by Linda Keir
Dark meat being the only turkey Cassidy ate.
“It doesn’t matter,” Cassidy said. “I’ll eat whatever.”
“We’ll finish up on Monday,” Mr. Kelly said, taking the hint. “Go enjoy your time with your mom.”
“Are you sure?” Cassidy asked.
“You’re good, Cass,” he said, with a smile that left Andi feeling anything but.
Despite bitter cold, the sun was out and the roads were clear as they headed back to St. Louis. While Andi was well rested after a good night’s sleep thanks to Ambien, Cassidy was conked out in the passenger seat after a traditionally sleepless night of merrymaking in the dorm before everyone scattered to go home.
At least she hoped that’s where her daughter had been in the wee hours of the night.
Cassidy’s phone, very much awake, pinged with a stream of texts.
Unlike some parents she knew, specifically Georgina, Andi maintained a firm policy of not snooping on her children’s emails or texts. With necessary exceptions, of course: Owen had been cc’d in a minor middle school kerfuffle in which a girl had sent out an inappropriate photo that needed deleting. Andi had checked Whitney’s emails after the school principal had asked everyone to watch out for online bullying. But she had never checked Cassidy’s communications.
The phone pinged yet again.
Andi found herself thinking about the reaction of the nurse at the infirmary, when she thought Andi was there to view Cassidy’s files. What if she was hiding something on Cassidy’s behalf? Andi knew she was spiraling into paranoia, but she couldn’t quite stop herself from pulling on the power cord attached to the phone, which had slid between the seat and the console. Or looking when the phone emerged with the screen facing her.
The sender was labeled not with a name but a heart emoji.
The message: How am I supposed to make it five days without u? was too compelling to not scroll down and see what else he’d written.
Are you going to get your dad’s side of the breakup?
Do your parents know? About us?
She looked up, spotted a chunk of tire in the middle of the road, and swerved.
Cassidy’s eyes opened. “What the . . . is that my phone?”
“I was checking IDOT for road conditions,” Andi said, fumbling for the internet browser button. “It was a mess around here yesterday, so I was checking to see if there are any problems ahead.”
“Why do you have to do that on my phone?”
“It was right there,” Andi said, pointing to the spot she’d lifted it from while Cassidy slept.
“And yours is right there,” Cassidy said, pointing to the console.
“It was the first one I saw. I was trying to be safe.”
“Way to go with that.”
Having told Cassidy a million times not to check her phone while driving, Andi couldn’t defend herself.
“I think you were reading my texts.”
“I don’t appreciate your tone or your implication.”
“And I don’t appreciate being spied on.”
“I wasn’t spying on you.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Although, if I were, I wonder what I’d find out. I didn’t think you allowed anyone to call you Cass, for example.”
“I don’t.”
“Mr. Kelly did.”
“I must not have noticed,” she said quickly.
“Well, I certainly did,” Andi said.
“Why are you acting so weird, Mom?” asked Cassidy, tossing her phone into her bag and zipping it up.
Andi paused. “Maybe I’m just concerned about the amount of time the two of you are spending together.”
“Investigating the biggest mystery in the history of Glenlake?”
“Working on something that closely, that intensely, sometimes leads to a familiarity that can be—”
“Inappropriate?”
“Yes,” Andi said.
“What’s inappropriate is a mother spying on her daughter. Trust goes both ways.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
IAN COPELAND’S GLENLAKE JOURNAL
Wednesday, November 27, 1996
When Dad picked me up to take me home for Thanksgiving break, I noticed right away that he didn’t mention Andi. No How’s Andi doing? or Where is Andi spending Thanksgiving this year? Instead, he wanted to talk about sports. And only sports.
He drove up Tuesday night and got in so late I didn’t even see him. He stayed at the Old Road Inn like always. And at 8:00 a.m. sharp he was on campus with the car running. He didn’t even come up to my room.
We talked about football and basketball until we were past Joliet, and then for the rest of the drive we listened to the radio when Dad wasn’t reading stuff off billboards. He thinks bad grammar on small-town signs is hilarious.
Mom didn’t say anything about Andi, either, which was weird, but I wasn’t going to be the one to bring her up. She was already busy making Thanksgiving dinner, so Dad and I went to the video store and rented The Natural (Dad’s choice) and Say Anything and then got a pizza to go.
Mom and Dad went to bed after The Natural, and I stayed up to watch Say Anything and immediately regretted it. Andi liked making fun of that movie, but we both kind of loved it, and it made me think about her way too much.
The next day, Mom waited until about half an hour before everyone started to show up before she finally told me what was on her mind.
“You’ve been moping around like someone, I don’t know, killed your dog,” she said, cutting me off as I headed to the fridge for a can of soda.
“I’m just tired from school,” I said.
“Your adviser tells me she’s worried about your grades. She also said you and Andi split up.”
I don’t know why I thought there might have been anyone left in the world who didn’t know. It weirded me out to suddenly realize that she and Dad must have been talking about it all along. “My grades will be fine.”
“Fall grades still count on your college apps, so you need to keep it together, Ian. Right now you may be feeling like it’s the end of the world, but when you get older, you’ll look back and realize this was only a hiccup.”
A “hiccup”? I didn’t say anything. I mean, how was I supposed to respond to that?
Dinner was the usual giant thing with all the leaves in the table and all the aunts and uncles and cousins and Grandma and Grandpa Copeland. Mom and Dad seemed so cheerful they could barely contain themselves, and I couldn’t help but think it was because they were happy Andi and I are over and done with. When Dad made his usual toast where he said something about everyone at the table, he said I had a bright future ahead of me, like he and Mom wanted to make sure to reinforce the message or something.
Later, all the kids at the kids’ table started cracking up because Chrissie had the hiccups and couldn’t stop. She tried to drink milk and hiccuped, and milk came out of her nose. Everybody was dying of laughter even though Grandma Copeland clearly thought the End Times were upon us.
I couldn’t laugh. I just kept thinking: hiccup.
Hiccup.
ANDI BLOOM’S GLENLAKE JOURNAL
Thursday, November 28, 1996
The whole way to the airport, everyone in the van went on about how jealous they were that I’m going to have a warm, sunny Thanksgiving. I swear, some of them think we eat our turkey dinner on the actual beach. Midwesterners don’t seem to understand that mashed potatoes and gravy don’t mix well with wind and sand. I don’t ruin their fantasies by explaining that Californians do dine indoors, particularly on Thanksgiving. Given that my house is just off Mulholland Drive and miles from the actual ocean, it’s unlikely that I will even feel sand between my toes this trip. And while Simon has been known to rent a beach house when the mood strikes him, he’s not all that jazzed about chasing toddlers up and down Malibu, trying to keep them from becoming shark bait. Or, I should say, watching the nanny do it while Lorraine arranges Thanksgiving dinner in bowls and
platters as though she actually cooked it herself and didn’t order everything from Gelson’s.
I’m not complaining exactly. The food is way better than anything she could possibly whip up.
Mostly, I’m just missing Dallas, who headed off to Ohio to be with family.
He didn’t even say where in Ohio. Or which members of his family.
I think he tried to call the home phone once, but Simon answered, said hello, and then hung up, irritated no one was there.
“How are things at school?” Lorraine asked, putting on kitchen mitts to remove the precooked turkey from the oven.
“Good,” I said, taking rolls out of the bag, putting them into a basket, and hoping one-word answers would keep Lorraine from any in-depth questioning.
In-depth questioning not being Lorraine’s strength anyway.
“Still on a break from Ian?”
“Yep,” I said.
“Are you interested in anyone else?” she continued, undoubtedly asking for Simon.
My pulse quickened just a little. He couldn’t know . . . could he?
“I’m just doing my own thing right now,” I said, casually.
Saturday, November 30, 1996
I had planned to kill two birds with one stone (bad cliché but, hey, it’s my journal) by spending the next two days working and taking suntan breaks by the pool.
I had my supplemental essay topics organized by school and spread out on the dining room table. I had a towel, sunscreen, and a cooler full of cold drinks on the patio. I was headed outside to start my half hour of soaking in vitamin D and deciding how I would answer Tell us about a person who has influenced you in a significant way when the phone rang.
“Got it!” I yelled before Simon or Lorraine could pick up an extension.
I said hello and heard a familiar and welcome voice. “Congratulations, you’ve won the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes.”
“I just knew I would,” I said, smiling.
“You’ll receive your prize tomorrow night.”
“What?” I said, thoroughly confused.
“I’m headed back.”
“To Glenlake?”
“Chicago,” he said. “I’ll be there tomorrow. Come back early and meet me.”
Simon wasn’t happy, but how could he argue against an opportunity for me to go back a day early to consult with a college counselor in Chicago?
I hated lying to him, although I rationalized it by telling myself that Dallas was a college counselor, in a way. I said I was staying with a friend, which was also kind of true, too.
Simon questioned me all the way down the 405 to the airport.
Why the last-minute notice?
Counselors really meet with students over Thanksgiving break?
There’s really no way they could fit you into the schedule if you go back when we planned?
I just kept on lying, knowing I would be with Dallas in a few short hours.
When I finally landed, Dallas was waiting for me at the gate, but there was no kiss.
“Welcome back,” he said, sounding more like my teacher than my lover. I was disappointed, but I guess kissing in public probably wasn’t the best idea.
It wasn’t until we got to his car and double-checked that we couldn’t be seen that we finally kissed.
Needless to say, our reunion was well worth his caution.
So was the momentous evening that followed, even if it took place at a chain hotel near the airport.
I’m not going to cheapen the moment by trying to describe it. Amazing? Life altering? Passionate? (See, it’s impossible without making it sound like a line out of a cheesy romance novel.) It was far too overwhelming to try and capture on paper. The intensity of making love to a man as opposed to a boy is thrilling, if a little scary. If I’m being entirely honest, I did think about Ian. Mainly because he always hugged me afterward, no matter how many times we did it.
It wasn’t like that at all with Dallas.
Part of that comfortable, safe feeling comes with time, I’m sure.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Cassidy had the house to herself, and she knew it wouldn’t last. The calm before the shitstorm of Thanksgiving guests. Mom was out shopping for the big dinner at Schnucks with the twins, and Dad was picking up a case of wine from one of his stores. She had weaseled out of helping by saying she’d been up late the night before working on college apps.
As she went into the kitchen in her socks, Rusty snuffling at her feet, anticipating the rattle of fresh food in his bowl, she actually had a moment of what she might have called prenostalgia: she was going to miss this place, and it wouldn’t be all that long before she did.
But she hadn’t stayed home alone to mope, even though she was still annoyed at Mom after that weird lecture on the ride home from Glenlake. Maybe she shouldn’t have been so sarcastic with the What happens at Glenlake stays at Glenlake line she’d said under her breath, but what the hell.
Ever since Liz Wright’s little buzzer-beating revelation that her parents had broken up during senior year, Cassidy hadn’t been able to get it out of her mind. According to Georgina, as related by Liz, it had been the talk of campus: They’d tried to do it quietly, but as the It Couple, their news all but made the headlines of the campus paper. They were both seen with other people, but neither of them seemed to settle into a real relationship. Then, a few months later, they were suddenly back together, acting like nothing happened.
And Mom was still pretending it was no big deal.
None of this had anything to do with the Dallas Walker investigation, obviously, but it raised one big question for Cassidy: Why hadn’t her parents said a single word, ever? Their relationship wasn’t just Glenlake legend; it was family legend, all but carved into the walls of the Copeland family manor.
Her mom had always decorated the place to within an inch of its life, and the walls were lined with not only generations of family photos but framed letters, sketches by artist friends, and fragments of prose and poetry, some of them handwritten. Like the Glenlake tradition of framed senior pages, she’d curated key artifacts from everyone’s lives—and Ian and Andi’s Glenlake romance was given a particularly prominent spot with a timeline that proceeded as you ascended the stairs.
With a diet soda in hand, no longer trailed by Rusty, who was now noisily crunching food in his bowl, Cassidy headed for those very stairs. Snapshots of Glenlake, covers of the campus literary journal where Mom had published several short stories, team and individual photos of Dad on a seemingly endless number of sports ball teams were all arrayed around four frames containing pages from Mom’s journal, written in her impossibly neat, tiny hand.
For freshman year, there were two pages framed side by side, next to a picture of Mom and Dad looking impossibly young and super dorky, even though they must have been totally cool at the time. Those haircuts!
“So you’re the new girl. From California.”
Those are the first words Ian Copeland said to me. That is, after he asked me to dance.
I danced with other guys, too—a Colin, a Tanner, and a boy whose parents seriously named him Steele Hammer, but dancing with Ian Copeland is major, or so says my new roommate, Georgina, who grew up with him in St. Louis, where he is like everything or something.
We danced to three songs in a row, which supposedly practically killed Georgina’s friend Sylvie, who has loved him forever.
Because Georgina and Sylvie (who actually said, “If Ian is going to fall for someone other than me, at least it’s someone who totally breaks the mold”) think Ian asking me to dance is the most important thing that’s ever happened since the beginning of time, I figured I should mention it in tonight’s journal entry.
My thoughts about Ian Copeland, in no particular order:
His hair is brown with highlights like he spent the summer outside, but not surfer-blond highlights like the boys back home.
It (his hair) is the type that always looks tousled.
So do his clothes (in a cute way).
He’s into the Beastie Boys. I know this because he said, “I love this band,” while we were dancing to “Sabotage.” I’m not all that into the Beastie Boys, but I’d put that in the style-points-plus category.
He is tall, but a little on the skinny side.
His eyes are blue and his nose is super straight.
He smells like cinnamon (gum) and cedar, like the sweater he was wearing came from one of those old-timey closets they have here to keep the moths from eating everything.
He told me he thought I was pretty . . .
The sophomore-year entry was a single page and was paired with a picture of Mom and Dad at the fall mixer. They were obviously a real item by then, given the way they side-hugged for the camera without leaving a single micron of space between them.
Today is our one-year anniversary!
Georgina insists we’re off by a week because it was love at first sight and that our relationship started at the fall mixer.
Then again, Georgina is a hopeless romantic.
I’d be lying if I said Ian wasn’t on my radar after that night, or that I didn’t notice him every day when I came out of math class, and at the field house after his soccer practice and my one and only nightmarish season on the field hockey team. Still, it wasn’t until he sat next to me in the dining hall at Wednesday-night dinner and asked if I was going on the weekend off-campus activity that I knew, for sure, he wanted to go out with me.
And it wasn’t until Saturday, when he kissed me by the indoor fountain at the Glenlake Valley Mall, that I pressed GO on our relationship timer.
I swear, whenever I hear trickling water and smell chlorine, I will always think of that kiss!
Unfortunately, the chemistry lab smells the same way.
Ian made that work for me, too, by tutoring me for like a million hours about ionic-covalent bonds AND making me flash cards in his (adorably) perfect handwriting. Not only did I get a miracle A− on the test, but he was waiting outside the science building with anniversary and congratulations kisses, Hershey’s and real!!
Ian + Andi 4ever!!!!!!
