; I can’t help it. “I mean, I guess the speaker of the poem really likes some guy? I think … people can relate to that.”

Drew shakes her head, her eyes bouncing off my hairline. “Or maybe it’s not even a boy,” she says. “Maybe … a friend. I don’t know.” She looks down at her hands twisting together in front of her. “It’s kind of a lonely poem, you know?”

“Cassie, come heeeeere!” It’s Annika, of course, standing by the door of the math room beckoning to me, an insistent look on her face.

I glance at Drew. “I have to … ” I gesture in Annika’s direction.

“Great! Introduce me?” And Drew steps closer to me. For a second I think she’s going to take my arm like we’re best friends, but at the last second her hand jumps up to fiddle with the end of her ponytail. She’s so eager it makes me queasy.

“Um.” I don’t move. I’m such a coward.

“Cassie, I’ve been looking for you
everywhere
,” Annika says, and she
does
take my arm, steering me deliberately away from Drew. “We have to talk.”

I’m totally confused. Of course she wasn’t really looking for me everywhere. She talked to me like two minutes ago. I follow her lead and step away from the now crestfallen Drew. “About what?”

Annika turns, looks over her shoulder at Drew. “Aw, honey, don’t look so sad. Top secret newspaper business, you know. And I’m sure your skin will clear up when you start washing your face more regularly.” Her winning smile is so solicitous that I don’t even know if Drew realizes how cruel she is.

To me, she hisses a low warning. “Cassie, OMG, we do not associate with greasy cows like that girl. What were you thinking? Surely you’re not actually friends?”

I know I should stick up for Drew. Annika’s being needlessly mean. The girl has
eczema
, not leprosy. Okay, so I don’t really like Drew the Shrew either, and I’ve made fun of her greasy hair and her acne and the lumbering way she walks. But privately, not to her face. And not with that awful pretend-
niceness.

“Oh, she’s this girl from my church.” My voice is hollow, a duplicitous Judas-voice. “She’s always hanging on me.”

Annika wrinkles her nose. “She smells bad.”

“Were you really looking for me?”

“Looking
out
for you, that’s all. We like you, Cassie.” She smiles, her bright green eyes with their perfectly curled lashes crinkling up a little at their perfect corners. “I mean, I know you’re thinking that this job on the newspaper is only temporary until Jenny gets back, but like, this is your chance. You play your cards right, and who knows what could happen.”

She squeezes my arm again and spins toward the math room, her high blond ponytail wagging behind her. “See you at lunch tomorrow, Cassie.”

If I play my cards right. I think of the cards buried in the back of my closet.
This is my chance
—so maybe I should take it. What if I used the tarot cards and wrote a column for the newspaper? It could be an anonymous advice column, except it gives advice about the future, based on readings I’d do for people. It would be something to write on that stupid survey, and in the Song of Myself, too. Something risky. Something all mine.

12. Your parents
wish that you …

Mom corners me as soon as I walk in the door, which isn’t really her style. Normally she’s more of a strike-fast-and-retreat type, like a shark with a distaste for messy carnage.

“Cassandra, we need to talk.” She holds out her hands to take my backpack from me while I remove my coat, but I hesitate before handing it over, doing a panicky mental rundown of its contents before surrendering it to her. Mom says that teenagers have no rights to privacy, that until I’m an adult with my own space, my property belongs to her and is subject to search and seizure at any time, with or without cause.

“What?” Stalling. I skim through possible sources of contention. Did I forget to clear my browsing history on the computer? Reveal confidential data while talking in my sleep? Oh god. Not the tarot cards. My stomach drops through the floor and then rapidly resurfaces somewhere in the vicinity of my throat. I can’t breathe.

“I was hoping you’d pray with me, Cass.” Her mouth is a thin line, moving around her crooked teeth. She notices my stricken face and tries to smile. “It’s nothing terrible, Cassandra, honest. I just want to talk.” She hangs my backpack on the hook by the door without opening even one zipper, clearly a record. Despite what she’s saying, this has to be serious.

“Can I get changed first?” I have to check on my hiding place. I have to be sure of the bomb she’s going to drop on me.

She looks away, then toward the front window, and for the slightest of moments, my mother’s face looks old in the bright afternoon sunlight reflecting off the snow. She doesn’t have wrinkles, but her skin seems softer, somehow. Like it’s lost a little snap, a little glow. “Sure, honey, but hurry. I want to talk before Eric and Gavin get here. I’ll make us some hot cocoa.”

Oh god,
cocoa
. Mom is always on a diet. The only time she indulges in anything even remotely resembling sugar is when she’s majorly stressed out. Like majorly. I slip away to my room and close the door behind me, leaning against the thin, hollow barrier. My eyes sweep across the room, but I don’t see anything out of place. No mess, nothing disturbed. There aren’t even any signs of her being in here for her usual activities: no clothes folded on my bed, no lingering scent of furniture polish. Pumpkin and Nutmeg are quiet and calm, hidden in their piggy tunnels. I dart over to the closet and crawl quickly to the back, where my old luggage set is stashed. Tucked one inside the other like Russian dolls, they made a perfect hiding place for the cards, which fit neatly into the smallest bag—a little purple zip-up “ditty bag” that I keep my makeup in if I stay overnight at Kayla’s house.

I keep my eyes on the door while I stealthily unzip the outermost suitcase. My cover story is wedged into my mouth, at the ready:
I was trying to hang up my dress, but it slipped off the hanger.

This would be a way better cover story if I wasn’t still wearing the damn dress. I wiggle it off over my head and throw it into the bottom of the closet as evidence. The truth is curled up, hidden in a scandalous smother of lies.

Zip, unzip. They’re still there. Everything is still there, untouched.

“Cass?” Footsteps, and I straighten up, letting out my breath in a hiss. “Oh sorry, honey, didn’t realize you weren’t decent.”