Lie to Me (an OddRocket title)

by Brahm, Suzanne

  RD dropped his fork on the glass table.

  "Cassie got dumped," Addie said, talking with her mouth full.

  "Addie. Close your mouth," Mom interrupted. "And that's not nice."

  "So you don't have a boyfriend?" Rachel asked, looking confused.

  "Well." Everyone looked at me, eyes boring into my skull. I wondered which lie to tell, which story made the most sense. "Men, I mean boys, are just trouble, you know?" I tried to laugh. "I had a boyfriend, then I didn't." I looked at Mom, Addie and Aunt Lucy, who all nodded. "But then I did."

  Priya smiled as if she was thinking of the new, unknown guy. RD looked pale. "And you know what?" I said. Rachel held Duncan on her lap, his eyes fighting to stay open. "I think that I should really be focusing on other things and that's why I've decided I'm not going to date anyone at all. I'm done. I'm totally done. For the record, I no longer have any boyfriends."

  "But I didn't think you had a boyfriend," Addie said.

  "She didn’t for a while, but now the old one wants her back," Priya said.

  "This is way too confusing," RD said, standing up and laughing. "Duncan this is why you’re never dating." He reached out and ruffled his son’s blonde head.

  "And believe me, if we ever have a daughter, she won't be allowed to leave the house," Rachel said.

  Right then, I felt like Rachel had blown a crater right in the center of my body. It didn't seem possible that someone could look at me and not see the damage. RD walked through the French doors into the kitchen.

  "I have to go to the bathroom," I said. "Be right back."

  I walked into the kitchen and closed the doors behind me, listening to the sounds of the house, trying to figure out where RD had gone. "RD?" I called softly, glancing over my shoulder back to the patio. "RD?" I walked down the hall into the entryway. He'd disappeared. "Where is he?" I whispered out loud and turned right into Rachel.

  "You're looking for RD?" she asked, standing in the hall between the family room and the entryway. I felt like she could see inside my head, her perky smile replaced with worry. She looked so young to me, holding Duncan on her hip. A simple, gold band around her finger, I wondered what it had felt like to slip that on, knowing that RD wouldn't have married her without their baby. I didn't want to talk to her; looking at her made me want to cry.

  "I was kind of looking. No. I mean, not really. I just thought he might be here, I guess." My face flushed and my own voice sounded awkward to me.

  "Oh," Rachel said, a hundred words in that one syllable. "Those are very pretty earrings." She reached out to touch the Orcas that RD had given me. I’d pulled my hair back behind my ears. I hadn’t even realized it.

  "Someone looking for me?" With the sound of the front door closing, RD walked back inside and put his arm around Rachel. He pulled her close and kissed her temple.

  I gasped out loud and RD's eyes widened. Easy, Cassie. Easy, he seemed to say. "What do you say we all go finish this dinner?"

  "I'm not hungry." I looked right at him. How could he kiss her right in front of me? He'd warned me he might do that, he'd told me to understand, but how could he do that after what he'd done to me in the boathouse. How could he be so sweet and affectionate with her and act like I was some horrible liability, a mistake that needed to be hidden?

  "Sure you are, Cassie," RD laughed. Rachel smiled at him, her face strained. She glanced at me and back at her husband, her face tightening with each passing moment.

  I wanted to tell her. I wanted to open my mouth and let it all out, this burning in my stomach. Scream it, Cassie. Just scream it. Tell Rachel what her husband has been doing to you below deck. Tell her about the things he whispers in your ear, the way he likes you to move your hands, the things he's taught you in the dark.

  But I just stood there. Every breath I took moved through my body in sharp waves. It was as if all the horrible thoughts and secrets I held inside had formed walls through my body, blocking the pathway to my lungs.

  "Are you all right, Cassie?" Rachel stepped away from RD.

  "She's fine." RD's smile grew so wide that he didn't even look like himself anymore.

  "No. I don't think she's all right." Rachel's voice sounded heavy with something new. "We're leaving." As she turned, RD reached for her. She slapped his hand away.

  "Rachel."

  "I think Cassie needs to rest." Rachel didn't look at me. She focused on her husband. "Naomi has been very gracious and I don't think we should keep her up any later. I am going to go outside, thank our hosts, pack up our son and go home." She said "our son" louder than she needed to.

  She left us standing in the hallway.

  "I'm sorry," I stammered. "I'm sorry. Did I do something wrong?"

  "Enough, Cassie."

  "RD. I didn't mean to do anything." I was so scared of him leaving. He might never come back, but another feeling pulsed right under my skin. I hated him in that moment. I hated him with every shaking bone in my body, and I didn't want him to go.

  "Shh." He grabbed my shoulder and leaned toward me, his face so close I could smell the beer on his breath. "I don't know what you said to her, but this isn't good. This isn't good. All right?"

  "Well, you shouldn't have come over," I whispered, wanting to hurt him.

  "I told you we needed to keep this secret. That it would be hard. But I can see now that this isn't going to work."

  I wanted to argue with him, to fight back. But I felt like I was standing before a stranger. I didn't know what to say to someone I didn't know at all.

  "This ends right now," he said. "You and me. It's over. All of it. It's over. It never happened."

  My heart tumbled out of my chest and crashed onto the floor in front of me. It broke into a million pieces.

  Chapter 32

  RD shut me out. He walked out of the house that night and closed the door so hard I felt like he'd opened me up and cut out my heart. I hurt. Everything inside of me ached. This is where my heart used to be, I wanted to say, pointing to my chest. It's gone. I don't know why I'm still standing. The trouble was, there was nobody to tell.

  I couldn't sleep and the thought of food made me sick. I didn't care about Nick and the note anymore. What did it matter? It was over. RD had chosen. His voice had contained a finality that I'd never heard before, an edge so angry and sharp that I couldn't believe he'd known that he was talking to me.

  Mom added another week to my grounding for lying about the summer job. I didn't fight her since I knew I was getting off easy. When Mom asked me about RD, I downplayed the hours I'd spent on the boat, but admitted that I'd kept working when she told me not to. It was easy to agree to quit. RD had disappeared. There was nowhere to go anymore.

  I called him. I couldn't help myself. I wondered if this is what drug addicts felt, this endless need for something outside of themselves. A need so big they'd do anything to feel good again, for just one moment. At first, I'd just hang up when I got his voicemail, terrified of leaving a message. I knew he'd be able to tell that I'd called. He'd see the record on his phone, but I didn't care. I wanted him to think of me. Then one day he answered.

  "Cassandra," he said.

  I stood outside the back door of the Hideaway leaning against the green dumpster. My hands shaking, I clutched the phone to my ear, my eyes full of tears. "I thought we should talk. I want to see you," I stumbled. I hadn't been fully prepared to hear his voice. He sounded like a stranger. "RD, please."

  "I told you. No more." He breathed so slowly that I could almost feel his breath coming through the phone, hot against my neck. The way he'd breathed when he held me below the deck.

  "RD, I don't want it to be over. I want to be with you. I promise I won't say anything. I won't. Please. "

  "Cassandra, what we did. It never happened."

  "How can you say that? How can you say it just wasn't?"

  "Don't call me again.” He hung up.

  I stood gasping like a fish, the phone still pressed against my ear. There was no a
ir in a world without RD. I had been thrown out of the water to die. I wiped the tears from my cheek with the back of my hand and took a few uncertain steps away from the restaurant. I couldn't go back inside, not looking like this. I could barely stand.

  Mariah stuck her head out the back door. "Cass?" Her face fell when she saw me. "Oh, honey. What's wrong? You okay?"

  She ran to me and wrapped her arms around my shoulders. I sobbed into her blond hair that smelled faintly of coconuts and French fries. "Oh, sweetheart. You just let it all out. You let out all of the sadness. It's okay."

  "But it's not okay," I gasped between tears. She thought I was crying for Mom. I could tell by the way she held me. Her voice low and soothing, she rocked me in her arms as if I was a baby that needed sleep. Everyone in the world thought the heartbroken look on my face was about my mother, that my heart was being torn in two as Mom slipped further away from me day by day. Nobody knew the horrible things I had done, the lies that I'd told and how my body ached to be touched by the one person in the world who wouldn't even come near me.

  As the weeks passed, I didn't feel that time was healing any of my wounds. I didn't call RD again after he hung up on me. I felt erased. RD had sailed away and I had nothing to prove he'd ever really existed.

  One afternoon, I was at the Hideaway listening to Mariah rattle on about her wedding. As long as she did most of the talking, I was okay. It was the silent moments that were dangerous. I'd imagine RD walking through the front door looking for me. "Hey, beautiful," he'd say, slipping his arm around my back, pulling me close to his warm body. "I've missed you."

  And he'd explain how confused he'd been and how Rachel wasn't around and that he couldn't live without me because I was the girl he'd been searching for his whole life. I was the girl of his dreams. He'd come back and I wouldn't have to think he was a liar anymore.

  "So, Cassie." Mariah leaned on the counter top, her ring glinting in the sunlight. "I think you should wear hot pink."

  "Okay." I sat at the counter, coloring in one of the Jekyll placemats. That's how slow it was. I'd taken to coloring, anything to keep from looking people in the eye.

  "Pink is the new black." She snapped her gum. "Or is black the new white?" Mariah laughed and paged through her magazine. "I'm just joking. You can wear whatever you want. After all, you are my only bridesmaid. By the way, you're getting a little too skinny. You need to eat."

  "I'm fine." I kept watching the door.

  "You're not doing some stupid diet that's going around the Internet or something, are you?"

  "No. I'm just not very hungry."

  Mariah bit her lip and looked sorry that she'd asked. "You've got a lot on your mind, sweetie, don't you?"

  "I guess." The worst part about not hearing from RD was the not knowing. Had Rachel figured something out? Had she really looked into my eyes and seen the things we'd done?"Have you heard from your ex?" Mariah asked.

  I felt like someone had poured ice cubes down my back. "What?"

  "Sherlock Rock Star. Isn't his band playing at the big Jekyll party tonight?"

  "I don't know." I'd forgotten about the party and Priya had given up asking me if I was going to go. The front door swung open and the chimes rang as the Smoking Ladies walked inside. Of course, I looked up, hoping, wishing, wanting it to be him.

  "I don't know. I'm not going." My relationship with Nick felt like it had happened in another lifetime.

  "Sit wherever you'd like, ladies," Mariah said, knowing they'd take the booth by the window. "Well, if you go to that party, I don't want to hear about any of you guys sailing out to Jekyll, all right? It's a stupid tradition. You know there weren't any pirates here, anyway. It's ridiculous."

  "Nobody's hanging out with pirates," I said.

  "It's not a joke, Cassie." Even while lecturing me, she glanced down at her ring. She couldn't help herself. "A girl drowned last year."

  "Don't worry. Parties are for the 'not grounded.'" I took two menus to the Smoking Ladies. I knew they only wanted coffee, but they could at least look at a menu. They weren't allowed to smoke at the table, but one by one they would take turns and sit on the porch outside until they'd gone through a whole pack. They all smelled faintly of ashes.

  "We'd like two coffees, extra cream." The Smoking Lady who always wore a crocheted lime-green poncho snapped her fingers.

  I carried the coffee carafe to the table and left it there. Outside, a bank of blue-gray clouds settled on the horizon and a thin drizzle dusted the grass with drops of fine rain. The weather was changing again.

  "It's winter, then summer, then winter," Mariah said, leaning on the counter. "God, I hope it doesn't rain at the wedding. Maybe we should get married inside the restaurant."

  "It'll be sunny by then," I said. I believed that Mariah could will the sun to shine upon her wedding day. Anything and everything looked possible in her smile.

  "You know Bill's heading out to Tulalip tonight to do a little gambling." Mariah rolled her eyes. "Since he can't get his fix until after the wedding, he says it's his last night to go big."

  "Oh?" I asked, hypnotized by the swaying masts in the harbor. I loved watching the way the water moved the world.

  "Don't let me forget to lock the office before we go. We're outta here early tonight. Your mom's rules." Mom always shut the restaurant down for Jekyll Days, the island's big summer celebration. There were fireworks that night and Mom knew that Mariah liked to close early so she could get a good seat in the park for the celebration. I usually liked the fireworks, but I'd always imagined I'd watch them with RD anchored out in the Sound.

  After the Smoking Ladies left, Mariah and I closed up the restaurant.

  "The dock," I reminded her as we walked down the stairs to the parking lot.

  I hadn't walked past the gate since the day RD had sailed away. I didn't want to get that close to the place where he'd once been. The soft, misting rain stopped and a strong wind had blown all the clouds away. As I followed Mariah down the dock, the odd silence of the marina made me feel even more like an intruder. I held my breath when we walked past RD's empty slip.

  While Mariah fiddled with her key ring, checking all of the locks, I watched the water. There were no waves, just a flat glassy line that stretched all the way to the horizon. The air felt muggy and electric, like a bolt of lightning might tear open the sky, a prelude to a storm.

  "You ready to go?" Mariah stood by my side and slipped her arm over my shoulder.

  "Yep." I nodded, swallowing.

  "Now, who would try sailing on a day like today?" Mariah said, pointing toward Jekyll Island. "Hope he has a motor out there."

  My breath caught and I couldn't speak. Sunlight glinted off the bow of a sailboat drifting. A blue spinnaker with yellow stars flapped and filled, then deflated. I would have recognized that sail anywhere.

  "Let's go before they get here," Mariah started up the dock. "I don't want to deal with checking anyone in. Bill can deal tomorrow." She glanced back at me. I hadn't moved. "Hey, Cass, come on. Let’s go."

  The sailboat rocked unsteadily as if the captain had finally realized he'd hit a dead calm. The bright blue spinnaker dropped and someone pulled it below deck. RD was back.

  Chapter 33

  As Mariah drove me home, I tried to figure out the best way to reach RD. I needed to talk to him. Alone. I was sure the second he saw me, the moment we spoke, he'd realize I wasn’t an object he could just throw away.

  "Cheer up, Cassie," Mariah said as she drove. "You know, I bet I can talk your mom into letting you go to the party. It would do you a little good to have some fun."

  "Doesn't sound that fun," I said. All I could think about was how awkward I'd feel standing by the bonfire, trying to make small talk with Priya, pretending that it was fun to climb over wet ferns to reach the keg in the woods. A few months ago, I'd have given anything to be at that party, to be somewhere with possibility, to stand under the stars with Nick because maybe that would be the night that he'd tell
me he wanted me back. So much had changed.

  "Hey," Mariah said, her voice soft. "Where did my Cassandra go? You just seem so sad, sweetie, and I know it's tough with your mom, but you just don't seem like yourself. Is something else bothering you?" She parked the car in front of the house, engine idling.

  I stiffened, fearing Mariah could see right through me. "I'm okay. Just having a down day is all." I leaned over and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

  "You know," Mariah whispered, her voice conspiratorial, eyebrows raised with mischief. "I think you should go out there tonight and be a little wild. I'm talking about 'dance around the bonfire' wild, not 'law-breaking' wild. You need to spend time with your friends, hon'. Enjoy this time. It goes so fast."

  Suddenly, it occurred to me that if I could get permission to go to the party, I'd have an excuse for being near the dock. I could find RD and talk to him if he was alone. I hoped he was alone. I needed some time to talk to him, to explain my feelings and how sorry I was that things had gone all wrong. "You know, a party might do me some good. Thanks, Mariah." I got out of the car and waved as she drove away.

  Aunt Lucy walked onto the front porch holding a glass of white wine in her hand. At first, she moved as if she didn't know I was there. She had the unseeing gaze of someone who believes they are alone.

  "Hiya," I said, smiling. I needed to be on my very best, non-sulking behavior.

  "You caught me." She pointed to her wine glass. "I thought you were working tonight."

  "Fireworks. Mariah closes way early. She just dropped me off." I looked at the upstairs window, knowing Mom was inside. "How is she?"

  Aunt Lucy took a sip of her wine. "We've had better days. Your mother likes to say that some days are diamonds and some days are stones."

  "And today's a stone."

  Aunt Lucy looked thoughtful. "Mrs. Bean came over to visit with your mom for a little while. She's upstairs."

  "I have a question." I sat down next to her on the white bench that needed a fresh coat of paint. "I was wondering if maybe you and Mom would let me go to a party tonight. It's a really big deal and I want to go. Everyone's going to be there."