The Cast

by Amy Blumenfeld

  Praise for The Cast

  ⋆ 2018 IPPY Gold Medal Winner in Popular Fiction

  ⋆ 2018 International Book Awards: Finalist, Best New Fiction

  “A dazzling debut that challenges the boundaries of longstanding friendships. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll relate. But, most of all, you’ll wish it would never end.”

  —EMILY LIEBERT, USA Today bestselling author of Some Women

  “This is my favorite novel of 2018. Your heart will grow after reading this story about the healing power of friendship.”

  —NORAH O’DONNELL, CBS This Morning Co-Host

  “In The Cast, Blumenfeld deftly reminds us how friendship and love, when cultivated over decades, can transcend even the darkest moments. A heartfelt, moving page-turner.”

  —FIONA DAVIS, author of The Address

  “In her captivating and wholly engrossing debut, Blumenfeld pulls the reader in from the very beginning. She deftly handles the perspective of multiple characters as well as writing about complicated issues with levity and grace. This well-told story is timely and relatable and leaves the reader wondering how she would handle similar situations.”

  —SUSIE ORMAN SCHNALL, author of Subway Girls and The Balance Project

  “By page 25, I’d already laughed out loud—and cried too. Amy Blumenfeld has masterfully captured the depth and magic of decades-long friendships in a story that moves effortlessly between two life-changing events that occur 25 years apart. Each character is someone you’ll recognize. Each step on their journey together is one you’ll feel in your bones. Blumenfeld has a true gift for storytelling that leaves you hoping it never has to end.”

  —ELIZABETH ANNE SHAW, Editor in Chief, FamilyFun Magazine

  “Amy Blumenfeld’s The Cast is a heartfelt story about growing up, growing together, and sometimes growing apart amid life’s gifts and grief. Ultimately, it is a novel about love and transformation. Readers will cheer and shed more than a few tears for these childhood friends, who come together for a reunion weekend against the backdrop of a dark history—one that resurfaces and tests their bonds.”

  —WENDY RUDERMAN, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and co-author of Busted: A Tale of Corruption and Betrayal in The City Of Brotherly Love

  “Brimming with tenderness, humor and heart, The Cast expertly explores how the experiences in childhood forever shape our adulthood. Blumenfeld has created richly drawn characters who are flawed and relatable and easy to root for despite their mistakes. This is a must-read!”

  —Elyssa Friedland, author of The Intermission

  The Cast

  Copyright © 2018 Amy Blumenfeld

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  Published by SparkPress, a BookSparks imprint,

  A division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC

  Tempe, Arizona, USA, 85281

  www.gosparkpress.com

  Published 2018

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN: 978-1-943006-72-4 (pbk)

  ISBN: 978-1-943006-71-7 (e-bk)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018935993

  Interior design by Tabitha Lahr

  All company and/or product names may be trade names, logos, trademarks, and/or registered trademarks

  and are the property of their respective owners.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  For

  Mom, Dad & Josh

  Dan & Mia

  With love and gratitude

  Part One

  Chapter 1: Becca

  First came the high-pitched squeak of the brakes, then a laborious chug. By the time the yellow school bus sidled up to the curb, I’d extricated myself from a crouched position on the sidewalk and ended my call. I tossed the cell phone into my canvas tote, along with the notes I’d frantically scribbled on the back of a grocery receipt, and made my way to the corner, smiling and waving at the tinted windows. For all she knew, I hadn’t moved from that exact spot since drop-off at 8:35 that morning.

  “Hiya, papaya!” I chirped. Emma looked down at her hot-pink sneakers and carefully descended the bus steps. She was balancing an art project in one hand and a damp-looking turquoise backpack on the opposite elbow. Freeze this moment, I instructed myself. I blinked away the wetness in my eyes and hoped she didn’t notice through my sunglasses—cheap aviators that lacked UV protection but that I wore daily because she had picked them out for me at a street fair.

  “We had Creamsicles for snack today,” she announced.

  “Yum! Good, right?” I took her backpack and flung it over my shoulder.

  “Uh-huh. But I dripped some on my shirt. See?” She showed me the spot. “You think Grandpa can get it out?”

  “Oh, he’ll love that one!” Since his retirement from city government, my father had developed an affinity for the challenge and satisfaction of eradicating stubborn fabric stains. To my mother’s delight, this pastime proved significantly more useful than other newly acquired interests, such as playing Bananagrams and binge-watching the History Channel.

  “What’s this?” I pointed to the painting Emma was holding.

  “It’s you, Daddy, and me on a beach. Do you like it?”

  I admired the three stick figures holding hands beneath a rainbow. “I love it. This is definitely refrigerator-worthy.”

  She grinned and my heart ached as we passed the shop where we bought her first pair of shoes—a milestone I documented in a small, scalloped-edge scrapbook labeled “Emma’s First . . .”

  “Honey, I’m going to need you to play by yourself for a bit, okay? I have to make a call when we get home.”

  “Can I see one of the movies?” she asked eagerly. She tilted her head and smiled widely, revealing the space where she had just lost a bottom tooth. “Pleeease?”

  Never in this era of high-definition DVDs would I have guessed that two VHS cassettes—our wedding video, and a home movie shot in my best friend’s basement back in high school—would be riveting entertainment for a seven-year-old. And yet, given the choice, my child would undoubtedly turn down a Disney block-buster to watch inebriated relatives dancing a hora, or a grainy old tape of my childhood friends making complete fools of themselves.

  At home, I rummaged through the drawers of our entertainment console and, after bypassing Annie and Lindsay Lohan’s version of The Parent Trap, came upon the old video from my friends. Emma settled herself on the living room couch and lit up as brightly as my neon-clad squad on screen. I closed the bedroom door, leaned back against my tufted headboard, and dialed my husband’s office. Erasure’s “Oh L’Amour” blasted down the hall, and I heard Emma jump onto the floor from the couch to mimic the dance.

  “Hey, Bec,” Nolan answered. He must have seen my name on the caller ID screen. “I’ve got Jordana on the other line. We were just talking about the reunion. I’m getting psyched! We’re leaving on Friday, right?”

  Oh my God! I thought. The reunion at Jordana’s!

  “Bec, we’re leaving for Jordana’s on Friday, right?” he repeated.

  I ignored his question. Though I’d been looking forward to seeing everyone, after the phone call I’d received earlier, I had no desire to go. I just wanted to stay home with Emma.

  “So, you have a minute?” I asked. This is the point of no return, I thought.

  “Of course,” he said, sounding unusually blasé. I could hear him tapping computer keys in the background.

  We talked in quiet, solemn voices for the next fifteen minutes, until Emma called from the
living room.

  “Mommyyyy!” she shouted. “I’m huuunnngry. Can I have an Oreo and a . . .”

  I sighed. “I’ve gotta go.”

  He exhaled slowly into the phone’s receiver. “Do your parents know?” he asked.

  “No,” I said curtly. The mere mention of them turned my hands clammy. “We need our ducks in a row first. Same goes for Jordana, by the way. We’re not ready to be cross-examined.”

  “Oh, shit,” he groaned. “Jordana’s still holding on my other line.”

  “I can’t go to the reunion,” I said. “I just can’t imagine—”

  “You cannot cancel. Jordana will have a fit if the guest of honor doesn’t show up. We’ll figure it out.”

  A lump formed in my throat. I couldn’t tell whether the fact that Nolan chose to use “we,” instead of “you,” triggered it, or whether it was just the realization that we now had something to figure out.

  “Mommyyyyy,” Emma called again. “I’m huuunnnngry.”

  “Go take care of her,” Nolan said. “I’ll be home within an hour.”

  “No, don’t. It’s only four o’clock. Get in as much face time at the office now as you can.”

  He was silent.

  “Nol? You there?”

  He cleared his throat. “Yeah, I’m here. Don’t worry about work. They’ll survive without me.” My husband had never left early. Taking off before seven made him visibly uneasy.

  After we hung up, I grabbed some Oreos and milk and sidled up next to Emma on the couch. I’d seen this tape countless times before, but never in twenty-five years had I experienced such a visceral reaction.

  The sepia-tinged photograph displayed on the side table—the one of Mom and Dad dancing at Nolan’s and my wedding—suddenly reminded me of the two of them on plastic hospital chairs, surreptitiously stealing glances my way every few minutes. The stack of coloring books on the leather ottoman beneath Emma’s little feet was reminiscent of the gossip-laden teen entertainment magazines I used to keep on a rolling tray table. And the childhood versions of my friends’ voices—Seth’s prepubescent high pitch and the sweetness in the girls’ timbre—took me back to my fifteen-year-old self. Though I was snuggling on the sofa with my daughter, every other part of my being was back in that room over two decades earlier, experiencing Becca Night Live for the very first time.

  When they knocked on the door, I was awake, propped up on two pillows and flipping through the current issue of People magazine. My parents sat beside my bed, quietly reading hardcover books.

  Seth was the first to enter my hospital room. His sterile blue gown was taut around the midsection and pooled at his sneakers like a dress in need of tailoring. A paper-thin shower cap sat perched atop his hair. Just below the elastic band, a capital letter B was shaved into the side of his buzz cut. My heartbeat quickened at the thought that pity was the reason he’d done it. When he extended a latex-gloved hand to my father, Dad jumped from his seat, vigorously grabbed Seth’s shoulders, and pulled him to his chest for a bear hug.

  “Oh my.” Mom sighed and placed her hand over her heart as Jordana, Holly, and Lex filed in. I was pretty sure that behind her mask, Mom’s mouth was contorting to stifle a cry. She rose to her feet and rested her tome about the Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys on the chair. Without saying a word, she kissed my girlfriends by pressing her mask to a small area of exposed skin on their foreheads. As she made her way down what looked like a receiving line at a hazmat convention, I watched my friends’ eyes dart around the room. I could sense them taking inventory, trying to gauge whether this whole scene was better or worse than they’d anticipated.

  “Okay, kids,” Dad said, gathering his iced tea and wallet from the windowsill. “If you need anything, we’ll be down the hall in the parents’ lounge.”

  “There are some drinks in the mini-fridge behind Becca’s bed,” Mom said. She knelt down, opened the door, and gestured like Vanna White to our collection of snack-size juice cans—the ones that arrived on meal trays but that I rarely craved. “And if there’s an emergency or if you have any questions, just press the red call button on the wall or run to the nurses’ station. Got it?”

  My friends nodded obediently.

  “And . . . ” Mom began again, before Dad cut her off.

  “Come on, Arlene. They’ll be just fine.” He put his hand on the small of her back, inching her toward the door. He winked at me on the way out, the lines next to his eyes creasing. It was the same go-get-’em look he gave me every September when I headed out the door at the start of a new school year. Though his mask hid his wide smile, I could clearly envision it.

  This was the first time I’d been alone in the room without adult supervision in seven weeks—weeks in which I had morphed from a teenager who hunted for lip gloss and dangly earrings at the dollar store with her girlfriends to a completely dependent, sponge-bathed bubble girl who often needed Mommy and Daddy to literally wipe her ass.

  I glanced over at my friends, arms folded against their chests, standing in a line beside the wall of Scotch-taped get-well cards. Are they disgusted by all the bags and tubes crowding my IV pole? Are they scared to come near me, afraid that even with their protective gear they might transmit germs and damage my compromised immune system? Does a tiny part of them worry I’m contagious—the way our cleaning lady did when she quit after learning I had Hodgkin’s lymphoma?

  Once the thick wooden door closed, we stared silently through its small inlaid window and watched as my parents removed their gloves; untied each other’s masks; ripped off their gowns, caps, and booties; and threw it all in the trash. Mom and Dad turned toward the glass to smile and wave one last time before they headed down the corridor.

  I’d learned more about my parents in those weeks spent looking only at the area above their masks and below their cap line than I had in all the years of seeing their whole faces. There was so much you could intuit from just eyeballs and brows. I saw hope sparkle in Mom’s baby blues if my daily blood counts were strong, droopy-eyed desperation when I was too weak to eat, squinting fear in Dad’s chocolate-brown irises when I had an adverse reaction to a transfusion, and arched-brow elation every time I laughed. But most of all, I saw a tremendous partnership. They could communicate seamlessly without uttering a word. Though they were living a nightmare, they were in it together. They were a committed team with shared values, priorities, goals, and love—for each other and for me. I may have been only fifteen, but I knew that if I were lucky enough to survive, one day I wanted exactly what they had.

  For a moment, the only sound in the room was the hum of my electronic IV machine. Suddenly, I felt homesick. I wasn’t sure if it was a longing for my parents to return or if seeing my friends in this bizarre setting was a reminder of all that had changed. Either way, I felt like a little girl who wanted to hide in her mommy’s lap.

  “So? What do you think?” Seth asked, breaking the silence as he spun around on the heels of his Air Jordan high-tops. The surgical booties covering the rubber soles made him turn faster. When he came to a halt, he whipped off the shower cap and bent toward my pillow so the B was close to my face.

  The girls rolled their eyes and moaned disapprovingly when he showed off his haircut. Ahhh, I thought, there they are! I didn’t recognize those gloomy girls!

  “Oh my God, Bec, can you believe what he did to his head?” Lex asked, as if she were embarrassed to be seen with him.

  Lex often lacked a filter. I saw Seth deflate, and my heart hurt for him. He tended to let even the most innocuous statements marinate in his head and melt his confidence. “I absolutely love it,” I said emphatically, as I ran my fingers over the B. I didn’t let on that the look was better suited for a boy-band member than for a baby-faced ninth-grader whose mother still shopped for him in the Husky section.

  There was no need for me to ask about Seth’s motivation. He’d known for months that I dreaded hair loss more than death. We discussed the topic at length before I started treatmen
t. I wasn’t being superficial, or at least not entirely. I was a dancer and an athlete who could go from a ballerina bun to a swinging ponytail in seconds flat. I’d release the bobby pins from my updo, and, like a slow-motion shampoo commercial on television, my twisted hair would gracefully uncoil and fall perfectly down my back, resting just between my shoulder blades. No way was I a bald, bedridden kid. If I lost my long brown waves, I lost me. But then one night in the middle of June, while I was watching stupid pet tricks on Late Night with David Letterman, a nurse came in with a pair of scissors. For weeks, my strands had been thinning into an old-man comb-over, and she’d said repeatedly it was time to part with it (a pun she used more than once, which annoyed me to no end). I protested repeatedly. But that night, she held her ground. A few snips later, it was over and I was a bald, bedridden kid.

  My first reaction was sensory: my head felt cooler and cleaner. I waved my right hand about an inch above my shoulder; the exact spot where I once reached to gather the hair into a ponytail. I poked my scalp, and my index finger quickly recoiled, as if it had touched a metal pan on a hot stove. Hopeful that the grotesque mental images I had of myself were worse than reality, I headed over to the medicine-cabinet mirror. Slowly, I moved to the left, and then to the right, mesmerized like a baby upon realizing the image reflected back was her own.

  “I was too chicken to totally shave it,” Seth said apologetically. “The B is for Becca, in case you’re wondering. Solidarity, you know?” He made a fist in the air and then pounded his chubby barrel chest.

  I knew how lucky I was to have a friend who was willing to look like an idiot on my behalf. Yet when I saw that B, I couldn’t help but think about our old elementary school cafeteria. Every year on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, students would gather to write cards or create an art project for children in need—kids who were homeless, or hungry, or sick and spending the holiday in the hospital. That B, I realized, was his art project. I had become the charity case.