by Kasie West
“Loud.”
He laughed and gave me a quick kiss. “See you at the rally, girlfriend.”
If I smiled any more at school people might start to think I actually liked to be there. I settled into my seat in Chemistry, a new feeling of appreciation for the class coming over me. Maybe I owed Chemistry some effort for all it had done for me. I was going to get my grade up. Isabel would help me.
My hand immediately went to the underside of the desk even though Cade and I both knew Mr. Ortega was on to us and we’d said we wouldn’t write anymore. My smile widened when I felt something there.
“You and Cade, huh?” Lauren said from next to me and I jumped a little. I pulled the letter onto my lap so she wouldn’t see it.
“I guess,” I replied. “I mean, yes. Me and Cade. Cade and I. We don’t really fit but we … ” Why was I explaining myself to Lauren? “Yes.” I forced myself to stop with that.
She looked over my shoulder and nodded. I quickly glanced over as well and saw the back of Sasha heading to her seat. I was surprised she hadn’t said anything. She was probably embarrassed. She’d said enough over the last few weeks. I was glad she was going to quietly lick her wounds.
I waited several minutes—until Mr. Ortega started his lesson, until Lauren was busy taking notes—to open the letter. The handwriting brought my smile back.
Hi. I know we’re not writing anymore but I couldn’t help myself. I’m thinking about you. Plus, I forgot to tell you something this morning. Remind me later. Now pay attention or Mr. Ortega will steal this.
I grabbed my phone from my bag and sent him off a quick text.
You know that there is this thing that magically takes words and sends them through the air and delivers them to a recipient. It’s kind of new so I didn’t know if you’d heard about it. But you use it for its speed.
He wrote back immediately.
Like an airplane that attaches words to its tail? I thought those only advertised sales and things. I wonder how much they charge per word.
My cheeks hurt. He must’ve read my letters as much as I’d read his.
You’re my favorite, I replied.
I need your letters back, btw. They belong to me.
The class had gone quiet and I silently cursed. I looked up to see if everyone was staring at me, but they weren’t. Mr. Ortega was just writing something on the board. It was my lucky day.
A lyric came into my mind: You’re my favorite way to pass the time. But time stands still when you’re on my mind. I reached inside my backpack to write it down, but couldn’t find my notebook. I must’ve left it on my nightstand the night before. That was new and kind of refreshing. I smiled a little and jotted the note on the corner of a scrap paper instead. The clock told me I still had thirty minutes left of class. Then it was the rally. Another thing I never thought I’d look forward to.
I hadn’t been to a rally in a while. It was loud.
Isabel leaned close as we sat in the bleachers. “The things we do for your boyfriend,” she said with a smile.
“I was just thinking the same thing.”
We had gotten to the point in the rally where the football team had just been congratulated for its amazing season. The sports teams we were now supposed to direct all our fan efforts toward were standing across the stage. I smiled at Cade, who had caught my eye.
One of the coaches tapped the microphone and asked, “Is this thing on?” It was definitely on.
Sasha, who must’ve been a tennis player or a swimmer or on some sort of spring team, walked across the stage to the coach holding the microphone. She said something too quiet for all of us to hear.
“Nobody told me about that,” the coach responded back, loud and clear in the mic.
She said something else.
“A poetry contest?”
She leaned into the mic so that she could be heard, too. “This school isn’t entirely about sports, right? We were supposed to announce the winner of the poetry contest.”
“What is she talking about?” Isabel asked.
I shrugged. “No idea. Maybe she’s the president of a poetry club.” Though I couldn’t quite see that.
“That’s not on the agenda,” the coach said. “Please take a seat, Sasha.”
“Coach Davis,” Sasha replied, her voice louder now. “I wouldn’t want a social media blowup about how Morris High only cares about their sports teams.”
The coach looked around as if expecting someone to jump to his rescue. When nobody did, he handed the microphone to Sasha. “Make it quick.”
She put on a wide smile and faced the gym. “Hello, Morris High!”
This brought a loud cheer.
“As many of you know, if you read the school paper, we held a poetry contest this first semester. I’m here to read the winning entry to you. You are all going to love this.” That’s when she took off her backpack that I hadn’t noticed before and pulled out my notebook. I recognized it from across the gym—the two-tone purple and green with my black doodles penned all over it.
My stomach fell in horror.
Noooo.
Isabel gasped. She obviously recognized my notebook, too.
“This poem was written by junior Lily Abbott, dedicated to Cade Jennings.”
It seemed like the whole room let out a collective “Aww.”
“What are you going to do?” Isabel asked.
I was frozen, half ready to jump up and tackle Sasha, half ready to run out of the gym. My eyes darted to Cade. He had a confused smile on.
“I know,” Sasha continued, “Cute, right? Well, what many of you don’t know is that Cade’s dad left him and his family several years back. A tragedy really. And Lily wrote an amazing poem about it.”
This was a nightmare.
I hadn’t written Cade’s name on any of the pages but the one she’d already read in detention. She was assuming this song was about Cade. Assuming because of the other lyrics. Assuming because of all the notes I’d written in the margins. She was assuming because she wanted to hurt me … and probably him.
I shook my head at Cade and mouthed the words stop her. He was much closer to Sasha than I was. He was on the stage with her. But he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at Sasha in horror. He seemed to be as frozen as I was. I couldn’t let this happen.
I stood and began working my way down the bleachers—through students and over backpacks. But Sasha was already reading my lyrics to “Left Behind” out loud. Cade’s very private life was now echoing through the suddenly completely silent gym.
By the time I was on the floor and heading toward the stage, she was reading the last two lines. My words were echoing through a gym full of people. People, I noticed, who seemed captivated by them. I stopped as Sasha finished. Now I stood in the middle of the basketball court alone, on the eye of our school mascot painted there—a bull.
“And there she is,” Sasha said, in the sweetest voice. “Everyone give her a hand. Come on up and accept your award, Lily.”
I did go up, because I wanted my notebook back, and I wanted to pull Cade out of there and explain everything. But it didn’t happen that way. When I’d climbed the five steps to the stage to the loud applause, Cade was gone.
“You are cruel,” I said to Sasha under my breath. I yanked my notebook out of her hands. “He didn’t deserve that.”
She smiled, pulled me into a hug and whispered. “You both did.”
She wanted me to react. Wanted me to punch her or shove her and have the whole school witness that I was a jerk who treated her poorly after she’d just showered me with praise. Plus, if I acted like this was a big deal, it would turn into a big deal. People would think she’d just exposed something about Cade that she shouldn’t have. I wouldn’t do that to him. So I smiled, said a wobbly “thank you” into the microphone, then walked as quickly as possible off the stage and outside where I searched in vain for Cade.
Over the next thirty minutes I sent him what felt like a hundred texts that all went somet
hing like:
She stole my book
I did not enter that into a contest.
I’m sorry.
Where are you?
Can we talk about this?
This was her revenge. You know it was. Please know I did not want this to happen.
He didn’t respond. Not to a single one. It was over. We were over before we’d ever begun.
I rounded the baseball field a second time, hoping he had shown up there sometime between me searching the boys’ locker room and the cafeteria kitchen. Then my phone buzzed. Hope shot through me until I saw the text was from Isabel.
Where are you?
Home plate, I responded, dejected.
She was there in minutes. “Should we beat her up now or later?” Isabel asked, her eyes flashing.
I pressed my palms to my temples. “I’m worried about him.”
“Don’t worry about him. He’ll be fine. It was a really good song, by the way. Everyone was talking about it.”
A small surge of pride went through me, the same one I had felt for a split second while standing in the middle of that gym, my words filling it. I pushed the feeling back down.
“Isabel,” I said, my voice breaking. “He’s kept this a huge secret and now the entire school knows because of me and my stupid lyrics.”
“Not because of you. Because of Sasha.”
“I should’ve never written about his life in the first place.”
“He stuck those notes all about his life under a desk!” Isabel pointed out. “Anybody could’ve gotten ahold of them. You could’ve been anyone, Lily, not you. Not kind, loyal, trustworthy you. He got lucky. This could’ve happened to him weeks ago because of his own doing.”
“But it didn’t. It happened now because of me.”
“Well, go explain that to him.”
I looked at my phone again. “He won’t answer me.”
“Then go find him.” She dug her keys out of her pocket and held them out for me. “I’ll have Gabriel pick me up.”
I didn’t hesitate. I grabbed the keys, hugged Isabel, and took off running.
I had been everywhere. Cade’s house, the kids’ baseball field at the park, In-N-Out, along with every other fast food restaurant I had ever seen him at in the past, as well as the ones where I hadn’t … he wasn’t anywhere. I was now just driving, looking around. Because he was obviously somewhere and it killed me that apparently I didn’t know him well enough to know where that somewhere was.
School was long out by now. I’d texted my sister earlier not to pick me up. Had he gone back to school for practice? Did he go somewhere to think? I drove home. Maybe he’d gone to my house. He liked my house.
His car wasn’t in front when I pulled up, but I checked all the rooms and backyard anyway. He wasn’t here. I didn’t know why I thought he’d come running to me when I was the person he was quite obviously running from right now.
I dropped Isabel’s car keys on the floor in my bedroom and collapsed onto my bed, not sure what to do at this point. Just wait for him to text me? I felt like there’d been too much waiting when it came to the two of us and I wasn’t sure we’d survive another session of it.
Wyatt’s head appeared around my partially open door. “Hi.”
“Hey.”
“Can I talk to you?” He inched his way into my room, but lingered by the door.
“Sure, come in.” I scooted over on the bed, still on my back, and patted the space next to me. My brother joined me there, lying next to me, staring at the ceiling. When he didn’t say anything I asked, “What’s going on?”
“I hope you don’t hate me.”
I propped myself up on my elbows, worried now. “I don’t hate you. What happened?”
He couldn’t look at me. He stared hard at the ceiling like it wasn’t just an empty white expanse. Like it might actually be telling him something. Judging him. Finally, he spit out, “I was the one who broke your guitar. I’m sorry.”
I sighed and let myself fall back again.
“You hate me now.”
“No, I don’t hate you. I could never hate you. I’m tired. I’ve just had a long day.”
“You’re not mad?”
I was mad and sad and frustrated and feeling very guilty for having blamed Jonah all this time for something he hadn’t done.
“We need to apologize to Jonah, don’t you think?”
“Yes.”
“Together?” I held up my hand and Wyatt put his against it. His fingers were nearly as long as mine. When had that happened? “How did you break it, anyway?” Maybe I shouldn’t have asked. The story might only ignite the anger that I didn’t have the energy for right now.
“I fell on it.”
“What? Why was it out of the case?”
Wyatt looked embarrassed. “I wanted to learn how to play … like you.”
I smiled and tousled his hair. “Who taught you the flattery rule?”
“Dad.”
I grabbed him by the arm and helped him off my bed. “Come on. Before you learn how to play, you need to listen to all the music in the world.”
“All of it? That’s a lot.”
“Well, you need to figure out what you like best. First, let’s go talk to Jonah and then I’ll give you a few tracks to start with.”
Wyatt’s foot connected with the keys on the carpet and they flew into the wall with a clunk. He picked them up and held them out for me. “Why do you have Isabel’s car?”
“I had to do something important.”
“Oh. Do you need to go do it?”
I pocketed the keys. “Later. This is important, too.”
I was in the car again. Wyatt and I had apologized to Jonah. I’d found a few perfect songs for Wyatt. And I’d written Cade a letter. It was all I could think of to do. Now I was going to drop the letter off at his house.
It was a letter that talked about how sorry I was and how all these years I’d misjudged him. How I understood why he’d acted like he had at his birthday party—he’d been waiting for his dad to call and was hurt when he hadn’t. I understood why he tried to help other people when he thought they were hurting by diverting attention, by making people laugh, because that’s how he dealt with his problems. I ended the letter by telling him that I wasn’t going to walk away from him. He couldn’t get rid of me this easily.
I gripped the steering wheel, the letter sitting on the passenger seat, waiting to be read. I wished Cade were sitting in the passenger seat instead.
I was halfway to his house when I realized there was one place I hadn’t looked. The one and only place he had ever taken me—the hotel with the golf course.
I crossed three lanes of traffic to make a U-turn, eliciting a long honk from a black Suburban. I waved but didn’t make eye contact.
Cade was going to be there. He had to be.
I got to the hotel, parked, and followed the path he had led me on that night. I got turned around a few times, but eventually I found the gate. The one he had climbed. It was locked, like it had been that night. The moon was bright tonight and lit the path beyond the gate better than it had when we had been here.
I leaned against the gate and pulled out my phone again.
Are you at the hotel? I texted. If you are, I’m here and in 5 minutes I’m going to climb this gate even though I’ll totally get caught … and I’m not sure I can actually climb a gate. And I’m wearing a skirt. Please don’t make me climb this gate.
I stood on my tiptoes and tried to see even a glimpse of the patio where we had sat. I could only see some colorful tips of a potted plant. I tugged on the bars. The gate wasn’t going to open. The top was flat, without pointy spikes like I’d seen on many gates. The kind of points that could impale a person. This was a good thing. But the bars that led up to the top had no horizontal connections. How had Cade climbed it that night?
“I can do this,” I muttered. “After all, I’m the world’s greatest runner now; this should be easy.” I sh
oved my foot in between a couple of bars to give me my first boost up.
“Are you talking to yourself?”
Relief poured through me as I heard his voice on the other side of the fence. I not so gracefully unwedged my foot from the bars and peered through them at his familiar face. I wanted to throw my arms around him but the fence separated us.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Why?” he asked, his normal Cade smile bright on his face. “I talk to myself frequently.”
“No. You know why.” I wrapped both hands around the bars, using them for support.
He shook his head. “Don’t be. It was Sasha.” He didn’t sound angry but he also hadn’t moved to let me in.
“Are you going to open this? I need to hug you. I can hug you, right?”
“If you can climb that fence, you can do anything you want, baby.” He winked, his flirt voice on. I knew what he was doing—putting up his wall—and I hated it. I hated he felt the need to do that for me.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t treat me like you treat everyone. Don’t hide from me.”
“And you haven’t been hiding from me?” Now his voice had an angry edge to it.
“What do you mean?”
“That song. When were you going to show it to me? When it won the competition?”
“No! Of course not. I wasn’t going to enter that into the competition.”
“Why not? It was really good.”
“It wasn’t meant for anyone to hear. Especially not the entire school.”
“I think you mean, especially not me.”
I started to shake my head, but he was right. I was never going to show him that song.
“You still don’t trust me?”
“I do.”
“You still think of me as the guy who treated Isabel badly. As the guy who’s going to hurt you one day, too. You aren’t willing to be completely open with me.”
“No. That’s not true. Cade, I tell you more than I’ve ever told anyone.” My throat was tight. “You’ve actually helped me find my words. My voice. But I didn’t feel like the words to that song belonged to me. I didn’t feel like I had the right to them.” I retrieved the letter I had written him out of the waistband of my skirt and slid it through the bars.
