“Those are good questions,” says Mrs. Quenell. “Anyone want to answer?”
At first no one does. And then Griffin says, “This isn’t an answer. But sometimes maybe it’s not exactly a person you’re missing, you know? It could be anything that meant something to you.”
I wonder what happened to him, what hurt him and shut him down.
When class ends, Griffin walks out ahead of everyone else in his clomping bad-boy biker boots; this time he doesn’t even make a show of trying to help Casey, the way the rest of us do. As we leave the building, he’s already way up ahead on the path alone, his hood back on, his hands jammed into the pockets of his coat.
• • •
That night at ten, when we all meet up again in the darkened classroom, I’m a little surprised that Griffin shows up. I thought maybe he was going to disconnect from us. But he’s there, sitting on Marc’s comforter. We all arrange ourselves, and Sierra lights the candle, and the faux-hazelnut fragrance makes the place smell like a cutesy, overpriced café. Casey says, “If anyone feels like helping me out of this contraption, I might actually be able to sit on the floor with you guys.”
We all sort of stare at her dumbly, as if it hadn’t occurred to us that she could exist outside the wheelchair. Marc goes to stand in front of the chair and lifts Casey out, saying, “Is this okay? I’m not gripping you too hard?”
“I’m not going to break, Marc,” she says. “I already broke, right?”
“Just checking. I’ve never done this before.”
Sierra has created a little place for Casey to sit where she can be supported, and finally she’s in the circle with the rest of us, though her legs are out in front of her, with her small, delicate feet in stylish ankle boots flopping to either side.
The candle sends its campfire glow around our circle, and this time we’ve come prepared with food that’s been snuck out of the dining hall at dinner, so we don’t have to steal anything from the teachers.
“Who’s going to go first?” Marc says.
Casey, leaning against the wall, raises a hand as if it were morning and she’s in class.
“Raised hands are not necessary in here,” Marc says, imitating Mrs. Quenell’s voice, and there’s a little laughter. “Only raised minds.”
“I’ll go,” Casey says. “Anybody want to hear how I got like this?”
CHAPTER
9
“I GREW UP RICH IN NEW YORK CITY,” CASEY TELLS US. “I don’t want to sound obnoxious, but my family’s apartment was featured in Architectural Digest. Yeah, one of those. It’s a duplex on Park and Seventy-First. We have a housekeeper who keeps everything running smoothly, and cooks amazing food. If we ever got hungry in the middle of the night, we’d just press the button on the intercom marked ‘Daphne,’ and she’d make us a buffalo chicken sandwich on a Kaiser roll. She’d complain about it the next day, but she’d do it. A town car took us to school every morning, and—”
“A town car. Aren’t you fancy,” Griffin murmurs.
“Be quiet, Griffin,” Sierra says lightly.
“It didn’t seem like a big deal,” Casey goes on, “because lots of girls at private schools in the city are brought to school like that. And our dads continue on to the office after dropping us off. They’re all masters of the universe. They run Wall Street. My dad likes to win, and for him that means taking over corporations and doing leveraged buyouts. He’s always been happier doing that than anything else. And he always loved the money he made, and loved spending it on us.
“We were mostly happy,” says Casey. “That’s the thing that people find hard to wrap their minds around. Nobody at Sedgefield—my rehabilitation hospital—really understood this. I tried to explain it to them, but they didn’t get it. Even my mom’s little problem didn’t make us unhappy.”
Casey stops, and we all wait. “She drank,” she says. “Not in the morning—never in the morning—but other times of day. I noticed it; we all did. It would put me on alert, make me feel kind of tense, like, ‘Okay, there’s Mom again, under the influence.’ She’d go out to lunch with her friends, and she’d come home basically trashed. My sisters and I always felt worried when this happened. We had a code we used. We’d say, ‘Mom took out the trash.’ We’d even say it right in front of her, and she’d say, ‘What do you girls mean? I didn’t take out the trash; Daphne did.’
“She wasn’t one of those mean drunks,” Casey continues. “Drinking actually made her sweeter than she was, which was already very sweet. But she would sort of go a little bit off; it’s hard to describe. The thing is, she’s very charming. She’s a redhead like me, and freckly. When my dad met her, he called her the Leprechaun. But even though she mostly stayed charming, and kept it together, I worried that when she had too much to drink she’d tip over into something kind of . . . embarrassing.
“And it did happen sometimes. Like, once, when Marissa Scherr came over, my mom was laughing too hard at everything we said, and Marissa noticed, and said, ‘Your mom is weird. She laughs too much.’ So l told her the dumbest thing. I said, ‘Oh, she had laughing gas at the dentist today.’ Which didn’t even make any sense.
“But it was pretty rare for my mom to actually embarrass us. I’d think to myself, Please let this be okay, when friends came over, or when she showed up for my school play. And usually it was okay. She was appropriate. I told myself that I could relax, that I didn’t have to do that walking-on-eggshells thing.
“It was mostly in the summer that my sisters and I got worried. Because in the summer we moved out to our house in Southampton. You know, the Hamptons.”
“Oh, give me a break,” says Griffin.
“Our house was right on the ocean,” Casey says, ignoring him, “and it even had a name: Treasure Tide. Every summer we swam all day, and made bonfires on the beach at night. My dad had to work during the week, so he could only come out on weekends. He didn’t even mind. I knew he’d rather be in the office screaming on the phone to Hong Kong than lying on the sand under an umbrella. So in the summer, it was just Mom and me and my sisters, Emma and Rachel. And that was where things got sticky.”
It almost seems as though that’s the end of Casey’s story and she’s not going to tell us anything more than this.
“Explain,” says Griffin.
“Mom did all the driving.”
Now I see where this is heading.
“It was the summer before last, and we’d been at the beach at night,” she says. “It was one of those August nights that are so suffocating the only place you can bear to be is by the water. We went to our friends’, the Brennigans, who live only half a mile away. We’d built this bonfire, and we roasted wieners, and the little kids were going around saying the word wiener over and over, like it was hilarious. And afterward, all the parents headed back to the Brennigans’ porch, while the teenagers stayed on the beach.
“Jacob Brennigan, the oldest, had been flirting with me since we were kids. And I always flirted back, but we were never really sure what to do with our relationship. Once, like a year earlier, we’d hooked up at a party. He was a very good kisser, and it was this really nice moment. That night on the beach he was chasing me along the shore, and I was running.”
It’s hard to picture Casey Cramer running, but of course, in this story, there’s no wheelchair. In this story, nothing is wrong with her yet. The night in August that she’s telling us about was the moment right before everything in her life changed. Her freckled legs took her across the sand, running away from Jacob Brennigan. Casey continues to tell her story of how she ran and ran, and how when she looked over her shoulder she saw that he’d given up and stopped chasing her. She was way too fast for him, and she stood down by the water, her hands on her hips, letting her heart slow.
“I remember thinking that I could outrun this boy I’d known forever,” Casey says. “I liked him, but I didn’
t want him to catch me. I felt like an Olympic runner. And then my sisters started shouting that it was time to leave. So I jogged back to the Brennigans’ under these amazing stars, and we said good night to everyone, including Jacob, who gave me this meaningful look.
“And then my sisters and my mom and I piled into the car. It was only a half-mile drive. It was nothing! I could feel the sand on my bare feet, and the bottoms of my jeans were all wet, and my mom was saying, ‘Did you girls have a good time tonight? Because I did.’
“Emma was being a pain in the ass. She said, ‘Mom, I don’t think you should drive. You had a lot to drink; I can hear it in your voice. You should ask Mr. Brennigan to drive us home in their SUV, and we can come get the car tomorrow.’
“And my mom said, ‘For God’s sake, Emma, I’m fine.’ My sister just kept saying it wasn’t a good idea. And I thought she was being ridiculous too. ‘All right, we’ll put it to a vote,’ my mom said.
Rachel said she didn’t think it was a big deal if Mom drove. It was a split vote. So it was up to me to decide. ‘You’re the tiebreaker, Casey,’ my mom said.
“And because my feet were all sandy and I was getting cold, I said, ‘Let Mom drive.’
“And she said, ‘Thank you, Casey girl.’ That’s what she called me a lot. I was sitting up front in the car, next to her. I was nervous, because Mom had that way about her. Everything was just a little too much, you know? And she started the engine and turned on the radio, and a Beatles’ song came on. And right away she said, ‘Ooh, I love this song! Just listen to the beautiful French horn solo in the middle.’
“She was too excited by it; I knew that. But I also knew how much she loves the Beatles, and here was this song on the radio, so why shouldn’t she enjoy it? Those are the songs my mom loves the best, because they remind her of when she was young. And she would always tell us how much she loved being young. Staying out late, being kind of wild. She missed all that when she got older and got married and settled down.
“So my mom was singing along. And she was happy, and we were too, all of us except Emma, I guess—and suddenly there was this loud thump, and then the feeling of flying, but bad flying. And then I felt as if I’d been socked in the head, and I heard glass breaking, and someone shrieking. Someone who turned out to be me. And then I blacked out.”
Casey stops there. None of us speaks or breathes.
“Okay, at ease,” she says. “That’s it. The story of how I became a cripple.”
Sierra, Marc, Griffin, and I are all silent. There’s not a thing we can say. I’ve never had friends with problems like these. The worst friend-problem I’d ever dealt with was a blowup between Hannah and Ryan about whether it was okay for Ryan to carry a condom in his pocket, “for when you change your mind.” Hannah was insulted, and Jenna and I had to stay up all night with her while she cried and texted him every ten seconds. But I could handle that.
I’m in way over my head now.
“My mom had driven us into a stone wall,” Casey goes on. “Everyone else in the car was fine. But I hadn’t been wearing my seat belt—I mean, it was only a five-minute drive—and I’d slammed into the windshield. I severed my spinal cord and experienced trauma to my head.”
There’s that word trauma again. It’s everywhere at The Wooden Barn.
“The airbag was faulty; it didn’t go off,” says Casey. “I was airlifted to the city, and I was in a coma for three days. Finally I woke up, and my parents were right over me in the bed, and they were both crying.
“I heard one of the nurses say, ‘Well, at least it won’t be manslaughter,’ but I didn’t know what she was talking about.
“As I recovered, I learned two things: One, I’d never walk again; and two, my mom’s blood alcohol level was way over the legal limit. She hadn’t been ‘tipsy’ when she drove us home. She’d been totally trashed.
“And then I remembered that I’d been the tiebreaker. Mom went to a court-ordered drug and alcohol rehab for a few months, and I went to a very different rehab. Sedgefield. It wasn’t that the doctors and nurses thought I’d walk again. They just wanted to teach me to get back my upper body strength, and use the wheelchair well.
“It was the grimmest place on earth. Pretty much everyone in my unit had had some kind of accident or disease. One lady was there because she’d gone to have the fat sucked out of her stomach so she could look good in a bikini when she went to Bermuda, and she woke up paralyzed. We were all so pathetic, sitting or lying in our bathrobes all day, drinking little containers of warm apple juice, making houses out of playing cards, and watching Law & Order. After I got out of Sedgefield, I didn’t stay in touch with any of those people. It was too depressing. They group e-mailed each other a lot, but I never joined in.
“And at home, my mom kept saying, ‘Casey girl, will you ever forgive me?’ She was totally sober now, and she was horrified at what she’d done. In her rehab they’d made her face everything. It was brutal. And here’s the thing: I forgave her right away. She’d just gotten so used to drinking all the time, and to people thinking she was this sweet, tipsy little leprechaun. I couldn’t be mad at her.
“I went back to school, but it was hard to focus. There was a party one night, and some kids from the boys’ school came. That was the first time I’d seen Jacob Brennigan since the accident. There he was, standing with his friends. He looked way uncomfortable seeing me in my wheelchair. One of his friends started whispering, and pushing him toward me. It was so awkward.
“He came over and said, ‘Hey,’ but he could barely look at me.
“I said, ‘Hey, Jacob. What’s up?’
“And he said, ‘Not much. I’m glad you’re out of the hospital. Well, I’d better go.’
“And that was it. The last time Jacob ever spoke to me. I’d been the cute girl he’d flirted with since we were kids, and now I was the crippled girl he couldn’t deal with.
“Everyone felt sorry for me, and no one treated me normally. My friends had to wait for me to take the wheelchair lift to leave school at the end of the day, and sometimes it took forever to find the lady in the front office who had the key. I started doing reckless things, like once I positioned my chair at the top of the hill on Eighty-Ninth Street that was closed to traffic during the school day, and I just let ’er rip.
“That was when my parents decided to send me to The Wooden Barn. And I guess it’s been sort of helpful so far. But then, the other night, I had one of those visions that Sierra described. Except what I saw, obviously, was different.”
“Tell us,” says Sierra.
“Okay,” Casey begins. “Here’s the situation. I’m at my desk, and I’m writing in my journal, and as I write, I feel like I might hurl, which—fun fact—is the thing that happens to me whenever I try to read or write in a car. And I look up and I see that I’m not at my desk anymore, but I’m actually in a car.”
She pauses, then says, “It’s nighttime, and I’m in the passenger seat. I realize that something’s happening to my brain. But then I know that I’ve been in this exact scene before, this exact moment. And I know when. I make a move to cross my legs, which are cold, my feet all dusted with sand, the bottom of my jeans damp. And my legs are fine, they move like normal. My mom and my sisters and I are singing along with the Beatles on the radio, and I think how lucky I am to be who I am. My family is great. Jacob and I are into each other. And the moment lasts. It doesn’t end after half a mile with my drunk mom plowing into a wall.
“I touch my legs and I can feel them; there’s total sensation there. They aren’t paralyzed, nothing bad has happened, and we’re just driving down the road. And I say to my mom, ‘Things are going to be okay, right? They’re going to be just the same as always?’
“She turns to me, and she doesn’t have that silly, tipsy expression on her face, but instead she looks calm and serious, and she says, ‘Let’s not worry about the future,
Casey girl. Let’s just enjoy this moment.’
“So I don’t say another thing, and we just keep driving, and the wind is in my hair, and the road seems to go on forever, and so does the Beatles song. At one point my mom stops the car and I get out and go running along the side of the road, and she starts the engine again and I keep pace with her. I’m so fast, and my legs are strong. Then I get back in the car and I can still feel my legs kind of pulsing with life, I guess you’d say.
“And that’s it. It’s this perfect, pure experience. The next thing I know, I’m back at my desk again, and back in my wheelchair. And when I look down I see that the pages of my journal have blown ahead. And all the papers on my desk have blown around too, like there’s been a wind in the room, even though the window’s completely shut. My roommate, Nina, comes in, and she says, ‘What happened in here?’
“And I say something like ‘I guess I got a little wrapped up in my homework.’
“‘I’ll say,’ she says, and she just laughs. Nina’s seen everything—she started stealing her dad’s Oxycontin in sixth grade. But then, when I straighten up all my papers and stuff, I notice something: The pages that have blown ahead in the journal are covered with writing. With my handwriting. I don’t even remember writing any of it, but there’s five pages’ worth. I must’ve written it when I was in my ‘trance,’ or whatever we’re supposed to call it.”
So not only are our journals the way into that world, but five is the automatic number of pages we each apparently write when we’re there. Details like this are slowly becoming clear. But what isn’t clear is why.
“Can I ask if anyone here has thought about the reason this is happening to us?” I ask.
“Oh, I guess it’s because we’re just so special,” Casey says.
“Maybe,” says Sierra, “it can’t be explained.”
“Only because we don’t have all the information yet,” says Marc. “But let’s be logical about it. And the most logical question to ask is, Do we think Mrs. Q knows about it? Did she plan it?”