Untethered (15 page)

Cassie stays on the floor, giggling.
Get up, Cass
, I think.
Get away from him
. Kevin stays next to her. He reaches out and tucks a wet strand of hair behind her ear.

“Ugh. I’m all sticky,” Cassie says, patting her hands to her cheeks.

“Come on.” Kevin gets and up grabs her hand, pulling her after him. They slide around the kitchen once more then slip out the doors to the patio. The swimming pool is a turquoise rectangle in the darkness. It’s a warm evening, but breezy. I can hear the wind shaking the leaves on the trees.

Kevin yanks off his Abercrombie sweatshirt and the T-shirt he’s wearing underneath. He stands there in his tan Bermudas. His chest is lean but muscular. His skin looks almost iridescent in the light from the pool. It’s beautiful. I reach out to touch him, but that’s when he dives a perfect arc into the deep end. When he comes up, he shakes his head and grins at Cassie. “You got your suit on, right?”

“Yeah ... but ...”

“It’ll get the 7Up off.” Then he dives under the water again.

Cassie hesitates for a second but undoes her jeans and whips off her top. She’s wearing her jade green bikini. I was there when she bought it this summer. Both of us stood in front of the mirror, gaping. Wondering who the hell the gorgeous babe in the green swimsuit was.

Of course she bought the damn thing.

Kevin comes up out of the water just as she’s descending the pool stairs. He wipes water from his face and stares. I see him swallow and know the bikini has worked its magic.

If only she’d burp or fart or vomit. Then maybe she wouldn’t be so freakin’ gorgeous. But she doesn’t. She glides gracefully under the water and ends up about two feet in front of Kevin, near the ladder. She climbs it and sits on the edge, shivering. “Got a towel?”

Kevin hoists himself up out of the water and goes to a little shed at the back of the yard. He comes back with two beach towels. One he wraps around her, the other he drapes over his shoulders.

“Warm enough?” He sits down, leaving barely an inch between them.

“Sure,” Cassie says.
Move away from him, Cass. Get up and move away
.

“Man, I’m glad my parents and brother are gone. I get to breathe.”

Cassie just raises an eyebrow.

“Do you ever get the feeling you’re living your life for other people?” Kevin’s voice is bitter and he keeps his eyes on the water.

Cassie looks at Kevin curiously, her eyes searching his face. “Sometimes.”

Kevin moves his jaw back and forth, like he’s trying to decide something. Then he turns to Cassie and says softly, “Or like nobody even cares if you’re there?”

Now it’s Cassie who looks down at the water. She blinks a few times, then closes her eyes. When she opens them, they’re glistening.

What the hell?
I can’t believe it. They have two minutes of conversation and already Kevin has Cassie down pat! He knows exactly what to say to her.

“Do you feel like that?” Cassie hugs her towel tighter to her chest.

“My dad wants me to be the best swimmer. The best baseball player. He’d probably keel over dead if one day I came in last place. When I’m playing real good, he calls me ‘Champ’, otherwise it’s ‘young man’. I think he forgot what my actual name is.”

A smile flits across Cassie’s face. She looks at Kevin, then back at the pool. “My parents actually do forget my name sometimes.” She takes a shaky breath and lets it out. “They like to get too plastered to remember they have a kid.”

Cassie has never told anyone in the whole world about her parents drinking. No one. Ever. Except me. I’m the only person who knows how her parents really are. It’s always been one of the greatest secrets in our friendship. And now she’s telling Kevin. My weightless form suddenly feels heavy, like instead of golden light I’m made of lead.

Kevin leans toward Cassie and brushes his lips against hers. And she lets him. She totally lets him. She takes in a quick breath and he bites her bottom lip.

Then they’re at it. Kevin’s hands pulling at Cassie’s hair, Cassie holding tight to his shoulders.

NO!

I didn’t know you could feel pain outside your body, but a pain so intense slashes through me, the next thing I know I’m on the mattress in Dad’s study, gasping like I’ve just been gutted.

Oh, my God.
Oh my God. Cassie and Kevin kissed.
I hug myself tight and do my best to hold back tears.

I knew it.

I could spy on Kevin every day. Learn all there is to know about him. Tutor him until he’s freakin’ Picasso. But it still wouldn’t change the fact that
I’m not her
.
All he wants is her.

I feel dizzy and nauseous and empty. Completely empty. I can’t believe Cassie did this.

Come on, Sylvie. It’s not like you really have a chance with him. It’s not that big of a deal. You love her. Let her be happy.

But it is a big deal. And she’s also supposed to love me.

With numb hands I reach for my cell, and dial her number. I mess up three times before I’m able to actually complete the call. I hold the phone to my ear as it rings. And rings. And rings.

Finally, she answers. “Hey.”

“What are you doing?”

“Huh? I ... I ... we’re at the party. You know that.”

“Having fun?” I can’t keep the sarcasm out of my voice.

She doesn’t answer right away. I can hear the sound of splashing and yelling in the background. Other people have finally made their way to the pool. “Yeah. It’s fun. What’s going on?”

“Forget it,” I say and hang up.

I sit and stare at the wall forever, letting time stretch out and out.

Then I hear the apartment door open and shut; Sam is back.

I go out into the living room. Dad’s on the couch with his laptop. He looks up and says, “Oh! I thought you were sleeping.” I just shrug and move past him to sit at the bar and wait while Sam makes himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

He squishes his two pieces of bread together, takes a big bite and half-sits on the counter. It’s odd; one thing about Sam is that he always looks ... I don’t know ... like his clothes don’t fit right, or maybe like he isn’t comfortable in them. But standing there with his PB and J at this particular moment, he looks at ease.

“Whoa,” he says when he notices me sitting there. “I forgot about your face. I hope it’s better by Monday.”

“The doctor said it will be. Mostly.”

Sam nods and I mouth that I want to talk to him about the party, but not in front of Dad. So he comes into Dad’s study with me.

He leans against the desk, but suddenly can’t stay still. He paces the room as he talks. “It was so awesome, Sylvie. I think... I think they’re my friends now.”

I swallow a rawness in my throat. They’re supposed to be
my
friends.

“They were nice. Not fake. And then I did the Mentos trick — they’d never tried it before.”

“I thought everyone had done that,” I say. But I’m stalling, what I really need to know is if Kevin and Cassie hooked up.

“But that’s not the big news—”

I brace myself.
This is it.

“—the neighbor called the cops! We had to book out the back and through that same neighbor’s yard to get away!” He looks at me and shakes his head. “We were all ready to crap our pants!”

The news isn’t as juicy as it normally would be. In fact, I’m barely listening. “And ... uh ... Kevin? At the party? Did he ... or Cassie ... did they, like ... get together?”

Sam looks embarrassed. “Kevin and Cassie?”

“Yes, Sam. Kevin and Cassie.”

“Look. I don’t want to talk about other people and what they do, okay? If you want to know, ask Cassie. Don’t ask me.” He’s got his thumbnail in his mouth and he’s gnawing at it like he’s starving. That’s all I need to confirm how uncomfortable he is. All I need to confirm that the kiss I saw was real.

I nod and turn toward the window. He leaves and I sit staring out at the streetlight and the dark sky behind it. My stomach is churning.

I lie down on the mattress and wait for sleep to come. But before it does, I slip out of my body. I’m surrounded by the shadows and their incessant buzzing. They whip out words I can’t quite grasp. But they repeat a phrase, over and over. I know they’re trying to tell me something, but I can’t seem to concentrate on the meaning.

They go with me to Chicago, where I hover above the John Hancock building and look at the lights of the city. I try to enjoy its beauty. Try to get the same high I usually get when I’m out of my body. But it’s lost its edge.

When I’m back in my body, the air in the room is chilly. My mouth tastes like hell. I can still hear the shadows’ buzzing, like an echo, inside my head. I can still feel their forked tongues tickling my ears. All of a sudden I get clarity and hear their words as one liquored voice:

Become her.
It says.
Figure out how.

In the morning, Cassie calls to tell me how the police took down people’s names and how they threatened Kevin that if he had another party they would give him trouble. But, apparently, this time they just wanted to scare everyone. They didn’t call Kevin’s parents. But Cassie says Kevin almost wished they had so that he could let the cleaning lady scrub the place down. As it was, he, Bryce and Ashley were going to have to spend all day doing nothing but mopping up.

“So, how do you know all this?” I push the phone closer to my ear.

“Oh ... Kevin called me. To let me know how things turned out. Since we left without knowing.”

“He called you.”

“It’s not like that, Sylvie.”

“What happened last night, Cass? Between you and Kevin?”

She hesitates and I think she’s about to tell me. Instead she sighs. “Nothing. Nothing for you to worry about.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“Let it go, Sylvie.”

But she should know I can’t.

Nineteen

A Memory: Stupid Girls

The summer we were ten years old, Cassie and I held our fingers over my mother’s biggest, shiniest knife and looked into each other’s eyes.

“Ready?” Cassie asked. Her eyes shone. She dragged her front teeth across the plump cushion of her bottom lip.

The knife was her idea, not mine. I would have gone with a needle.

But a few hours earlier Cassie had come over to my place with tears in her eyes, upset about her parents drinking. As usual.

There was never any violence. Never anything to get too freaked out about. But sometimes it wore her out. Like this time. This time she wilted against the back of the couch and whispered, “They barely notice I’m there.”

I laced my fingers in hers. We sat a long time, dangling our flip-flops from our toes, the too-sweet smell of honeysuckle coming in from the open windows.

Suddenly, Cassie sat up straight. Her left flip-flop dropped to the floor. “You’re my best friend, right?”

“Yeah.”

“We’ve been through everything together.”

We had. From what everyone called my ‘fainting spells’, to getting our pants pulled down by the neighborhood boys, to an attempt at running away, to living through Sam’s practical jokes. And more.

“And we’ll be friends forever? We’ll always be able to count on each other, right?” Cassie spoke quickly now, her grip on my hand getting tighter.

Her intensity wasn’t exactly scaring me, but it did make me squirm just a little. “Forever.”

She narrowed her green eyes at me. “Prove it.”

So it came down to this: An extremely sharp knife and an oath to always be best friends. Which is why we were standing there, in my kitchen, my mom’s cutlery in our hands and why Cassie’s face was flushed with satisfaction and mine with fear.

“The oath,” Cassie prompted. We said it together, our two voices melding into one:

Blood Sisters, blood sisters as long as we live. Always together. We always forgive.

Best friends forever, best friends for life. As proof we share our blood with this knife.

“On the count of three,” Cassie said.

“Uhhh ... ”

“You can’t hesitate, Sylvie. If you hesitate that means you don’t take it seriously.” She fixed me a look that managed to be both demanding and pleading at the same time.

Where we gripped the handle, my palm was slick with sweat.

She started to count: “One ... two ... three ...”

Both of us slid the pad of our index fingers down the blade at the same time.

The blood came first. Bright, bright blood. And then the sharp, stinging bolt of pain. The knife dropped to the tile floor with a loud clang. Cassie sucked in a huge breath. I stared at the red dripping onto my feet and cried out.

We’d been intending to rub our blood into each other’s cut. But before we could, I felt a prickle of fear and then nothing. Nothing at all.

Dizziness seized me as I hovered near a cobweb in the corner, watching as my mom ran into the kitchen and took control, her voice strange and surreal from where I was.

“What are you girls thinking?” she shrieked. “Do you know what kind of infections and diseases you can get from doing this kind of thing? You’re lucky you didn’t cut your fingers off!” From above I saw my body go limp, my head pitching forward and my legs buckling. “Oh, my Lord, Sylvie! Don’t faint!” When Mom thrust our hands under cold water, I came back to my body with a jerk. “Stay with me!” pleaded Mom as she shoved my raw and aching finger further under the rushing tap.

Mom cleaned our cuts and wrapped them in Barbie Band-Aids. It was only then that Cassie and I touched fingers. We hooked them around each other and squeezed, the pain from the fresh cut throbbing up to our elbows. But no fluids were shared, so officially we were just two kids with deep cuts. Not blood sisters.

Even so, we took that oath — Band-Aids or not we took it. “We’re blood sisters,” Cassie says even now, six years later. “No matter how mad we get, we have to forgive.”

Or do we?

October 28
^th