Teen Hyde

by Chandler Baker

  “You included yourself,” I said in a soft voice. “Why?” When there were so many girls to choose from, I wasn’t sure I understood. She hadn’t included me, after all.

  “This is the part I can contribute to. This is the part of my story I get to direct. They have to watch. You’ll make them.”

  She tapped the “escape” button and the video player disappeared.

  Below us, the auditorium was empty, but as I stood behind Lena, I applauded. With the video clips, she’d created a movie. It was all I wanted and more. Now, they would have to come.

  “It’ll work?” she asked, resting her hands in her lap and staring down at them. I could feel more than see the blush in her cheeks.

  “It’s horrific,” I said. “Which is actually perfect.”

  She stared up at me and I looked down at her, our eyes finding each other. And without asking, I bent down and kissed her.

  NINETEEN

  Cassidy

  The second line had appeared sometime during the night because there was now another black mark drawn into the skin at my wrist, side by side with the first.

  I knew what it meant by the wet clothes I’d found soaking in the bathtub yesterday and by the sick pit burning through the base of my stomach and chewing an ulcer there.

  They were tally marks.

  And if they were tally marks, I knew what the final tally would be.

  Five.

  My mom reached over to squeeze my hand during the chorus of “Holy, Holy, Holy.” Sometime after the song was over—I didn’t know how long—Dad tapped me on the shoulder to tell me the service was over. I realized then that I was just sitting there, staring at the cross over the pulpit with my mouth hung slightly open and my vision blurring into watercolor.

  “What? Oh, sorry,” I said, startled when I looked up to find that the well-dressed, polo-wearing family beside us was trying to leave, but my knees were blocking the way. My parents shared a look over my head. I hadn’t caught a word of the sermon.

  Honor and I hadn’t spoken since yesterday. Her shoulders were slumped and she stared at the ground, ignoring me with a mix of icy defiance and indifference. Not having the energy to make inroads with her, I trailed them up the aisle and out of the sanctuary as the organ played a recessional that sounded unusually melancholy to my ears today. I smoothed the wrinkles on my navy blue dress. Usually I would rush off to try to find Paisley or Ava so that we could quickly rehash what had happened that weekend and catch up on any gossip we’d missed out on before. But there was too much distance between Paisley and me, most of it put there by her, but I had to take credit for widening the gulf until there was no swimming back across it. And Ava would still be home nursing a leg that I’d helped break. She was probably BeDazzling her cast, I thought, and felt an unwelcome and bittersweet tug at my heartstrings.

  Today, I just waited for the moment when my dad would start jingling the car keys and talking about traffic and I even vaguely hoped that there might be talk of waffles this Sunday given that there was no reason to care about my figure any longer.

  Mom stopped the family in front of the table filled with store-bought Danishes and coffee dispensers. “Honor,” she said. “Why don’t you go find Meghan and thank her mom for helping with the Junior League bake sale the other day.”

  Honor, who clearly had no interest in looking me in the eye, didn’t protest. Instead, she disappeared into the throng of churchgoers.

  Mom smiled at me. She’d put her lipstick on crookedly this morning and the peaks were uneven. “Cassidy, honey, your dad and I thought that maybe it was time for you to talk to somebody. About your”—she lowered her voice—“well, about your depression. We’ve arranged for Pastor Long to meet with you.”

  My mind went blank. I still felt as though I was just waking up. And now I was supposed to go chat with Pastor Long? “But … but I don’t want to.” This was a stupid way to object. Childish even. But it felt ridiculous that they thought a church pastor could fix my problems.

  “Cassidy.” Mom rubbed her hand between my shoulder blades the way she used to when I was sick. “It’ll be fine.”

  “When?” I asked, blinking my eyes rapidly as though I was still adjusting to the light. Everything about the church felt vague and unfamiliar. Like it was a scene happening to someone else.

  “Now,” Dad said. The wrinkles around his eyes formed little starbursts. “He’s waiting for you in the elder offices. You shouldn’t keep him waiting, sport.”

  “But—”

  “Cassidy.” Dad didn’t sigh, but he did look very tired. Almost as tired as I did, I bet. Was that the effect I was having on people? “He only wants to talk. Maybe you’ll even feel better.”

  At this very moment, I felt terrible. Worse than I had in my entire life. And I only knew that I didn’t want to make them suffer, too. It seemed that I could only accomplish small things now. And this was one of them.

  I felt my parents’ collective gaze on my back as I trudged up the red carpet stairs to the elder offices. Lately my tongue had begun to feel as though it was made of wet cement.

  I walked down the hallway lined with office doors. I wasn’t in a hurry. Since we were in church, after all, I didn’t think it was too much to hope for a miracle that would get me out of a heart-to-heart with the head reverend at Hollow Pines Presbyterian.

  The desire to get out of the talk continued to grow with each step until a voice began to materialize. Duck into one, something inside me urged. I glanced at the office doors next to me, the lights inside turned off, vacant. Duck into one and skip this charade. My pace slowed and I came to a stop. I looked at the door closest on my left, indecision brewing in me at the same time as temptation drew my hand like a magnet.

  “Cassidy!”

  I jumped at the sound of my own name. My eyelashes fluttered and it took a second for the man in robes to come into focus. Pastor Long waved at me from the end of the hall.

  “I’m in this one down here,” he said.

  My cheeks flushed. “Right, sorry.”

  I dusted my palms off on my dress, lowered my head, and hurried the rest of the distance to the church’s lead pastor. He ushered me into a small room where I took a seat on a yellow couch and pinned my knees together. Pastor Long pulled up a chair opposite me, crossed his legs one over the other, and leaned back.

  “Tell me why you’re here, Cassidy.” Pastor Long was a man old enough to be my grandfather. He had long earlobes and grooves etched into his forehead so deeply they might have been irrigation ditches.

  I twisted the hem of my skirt between my fingers and shrugged.

  Pastor Long waited. “What I mean is, why did your parents arrange this meeting?” Another long pause. “Do you think … in your own words…” He twirled his hand as if to say, go on.

  I chewed the inside of my lip until the skin lifted and I could feel the salty sting underneath. I pressed my tongue into the small gouge. “I don’t know,” I said finally. “I told them everything was fine. I’m just tired. I’m not … sleeping very well.”

  Pastor Long nodded and folded his hands in his lap. He’d always been a kind man. One time he’d even given Paisley and me bite-sized Butterfingers that he kept in his robe pockets when he caught us sneaking out of Sunday school. I’d, of course, given mine to Paisley, but I had associated the reverend with chocolate and peanut butter ever since and, as far as I was concerned, there were worse things to be reminded of by a person.

  “Let’s try another tactic. How’s cheerleading going? What do you kids call yourselves, the Oilerettes?” His patience didn’t waver.

  I sighed. “I’m not on the squad anymore.”

  I watched for any flicker of surprise. A raise of the eyebrows. But instead, Pastor Long leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. His robes and pant legs hiked up so that I could see maroon socks with a pattern of bears marching across. “Cassidy,” he said. “You don’t have to talk to me if you don’t want. I’m not here to mak
e you.” I shifted in my seat. “But there’s one person you can and probably should talk to.” Pastor Long lifted his eyes to the ceiling. “God. He sees everything, Cassidy.” An uncomfortable wad of spit worked its way up my throat at the mention of “everything.” “But he also forgives everything. Do you understand?”

  His eyes were gray and comforting. What would Pastor Long say if he knew who I really was? What I’d really done? A thousand truths piled up on my chest and it felt like I was being buried alive. Every choice now twisted around me like a straitjacket. The drinking. The kissing. The flirting. The boys. Dearborn. Sunshine. Teddy Marks. And all the frightening blank spots in my memory too dark for me to see.

  I tried to open my mouth, wondering if I did, what might come out, but my tongue stuck to the roof and the words stuck in my saliva like it was a fly trap. Don’t tell him. The voice that had winnowed its way to the surface moments earlier now bubbled up again. My teeth ground into each other. My jaw twitched.

  Even if someone would believe me about that night in Dearborn, that it had all happened and that I’d wanted none of it, the truth wouldn’t set me free. It didn’t take a mathematician to know that, if I confided in anyone about the night in Dearborn, it wouldn’t take long for the cops to solve for y—and that y would be me.

  “I promise, your problems may seem big now, but I’ve been working with kids your age for a long time and I can tell you that the problems of high school—the gossip, the boys, the cheerleading—they are never as cataclysmic as they seem.” The pastor’s office was hot and stuffy. I needed him to open a window before I suffocated. “Another year and you’ll graduate, then—poof—all these problems will disappear.”

  Disappear. Poof. Gone. I was having trouble breathing.

  He winked at me and leaned back again, probably confident that he had told another teenage girl exactly what she’d needed to hear.

  And for the first time ever, I kind of hated Pastor Long. Because it never occurred to adults that we might be capable of having real problems, too.

  * * *

  THERE WERE NO waffles after church. My parents and I hardly spoke a word and Honor and I spoke none. I wanted desperately to make things better for Honor, but what could I say to fix things? I’d be repeating the same advice as Pastor Long and I couldn’t bring myself to do that.

  I kept staring at the two lines tattooed into my wrist, becoming more and more fearful that I might go to sleep and wake up to another one. The black marks felt like explosives, counting off seconds, hours, minutes of the time I had left. With every new one, I understood that another part of who I was would be lost forever.

  Pastor Long had spoken about forgiveness. Aside from that, I’d been attending years’ worth of church services that all talked about forgiveness. I didn’t know if it was for me, but how could I possibly be forgiven if I sat around and did nothing?

  My stomach churned at the thought, but I could think of only one thing to keep another line from materializing. If I could offer a warning, then maybe this nightmare would stop. Nothing worse would have to happen. I wasn’t stupid enough to think that I could return to my old life. The thought of going back to the Oilerettes was laughable now. But I did still want a life, one outside of Hollow Pines.

  Which was what had led me here, back to Dearborn. I’d left the moment our family had returned home from church.

  Sunlight flooded the picturesque campus where I stared up at the brick buildings with concrete steps lined by scrolling iron handrails. On the greens, students lounged on blankets where they read and enjoyed the day off from classes. For a moment, I allowed my head to tilt back and I closed my eyes and imagined myself as a college freshman. A new state. New friends. New me. The setting looked straight out of a college recruitment brochure. It said: Nothing bad could ever happen here.…

  Only I knew better.

  When I opened my eyes, I quickly promised myself that wherever I ended up, it wouldn’t be here in Dearborn. Ever since I’d crossed the city line into Dearborn, my insides had begun to slosh around in my belly like a bowlful of slugs. I hid my hands in my pockets so that I didn’t have to watch how they trembled. I swore I’d never come back to this town, but here I was. As the saying went, Never say never, I supposed.

  As I wandered the campus, I felt self-conscious and too young. How could I have ever thought I had any business being here at all? I checked the time on my phone. Eleven o’clock. The morning sun was a half step away from directly overhead. I followed a series of signs to the dining hall. Surely, at one point, at least one of the boys had to eat.

  The dining hall had a triangular front made entirely of glass that reflected the sky. I took a seat on a bench at the top of a short flight of stairs, curled my heels up underneath me, and prepared to wait.

  Reflexively, I turned over my wrist again and ran my fingers over the two lines tattooed. I knew it wasn’t a coincidence. If that night hadn’t been seared into my memory, I might not know how many would complete the set, but without having to stop to add up the faces, I could tell anyone with absolute certainty that the number was three more. The tattoos would end once a complete tally mark had been inked into my skin for eternity—four hash marks, plus one crossed over. It would end once my entire life had been ruined and then whose skin would it be, really? Would there be any Cassidy Hyde left over?

  The numbers on my phone’s digital clock read a quarter till noon. My tailbone was beginning to ache and I leaned back on my palms, watching the students that came and left through the doors of Broomwood Dining Hall.

  Even though that night had been branded into me as physically as the lines of ink, I still nursed a needling worry that even if I found the boys, I wouldn’t recognize them in the light of day. It turned out, I shouldn’t have been. I heard before I saw. A clap of laughter sounded like a thunderbolt in my chest. I pulled the weight off my palms and twisted on the bench to see behind me. At three minutes after twelve, I laid eyes on him. The meanest of them all. He was nameless to me. The sight of his face felt like touching a spot of skin that had been burned. It stung and flared. The pain pulsed in time with my pounding heart. I lost my ability to breathe.

  There he was. I sat frozen a safe distance away, watching his profile as he chained a bicycle to the rack. He chatted with another boy that I didn’t recognize while everyone else faded into a blurry background. All I could see was him.

  I remembered the feel of his hands around my wrists. The weight of his torso. The hotness of his breath. Slowly, I rose to my feet. But my knees went weak. My arms shot out to steady myself like a tightrope walker and I felt just as off balance as I forced my feet down the three shallow steps and nearer to him. His presence pressed me away like a repellent. My head was going fuzzy. One, two, three steps, I counted them out.

  Screw him. The voice emerged nearly stopping me cold. Leave him. It was the same voice I’d felt in the elder offices. Turn around. Run.

  My pace faltered. Something about the sound of the small but significant voice made me recognize it as someone’s other than my own. I gritted my teeth, willing my mind not to listen.

  My walk was stiff and robotic while at the same time tremors raced from my scalp clear through to my toes. I was close. Soon, I’d be close enough to reach out my hand and touch him. The conversation between the two boys faltered as they each noticed me.

  “What do you want?” I shut my eyes against the sound of his voice. Knife wounds through my chest. Keep going.

  “Are you all right? Are you sick?” The other boy’s voice was an echo in my ears. I waved him off.

  “I—I need to talk to you.” It took every ounce of strength for me to open my eyes and look at the boy I recognized in my soul as my tormentor. Circus Master, the name came to me like a memory. Like the hiss of a snake. “You remember me,” I said.

  One corner of his mouth lifted and his chin snapped back. “Oh. That kind of talk.” He snapped his bike lock into place and slung a backpack over one shoulder. He n
arrowed his eyes to a cocky squint. “Well, face doesn’t ring a bell.” He waved good-bye to the other boy and moved to pass me. “Excuse me.”

  “Wait—” I turned and trotted several steps after him. “I … I have to warn you. You must recog—”

  He shook his head. “Look,” he said, talking over his shoulder as he rounded the steps to the dining hall. “I’m sorry if we, like, talked at a party and I forgot to call or whatever. But you got the wrong idea. Trust me, I’m not really looking for anything right now.”

  My legs stopped working. My mouth turned into an o. He didn’t recognize me. This boy had no idea who I was. To him, I was nothing. It was nothing. Another night. Another party. Another girl. The force of gravity seemed to double. Was it possible that the same night and the same set of events had been two completely different things for us? Was he not even the villain in his version of the story? Or did he just not care?

  The distance between me and the back of his head increased and I couldn’t get myself to close it. I felt as powerless as I had that night. And the snake voice wrapped around me. Let him go. Leave. Run. Lead flooded my veins and weighed down my ankles like I was sinking below the surface.

  Tears stung my eyes. I watched him disappear into the dining hall behind the reflective glass that bounced back what I could already see and hid what was inside. I slid the back of my hand under my eyelids and wiped it on my jeans.

  “Hey, hey, hold up a sec.” I felt my shoulders raise up like I was ducking into a tortoiseshell. I jerked away when a hand softly touched my elbow. I glanced up at the boy from the bike rack. His sandy blond hair seemed to be made of down and it fluttered in the breeze. “Sorry about him. Tate can be kind of an asshole.” Tate. “Okay, I don’t know why I said kind of. Totally an asshole.” Why was this guy talking to me? “We got paired together for an econ project. Otherwise, no affiliation.” He swiped his hand through the air for emphasis. “Swear. Can I walk you to your dorm or something?”