The Odds of Loving Grover Cleveland

by Rebekah Crane

  “How does that make you feel?”

  “Forget it,” Dori mumbles, but Madison doesn’t move on. We all wait for Dori to say more. “I guess I should be happy for my parents but I’m not.”

  Madison pats her knee. “Don’t should on yourself, Dori.”

  “Don’t should on yourself?” Cassie breaks the moment and bursts into hysterics. “Did you just say that for real?”

  “I don’t want this anymore.” Dori shoves the St. Anthony figurine into Madison’s hand and stares down at the ground like maybe a hole will suddenly appear and swallow her.

  Madison looks at Cassie with a tight face.

  “Don’t look at me, Mads. You’re the one who’s talking about people shitting on themselves.”

  “Shoulding on themselves,” Madison corrects. “Saying how you should feel is counterproductive to dealing with how you do feel.”

  Cassie rolls her eyes, but Madison directs her attention back at Dori. “I hear what you’re saying. I remember when my parents got divorced. It sucked.”

  “Your parents are divorced?” Dori perks up as Madison nods.

  “Okay. Who would like to go next?” Madison asks.

  Hannah and Katie share that they’re both from Indiana, but not the same town. Katie’s parents are divorced, too, but she likes her stepdad better than her real dad. The whole time the girls talk, Cassie laughs or makes grunting noises and continually rolls her eyes.

  “Cassie, would you please stop doing that,” Madison says.

  “Me? I’m not the problem here.”

  “Well, then what is the problem?”

  Cassie narrows her eyes as the air around the circle gets heavy. It’s as if a cloud rolls over us and brings the temperature down to a chill.

  “Why don’t you ask Katie what you really want to know?” Cassie says.

  “I just want to know her,” Madison replies. “The real her. That’s what we’re trying to focus on this first week: Knowing ourselves. Our true selves.”

  “You just want to know why she stuffs her fingers down her throat. And then you want to pat yourself on the back for making Katie admit to things that are none of your business.”

  “That’s not true,” Madison says. She holds out St. Anthony to Cassie. “Why don’t you share with us what you’re hoping to find?”

  Cassie snatches the figurine out of Madison’s hands in a quick move that surprises everyone. “What am I hoping to find?” she scoffs. “What are you hoping to find here, Madison? A venereal disease?”

  “That’s enough, Cassie.” Madison reaches out to take the figurine back.

  “No.” She pulls away. “All we are is a line on your perfect resume. You don’t want to help us. We are your science experiment, so you can go back to college and brag about how you helped lost teenagers this summer while banging a guy with occasional body odor and hair longer than yours.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “I’ll tell you what is true.” Cassie turns to the group and points. “Katie makes herself puke because society tells her she’s fat and she doesn’t love herself enough not to care. Dori hates her stepdad because her real dad abandoned her for another woman. And I gotta admit. That one must sting.”

  “That’s enough, Cassie. Please sit down,” Madison says.

  “Hannah cuts herself because she’d rather feel physical pain than admit to her emotional pain. Though I’m not sure what it is that hurt her so bad. And Zander might be the most fucked-up of us all because she won’t admit to anything.”

  I freeze when I hear my name. “What?” I ask.

  “That’s right, Z, you’re more fucked-up than me.” Cassie gives me a wild grin and holds out St. Anthony. “Why don’t you tell the group what got you into this place?”

  I stutter over my words. “My parents signed me up.”

  “You’re lying,” Cassie sings.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “I’m guessing that you tried to kill yourself,” she says.

  “I didn’t try to kill myself,” I say, looking around at the other girls.

  “Your boyfriend beats you, but you keep taking him back. Or you’re flunking out of school. Am I getting warm?” Cassie mocks.

  “No,” I say more emphatically. “I have straight As.”

  “I got it. Maybe . . .” Cassie draws closer and gets into my face. “Maybe you’re just a selfish brat who’s never experienced anything bad in her life, but Mommy and Daddy caught you screwing your boyfriend on their fine leather couch and couldn’t believe their precious child would let a boy put his stick in their innocent child’s hole.”

  My stomach is tight, like a vise is wrapped around my body and is squeezing until everything comes spilling out. I grip on to the wood bench until my nails hurt, but I don’t make a sound. I force a yawn in Cassie’s face, my neck straining as I suck in air.

  “Or maybe it’s worse. Maybe you’re just an apathetic mess of a human being. A bump waiting to get run over,” Cassie scoffs. “And you think I’m crazy. At least I feel things and I’m not afraid to talk about it. Do you even feel anything, Zander?”

  Apathetic. In French: apathique.

  The grief counselor at school, Mrs. Nunez, said the same thing. My dad wanted to send me to what he called a “real professional” at the hospital in Phoenix, but my mom insisted that between her efforts and the school counselor’s, I would be fine. She doesn’t like hospitals. My dad’s compromise was that I would also attend Camp Padua.

  “You strike me as very apathetic, Zander,” Mrs. Nunez said. “Do you know what apathetic means?”

  “I have an A in English.” I looked out the window.

  “Yes.” She shuffled my personal folder around on her desk. “You have As in all your classes. Which is why I’m confused how all of this happened. You’re smart, Zander. You should know better.”

  “It won’t happen again,” I said.

  “I know you must be having a hard time with what happened to your sister, but to go to such extreme lengths . . .” She touched my leg.

  “It won’t happen again.” I said louder.

  “Have you cried much since it happened?”

  “Sure,” I said. A few weeks earlier Coop was tickling me on my bed, which was code for really just trying to get my shirt off. I lay still and stared at the ceiling, conjugating French verbs. I barely felt him touching me.

  He sat back all of a sudden and said, “Holy shit. You’re crying. That is so fucked up, Zander.”

  He left and I didn’t care.

  “I cry all the time,” I told Mrs. Nunez.

  She seemed satisfied and went a different direction after that.

  “I’m good at organizing. Let’s plan for your future, since you’ve told me you intend to have an actual future,” she said. I took home a list of potential universities, and my mom put it under one of her inspirational magnets on the fridge that says, “The present is a present.”

  But right now, this present is no gift. Cassie gets in my face again. “Are you ignoring me, Zander? Focusing on something easier to deal with? Pretending I don’t exist? Too bad for you, but I do exist. I’m one hundred percent real, whether you want to see it or not.”

  “That’s enough, Cassie,” Madison says.

  I shake in my seat in the Circle of Hope as Cassie begins to sit back down. I might break the bench with my bare fingers or use Cassie’s fork to poke her own eyes out.

  “Maybe you’re the liar,” I blurt out.

  “What?” Cassie turns slowly back toward me.

  “You didn’t share anything about yourself. How do we know there’s even anything to share? You could be lying about it all,” I say.

  “You want me to share something about myself?” When Cassie comes closer to me, her sweet breath hits my nose. She puts her foot up on the bench. “Do you see this?” She points to a large raised scar on her shin that’s multiple inches long. I can’t believe I haven’t noticed it before. But then again, I haven’t noticed
a lot of things lately. “This is from being thrown down the stairs by my mom’s boyfriend. He thought it was fun to beat the shit out of a five-year-old while my mom watched. Have you ever felt a rusty nail tear your skin, Zander?”

  Blood drains from my face, but no words manage to come out of my mouth.

  “I’m sorry that happened to you,” Madison finally says.

  “Are you really sorry, Mads? Or are you just sorry that you have to deal with me?” Cassie tosses the St. Anthony figurine into the dirt at my feet. “I’m done here.”

  She walks away from the Circle of Hope. I dig my foot back into the ground and press as hard as I can, pushing the dirt until the raging anger in my stomach goes away. I wish it would all just go away.

  “I think that’s enough for today,” Madison says, picking up St. Anthony and putting him back in her pocket.

  CHAPTER 7

  Dear Mom and President Cleveland,

  I’ve met a girl. And she’s real. I’ll keep you posted.

  Your son,

  Grover Cleveland

  Cassie doesn’t come to dinner. I make a spinach salad, but I’m not very hungry. My stomach feels like someone punched me. It hurts all over. I stop in front of a tray of cookies the size of my head, most definitely not homemade. They look like something mass-produced with an expiration date of never.

  Eating mass-produced food is equivalent to eating raw pesticides, my mom always says.

  I set a cookie on my tray and take a seat next to Grover.

  “Where’s Sticks?” he asks.

  “I don’t know,” I say flatly. I poke at my salad, popping a cherry tomato into my mouth. It tastes like acid going down my throat.

  “She ran away,” Bek says.

  “She did?” I practically yell.

  “With my heart.” Bek smiles, but Grover doesn’t say anything. Every few seconds Grover glances over at me.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Nothing.” Grover shrugs.

  I eat, trying to ignore the rotten feeling inside of me. It’s what my parents don’t understand. Feeling good only makes feeling bad worse. Way worse. I just want to be even. There’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s impossible right now. Cassie pushed on me so hard I can’t ignore the anger I feel, but at the same time, I’m sad for her. And what I want to feel is indifferent. Caring causes pain, no matter how much or little you care.

  When I can’t stand another bite of the garden on my plate, I unwrap the cookie. Then I rewrap it. Then I unwrap it. Then I lick the sweet crumbs from my fingers. I look around the mess hall wondering if anyone noticed, but no one is paying attention, except Grover. He just sits next to me occasionally touching his bare knee to mine under the table. Every time it happens I scoot over, but somehow he always finds a way to do it again.

  At the end of dinner, he sets an apple down on my tray.

  “In case you change your mind,” he says. But I hand it back to him. “You know some people like to peel off the skin because it makes it easier to eat.”

  “So?” I ask.

  “So even if you peel off the skin, the poison’s still inside.”

  “I’m still not eating it,” I say.

  “Who said anything about eating it? I just want you to understand it.” Grover touches Cassie’s empty seat. “Under a hard exterior there’s usually something sweet.”

  I get his more-than-obvious hint. “But what about the poison in the seeds?”

  “Every apple has poison inside. If we’re careful enough, we can cut out the seeds. But it takes patience.”

  “I thought you said you hate waiting,” I say.

  “I do hate waiting.” Grover smiles at me. “But it sure beats poison.”

  “So what’s your poison?” I ask, crossing my arms over my chest.

  Grover takes the apple and tosses it in the air. He catches it easily. “Maybe tomorrow,” he says.

  Cassie is in the cabin when we get back. She smells like Lemonheads. No one says anything and she says nothing back. She just reaches into her duffel bag and pulls out a red container of nail polish. She sits on top of her bed, painting her toenails and every few minutes popping another Lemonhead in her mouth.

  As I lie across from her, I can’t help but look at the scar on her leg. How did I not notice it before?

  “If you keep looking at me, Z, I’m going to nail polish your forehead in the middle of the night.”

  When I wake up somewhere between twilight and morning, Cassie’s bed sits empty and, in the bathroom, the window is pushed open. I stand up on the toilet seat and try to close it, but I can’t.

  Instead, I push the window open farther, so Cassie doesn’t have a hard time climbing back in.

  CHAPTER 8

  Aunt Chey,

  It’s about time I tell you that I had sex in your bed . . . with your boyfriend.

  Kisses,

  Cassie

  I try volleyball, arts and crafts, and horseback riding. I even play Bek in tetherball one afternoon after another torturous group “share-apy” session. In an exercise to get to know ourselves better, Madison asks the group to share one thing about themselves they’ve never told anyone. Katie says she cheated on a math test her freshman year. Hannah says she kissed her best friend’s boyfriend. Dori says that most days she’s pretty sure there’s no God, which would really piss off her Bible-thumping stepdad. I say I hate spinach.

  “Then why do you eat a fucking spinach salad every night?” Cassie counters me.

  I look down at my feet and try to remember the word for spinach in French, but come up blank.

  “What about you, Cassie? What have you never told anyone?” Madison asks.

  Cassie clicks her tongue on the roof of her mouth. “I’ve never told anyone that it’s weird that Zander eats spinach when she hates it.”

  After that, I head straight to the tetherball courts. I like the feeling of punching something, but it catches me off guard—the sensation of actually liking something and wanting to do it again. I can’t remember the last time that happened. To my surprise, I end up winning. Hayes cheers from the sidelines chanting, “Durga! Durga! Durga!” Bek doesn’t look too disappointed and claims his artificial arm holds him back.

  “Why do you lie all the time?” I ask.

  “I don’t.” He rubs his very apparent arm and walks away.

  An afternoon later that week, I lie alone on the raft, air-drying myself after a swim. It’s another thing I’d forgotten—how much I like being in the water. Or maybe I didn’t forget; I just didn’t care to remember. Out in the middle of the lake, it almost feels like I’m not at camp. My eyes glaze over and my mind fades away, but I realize that if I’m not at camp that means I’m at home and the anger comes back. I squeeze my nails into my palms. As I feared, the downside to actually acknowledging that I like something is that I notice when I don’t like something, too.

  The raft starts to move as Grover climbs up the ladder and shakes his wet hair over me. Little droplets of water fall on my face.

  “Finally, the legendary black bathing suit. All my dreams have come true.” He sets an apple next to me. “You didn’t take this at lunch.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you, I don’t want it?” I roll over onto my side.

  “A boy can try.” He tosses the whole apple into the water. It splashes through the surface, but comes back up seconds later and floats.

  “You’re just gonna waste it?” I ask.

  “You know the whole ‘eat an apple a day to keep the doctor away’ thing doesn’t really apply to me.” Grover watches the ripples on the water.

  “How do you know you’re going to be schizophrenic?”

  “I don’t know. But I feel it.”

  Feel. I nod at the word.

  “What’s it like?” I ask.

  “Like sitting on a wobbly chair that will eventually break from the pressure.” Grover looks at the bobbling apple for a second before coming back to me. “But let’s not talk about me. L
et’s talk about you.”

  “No.” I lie back down and turn my face up to the sun. A second later, I feel a shadow block the heat. I open my eyes and see Grover’s face inches from mine.

  “You’re really pretty. Does your boyfriend who plays football tell you that?”

  I don’t move. I just look into Grover’s oversized eyes.

  “He should,” he says.

  “He doesn’t really care about me,” I say. “He just likes my boobs.”

  “I can’t blame him for that.” Grover smiles. “How do you know he doesn’t care about you?”

  My stomach turns with anger. Again. When I try to push the feeling down, I hear Cassie’s voice in my ear. Apathetic mess. It makes the anger worse and I can’t get rid of it.

  “Because he always forgets my sister’s birthday,” I say. I’ve never said that out loud before.

  “You have a sister? What’s her name?” Water drips from Grover’s hair onto my forehead.

  “Molly.”

  I acknowledge Molly.

  “When is Molly’s birthday?”

  “September sixteenth.”

  “I’ll write it down in my notebook when I get back to the beach. I can send her a card. Do you want to dump your boyfriend yet?”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I want to do that,” Grover says.

  “Well, she won’t get it.”

  “Is she off at college?”

  “No, she’s younger than me,” I say.

  “Boarding school? I can send it there.”

  “She’s dead, Grover.”

  The moment the words come out, my chest feels like a balloon pops inside of me. I deflate. Grover stays still, his eyes barely blinking. “You should definitely dump your boyfriend,” he says.

  “I acknowledge that.” I close my eyes. The strain of looking at Grover so closely that I can see the pores on his nose and the freckles that rim his eyes makes my sight blurry. Nothing is spoken for too many long seconds. I try to find a verb to conjugate in French in my head, but it’s a jumbled mess.

  “Why do you care so much about Cassie? She’s so mean,” I finally say.