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Actually, she didn’t.
She loved Acacia, because Acacia was the best friend she’d ever had. Acacia was stubborn and self-righteous and a little wild, but she was the most loyal person Cassie knew. And she was on her side.
She didn’t tell Parker. Didn’t tell anyone. She didn’t bring Erin up again, unless Cassie did first. Even then, she was the perfect friend—let Cassie whine a little bit, offered some comfort, then told her, “You really need to get laid. Like, by someone who isn’t Parker’s mom.”
Cassie knew this, but she didn’t do it. Spending too much time in the shop was a better way to get her mind off Erin than sleeping with someone else would’ve been. She’d probablycomparethem, which would be worse. Plus, the shop was more productive. She had reasons to spend too much time there that didn’t include thinking too much about Erin. Namely: Caltech. At the beginning of ninth grade, her school had students take one of those absurd “what career are you suited for” questionnaires. It had told Cassie to be a race car driver or a plumber. It told her that she had problems with authority and wasn’t built for academia. After, she’d googled “careers making planes” then “best aerospace engineering schools.” She found Caltech, and never looked back.
But it was about more than proving the test wrong. She’d always wanted to fly. As a kid, she’d spent entire summers outside, sunup to sundown. She climbed every tree she could. She rode her bike, a little farther each time, until she knew every street in a ten-mile radius of their town. It was about freedom, and going fast, and getting away. All things she still wanted to do. She’d never been out of the eastern time zone. California seemed dazzling. Sunshine and palm trees and a whole other ocean. More than two thousand miles from the trailer she grew up in. It was a different world.
Working in the shop was better than hanging out with people anyway. She didn’t like that many people. Leaving Acacia behind in Greensboro freshman year had been one of the hardest things she’d ever done. Keckley was a small school, but it was still full of strangers. Going from a best friend who’d known her basically since before she’d known herself to a place she knew no one had Cassie retreating into herself. She’d found Seth, and fell into a friend group, but she’d still always felt on the outside of it.
In the shop, though, Cassie fit. Her head didn’t go quiet, exactly, it just focused. Numbers and calculations and how to make whatever she was working on go faster. She never felt sad or scared or lonely. She didn’t worry about money. Things just made sense in the shop. Shebelonged. In a way she never had anywhere else. Certainly not in Greensboro, which wasn’t even that small, but felt it. Everyone always knowing her business, or thinking they did.
She was that poor girl with clothes from Goodwill. She was the skinny white kid who tagged along with the homeschooling Black family. In high school, Cassie was the promiscuous bisexual who probably wouldn’t be into chicks if she’d had a father figure. After her third speeding ticket, cops acted like she was reckless with her life, instead of understanding she just liked going fast.
And it always came back to her family life, or lack thereof. No one ever understood that Cassie was over it, past it, better without them. Her mom had never once chosen her, not over drugs or alcoholor some scraggly dude who often looked likehewould’ve chosen Cassie, if he’d had the chance. People never knew what to do with that—most hadn’t in Greensboro, so she decided not to give people at Keckley a chance to not get it. She didn’t share. She’d tell stories of Acacia and Mama Webb and her favorite classes in high school. She’d skip over the absent mom and never-known father and the way she’d wanted to get out of that town so badly.
Seth had known. Cassie had told him enough that he understood, mostly. She’d opened up. Look where that had gotten her.
Weird homeschooling family or not, the Webbs were her saving grace. Who knew what kind of trouble Cassie would’ve gotten into without them? Mama Webb’s warningCassandra Maureen Klein,and Mr. Ben’s quietly raised eyebrows when she and Acacia were pushing things too far, as if sayingYou sure you want to do this?or his heavy sigh, the physical manifestation ofI’m not mad, just disappointed.
Who knew what kind of rut Cassie would get stuck in now, if Acacia didn’t drag her out of the workshop Friday night, force her into a shower, and demand she come to a party?
That was how Cassie ended up in someone’s house with way too many people, everyone drunk and loud and rowdy. She was watching beer pong when Parker came tumbling into her.
“Cassie, Cassie, Cassie,” Parker giggled. “Cassie. You need to take my phone.”
“We pregamed the same amount, princess,” Cassie said. “How are you already this drunk? Why do I need to take your phone?”
Parker ignored the first question. “You need to take my phone so I don’t do something stupid like text Sam inappropriate things I want to do to her, okay? Okay, great.”
She slipped her phone into Cassie’s pocket and headed back to the living room-slash-dance floor.
Cassie would not be joining. She’d never been one for rhythm, saw more grace in fuel injectors than in the way people in the living room were writhing against each other. Everyone was pressed together. Cassie didnotneed that many people touching her, thank you. Parker, meanwhile, had already disappeared in the crowd, back to Acacia’s side, likely; Kaysh had loved dances since her mom stopped homeschooling her and she’d finally been allowed to go. Cassie slid her hand into her pocket next to Parker’s phone and went looking for a bit of quiet.
The thumping bass was muffled in the backyard, at least, though there were still plenty of people around. Cassie slipped to the corner of the porch, as secluded as she could get. She kept her hand on Parker’s phone the whole time. Parker was trying to break her habit of drunk texting, so instead she’d picked up a habit of handing her phone off to Cassie or Acacia. For all the self-control that girl had while sober, get her drunk and she lost every ounce of it. Last week, playing king’s cup in Parker and Acacia’s room, Cassie hadn’t paid enough attention. Parker had pickpocketed the phone back, shot off a text toSethbefore Cassie could stop her. She knew to be vigilant now.
Then Cassie had a really stupid idea.
It was a hideously stupid idea; she knew it was. There was absolutely no good reason to get Erin’s number out of Parker’s phone. She would never be able to explain to Parker why she had it if she ever found out. There was no way she would ever even use it.
That rationalized it for her, though. She wasn’t actually going to text Erin or anything. But wouldn’t it be funny if she had her number? There was nothing wrong with having it if she didn’t use it.
She saved it under MILF first, because she was drunk and that was hilarious, but it also kind of seemed like she was asking to get caught. So she switched it to Aaron, spelled wrong so if Parker saw it she wouldn’t get suspicious. Yeah, drunk Cassie could scheme with the best of them.
So now she had Erin’s phone number. Not that it mattered, because she wasn’t going to do anything with it. She totally wasn’t. That’d be ridiculous.
She headed back inside before she could come up with any other really stupid ideas.
On the way to the living room, some people she’d never met before offered her shots in the kitchen. It’s not like she was going to say no.
Her new friends poured her a tequila shot and someone procured lime slices and salt. Acacia swore tequila made Cassie do dumb things, but Cassie was pretty sure it was more theamountof tequila. A shot or two couldn’t hurt. They toasted to the basketball team that had apparently won, then threw the shots back and bit quickly into the slices of lime. It was cheap tequila—cheaper than Cassie’d had in a while, but she still liked it, liked the burn of the alcohol and the lime both. Everyone poured another, and they started arguing over what they should toast to next. Cassie lasted through maybe thirty seconds of that before taking her shot alone, to a chorus of groans.
“C’mon, dude, that’s no fun,” one of them said.
She waved them off and continued toward the living room. She’d take their booze but she wasn’t going to hang around with people who would rather fight about what to cheers to than take their fucking shots.
She was pretty drunk now, a little wobbly. She wondered where Parker and Acacia—
