“How does that make you feel?”
Feel. The word is haunting me.
“Cassie makes me mad,” I admit.
“Then it’s working.” I look at Grover, confused. “If you’re mad at her, then she can be mad at you. Get it?” He smiles.
“And being mad is a good thing?”
“What’s wrong with being mad?” Grover asks. I can’t muster the energy to respond. Being mad means being, and some days, I simply don’t want to be. “You may not want to be mad, Zander, but maybe you need to be.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t. Only you know yourself.” Grover leans in closer to me, like he’s telling me a secret. “I care because she doesn’t want me to,” he says.
“But if Cassie doesn’t want you to care about her, why not give her what she wants?”
“It’s not about doing what people want you to do. It’s about giving people what they need.” Grover moves in closer, his nose inches from my face. For a moment, I think he’s going to kiss me and my heart rate picks up. “I want to remember you like this for the rest of my life.”
And then he sits back. The sun hits me directly in the eyes, making them instantly water.
“You should really think about dumping that boyfriend of yours,” Grover says.
“What about you?” I sit up. “What makes you mad?”
Grover smiles and does a cannonball into the water, splashing me. Chills cover my skin and when his head pops up, he yells, “I can wait for you, Zander!”
“I thought you said you hate waiting.”
“I do.” Water drips down Grover’s face. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t need to do it.”
He swims away as I sit sweating in the afternoon sun. When I get too hot, I dive off the raft and swim all the way to the bottom of the lake. My hair floats around me as I sit on the floor of Lake Kimball. I grab a fistful of sand and let it drain out of my hand slowly, like grains dripping through an hourglass. I try to clear my brain. When the pinch of suffocation starts in my lungs, I kick my way to the top and gasp for air. A second later and I might not have made it.
On the beach, I find Cassie sitting on her towel. Her nose points up to the sky as she leans back on her hands. I dry off and twist my wet hair into a ponytail. A few strands come loose in my hand. They cling to my damp fingers.
“Damn it,” I whisper.
“Talking to yourself again, Z?”
I wipe the strands on my towel and let them go.
“I pull on my hair too hard when I’m frustrated. I’m afraid I might go bald,” I admit. “I also have a sister.”
“Like I care,” Cassie says.
“And she’s dead.” Cassie looks at me, but I can’t read her face. “I haven’t said that out loud much.” I stretch my hands out at my side and resist the urge to clench up. “I can teach you how to swim,” I say.
Cassie’s face turns sour. “Who said I don’t know how to swim?”
“No one. I just guessed.”
Cassie blows out an exaggerated breath. “Who even says I want to know how to swim? If it means I have to wear a bathing suit like yours, I’d rather drown.”
“Fine,” I say and kick some sand on her towel. “But if you decide you need me, you know where to find me.”
TEAMWORK
CHAPTER 9
Mom and Dad,
Thanks for the bug spray.
Z
After a week of camp, Dori decides to drop the bomb in group share-apy that she tried to kill herself once.
“It was a few years ago, right after my mom got remarried. I locked myself in the bathroom and ate a bottle of pills. I just grabbed the first thing I could find and downed it,” she says.
“Oh my God,” Hannah speaks up.
“It wasn’t that bad.” Dori shakes her head. “I was crying so hard I couldn’t see the label on the bottle. Turns out I downed a bottle of Beano. Nothing even happened.”
Cassie bursts out laughing. “Well, your first mistake was taking pills. What a sissy fucking suicide.”
Dori ignores her. “In the end, it was a good thing. I realized I didn’t really want to die. I was just being dramatic.”
“Dori, that’s so scary,” Madison says. “What if you had really hurt yourself?”
“You don’t think I registered that?” Dori snaps. “I would have left my mom alone to live with her Neanderthal husband.” She rolls her eyes at Madison, but Madison doesn’t seem to let it get to her.
She touches Dori’s leg and says, “Thank you for sharing.” Madison turns to the rest of the group. “Has anyone else ever thought about going to dramatic lengths with their lives?”
“That’s a stupid question, Mads. Of course we have. We’re here.”
“I’ve never tried to kill myself,” Hannah says.
“No. You just mutilate your body. I’d say that’s dramatic, Razor Blades.”
“I don’t cut myself with razor blades.”
“You want to judge Dori because she tried to off herself with Beano, but you’re just as bad as she is,” Cassie scoffs.
After that, the rest of the session goes flat.
The next day, I sit on the end of my bed, my foot tapping on the ground in an even rhythm. It always helps if I keep a beat.
“Devenir, Revenir, Monter, Rester, Sortir,” I whisper to myself, my toes slowly becoming numb. “Venir, Aller, Naître, Descendre, Entrer, Rentrer . . .” I stop blank. My foot hangs above the ground ready to pound out the next beat, but the word isn’t there. “Dr. and Mrs. Vandertramp” verbs are my French mnemonic device specialty. I know them like I know the smell of my own house.
I run my hands through my hair, but the moment before I pull a few strands free, I pause. My fingers feel around my scalp, inspecting the density. I would have more hair if I could just stop pulling on myself so hard. It doesn’t help me. It hurts me. I drop my hands, rest my head in my palms, and look around the cabin like the French verb I can’t seem to find in my brain is hiding somewhere in here.
“What the hell comes next?” I whisper.
Dori enters the cabin a bit later with a stack of letters in her hands. She holds one out to me.
“Mail delivery. Also, Madison said to meet in the Circle of Hope in fifteen minutes.”
“Thanks.” I take the letter and recognize the handwriting and return address. Nina Osborne.
“Aren’t you gonna open it?” Dori asks.
“It’s from my mom.”
She waves one of her letters in the air. “I get it. My mom just told me she’s pregnant. In a letter. Which means she’s having sex with my disgusting stepdad. I want to puke.” Dori plops down on the bed next to me. “I can’t believe some of my genes are going to mix with his and create a person. I hate him.”
Some afternoons Dori will say she’s going to an activity, but I’ll find her sleeping in the cabin. I never wake her up.
“I’m sorry your mom is having a baby with someone you hate,” I say.
“That’s okay.” The skin around her mouth hangs low, like it’s heavy.
When Dori is about to leave the cabin, I blurt out, “How do you know you’re depressed?”
Dori stops and touches the lock on the door, circling her finger around the metal. “Because some days I don’t think there’s any point to this.”
“To camp?” I ask.
“No, Zander. To life.”
Dori quietly shuts the door and leaves. I flip the flimsy letter around in my hand a few times. I contemplate burning it, but with the humidity from all the rain, I don’t think it would light.
So I open it instead.
Dear Zander,
It sure is quiet around here without you. Your father formed a “podcast club.” I’m not sure you could call it a club since the only two members are he and I, but I don’t tell him that. He makes me listen to TED Talks and Freakonomics Radio and a whole bunch of other stuff that you would find horribly boring. It’s not as bad as I thought
, though. I think I’m actually learning something.
That’s what I’ve decided this summer is all about. Learning. You’re learning in Michigan and your father and I are learning here at home. I’m not sure I’ll ever learn to get used to the silence of not having you around, though. I still wish the camp had made an exception on the “no cell phone” rule for you. We’ve been through so much, it just seems cruel to keep me away from my daughter.
Anyway, I hope you’re enjoying yourself. I can’t tell by your letters. They’re so short.
I saw Cooper working at the grocery store last week. He looked too busy to come say hi, but I waved. I hope they’re feeding you well at camp. I just listened to a podcast about the overabundance of sugar in our food. Yellow foods in particular. Stay away from yellow. And orange. Nothing is naturally orange unless it’s an actual orange or a carrot. You can eat those.
I miss you.
Love,
Mom
I stare down at her pointed handwriting, like the words have thorns on the end. Each mundane sentence pricks me. I ball up the letter and I grab a piece of paper and a pen from my duffel bag.
I write:
Devenir
Revenir
Monter
Rester
Sortir
Venir
Aller
Naître
Descendre
Entrer
Rentrer
My foot taps to the beat as I say the words in my head again and again, but every few seconds my eyes drift to the balled-up letter sitting next to me.
When I can’t stand it anymore, I throw my mom’s letter away and start searching the mound of clothes on Cassie’s bed. I know they’re here somewhere. I shake a pair of shorts and hear something rattle—Lemonheads. I pop three in my mouth like pills. Sweet, sugary, yellow pills. My cheeks water as I crunch down on the candy. I fold up my unfinished French mnemonic device and put it in an envelope addressed to my mom.
On my way to the Circle of Hope, I detour to the outgoing mailbox by the mess hall and drop the letter in the slot.
“Breaking up with your boyfriend?” Grover says from behind me.
My heart rate jumps in surprise. “No. It’s a letter for my mom.”
“Did you tell her about me?” he asks.
“No. I told her about me. She won’t get it, though.”
Grover nods as silence hangs over us. I can’t think of what to say because it’s never just talking with Grover. His big eyes always look like he’s about to cry. It makes every word he utters seem like it’s his last, and I want to grab him and make it all go away. And Grover’s hair is wet right now. He’s wearing soaking-wet swim trunks and a “Having fun isn’t hard when you have a library card” T-shirt.
He leans in toward me. “Is that?”
I back away. “What?”
He looks at my lip. “Sugar.”
I cup my hand over my mouth and smell my own breath.
“Don’t tell Cassie,” I say.
Grover smiles and presses his lips together. Neither of us moves.
“I hate the way my mom says things without really saying things,” I finally blurt out.
“Like what?”
“She hates the letters I send home, but she won’t actually say that. She’ll just say they’re too short, but what she really means is that they aren’t enough. There’s a difference.” Grover’s eyes do the almost-crying thing and my stomach gets tight, like I want to burst open. “It’s like she wants everything to be long and drawn out because it’s better to have noise than nothing. But you could write a thousand words and it still wouldn’t equal the power of ‘I love you.’”
“I love you,” Grover says.
“Exactly. ‘I love you.’”
“You better tell your boyfriend.”
“Wait. What? I was making an analogy,” I say.
“I think it was more like an acknowledgment.” Grover winks.
I groan and start to walk away, shaking my head. Damn his overactive eyes.
“Wait,” he says, catching up to me and touching my arm. I yank it away.
“I told you. I hate waiting,” I snap.
“And I told you that sometimes waiting is inevitable. So stop fighting it.”
“I’m not fighting anything.”
“Yes, you are,” Grover says.
“No, I’m not.” I hold his stare. The watery sheen on his skin makes the sun reflect off of his nose. I notice that the tip of it is perfectly round and smooth. “What about you?” I say.
“What about me?”
“You never acknowledge anything.”
“Yes, I do. In fact, I’d like to acknowledge right now that you smell good. Sugar suits you.”
“That doesn’t count.”
“Sure it does.”
“But it’s not about you,” I say.
“People are too selfish. Did you know that if given a choice more people would rather win the lottery than cure AIDS?”
“Forget it.” I start to walk away.
“You’re just as bad as your mom,” Grover hollers after me.
I whip around. “How can you say that?”
He makes up the space between us. “You say she likes to drag things out. So do you.”
“No, I don’t.” I move again, but Grover moves with me.
“Yes, you do. You’re doing it right now.”
I take another step back and I run into a tree. My head knocks against the bark with a small thud and I’m pinned.
“Is your head okay?” he asks.
“Obviously not. I’m here, aren’t I?”
“I meant this head.” Grover touches the tender spot on the back of my skull. And then he backs away from me, so far that the air gets cold, like when the sun goes down in the desert. “I’m sure your mom will appreciate the letter no matter what. She’s probably been waiting for it.”
He walks away and I slump down on the tree, pulling my knees to my chest to bury my face. My eyes get tired as I sit on the ground, my energy waning. I contemplate pulling a Dori move and skipping group share-apy to take a nap. But the more I think about Coop, the more the fatigue fades and anger replaces it. I want to call him and scream at him for not talking to my mom at the grocery store. My mom may not like to see reality, but even she must know he wasn’t too busy to talk to her. Coop avoided her.
On my way over to the Circle of Hope, I pass the tetherball court. Without hesitating, I smack the ball with as much force as I can, sending it high into the air. The ball wraps around the pole quickly, making a ding sound when all the slack in the rope is gone. I smack it again with the other hand.
“Durga, Durga, Durga,” I say through tight teeth. It’s clear my tetherball skills have greatly improved, though this place hasn’t stopped me from talking to myself.
CHAPTER 10
Aunt Chey,
Don’t look under my bed.
Kisses,
Cassie
“When I say the word teamwork, what comes to your mind first?” Madison asks.
“An over-Botoxed face,” Cassie says. She’s braiding small patches of random hair on her head. They stick out chaotically like broken antennas. I count seven braids total. Cassie stops midbraid. “Sorry. I should have been more specific. Your over-Botoxed face.”
“I don’t Botox my face.”
“Not now, but you will.” She goes back to work on her hair. “I can picture it. In twenty years, you’ll be one of those women with a shiny flat forehead and plastic cheekbones, whose upper lip doesn’t move. I bet you go running to the dermatologist on your twenty-fifth birthday when you see your first wrinkle.”
“I meant the question seriously, Cassie.”
“I wasn’t trying to be funny, Mads,” Cassie says deadpan, tying a rubber band around the end of a braid. “I was trying to be honest. When you say anything, your future plastic face comes to my mind first.”
“Well, I’d thank you for your honesty, but I don’t
appreciate it.”
“Most people don’t,” Cassie says, leaning back on her hands and turning her face up to the sky. “When you’re wrinkled from too many sunburns from too many spring breaks in Panama City, where you’ve screwed some guy with an eagle tattoo who looked cute through your beer goggles, you’ll be jealous of my skin. I’ll be eighty before I wrinkle.” Cassie sits back and smiles. “If I choose to live that long.”
For the first time since camp started, Madison looks defeated. The girl with the perfect nails and long silky hair, who appears unbreakable, might be on the verge of cracking.
“There’s no I in team,” I blurt out, wanting the moment to be over between Cassie and Madison. Everyone turns to look at me. “You wanted to know what I think about when you say teamwork? ‘There’s no I in team.’ That’s what my coach always said.”
“Your swim coach?” Madison asks, her shoulders relaxing.
I nod. “I pointed out once that there is a me, if you rearrange the letters. He ignored me.”
Madison hands me the St. Anthony statue and whispers, “Thank you.”
I roll the little man around in my hands. I haven’t talked much in group share-apy before today.
“Tell us more about swim team,” Madison says.
“My coach smelled like garlic. Have you ever been in a humid enclosed space with someone who smells like garlic?” I ask the question down at St. Anthony as if I’m talking to him. “It’s like every molecule of air is carrying the world’s worst case of bad breath.”
“That is so gross,” Dori says.
“I tried breathing through my mouth once, thinking I wouldn’t smell the garlic, but then it was like I was tasting it,” I say.
“Oh my God, Z, I’m gonna throw up.” Cassie sticks her finger down her throat and looks at Katie. “Fingers, care to join me?”
“Shut up.” Katie glares at Cassie.
“‘Teamwork makes the dream work,’” I continue. “That’s the other thing he used to say.”
“My volleyball coach used to say that.” Madison smiles. “Coaches must get a manual with these sayings inside.”
“Kind of like camp counselors,” Cassie snaps at her.
The Odds of Loving Grover Cleveland Page 7
