The Beginning of Everything

  “Ezra?” my mom called when I came in.

  “Yeah, hi.”

  She could see it in my face that something was deeply, horribly wrong. And that I didn’t want to talk about it.

  “Aren’t you going to the dance, honey?” she asked.

  “No.”

  I went upstairs, Cooper following worriedly, and slammed the door, barricading the two of us inside. I lay down on top of the bed in my suit and closed my eyes.

  This is how they bury you, I thought. In your best suit, the one you wear to weddings and funerals, a suit that girls have draped over their shoulders on cold nights and dry cleaners have absolved of all stains.

  Suddenly, I couldn’t stand wearing the thing. She’d picked it out for me, and I felt sick at the thought.

  Cooper whined nervously, his tail thumping against the duvet as I stripped down to my boxers. I stared up at the ceiling fan, but the propellers reminded me of my old car, the BMW logo, so I turned over, burying my face in my pillow.

  That was when I heard it: the alarm on my phone. Homecoming court. The results. And I couldn’t have cared less.

  The alarm continued to trill in two-minute intervals as I lay there undressed and miserable in the darkness. I cried for my brokenness, for the way her words had crippled me, and for the three unspoken words I’d been carrying with me for a while now, and how quickly one of them had changed.

  “I hate you, Cassidy Thorpe,” I whispered. “I hate you.”

  25

  THERE’S A CLOCK in Mr. Choi’s calculus classroom that has sixty-two seconds in each minute. I’ve counted it before, fascinated with the discrepancy, but not really believing in it. There was something wrong with the clock, not with time itself.

  That weekend, there was something wrong with time. It passed in an agony of drawn-out minutes and lost hours. I neglected my phone and shut the blinds and endured my misery until it was time for school and I slunk out the door with two days’ stubble and unfinished homework.

  It felt strange driving to school alone, as though I was forgetting something. I stared out at the migrant workers in the strawberry fields, breaking their backs to harvest off-season fruit, and I thought about how I’d rather do that today. Feel the sun baking the back of my neck while I engaged in the sort of activity that occupied my mind just enough to push back the pain of what had happened. But no, I had a test in Calculus.

  I flunked the test, badly. It was as though my brain didn’t want to solve for the rate of acceleration, as though it just wanted to hit the brakes and not accelerate at all. Decelerate. Whatever.

  When I handed in my answer sheet at the bell, Anamica looked up from her desk and glared at me.

  “Well, well,” she said, sliding her calculator into its case with unnecessary force. “If it isn’t the homecoming king.”

  I’m fairly certain that the correct response to that isn’t, “Uh, what?” but that’s what I said.

  Anamica sighed and thrust a copy of the school paper at me. Sure enough, the front page featured the picture from the pep rally, with all of us holding our Royal Roses and none of us looking at the camera. I supposed they’d wanted to take a shot of us at the dance, dressed formally and all, but I’d wrecked that.

  EZRA FAULKNER AND JILLIAN NAKAMURA NAMED HOMECOMING KING AND QUEEN. Article and photos by Phoebe Chang, the subhead read.

  “Right,” I said, still in shock. “Wow. Yeah, so apparently that happened.”

  “You were supposed to escort me,” Anamica accused. “When all the nominees walked to the stage. I had to go alone because you ditched.”

  “Sorry,” I muttered as Justin Wong clapped me on the shoulder.

  “Yo, Faulkner! Congrats,” he called, already halfway out the door to break.

  “Thanks.” I stood there, sort of dazed, while a few more of my classmates added their well wishes. I’d gotten ready for school that morning in a fog of low-hanging misery, hoping I could muddle through the day largely unnoticed, but clearly that wasn’t going to happen.

  Tony Masters walked past and yanked the strap of Anamica’s backpack. “Don’t worry, Joke Vote, you’ll win teacher’s pet in the Senior Shout-outs for sure.”

  Anamica shot me a dirty look, like she blamed me for that as well, and suddenly I just needed to get out of there. The last thing I wanted to talk about was why I’d missed the homecoming court announcement, and the last person I wanted to talk about it with was Anamica Patel.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and then fled the classroom, taking a back staircase to avoid the quad.

  Homecoming king. And I’d been lying facedown on my bed in a pair of boxer shorts and a heap of despair when they’d announced it.

  You’d think I would have been able to sense the entire school standing there, confused, as my name was called and I was nowhere to be found. You’d think someone—Toby, Phoebe, even Austin—would have texted. But of course my phone had been off, and still was. I’d extracted a disturbing amount of pleasure from watching it die on my bedside table, denying it a charge.

  I wasn’t headed anywhere in particular, just avoiding seeing anyone, so I wound up sitting in my car, wishing I had the courage to drive off but knowing the security guard would harass me.

  When the bell rang, I decided I wasn’t going to class. Instead, I disappeared inside my hoodie at one of the back tables in the library, listening to my old Dylan playlist from the summer and remembering when I’d first heard this music, in the waiting room of Dr. Cohen’s office, the perfect sound track for my personal hell. By the time I looked up, the quad was already filled for lunch and the librarian was staring at me like she didn’t know if I should be allowed to sit there all day.

  I got up, trying to mentally prepare myself for the ordeal of going out there and facing the whole school as their homecoming king. I looked terrible; my hair was a mess and I hadn’t bothered to shave all weekend. The dark circles under my eyes were turning into parabola, and I’d thrown on a T-shirt that had definitely seen better days.

  My eyes went automatically to Toby’s table: Phoebe spotted me and waved, but I hesitated, not feeling up to it. And then Evan McMillan’s booming voice cut above the tension in the quad: “Yo, Faulkner! Get your royal ass over here!”

  Suddenly, I knew what I had to do. And maybe I’d known it all along. So I nodded at Evan and walked over there with the whole school watching, to that choice lunch table next to the wall that separates the upper and lower quads, like I’d never been gone.

  I endured the tennis team’s backslapping and clowning with a good-natured grimace and waited for someone to offer me a seat at the already crowded table.

  “Trevor, get up,” Evan grunted at one of the juniors.

  “Fuck you, I’m on crutches,” Trevor grumbled.

  He was, too. One of those superficial sports injuries, the kind that takes you out for a game. Trevor reached questioningly for a crutch, but I shook my head.

  “Save it for me,” I said. “I have to buy lunch.”

  But I made no move toward the lunch line. For one thing, I had no appetite, and for another, I didn’t trust myself to come back. But it didn’t matter, since I couldn’t have gotten away if I’d wanted to—half the song squad wanted to give me hugs, because omigod, wasn’t it like soooo epic that I’d won homecoming king and where had I been during the announcement?

  I mumbled something about having a fight with Cassidy, and they all cooed in the way that girls do, as though sad things and cute puppies are interchangeable.

  “Nah, it’s fine,” I said, uncomfortable from all of the attention. “Honestly.”

  Charlotte sat there on top of the wall, swinging her long, tanned legs back and forth as she watched everything.

  “Just to be clear,” she said, hopping down from the wall and tossing her hair in one fluid motion, “you had a fight, or you broke up?”

  I allowed myself to say it.

  “We broke up.”

  “It’s about time.” Charlotte r
ested her hand on my arm for the briefest of moments. “Oh, and welcome back.”

  The homecoming king’s homecoming. The ridiculous phrase lodged itself in my head and stayed there for the rest of the lunch period, when finally Aaron Hersh got up so I could have a seat, and Charlotte went off to the lunch line with Jill and Emma Rosen, the three of them returning, giggling, with a turkey sandwich and a yellow Gatorade and extra mustard packets, insisting that I didn’t have to pay them back.

  I glanced over toward Toby’s lunch table while I unwrapped the sandwich, and it was as though the past six weeks had never happened. Cassidy had vanished, leaving just Phoebe and the boys and too much room between them on the benches.

  Luke caught me staring and gave an arrogant toss of his chin as if to say, You stay on your side, and I’ll stay on mine.

  “Faulkner? Whaddaya say?” Jimmy threw a curly fry at me, trying to get my attention.

  I scooped the fry off my jeans and tossed it back into his container. “Have fun eating it, now that it’s been on my crotch.”

  Everyone laughed. Jimmy shrugged before tilting the container of fries up to his face, emptying it.

  “Don’t care,” he said. “So you coming or not?”

  “Where?” I asked.

  “Practice, yo.”

  For a moment, I thought he was joking.

  “Someone’s gotta keep Trev here company on the benches,” Evan insisted.

  I guessed there was no half-assing a descent into hell, so I said I’d show. And really, what was the alternative? Sit in my bedroom trying to pretend my mom wasn’t hovering worriedly outside my door and that Cassidy’s presence wasn’t haunting me from across the park?

  When the bell rang, launching me toward sixth-period physics, I passed the bike rack and something made me look for Cassidy’s red Cannondale. But it wasn’t there. Of course it wasn’t. And neither was Cassidy Thorpe.

  TREVOR AND I took opposite ends of the bench by the water fountain and nodded at each other. I didn’t know him too well; he was a junior, and I thought I remembered him hawking Abercrombie and Fitch’s official fragrance with his shirt off when Charlotte used to drag me to the mall, but that wasn’t exactly a topic of conversation, so I didn’t bring it up.

  A group of tennis team girlfriends came by and sat around the picnic table by the water fountain. They chatted among themselves, none of them particularly interested in watching the courts.

  “Hey Ezra,” Emma called teasingly, holding up a bottle of nail polish. “Want me to do yours?”

  “Absolutely,” I deadpanned, dropping into the seat next to hers with a grin.

  For a moment, she thought I was serious.

  “Faulkner!” Evan called from the courts. “Hit some volleys with Trev, would you?”

  I glanced up from my table of other people’s girlfriends.

  “Can’t!” I yelled. “My nails are wet.”

  “They are not!” Emma squealed. “I haven’t even started!”

  “Rain check, then,” I promised, winking.

  “So, uh, want me to grab some racquets?” Trevor asked nervously.

  “Go for it,” I said. I mean, why not?

  We shared a court with Evan and Jimmy, using the crappy loaner racquets Coach kept in the locker room. Trevor, who only had a minor ankle sprain, tossed his crutches to the side, and hopped up to the volley line. I’d seen him play on JV, but hadn’t expected him to move up to varsity before his senior year.

  I put down my cane and stepped onto the court. And it hit me then that Trevor would be fine next week, but I’d still be sitting on the sidelines. I’d always be sitting on the sidelines, and this whole thing was just an elaborately cruel reminder that I could never go back to the way things had been, no matter where I sat during lunch.

  I sent Trevor a couple of easy volleys and then some harder ones. It felt great to hold a racquet again; I’d taken off my brace about a week earlier, and the doctors were right, my wrist had healed up fine. But of course I couldn’t really play—not a full game, not ever—and there was no use in kidding myself.

  Unfortunately, Coach Anthony caught us coming off the court.

  “Faulkner,” he said coldly.

  “Yeah, hey Coach,” I said, realizing I was holding a racquet and a cane.

  “Are you on my team, Faulkner?” Coach demanded.

  “No, Coach.”

  “Then why are you on my court?”

  I winced.

  “Um,” I said.

  “We were just foolin’ around, Coach,” Trevor said, shifting on his crutches.

  “Fooling around?” Coach’s mouth twisted sourly. “Isn’t that how you got injured in the first place, Barnes?”

  Trevor mumbled that it was.

  “Keep off my courts, gentlemen,” Coach demanded, “until you can run three field laps with a racquet above your head. I’ll require a demonstration, of course.”

  “Yes, Coach,” we muttered, and then slunk back to the benches.

  “Three racquet laps, damn.” Trevor whistled at the punishment.

  Three racquet laps, I thought. What I wouldn’t give to be able to run even one. But of course I didn’t say anything. Instead, I stretched out on the bench like I was enjoying myself but secretly wishing I’d never come back.

  “Omigod!” Emma shrieked, sounding scared. “What’s that?”

  She pointed toward the far side of the tennis courts where some large animal was slinking through the bushes that rimmed the foothills, its fur coppery in the sun.

  “Yo, that’s a coyote,” Trevor muttered, nervous.

  But as soon as we spotted it, the bushes stopped rustling; the animal was heading back into the hills.

  “That’s weird,” I said, “you don’t usually see them during the day.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t really a coyote,” Emma teased, making her voice spooky. “Or maybe, it was looking for you.”

  MY MOM CORNERED me when I got home from school. She’d called twice, apparently. I hadn’t picked up my phone.

  “Where were you?” she demanded, more worried than upset.

  “Tennis practice,” I said, and she thought I was joking.

  “Ezra.” She glared that mom glare. Cooper, who was dozing on the rug under the kitchen sink, woke up and whined guiltily. “Sit down.”

  I sat. Lifted my eyes from the place mat as though it was an ordeal. Waited.

  “Did you get that girl pregnant? Is that what’s going on here?”

  Out of all the things I expected my mom to say, that was so far down the list that it was practically on the waiting list.

  “Yeah, and you can plan the bris,” I muttered, which wasn’t my finest moment. “No, Mom. God.”

  We stared at each other, and she softened, sensing exactly why I’d been moping in my room all weekend.

  “Ezra, honey,” she cooed. “Girls change their minds. It happens. Lord knows I broke enough hearts in my day.”

  “Mom,” I moaned, putting my head down.

  “I’m just saying, honey. A shower and shave wouldn’t hurt. You can still be miserable and clean.”

  “That,” I said sarcastically, “is awesome advice.”

  “Tone,” she cautioned, pouring us each a glass of unsweetened juice. “How’s school?”

  “I won homecoming king.” I said it in the way Toby’s friends used to when they made serious announcements—a hint of a smirk, like maybe it wasn’t true, but wouldn’t it be hilarious if it were?

  “Really?” She raised an eyebrow.

  “Really.”

  “Well, that’s wonderful,” Mom said, all false cheer. “I bet that girl’s kicking herself for throwing you over now.”

  I didn’t have the heart to tell her otherwise.

  26

  CASSIDY STILL WASN’T back in school on Tuesday. Mrs. Martin, who clearly thought she was being very astute, singled me out during roll to ask if I knew where Senorita Thorpe had gone. The class laughed in this uncomfortable, knowing
way while I muttered, “No se, Señora,” and wished I could disappear.

  I had PT that afternoon, so I conjured some flimsy excuse to get out of hanging around the tennis courts that I doubt anyone believed, and I drove over to the UC Eastwood Medical Complex with my windows down.

  The weather was gorgeous, and as the warmth streamed through my car, I replayed a conversation from lunch that day, when Jimmy had announced that outie bellybuttons looked like nipples. Evan had laughed so hard that he’d snorted Sprite, and the whole thing had been hilarious if you didn’t think about it for too long, in which case it became incredibly depressing. The truth was, I didn’t understand how it had suddenly turned so painful to be around Evan and Jimmy when we’d been teammates since the ninth grade.

  The three of us had been the only freshmen to make varsity tennis. But sitting there at the lunch table we’d inherited, thinking back to the first upperclassmen party we’d attended, the three of us nervously wearing our letter jackets like they proved we were cool, it made me wonder whether we’d ever had anything in common besides taking crap from the seniors a year longer than the rest of our teammates.

  It frustrated me, listening to conversations that consisted mostly of gossip and unfunny jokes told at someone’s expense, holding back my clever remarks and pretending to enjoy myself. It was as though I’d gone off on epic adventures, chased down fireworks and buried treasure, danced to music that only I could hear, and had returned to find that nothing had changed except for me. But maybe it was better this way, remembering those few months at the beginning of the year as this wonderful thing that was over now, rather than living in Cassidy’s world without her.

  Dr. Levine had me go through the usual exercises and do a couple of sets on the elliptical. We chatted about how I was doing, and if I’d been to see Dr. Cohen lately, and I don’t know what made me say it, but I asked if it was possible to ditch the cane.

  Dr. Levine regarded me thoughtfully for a moment, and then looked down at my chart.