Kasey Screws Up the World

by Rachel Shane

  The musician opened his eyes at the end of his song and nodded at Lonnie before continuing to the next.

  “You know him?”

  “I come here a lot.”

  If I hadn’t been with Lonnie, I would have walked right by the performer. I would have been more focused on the sound of the oncoming train than the performer trying to drown it out.

  “I want to be him someday,” Lonnie said.

  “Homeless?”

  He chuckled. “No, talented. And he’s not homeless. He’s just trying to get discovered. There’s a record company above the station. Man, I’m going to be devastated on the day the execs wise up and give him a contract.”

  This was something Lara would have done. Performing in an unconventional way to get attention. And then it hit me…this guy was Lonnie’s Lara. The person he strived to be.

  We watched the performer until he finished for the day. Lonnie threw him a ten-dollar tip and stopped me as I rummaged through my purse.

  “I promised you today would be free and it is.” He nodded toward the stairs. “Brunch? I’m starving. My treat.”

  Treating seemed like it might make this a date. And I definitely didn’t want this to be a date. Lonnie was off limits, I reminded myself, even though another part of me desperately wanted something to help me get over Finn. I knew I should make that clarification to Lonnie, tell him this was just a friends thing, not lead him on. Instead I said, “I feel bad.”

  “Don’t. You can pay for me next time.”

  And I smiled. Because there would be a next time.

  We slipped into a booth at the first diner we came across. The red vinyl seats swallowed me whole. Everything was oversized, including the menu. Each time I lifted it up, it poked Lonnie in the eye. Every item on the menu sent a wave of memories of the cruise. Donuts, bacon, even the orange juice made me want to throw myself in a desert until my lips were too parched to care. I flipped through the pages searching for something, anything, that wouldn’t remind me of Finn.

  “Coffee and the breakfast special,” Lonnie said, closing the menu.

  “Um. The tongue sandwich. With mustard.” I handed the waitress the menu.

  Lonnie blinked at me. “That’s uh,” he cleared his throat, “a surprising choice.”

  I twisted the salt shaker in my hands. “I like to try new things.”

  The waitress set water in front of us. I shoved my glass to the end of the table. “Can you take this away? I don’t want it.” My throat started to close at the thought of drinking it. “Bring me something else instead. Anything.” She grabbed the glass and started to turn away. “But not soda!” I added.

  Water reminded me too much of the ocean.

  Lonnie pushed his toward the end of the table too. “You’re weird.”

  My cell phone blared and a few other patrons turned around to glare at me. I fumbled in my purse, trying to find the phone and turn off the damn ringer. Lonnie snorted at me from across the table. It was Denise calling. I glanced at Lonnie, then at the phone. She’d want to know all about this, but she’d also be wondering where I was. I hit ignore. My phone revealed a bunch of missed texts:

  Where are you? Sent at 9:01

  I’m getting worried. Sent at 9:15

  Are you okay? Sent at 10:07

  Followed by the worst one of all: I heard your sister will never dance again. OMG! Why didn’t you tell me that?!?!

  Denise knew she broke her hip but that was as far as I was willing to admit. I shoved the phone back in the bag as if hiding it would make it everything go away. It only made the lump in my throat bigger. I turned back to Lonnie to find him watching me.

  “Listen. You don’t have to worry about me,” he said. “I’m not going to ask.”

  I tore a strip off my napkin and rolled it into a ball. “Ask what?”

  “What those text messages are asking.”

  The waitress came back with our food. Lonnie grabbed a potato before she had even set his plate down.

  “Do you know what they’re asking?” I bit into my sandwich, then scrunched up my face. It seemed tongues were only good for one thing and without Finn, I wouldn’t be using mine anymore.

  “Yeah. My brother heard about it from Jules Barlow.” Lonnie dipped his toast in the egg and stuffed the entire slice in his mouth. He spoke with his mouth full of food. “There we go. Elephant has left the room.”

  I felt my body deflate as relief washed over me. Lonnie wasn’t going to ask about what actually happened to Lara. I wouldn’t have to hide anything from him.

  He wiped his mouth with his napkin. “I won’t say anything more on the subject except that I’m sure this is why you ditched camp. I think you should go back tomorrow.”

  I was already shaking my head before he finished. “I can’t.” It would destroy Lara and I’d be forever reminded of what I did to her.

  Lonnie held up his hands in surrender. “Then I just have to work harder at making you forget.”

  Displaying 1 of 20 comments

  Lonnie said…

  Best post ever! (Well, sort of.)

  WHEN I GOT HOME from school, the sound of the TV blared from Lara’s room. My heart thudded. She came home? I bounded the stairs two at a time and slammed my fist against her door.

  “Go away,” she yelled.

  I jiggled the doorknob. “Lara, please. I’ve been so worried about you.”

  She wrenched open the door so hard, I flew back from it.

  “I knew it was a mistake coming home.” She strung an overnight bag over her shoulder and tried to brush past me. Except as soon as she took a step, her knees wobbled and gave out. She crashed to the hardwood floor with a thunk that made my teeth snap together.

  “Oh my God, are you okay?” I offered my arm, but she swatted me away.

  She placed both palms on the floor beside her and pushed herself up. A sniffle escaped her lips. As soon as she pulled herself upright, her hip snapped in the wrong direction and she toppled to the ground once more.

  My chest constricted. The last time I saw her, she was able to take stairs without clutching the railing. And now, it seemed she’d regressed to how she first was right after the accident. “What happened to you?”

  Her eyes widened and then narrowed. And then they closed all together. “I’m fine. I don’t need help.”

  I rested a hand on her back anyway.

  This time she didn’t shrug it off. “I can’t believe you.” She dug the heels of her hands into her eyes. “I asked you one thing. One thing. And you betrayed me.” Her voice lowered to a whisper. “I didn’t think I could hate you more than I already did.”

  I sprang up, away from her, pressing my back against the wall at the far end of the hallway. It felt like Lara had punched a hole through my stomach and scooped out my intestines, then threw them at the wall to see if they stuck. “I did this for you. To make you a star again.”

  “To make a fool out of me again,” Lara corrected. She took a deep breath and tried once again to push herself into a standing position. This time she utilized the doorframe, placing one hand above the other and climbing it like a rope. When she rose to her feet, she wobbled before steadying herself. If there was one thing about Lara that remained constant, it was her resolve. She never gave up.

  I took a tentative step toward her. “Where have you been?”

  “Away from you.” She brought her arms to her chest to cross them, but then her balance wavered and she clutched the wall for support.

  “Then why did you come back?” It should have been an accusation. Instead it was a whisper.

  She answered in her own whisper. “Because now I’m embarrassed.”

  Her overnight bag rested between us, just another obstacle in our way.

  “Please, don’t leave again.”

  She swallowed hard. “I have nowhere to go anymore. I can’t face them again.”

  “Who?”

  “Jules. Ali. Crista. Everyone else. You ruined that for me, too.”
She kicked her overnight bag, lifting her foot enough to keep her balance and brush against the suede lining. From the way her fists curled, I knew she wanted to send it flying across the room.

  Jules. Ali. Crista. She’d been crashing with them this whole time. “Is that what the money was for? To pay for room and board or whatever?”

  Her mouth parted, then snapped shut. “How do you know about that?”

  “Because I covered for you.”

  “Well, I guess you got what you wanted then. You finally got to bribe me.” She clucked her tongue in a disgusted way.

  Of course, she took what I did the wrong way. Like everything else I’d done to her. “Did you read it?”

  “How could I?” Her eyes flicked to me, angry. “Please, Kasey. Just leave me alone from now on.”

  Silence slipped between us, separating us more than distance ever could. I had what I wanted. Answers. My sister back home. But neither of those things brought me one step closer to her forgiveness.

  I hadn’t fixed anything yet. I’d made it worse for her. The blog seemed to be getting people to pay attention to what I had to say, but I had to take the next step for her.

  Too bad I didn’t know what that next step was.

  “Finally! The story is about me!” Several people in the cafeteria eyed Lonnie up and down as if checking him out for the first time. “I bet this post gets a shit ton of comments.”

  I planted my feet on the linoleum floor under our table. “Congratulations! You’ve been bumped to series regular from this point forward.”

  “I can’t wait to find out what you did to me!” He wouldn’t be so excited when he did find out. “When do we get to that part?” He rubbed his hands together.

  It felt strange to put out my dark secrets for the world to see when they were private memories. But now I was writing about my classmates. People my readers could question and ridicule. The roles of my readers had changed, turning from voyeurs to participants.

  “Soon. Don’t be too eager now.”

  “And you’re still planning on making whatever you did up to me?” His eyes were wide and hopeful and of the puppy dog variety.

  “Yep.” I suspected his definition of “making it up to you” was different than mine. His probably involved kissing. Mine involved giving him back what I broke. And setting him up with Denise. “Lara came home,” I blurted to change the subject.

  Lonnie spit out the sip of soda he’d gulped, spraying it all over me.

  “Thanks for that.” I wiped down my white shirt, now dotted with brown splotches.

  He glanced at the clock on the wall. “Three minutes. That’s how long you let me prattle on before you revealed this vital info.”

  I told him about how Lara’s injuries seemed to be worse than before and how she all but confessed to staying over at Ali’s and Jules’s houses. “I thought the blog would help her be a star again, but all it did was embarrass her.”

  Lonnie pointed a floppy piece of cafeteria pizza at me. “Sounds like she doesn’t want to be a star again. Maybe what you need to do is get her to fall in love with something else. A different career.”

  It wouldn’t work. To Lara, another career would be giving up. I was about to say that when my eyes locked onto Denise across the cafeteria. She sat at a table near the concession line with a few of the other dance team girls, though thankfully Ali wasn’t one of them. And thankfully this time they weren’t selling incriminating t-shirts. A line snaked away from their table and patrons left balancing cupcakes or brownies on little paper plates. A bake sale. Most likely Denise’s idea.

  Lonnie followed my eyes to the bake sale. “I know what you’re thinking, but I’m not waiting on that line just to talk to her for two seconds.”

  I felt immediate relief but I forced myself to encourage him. “You flirted with her the other day during the t-shirt incident.”

  “And she didn’t flirt back. I feel stupid trying to talk to her again. She probably stopped liking me after…” He turned toward the window where a brick building blocked any hope of the sun. The rest of his sentence played out in memories in both our minds. We both cringed for different reasons.

  My eyes flicked back to the bake sale as I replayed Lonnie’s words about giving Lara a different career.

  Suddenly everything clicked into place. I knew exactly how to fix things with Lara. Lonnie was right, she needed a different career entirely. And in the process of fixing her, I’d have an excuse to replace what I ruined for Lonnie and be able to set him up with Denise in a way neither of them could refuse.

  I pushed myself up from the table. “Be right back.”

  “Wait. What are you going to…”

  His words trailed off as I strutted toward the bake sale table, bypassing the line altogether. A few people shouted at me to wait my turn while others shushed them, knowing they might get a clue as to what I did to Denise. She clutched an elaborate cupcake like a shield.

  “Hey,” I said, wishing I had a better opening. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  “I’m working,” Denise offered as an excuse.

  Crista snapped her fingers high in the air, probably to alert Ali to a potential showdown. The line dispersed until it crowded around the table, locking me into the barricade.

  “Please just hear me out, D.”

  She cringed at my old nickname for her. “I’m reading your blog, aren’t I? Though it’s not making things all better. Isn’t that what your blog is supposed to do? Because I definitely feel much worse after the last post.” She shoved the apple pie into the next customer’s hands even though he didn’t ask for it.

  “Here, I got that,” I told him. He scuttled off and I handed her five dollars for it. I beamed at her, hoping this would come off as a nice gesture.

  She scoffed. “You’re trying to bribe me now?”

  My stomach dropped. It was the same thing Lara had accused me of. “I just thought…”

  Trying to get her help before she read the rest of the story was too premature. I’d have to be patient.

  Like Finn always taught me.

  “Look, I know there will be things in the next few posts that are hard to read.”

  “Yipee.”

  In the past, she would have uttered that word with so much enthusiasm, her entire body would have bounced into it. This time, she sounded like Ali. I needed Denise on my side, now more than ever. Before she morphed further into the girl almost everyone hated. “But I wanted you to know I’m in the process of making things right for you. So please keep that in mind when you read.”

  Her eyes flicked to Lonnie, watching us from our lunch table. In that gesture, I saw hope.

  I also saw worry.

  ME’S A CROWD

  Posted by Kasey at 7:27 P.M.

  Monday, September 15

  Past Mood: Out of Place

  SAT Word Of The Day: Reticent. Definition: The opposite of this blog.

  I expected the number of hits to decrease after the reveal of what I did to Lara, but the unique hits doubled again in the last post. Lonnie, guess you were right.

  “You’re alive! It’s a miracle!” Denise stood in the doorway, jiggling her phone at me as her unspoken excuse for dropping by. She pushed her way inside my house and strode over to my sister on the couch. “Oh my God. I heard about your hip. Are you okay?”

  Lara looked past her in a panic to me. It was the first time in days she acknowledged my existence. I outstretched my arms and mouthed, “I didn’t say anything.” Her secret was still safe with me. The only thing of hers that was safe with me.

  “Not really.” Lara gave her a fake smile, directed at the wall instead. “But I will be.” She patted her hip as if it was only a matter of time before she was as good as new.

  “And you!” Denise twisted around and pointed at me. “Where the hell were you today? I called you like fifty bazillion times.”

  My face grew hot and I waved her away from the living room, out of Lara’s earshot. Lara sh
ouldn’t have to hear any discussions related to dance.

  “I’m really sorry you got hurt,” Denise told Lara before following me into the kitchen. She flopped against the counter and rested the back of her hand on her forehead like a maiden in distress. “Is there an epidemic going around I don’t know about? I heard Lonnie Weitzman was sick. And you were M.I.A.” She clucked her tongue. “I had to fend. For. Myself.” She said the last part like it was the end of the world. She dropped her hand from her forehead and spotted my half eaten pop tart on the counter. The tongue sandwich earlier wasn’t exactly satisfying. “Oh God. The situation is worse than I thought.” She grabbed the pop tart and tossed it into the trash.

  I should probably tell her I wasn’t going to camp tomorrow either. Or maybe I should warn her that Lonnie had caught his school-ditching disease from me. Instead, I chose the easy way, the cop out. “Hey, I was eating that!”

  “You deserve better.” She opened the fridge and grabbed the egg tray and milk, then headed over to the pantry for the other ingredients. She set them all out on the counter and surveyed her bounty. “Have any chocolate chips?”

  “Nope, only the essentials.”

  “Those are essentials.” She pursed her lips. “Blah. This will have to do.” She got to work measuring out flower and sugar and adding them to the bowl.

  “What are you making this time?” I took a seat at the kitchen table and watched her work.

  “Oh no.” She shook a measuring cup at me. “I know you and your fondness for subject avoiding. Where were you today?”

  “I quit,” I said and she stopped mixing for a second before churning the whisk in vigorous strokes. “Lara needs me here.” More secrets, more lies. I tried to tell myself it was just another cover story, like the one about Victoria Cruise.

  I ignored the lump that lodged in my throat at the thought of Victoria Cruise and replaced the image of Finn in my mind with one of Lonnie.