Henry rolled his eyes. “Sure.”
All in all, it seemed like a solid plan: conservative, uncomplicated, well-thought-out, and with plenty of opportunities to adapt, adjust, alter, or abort. And at the beginning, at least, everything looked quite positive.
First of all, we couldn’t have asked for a better house—it turned out to be a sprawling ranch, all one-story, with plenty of tall shrubs around the yard, easily capable of concealing little Henry. So I was feeling optimistic when I stepped up to the front patio and rang the doorbell, finally setting our plan into action.
Cassie’s mom came to the door. This, I must admit, was a little disconcerting. I expected her to be home, of course, but in my imaginings I somehow figured that she would be permanently out of sight, holed up in the den or the kitchen like my own mother always was.
“Hi,” she said, elongating the “iiiiiii” in the same sappy, sympathetic way every adult did with me since Ryan had died. “You must be Jonathan.”
I decided that the best idea would be to play up the brokenhearted-brother angle to gain her trust, so I put my saddest, brave-little-man-smile on and said, “It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. St. Claire.”
“It’s Miss Morrison now, or again, rather, but anyway it’s nice to meet you too. Come on in. Cassie’s in the kitchen, having a snack. Are you hungry?”
Well, this was good news and bad news: good that Mrs. St. Claire was now Miss Morrison (so I was right about the dad not being around), but bad that Cassie was having a snack in the kitchen, where surely Miss Morrison would want to linger and ask all sorts of questions about how I, and my family, were doing. “Sure,” I said, trying my best to imitate a wounded puppy being offered a bone. “I’d love a snack. Thank you.”
“Of course,” she said. “Right this way.”
She led me back through the house toward the kitchen, and instantly I began inspecting and cataloguing everything I saw. It was a nice house—warm and cozy, decorated in a haphazard country sort of style with lots of wallpaper and curtains, pictures of family on every wall, trinkets and vases and bowls of candy on every surface—in other words, it was the exact opposite of the magazine showroom that my own house was. I also noticed, more importantly, that I was right in my initial assessment of the layout. The bedrooms all seemed to be bunched up at the far end of the house, right where Henry was waiting.
As we turned into the kitchen, Miss Morrison was saying, “Cassie, your friend is…” but I lost the rest of sentence as soon as I saw her. I guess it was because when we first met it was dark, and the next time she was in her school uniform, but this felt like the first time I’d ever really seen her. Now, as I said before, Cassie wasn’t “classically” pretty the way your typical leading-lady-movie star or fashion magazine cover girl is pretty—her features were somehow sharper, more angular than that, and her eyes, my God, her long almond eyes, pale blue with strawberry eyebrows—one always cocked just a little higher than the other; like she was trying to figure out your secret, or else tease you with her own.
“Hey Jon,” said Cassie in a singsong sort of voice. “Take a seat. Have a brownie.”
Peeling my eyes away from her, I found the next most appealing thing to settle them on: a tray of steaming straight-from-the-mix brownies sitting right beside a frosty bottle of milk. It struck me as so strange (my mother was incapable of making anything so normal). It almost made me laugh, looking so perfect and simple and wholesomely American.
“Thanks,” I said, taking a seat and picking up a brownie.
The brownies were delicious, of course, and I was just about to complement Ms. Morrison, when she picked her purse up off the counter, swung it over her shoulder and said, “Okay, I’ve got to run up to the school for the parents’ association meeting. I’ll be back in about an hour and a half. You guys need anything before I go?”
Cassie shook her head as I began to calculate this new turn of events: one and a half hours without having to worry about anyone but Cassie getting in my way. This was well within the time frame I originally had in mind.
“Well, alright,” Miss Morrison called from the front hallway. “See you in a bit.”
“Bye Mom,” yelled back Cassie.
“Thanks for the brownies,” I said.
Cassie looked down the front hall as her mother’s steps sounded toward the door, and finally through it. When the screen door slammed, she said. “Thank God she’s gone. I was afraid she wouldn’t leave us alone if she stayed here.”
“Yeah, thank God.”
She stared straight at me, her face all business. “Okay. So what’s your whole deal?”
“My whole…deal?” I said, confused. “I, um…I don’t know. I’m just a regular sort of kid, I guess. I like punk music, and skateboarding…but I’m not sure what you’re…”
“No,” she giggled. “What’s your deal with school? What are you falling behind in?”
I paused for a second, even more confused than before. Then I remembered: Ah, yes. This was my reason for coming over. “Right,” I said. “Sorry. I’m a little flustered these days.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Math, mostly. And Biology, a little. We haven’t really done anything in my other classes yet, as far as I can tell.”
“Well I’m sure you have, but you’re right to be most concerned with Math and Bio. If you fall behind in those, it’s really hard to catch up.”
“Right.”
“So let’s go, then,” she said, snatching one more brownie and popping up from her chair. “Grab your backpack.”
“Okay.” I grabbed another brownie for myself and followed after her. “Where are we going?”
“My room. We can look through my old assignments.”
“Old assignments?”
“Yeah, I’m a packrat. I have pretty much everything I’ve ever done since kindergarten in my room. We’ll just find the assignments you’re missing, you can copy them into your handwriting, and we’ll be done with the whole homework thing in no time.”
“Wow.” I was impressed.
She paused for moment just before opening her bedroom door. “Then we can pick back up with your whole skateboarding and punk deal…”
I shuffled in, sitting myself down on her thick yellow carpet that was covered in clothes and magazines and schoolbooks. Just from the look of her room, I could tell this girl was unusual—in the best possible of ways. Her walls were a collage of hastily painted patches of black and neon green, surrounded by rock posters and drawings and pixelated meme print-outs and at least a million tiny stickers (mostly pink and purple unicorns, with the occasional My Little Pony thrown in).
I just sat there, taking it all in as she searched through her train-wreck of a closet for the homework. Not surprisingly, it took a few minutes before I realized that, as entranced as I was, I had completely forgotten to look around the hallway for Alistair’s room, an open window, or much of anything that had to do with my actual purpose for being there.
From inside the closet, I heard Cassie’s muffled voice saying, “Okay, I found Bio. Now where the heck is my math work?”
So I was faced with a major dilemma: I could only really “go to the bathroom” once. If I went right away, then I risked not finding Alistair’s room at all (it could have, after all, been on the other end of the house, or even in the basement, for all I knew). If I waited, then I might not have an opportunity to leave Cassie’s room until after her mom (or worse, Alistair) returned home.
What I needed was another reason to wander back out into the house, preferably alone. But before I could come up with one, Cassie emerged from the closet with a big stack of papers, sat down Indian-style in front of me, and plopped them all onto the ground. “There,” she said. “Math and Bio, ninth grade. Now let’s see your planner.”
“My what?”
“Your school planner. Th
at thing with the school crest on the front that they give you to write all of your homework in.”
“Oh,” I said. “Right”
“You really haven’t paid any attention at all in school yet, have you?”
I unzipped my backpack and began fumbling through its contents. “No,” I replied quietly. “Not really.”
She watched me search in vain for a little while. Then out of nowhere, she asked, “Do you think about Ryan a lot?”
Her question froze me. It was the first time someone had asked me about Ryan when I couldn’t just shrug and walk away. When I didn’t want to just walk away. So I decided to tell her the truth: “Constantly,” I said.
“Really?” She sounded almost surprised.
“Is that hard to believe?”
“No,” she shot back. “You just don’t seem so…I don’t know…”
“Sad?”
“Yeah. Why is that?”
“I don’t know. I am sad. But, it’s…”
“It’s what?”
“It’s like I have to concentrate to feel it. And even then, it’s far away.”
She slid a little closer to me on the carpet. “I don’t think that’s so weird. I felt the same way when my grandmother died. And you…this is so much bigger.”
“But shouldn’t that just make me sadder?”
She looked off thoughtfully, staring out the window, where a few raindrops were beginning to splash onto the glass. “I think it works the other way around. The bigger something is, the harder it is to feel. The longer it takes to sink in…”
“Yeah.”
“I guess that’s why people believe in God. To make sense of it all in the meantime.”
I turned to her, suspicious. “Don’t you believe in God?”
“Sometimes I do. And then sometimes I don’t. And most of the time I just don’t know.” She shrugged. “What about you?”
Figuring, well, as long as I was going with honesty, I said, “No, actually. Not at all. Not even a little bit.”
She looked surprised, and a little curious, as if I’d just revealed that I was really a secret agent. “Not at all? That’s pretty bold. Why not?”
“That’s a big question.”
“But you must have a reason.”
A million different reasons came barreling into mind, but I couldn’t quite organize my thoughts into a coherent or concrete why. Before, when I’d been asked this question (like with Mr. Finger) I just brushed it off. Usually, people didn’t really want to know why, they just wanted to look for some kind of flaw in your psyche, a trauma from your childhood, or some other “problem” you have that makes you different from everyone else so they could paint you into a corner and not have to worry that they might ever be like you. But I didn’t want to do that with Cassie. I wanted to tell her—to try to tell her—why I just couldn’t believe. But those days, ever since Ryan and Alistair and Jesus Jackson and the rest of it, my reasons were even more confused and conflicted than ever before. So I just started talking, hoping something coherent would come out eventually.
This is what I said:
“It just doesn’t make sense. And it’s a little absurd, when you think about it—the whole concept of some white-bearded guy up in the clouds, making every little decision about every little thing in every little person’s life. Listening to your thoughts, giving a crap about whether you tell a little lie, or curse, or copy someone’s homework.” I gestured down at the stacks of paper, and Cassie giggled, charmingly. “It’s all so damned convenient, you know? Life is too complex, too random, and too fucking sad for it all to wind up in some kind of marshmallow wonderland in the sky, where everything that ever happened, happened for a reason. I don’t know, it just feels like some cheesy ending to a crappy movie.”
Cassie didn’t meet my eyes for a few seconds. She stared at her fluffy yellow carpet, seeming unsure of what she was about to say next. I was afraid that I’d offended her, so I said, “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you—”
But she cut me off. And she asked the one question that I’d been avoiding since last Saturday: “So, where’s Ryan, then?”
“That’s a good question.”
“But don’t you want to believe he’s in heaven…or whatever, don’t you believe that he’s somewhere? I mean, I don’t believe all the stuff about fluffy clouds and angels and whatever, but I do believe that we go somewhere after we die. That there’s something more than this. Don’t you?”
“I would love to,” I whispered, thinking about Jesus Jackson out there constructing my faith in….something (or nothing, as the case may be). “If I could just snap my fingers and have faith, I’d like to believe a lot of things. I’d like to believe that I’m not going to feel like this forever. I’d like to believe that nothing bad will ever happen to anyone I know again, and that there won’t be any more war, or famine, or AIDS in Africa, and that I’ll grow up to be a millionaire rock star living in a huge mansion with a girl like you.”
This last part just kind of slipped out. I got nervous for a second, but then Cassie smiled—this big, proud, awesome smile—and reached her hand behind my head, pulled my face to hers, and kissed me.
I should mention that this was not, technically, my first kiss. But from that point on I would consider it as much. After all, this was no mere middle school swirling of saliva, no awkward summer-camp smacking of lips and groping of unknown and underappreciated parts. She tore into me, Cassie did. This was deep, and furious. This was bordering on obscene. This was awesome.
At any rate, we kissed for a little while (I really don’t know how long), and, of course, during the whole time I did not think once about Henry or Alistair or Ryan or Jesus-goddamned-Jackson. In fact, I didn’t think about a thing until about a minute after we stopped, when Cassie looked at the clock and said, “Wow, my mom will be home in like fifteen minutes and we haven’t even done anything yet.”
Then it all came crashing down on me—my purpose, Alistair, Henry outside in the bushes. I jumped up from our still-curled position on the floor. “I have to go to the bathroom,” I blurted.
She looked at me strangely. “Okay…it’s down the hall, on your right, just after Alistair’s door.”
I smiled awkwardly and darted into the hall, thankful, at least, that I got lucky about Alistair’s room. I paused in the hallway, listening for any sign that Cassie would peek out her door. I heard her turn on some music, so I figured I was safe, and darted into Alistair’s room. I unlocked the window, threw open the screen, and found myself face to face with a sopping wet and very angry Henry.
I looked past him, to the deluge that had begun at some point while I wasn’t paying attention. “When did it start to rain?”
“An hour ago,” he hissed. “Where were you?”
“I got held up. Long story. Listen, you’re going to have to hurry.”
“Obviously.”
“Hold on,” I said, looking back over my shoulder. “Give me two minutes to go flush the toilet and get back to Cassie’s room. Then you come in, but be quick about it.”
Henry glared at me, fuming. I attempted a reassuring smile, but I don’t think it did much good.
“Just make sure no one comes in here,” Henry whispered, as I closed the door behind me.
When I got back into Cassie’s room, I found her pacing back-and-forth, chewing on her fingernails, and clearly distressed. I was about to ask her what was wrong, when she turned to me and blurted out, “I’m sorry. Okay? I’m just…really sorry.”
I stopped, one hand still on the doorknob. “What for?”
“I just…I shouldn’t have done that, you know? I shouldn’t have kissed you.” She continued pacing, but even faster than before. “You were opening up to me in a very real and honest and vulnerable way and, you know, I had just thought you were really cute at the party the other
night, but even then I told myself, I said, “Cassie you know you really should just let this guy be, let him heal, the last thing he needs in his life right now is you,’ and I was totally and truly planning on leaving you alone, but then you—” She stopped, pointing at me almost accusatorially. “You came up to me in the cafeteria and you were still just as cute—maybe even cuter, all asking me for help, and then still, as I was eating my brownie and waiting for you to get here I was saying, `Just don’t kiss him, Cassie. Just don’t kiss him, Cassie. Just don’t kiss him, Cassie’ and what do I do the minute you say just one thing nice about me—which, of course, was in a hypothetical scenario anyway so doesn’t even really count—but what do I do? I kiss you.” She turned, pressing her head into her dresser. “So STUPID!”
What could I say? I was stunned. Completely speechless. Of course, the kiss itself was a surprise, but this subsequent meltdown was just completely out of left field.
Seeing that I was not about to respond too quickly, she said, “Anyway, sorry. I’ll understand if you just want to leave.”
Once again, without anything sensible to say, I resorted to honesty. “What are you talking about? That was great.”
Cassie walked over to me, a sadly patronizing look on her face. “You’re sweet,” she said, gently touching my chin. “I know it was great. But it was still a terrible, terrible idea.”
“Why?”
She flopped back onto the floor, pulling her knees into her face. “Because I’m a mess! I’m a train-wreck and a disaster of a girlfriend even for regular boys, for perfectly healthy, didn’t-just-lose-their-brother boys. It would be awful for you. Awful.”
Truth be told, my mind ceased to clearly recognize anything she said past that one word: girlfriend. Yes, I caught that she was saying that it was a bad idea—that much I understood—but just the fact that she was saying it was any kind of an idea, just saying that it was on the table as a possibility blew away every other thought of why I was in that house, what had just happened in my life, or anything other than that one word: girlfriend.
I was about to say something about it, too—at least, to gain some clarity on the matter—but right at that moment I heard a door slam somewhere on the other side of the house, and a loud, deep, masculine voice, yelling, “Cassie! Where the hell is mom?” And then a pause. And then, “Cool. Fucking brownies.”
Jesus Jackson Page 13
