Beautiful Page 14

  “What are you going to tell her?” Her eyes are big, like she knows the nightmare is close, pushing against the walls, threatening to break back in.

  “I don’t know.” I imagine Sarah back at Alex’s house packing her things, terrified of getting caught. I imagine her walking out the door of that crazy house and never going back. I imagine her eating dinner with us, my dad making jokes, my mom laughing. I imagine her in my bed every night just like this.

  “I’ll tell her Lenora’s not feeding you,” I say. I’m talking fast. My mouth can’t keep up with my brain and my heartbeat.

  “You wouldn’t even be lying,” Sarah says, and she laughs and all of a sudden she doesn’t look so old. She looks like she should look, like a kid, not worn down and beaten.

  “Yes,” I say. “Okay.” And I grab the sides of her face and kiss her. For the first time I see something in her eyes like a sparkle, like some kind of life burning inside her. “Let’s go,” I say, and she jumps from the bed and gives a silly wave as she runs out the door.

  “Everything’s going to be okay!” I yell after her, and somehow I think it could actually be true.

  I explain to my mother that Sarah’s being neglected. I say all the words the talk show ladies say, and Mom furrows her brows in concern like an audience member who knows the camera could catch her at any moment. “Of course she can stay here for a little while,” Mom says, just like I knew she would. “That poor girl.”

  “She’s really polite and everything,” I say. “She totally won’t be a burden.”

  “Should we call someone? Can we get ahold of her father? I’m sure the military has a way of getting ahold of people for emergencies.”

  “Not her dad,” I say. “He’s on a secret mission.”

  “Oh, dear,” Mom says, wringing her hands. “We have to tell someone, don’t we? Maybe I should talk to her mom.”

  “But she’s crazy, Mom,” I say. “Really crazy. That’s who we’re saving her from.”

  “Oh, dear,” she says again.

  “We’ll figure it out later,” I say.

  “You’re right,” she says, and I can tell that the rusty machinery in her head is starting to work. “What Sarah needs right now is a safe place.”

  “Right.”

  She puts her hand on my shoulder and looks me in the eye. “You’re a good person, Cassie,” she says. My heart sinks and I feel like crying, like hugging her, like telling her everything. But all I do is say, “Thanks,” and run to my room to call Sarah even though I know there’s no way she could have made it home yet. I dial the number even though I know it’s just going to keep ringing and ringing. I do it because I have to do something. I listen to the phone ring and at least it sounds like something happening.

  But someone picks up. All of a sudden there’s a hello and it’s Alex. Alex who is not supposed to be home right now. Alex who can’t know anything. I think about hanging up, but my thoughts do not travel to my hand fast enough. My hand is paralyzed, stone. I don’t say anything. I just stand in the middle of my room holding the phone to my ear.

  “Hello?” she says. “Goddammit, Cassie, is that you?”

  “Hi,” I say, and it sounds like something croaking.

  “You fucking pissed me off,” she says.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You can’t fucking keep secrets from me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You were fucking stealing from me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Stop saying you’re fucking sorry.”

  I don’t say anything. The only sound is her angry breath blasting into the telephone, making me flinch every time she exhales. I look at the wall and it is flat and white. I look at the window and the shadowy outlines of trees. I look at the bed and the messed-up sheets and the place where Sarah just was, where she will return, where it felt for a moment like everything was going to be okay.

  Then suddenly, Alex’s breath sounds like nothing, just breath, just air, innocuous, harmless. I can smell it through the phone, foul and ugly. I can see her thin, chapped lips and the white hair above her mouth. I see her skinny, crooked nose; her blotchy, pale skin; her empty, beady eyes. I see her big ugly face and I want nothing to do with it. I am thinking, How is it stealing to do drugs Justin gave me? I am thinking, I owe Alex nothing. I am thinking, I am not sorry for anything.

  Alex finally speaks: “We’re leaving tomorrow.”

  “Leaving for where?” I say, even though I know.

  “Portland, dummy. Get your shit ready. We’re leaving from school. You didn’t spend the money did you?”

  “No.” It’s my money, my mom’s money. Not Alex’s.

  “Are you ready?”

  I try to think about what to say, the perfect thing that won’t get me in trouble. I try to think about some magical way I can make everything okay, but nothing comes. My mind is blank, clean, spotless.

  All I can say is, “No.”

  “What?”

  “No.”

  “‘No,’ what? ‘No,’ like you’re not ready? Jesus, Cassie.”

  I always thought the way she said “Jesus, Cassie,” was like how my dad said it. But there’s a difference: He says it like I let him down; she says it like she’s going to kill me.

  “‘No,’ like I’m not going,” I say, and I’m surprised how easily it slips out. I didn’t have to think about it. I didn’t have to plan it and worry about how it would sound. There it is, hanging somewhere in the phone line between us, somewhere stuck in electricity and waiting.

  “What?” she says. I can see her face getting red. I can see her face turning into a pit bull’s.

  “I don’t want to go anymore,” I say. “I changed my mind.”

  “You can’t fucking change your mind,” she says, her voice getting low and hard, gravelly, growling.

  There is silence. I am supposed to cower now. I am supposed to ask for forgiveness.

  “Yes I can,” I say, and I can hear her stop breathing.

  “You’re dead,” she says, and hangs up the phone.

  There’s a dull thud in my chest at the sound of the crashing receiver. There’s a sound in my ears like when you stand up too fast, like buzzing echoes from far away. Everything is still and hard and silent. This is the feeling of everything changing. This is the feeling in the place that is nowhere, empty, the beginning and ending of everything.

  I need to get out of my room. I need to take a shower. I turn the water on hot and scrub off the days of sleep and cigarettes and pot smoke. I scrub off history and silence and secrets and drugs and sex. I scrub off Alex and Ethan and James and Justin and Uncle Charlie. I am clean and nothing is the same. I put on new clothes. I sit on the couch and listen to Mom tell Dad what is happening. I watch him nod and grow quiet. I hear him say, “Yes.” I hear him say, “The poor girl.” I see him look at me, his always anger gone and replaced by something softer, sadder, and I feel myself love him.

  I watch TV with my parents with the cordless telephone in my lap. I watch perfect families eat dinner to a symphony of laugh tracks, their problems monumental things like the kid’s bad grades and the mom’s PMS. At the commercial break, Mom tells me to call Sarah, and I do even though Alex picks up every time. I hang up as fast as I can and tell Mom the line’s busy. I don’t tell her about Alex screaming into the phone that she’s going to kill me.

  I try to watch TV, to put my face on one of the happy children. I try to be the popular one everyone loves, whose only problem is bad grades. But I keep picturing Sarah waiting next to her packed bags in the haunted bedroom, wondering why I haven’t called yet. She should know why I can’t call. She should know that Alex won’t let me talk to her. She should know she can go to a pay phone, that she can come over as soon as she’s ready. She should know that I am here waiting for her.

  I keep checking to make sure the phone is charged, that the ringer is on, that it hasn’t been left off the hook. But Sarah does not call. It is eleven and the new
s is on and she hasn’t called.

  “Go to bed,” Mom says. “You’ll see Sarah at school tomorrow.”

  But I can’t sleep. I’ve been sleeping for a week and all my sleep’s used up. I try reading. I do next week’s homework. I listen to the radio turned down low. I think about Sarah in her room, wide awake like me, waiting for tomorrow. I wonder if she’s still excited, if she still believes what I said about everything being okay. Or is the nightmare seeping back in? Is she sitting in the haunted room and wondering if the two of us are enough?

  I watch the room slowly fill up with daylight. I get dressed and go to school.

  (NINETEEN)

  I walk down the hill to the lake where Ethan picks me up every morning. I look at Seattle, dull and lifeless under the low gray sky, not green and sparkling like it always is in magazines and on TV. There’s nothing beautiful about the concrete and metal towers of downtown, the wooden boxes flanking the hills, the stupid Space Needle like a giant cheap toy.

  It’s so windy the lake has waves. Water breaks over the rocks and sprays the sidewalk where I am standing. I don’t move, just let my jeans turn dark with water, just let it run down my legs and make puddles in my shoes. I wish the lake was salt water. I wish the rocks were not smooth and round. I wish this was the ocean and there was nothing on the other side.

  Ethan doesn’t show up. I wait until my legs are drenched and my teeth are chattering and the first bell has probably already rung. I could go back home and have Mom drive me. I could jump into the water and swim to the locks that connect the lake to Puget Sound. I could emerge on the other side, in salt water, and I could swim back to the island, back to the house in the middle of the forest, back to where it was quiet and no one wanted anything to do with me.

  But I start walking. It is three miles to school, but I start walking because moving makes me not have to think. I can focus on the sting in my lungs as I climb the hill, the muscles in my legs, my arms pumping back and forth, the wind, the wet denim sticking to my legs, the numbness in my fingertips. I feel the blood moving through my limbs, my breath going in and out, all the tiny cells speeding through the tunnels of my bloodstream. I don’t have to think about why Ethan didn’t pick me up. I don’t have to think about Alex or Sarah or where I am going.

  The halls are empty. Everyone’s in classrooms pretending to learn and I’m in the hall dripping on the floor. It started raining four blocks ago and I ran the rest of the way here. But you can’t outrun rain. You can’t outrun something that’s coming down on you instead of from behind. I’m panting, my shoes are squishing, and the bathroom mirror tells me I look like a homeless person. I crouch under the hand dryer until my hair is tangled and frizzy and my clothes are only damp and warm instead of cold and soaked. I put my hair in a ponytail and assess the damage. I would be passable if I were someone other than me, if I were someplace else where no one knew who I was. I did not put on makeup this morning. I am wearing a sweater and jeans. I am wearing my naked face that no one has seen since the first week of school.

  I walk by Alex’s class and duck under the window.

  I walk by Sarah’s class and she is not in her normal seat in the back corner. She could have changed seats. She could be somewhere that I can’t see, somewhere on the other side of the room.

  I walk by Ethan’s class and I catch his eye, but he looks away. I stand there and keep looking, thinking he must be playing a game because usually he starts licking his lips or something vulgar, and then the teacher catches him and shoos me away. But he’s looking at the book on his desk like he wants to kill it, burning holes into it with his eyes.

  Something is very wrong.

  When I walk into class, everyone turns around and looks at me like they do every time I’m late.

  “An hour, Cassie?” says Mr. Cobb. “You might as well not bother.” Someone laughs and it sounds sharper than usual.

  I nod and mutter, “Sorry.” Usually, everyone turns back around by now. They usually return to whatever they’re doing as soon as Mr. Cobb is done humiliating me. But the girls keep looking, glaring harder than they ever have. The guys are laughing under their breath, catching each others’ eyes, and smiling crooked smiles. I walk to my desk and someone coughs, “Slut.”

  I try to act like everything’s normal. I take out my notebook and pen and pretend I’m paying attention to whatever Mr. Cobb says. But all I’m doing is trying to keep from screaming. All I’m doing is clenching my teeth to keep my eyes from turning into water, waves crashing against rocks, to keep from picking up my desk and throwing it out the window.

  I stay in the classroom during break because I’m not ready for whatever’s out there. I can hear all the normal students going to their next classes, all the gifted students standing in the hall outside the door, waiting to come back inside. They never stray too far, never venture into the rest of the school except when they have to for lunch or gym class.

  It’s only me and Justin left. I shuffle the papers on my desk, trying to look busy.

  “Hey, Cassie,” he says.

  “What?”

  “How was your vacation?”

  “Fine.” I don’t tell him I called his house twenty times because I ran out of Ritalin.

  “I went to my dad’s house in Wenatchee.”

  “That’s nice,” I say. I don’t even have the energy to be mean to him.

  “Is it true what everyone’s saying?”

  “About what?”

  “About you.”

  His face is worried, wrinkled. Everything is suddenly very quiet and I realize that I’m not breathing, that I didn’t sleep last night and there are no drugs in my body to help me pretend I’m awake, no drugs to help me pretend I’m not terrified.

  I look around the room to make sure no one’s here. There’s just Mr. Cobb at his desk grading papers. I lean over and whisper, “What are they saying?” It could be anything. It could be something stupid. It could be something worse.

  He leans over and I can smell the musty stench of him. His lips quiver as he whispers, “Everyone’s saying you had sex with the whole Redmond High football team.” He pauses. “At the same time.”

  “What?” I blurt out, half laugh, half scream. “That’s fucking ridiculous.” Mr. Cobb looks up from his desk and raises his eyebrows, so I quiet down. “Who’s saying that?”

  “I don’t know. Everyone,” Justin says. “Is it true?” He looks like he did that day next to the dumpster, all ugly and horny and hopeful.

  “No, it’s not true,” I say. He looks disappointed. “Do people actually believe it?”

  He shrugs his shoulders. “People will believe anything.”

  I don’t move when the bell for lunch rings. I try to be invisible, but Mr. Cobb says, “You can’t stay in the room during lunch, Cassie,” and he doesn’t even try to hide the smug look on his face.

  The traffic in the hallway pushes me toward the lunch-room. I feel everyone’s eyes on me, hear their satisfied whispers. I want to turn around, but I keep thinking of Sarah stranded in the middle of the cafeteria. I think about her waiting for me, more scared than I am, and I keep walking. I will get her and we will run out of this place. We will leave and never come back.

  I stay close to the wall and look around the lunchroom for Sarah. There is Alex holding court at the cool table where I was once crowned Cassie the Beautiful Seventh Grader, like that meant something, like the stupid title could transform me. There is Wes with his hand on Alex’s skinny ass. There’s James making out with his slut, and there’s Ethan pouring whiskey into his Coke, looking sad in public and not caring who sees. There are the gifted kids and the jocks and the nerds. There’s everyone at their designated tables, their little islands of identity they cling to like their lives depend on it. In the middle is everyone else, everyone who is too boring for anyone to bother defining. They are not gifted, not beautiful, not rich, not tough, not repulsive. They are not anything controversial, not loved, not hated, not feared. I want to see
Sarah there. I want to see her sitting at one of those tables, looking like everyone else, talking about a stupid movie she just saw. I want to see myself sitting next to her, planning a sleepover or a trip to the mall.

  But Sarah is not there. She is not at the cool table that tolerated her because she was my friend. She is not in line buying food with money she doesn’t have. She is not anywhere.

  Someone yells my name from across the lunchroom. The room falls silent and everyone turns their heads to look at me. All the extras are perfectly synchronized. The spotlight is shining. This is my new role in the new movie. This is my closeup. This is when my face turns white and I forget my lines.

  “Hey, Cassie!” yells one of the slut girls who has taken my old seat next to Alex. “Why aren’t you sitting with us? Is something wrong? Do you want to talk about it?” Everyone laughs except Ethan, who is pretending he doesn’t see me, who is drinking whiskey out of the bottle now, not even bothering to disguise it in his Coke. Alex is staring at me with that crazy smile on her face, and her eyes don’t look human. They are the eyes of someone who could skin a cat with her brother, someone who could beat up her sister, someone who could destroy her best friend for doing nothing but deciding something for herself.

  I turn around and search for the door that goes outside, the door that will take me behind the gym, next to the dumpsters, where I will find Justin and the pills that will make all of this go away. I hear the lunchroom laughing. I don’t have the strength to stop the tears bursting out of my eyes. I run to the dumpster and I’ve never been so happy to see Justin in my life. He’s sitting on the cold concrete, cross-legged, eating a limp sandwich, looking out at the dreary field.

  I stand in front of him in my still-damp clothes, my hair a mess, tears running down my face.

  “You’re having a bad day, huh?” he says.

  I nod and a little whimper comes out of my mouth that sounds like the most pathetic noise ever made.

  “That’s too bad,” he says, and takes a bite of his sandwich.

  “Justin,” I manage to say. “Do you have any of those pills?”