Sometimes Never, Sometimes Always (32 page)

“Erica, wait,” says my father, but she’s already up from the table, and then she’s gone. “I hope you’re happy,” he says, his face turned away from me. People say that—
I hope you’re happy
—but they always mean the opposite.
I hope you’re miserable.
And I am. The house is silent. He sighs. “Bring me the cards.”

I suppose I could argue. I could tell him they aren’t here, or that I’ve already destroyed them. I could stand my ground and fight with him. I’m seventeen years old; he can’t treat me like an infant. But I’ve done so much damage in the last few minutes that I simply fetch the cards and the little booklet, the key to the mystery, from my room and hand them over. He pulls the kitchen garbage out from under the sink and tosses them in without looking. “Filthy,” he says, and at last his eyes land on me.

“Grounded,” he says, his mouth drawn tight around the syllables of his sentencing. He yanks the computer cords out of the wall and wraps them around his hand as he speaks, disconnecting my online alter ego with a severe finality. “To your room. You’ll spend the day tomorrow with your mother and Pastor Fordham volunteering at church. You will
not
be attending the Winter Carnival.” He wipes his hand across his clammy brow. “We’ll discuss this in the morning.”

51. Something you
try to avoid …

I keep waiting for her to barge in, to talk to me—even to yell at me. To tell me she still loves me. Dinnertime comes and goes, and I hear the sound of silverware being loaded into the dishwasher. I can’t hear any evidence of normal conversation, and even Dicey doesn’t talk in a voice loud enough for me to hear through the walls of my bedroom. My prison. I sit on my stupid pastel-rainbow bed and stare at the center of the floor, where a lonely tarot card still lies, face down.

Won’t Eric stop in to relieve me from this solitary confinement? He could at least bring me my phone from my backpack behind the front door, even though the only person I could possibly call would be Kayla, and I don’t think now is the time to talk to her. She wouldn’t come close to understanding how much this sucks.

I don’t know what to do with all the resolve I had to “be myself.” Okay, so maybe I thought confessing would change everything, would open up this amazing dialogue between me and my parents while sappy music played in the background, or maybe it would throw us all into a time warp where none of this would have ever happened. At the very least, I guess I hoped that coming clean to my parents would make me feel better about Drew—like maybe she could someday forgive me for all the stupid things I’ve done—or perhaps I hoped I’d be instantly reinvented as a better person, the kind of person who takes responsibility for her actions and stands up for the weak and the oppressed.

Yeah. I’m that stupid. I roll off my bed and, still skirting the mystery card on my floor, I crouch down to say hello to Pumpkin and Nut, who squeak happily. I wonder if I could sneak out to the hall closet for some fresh bedding and clean their cage. It would feel good to do something right, something that doesn’t ruin anyone’s life or hurt them or disappoint them, and the sight of a joyful guinea pig in a clean cage is pretty much the greatest thing ever. I gather up their food and water dishes. “Be right back, girls,” I say, and already, speaking in a soothing voice helps calm me. “I’ll bring you fresh water and hay, sweethearts.”

I press my ear against the door, but I can’t hear anything, not even the evening news, which my dad almost never misses. Okay, so … did they all go out and leave me here? Like, who cares about Cassandra, she doesn’t believe in God. Maybe they’re out hiring an exorcist, or whatever non-denominational equivalent might be available to cleanse their home and their daughter from the evil spirits.

Whatever. They can’t keep me in my room forever. My hand rests on the doorknob but I don’t turn it, not yet. This is so dumb. Am I really cowering in my room, hungry and thirsty, afraid to venture out into the rest of my house? Stupid!

I open the door and stomp my way noisily to the bathroom across the hall, risking a look down the hallway toward my parents’ room. The door is closed, no light visible underneath.

“Whatever.” I drop my armload of bottles and dishes into the bathroom sink, fill it with warm water, and wash them quickly, relying on the night light so that I don’t have to look at myself in the mirror.

I rinse and dry the bottles carefully and brace myself again for entering the enemy territory that has become my own home. Once again, all the doors in the hallway are closed, and everyone seems to be either gone or silently ensconced in their rooms. I tiptoe into the kitchen. “They could’ve at least brought me some food,” I say, and then I find myself actually
crying
when I open the fridge and see the plate, neatly wrapped in plastic and waiting for me. I’m such a mess. I toss the plate into the microwave and watch it spin for a moment before my gaze falls on the cabinet under the sink.

The door is still equipped with child safety locks, even though Dicey’s the youngest in our family. My parents always intended on having a whole series of children, stair-steps down to the babe in arms, but Mom had some medical stuff between me and Dicey, and then what happened with the baby, and I guess in some ways we’ve all been unwilling to think about it being the end. In any case, I’m so used to this that my fingers push the plastic latch down automatically and slide the door open. My heart is thumping. Why am I so nervous? They’re my cards, after all.

I pull the trash can out of the cupboard and tilt it toward me. The cards should be near the top, but I don’t see them, so I gingerly turn over some of the contents. There’s the broccoli stems from last night’s salad, some of my brother’s morning oatmeal … no cards. Which means my father must have removed them. Was he worried I’d dig them out? Or did he want to personally destroy them?

The microwave dings. I wash my hands and the lemon scent of the dish soap wafts up, bringing a pang to my chest as I think of my mom’s eyes, the way they were closed off to me, so distant and hard. I’ve hurt her—there’s no question, but if I do what she wants, I’m only going to be pretending again. I shake my hands into the sink and grab a fork from the drawer.

It doesn’t work like that. I’m not just someone’s daughter or someone’s best friend or anyone’s puppet, either. And I’m not going to spend all day tomorrow at the church. Just because I’m a teenager doesn’t mean I should have to believe everything that my parents believe.

I take my plate out of the microwave, balance it and the guinea pig dishes in one hand, and pull the sack of bedding and the bottle of vinegar spray out of the hall closet with the other. I use my right elbow to open the door to my bedroom and then nearly drop everything when Eric clears his throat from inside my room.

“Sorry!” He jumps up to take some stuff from me. “I didn’t mean to scare you, honest.” Pumpkin, curled up against his chest, chirps at the disturbance, so he sits back down and cuddles her. “And I didn’t mean to scare you, either,” he whispers.

“Took you long enough.” I sit down and sulk, nibbling at the chicken on my plate. “You said they would be open-minded.”

“Give them time,” he says, taking Nut out of the cage and settling both pigs on the floor under a sheet of newspaper. “They’ll come around.” He picks up the tarot card from the floor and tosses it at me. “You forgot one.”

Once again I find myself with a mouthful of food I can’t swallow. The card lands on my bed, still face down, promising me some glimpse of destiny. “Eric, I can’t do this.” I stare at the card.

“You can’t do what?” He shrugs, noticing my face. “I’ll wait until you’re finished eating to clean the cage.”

“No, it’s not that … ” I flip the card over.
The Hanged Man
, Major Arcana XII. The sight of the guy hanging there, upside down from a tree, makes my stomach plunge; the few bites of chicken I’ve managed to swallow threaten to come back up. The look on the man’s face is so grim, like he’s watching his own death.

“I can’t stay here. I can’t spend tomorrow at church. I can’t let this happen.” I have to be at the carnival tomorrow, even if it means defying my parents. Even if it means scaring them. “Look.” I hand the card to Eric.

“Cass. What, do you think there’s going to be a lynch mob at the school carnival? You think Ronnie and Blake are going to string me up for giving Gavin a ring in front of a gay snowman?” He shakes his head. “They’re not killers. They’re obnoxious little boys who don’t have the sense to think their own thoughts.”

“But the card—” I grab it out of his hands. “Darin told me about this other Cassandra. In ancient Troy.” I trace my finger over the wounded face of the hanged figure. “She was a prophetess, and she was always right, but nobody believed her.” I stuff the card into my pocket but my hand encounters a folded triangle of paper. My stupid hate note. I pull it out, unfold it, hold it up for Eric to see.
U BETTER WATCH UR BACK
. “I’m not good enough at reading the cards. This Hanged Man could mean anything, but don’t you see? It has to mean
something.
What if something terrible happens and I can’t stop it?” What if something terrible has already happened, and I can’t fix it?

“Terrible things do happen, Cass. But so do good things. And sometimes we can’t tell the difference between the two until afterward.” He grins, as though he can erase all the bad things in the world with a flash of those dimples.

Maybe he’s right, but what if he’s wrong? “I’ve got to go,” I say. I jump to my feet, making the piggies squeak in surprise. “Don’t tell
anyone
I’m gone until tomorrow.” And then I leave, before he can say another word.

52. Where would
you run to …

I feel totally conspicuous skidding on the icy sidewalks, running away from home. I’m certain that every approaching car is full of spies ready to report my whereabouts, even though I’m praying that nobody knows I’m missing yet. It’s late, and it’s cold, and I’ve been walking forever, with nowhere to go, stupidly. I’m also starving, but at least I thought to grab my backpack with my phone in it. I pull my hood up and burrow my face into my scarf, hoping Kayla got my text, hoping she’ll find a way to come and get me even though she’s grounded from her hearse. She hasn’t returned my message, but she’s my only hope.

I’m starting to lose that hope—and the feeling in my toes—when I hear the rattling exhaust of a car coming up the hill. It slows, comes to a stop beside me. I pull open the passenger door. “H-how?” My teeth chatter. “I d-didn’t have your number.”

Darin grins. “That’s because I’ve been too lame to call you. I figured you’d try to walk all the way to Kayla’s. Insane, on a night like tonight, Cass. Now quick, get in before you freeze solid out there.” He switches the heater to high and I climb in. “Are you okay?”

I’m still shivering. “I’m despicable,” I say. I fiddle with the mittens on my lap. “And I kind of need a place to stay.”

Darin takes his eyes off the road for a moment and studies my face. “Eric called,” he says. “I told him I’d call him back when I found you.”

I don’t answer. I can’t move, can’t speak, not until he tells me I can stay.

“Cass, it’s
January
.” He keeps driving, heading into the country north of town. “If you’re going to run away, you need to plan it for a summer month.” We pass the turnoff to Plath’s Lookout, and we both glance up the snowy road as though we could see, in the darkness, whose car might be parked at the barrier, the windows steamy.

Darin nods. “Ever been up there?”

My teeth have finally stopped chattering. “I like seeing the sunsets.” I don’t mention the last time I was there, but the thought of it is heavy and sharp, like I’m holding onto a bundle of those swords on the tarot cards.

“Yeah, me too,” says Darin. He turns off the highway onto a narrow, snow-covered driveway and parks beside a neat wood pile. “So, Cass?” He glances over at me. “Uh … would you like to stay here tonight?”

I bite my lip. “In your tree house?” My voice is a tiny squeak.

He nods. “But you have to tell your brother,” he says.

I rest my head against the seat, staring up at the star-studded sky, perfectly clear and freezing cold. “And I have to tell
you
.” My voice is too quiet to hear.

“Everything’s going to be fine,” he says, his voice soft in the darkness. “But we need to get you warmed up.” And then he leans in toward me, and I close my eyes on the stars and the cold sky. This time his mouth lingers on mine, and I wrap my hands tightly around my seat belt, clinging to this moment, to this breathless kiss.

53. If you were a
comic book hero …

The “tree house” is cozy once Darin builds up the fire. I sit on his bunk, wrapped up in an army-green sleeping bag, watching him prod the stove like an expert. “You open this vent if the fire gets low,” he says, demonstrating. “Adding wood is simple. You don’t have to freeze.” He looks up at me with a shy smile, but his eyes are tired.

“Maybe you should stay,” I say. “I mean, to keep me from freezing to death and all.” Okay, so it’s a bad time for awkward flirting, but I get something like a real smile out of him.