The Beginning of Everything(32)

“In Soviet Russia,” I said, doing a terrible accent, “tumbleweeds hit you.”

“There are no tumbleweeds in Soviet Russia,” Cassidy put in. “But speaking of the KGB, what was up with your ex-girlfriend?”

I laughed hollowly.

“She informed me that I’m upsetting the status quo. And also that she’s having a party next Friday.”

“So are we,” Toby said. “And I can guarantee you, ours is going to be far better, and far more exclusive.”

“It will,” Cassidy assured me. “You’ve yet to experience the undiluted awesome that is a hotel-room party.”

“My single regret in life,” I replied.

“I don’t know,” Toby mused, “that mullet you had in sixth grade was pretty bad.”

Cassidy laughed.

“He’s lying,” I said. “It’s physically impossible for my hair to mullet.”

“Since when is mullet a verb?” Toby grinned.

“Since you started lying about my having one,” I said, turning into the school lot. It was just starting to fill up with cars for that night’s football game.

“I’ll drive Cassidy home,” Toby said, digging for his keys.

“I’m fine,” Cassidy protested. “I don’t know why you’re all so afraid of coyotes.”

“I’m not,” Toby said. “I’m afraid Faulkner’s gonna offer to put your bike in his trunk again, and we all know he’ll kill himself lifting it.”

“You’re an asshole,” I informed him.

“At least I didn’t have a mullet in the sixth grade!”





14


CASSIDY AND I never told anyone where we’d gone during Teacher Development Day. We hadn’t sworn to keep it a secret or anything, but it felt strangely private, tangled in the things I’d confessed and in the brief moment when she’d pressed her lips against my cheek. Somehow, though, Toby could sense that something had passed between us, and he was less than thrilled about it.

“That’s why I drove her home,” he explained in the lunch line on Friday. “It’s . . . she’s not what you think. She’s unpredictable.”

“Then stop trying to predict that she’ll wreck me,” I replied, paying the lunch lady for my sandwich. “What’s this about, anyway? How well do you even know each other?”

“Biblically, Faulkner. We know each other biblically.”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

“Well, our teams hung out sometimes. We invited each other when we had room parties,” Toby said. “And there are these little flirtations that happen—debate-cest or whatever you want to call it. She’d act like she couldn’t get enough of someone for about a day, and then she’d lose interest completely. She leaves a trail of broken hearts, and she either doesn’t realize or doesn’t care.”

I took my change from the lunch lady.

“That’s the problem? Remind me never to tell you what goes on at tennis camp,” I said, grabbing some napkins.

“I’d make a dropping-the-soap joke, but I sense that the lunch ladies won’t appreciate it.” Toby picked up a Styrofoam container of “General Chicken” and gave it a dubious sniff before handing over some crumpled dollar bills. “There’s something different about Cassidy this year, and I don’t know what’s changed, but I have a bad feeling about it. Now what do you think? Is this chicken in general, or some specific type of chicken they’ve neglected to identify?”

“It looks disgusting.”

“Obviously. But does its disgustingness remind you of anything?” Toby pressed hopefully. “General Tso’s chicken, perhaps?”

I glanced at it again.

“It’s generally disgusting chicken,” I informed him.

“Hmmm,” Toby regarded it sadly. “I think you’re right.”



I SPENT THE weekend digging myself out from beneath a pile of work. Moreno wanted a “practice essay” on Gatsby, which apparently differed from a real essay, most likely in a way that didn’t exist. Coach Anthony wanted fifty key terms by Tuesday, handwritten, to prevent us from using copy-paste. And I had a take-home quiz in Calculus. The only bright point was Sunday night, when Cassidy finally flashed Morse code at me from her bedroom window.

HI, she said, flashing it twice. HI HI.

I still remembered Morse code from my Cub Scout days, and I reached for the switch on my desk lamp and flashed HI back at her, wondering and half hoping that she’d ask me to slip out and meet her in the park.

But her window stayed dark after I replied, even though she knew I was there, watching. So I went to sleep thinking of her, of the curve of her back in a light cotton dress, of her hair twisted up into its crown of braids, of her, leaping from the zenith of the plastic swing set and clearing the sandbox, turning a neat lap around the whole of Eastwood, California, while I stood there, trapped in the dreariness of it all, numbly watching.



TOBY CALLED TWO practice sessions for the debate team after school that week. We matched up for mock debates on Tuesday, and I got paired with Phoebe. Cassidy played judge, sitting cross-legged on Ms. Weng’s desk and toying with the fringed ends of her scarf.