Addicted to Him (2 page)

“Please explain to me why you would do this,” Principal Tuggle begs.

I shrug my shoulders, not meeting her eyes. This is really hard because I’ve always really liked Principal Tuggle and I hate that I’ve let her down. I wish I could just tell her everything and make her understand that I didn’t have a choice but I can’t. I barely believe myself and I know there is no way anyone else would believe me.

“I can’t just ignore this. We have a zero tolerance policy on this kind of thing. You could have gotten someone hurt and you just cost the school district a lot of money.”

Principal Tuggle’s door flies open and her secretary announces that Chastity is here. I sit up a little straighter even though I really just want to slink to the floor. She is going to be furious. I’ve never done anything to publicly humiliate her before. I just hope that I know her as well as I think I do.

She breezes in looking fabulous in a pair of navy slacks, a coral-colored sweater, and a white chiffon scarf tied fashionably around her neck. To a perfect stranger, she probably seems like a wonderful parent saddled with an unappreciative spoiled brat for a daughter.

“This must be some mistake. Cassidy has never been in any trouble before,” Chastity starts. My eyes dart to her, not believing that she is actually standing up for me, but then she makes eye contact and I realize that this isn’t about me at all, this is her trying to save face for herself.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Peterson, there is no mistake,” Principal Tuggle says, holding up an iPad and playing the security video for her.

I can feel the anger coming off of her in waves. She backs herself gently into a chair, gripping the arm rests so hard I’m afraid she might break them off.

“Since it’s the last day of school, I can’t really expel her, but I can’t just let this go. I can smooth things over with the board if I have your word that she is going to be punished at home. We know that Cassidy is a good student and we believe that she could benefit from some therapy over the summer as well,” Principal Tuggle suggests.

I can almost see Chastity’s nails grow into daggers, just itching to dig them into the principal’s throat.

“I would appreciate anything you could do to keep this quiet. I assure you that I’ll deal with Cassidy.”

I follow Chastity out to her Mercedes SUV where she unlocks the driver’s door but makes me wait until she is settled to unlock my side. I’ve barely got my door closed when she peels out of the parking lot and heads home. I wonder if I’ve pushed her too far. She’s never been physically abusive to me, but I suddenly feel very threatened.

She turns up the volume on the radio while breathing in and out like she’s in labor. I wish I could enjoy the chaos I’ve inflicted on her but I’m too scared that I may have went too far. I thought I knew which buttons to push to get exactly what I wanted but now I’m starting to doubt myself.

Several minutes go by before she actually speaks. I’ve been holding my breath practically the entire time.

“You are the most unappreciative child I have ever had the misfortune of knowing. I’ve put up with your selfishness for the last eighteen years and I’m done. It’s your father’s turn now,” she says, pounding the last nail in my coffin.

“No, you can’t send me there,” I plead, trying to keep the happiness out of my voice. “I’ll be good. I promise.” She likes it when I beg because it makes her feel powerful, sometimes it actually works, but this time I’ve crossed the line.

“Your ass is on a plane tomorrow.”

I bury my face in my hands and put on a very good act of being completely despondent. I really want to laugh in her face for giving me exactly what I wanted all along but then my plan would just backfire. Someday she’ll push me too far, and I’ll let it all out, but not today.

****

“I don’t get it, Cass. Why would you do something like that?” Ethan asks, sitting on my bed with his head hung.

“I just felt like it.” My excuse sounds lame to even my own ears.

“Now she’s making you go to Colorado all summer?” he asks incredulously.

“Yep, surprisingly he agreed to take me off her hands the entire summer.” Making sure Dad actually wanted me was the only part of my plan that wasn’t a sure thing. I was sweating the entire time Chastity called him, but I knew deep down he would pull through for me. He hasn’t been around me enough to realize that I don’t deserve his unfailing understanding and forgiveness.

“So this is the last time I’m going to see you until September?” He moves off the bed and toward me with a desperate look on his face.

“The summer will fly by,” I say, busying myself stuffing some clothes in a carry-on bag.

Ethan reaches out to touch me and I will myself not to flinch. He doesn’t deserve for me to act like a freak, it isn’t his fault that any man’s touch makes my skin crawl. He leans in to kiss me and I force myself to press my lips against his. I stand soldier stiff until it’s over, trying not to scream. I open my eyes to find Ethan staring at me.

“You’re not in love with me anymore,” he states matter-of-factly. “There’s someone else.”

I want to convince him that there is no one else and if I was capable of being in love it would be with him. I think I used to be in love with him but that was before everything changed. I’ve selfishly kept him hanging on because even though I didn’t want him to touch me or expect anything from me, being with him made me feel safe because it reminded me of how things used to be, how I used to be. But I care about him too much to keep him hanging on any longer.

His kind blue eyes settle on my lying green ones. “Yes, Ethan, there is someone else,” I force out.

He deflates immediately and I know this is one of those moments I’m going to regret for the rest of my life but the amputation of Ethan from my life is necessary. Everything is getting too complicated and I don’t trust myself around him anymore. He makes me feel so safe that I’m afraid eventually I might just bust open like a piñata and all my secrets will come tumbling out. And I can’t have that.

“Cassidy, you’re my whole world,” he pleads, pacing back and forth across my plush blue bedroom carpet. I’ve always hated this carpet and I’d secretly love it if he wore a hole in it. I can still feel the sting when I realized that Chastity had specifically bought me blue carpet instead of the plum that she knew I loved. Ethan’s big toe poking through the end of his sock distracts me from the memory and I almost start laughing. What kind of a deranged lunatic giggles during a breakup? This is who I’ve become and Ethan deserves better than to be with the person I’ve become. He is the only person alive who has never let me down. He doesn’t deserve to be drug down into my pathetic world. I’ve kept him moored to me for too long already.

“We’ve been together for two years and we are both so young that I think we should experience life a little more,” I say, forcing myself to think about mundane things like cleaning the bathroom or helping Wade with his science project so that the gravity of what I’m doing, forcing away the only person who has ever loved me unconditionally, doesn’t make me break down. Tears are a sign of weakness and I am not weak.

He stops in front of my vanity and takes in all the pictures I have taped to the mirror. Most of them are of us. I can hardly stand the thought of him never being in my bedroom again and I dig my nails into my palms to force myself from telling him I’m just joking and that I don’t really want to break up.

“Can I call you?” he asks.

“It would probably be better if you didn’t,” I respond coldly.

“I know that something has been wrong for a really long time and I wish you would just tell me what it is,” he whispers, but he might as well have screamed it because my body is on full alert. He just couldn’t leave it alone; this is exactly why I’m severing our ties. I can’t deal with him trying to badger secrets out of me anymore. I don’t like it, but I know what I have to do.

“I’m not harboring some deep dark secret, Ethan. I’m just bored with you. I want out,” I say, channeling my inner Chastity. I hold eye contact with him until the full impact of my response sinks in. I hate myself more than I ever have before and, believe me, that’s saying something.

He couldn’t look more visibly shaken if I had smacked him across the face. “Good-bye, Cassidy,” he says, walking out my bedroom door and shutting it softly behind him without anger or even sadness. No matter how bad I feel, I know I did the right thing by letting him go. No one deserves to be saddled with my baggage for the rest of their life. I stand in front of my mirror barely recognizing the girl gazing hollowly back at me.

****

Kentucky Fried Chicken, dinner of champions, for the second time this week. My mother wouldn’t know a home-cooked meal if Martha Stewart herself delivered it to our door. I dig out all the drumsticks and hand them over to Wade who rewards me with a crooked jack o’ lantern smile. It doesn’t take much to keep that kid happy and it reminds me that sacrificing my soul to keep that smile on his face forever isn’t such a burden after all.

Chastity throws some napkins in our general direction and I busy myself tucking one into the top of Wade’s shirt so it doesn’t get covered in greasy chicken spots. Phil slides a soda across the table toward me. I catch it and pop the top, busying myself guzzling it down.

“How about a thank you, you weren’t born in a barn,” Chastity scolds me. I mutter thank you without raising my eyes. She seems to have calmed down a little bit since receiving confirmation of my airline reservations for tomorrow morning.

“Where’s Ethan? He said he’d play Mario Kart with me,” Wade asks, bless his eight-year-old heart.

“Ethan won’t be coming over much anymore, buddy,” I tell him gently. “We broke up.” I knew Wade’s feelings would be another casualty of our breakup and I wasn’t looking forward to it. Maybe someday I’ll be able to tell him that I did it all for him, but probably not because that would kind of defeat the purpose.

“Good. He deserved better,” Chastity comments under her breath as she slops coleslaw on her plate while checking her cell phone. It will be such a relief to get away from her nasty remarks for a few months. I just hope that my dad’s new wife doesn’t automatically hate me and make my life even more miserable.

“What happened, Cass?” Phil asks.

“It just wasn’t working out anymore,” I reply curtly, knowing that he won’t be sad to see Ethan gone. After all, he was the one who caught us in a very precarious situation about eighteen months ago.

A week after Phil caught us; I was still holding my breath, wondering when Chastity was going to find out. Instead, one afternoon Phil asked me if I had protection. Phil married Chastity when I was six and he had been more of a permanent fixture in my life than my biological father. He was the parent I loved the most. He was the one who was always there with a smile or corny joke, he had even covered up a few things for me so she wouldn’t go ballistic, like the time I dumped an entire bottle of nail polish on the new carpet, so when I found out that he wasn’t going to tell her, even offering to take me to Planned Parenthood to get on the birth control pill, I was ecstatic. I’ve never been able to talk to my mother about anything, and there was no way at sixteen, I was going to attempt a birth control conversation with her. Good old Phil had saved the day again.

Phil only had one request; that I never tell Ethan I was on the pill. He preached the importance of using a condom as double birth control and protection against diseases. I thought I would die of embarrassment discussing such intimate matters but I kept my head down and nodded in agreement. I kept my promise. To this day, Ethan doesn’t know I’m on the pill. Not that it really matters since we are now broke up, but it never really did anyway because we haven’t had sex in over a year.

“You, okay?” Phil asks, reaching across the table to touch my arm.

I jerk away so fast I spill my soda. Everyone flies back from the table as I attempt to mop it up with a wad of napkins.

“Is there anything else you can possibly screw up today, Cassidy?” Chastity shouts.

Phil jumps up and grabs a roll of paper towel to help me. Wade is giggling so hard that he starts having the hiccups. His playful innocence is the only thing that keeps me rooted to this insane existence.

“Here, I’ve got it,” Phil offers, moving closely behind me. I can feel his hot breath on my neck as we trade places so that he can wipe up the remaining soda. My stomach roils and suddenly the chicken doesn’t look so good.

“I’m really not that hungry,” I say, moving away from the table, but nobody even notices because they are too busy drilling Wade about his day. I wander back to my bedroom realizing that I’ve never really belonged anywhere.

****

“Are you really going to be gone all summer?” my best friend Whitney whines, twirling strands of her white-blonde hair around her perfectly manicured finger.

“Yep, I’m not coming back until Labor Day,” I verify, zipping my carry-on. It is amazing how little space some underwear, a few T-shirts, and two pairs of shorts take up. At least I’ll save Dad the baggage fee. I gaze longingly into my closet wondering if I should pack a dress or two then decide against it.

“That’s FOUR months,” Whitney points out. Through the perfect storm of no used snow days and the construction happening on the high school that is pushing back the start of school next year, we actually have four months off this summer instead of the normal three. I can’t help but think it might be fate.

“I broke up with Ethan.” I figure I might as well just deal with Whitney’s melodrama all at once and not drag it out.

She sits frozen in the middle of my bed. You would think that I just told her I was diagnosed with an incurable type of cancer. I knew this was going to be painful.

“But…but…but, you guys have been together forever. You love him,” she reminds me.

“We grew apart. It happens.” I’m careful not to meet her eyes.

“You’ve been acting really weird for a long time,” she declares, narrowing her eyes at me.

The best invisible mask I can muster slides over my features. Whitney has known me since I was five and it is a miracle that I’ve been able to blow her off for this long. If I can just make a clean getaway then I’ll have four months to figure out how to deal with everything.