Fml

  “Cassie’s broke,” Aja said abruptly.

  I didn’t know what to say to that. It was ludicrous. Obviously Cassie wasn’t broke. We were standing right outside her expensive house. “Bullshit.”

  “I thought I’d enjoy this,” Aja said.

  “Enjoy what?” Aja wasn’t making any sense and I suspected she might be playing a game. Maybe it had all been a game.

  “Cassie’s downfall.” When it was clear I had no clue what she meant, Aja sighed and said, “Sia’s dad is a Realtor. The Castillos lost this house. Her dad got canned. I even heard they can’t afford to send her to college.”

  It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. “You’re a liar, Aja. Always were.”

  Aja threw up her hands. “Believe what you want, Simon. Maybe you and Cassie do deserve each other.” There was no more to say and she walked toward the patio without another word.

  I waited until Aja was gone, trying to process what she’d told me. It might have been a lie, but it had the feel of truth. And Cassie losing everything would explain why she’d been acting so strangely. So unlike herself.

  What it didn’t explain was why it would make Cassie hook up with me if I told her how I felt. Aja had seemed as certain about that as she had about the rest. But it didn’t make sense.

  It also didn’t matter. I could sort it out when I found Cassie.

  I followed the sounds of the play to the back patio. Half the party was out there watching what was likely the most elaborate poolside production of Romeo and Juliet that had ever been staged. They were waist deep in the masquerade scene, and the audience was so enthralled that I was able to move through them with ease.

  Ben and Coop were watching from the couch by the grill. Sia and Aja were by the deep end of the pool. I ran into people I hadn’t even known were at the party as I wandered around. The only person I couldn’t find was Cassie.

  But I knew she was out there.

  I would have spent all night looking for Cassie, but my time was up. Eli ran out of the house in his shirt and boxers, with murder in his eyes. He locked onto me with laser precision and tore through the crowd. Most people were too busy watching the play to notice that Eli was coming at me, probably to tear my head from my neck. I still didn’t see Cassie and I didn’t know what else to do.

  So I did the first thing that popped into my mind. I climbed up the rocks to the summit of the waterfall and shouted, “Cassandra, Cassandra! Wherefore art thou, Cassandra?” And then waited for the shit to hit the fan.

  Living the Dream

  Cassie’s barter party was winding down toward its inevitable collapse. I knew it the moment I opened the front door. The party had the weary, frantic look of a marathon runner at the end of a torturous race. People were still drinking and dancing and bartering their last bits of pocket lint for whatever they could get, but these were the actions of the desperate. Last drinks, last dances, last attempts to find someone, anyone, to make out with. Coop and Ben and I usually vacated parties before they got to this point. Me because when I didn’t, I ended up with Aja Bourne, and the boys because they had each other.

  Tonight, though, I was staying. I had to. Cassie was somewhere in this house and I had to find her and show her my blue ball. I had one last chance to prove my love.

  As I pushed my way through each room, I kept an eye out for Eli. There was no doubt in my mind that he was still plotting against me. He wouldn’t have thrown me out of a window unless I was a threat. I only wished I hadn’t been so gullible. Every time my head ached or some drunk asshole ran into me, sending shockwaves of pain through my body, I cursed Eli Horowitz.

  “She’s not in here,” Dean said. He was in the same chair he’d been in the last time I’d seen him, with one leg up, relaxing like he was the king.

  “About earlier,” I said.

  “No need to apologize.”

  “I wasn’t,” I said. “Just wanted to thank you for not killing me.”

  Dean chuckled. He looked around but there wasn’t anyone watching us. The Ping-Pong table lay abandoned and forgotten. A beer puddle that looked suspiciously like Lake Okeechobee stained the green surface. A couple I didn’t know was sucking face in the far corner, but we could have pulled out rapiers and dueled and they wouldn’t have noticed.

  “The rumors of my homicidal tendencies are slightly overstated,” said Dean. “You should take a break. You look like shit.” He pointed at a chair.

  My body ached and my legs were shaking. Sitting down would have been the end of me. But I wanted to so badly. I wanted to relax and shake out all my worries into a dusty pile on the floor, let the wind blow them away. “I can’t,” I said. “I have to find Cassie.”

  Dean leaned to the left and looked down the hallway. “Pool,” he said. “Prima donna Sia’s putting on a show.”

  “A what?”

  “A play. You know, the kind with actors and shit? Shakespeare, I think.”

  I wondered if that was what Sia had been doing when I’d been on the patio earlier. My head injury made my memories somewhat fuzzy around the edges, but it made sense in a random sort of way. “Thanks,” I said.

  Dean nodded and pulled a wrinkled joint from behind his ear. He offered it to me but I shook my head. That was the last thing I needed. Dean sucked in a lungful of the sweet smoke and said, “Watch out for Eli.”

  So Eli had fixed the doorknob and escaped. That didn’t surprise me. The only thing I didn’t get was why Dean had warned me. Based on everything I knew about him, not only would he have enjoyed watching Eli and me tussle, but he would have made a fortune taking bets on the outcome.

  “You’re not really a bad guy, are you?” I said impulsively.

  Dean shrugged. If I was expecting some kind of outpouring of emotion or an admission of the tragic past that had shaped Dean Kowalcyk into the man he was now, I was going to leave disappointed.

  And leave is exactly what I did.

  I tore a path down the hall and through the kitchen, picking up more bruises along the way as people who shouldn’t have been able to stand got in my way. DJ Leo looked haggard but proud. He’d spin until the last person was standing.

  When I emerged onto the patio, half the party was crowded around the pool watching Sia’s masterstroke. I never imagined a pool could be transformed into Verona, with inner tubes and alligators and a cartoon inflatable shark forming the various set pieces, but Sia Marcus had done it. It was something like magic.

  The play had only just begun and I stood in awe for a whole scene before remembering why I’d risked permanent brain injury to return to the party. I elbowed my way through the audience, standing on my toes to look over people’s heads. I finally saw Cassie on the other side of the pool, standing alone. She looked radiant dressed in shadows, her eyes reflecting the multicolored lights of the pool. For a moment, I thought she saw me but I was mistaken. The blue golf ball burned a hole in my hand and I knew it was time.

  “She’s so pretty, isn’t she?”

  Urinal Cake stood beside me, looking at Cassie with so much admiration it was embarrassing. He wasn’t even trying to hide the fact that he was staring at her, watching her, thinking about her.

  “Yeah,” I said. “She’s beautiful.”

  “I think I’m in love with her,” Freddy said.

  “That’s cute,” I said, not meaning to be condescending. “You don’t even know her.”

  Freddy shrugged and kept staring at Cassie like there weren’t a hundred people gathered around the pool watching an improvised production of Romeo and Juliet. He was hyperfocused on her in a way that I kind of admired. “I love her. I’ll never love anyone else.”

  When Freddy said those words, I didn’t hear him. I heard myself. I heard myself the night Coop and I snuck into Pirate Chang’s to steal my ball back. The same ball I held in my sweaty fist. I’d said those exact same words with the exact same amount of slavish devotion. In an instant, I saw Urinal Cake’s entire future stretch out in front of me.

&nb
sp; “You don’t love her,” I said. “You only think you do.” When Freddy tried to interrupt me, I put my hand over his mouth. “Shut up and listen.”

  A girl shushed me and I pulled Freddy to the back of the crowd so that we wouldn’t disturb anyone. “Listen to me, kid. Cassie only saved you from Blaise because she felt bad for you. She doesn’t love you; she doesn’t have any feelings for you. She probably doesn’t even remember your name. There are tons of girls who are better for you than Cassandra Castillo. Girls who will love you. If you don’t forget about her right now, you’re going to miss out on so much.”

  I didn’t know whether I was talking to Urinal Cake or to myself, but all the words made sense. Eli had told me that Cassie had gone out with me only because she felt bad for me. She’d kept the scorecard, but maybe she’d just had a good time that night, maybe it had nothing to do with me at all. I was so fucking confused and my head hurt and I wanted to scream.

  It might have been too late to save myself, but Urinal Cake still had a chance if I could get through to him.

  “Have a nice fall?” Eli detached from the shadows and strutted toward us. He wore a jack-o’-lantern grin and didn’t appear the slightest bit drunk. I couldn’t help wondering how much of that rum-soaked slurring had been an act for my benefit.

  “Eli.”

  “Whatcha doing?”

  “Talking to my friend.” But when I looked over, Freddy Standish was gone, disappeared into the crowd. “Or not.”

  While I scanned the audience for Freddy, Eli grabbed the blue golf ball out of my hand and held it in front of his eyes. “Is this the ball that made the famous shot?”

  “Give it back,” I said, trying to avoid drawing any attention. But it was too late. Cassie had seen Eli and me together. She eased through the gaps between people on an intercept course. Explaining to Cassie how I felt about her with Eli standing here wasn’t my first choice for how this was going to go down, but I’d do what was necessary.

  “So, you actually went home and got it,” Eli said. I wished I’d never told him my plan. He wasn’t the guy I’d shared rum and stories with in Cassie’s room. We weren’t compatriots anymore. This was the gladiatorial field and we were locked in a battle to the death.

  I made a grab for the ball, but Eli’s athletic reflexes bordered on superhuman. “Give me my ball back,” I growled.

  Cassie reached us and did not look amused. In fact, she looked a bit green and swayed when she tried to stand still. The beer she’d chugged during our game did not appear to have agreed with her. “What the hell’s going on?”

  People were beginning to watch us rather than the play. Sia directed a sour frown at us that said we’d better shut up before the drama queen went full-on Carrie.

  “Maybe we should go inside,” I said. Eli waved me off. He kept my ball hidden behind his back. He either didn’t want Cassie to see it or he planned to reveal it at the worst possible moment. I’d broken into a mini-golf course, kept it safe, and braved the wrath of my father to get the ball to this moment. I refused to let Eli Horowitz ruin it.

  Cassie shook her head. She looked exhausted. Not just from the night but from everything. Weariness clung to her bones, to her soul, and she looked like she’d never shake it. Gone was the girl who’d met me at the door, the girl who’d dragged me to dance, the girl who’d jumped on her parents’ bed for the first time. The Cassie in front of me bore her wounds like rocks in her pockets that would inevitably drag her down. And I don’t mean her bruised knuckles or the foot I’d gracelessly trampled on. Cassie’s hurts were deep. Even stripped down as she was by booze, her injuries were so profound that I doubted they could be found and fixed in one night.

  “I don’t know what’s going on, but can you not do it now? I can’t take anything else tonight.”

  I wondered if Eli had reached the same conclusion about Cassie as I had, because some of the fight drained from him and he reached out to his once-and-former girlfriend. “We were just—”

  Cassie held up her hand. “I know what you were doing, Eli. I’m not stupid.”

  Behind us, Sia Marcus had decided that if she couldn’t shut us up, she could drown us out. The actors shouted their lines, which were a clever bastardization of Shakespeare and hip-hop. I might not have liked Sia as a person, but she had genuine talent on- and offstage.

  “I’m not doing anything,” Eli said. His voice had dropped the edge he’d used with me and he was pleading his case. He still had my ball behind his back and I felt powerless to do anything but stand by and watch him steal Cassie away from me again. “You know how I feel about you, Shana.”

  “Don’t call me that,” Cassie said. I tried to gauge Eli’s chances of success in Cassie’s bloodshot eyes, but nothing he said seemed to reach her. Cassie had fortified her walls, she’d filled the cracks I’d seen earlier.

  Eli’s nostrils flared as he breathed heavily. Whatever plan Eli had devised was falling apart, and I could practically feel the frustration building inside of him. I understood the feeling intimately. I’d been so sure when I’d gone home to retrieve the blue ball that I’d show it to Cassie and everything would fall into place. But nothing was working out like I’d hoped. “I’m trying here,” he said.

  “You’re pathetic.” Cassie directed her insult at both of us even though I hadn’t said much.

  I waited for Eli to tell Cassie the things he’d told me in her bedroom, to show Cassie the depth of his feelings for her in some way that could break through the barriers she’d erected. Eli had the words; I’d heard him say them. I wasn’t sure if they were strong enough to breach Cassie’s defenses, but I thought they might be. The only problem was that Eli hesitated. He stood like an actor who’d forgotten his lines, the hot stage lights burning away his confidence, the eyes of the audience stripping him naked, each second that ticked away increasing the pressure on him to do something. Anything.

  But he didn’t. He froze.

  We were about to lose our Cassie. She was about to turn around and disappear from our lives forever. I saw it in the way her honey eyes lost their shine and in the way her shoulders relaxed ever so slightly. Most kids think they’re wise—they think that sixteen or seventeen years of living makes them world-weary experts on everything. Not me. I knew I was an idiot. It helped that Coop constantly reminded me of my terminal dim-wittedness. However, I did know, even then, that life seldom offers more than one opportunity to do a thing. If you wait, if you hesitate, if you let fear pull your puppet strings, you may spend your entire life living in that moment, wondering where it all went wrong.

  I was an idiot, but I knew that I had to act.

  “I love you, Cassie,” I said. This time I didn’t blurt it out accidentally. The words didn’t stumble from my tongue. I owned those words. They were mine and I offered them to Cassie.

  Cassie rolled her eyes. “Eres tan estúpido como un perro.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I don’t know what that means, but I’m guessing it’s not a compliment.”

  “You’re worse than he is,” Cassie said, pointing at Eli. “Take a hint.” Cassie turned to leave.

  Fear was my bitch. I was SIMON FUCKING CROSS. Nothing could stop me from wresting my ball from Eli’s iron fist and showing Cassandra Castillo that I really did love her. Except that I had one question I needed answering first.

  “Did you only go out with me because you felt sorry for me?”

  “What?” Cassie asked. “Are you serious? That was years ago, Simon. Move on.”

  Our show was competing with Sia’s and winning, a fact about which I genuinely felt bad. People were shooting pictures with their phones and I was certain at least one person was recording video of the whole thing. Hell, I could probably get the instant replay on Facebook right now if I wanted. But those concerns were for later. Cassie was the only person on the patio who mattered.

  “Answer the question,” I said, and I knew that this time Cassie would. There was no beer to drink, nowhere for her to run. ?
??Why did go out with me?”

  Cassie seemed to finally realize that we had an audience and she began to shut down. I closed the distance between us and took her hand. She was so beautiful, so amazing. All I wanted to do was show her the golf ball and kiss her all night long. But I had to know.

  “It’s okay,” I said, keeping the words between us. I was aware of Eli still standing there, but I blocked him out.

  “I’m going away,” Cassie said.

  “What?”

  “I’m leaving. I may not even be around for graduation.” The words were so difficult for Cassie to say, but the moment they were out, I could actually feel her relief. These were the wounds that had been festering in Cassie all night and for who knew how long. By peeling back the bandages, finally letting them breathe, they’d begun to heal.

  “Why?”

  Cassie blinked away tears. “Does it matter?” she asked. “My parents lost everything. It’s all gone. College, home. Everything.”

  The details seemed unimportant because everything finally made sense. Cassie’s behavior, the party, Eli. Something had happened that had upended Cassie’s life and she was foundering without an anchor. Cassie, the girl who had her whole life planned, was suddenly working without a net, and it scared the shit out of her.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, though it felt inadequate.

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “I know . . . still.”

  “Thanks.” Cassie saw me for the first time that night. She’d looked at me before, but this time she actually saw me. The last time I’d felt like that was when I’d made the shot at Pirate Chang’s. She smiled and said, “Yes.”

  You’d think it would be difficult to forget that there was an entire party going on around you, but it’s actually pretty easy when you’re standing with the girl you’ve loved for so long you can’t remember what it was like before you didn’t love her, and she’s looking at you and you’re looking at her and you’re thinking about all those moments you wished you could kiss her, knowing that now, right now, you might finally get your chance.