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CASS
As soon as the shock of reading the post wears off, I’m back on my motorbike, speeding away from Lamphan beach. Anger and betrayal lap at the back of my mind like waves, but I’m fully consumed with one task: finding Logan.
The words of his text sawed at the few threads holding me together these last few days.Tell me this isn’t true.I need to see him, to explain everything I should have told him yesterday. The things I should have confessed to years ago, when we first became serious. I need to make this right.
Nausea clings to my throat, cloying and threatening as I think about what all this could mean for us. The desperation from yesterday returns in full form, clutching at my throat and pressing tighter and tighter. I need him. For the first time, it starts to sink in. I barely survived losing Robin. I wouldn’t make it through losing Logan too.
I drive like my life depends on it—which it very well might—my resolve growing with every rotation of my bike wheels against theroad. I’ll tell him everything. I’ll make him understand. We’ll get through this. We have to.
I barely see her as I near the house, so focused am I on the crushing disappointment that comes when I realize Logan’s bike isn’t parked in the driveway.
I look around, expecting him to walk into view. And that’s when I notice her. Her motorbike parked at the mouth of the Khrum Yai trail, her lips contorted into a smug smile.
I barely manage to park my bike before I’m running toward her, fists balled. I don’t know what it is I plan to do with them. I manage to stop with my face inches from hers, and a small pulse of satisfaction thrums in my muscles when I notice her flinch.
“How could you.” The words come out as a growl, more demand for an explanation than question.
This close, Brooke looks as if she hasn’t slept in days. Her face is awash with dark circles and broken capillaries, and the whites of her eyes are tinged red, though not enough to dampen her disdain. I suppose there’s no longer a reason for her to hide her real feelings for me.
“You really don’t remember me, do you?” Brooke asks slyly.
I open my mouth to claim she’s mistaken, that we’ve never met. But before I can, I note yet again the echo of something familiar in her voice. The flattened vowels, the slight twang. A sound I’ve only noticed in a few of our more recent conversations, when Brooke was focused or irritated.
“What accent is that? Where are you even from?” I ask with trepidation. “You said you were from out west.”
Brooke puts a mocking finger to her mouth. “Guess that Hudson education really did wonders for you, huh?” She begins pacing,swinging her arms at her sides casually. “By the way, have you kept up with your friends there, your old roomie? Eric, perhaps?” Her voice is razor sharp, eyes poisonous.
And then it comes to me. Ihavemet her before.
It was one time, years ago, and only for a few minutes.
That skinny girl in her clearly secondhand clothes and badly dyed hair. The quiet one who spoke with a heavy drawl, her insecurity painted across her face.
The swim house, three years ago. A night that would otherwise have blended in with hundreds of others if not for the fact that it happened only weeks before my life imploded. That girl, showing up at the house, smiling eagerly at everyone. I watched her with distaste as she drowned in Eric’s attention, thinking she was actually special enough to deserve it. I knew she’d find out eventually that she wasn’t, that Eric was just using her for that stupid contest over which guy could sleep with the most women during their dry month. It was appalling, in retrospect, but at the time, I laughed along with them. I did what I needed to do for Eric and my roommate to keep me around. They, in their infinite popularity, made me feel special, the same way Brooke has in these last few weeks. Until now.
That night, after the girl went up to Eric’s room and he came back down to the living room victorious, she caused a scene. Pounding her way down the stairs, slamming the door behind her. I remember watching as she ran out of the house, embarrassed for her. She looked at me as if I did something wrong. I didn’t understand it, and I barely thought of her again.
The Brooke I know bears no similarities to that girl. She’s changed everything about herself, swapping her secondhandclothes for more flattering styles, trading her terrible black hair for soft honey waves, her bony limbs expanding into appealing curves.
But as she stares at me now through those red-rimmed eyes, her bracelets jangling as she runs her hand through her hair, I can see a flash of it in her face. That same eagerness to be accepted that wafted off her at the swim house. I think back to the few times I brought her along to hang out with the Permanents before Lucy and all the chaos that unfolded with her death. How quick she was to laugh at a joke or throw a compliment in Greta’s direction. She may have suppressed her desire to fit in—she certainly wasn’t as obvious as that girl at the swim house—but now I can see the times when her need for acceptance poked through.
“Should we go inside?” Brooke says now, three years older and much more vindictive than that freshman girl in the swim house. She nods back down the hill to where one of my neighbors is cleaning out his gutters in preparation for the impending storm while indiscreetly shooting glances in our direction. “Wouldn’t want to cause a scene, would you?”
Normally, I would agree with her. Normal Cass would invite her in, offer her a drink, and wait for her to tell her side of the story. But that’s what got me in this trouble to begin with. My willingness to please.
That Cass is done.
“What, do you think someone will overhear what you just shared with the whole goddamn world? No, this is exactly where we’ll do it.” My hands shake, and I stuff them in my pockets. But unlike usual, the tremors aren’t from nerves; they’re from fury.
Brooke raises her eyebrows slightly, and a small part of me isproud that I’ve finally been able to surprise her, which just infuriates me even more.
“So she’s finally found her voice after all,” Brooke says in an indifferent tone I’ve never heard her use. I don’t even recognize her. This person isn’t Brooke. The woman who made me feel special, even loved. The person who I was too nervous to admit had become my best friend in only a matter of weeks.
But I guess that’s the point. She is—and always has been—a complete stranger.
“Who the fuck are you? What kind of person does this?”
Brooke’s response is immediate. “The kind of person you will never have the balls to be, clearly. One who doesn’t let bad people get away with bad things.”
