The Beginning of Everything

  When Cassidy saw it, she grinned.

  “Why, deary me,” she drawled in an overwrought southern accent, “a gentleman caller wantin’ to escort me to the dance.”

  “We’ll have dinner at Fiesta Palace,” I promised. “You can order chips in a sombrero and there’s a guy who comes around and makes balloon hats with the mariachi band.”

  “Why, Mr. Faulkner,” she said, still using that ridiculous accent, “that sounds positively delightful.”

  And then Toby acted disgusted when we kissed.

  Cassidy’s phone rang with some secretary confirming an appointment (“The dentist’s office,” she whispered, making a face), and when she went outside to deal with it, I asked Toby whom he was taking to the dance.

  “I thought Phoebe and I might go as friends,” he admitted. “And Austin’s determined to take this girl from his SAT class. He thinks he’s found his soul mate.”

  “Oh, so you guys aren’t . . .” I trailed off, embarrassed.

  “No, Faulkner, we’re not,” he said drily.

  I shrugged, wishing Cassidy would come back and rescue us. But she didn’t.

  “Um, that’s cool,” I said. “I mean, either way. If you’re going with Phoebe or if, whatever—”

  “This is painful, dude,” Toby informed me. Surprisingly, he looked as though he was trying not to laugh. “I’m not gay. I mean, I think I am, but I’ll figure it out in college. You have to really know to be out in high school. And I’m hopelessly single, never been kissed, no prospects on the horizon, dating my left hand and a stack of hentai DVDs.”

  “Hentai?” I asked, trying to keep a straight face. “Really?”

  “Major nerd points for knowing what that is, but yes.”

  “Huh.” I considered this. “Good to know.”

  “Well don’t worry, you’re not my type,” Toby said drily.

  “I figured, if you’re into hentai.”

  “Shut up about the hentai,” he begged. “I never should have mentioned that.”

  We laughed, since admitting to enjoying naked Japanese anime was pretty shameful, and we both knew I was going to give him hell about that one until the end of time.

  “Listen,” Toby said, taking a sip of his frappuccino, “thanks for being cool. I was a little worried.”

  “Seriously?” I wondered for a moment if I gave the impression of being the sort of guy who would disown his best friend over something like that. It wasn’t a nice thought.

  “Your old friends would have called me a faggot,” Toby said.

  I winced. “They would not!”

  “Let me clarify,” Toby said bitterly, “they would have called me a faggot again.”

  He shook his head and wouldn’t tell me when it had happened, and I wanted to press him on it, but Cassidy came back from her phone call then, and Toby made her pull up a silly website featuring awkward formal photos, and we laughed so hard that the barista came over and pointedly cleared our table.

  24

  EVERYONE AGREED THAT dining at Fiesta Palace was a deeply ironic stroke of genius, so I made a reservation for six. Or, I called and attempted to make a reservation, only to be laughed at by the woman who answered the phone.

  Austin went on and on about the girl from his SAT class who went to the arts academy and did special-effects makeup, and Phoebe and Cassidy went shopping for dresses three days in a row after school, and the whole thing became such a big production that I couldn’t tell if we were actually taking it seriously.

  But then, that’s how we always were. Outwardly mocking, but never quite to the point of not wanting to participate. Of course my mom was ecstatic over my asking Cassidy to the dance. She kept asking what color Cassidy’s dress was (for all I knew, Cassidy was wearing a tuxedo and a top hat), and if we were going to the game (no), and where we were going for dinner (I lied and named the Italian place she and my father liked), and what we were doing afterward (having a Doctor Who marathon at Austin’s).

  We had voting for king and queen in homeroom on Monday, Scantron sheets this time. It reminded me of the student government elections, the way you had to bubble in A for this candidate, or B for that one. I passed forward my blank ballot and tried not to think about it, about how I’d been in the hospital during class-president elections last year. Instead, I thought about Cassidy, and how she pronounced “vitamin” the British way and hated when people took too many napkins in restaurants. It was as though I was collecting memories of her; as though I knew, or suspected, what was coming.

  There was a huge line at the florist’s the afternoon of the dance, and I tried to entertain myself by watching the kids who’d come with their parents standing around pretending they weren’t embarrassed. But that got boring after a while, so I jokingly texted Cassidy a picture of a hot pink lei along with the message, they said I could have this for the same price as a corsage!

  You’re not serious?! she texted back immediately.

  I laughed over it and let her wonder while I paid for her wrist corsage.

  My phone rang as I was walking back to my car.

  “Please tell me you didn’t,” Cassidy said.

  “I didn’t,” I admitted. “Note to self: girlfriend does not want to get leid.”

  “Oh, very funny.”

  Tony Masters screeched into the parking lot then, the windows of his Blazer rolled down and shedding rap music. He honked his horn at me to say hey, and I only jumped a mile.

  “Jesus,” I swore, half panicked even though I was still on the sidewalk.

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing. Just this guy from school being an ass.”

  “Okay,” Cassidy said. “Well, try not to die before tonight.”

  “If I see a big black SUV that looks like it’s going to blow through a stop sign, I’ll hit reverse,” I promised.

  “What?”

  “The accident,” I told her. “Last May?”

  “You never told me that part. You always just called it the accident.”

  “Oh, I thought I had.” I reached into my pocket for my keys. “I was leaving this kid Jonas’s lakehouse party back when I still had my cool car, before I drove Voldemort.”

  Silence, and a bit of scuffling on Cassidy’s end.

  “Did I tell you I’ve decided to name the Volvo?” I pressed, wondering why she wasn’t laughing. Probably she was just impressed by the amazingly clever name I’d given my car.

  “Sorry,” Cassidy said. She sounded distracted, like she was at the salon or something. “I have to go.”

  “Yeah, me too. See you tonight.”

  I GOT DRESSED slightly early and put some product in my hair that I never bothered with for school and stood there adjusting my tie in the mirror forever.

  It wasn’t that I was nervous about taking Cassidy to a dance—I was certain we’d goof around and have a good time with our friends like we always did—but more than anything, the homecoming nomination made me feel as though I was being pushed back into a world I was happy to leave behind.

  I didn’t expect to win homecoming king. It would have been flattering, but useless, since it was the kind of thing that was over the moment it began. Still, I set the alarm on my phone for the time Ms. Reed, the student government advisor, had told us nominees to head to the green room. The “green room,” as though it was someplace fancier than the little annex with the unisex handicapped toilet off the back of the gym.

  I picked up my copy of The Great Gatsby while I waited for Cassidy to arrive and reread the parts about Gatsby’s parties since they seemed festive enough. I got so engrossed in the book that I failed to realize it was getting late, and it startled me when my mom knocked on the door of my room.

  “Maybe you should check with Cassidy, sweetie,” Mom said worriedly. She was carrying this camera my father had bought her for Hanukkah maybe five years ago, bulky and outdated.

  “Yeah, I’ll text her,” I promised, pulling out my phone. When she didn’t answer back, I called.
It went to voice mail, and I didn’t much see a point in leaving a message.

  But when she was a half hour late and still hadn’t returned my call, or either of my texts, I started to get worried. Mom stuck her head back into my bedroom and asked what was going on. She was all false cheer, clutching that sad old camera, and I don’t know what made me do it, but I looked down at my phone and acted like Cassidy had just texted me back.

  “She’s running late,” I lied, reaching for my keys. “And it’s easier if I just pick her up. You don’t mind, right?”

  The gate guard at Terrace Bluffs was used to me picking up Cassidy; he waved me through without a second glance. Some little kids had done chalk drawings in the street again, of ghosts and pumpkins. A few of the houses on Summit Terrace already had Halloween decorations up, orange lights glowing from the trees and fake cobwebs over their hedges.

  I grabbed the corsage and rang the bell, wondering if I’d finally meet her parents. No one answered, so I knocked louder, and rang the bell again, trying not to be too rude about it.

  “Hello? It’s Ezra,” I called, in case they thought I was one of those kids on the bicycles who went door to door preaching the joys of the Church of Latter-day Saints. I mean, I was wearing a tie. A limo drove past, with Tommy Yang from JV tennis sticking his head out the sunroof. He hooted at me, and I waved back. It wasn’t until the limo disappeared around the corner that I started to panic.

  I gave Cassidy another call. Her phone rang five times before I got voice mail.

  “Hey,” she said laughingly. “Leave me a message in a hundred forty characters or less and—oh my God, Owen, stop, I’m trying to record a voice-mail greeting—sorry, well, leave a message. Or send a telegram if it’s urgent.”

  “Um,” I said. “Hi. It’s me, Ezra. I’m staring at your front door, and your corsage is sweating. Wait, no, that sounds gross. It’s moist. Sorry, that’s worse. Anyway, you should come open the door soon because I’m leaving fingerprints all over your doorbell.”

  Some people have a fear of public speaking; I have a fear of leaving voice mails. Something about talking into a void, about having your voice recorded, unrehearsed and with no warning, has always made me hopeless at getting the point across.

  I was fairly certain that no one was home, so I climbed back into my car, trying not to panic. Cassidy was, well, gone, and I was totally confused by what was happening. And then, because I didn’t know what else to do, I called Toby.

  “Hey!” he said, answering after the first ring. “You two on your way?”

  “Cassidy’s missing,” I said hollowly.

  “What do you mean, she’s missing?” He sounded amused, as though he expected the explanation to be hilarious.

  “She never came over, and she hasn’t returned my texts, and I’m outside her house but no one is answering the door. Put Phoebe on.”

  Toby told me to wait, and then I heard a muffled conversation, and finally Phoebe got the phone and asked me what was going on.

  “I don’t know,” I said, my voice cracking. “Cassidy isn’t home and she isn’t answering her phone. Didn’t you two get your hair done together or something?”

  “No,” Phoebe said. I could hear the frown in her voice. “I haven’t talked to her since yesterday.”

  “I talked to her this afternoon,” I said doubtfully. “Can you call her? Maybe she’s just avoiding me.”

  “Sure,” Phoebe said. “Hold on, I’ll use my phone.”

  I heard the noise of the restaurant, and the faraway sound of a cell phone ringing, and then a faint beep and “Hey, leave me a message in a hundred forty characters or less . . .”

  “Sorry.” It was Phoebe again. “She didn’t pick up.”

  “So I heard.”

  We studied each other’s silence.

  “Maybe her hair appointment went late?” Phoebe suggested.

  “Maybe.” I didn’t sound very optimistic.

  “Well, Austin just got here and oh my God, his date is full-on goth, I’m not kidding. She’s wearing black lipstick and everything.”

  There was a bit of noise as Toby grabbed the phone back.

  “We have to go make fun of Austin now. Let me know when you’re on your way, okay?”

  “I will,” I promised. “Go ahead and order without us.”

  I hung up and put on the playlist I’d made for tonight, listening to the Kooks croon about the seaside while I waited for a car to pull into the driveway, or a light to flicker on, or my phone to buzz. But none of those things happened.

  After a couple songs, I put on my seat belt and pulled away from the curb. Something felt wrong. She was always waiting for me. Always there, with her flashlight in her bedroom window, always hurrying down the front walk with a smile on her face, never late or missing.

  More than anything, I was worried. I pictured her in a ditch on the hiking trails, a car accident on the side of the freeway, lying in one of those patient annexes surrounded by a flimsy curtain in the ER. I pictured her tragically; it never once occurred to me to picture her as the tragedy.

  Since I didn’t know what to do, I wound up driving around Eastwood. Driving always calmed me, especially at night, with the streetlights wavering slightly out of focus and the empty roads and the dark stretches of the old ranch lands.

  And then I passed the castle park, and something made me stop. One figure atop the highest turret, the one with the steering wheel. A girl.

  I pulled into the lot, my heart pounding in my ears, not wanting to know but unable to stop myself from finding out.

  There were stadium lights trained on the tennis courts, the overflow casting a soft glow against the concrete castle. As soon as I stepped out of my car, I could see it; the unmistakable green of Cassidy’s favorite sweater.

  I crossed the grass, calling out to her. She jumped down from the turret easily, vaulting over the castle’s sandbox terraces and walking across the playground.

  As she came toward me, I took in her jeans and plaid shirt, her sneakers, her hair in its ponytail. She looked like a girl who had no intention of attending a formal dance, and whatever this was about, it wasn’t going to be good.

  “What are you doing here?” Her expression was dark and cold, like I was the last person she wanted to see, and the anger in her voice confused me.

  “The dance,” I said, forcing myself to smile, to make a joke of it. “Remember?”

  Cassidy opened her mouth as if to say something, but then she stopped herself.

  “I’m not going,” she informed me, as though it should have been obvious.

  “Okay. Well, maybe you should have told me that before?” I shrugged helplessly.

  The stadium lights seemed harsh all of a sudden, like the lights they use in operating rooms.

  “Go away, Ezra,” Cassidy pleaded. “Please, just go.”

  “No,” I said stubbornly.

  Cassidy glared at me, her eyes not so much filling with tears as lacking the capacity to hold any more of them.

  “God, can’t you see that you’re the last person I want to talk to right now?” she asked.

  “Yeah, actually,” I said. “And I have no idea why.”

  “It’s complicated.” Cassidy wrapped her arms around herself as though she was cold, and my first instinct was to offer her my jacket, but of course I didn’t. Not with the two of us standing on top of that grassy hill in the castle park, a corsage going limp in the passenger seat of my car while our friends ate their entrees at a table with empty seats.

  “Maybe you can explain it to me anyway?”

  “Oh, honey.” She’d never called me that before, and I didn’t like it. “Isn’t it obvious? You. Me. Dating. I was amusing myself. And then my boyfriend drove down from San Francisco to surprise me. He just ran to the gas station to buy cigarettes. You probably don’t want to be here when he gets back.”

  Cassidy nodded toward the neon lights of the gas station, which was just across the street. I thought about going in t
here and punching that asscanoe right in the face. But then Cassidy sniffled, and asked me again to leave.

  We stood there, coolly regarding each other. The castle park was behind her, like a photograph of a night we’d shared a million years and two weeks ago.

  “I—just—the whole time, it’s been someone else?” I said numbly.

  She cocked her head slightly, her hand on her hip, as though it pained her to have to explain it to me.

  “How could it have been you? My God, Ezra, look at yourself. You’re a washed-up prom king who lost his virginity to some cheerleader in a hot tub. You take me out for burgers and Friday-night movies at the multiplex. You’re everything I make fun of about small hick towns like this one, and you’re still going to be here in twenty years, coaching the high-school tennis team so you can relive your glory days.”

  Back when they’d reset the broken bone in my wrist, I’d woken up on the operating table. It was just for a moment, before the doctors upped the anesthesia, but in those seconds when the lights were bright and hot and the surgeons were bent over me with my blood dripping from their scalpels, I’d felt as though I’d woken into a nightmare.

  Hearing Cassidy say those things was worse. Because I hadn’t been broken when I’d left my house an hour earlier, with a wrist corsage of white roses still cold from the refrigerator, but I was certainly broken now.

  I stared at her, horrified. Her chin jutted stubbornly and her eyes were a hurricane, and there was nowhere for me to seek cover.

  “Okay,” I said hollowly. “Sorry. I just—sorry.”

  I turned and walked away.

  “Ezra!” she called desperately, as though I was the one who was being unreasonable.

  I paused, considering it, but what more was there to say? And then I continued my funeral march toward the parking lot.

  The death of a relationship. At least I was dressed for the wake.

  My phone was a grocery list of missed calls, but I didn’t feel like dealing with them. Instead, I drove home in the cooling darkness, past the ghostly stretch of white birch trees and around the loop that encircled Eastwood like a noose.

  I jammed my brakes at a stop sign that had gone up recently, and the corsage flew forward, landing on the floor. I left it there, sliding back and forth, its petals bruising with each curve of the road.