The Beginning of Everything(12)

Toby slid off the desk and practically choked when he saw Cassidy.

“What are you doing here?” he spluttered.

“You two know each other?” I frowned, glancing back and forth between them. Cassidy looked horrified, and I couldn’t read Toby’s expression at all.

“Cassidy’s—well,” Toby seemed to change his mind mid-explanation. “She’s a fencer.”

For some reason, this made Cassidy uncomfortable.

“What, like swords?” I asked.

“He means a picket fencer,” Cassidy clarified, grimacing as though the subject was painful. “It’s just this term from debate. It’s not important.”

“Like hell it’s not!” Toby retorted. “I can’t believe you transferred to Eastwood. You transferred here, right? Because, seriously, this is epic! Everyone’s going to freak out.”

Cassidy shrugged, clearly not wanting to talk about it. We took a table together in the back, and, after a few minutes, Ms. Weng came in and passed out a course description. She was young, barely out of grad school, the sort of teacher who would constantly lose control of the class and quietly panic until the teacher next door came in and yelled.

She talked about the different types of debate and then made Toby get up and sell us on joining the debate team.

He sauntered to the front of the classroom, buttoned his blazer, and grinned.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “I presume that we all share an interest in booze, mischief, and coed sleepovers.”

The color drained from Ms. Weng’s face.

“I’m speaking, of course, about getting into college, where one has the option to engage in those sorts of illicit activities after achieving academic excellence, naturally,” Toby quickly amended. “And joining the debate team makes an excellent résumé stuffer for those college applications.”

Toby continued talking about the debate team, the time commitment, and the school’s past record (“We’re even worse than the golf team!”). He was a decent public speaker, and for a moment I wondered why he’d never gone out for student government. And then I remembered the severed head.

Afterward, Toby sent around a sign-up sheet for the first debate tournament of the year, which no one signed. When the sheet got to Cassidy, her shoulders shook with silent laughter. She slid the piece of paper onto my desk.

Written at the top of the list, in obnoxiously hot pink Sharpie, was this beauty:



EZRA MOTHA-EFFING FAULKNER, YO!

(you owe me for the Gatorade piss)



I couldn’t help it—I burst out laughing.

The room went deadly silent, and Toby grinned like he’d just won the Ping-Pong world championship. Ms. Weng frowned at me. I quickly turned my laughter into a fake coughing fit, and Cassidy leaned over and helpfully whacked me on the back. To my deepest shame, this made me actually start coughing in earnest.

By the time I got it under control, it had sort of become an event.

“Sorry,” Cassidy whispered.

I shrugged like it didn’t matter, but when she wasn’t looking, I scribbled her name onto the sign-up sheet in payback and then passed it forward. For the remainder of class, we worked in pairs structuring a parliamentary debate. Cassidy and I partnered together.

“What’s a picket fencer?” I pressed, when she made no move to start the assignment.

“It’s, well, it’s when you place first in every round at a tournament.” She sighed, fiddling with her still-capped pen. “Your cumulative’s a row of ones, like a little picket fence.”

I considered this, the idea not just of winning, but doing so without a single defeat, as Toby wandered over and pulled up a chair.

“Yeah, hi,” he said. “In case you were wondering, you’re not going to have to turn that in.”

“You’re sure?” I asked.

“I swear it on the grave of my sweet dead hamster Petunia,” he said, which wasn’t exactly reassuring since, to my knowledge, Toby had never owned a hamster. “Ms. Weng asked me to come up with a random topic during break as an exercise. Technically, I’m not in this class. I’m her student aide.”

“So you’re her Weng-man?” Cassidy asked.

The three of us laughed, and it struck me that Cassidy and Toby knew each other. That, if anyone was an outsider, it wasn’t the new girl, it was me.

When the bell rang, Ms. Weng told us to hold on to our debates, and Toby mouthed, “Told you so.”

The classroom began to clear out, and I watched Cassidy fasten the buckles on her satchel. Her hair was half pinned up into this crown of braids, and with the sharp planes of her cheekbones and her pale skin, she looked as though she’d stepped out of a different era, one where people bought war bonds and decamped to the countryside to avoid air raids. I’d never seen anyone like her, and I couldn’t help but stare.

“Come on,” Toby said, and Cassidy glanced up, nearly catching me staring. “Join me for lunch. You’re coming too, Faulkner. I could use a new sidekick.”

“Actually, I’m going to Chipotle,” I said. “With Evan and Jimmy and them.”

But it sounded ridiculous, and even as I said it, I knew I wasn’t really going.

“Sure you are.” Toby laughed. “I’m not taking no for an answer. Now let’s go, for my harem does not eat before I have graced them with my magnificence.”