“So, do you care where I put it?” I asked.
“What?” she spluttered.
“Oh wow, no. Your bra,” I clarified, unsnagging it from my wrist brace. “Sorry.”
“You’re cute when you blush.” Cassidy grinned mischievously. “And since you asked, how about I show you exactly where to put it?”
Cassidy slid down beneath the covers, and I tossed her bra onto the floor and closed my eyes and clenched my fists and let the delicious pressure of her warm, soft mouth take me back to our fireworks, all of them bursting at once.
Later—after I’d returned the favor, and we’d gotten dressed, and Cassidy had expressed her undying appreciation for the fact that I had an en suite bathroom—after we’d let Cooper back into the room and were innocently playing Mario Cars with the door open in case my parents came home, Cassidy asked if I was a virgin.
I paused the game, since I had the A controller.
“Um,” I said, wondering if she’d guessed.
“Oh my God.” Cassidy’s lips twitched as she held back a smile. “You’re not!”
“Hey, I used to be cool!” I tried to make a joke of it.
“I know, it’s horrifying,” Cassidy said wryly, and then fiddled with the controller, realizing what she’d started.
“Well, I’m saving myself,” Cassidy announced, like it was the punch line to an untold joke, and then shrugged, embarrassed. “Why do they even call it that, ‘saving yourself’? Like we need to be rescued from sex? It’s not as though virgins spend their whole lives engaged in the sacred ceremony of ‘being saved’ from intercourse.”
“Just so long as you’re cool with outercourse, I guess I don’t mind.” I grinned.
“What the heck is outercourse?” Cassidy frowned.
I tried to make myself the picture of innocence.
“Well, I could show you again?”
21
I’M NOT CERTAIN I can pinpoint the exact moment when I became irreparably different. These days, I think it wasn’t a moment at all, but a process. A chemical reaction, if you will. I was no longer Ezra Faulkner, golden boy, and maybe I hadn’t been for a while, but the more time I spent with Cassidy, the more I was okay with it.
After Cassidy went home and my parents returned from their outing to various home décor warehouses, which we discussed at length over dinner, I put on my new leather jacket and looked at myself in the mirror. A real look, something I’d been avoiding for a long time.
Ever since the accident, I’d only seen the things that were wrong: my hair grown out from its athlete’s cut, my muscles diminished, my tan replaced by an unhealthy pallor, my formerly fitted jeans hanging off my hipbones, even with the aid of a belt.
But when I looked in the mirror this time, I didn’t see any of those things. They were still there, of course, but not as flaws, just as facts: skinny, messy-haired, pale. Me, I guessed, just a different version from the one most people remembered.
In some sort of grand gesture, I took the books out from under my bed and put them on the shelves. Not that I was planning on reading many of them, but it was a nice feeling, being able to glance at my bookshelves and contemplate the possibility of it. To think that a small piece of my bedroom finally represented something of me.
I wondered what Cassidy’s bedroom looked like, if it encapsulated her in a way that mine didn’t. I wondered if it was anything like Charlotte’s bedroom had been, with ladybug figurines lining the windowsill and an entire desk just for her makeup collection, which apparently was called a vanity.
“How come we never go over to your house?” I asked Cassidy when I picked her up for school on Monday.
“Because we have a housekeeper,” she said, sighing. “And she’d tell my parents I have boys over when they’re not around.”
“Technically, I’m singular,” I said, nodding at the security guard as we drove past.
“All the more disastrous,” Cassidy assured me. “Trust me, it’s easier if you don’t come over. You’re not missing anything.”
“I guess,” I said, sensing that Cassidy wanted to drop the subject.
Cassidy took a sip of the coffee I’d brought.
“Have you ever tried a French press?” she asked. “I think you’d like it better.”
CASSIDY AND I went out to the movies on Friday night—a real date, at the Prism Center. She wore a nice dress, and I wore my new clothes, and we saw this awful comedy starring the same actors who always star in awful comedies.
Going to the movies always makes me strangely exhilarated when I exit the theater, surrounded by the smell of popcorn and everyone talking about the film. It’s as though everything is more vivid, and the line between the probable and the cinematic becomes blurred. You think big thoughts, like maybe it’s possible to move someplace exciting, or risk everything for a chance at your dreams or whatever, but then you never do. It’s more the feeling that you could turn your life into a movie if you wanted to.
I’ve never been able to explain to anyone what’s so holy about the moments after you exit a movie theater, so it surprised me when Cassidy smiled and said nothing until we reached the bottom of the escalator, leaving me to the perfect silence of my moment.
“It’s creepy,” she observed, slipping her hand into mine, “overhearing a hundred identical conversations.”
“Then we’ll be the one conversation that’s different,” I promised. “Tell me something that happened when you were a kid.”
Cassidy smiled, pleased.
“When I was seven, my best friend blew out the candles on my birthday cake. I cried because I thought my birthday wish wouldn’t come true. Now you tell me something.”
“Um,” I said, thinking. “In the second grade, Toby and I borrowed a bunch of plastic jewelry from his little sister and buried it in his mother’s flower bed. We wanted to dig up buried treasure, I guess, but we got in so much trouble. I had to sleep over in a different room, like the world’s longest time out.”
“I didn’t realize you’d been friends for such a long time.”
“Since kindergarten,” I said. “Alphabetical order. We had to share a cubby and everything.”
A couple of guys from school interrupted us then, to say hi. We stopped to chat about which movie we’d seen—it turned out to be the same one—and how it had sucked.
By the time we got away, we passed half of the girls’ water polo team, hanging out by one of the fountains. They waved, and I nodded back.
I didn’t really have a big romantic evening planned, but neither of us wanted to head home, so I offered to show her the castle park. It’s this great old playground with a huge concrete fortress built way back in the eighties, where I used to play when I was little.
On the drive over, Cassidy discovered that I’d never tried a Toblerone bar, which she deemed totally unacceptable, so we stopped off at the grocery store to buy some. While we were waiting to pay, what might possibly have been the entire varsity football team crowded into the checkout line behind us. They were buying two dozen cans of nonstick cooking spray.
It was so entirely magnificent that I was too stunned to laugh. Cassidy nudged me, grinning.
“Hey,” I said, turning around.
Connor, the quarterback, seemed surprised to see me—although not as surprised as I was to see the entire starting lineup dropping what had to be a cool fifty on cooking spray.
“Faulkner,” he acknowledged, and then nodded at Cassidy. “Lady friend.”
Connor was plastered, the stench of liquor radiating off him in waves. I hoped someone else was the designated driver.
“They make different flavors,” Cassidy said politely, nodding toward the cooking spray. “I don’t know if you’re aware.”
I stifled a laugh. It was all too bizarre. And the worst of it was that the cashier was some kid from school, possibly a junior. He looked terrified at the prospect of ringing up the football team’s purchase, and I didn’t blame him.
“Got it
, thanks,” Connor said sheepishly, as though we’d caught him buying a bulk pack of tiny condoms. Honestly? That would have been less surprising.
I paid quickly and ushered Cassidy into the parking lot, where we laughed our faces off.
“What was that?” Cassidy asked, gasping.
“I’m not certain,” I said, “but I believe it may have been the starting lineup of our school’s football team purchasing twenty-four cans of PAM.”
“Oh my God,” Cassidy spluttered. “I’m dying.”
We were still laughing when I pulled into the empty lot in the castle park.
“Maybe it’s some sort of ritual,” Cassidy said, speculating. “Like, they have to cover themselves with PAM and play tackle football.”
“Believe me, if that was going on, I’d know about it. The tennis guys would give football so much crap.” As if we didn’t already. We played a country-club sport; they put on protective padding and slammed into each other.
“Maybe they’re pranking someone.”
“It’s probably a drinking game. PAM shots with beer.”
We stared up at the enormous concrete castle, this bizarre combination sandbox and jungle gym with a tire swing I used to love as a kid. Cassidy held the candy and drinks we’d bought from the market, the plastic bag knotted around her wrist like a corsage.
“So we just climb up?” she asked doubtfully, taking hold of the rock wall that led up the side of the fortress.
I winced, realizing her doubt was focused in my direction.
“Well, there are stairs.” I disappeared around the other side of the castle, trying to make a joke of it, of how I couldn’t even handle a freaking jungle gym.
We claimed the castle’s lookout tower, the highest point of the playground, and it was sad how triumphant I felt at getting up there. A little plastic steering wheel was bolted to the balcony, which made Cassidy laugh.
“It’s like that castle from Monty Python!” she said, taking the helm. “Let’s take it out for a spin.”
“I thought you didn’t have a license,” I teased, sitting down on the rubberized floor of our little fort.
A full moon was shining high and white over the skeletons of the birch trees, and I could hear someone still on the tennis courts beyond the cookout area, even though it was nearly curfew. I wondered if it was anyone I knew.
Cassidy sat down next to me, her dress teasing me as it fluttered in the breeze. She broke the chocolate bar in half and waited for me to taste it with this I-told-you-so grin.
We finished the candy in an embarrassingly short time, and I watched as she absently licked the chocolate off her fingers. She blushed when she noticed my reaction.
“I bet you taste like chocolate,” Cassidy said.
“I bet you’re right,” I told her, and then we were very busy in our private little turret, Cassidy sitting on my lap in her little dress, driving me crazy with her bare legs against my jeans. I was kissing her neck, and her hands were under my shirt, and I didn’t know how far I was getting, but I didn’t care, because the magnificent possibility of kissing Cassidy Thorpe had turned into an indisputable fact of my daily existence, and I could hardly believe my good fortune.
I ran my hand up her thigh, half expecting her to push it away, but she didn’t. Instead, she sat up as though we’d been caught by her dear, sweet grandmother, and for all I knew, we had.
“Someone’s here,” Cassidy said, smoothing her hair. She scooted over to the edge of the lookout and peered through the crenellations. I hoped desperately that she’d imagined it, but then I heard laughter. Laughter and aerosol cans being shaken.
“You’re not going to believe this.” Cassidy motioned me over to take a look.
The football team had arrived, their trucks and Blazers lined up in the lot. With cans of cooking spray in hand, they advanced on the swing set and monkey bars.
“Are you kidding me?” I whispered as they began to PAM the monkey bars.
“That’s horrible.” Cassidy whispered back. “We should do something.”
“I’ll handle it,” I told her. After all, nothing kills the mood quicker than bearing witness to mass vandalism.
They didn’t notice me until I was right there, standing at the edge of the sandbox. I took out my car keys and hit the panic button, making everyone jump.
“Hey!” I said, killing the alarm. “Connor MacLeary, get your drunk ass over here!”
Connor stumbled toward me, kicking up sand. He was barefoot, wearing his jersey with a pair of jean shorts, and he looked strangely vulnerable without shoes on. I’d known him since kindergarten, and what I was thinking about then wasn’t how I was a cane-wielding member of my high school’s debate team, about to face off against the varsity quarterback, but how Connor had refused to put on his construction paper pilgrim hat during our kindergarten’s Thanksgiving party. He’d thrown a tantrum over it until Ms. Lardner had picked him up and sat him on top of the cubby nook to calm down.
He was the kid who’d refused to give fat girls Valentines even though you were supposed to bring enough for everyone, who’d always forgotten part of his Cub Scout uniform and who’d made dioramas on lined paper the morning they were due. And he was committing playground vandalism with cooking spray, which was so ridiculous that the vast difference between our respective lunch tables didn’t even factor into my decision to confront him.
“Faulkner!” Connor shouted, spreading his arms as though literally embracing my appearance in the castle park. “Perfect timing! Grab a can!”
“You’re an asshole,” I told him. “Also an idiot, but mostly an asshole.”
His smile disappeared and he scratched his head like he couldn’t believe I was actually angry, as though he was probably misunderstanding.
“What? It’s a joke,” he explained laughingly.
I shook my head, disgusted.
“This is the furthest thing from a joke I’ve ever seen. We’re on a playground. It’s for little kids, you douchenozzle. Call off your goons before some second grader breaks an arm.”
It finally got through to him that I was seriously pissed off. He cocked his head, sizing me up, and for a moment, I thought he might actually take a swing at me. But we both knew he wouldn’t get away with it. Not at school on Monday; the entire football team against a kid with a cane.
I sighed impatiently and hit the alarm on my car again.
“Call it off,” I threatened. “Now.”
“All right, Faulkner. Jesus.” Connor shook his head and ambled back toward his team.
“Hey, assholes,” I heard him call. “Drop your cans. This was a dumb idea. Let’s get that beer from my garage.”
I felt invincible as I swaggered back toward the castle, as though I’d actually accomplished something good. I grinned when I saw Cassidy. She was sitting on the stairs, solemnly watching the football team slink off in defeat. I sat down next to her and pulled her close.
“I have completed my quest, fair maiden,” I joked, “and returned to yon castle to share tales of my triumph.”
But Cassidy wasn’t laughing.
“I can’t believe you did that,” she said. “I thought he was going to jump you.”
“I have bested the ogre,” I insisted. “I am the king of castle park.”
“Ezra, be serious.”
“Connor wouldn’t have done anything. I’ve known him since we were five.”
I tilted Cassidy’s face toward mine, trying to resume where we’d broken off, but clearly I’d used up my allotment of successes for that evening, because Cassidy wasn’t having it.
“I don’t want anything to happen to you,” she said, twisting her hair up into a bun. “Just—don’t scare me like that, okay?”
“No more questing,” I promised, and then drove Cassidy home because it was getting late.
22
SCHOOL ON MONDAY was unbearable. I hadn’t thought anyone would know what had happened, but it was pretty evident that everyone did. A junior
from JV tennis named Tommy Yang (the younger brother of notable pantsless sake bomber Kenneth Yang) had been on the courts that night and seen the whole thing.
“I wish I was invisible,” I moaned, putting my head down on the lunch table.
“Yeah, well I wish the turkey in this sandwich wasn’t sweating more than a fat kid in a Jacuzzi,” Toby said philosophically, peeling two pieces of incredibly clammy deli meat apart and jiggling them for emphasis.
I laughed, feeling slightly better about all of the unwanted attention. And then Luke grinned and leaned back in his seat.
“So I heard a pretty good joke,” he said. “I heard Faulkner fought the entire football team on Friday night.”
“What’s funny about that?” I asked, in no mood for Luke’s crap.
“It’s true?” Toby let the halves of his sandwich drop onto the plastic wrap.
“Mostly true,” I admitted. “Depending which version you heard.”
“I’d rather hear your version,” Phoebe said, leaning forward in her seat and reminding me strongly that she ran the school paper.
Cassidy joined us at the table then, unwrapping a pack of vending-machine granola bars.
“Hey,” she said, quickly kissing me on the cheek. “I didn’t say anything. I promise.”
“I know.” I sighed. “Tommy Yang was on the tennis courts.”
And so I told everyone what had really happened, leaving out the part about my having a half-staff the entire time thanks to Cassidy’s and my, uh, fortress play. Toby laughed so hard that he snorted, which I hadn’t heard him do since we were kids.
“I hate to say it”—Austin shrugged helplessly—“but it’s pretty genius, using cooking spray like that.”
“The sort of genius that falls into the exclusive realm of pedophiles and psychopaths,” Phoebe noted.
“I can’t believe you didn’t get your ass handed to you,” Sam said.
“Well, I don’t know if you can tell, but I’m limping,” I deadpanned.
Toby laughed.
“I would have shit my pants,” he told me. “If I was sitting in the park and those goons showed up drunk and spray happy, I’m not even kidding, I would’ve had a bodily misfunction.”
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