Sometimes Never, Sometimes Always (13 page)

“Hey.” They both look up, startled by my presence. “The file’s ready for the printer. We’re right on schedule to distribute tomorrow.”

Twin fake smiles, as the two girls wonder how much I heard. Do they realize that they are, like, exactly the same kind of people as the “overcompensating losers” that they’re making fun of? Do they not even see the comparison between the kind of gossipy meanness they excel at and the cowardice of whoever attacked Eric and vandalized Gavin’s car? More importantly, though, can I get them to tell me who it was? I search their eyes for any hint, but the two sets of bright blue eyes are equally empty. Robot Bitches, activated to “saccharine-
sweet.”

“Cassie, we looooooove you!” gushes Britney, using her best baby-voice.

“You saaaaaaved us!” Annika adds her own nauseating squeal.

“So you know who punched my brother in the eye.”

Instant uncomfortable silence. The two girls look at each other and shrug. “Blake Peters,” says Britney, at the same time as Annika blurts out, “Ronnie Fischer.”

Blake and Ronnie. Of course. Lead guitarist and drummer for the Youth Group Praise Band. No wonder Eric doesn’t want to go to church. Looks like tomorrow night just got more interesting.

“Don’t tell them we told you, though,” says Britney, her voice once more a breathy hush.

Annika laces her fingers into her blond hair. “Yeah, they’d kill us,” she says.

20. If you were a
fictional character …

Darin fixes me with a piercing look. “Shut up. Don’t tell me you couldn’t get a single line of your poem written, Cassandra. I’m the laziest one in this whole class, and even I have something to turn in today.” He turns his paper over, but I catch a glimpse of stars, an inky galaxy with a tiny stick figure at the bottom, gazing up into a giant telescope.

“I got something,” I say, closing my notebook quickly. “I’m not quite done yet.”

“You got two lines, both of which were written by Whitman.” He shakes his head. “Why is this so hard? Just write something.”

“I will. I just … haven’t yet.”

“I bet I could write a song about you.”

My heart.
It feels like someone just scrubbed my entire chest over an old wooden washboard:
thumpa thumpa thump
. “Yeah, right. There’s nothing to write about me,” I say.

“I’m pretty sick of you saying that.” He picks up his black pen and takes my notebook.

“Hey, that’s mine.”

“Just a sec,” he says, pulling a blank sheet of paper out of the middle. “I celebrate Cassandra and sing Cassandra.” He writes quickly, in tiny block letters. His hands are sheathed in the cuffs of his sweatshirt, holes cut in the seams for his thumbs. “The quirk of her eyebrow as she debates whether or not to smack me.” His look is baiting; he returns to the page in a furious scribble, narrating as he writes: “The spikes … of her dark hair … like a … a … hedgehog halo … above her increasingly … annoyed countenance.”

I reach for the page, which he guards with his arm, still scribbling. “Her charming lack … of self-awareness. The futile blows … of her fist … against my shoulder. The long, wavering gust … of her … angry … sigh.
Ouch!
”

I punch him again for good measure. “Okay. I get it. I’ll write something.”

“Maybe you should ask this chick for some help.” He pulls a rolled newspaper out of his back pocket and spreads it out on the table. “Here. Divinia Starr.” He taps the small ad I placed yesterday.

Am I blushing? I hope not. “A fortune-teller? How is that going to help me?”

“A mystic and medium,” he says. “Come on, don’t you think it could be fun?”

“I don’t believe in mystics and mediums.” It’s the first copy of this edition of
The Gordon High Gazette
I’ve seen today, and I get a little thrill from seeing my ad there, even if nobody knows it’s mine.

Darin grows serious. “Oh, right. I’m sorry, Cass. That was insensitive, I guess.”

“What?” What happened? How did this conversation go so fast from flirty and funny to awkward and weird?

He shrugs, looking down. He doodles a little crystal ball in the middle of the ad, and then he shrugs again and looks up at me. “Well. You go to Joyful News, right?”

Oh,
that
. I shake my head quickly. “I’m not … I don’t … ”

“It’s cool.” He smiles, peering up at me again through his bangs with those incredible eyes. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

My mouth is dry, but it forms the words, “I’m on my way to becoming an atheist.” Something about this kid pulls the truth out of me.

I don’t expect the laugh that explodes out of him. “Well, write about
that
, Cassandra. I mean, being an atheist in a family of fundamentalists has got to count for something of interest, doesn’t it?”

Does it? “It’s not something I can write about,” I say. I can only imagine what that poem would stir up, if anyone in my family read it.

He nods. “Ah. Gotcha. Well, maybe you can figure out a metaphor?”

“I think I’m allergic to metaphors. I get hives.” Okay, so metaphors aren’t so bad once someone explains them to me, gives me detailed notes to spit out on the exam, but please don’t expect me to interpret them on my own. And dream on if you think I can write one.

Mr. Dawkins taps the edge of my desk. “So did you make something up?” His voice is gentle, but the set of his mouth means business.

“I’m still working on it.” I work on shrinking down to a size so insignificant he’ll forget I exist and pass on to the next slacker, but he doesn’t budge.

“Let’s see what you have so far.” Mr. D’s persistence is admirable for a veteran teacher. Most of the faculty at Gordon have already settled into their pre-retirement mode of half-hearted, long-memorized lectures and prolonged sessions of busywork. Mr. D insists on being one of the ones who still pushes, relentlessly, against the tide of student apathy. Today I hate him for it.

“It’s too rough,” I say, keeping my hand flat on top of the cover of my closed notebook. “I’ll show you when I get it polished.”

“Show me, and I can help give some revision ideas.”

Panic. “It’s on my computer at home.” The old stand-by excuse.

“Recreate it here,” he says, and he officially becomes the second person to pick up my notebook without my permission, sliding it out from under my resisting hand. He opens it up to a blank sheet of paper. “
Now
, Cass. I’ll be back to check in ten minutes.”

“Now you’re screwed,” says Darin out of the side of his mouth.

“Sure.” I draw geometric shapes in the top margin. “I celebrate myself, and sing myself, for I am screwed.”

“Write it,” says Darin.

“Write that?”

“Write your song. Write Cassandra.” He’s drawing, too, on the silly poem he wrote about me. A spiky-haired girl with manga eyes glares up from the faint blue lines. In her hand she wields a crystal ball.

“I can’t … ” I don’t know how to finish my sentence. Why is he drawing me as a fortune-teller? Once again, I feel like he somehow
knows
.

“Can I tell you something?” Darin keeps drawing, adding to his picture. I can see now that he’s drawing the Cassandra myth … and her brother, Hector, dead on his shield. Lovely. “It’s weird.”

“
You’re
weird,” I say, but I smile. Somehow I’m always smiling around him.

A little pause, and I can feel him sort of gathering up his words. I feel bad for teasing him—it’s obvious he’s being completely serious here. I open my mouth to apologize, but he holds up his hand.

“I can remember the first moment I realized you existed.” He clears his throat, but not nervously—like a storyteller, maybe. “It was in the underground mine, back in eighth grade.”

“The field trip.” Of course I remember the underground mine. There’s this awesome elevator that takes you a mile under the earth’s surface, and they turn out the lights when you’re under and it’s perfectly dark. “You remember
me
?” I add. From eighth grade? I try to remember him, but the best I can do is a faint recollection of a Spider-Man lunchbox. And that could have been any of the middle school boys, really, with their fuzzy little buzz cuts and their pant legs always too short.

“I remember your face. During the tour. There was this lady talking about that underground physics lab, you know? She was talking about dark matter and, like, neutrinos whizzing around the earth through solid bedrock, and I looked up at your face—I remember I’d just finished reading
A Wrinkle in Time
—and you were so enthralled. You reminded me … ” He trails off, ducking his head closer to his drawing.

“Of what?”
A Wrinkle in Time
is the last book I truly loved. Ms. Privett in the fifth grade read it out loud to us, and she had the most amazing Mrs. Whatsit voice. I asked my mom for a Bunsen burner that Christmas, but she thought I was kidding.

“Write something.” He taps my paper, which is still empty. “You reminded me of Meg Murry,” he says, and he shrugs. “I thought you’d be a cool person to travel through time and space with.”

I laugh. “I am pretty good at math,” I say. “Much better than poetry.”

21. Describe the kind
of student you are …

Mr. D keeps me after class to discuss my midterm grade, which he will be “forced to mark as an incomplete” if I don’t finish this stupid poem. And if he does that, my parents will get a stupid automatic email alerting them that I have to turn in the missing work within two weeks or I’ll get an F.

“So you’d best get that amazing creation off your computer this evening and bring it in to me before homeroom Monday. My grade book needs to be finalized by noon, and I’d hoped to get everything for this half of the term marked over the weekend.”

Ack, it’s like I’m right back in middle school. Okay, so I’ll write the damn poem, right? I’ll do it tonight. I will. Except I have youth group tonight. And then I have to babysit for Mrs. Rennan’s twins all day Saturday. And Kayla and I have talked like five times this week about how we’re going to the movies Saturday night … so she’ll probably call, for real this time.

“I will, Mr. D. It’s practically done on my computer, I promise.”

“Cass?” He’s doing it again—those bony teacher fingers gripping my shoulder in a clutch of concern. I take a step back, wrenching free of his worry.

“Have a good weekend!” I force a smile and head toward the door of the nearly empty classroom.

“Cass, is everything okay?” He doesn’t move to follow me, but his hands sort of float around in midair like he’s lost something important and is trying to put his finger on where he left it.

I feel bad about taking off so abruptly when he clearly would like me to confide in him. Mr. D is a genuinely nice guy, and it’s not really his fault he’s a teacher. I mean, how many jobs can there possibly be for guys who wear corduroy blazers and get all jittery over the words of some dead guy’s poetry?

“Everything’s great, Mr. D. See you Monday!” And I’m out, merging into the slipstream of hallway traffic before he can say anything else, anything that would change even the slightest fiber of my existence.

22. Your typical
Saturday night …

“You are so completely transparent, Cassandra Randall.” Kayla slides her lunch tray along the metal runners as she expresses her disdain.

“And you are so completely … the opposite of transparent.” I crash my tray into hers, just because. Because she’s here for once, with me, eating lunch. Like a best friend. Okay, so I had to beg her to get her to come, but still.

“
Enigmatic. Obscure. Ambiguous.
” She ignores my bumper-car move.

“
Arrogant. Patronizing.
” I pause, searching my brain for a vocabulary word. “
Pontificating.
”

“Uh,
no
,” she says, rolling her eyes. “And I’m talking about Divinia Starr.”

“Shhh.” Does she not get the concept of a pen name?

“It was in the newspaper, Cass. Everyone’s talking about Divinia Starr and her ridiculous tarot reading.”

I have to learn how to control my facial capillaries. “Al-
ready?” My voice is barely above a whisper.

“The paper came out while we were in the lab for social studies, so of course half the class checked out the blog.”

“And?”

Kayla sniffs. “I suppose most people were reasonably intrigued. But really, Cass. The boy who has a crush on the girl who sits next to him in English class? Could you
be
more obvious?”

Damn it, I’m blushing again. “He won’t know it’s me,” I say. “Will he?”

“Maybe I’ll tell him.”

“You wouldn’t.” I should never have told her about that. Also, what was I thinking with that entry? Okay, so it was difficult to come up with a question out of the blue. I may have borrowed from real life, or at least from wishful-thinking life. My cheeks burn.