by Sarah Dessen
I had my hand on my cheek, holding it there. My face felt strange and tight and I was gripping the door handle with my other hand, as if that was all that was keeping me from flying loose from my seat and up into the air. I concentrated hard on the car in front of us, a blue Honda Accord with a bumper sticker that said I Love My Scottish Terrier! I read it again and again, saying the words in my head.
Someone started beeping. Traffic was bad, all backed up. Rogerson turned on the wipers as it started raining harder, the drops big and round, splashing as they hit the windshield.
“What the fuck is taking so long?” he said under his breath, looking over the car in front of us. “Jesus.”
I still had my hand on my face. I was trying not to cry but the tears came anyway, bumping over my fingers and down the back of my hand, and I tried to think of something safe. But all I could come up with was trivia.
What are sometimes called Minor Planets? Asteroids. What is seaborgium? A new transuranium element. What does a sphygmomanometer measure? Blood pressure.
All the cars were going off to the median, heading around something. One by one they pulled aside, bumping across the grass and gravel. As we got closer I could see it was my parents’ car in the middle of the road. My father was behind the wheel, one hand rubbing his forehead, while my mother sat beside him. Stewart was in the backseat, the door opposite him open. And then, as we crawled around them, I saw Boo.
She was crouching in the road, her braid hanging over her shoulder. Then she stood up, hands cupped and extended in front of her. She was holding something.
The rain was coming down very hard now, in sheets, but Boo moved slowly, carrying whatever it was very gently. As we wound past her, I looked back and saw her bend down by the side of the road. She put her hands into the grass, releasing what she’d been carrying, what she had saved. It was a turtle, brought out by the unseasonable rain and into peril by blind instinct. Boo stood up, hands on her hips, watching as it made its way over the grass, to its intended destination, as the cars honked and the people cursed and Rogerson, disgusted, gunned the engine across the grass median and back onto the road, while my face still burned under my hand.
“Crazy bitch,” he said.
But as we turned right, onto the main road home, all I could think of as we sped away was how it must feel to be surrounded by those whizzing cars and find yourself suddenly lifted and carried, safe, to the comfort of that tall, cool grass.
We didn’t talk about what happened. Instead, we went to Mc-Donald’s, just like it was any other night, where Rogerson had a Big Mac and bought me a milkshake without me even asking him to. Then he drove me home, his hand on my leg, playing my radio station like nothing had happened, nothing at all. It seemed so crazy to me, like maybe I had dreamed it, somehow, but each time I touched my fingers to my face the swelling and tenderness there reminded me it was real.
Rogerson parked in front of my house, then surprised me by reaching over and kissing me very tenderly, cupping my chin in his hand. And as much as I hated to admit it—it seemed impossible, just so wrong—I felt that rush that always came when he touched me or kissed me, the one that made me feel unsteady and wonderful all at once.
“I love you,” he said, pulling back and looking very directly into my eyes. His were so green, like the ocean underwater: When he’d been angry, earlier, they seemed almost black. “Okay?”
It was the first time he’d said it, and under other circumstances it would have been important. But now, all I could think about was the pain in my face. My temple was still throbbing, my eye swollen just enough that when I blinked it stung. And I missed Cass so much, suddenly, wanted to walk up the steps to my house and find her there, ready to smooth one finger over my eyebrow, her face close to mine. Close enough to see what had happened, without me even having to say it out loud.
Rogerson was focused on me. It was as if he was asking me to make a pact with him, to get our stories straight. He brushed his finger across the back of my hand, gently. All the way home he’d kept touching me, so carefully, as if he had to keep me somehow connected to him or I’d just drift away.
I could have just gotten out of the car and walked up to my house, leaving him behind forever. Things would have been very different if I had done that. But the fact was that I loved Rogerson. It wasn’t just that I loved him, even: it was that I loved what I was when I was with him. Not a little sister, the pretty girl’s sidekick, the second runner-up. All I’d ever wanted was to make my own path, far from Cass’s. And even after what had happened, I wasn’t ready to give that up just yet.
“Okay,” I said to him, and when he kissed me again I closed my eyes, feeling the slight sting there, like a pinprick, nothing more.
He stayed in front of my house, engine running, as I walked up the steps. I could feel him watching me and wondered if he was worried whether I’d keep up my end of our bargain. Still, I couldn’t shake the image of his face, so dark and angry, his hand coming at me, with no time to stop it or get out of the way. It was like he’d become a different person, a monster from a nightmare.
He didn’t drive away until I’d closed the front door behind me. I took a deep breath and started up the stairs, not even sure yet what story I would tell when my mother saw my face and flew into a panic.
When I got to the top of the stairs, I could see her standing in the kitchen, clutching the phone to her ear, the cord wrapped around her wrist. My father was standing in front of the refrigerator, arms crossed against his chest, his eyes on my mother as she spoke, haltingly, her voice seeming to echo lightly off the cabinets and bright, shiny floor. Neither of them saw me.
“Oh, baby,” my mother was saying, one hand rising, shaking, to touch her own cheek. “I’m so glad you called.”
My father shifted his weight, the worried crease easing into and out of his forehead, but he never took his eyes off my mother’s face. Behind him, on the counter, were four coffee cups, abandoned, as well as a plate of untouched brownies.
“Oh, honey, no. No. We’re not mad,” my mother said softly, wiping her eyes and looking back at my father, a mild smile on her face. “We were just worried about you, that’s all. We just wanted to be sure ... that you were okay.” Her voice cracked, slightly. “I know, sweetie. I know.”
I walked into the living room and sat down in my father’s chair, looking at the row of dolls lined up around the TV. They stared back at me, open-mouthed, their gazes dull and gray, as I reached up and touched my eye, feeling the slight puffiness there.
“We love you too, Cass,” my mother said, her voice choked. “We just didn’t want to lose you, honey. I couldn’t stand to lose you.”
I heard the patio door slide open, then footsteps as my father walked out onto the deck. A breeze blew in—hot and sticky-wet-before the door slid shut again. When I looked outside, through the glass, he was standing with his back to me, looking up at the few stars visible through the fast-moving clouds.
My mother sniffled, listening as Cass spoke. Then she laughed, once, and said, “We’ve got time, honey. Plenty of time to tell us everything, when you’re ready.”
I closed my eyes, seeing Rogerson again in my mind, his eyes black as his hand lashed out, the pain spreading so suddenly from my cheek to my temple. I hadn’t even seen it coming, hadn’t even had a chance to move aside.
My mother was talking, laughing, as I crept back down the stairs and slipped out the front door, easing it shut behind me. I didn’t even know where I was going—Rina’s route, maybe—as I started my car and pulled out onto the street, my headlights cutting a swath across the house. I just drove, one hand cradling my face, until I finally turned into the parking lot at Applebee’s.
I could see Corinna inside, sitting at the bar, legs crossed, smoking a cigarette and counting a stack of money, her hair twisted up in a bun. The bartender slid a drink over to her, and she looked up at him, smiling, then tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, her bracelets sliding down he
r arm.
When I walked inside I had no idea of what my face looked like: I still hadn’t seen a mirror. But when the bartender nodded at me and Corinna turned around, her mouth dropped open, her eyes widening.
“Oh, my God,” she said, standing up and coming over to me. She reached out and touched my eye and I flinched, my own hand rising to push her away. “What happened to you, Caitlin?”
But I couldn’t tell her. Instead, I just let her walk me to the bar and sit me down before she wrapped her arms around me, drawing my face to her shoulder. She smelled like fried food and grilled peppers as she drew her fingers through my hair, telling me it was all right, all right now.
CHAPTER NINE
Dec. 13
What’s been happening is so strange, like it isn’t even
Dec. 14
Last night something happened with Rogerson. He got so angry at me, and he
Dec. 14
I don’t even know where to start but
This wasn’t working.
I closed my dream journal, sitting back across my pillows in the slant of streetlight coming through the window. Since the night of the winter banquet I’d tried again and again to put down in words or even say aloud just to myself what had happened with Rogerson. The excuses had come easily: to my parents, Corinna, and Rina, I’d gotten bumped by a stray elbow as I made my way through the banquet crowd. The truth was harder.
I was afraid of forgetting. It seemed too easy. Already life was back to normal—I was lost in midterms and cheering practice and long, gray winter afternoons at Corinna’s. But when Rogerson and I were at the pool house, inching ever closer to the inevitable, I’d feel his fingers slide up my arm, or curve around my neck and be lost in it, only to feel a sudden jolt as I remembered. His face, so angry, glaring at me. That split second as his hand moved toward me, too quickly for me to even comprehend what was about to happen.
But then he’d kiss me harder, and I’d go under again.
My mother, meanwhile, was almost giddy after her one conversation with Cass, who had still made it clear that she wanted to take things slowly: In two weeks she hadn’t yet called back.
My mother was hoping she would for Christmas Eve. This, alone, just the possibility, was making the holidays more bearable for all of us. Before Cass broke down under endless pleading letters and phone messages, my mother hadn’t even begun to prepare for her favorite of holidays: no eggnog, no tinsel, not even a tree. The day after Cass called, I came home to find her baking snowman cookies and wrapping gifts, with Barbra Streisand singing “Silent Night” in the background.
From what I could make of it, Cass hadn’t explained much when she called. She said she missed us, and that she was happy. That she liked her job. That she hoped we could understand that this was what she wanted. Yale was not mentioned, and she didn’t give my mother her phone number.
“She needs time,” my father kept saying, each time the phone rang and my mother ran to it, her face falling the instant she didn’t hear Cass’s voice on the other end of the line. “She’ll come around.”
“I just don’t understand why she doesn’t want to be in contact with us,” my mother kept saying. “She didn’t even talk to Caitlin.”
But the truth was, I wasn’t ready to talk to Cass yet. I had a secret now, one I could keep from everyone else. But I worried that Cass, even over the phone, would recognize something different in my voice. She knew me too well.
Life was going on. I didn’t even have a scar, this time, to remind me of what happened. But sometimes, when I glanced sideways at Rogerson in the car, or right before I fell asleep at night, I would have a sudden flash of his face again, how it had literally changed right before my eyes. And even as life settled back to normal, and we never discussed it, there was a part of me waiting, always braced and ready for him to do it again.
My mother, Boo, and I had our final photography class before the holidays the last Saturday before Christmas. We’d just finished developing what our instructor, Matthew, called our “people series,” in which we were supposed to use a portrait to convey our relationship to someone else. My mother had posed my father in front of the window in his study, with all his diplomas and various certificates behind him. He looked uncomfortable, his smiled forced, hands uneasily stuffed in his pockets, like an executive posing for the company newsletter. My mother, however, was just proud to have gotten his whole head in.
Boo’s picture was of her and Stewart. They’d put the camera on a table, set the timer, and then bent over, heads down, for a full minute, yanking themselves up just before the shutter clicked. The result was striking: the two of them, hair wildly sticking up, eyes sparkling and smiling hugely while the blood rushed out of their faces. It captured the closeness and eccentricity about them that I loved—two people, so alike, caught in a crazy moment of their own making.
My picture was of Rogerson. He hadn’t wanted me to shoot him, but since the winter banquet he’d been sweet and gentle with me, on his best behavior. I’d carried my camera around with me for over a week, trying to catch him at the perfect time, and taken a few shots here and there, none of them outstanding. Then, one day, we were walking down the steps of Corinna’s when I called out his name and he turned around.
In the picture, Rogerson is not smiling. He is looking steadily at the camera, a trace of irritation on his face, his car keys dangling from one hand under his jacket sleeve. Behind him you can see all the bare winter trees against the light gray sky. The sun is barely bright, and farther down the driveway, at the very end, you can see Dave’s yellow Lab, Mingus, sitting by the mailbox, looking out at the road. Rogerson takes up most of the picture, the landscape behind him stark and cold as if there is some part of him that belongs there.
Matthew, wearing a red wool sweater and now sporting sideburns, called my mother’s picture “promising” (knowing to appreciate a subject with a full head) and Boo’s “startling and emotional.” When he got to mine, he just stood there, looking down at it for a long time. Then he said, “It’s clear you know this subject very well.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. For some reason, I always blushed like crazy when Matthew talked to me. He wasn’t that much older than me—maybe four years—and had such a sweet, gentle disposition, always placing a hand on your shoulder or back to make a point. Boo said he was full of positive aura. “Well, he’s my boyfriend.”
Matthew nodded, his eyes still on the photograph. “It looks,” he said in a lower voice, just to me, “like you know him a little better than he’d like you to.”
I looked back down at the picture, at Rogerson’s eyes, remembering again how dark, almost black, they’d seemed the night he hit me.
“Yeah,” I said, keeping my eye on the picture. “I guess I do.”
When class was over, I walked outside with my mother and Boo, who were headed off to do some final Christmas shopping. Rogerson was picking me up, but it was so cold in the parking lot, and sleeting, that I went back into the lobby of the Arts Center to wait. There was an Irish dancing class going on down the hallway, with music all jaunty and fast, and I stood listening and watching the Christmas lights strung over the front windows as they blinked on and off. Outside, the traffic was thick with last-minute shoppers, angrily beeping at each other at the stoplight. I wondered what Cass was doing for Christmas: if she had put up lights, bought a tree, hung stockings over a mantel.
“Caitlin?”
I turned around to see Matthew, standing there in a lime-green windbreaker, a backpack slung over his shoulder. “Hi,” I said.
“You miss your ride or something?” he asked, glancing around the small lobby. Down the hall the Irish music stopped, suddenly, and there was a smattering of applause and laughter.
“Nah,” I said. “He’s just late.”
He nodded, pulling up his windbreaker hood. “I can wait with you, if you want.”
“Oh, no,” I said quickly, as the Irish music began again, followed by the sound of fe
et clomping across a hard floor. “I’m fine.”
“Okay,” he said, putting one hand on the door and beginning to push it open. Then he stopped and said, “You have a real talent for faces, Caitlin. I’ve been very impressed with your work.”
“Oh, thanks,” I said, embarrassed. “I just mess around, mostly.”
“You’re very good. That one we looked at today, of your boyfriend ... it’s very moving. There’s something striking there, and you caught it. Very well done.”
He stood there, as if he knew something and was just waiting for me to confirm it. Instead, I realized I was blushing, clutching my folder with the picture in it so tightly I was bending the edges. “Thanks,” I said again. “Really.”
He nodded, smiling, and reached into his windbreaker pocket to pull out a pair of red knit mittens. “Have a good holiday.”
“You, too,” I said, as Rogerson pulled in to the far side of the parking lot. “Merry Christmas, Matthew.”
He smiled, then reached forward and took my hand, squeezing it tightly between the warm wool of his mittens. They felt scratchy yet comfortable, like the kind Cass and I both had as kids, clipped to our jackets so we wouldn’t lose them. “Merry Christmas,” he said.
There was something so nice about standing there with him, under all those blinking lights, his mittens closed tightly over my fingers. I felt safe with him, strangely, with this person I hardly knew—safer than I’d felt in a long time, as if some part of me that had been churned up and crazy had finally come to a stop.
We couldn’t have stood there like that for more than five seconds before Rogerson pulled up in front of the window and beeped the horn.
