Sometimes Never, Sometimes Always (16 page)

“That’s so … free.” I yearn for my five paragraph essay. For thesis statements and parenthetical notations. “I need guidelines.”

“I know. I’m hopeless about rhyme.” She looks thoughtful for a moment and then flips back a couple of pages in her notebook. There are pages and pages of poems, all with those little hearts dotting the letter i’s. “Did you ever show my poem to Annika and Britney?” She keeps her eyes on the words in front of her, one thumb folding up the bottom corner of the pages and then smoothing it out—folding and smoothing, folding and smoothing.

I can’t lie to her, even though I don’t really like her. Or …
well, it’s not that I don’t like her. I can’t quite make sense of her, the pungent scent of her in the middle of this perfect room, her bad poetry in the middle of her kindness. “Not yet,” I say, which is another one of those part-truths that keep me here in the middle.

“Oh, good,” she says. Her fingers twitch and then a whole sheaf of pages is torn loose from the spiral binding, stray bits of paper raining on the perfect carpet. “That one was no good. Can you give these instead? I mean, I don’t know exactly which ones, but maybe you could read them and pick a couple that you think are best?” Her hand trembles a little as she holds out the pages.

I take them. What else can I do? I hold them in front of me, staring at the verses on the first page in the same way I stare at the script font on sappy birthday cards, pretending to read with an appreciative smile and a nod. “Aw, that’s really beautiful.” What is? The imagery? The sentiment? The handwriting? I hope she doesn’t ask me to elaborate. There’s no way I’m going to read these. I’m not going to get to know the secret pain of Drew Godfrey so I can feel like even more of a complete asshole when I won’t wear her BFF necklace and make Annika and Britney be nice to her at school.

“Maybe they’ll inspire you a little when you’re working on your song,” says Drew. “I know you’ve inspired me.” She looks up at me, her eyes all shiny and stupid.

“Um, really?” Oh god, this awkward moment needs to end.

Her face goes pink. “Well, you know.”

I don’t know. But,
oh god
, she’s going to tell me.

“Like … well, like with Gunnar, you know? You stick up for people, Cass. You’re
nice
. And like at church, I like the fact that you think about stuff instead of just accepting what Terry or Pastor says.”

“No, I don’t.” Okay, so I do, but I never say anything. I don’t speak up—I roll my eyes and maybe send a sarcastic text to Kayla. I don’t do anything …
inspirational
. And I guess I’ll believe her, that I stood up to that idiot Gunnar a long time ago, but how hard is it to tell some annoying boy to stop acting like a moron? “I’m not nice.”

She smiles. “Well, you’re nice to me.”

“I’m not nice.” Right now here I am, pretending to read her poetry, breathing shallowly so as not to gag on her stench, calling her a Shrew behind her back. Walking away from her with Annika, not defending her.

“You are
so
nice.”

Okay, so we could do this all evening, but it doesn’t matter. None of it matters, and my poem is still not getting written, so I still have an F in English and I’m still the most uninteresting person on the face of the earth, except, on top of being boring, now I’m also a mean girl who somehow has fooled this slightly nauseating girl into thinking I like her and that I’m nice and really, all I am is a fraud who believes in nothing.

And I start to cry. Again.

Stupid, just like that, to start crying in Drew Godfrey’s bedroom. What, do I want her to feel sorry for
me
? Oh god, and what if she
hugs
me? I’ll throw up, I swear. I drag the sleeve of my fleece jacket across my eyes and scoot backwards a few inches across her bedroom carpet so she’ll get the idea.

“Cass?” She doesn’t try to get any closer, thank god.

“I’m okay.” I’m okay. Perfect. What the hell, Cassandra? You’re okay.

“Do you want to bake cookies?”

“What?”

“Cookies. I always bake when I’m stuck.”

“Stuck?”

“Stuck, like, emotionally, I guess.” Drew laughs. “Like when you’re feeling something and you don’t want to be feeling it anymore, but you’re not sure what to do to get rid of it? I get stuck a lot. And I eat too many cookies, according to my mom.” Her smile is sad, and I think about this, about what Drew’s mom might be like, about how she might be as disgusted with her daughter as everyone else.

“I’m not stuck. I’m fine.” I speak too quickly. Maybe my own mom is disgusted with me. I think of the way her face falls every morning during prayer. It’s bad enough that my best friend doesn’t like me anymore, but what if my own mom couldn’t love me? Surely I don’t fit into her life any more seamlessly than Drew fits into this polished, magazine-photo home.

“It’s okay,” says Drew, just as quickly. “I know I don’t need to eat any more cookies. I know it’s not good for my complexion, and it’s definitely not good for my stupid diet.” She leans back against the side of her bed, the notebook falling off her lap to the floor.

“No!” My voice is so loud, and this is so stupid. “No, that’s not what I meant. See? I’m trying to be nice, and I’m such a failure.”

“You? You’re not a failure.”

“I’m failing English.”

“You’ll pass English. You just have to write that poem about yourself.”

“Okay, but I’m stuck.”

“I know.” She giggles. “So let’s bake some cookies.”

25. If you were a tree …

I walk into the kitchen after spending the whole day chasing six-year-old twins, and the last thing I want to do is take a family shopping trip, but Mom’s trying to pile everyone into the van for new shoes. “I’ve got homework,” I say. Which is true, of course, although I have no energy for poetry right now.

My dad frowns. “You never showed us the project that kept you from youth group on Wednesday.”

“I turned that one in.” Liar, liar. “They’re really piling it up for midterm,” I say, and then I curse myself.
Don’t remind them about midterm.

Mom’s gaze is unreadable. “Didn’t you say that you and Kayla were finally going to see a movie tonight?”

“She has a date.”

Her eyes widen, as if I’ve told her that Kayla can’t go to the movies because she’s busy getting an abortion.

“It happens, Mom. I mean, to other people.” I try not to think about the fact that I spent my Friday night baking snickerdoodles with the stinkiest girl in the school. Worse, that I had fun doing it.

“Are you sure you don’t need new shoes?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.” I roll my eyes and retreat to the safety of my room, where I wait to hear the front door lock before I reach into the back of the closet and pull out the cards.

I wait an extra ten minutes before logging onto the computer, enough to allow for them to remember something they forgot and come back for it. My hand sweats on the mouse as I log into my new email. It’s the first time I’ve managed to log in since the ad appeared in the paper.

Divinia Starr has forty-seven emails in her inbox. Forty-seven. One is from the email service. Twenty-three are comments on the blog. As I read them, it kind of amazes me how much it means to me, that people read my post and took the time to comment. Some of the comments are stupid, and a couple are predictably religious—evil tarot, blah blah blah—but a good number of the comments are people actually complimenting me on the advice I gave to the kid with the crush, asking me how I learned to read the cards so well, and one says I’m an awesome writer. Flattery or whatever be damned—it feels
good
to be recognized. It feels good to know that this is all mine, and that people like it. They like me.

The other twenty-three emails are questions from
Gordon Gazette
readers, questions ranging from the skeptical—
Tell me what I had for breakfast yesterday
—to the heartbreaking—
Can you help me find where my dad went because my baby sister and I really miss him?

I skim through the subject lines, looking for one that would make an interesting tarot reading, and open one that says,
Complicated new beginnings—please help!

I’m starting a new school, and things are really complicated right now in my home. You could even say dangerous. So … I have to leave, to start over, and I’m afraid I might never make the kind of friends I had at my old school. I’m worried everyone will hate me, and I’m even more afraid that my secrets will follow me there, that no new beginning is possible at this point. Are my fears going to come true, Divinia?

Sterling Creek is a small town. I think of the girl Annika and Britney were gossiping about. The girl who was starting a new school because of a complicated, even dangerous, family secret. Jillian. I shuffle, reading through her question.
Are my fears going to come true?

I spread the cards out on the kitchen table in one long snake of blue diamonds, fanning out in a perfect line, the repeating parallel lines of their white borders blurring into a staircase up to the stars. A new school, a complicated home.

The first card. An Ace of Wands. The beginning of everything—of life, of adventures. A forest, an invention. Something alive or with the order of life. I think of the girl they talked about, molested by her father. Even if this is not her, I imagine her. Jillian. Her new school.

I turn the next card. Eight of Cups, crossing her. This is shyness, the girl’s shame, impeding her progress along the path.

Two of the next four cards are also cups, played upside down, empty. In her recent past, the knight—a swindler. Clearly the girl’s father. In the immediate future, a period of stationary life, a sort of feeling of being stalled out. Then there’s the Justice card, and the Four of Wands, which shows a picture of a joyful wedding. The reading is totally hopeful.
Hang in there, Jillian. It’s going to get better.

I flip the final four, all big cards. The Page of Wands. The Page of Swords. The Star. And finally, up at the top, the Nine of Swords, looking grim and nightmarish in the “final results” spot. There’s got to be another reading for that card, something that doesn’t look as grim as the card looks, with all those swords hanging in the background, the woman seated and weeping. I spend a few minutes reading through my guidebook, puzzling out the possibilities.
Death, despair, shame, miscarriage.
Yikes.

I titled my first reading “Starr-y Eyed,” with a play on Divinia Starr’s name, so this entry is called “Starr-Strong,” which is not as clever as the last time, but whatever. I guess if I were a brilliant writer I wouldn’t be failing English, right? So instead of worrying about how it sounds or looking at my notes, I set everything aside—especially the picture of that final card and the swords so heavy—and I write to this girl as though I’m writing her a note and slipping it into the slots of her locker. A warning and a tiny sliver of hope.

Dear Complicated:

Okay, so the best thing about what I’m going to tell you is that I’m going to begin and end with talking about how strong you are. This is a good thing. I know you’ve had to be way too strong already—what with this complicated at-home stuff and the cards in your recent and distant past, which suggest betrayals and a swindler of the worst kind, the most damaging kind ever—but your strength is far from gone.

This is a beginning for you, like a seedling sprouting up from the fallen log of your old self, the self that has been hollowed out by your circumstances.

When you first start your new school, it may feel for a while like you are not making any progress, like you would have moved forward from everything a lot faster at your old school, even with the complications, even with the secrets. Even with who might know about them, and what they might say. But this reading also tells me that the people who call themselves your friends now are not true to you; they aren’t the right kind of friends. They couldn’t possibly stick with you through it all, and they certainly wouldn’t stand beside you and block the wind or fight off enemies to give your seedling self a chance to grow and change.

They would try to keep you the same, to define you by your past, to keep you from sprouting new leaves. They would block out the sun to feed their own need of feeling big and tall and powerful.

There’s someone coming into your life, a new best friend, maybe. This person is strong, too, but in a different way. Not like a tree, but sharp like a sword. She will be able to cut through most of your crap, and I mean that in a nice way, you know. You are so steady, so enduring; nobody knows what you’re going through. But this person will see right through that, and while it may be difficult to let her in, remember that she will be a friend unlike the ones you had before.

The hardest part about what I have to tell you is that the final cards are pretty bleak. You worry about being disappointed, or about being a disappointment, and this tendency puts you in danger of becoming a self-fulfilling prophesy. The ending card shows uncertainty, anxiety, even loss. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows. But I told you the best part of this reading was found in your strength, and so I want to remind you of the fact that your seedling strength is sinewy and alive. Good luck, Complicated, and you’re making the right choice in your move!