The Secrets of Boys (3 page)

… after seven years.”

Cassidy’s head already felt a little lighter and she was loosening up. Not as much as Scotto, but enough that she wasn’t nearly as worried about having to talk to people she didn’t know.

Joe and Cassidy walked out to the backyard, where there was a DJ booth and a fire ring that had been cleared and edged with stones. Cassidy breathed deeply, letting the cool, damp summer air invade her lungs, glad to be free of the suffocating beery smokiness inside the frat house.

“Do they really burn all the furniture that nobody wants?” she asked.

“The Sig Eps have a very unique philosophy,” Joe replied. “If you don’t like a particular piece, even if it’s not yours, you can burn it. And if you
do
like one that’s somebody else’s, you can steal it from them. Of course, they can steal it back from you as well, but that’s part of the fun. So around this time of year, there’s a lot of bartering and steal-ing going on, and you have to be pretty vigilant to keep something you really like from going up in flames.”

Cassidy couldn’t help laughing. “That’s ridiculous.”

“There was one guy who strapped his favorite chair to his back and walked around like that for weeks before the end-of-year party. At night, he’d padlock it to the post of his bed.”

“Did it work?” Cassidy giggled.

“No,” Joe admitted. “They dismantled his bed while he was sleeping and hid the piece with his chair attached in another frat house. He was inconsolable. In fact, that’s him over there.” He pointed to a stocky guy in a green knit cap sitting by himself in the corner, drinking a beer and staring up at the stars with a “Why me?”

expression on his face.

“Poor man,” Cassidy said. “Should we go cheer him up?”

Joe shook his head. “I’ve tried,” he said. “We all have.

They even gave him back his chair when they realized the deeper psychological impact. But I don’t think that was it. I think it was just having his plan thwarted. It insulted his intelligence.”

“The complexity of the male psyche,” Cassidy agreed. “Who knows its bounds? It’s like boys have all these weird secrets I’ll never understand.”

“Boys?”
Joe asked. “What about the girls? They’re the ones with the weird secrets. At least, they always manage to confuse
me
.”

“I guess you’re right,” Cassidy said. “I mean, I
am
a girl, and half the time I can’t even understand what’s going on in my
own
head.”

“Hey, isn’t that your boyfriend?”

Cassidy’s eyes followed his. Sure enough, Eric was coming through the crowd of dancers, a beer balanced in each hand. His eyes lit up when he saw her but clouded slightly when he noticed Joe.

“Hey, sweetie,” he said, leaning down for a kiss.

Cassidy noticed Joe’s grin falter out of the corner of her eye. “I’ve been looking all over for you. Where’ve you been?”

“Oh, Joe was just showing me around,” she said.

“You guys know each other, right?”

“Yeah, sure,” Eric said.

“How’s it going?” Joe asked, reaching out to shake Eric’s hand. But Eric was too busy wrapping his arm around Cassidy’s shoulders to notice.

“So I brought you a drink,” he said, squeezing her tight. “But it looks like you already have one.”

“That’s okay; I can finish it quick,” Cassidy said. She tipped her head back and let the rest of the beer slide down her throat. Her cup had been about halfway full, and a tiny trickle spilled down her chin when she reached the bottom. She righted her head, wiped her chin, and hiccupped.

“Now I can have this one,” she said, reaching for the cup in Eric’s hand.

“Maybe you should take a little break first,” Joe warned. “I could get you a glass of water or something.”

“She’ll be fine,” Eric assured him coolly, then turned to Cassidy. “They’re about to start the bonfire. Let’s go find a good spot.”

“Where’s Larissa?” Cassidy asked. The thought of her current best friend and her old best friend hooking up suddenly seemed like a great idea. Maybe the beer was drowning the neurons in her brain.

“I think I saw her making out with someone in the kiddie pool,” Joe said.

So much for that,
she thought.

Eric tugged on her arm a little. “Come on, we don’t want to miss the first futon in the fire pit.”

Cassidy glanced over at Joe, who was looking a little dejected. He put his hands in his pockets and leaned back on his heels as if he were trying to plan his exit.

Cassidy felt kind of bad that Eric wasn’t being friendlier to him. It was unusual, actually. She rarely saw Eric be anything but warm and jovial.

“I’m probably going to head out,” Joe mumbled.

Cassidy frowned. “Not yet. You’ll miss the bonfire.”

“It’ll never match the first time I saw jocks douse a bunch of stuff in lighter fluid, though,” Joe joked. “Why put myself through the disappointment?”

Eric barely cracked a smile. “See you later.” Then he tugged on Cassidy’s arm harder and pulled her away before she could even say good-bye.

As they stood in front of the crowd that gathered near the fire ring, Cassidy felt a surge of annoyance rise in her.

Why was Eric being so pushy and weird? And where on earth was Larissa? She was the person who had orches-trated this whole evening and she had abandoned Cassidy to go off somewhere and get it on with God knows who. Then there was Joe. She was having a nice time with him, just like she always had, but now she was sure that he thought she was a loser for allowing Eric to pull her away.

Soon a ruckus emerged from inside the house. A large group of husky guys began dragging furniture out into the backyard. The crowd chanted, “Chet! Chet!

Chet!” as a burly boy poured something that smelled like gasoline onto what looked like a Pier 1 Papasan chair. Within seconds, Cassidy felt the heat from four-foot crackling flames on her skin and heard Eric and everyone else yelping for joy.

She wished she could be more excited. Summer was practically here. That’s what this celebration was all about. But Cassidy couldn’t muster up enough enthusiasm to cheer with her fellow partygoers. All she did was think about how she would sketch this moment—and that the only color she would use was gray.

From:
[email protected]

Sent:
Wednesday, June
To:
[email protected]

Re:
Seersuckaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!

Dude C, I am so psyched about our summer jobz!

Talked 2 Fumiko & she said we’ll be working 9–5m–f for $11/hour + we get a 30% discount =

sweet! My ass will be the best dressed in Malibu this summer. No, not Nicole Richie—me!

So psyched. Can’t wait. So psyched. Can’t wait.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxo,

L

Even though she’d drawn her window shades as tight as they would go, bright yellow sunlight still filtered into Cassidy’s room around their edges, ruining the calming effect of her favorite blue lightbulb. She really should have avoided those farewell Jell-O shots at the party the night before. They’d already ruined what was supposed to be a beautiful Saturday at Zuma Beach with Eric. After hiding under a floppy sun hat and rubbing her temples all afternoon, she had finally begged off to go home and chill with a Norah Jones CD and her sketchbook. She was trying to draw the gnomes inside her head, who were bashing away at her skull with their tiny gnome hammers.

She was so wrapped up in sketching that she didn’t get up to answer her cell until the third ring.

“Cassidy,” her mother’s voice came leaping through the receiver. “Did you forget we had scheduled dinner tonight?”

“Of course not,” Cassidy lied. “I was just on my way down.”

She could hear the phone snap shut on the other end of the line. As an efficiency expert, her mom didn’t believe in saying good-bye to someone she was going to see again in five minutes. She also believed in schedul-ing family dinners two to three times a week to “pro-mote closeness and communication,” as she wrote in her best-selling self-help book
All the Time in the World
.

Cassidy glanced quickly at herself in the mirror and ran a brush through her hair. “Respect Your Appearance, Respect Yourself ” was her favorite chapter in her mother’s book. Sandra Jones liked her family to practice what she preached.

Dinner was already on the table as Cassidy hopped off the bottom step. She glanced guiltily at the words FAMILY

DINNER written prominently in the seven o’clock time slot on the erasable whiteboard hanging in the front hall.

It was unlike her to forget things like that. In fact, she usually set the alarm on her cell phone to go off a few minutes beforehand so she could be down in time to help her mother get dinner on the table.

Cassidy took her usual spot at one end of the long glass-and-marble dining room table, next to her dad and across from her mom. Her mouth watered as she eyed the chicken roasted with rosemary until the skin was crisp and the inside juicy and sweet, potatoes mashed with just the right amount of butter, and string beans steamed so they still crunched when you bit into them. There were fresh tiger lilies in a hand-blown glass vase on the table, and quiet classical music played in the background. “If You’re Gonna Take the Time to Do Something, You Might as Well Do It Right” was another chapter in Mom’s book.

But tonight something was different. Her parents seemed tense with excitement, like they had a big, wonderful secret hanging in the air between them. It buzzed around her mom’s carefully styled dark hair and coral-colored Chanel lipstick and seemed to bounce off the paunch sticking out from her father’s argyle sweater vest.

“So Cassidy,” her mother said, smiling as she squeezed a wedge of lime into her club soda. “According to my calendar, school is almost out for the year.”

“Yeah, it is,” Cassidy agreed. “Just finals on Monday and Tuesday, Wednesday to pick classes for next year, clean out our lockers on Friday, and then I’m free.”

“And how do you expect to do on finals?” Sandra probed. “I know we were looking at mostly A’s during midterms.”

“I’ve been studying real hard,” Cassidy replied. “I even joined a study group for American history.” She didn’t mention that the study group consisted of her, Larissa, and two girls who were perpetually sneaking out of the library to smoke cigarettes behind the Dumpsters, and that they mostly talked about which
American Idol
contestants had the worst hair. “Always Stress the Positive” was yet another chapter in her mom’s book, and Cassidy had memorized every line in it.

“And how about French?” Sandra asked. Cassidy noticed that even though her mother had peeled the skin off her chicken breast, none of the food had actually made it to her mouth.

“I should do just fine,” she said. “I’ve gotten A’s on all the quizzes so far.” All the written quizzes, at least.

Cassidy decided to leave out Monsieur Stuart’s displeasure at her refusal to speak in class. She wasn’t a conversation-alist in her native language. How did the man expect her to start yapping it up in one that she barely understood?

“Excellent.” Cassidy watched her parents exchange glances. Something was
definitely
up. “Because we have some good news for you.”

“Great news,” Laurent Jones agreed, his mustache twitching with anticipation.

“Really?” Cassidy’s mind reeled with possibilities.

Maybe they’d decided that if she got an A in every subject, she would get a Lexus or something. She hated driving her mom’s Volvo; it had
middle-aged self-help
writer
written all over it.

“Yes,” her mom continued. “We’ve enrolled you in a wonderful summer program. Only the best students are accepted.”

“Summer … program?” Maybe she’d heard wrong.

It wouldn’t be unlikely, considering the way the gnomes were still hammering away at her head.

“I’m so glad to hear you’re doing well in French because you’ll be taking an accelerated French course at Pepperdine. You know what that means, right?”

“No,” Cassidy croaked. She took a long gulp of water, hoping it would make her throat feel less tight and dry. But it didn’t.

“It means you can stay with Aunt Geraldine in Paris when you study abroad your junior year of college,” her mother crowed. “Won’t that be nice?”

“But … college is like a million years away,” Cassidy said, confused.

“College will be here before you know it,” her mother said, her smile faltering for a moment. “And what have I always taught you about thinking ahead?”

“It’s never too early.” Cassidy sighed.

“That’s right. This way, you can take AP French in school next year and be nearly fluent by the time you’re in college. Then when it’s time to live in France, you’ll be speaking like a native. Won’t that be perfect?”

Perfect?
Cassidy stared at her mom, openmouthed with confusion. How could anyone possibly think being locked in a stuffy classroom all day was
perfect
?

Didn’t she understand that the whole point of summer was not having to smell chalk dust and worry about homework assignments for almost three whole months? She realized she was stirring her mashed potatoes violently and looked up to see her parents staring at her expectantly, ready for her to thank them so they could break into exultant smiles.

“Actually, I already made plans for the summer.”

Cassidy strove to sound chipper and upbeat. “Larissa and I both got jobs at Seersucker.”

“Seer-
what
?” her mother asked, incredulous.

Cassidy’s resolve was already beginning to falter. “It’s this really cool new clothing boutique downtown.”

“You can do retail any old summer. If you even want to, that is,” she said firmly. “This is the chance of a lifetime, Cassidy. Do you have any idea how competitive this program is? Only one in four students gets in, and we had to submit your PSAT scores and transcripts from the last two years. We knew it was a gamble, so we didn’t want to tell you in case you didn’t make the cut. See how enriching this looks?” Her mother pushed a glossy folder across the tabletop toward her daughter.

Even for an announcement over a family meal, Sandra Jones had brought visual aids.