Finding Cassidy

by Laura Langston

  Finding Cassidy

  Laura Langston

  For Robyn, Shona and Tlell, with love and gratitude

  Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

  Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese”

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  ONE

  Female birds choose their husbends because of how good they look and how nice they sing.

  Cassidy MacLaughlin, Grade Four Science Project

  All lives come down to a series of events. And Thursday night, as Jason and I made out at Circle Lake, I decided that some of the most significant events of my life had been defined by sex.

  (Which was weird, since I was a sixteen-year-old virgin at the time.)

  Event Number One—a comment three years ago in grade-eight science class about the sex habits of Pacific tree frogs—freed me from geekdom and started my rise to popularity.

  Event Number Two—explaining what the sex ed teacher meant by withdrawal—had earned the devotion of the popular Prissy Smart and had cemented my rise. (Her name, by the way, was an unfortunate cosmic joke, since she’s not prissy or smart.)

  Now, lying with Jason at the end of the dock on Circle Lake while our friends partied in the bushes nearby, I had to face facts. This—Event Number Three—just might send my life spiralling back down again.

  “Come on, Cass. We’ve been going out for nine months.” Jason’s hand slid under my top; his tongue marked a hot trail along the curve of my ear to my neck. It was warm for an island night in April, and the soft air cocooned me with the intoxicating scent of water, daffodils and Jason. “Don’t you think it’s time?”

  It was time, all right—time for Jason to ask me to the prom. But he hadn’t. I’d been obsessing about it for weeks. Was it because I was a year younger and he wanted to go with someone from grade twelve? (I would kill him.) Or was it because the prom was still seven weeks away and he thought there was plenty of time (he was male, what could I expect)? Either way, I wasn’t happy. However, I had other things worrying my mind.

  I’d been saying no to Jason’s moves for months. Saying no again could be it. Event Number Three. The Big Breakup. And that was the last thing I wanted.

  “I can’t, Jason,” I said for the millionth time. “Not yet.”

  “Aw, Cass. Come on.” His fingers found my breast. Desire rose, resolve puddled. Virginity was there to lose. I mean, tree frogs mated when they were a year old. Eagles did it at five. Sixteen seemed long enough to wait. Maybe it was time. Maybe. But then he kissed me and I tasted the garlic from the pizza we’d just shared and the dock swayed underneath us and a burst of drunken laughter came from the bushes and I knew I couldn’t do it.

  “Not tonight.”

  “I’m prepared.” His voice rumbled, low and deep. “I brought a whole box of condoms.” Moonlight picked up the pink stain on his cheeks.

  I traced the colour with my fingertip. Mom said I was too young to know my own mind, but I knew my mind a whole lot better than she did. And I knew I loved Jason. It should have been enough, but it wasn’t. “I don’t know. I just…” Lately things had felt different. Call me paranoid, but I worried that Jason was losing interest. I wasn’t about to give up my virginity and then be dumped. A cliché I am not. “Someone might see,” I said. “They’re right over there.”

  “It’s pitch black out here.”

  It wasn’t—not really. Besides, a dozen people had decided to start the weekend early, including Jason’s best friend, Mike. The last thing I wanted was an audience. “There’s a full moon, Jase.”

  He kissed me again. “You worry too much.”

  Not true. I had only one worry: holding on to Jason Perdue, grade twelve hunk, star quarterback on the football team and, incredibly, for the last nine months, my boyfriend. Okay, maybe two worries—holding on to him and my virginity. For some reason, the more Jason wanted it, the more I hated to give it up.

  Let’s face it: condoms aren’t foolproof, and the thought of getting pregnant terrified me. I had Brynna to thank for that. As she’d pointed out, Jason and I would make beautiful babies together. We were both tall, both blond, both blue-eyed.

  But I didn’t want a baby. Not even a beautiful blond one.

  Jason kissed me again. My insides flipped; my brain fogged over. Baby paranoia dissolved. Part of me wanted him so bad, but the other part…well…no. “I don’t want my first time to be out in public,” I finally whispered. “I want it to be special.”

  “Tonight is special. We had the best pizza in town. We went for a walk. We’re together with friends. That’s special.” He dropped his hand but continued to nuzzle my neck. “Or are you thinking champagne-and-chocolates kind of special?”

  At least that. “Yeah.” Why didn’t guys get it? Whoops and hollers ripped through the air, followed by a rumble of laughter. I rolled my eyes. “Somewhere quiet, too. A nice room with a shower, maybe. I’ve heard the first time can be messy.” I giggled self-consciously.

  Jason groaned and pulled back. “You are so not romantic.”

  “And making out on a dock is?” But I grinned, and then he grinned, and I knew we’d be okay. Scrambling to a sitting position, I grabbed my bag from the dock and pulled out the box I’d shoved in a few hours earlier. “Happy anniversary.”

  His eyes clouded. “Ah jeez, Cass.”

  He hadn’t gotten me a thing. “It’s okay. I know buying your car wiped you out. At least you took the night off work so we could celebrate. That’s enough of a gift for me.” It was true. I liked the fact that Jason was one of the few kids at Prestwood High who paid for his own car and his own clothes. It reminded me of what life had been like way back when, before Mom had come into the inheritance and my girlfriend Quinn had turned all weird on me. Plus I admired the fact that Jason never let his lack of money bother him. “Here.” Gently I pushed the gold box at his chest.

  He picked at the plaid ribbon, the matching navy and burgundy bow. Then he pulled the deck player from its box and stared at it like he’d never seen one before. Running his fingers over it, he toyed with the buttons and studied the wires.

  “It’ll fit your dash,” I said. “I measured last week.”

  “You didn’t have to do this.” He wouldn’t look at me, and that made me nervous.

  “I wanted to do this.”

  “I can’t take it, Cass. It’s way too much.”

  Thank God I hadn’t bought him the whole system. Or the Rolex watch. “Too much what?” I demanded. “Too much present? Too much CD? Too much money? Too much what?”

  “Too much…” Jason started to laugh. “You’re too much. Come here.” He folded me inside his long arms and squeezed so hard I thought the tears gathering behind my eyelids would pop out and river down my face. “You didn’t have to get me anything,” he said quietly. “I told you that on our six-month anniversary.”

  I liked buying Jason things. Buying things was something I was good at. Dad said I’d learned to shop in vitro from observing my mother. “You didn’t say anything about nine mo
nths.” I blinked furiously to keep the tears at bay.

  “My mother’s going to shit a brick.”

  “I’m not giving it to your mother. I’m giving it to you.” Jason said his mother hated every girlfriend he’d ever had. I believed it. The woman wore a dark cloud for a hat. She was never happy. And she was never happy to see me. I think she resented the fact that I was rich. Or that I had big breasts. Or maybe both.

  “Hey, you two.” It was Prissy; her voice grew closer. “Quit making out and join the rest of us.”

  Jason pulled back, kissed the tip of my nose. “I care about you, Cass. I want to take our relationship one step further.” His gaze slipped to my breasts.

  Now who wasn’t being romantic? Frankly, I expected something a little more than “I care about you.” At the very least, I expected an invite to the prom. I rearranged my top and zipped up my coat. “Yeah, well. I’ll be ready when I’m ready.”

  Jason stared at me this time instead of my body parts. His face was unreadable, blank. Was this it? Event Number Three? The Big Breakup? A slow, sexy smile spread across his face. “I guess I’ll have to find a nice warm room somewhere for our one-year anniversary.”

  Fireworks erupted in my stomach. He saw an “us” future. “Sounds like a plan.” I smiled back. Our anniversary was close to my seventeenth birthday. By then I’d be sure of Jason. I’d be ready.

  The dock shook harder. Jason grabbed the wrapping and the CD player and shoved it into my knapsack. Half a dozen pairs of feet surrounded us as he zipped it shut. “If you won’t come to us, we’ll come to you.” Max Wilde, Prissy’s sometimes boyfriend and Jason’s running partner, threw himself down and popped open a can of beer. Prissy and Yvonne spread out a blanket. Brynna turned on a radio.

  Nervously, I glanced up the hill to the caretaker’s house. Circle Lake was twenty quiet acres of marshy lowlands and rolling hills in the middle of the city. It was a great place to party—as long as the noise didn’t get out of hand.

  And tonight people were being way too noisy.

  I peered down the boardwalk that ran above the ground to the floating dock. Where was the rest of the crowd? It took a minute but then I saw six others trampling through the marsh to get to the dock faster. I jumped up. Screeching birds lifted off with a whoosh, their dark wings flapping like black tissues in the moonlight. “Get out of there,” I yelled. “That’s a nesting area.” I should know—I’d pulled enough weeds during the previous week’s environmental studies class.

  But the bodies kept coming. Shrill sounds of distress came from the displaced birds. “Get out!” I shouted again. There was a collective scramble up the bank to the boardwalk.

  “I thought you were supposed to be getting rid of the geese, not protecting them,” Max said.

  “They’re nuisance birds,” Prissy added.

  “Yeah! Did you know that one goose shits twenty-eight times a day?” someone yelled. Groans of disgust mixed with snorts of laughter.

  “Ducks nest there, too,” I said.

  “You’re such a bird nerd,” Yvonne said sarcastically.

  Yvonne didn’t like me much. She didn’t like anybody much—unless they were male. But she was smart enough to hide her petty insecurities behind nasty jokes and almost-funny criticisms.

  In this case, however, she was right. I loved birds. I mean, what’s not to like? But birds weren’t cool and my friends were, so I’d started calling myself a recovering birdaholic. I was about to crack a joke about my path on the twelve-step program when Jason came to my defence.

  “Piss off, Yvonne. We’re all allowed our one bit of weirdness.” He winked at me.

  The rest of the group rounded the bend and clattered down the dock. The wooden slats swayed and creaked with the movement. I wondered if the old dock was strong enough to hold us all.

  “What’s really weird is that you’re working to clean up the lake and your dad thinks the whole area should be turned into condos.” Yvonne downed some beer.

  It wasn’t weird at all. My dad and I had spent our entire lives on opposite sides of every argument.

  Tom whistled. “She’s her father’s daughter, all right. Not.”

  Everyone laughed. My father was Victoria’s deputy mayor. He thrived on community involvement. The only community involvement I cared about was shopping.

  Someone turned up the radio. Max tossed a beer to Jason. Jason tossed it back. “No thanks.” He reached for his jacket, tugged it on. “Got practice first thing tomorrow morning.”

  Good. That meant we’d be leaving soon. Jason loved to party with his friends, but I didn’t feel like sharing him tonight.

  “Me too,” Max chuckled, “but you don’t see it slowing me down.”

  “Yeah, well.” Jason stood and lifted my knapsack. “Like I said, we’re all allowed our one bit of weirdness.” Max didn’t take football as seriously as Jason did. He didn’t have to. Jason was at Prestwood High on a private scholarship. His performance was what kept him there. If he continued to perform well, he might get a football scholarship to an American college.

  “Hey, Cass?” Jason pulled my blinking cellphone from its tiny case on the front of my bag. “It looks like you’ve got a message.”

  I flipped it open, pressed the buttons and listened.

  My phone battery was running low; Mom’s message crackled through the receiver. But I heard enough. “I have to go home,” I told Jason as I disconnected. “Something’s happened to Dad.”

  By anyone’s standards, our house was boring. A lowslung brick rancher with a circular driveway, it was surrounded by plain old Douglas firs on one side and clumps of dusty ferns and rhododendrons on the other. My mother was too busy to garden. She owned Grace Notes, a highly successful chain of home decorating shops in the Pacific Northwest. And my father’s only interest in plants was writing the cheque for the gardener. Jason pulled halfway into the driveway and parked his beat-up Toyota beside my Cabrio.

  We hurried into the backyard, past the pool that looked like an aquamarine cough drop floating in the darkness, up the cedar-planked deck and around the hot tub to the back door. Tabitha appeared with a loud meow and wound herself around my ankles, leaving a trail of cat hair on my jeans.

  Mom sat at the kitchen table, wearing her brilliant red housecoat, a cup of coffee cradled in her hand. Her long, dark hair, normally pulled into a French twist, fell in a messy tangle to her shoulders. Her lipstick was gone; her mascara was smeared; there was a strange caught-in-the-headlights look in her eye. And instead of greeting me with a bright smile and her usual “Hi, gorgeous,” she said, “Your dad slipped and hit his head. He’s in the hospital.”

  The hospital? For slipping? The remains of dinner littered the counter—scraps of steak, a half-eaten potato, sour cream. My heart broke into a trot. My mother was anal about cleaning up; she wouldn’t sit down for her after-dinner coffee until the dishwasher was loaded. And here she sat in her housecoat.

  “Is he going to be okay?” Jason asked.

  “They’ll run some tests in the morning. He’s…” Her hand swept through the air. “Not well.”

  Not well? My mother turned a hangnail into a case of gangrene. What did “not well” mean?

  “Why don’t you let Jason out, Cassidy, and then hang up your coat.” She gave Jason a weary smile. “Thanks for bringing my baby home.”

  “Hey, no problem.” He and Mom had an easy friendship I couldn’t imagine having with his mother.

  “Your mom looks like shit,” Jason whispered as we said goodnight. “She’s usually so pulled together. I’ve never seen her looking so—I don’t know…so messed.”

  Panic knotted in the pit of my stomach. I attempted a shrug. “It’s probably nothing. You know how she overreacts.”

  We kissed goodnight; I promised Jason I’d call. That was the thing about Mom, I reminded myself as I hung up my coat in the hall closet and walked back into the kitchen. She was a person of extremes. Eying the vivid turquoise walls, the chrome accen
ts and the clay pottery from Santa Fe, I remembered the conversation she’d had with us when she’d wanted to redecorate.

  “This kitchen is crying for a southwest theme,” she’d insisted. “The room was absolutely made for it.”

  “This room was made for beige,” I’d said. “Just like the rest of our boring old house.”

  Mom had actually paled before clutching my arm in horror. “Cassidy, my darling, we are not beige people. And neither is our house.”

  Mom lived in technicolour. Nana used to say it was her Texas upbringing combined with her artistic temperament. I liked to think I was more earthbound, like Dad.

  “So what happened?” I grabbed a glass from the cupboard and poured myself some orange juice.

  “It was just a little fall, Cassidy. Your dad left the phone downstairs and was running to answer it when he slipped and fell. It’s nothing to worry about.” She fiddled with her coffee cup, wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Are you hungry?”

  A little fall? Understatement was not Mom’s forte, either. Plus she was avoiding my question—a sure sign something was really wrong. “No, I’m not hungry. If it’s nothing to worry about, then why are they running tests?”

  “To be on the safe side, I imagine.”

  I sighed. “To be on the safe side of what?”

  “You know what doctors are like. It’s probably a slow night at the hospital.” She giggled faintly.

  “You didn’t answer me.”

  And she still didn’t. Instead, she jumped up, dumped the last of her coffee in the sink and rinsed the cup.

  “What’s going on, Mom?” My heart galloped to triple time. “What’s wrong?”

  Her shoulders slumped. She slid the cup into the dishwasher and collapsed into the chair across from me. “Oh, Dee Dee Bird,” she whispered.

  The old childhood nickname brought an unexpected lump to my throat. I clutched my orange juice and waited for her to explain. When she didn’t, I said, “Dad’s been stumbling around here for weeks. He’s been grumpy and short-tempered. He’s always kind of quiet, but lately he’s almost anti-social. And you guys have been fighting, too. You never, ever fight.”