Finding Cassidy

by Laura Langston

  When Jason asked about Dad, I told him about the third test. I think. By then we were in the living room dancing. The crowd of people and the noise…the smoke…Dad’s Huntington’s diagnosis…none of it bothered me. I was having too much fun to care.

  Prissy danced nearby with Max. “Hey!” she yelled. “Did you hear the news?”

  Prissy was gossip central. “What?” I yelled back. The room was tilting; I was tilting. Tilt and whirl. Whirl and tilt. Wheeeee.

  “Rowan’s dad lost his car dealership. They’ve filed for bankruptcy.” Rowan was a wide receiver on the football team. His parents owned the Mercedes Benz dealership on Douglas.

  Someone whistled. Another person groaned.

  “I wondered why he wasn’t here tonight,” Jason said.

  “I guess it’s the day for news.” I clapped my hands over my head in time to the music. “My daddy’s dying. Only he’s not my real daddy at all ‘cause I’m a sperm child.” The last two words slid out all sloppy and crushed together. I laughed and repeated myself. “Sperm child, just dancing to the music.”

  Somebody whooped. “Are you serious?”

  Feet stomped the floor. “Eww, no shit?”

  In the distance, a bell rang. “What’s he dying from?”

  The questions swirled around me. I didn’t answer. “I am sperm chiiiiiiilllllld,” I sang, swaying with the melody. “Sperm chiiiiiiilllllld, dancing to the music.”

  “Come on,” Jason grabbed my wrist and tugged me toward the kitchen. “The cops are here.”

  The music came to a screeching halt; bodies scattered. We ran for the double doors of the sunroom. Even though the walls were moving like walls aren’t supposed to, I must have grabbed my purse and jacket, because they were in my hands when I got outside.

  Jason pulled me toward the beach. “The cops are all over the front yard. We’ll have to walk this way.”

  The cold air and biting wind sobered me up fast. Stomach churning, I stumbled after Jason. I was dizzy, nauseous. I’d had way too much to drink. Too many Jell-O shooters. All that rum and vodka. And pizza.

  But that was only part of it.

  I’d outed myself in public. I’d told everybody the truth about my conception, when I didn’t even know the whole truth myself.

  Oh God, oh God. I gagged, knelt down by a weathered log and threw up. Twice.

  Jason rubbed my back. “You okay?”

  My legs and arms shook, my teeth chattered. I pulled my jacket around my shoulders. “Just great,” I mumbled. Even my voice sounded weird.

  He handed me his beer. “Rinse your mouth out,” he said. “It’ll help.”

  It did. So did the stick of gum I found in the bottom of my purse. We walked a few hundred feet and then sat on a log. In the distance, car engines started, people yelled. The police were shutting down the party.

  “I shouldn’t drive like this.” I felt sober enough, but I wasn’t stupid. I’d drunk more tonight, in one form or another, than I ever had before.

  “Me either.” Jason pulled me close. “We’ll walk to my place. I’ll call you a cab from there.”

  I didn’t remind him that I had a cellphone and could call one myself. I didn’t want a cab. I wanted a hotel room, white bathrobes, hearts and flowers, Jason. But I felt dirty and embarrassed, because of my revelation, and because I’d just thrown up. “Sure.” I kicked at the sand. I was determined to sleep with him; I just needed a few minutes to compose myself…to figure out how to tell him.

  “Is it true?” he asked softly.

  Uneasily, I glanced at his face. I was worried that I’d see disgust there, but he just looked curious. “Yeah. Donor insemination.” I had to work hard not to slur the words together. “Strange sperm meets warm body.”

  “So you don’t have to worry about Huntington’s?”

  “Right.”

  “Why’d they hide it from you?”

  I shivered. “Who knows.”

  His whistle was low and deep. “Parents are weird.”

  “Amen to that.” I wiggled out from under his arm and stood. “Come on, let’s go.”

  SIX

  Most birds are away smarter than you would think. Parrots, for enstance. They are smart like children. But not the Hawaian goose. They sometimes attack themselves in the mirror.

  Cassidy MacLaughlin, Grade Four Science Project

  All the lights in Jason’s house were out, except for a single bulb that illuminated the back door. He held his finger to his lips, slid the key into the lock and carefully unlatched the deadbolt. I slipped inside and tiptoed down the basement stairs while he pulled the door shut and quietly refastened the locks.

  Jason’s bedroom was an old converted family room. It was large enough for his bed and dresser, a snack fridge, even a small pool table at the far end beside the bathroom. I unzipped my jacket and tossed it, along with my purse, on his desk.

  Seconds later, Jason was beside me and we both waited, breath held, to hear footsteps upstairs.

  But it was quiet.

  “I’ll call you a cab,” Jason whispered.

  It was now or never. “Please don’t,” I whispered back.

  “Why not?”

  “I want to stay here tonight.” I took a breath. “With you.”

  “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”

  “Please, Jase. I told my parents I’d be at Prissy’s overnight and…well…I just want you to hold me.” Make me forget. I wrapped an arm around his waist and snuggled close.

  “My mother will kill me.”

  “She doesn’t have to know. We can set your alarm. I’ll go before she gets up.”

  His arms tightened. I felt his heart thumping against the thin cotton of my sweater. He buried his face in my hair. “Jeez, Cass. I don’t know if I trust myself.”

  “I don’t want you to trust yourself.” I could barely breathe. “I’m ready now.”

  He froze. For a minute, I imagined his heart had stopped beating. “Don’t say anything.” I slid out of his arms. “I’ll be back in a sec.” I bolted for the bathroom.

  I splashed cool water on my face, finger-combed my hair and smeared a large glob of Jason’s toothpaste on my teeth, my gums, my tongue. Then I remembered. My new lingerie sets were in the trunk of my car. And my car was back at Max’s.

  It’s not hearts and flowers, I said to my reflection, but it’s as good as it gets. You are no longer Cassidy the Separate. You are Jason’s girlfriend. You love him. I opened the door. Go prove it.

  Jason was already in bed, leaning against a stack of pillows. Watery light from a small reading lamp gave his blond hair and bare chest a halo-like glow. Was he completely nude under the covers? I wondered.

  “You don’t have to do this.”

  “I know.” Turning my back, I pulled off my sweater, removed my jeans and slid into bed beside him. The room spun. I lay rigid, my hands folded over my chest, waiting for the movement to stop.

  “Cass, I—”

  “Jase, I—”

  We both chuckled softly then rolled on our sides to face each other.

  “You first.”

  “No, you.”

  Jason reached out and traced my lips with his finger. “I’m fresh out of champagne and chocolates.”

  “I don’t care. I just…” How to explain? “I just want to feel close to you.” Close to someone. My eyes filled. Horrified, I blinked and swallowed, willed the tears away.

  He pulled me close. Relief turned me limp. He wore a pair of sweatpants under the covers.

  I wound my legs around his, snuggled into the crook of his neck and relaxed. Slowly, the room stopped spinning. Under Jason’s careful questioning, I told him about the conversation with my parents. What I knew about my conception. “I’ll find out more tomorrow. About who he is and stuff. They’ve got the paperwork in the safety deposit box.”

  He kissed me. I touched his shoulders, ran my fingers down the length of his back, to the bony bit at the base of his spine. I wanted to sl
ide my hand under his pants, but I didn’t have the nerve. I wanted him to make the first move. He didn’t. Instead, his kisses slowed, then stopped.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong, but nothing’s exactly right, either.” He settled me in the curve of his arm with a sigh. “The timing sucks, that’s all.”

  “What do you mean, the timing sucks?”

  “I mean, we’ve both been drinking, and you’ve had the shock of your life. I’m not…It’s not…Not tonight, Cass.”

  I struggled to sit up. “But you wanted to!”

  “Ssssh!” He frowned and pulled me back down. “Not like this. I don’t want your first time to be wrapped up with a shitload of bad memories.”

  Was this Jason speaking? I-want-to-take-our-relationship-to-another-level Jason? “Last night you were ready to do it on the dock!”

  “Yeah, well.” I heard a smile in his voice. “You couldn’t relax on the dock, and I can’t relax with my mother upstairs.”

  His mother. If I’d been thinking back on the beach, I would have dragged him to a hotel. “Can I stay?”

  “I should call you a cab.”

  “Just for a few minutes?”

  “Okay,” he murmured sleepily. “Just for few minutes.”

  “Jason Elijah Perdue!”

  The cabbie yelled at Jason, motioned him over with fingers the colour of Jell-O shooters. Orange. Green. Midnight blue.

  “Get your sorry ass out of there.”

  The cabbie didn’t want to help. He was mean, loud. I hid behind Jason. We had to get away.

  “And you!” The cabbie grabbed my shoulder and ripped my coat off. He poked me in the stomach with a big, black stick. “You have a phone call.”

  The cabbie dissolved into the mist.

  “C’mon, Princess, get your bits together and get them out of my house.”

  I jerked awake. My head was an explosion waiting to happen. Only one person in the world spoke to me like that. Jason’s mother. She jabbed me in the stomach with the phone. “You have a call.” Was it morning? Night? And why were the covers down around our feet? I sat up, grabbed the blanket with one hand, the phone with the other.

  Jason said, “Ma, wait, it’s not what you think.”

  Over his head, I saw the clock radio. 6:20 a.m. Dear Lord, we’d slept for almost five hours.

  “You don’t know what I think.” She jerked her thumb angrily toward the centre of the room. “Now get out of that bed.” Jason’s mother was short, skinny and mousy. The only thing interesting about her was her hair. Being a stylist, she changed it like she changed her clothes. This week it was purple. “Out!” she said, all frown lines and puckered lips. Jason jumped.

  My mouth tasted like I’d sucked nails all night. Images flashed through my mind. The Jell-O shooters. The party. Sperm child just dancing to the music. I almost groaned. What had I been thinking? Clearly, I hadn’t been. I took a breath, licked my lips. “Hello,” I croaked into the receiver.

  My mother said, “Sweet Jesus, Cassidy, do you know how worried we’ve been? You were supposed to call from Prissy’s. When we checked, the Smarts said you weren’t there. You’d never been there. We’ve been searching all over town for you. What were you thinking?” Her voice was thick, like she’d been crying.

  What could I say? Not much. I had my faults, but lying wasn’t one of them. I rarely lied to anyone, parents included. Until last night.

  My mother ranted in my ear; Jason’s mother ranted in his. I sat and listened; Jason stood. At one point, we looked at each other and I wanted to launch myself across the bed and into his arms. Instead we messaged silently with our eyes. Parents are such idiots, we repeated. Such idiots.

  My mother wound down. Mrs. Perdue continued to yell. For such a tiny woman, she had a huge set of lungs. Jason’s little brother, Pete, wandered into the room to see what was happening. He was as dark as Jason was blond, with eyes as round and as brown as chocolate kisses. I waggled my fingers in his direction. He waggled his back.

  “Cassidy!” Mom said. “Cassidy, are you there?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Your dad will be there in ten minutes. Don’t leave.” She disconnected before I could tell her I was one big pounding headache and I had no intention of going anywhere fast, except maybe the front steps, because it didn’t sound like Mrs. Perdue wanted me breathing her air. Come to think of it, the front steps probably counted. I might have to wait on the curb.

  When I leaned over to grab my sweater and jeans from the floor, there was a huge blood rush to my head. I hesitated, waited for the dizziness to subside.

  “Watch those bits!” Mrs. Perdue screeched, rushing over to block the sight of my body with her scrawny arms. “Keep yourself covered.”

  Pete giggled. Jason turned crimson. I wanted to die on the spot.

  “Go upstairs!” She directed her wrath to seven-year-old Pete. “And shut the door behind you.”

  I pulled my sweater over my cheesy cotton bra and thought of the fancy lace bras waiting in the trunk of my car. Good thing I hadn’t been wearing one of those. I might have given her a heart attack.

  After shimmying into my jeans without showing any skin, I slid from the bed and went to Jason. He was still pink; he looked ready to fall over with embarrassment. I owed him a big-time apology. I never should have stayed.

  “Mrs. Perdue, I’m sorry. But I have to tell you, Jason was wonderful last night. He—”

  “Don’t say another word.” She looked away in disgust. “I don’t want to know the details of your lovefest.”

  She spit the last word out, made it sound dirty.

  Jason groaned. “Ma.”

  Warmth flooded my face “We didn’t have a lovefest,” I said, lashing back. “Or a love feast, either.”

  Jason smirked. Mrs. Perdue gasped. “Don’t you get smart with me, young lady.”

  “Look, I’m sorry.” I tried again. “Nothing happened. Jason was a…a…gentleman.” Weak, Cassidy, weak. “We came back here and I’d had some bad news and I’d been sick and we laid down for a few minutes and he was going to call me a cab and I guess we fell asleep and—”

  “In your underwear?”

  She looked so offended and she made the word sound so horrific that Jason’s lip curled and I giggled and that sent her off the deep end. “This. Is. So. Not. Funny.”

  “I’m sorry, you’re right.”

  “Ma, listen.”

  But Mrs. Perdue was off again, babbling so fast and furious that it was almost impossible to make sense of the words. “I warned you…hope you used protection…that girl taking advantage…in over your head.”

  I grabbed my jacket and purse and fled up the stairs.

  Pete sat in the kitchen eating Oreos. “Want one?” He held up a half-eaten cookie and smiled the killer Perdue smile, with its tiny cheek dimple, that he shared with Jason. Since they had different fathers, I guessed they got the smile and dimple from their mother, but there was no way of knowing. The woman probably hadn’t smiled since 1991.

  I tried to arrange my lips into something that would pass for a grin. “No thanks.” I grabbed a glass of water and listened to the rant coming from downstairs. Every once in a while there’d be a pause, and I knew Jason was presenting his case. I prayed he’d get out in time for me to apologize. I’d never meant for his mother to catch us. Never meant to make an ass of myself at the party, either.

  Cookie bag in hand, Pete followed me out the front door. I tossed down my purse, shrugged on my jacket and sat on the top stair. Pete settled beside me, all warmth and innocence in Harry Potter pajamas and bare feet. “You’re up early,” I said.

  “The yelling woke me.”

  “Huh.” At the bottom of the stairs was a dirty, old soccer ball. It was losing air, falling in on itself. It looked like I felt.

  “My mom’s pretty mad,” Pete said matter-of-factly.

  I didn’t need a seven-year-old rubbing it in. I massaged my temples and tried to
change the subject. “Shouldn’t you be wearing a coat or shoes or something?” The wind had died down overnight, but still, it wasn’t exactly warm. A faint blush of a milky sun rose behind the clouds, and it was too early to say whether sun or clouds would win.

  “Nope.” He sucked the guts out of another Oreo. “I don’t think she likes your bits.” Normally I loved Pete’s bluntness. This morning, not so much.

  “I know.” I took a cookie out of the bag, scraped out the stuffing for Pete and nibbled on the chocolate wafers.

  “’Specially your front ones.”

  I almost smiled. “Yeah, no kidding.”

  “She calls you Princess. She says you’re bad for Jason ‘cause you’re rich and you’re stuck-up.”

  How could I be bad for Jason? I looked up and down the street, willing my father to hurry up. Jason’s neighbourhood wasn’t heavily treed like mine; I’d see Dad coming blocks away.

  “Is that true?”

  Bad for Jason? The woman was so not right. “Which one?” I stalled.

  “The rich one.”

  My eyes were drawn to Mrs. Perdue’s beat-up Subaru in the driveway, the peeling paint on the house across the street, the tree branches from last night’s storm littering the street like trash. In my neighbourhood, branches hardly had time to hit the ground before a lawn service swept them up. “I guess.”

  Pete eyed me like I was a bug in a jar. “What about the stuck-up one? Are you that, too?”

  Jason, where are you? But his mother had him trapped. There were no reassuring footsteps heading my way. I’d probably have to leave without apologizing. “Are you?” Pete repeated. “That stuck-up thing?”

  Quinn thinks so. “Maybe. I guess. Sometimes.”

  “What is ‘stuck-up,’ anyway?”

  Oh, man, his questions were not helping my head. I hesitated. How did you explain “stuck-up” to a seven-year-old? “When you’re mean to people and act like you’re better than they are.”

  Pete considered. “You don’t do that.”

  “I don’t?”

  “Not to me.”

  “I didn’t think so.”