CHAPTER 4
Aunt Chey,
My counselor is Madison. I hear she did it with a raw hot dog in high school. I hope she’s reading this right now because I know she’s standing behind me WATCHING ME WRITE THIS.
Kisses,
Cassie
The line at the Wellness Center for medication is long. Dori, Hannah, and Katie are all there. When I walk past, Dori stops me. She’s holding a small Dixie Cup.
“You don’t take anything?” she asks.
“No.”
Dori shakes her head. “That’s right. You’re here because your ‘parents signed you up.’” She rolls her eyes as she shoots her pills like a shot of liquor.
“It’s Prozac,” Hannah says, showing me what’s inside her cup.
Cassie walks up next to us. “Boring.” She stretches out the word. “Everyone’s on Prozac.”
“What about you?” I ask her. “No meds?”
“You think I’d let any doctors come close to me? They won’t give me what I want. Plus, I’ve got all the medicine I need.” She starts to walk away, but I grab her arm to stop her.
“Where’s the fork?”
Cassie pulls away from my grip but doesn’t respond. She shakes her head as she leaves, her skinny legs even skinnier in the twilight.
At the cabin, we brush our teeth and get dressed for bed. Dori takes the bunk above my bed, and Cassie is on the lower bunk next to me with Hannah on top. Katie is the sucker who has to share a bunk with Madison. I glance at the duffel bag stuffed under Cassie’s bed filled with her “medication.”
“Lights out in fifteen minutes, girls,” Madison says. “Sleep is important.”
I lie in bed, on top of the single sheet, and flip through the Seventeen magazine I picked up at the airport on the way here. I bought it so my dad wouldn’t talk to me on the flight, but I didn’t actually read any of the articles. For each page, I counted to one hundred in my head and then flipped it. It worked. My dad listened to a podcast on his phone the entire flight, and I got the solitude of counting in my head.
Just me . . . the thought makes me remember the quilt stuffed in my bag, and I have to choke down the bile that rises in my throat.
I focus back on the magazine. The dim light of the sunset creeps through the window above my bed, but even then it’s hard to see the words on the page. Both Hannah and Katie plug their ears with headphones and turn up the music so loud I can hear the heavy beat. The camp doesn’t allow any cell phones. When my parents told me that, it was a relief. A summer without a single call from my mom sounded nice.
She is a compulsive texter.
Did u remember to grab the lunch I packed u?
I made u a hair appointment for Friday.
Let’s practice driving after school.
I’m making lasagna for dinner.
Drink at least 64 ounces of water today.
The sun will set at 5:45.
At one point this past year, it got so bad that my English teacher took my phone away and carted me down to the office. Mr. Ortiz said he couldn’t teach with all the dinging.
He even called my mom with my phone. She apologized and actually cried. I could hear her sobs through the receiver. Mr. Ortiz felt so bad that he gave me back my phone and said if it ever died, I could use the one in the English office. Then he apologized for saying the word died.
“I mean—if it ever runs out of batteries,” he corrected himself.
The no-phone rule was the only fight my parents had about Camp Padua. My mom yelled so loudly about how unfair it is that I can’t have one, I could hear her shrieking voice in my room with the door closed, and then she threw something against the wall. By the time I came down to dinner, whatever she had smashed had been cleaned up. My mom made portobello vegan stroganoff, and my dad said it was his favorite thing she’d cooked in at least a year. The Camp Padua brochure never moved from underneath the magnet on our refrigerator.
The lead article on the cover of the magazine is “How to Flirt without Being Obvious.” I glare at the words until they get fuzzy and then the buzzing begins. The small sound of a mosquito moves in and out of my ears, like it’s circling my head. I roll up the magazine, holding it in my hand like a club, and sit up. When I see the mosquito land on my white sheet, I bring the magazine down on it hard, squashing the bug into the cotton. I flick the dead thing onto the ground.
“Oh sure,” Cassie says, “your parents just signed you up.” She swirls her finger around her temple and rolls over in bed so she’s facing the wall. The rest of the girls laugh in unison.
I face the opposite direction of Cassie, wanting as much distance between us as possible. I don’t care that we ate at the same table. I want nothing to do with her. I want nothing to do with anyone at this camp or anyone out of this camp for that matter.
The silver lock on the cabin door glimmers in the dull light coming through the windows. But I’m locked in, forced to be with these people. I place the Seventeen magazine over my face, and, lying back on top of my sheet, start to conjugate words in the French imparfait.
To speak:
Je parlais
Tu parlais
Il parlait
Nous parlions
Vous parliez
Ils parlaient
I lie still, drifting further away from reality and feeling the ease of sleep come over me. Sleep is so pleasant. I can drift into the blackness and no one cares. It’s expected.
I’m gone for only a bit when a tapping feeling starts in my light sleep, like water is dripping on my head from a leak in the ceiling. I wipe the feeling away, annoyed, and roll over.
The sound of my magazine falling on the ground triggers something in my subconscious that remembers a ceiling isn’t over my head. Dori’s bed is. And it’s back. The dripping or tapping. I sit up in the dark, almost banging my head on the bunk. Cassie is inches away from my face, her dark eyes big, the whites practically glowing.
“What are you doing?” I ask, scooting back. It’s dark now in the cabin, but still I can see that Cassie looks crazier than usual.
“I’m waking you up so you can help me, asshole,” she says.
“Why would I want to help you? You just called me an asshole.”
“Because you don’t like that lock as much as I do.” Cassie points to the door.
I sit back on the bed. Madison is tucked neatly under her quilt, her mouth slightly open with the smallest bit of drool on her pillow. The key still hangs around her slender neck. I must have been asleep longer than I thought.
“Are you gonna help me or what, moron?”
“Don’t call me a moron,” I say. “I got an A plus in French.”
Cassie rolls her eyes. “Listen, I’m about one minute away from strangling Madison with her necklace. So either you help me get out of here or you become an accomplice to murder.”
“I’m going back to sleep.” I lie down.
“Suit yourself,” Cassie says. She moves to stand over Madison’s bed and pulls something pointed and sharp out of her back pocket.
“Are you crazy?” I whisper, shooting up.
“Of course, I’m crazy. And so are you, even if you don’t want to admit it. There’s a secret inside of you, Zander. And it’s coming out this summer whether you like it or not.” Cassie squats in front of me. Her face is so close to mine, I can smell her sugary breath. There’s even a hint of lemon. I want to shove her away from me. Who is she to comment on my life? Cassie doesn’t even know me. But I can’t bring myself to touch her, because a part of me knows she’s right. “You know what your problem is? You’re not actually afraid of me. You’re afraid you are me,” she says.
“No.” I struggle with the word like I’m physically fighting with the truth. The longer and harder I press it down, the more it pushes back. “I’m just afraid you’re going to kill Madison with whatever you have in your hand.”
“Don’t you ever just want to kill someone because you’re that angry?”
I can’t answer Cassie because it’s a ridiculous question, but a lump forms in my throat anyway. It’s so big I might choke. I swallow it, pushing it back down, and breathe in her oddly sweet breath. Cassie holds up the pointy object. “It’s just a fork, asshole. What am I going to do, poke her to death?”
“I knew you took it.”
“Duh.” Cassie rolls her eyes. “Who cares? It’s a fork. People eat too much anyway.”
I ease back on the bed. “How are you planning to get out? What about Madison?”
“What about Madison? I wouldn’t touch her with a ten-foot pole covered in slime. The slime would get a bacteria.”
“The key.” I point to her neck.
“That’s your problem. You think a key will get us out of this. A key can’t do anything for you or me.”
“Fine, then what will get you out?” I ask.
“You.” Cassie points to the bathroom door. “My aunt always says that when God closes the door, somewhere he opens a window.”
“I think that’s from a movie.” Or one of the magnets hanging on my fridge.
“I don’t care where it’s from,” Cassie says. “And I don’t actually believe it. As far as I’m concerned all windows and doors just lead to more windows and doors.”
“So there’s no way out of anything?” I ask.
“Sure there is,” Cassie says. “Death is the way out.”
“Death.” I don’t move as I say the word. Cassie’s shadow moves the moonlight’s glow on my single white sheet as she nods.
“Now, are you gonna help me or what?”
“I don’t think sneaking out is a good idea.”
“And what is a good idea?” she asks.
I fumble for too long. “I don’t know,” I say.
“That’s your other problem. You don’t know.” She shakes her head and stifles a laugh. “God, Cleve is so wrong about you.”
“What did Grover say?”
“His name is Cleve.” Cassie puts the fork in her back pocket. “And time’s ticking. I’m out of here.”
She tiptoes into the bathroom. I lie back down in bed and pull my single sheet up around my neck. If Cassie wants to sneak out, she can do it herself. I’m not her accomplice or confidant or friend. I’m nothing to her and I want it to stay that way.
And then before I know it, I’ve twisted a small patch of hair at the base of my neck too tight around my finger until a few strands pop free.
“Damn it,” I whisper, looking down at the loose pieces. It will take years for that hair to grow back out. I never learn my lesson. I just need to let my hair be, to stop pulling so hard at it. That’s what I’ve been trying to do for the past year. Just let everything be, but my parents don’t understand that. They want me to be something because something is better than nothing. I disagree. We all end up as nothing in the end anyway. But with Cassie in my face and Grover touching me today, those two make it hard to ignore them. I ball up the pathetic strands of hair and sprinkle them on the ground.
I try distracting myself with my magazine, but I can’t stand to look at the model on the cover with her long, thick perfect hair. So I rip the cover off. I rip it again and again and again until all that’s left are little broken pieces of paper that could never be put back together. I dust them off my bed, smiling.
In the bathroom, I find Cassie using her fork to unhinge the window. A long screw falls free into her hand, and the window loosens enough to fit a teenage body. Especially one of a girl who doesn’t eat.
Cassie hands me the screw. “Keep it safe.”
“I don’t want it.” But I don’t hand it back.
When Cassie is safely outside, I hear her say, “Tell anyone about this and I’ll be forced to use my fork on you.”
I don’t close the window on her. Instead, I stuff the screw in my bag and go back to sleep.