The Beginning of Everything(73)

“Well, I’m surprised,” my father said, scrutinizing me. “You’ve grown up a lot this year, kiddo. You’ve had to, and I’m sorry about that. But I’m glad to see that you have a plan.”

“You mean you’re okay with it?” I asked, hardly daring to believe it.

“I don’t presume to speak for your mother.” He smiled wryly. “But I think it would be good for you. And of course my old fraternity has chapters at most schools.”

I laughed, for once finding one of my father’s pseudojokes funny. And when my mom called us in to dinner and stood beaming over a platter of only mildly healthy-tasting lasagna, we finally had something to discuss besides light fixtures.



AFTER DINNER, I drove over to Toby’s house.

“Hey,” he said, ushering me into his bedroom. He was wearing glasses and pajama pants, and it reminded me of when we were little, the two of us sneaking around the house at night when we were supposed to be asleep.

He passed me an old N64 controller, the see-through one we used to fight over, and put in a game without asking. It was some retro Mario I’d given him for an elementary-school birthday back when it was the cool new thing, and we sat there and played it, like we had a hundred times, secret levels and all, except this time felt different.

“Do you want to see the article?” Toby finally asked.

I told him I did, and he pulled it up on his computer.

Sure enough, Owen Alexander Thorpe. Graduated first in his class from the Barrows School, gone on to Yale, and then Johns Hopkins for medical school. He’d died at twenty-three, unexpectedly, from a sudden cardiac arrest caused by a thromboembolism. I’d picked up enough from my time in the hospital to know what that meant: Owen had died of a broken heart.

There was a picture, too, a cheesy tourist shot, taking up half of the screen. I could see the Eiffel Tower in the background, the ground slick with rain, some strangers still under their umbrellas. Owen was smiling in this embarrassed way, his blond hair flopping into his eyes, Cassidy’s particular shade of blue that evidently ran in their family. A scarf was around his neck, and his arm was slung around someone who had been cropped from the picture. I could see the corner of a trench coat, the edge of a shopping bag.

To his credit, Toby let me sit there staring at his computer screen for a good long while. It was only when his neighbor’s lights came on, splashing through his bedroom window, that I looked up, remembering where I was.

The house across the street had turned on their Christmas lights. Toby and I looked out the window horrorstruck by the pair of twelve-foot-tall glowing inflatable snowmen that had ballooned out of nowhere, bookending a neon nativity. Someone had climbed onto the roof and used dozens of strands of lights to spell out “HAPPY BDAY JESUS” in flashing red and green.

“It’s not even Thanksgiving,” I said.

“They could have at least gone to the effort to spell out ‘birthday,’” Toby observed, shutting the blinds. “So, what are you going to do?”

I sighed and raked a hand through my hair.

“Um,” I said. “Knock on her door with flowers?”

It sounded pathetic even as I said it. Like I was giving her some belated funeral bouquet.

“Yeah?” Toby asked doubtfully.

“Ugh, I don’t know,” I said wretchedly. “Look, I love her. Loved her, whatever. And if I can make things right between us—because I just really, completely miss her and think she misses me, too—then I’m going over there and knocking on her damned door.”

“This is Cassidy we’re talking about.” Toby raised an eyebrow, trying to convey the full gravitas of the situation. “She called you a washed-up, podunk, unoriginal townie.”

“I remember,” I said drily, hoping Toby was going somewhere with this that didn’t contribute solely to his own amusement.

“And you want to show up at her front door with flowers?”

I winced, catching Toby’s point immediately.

“Okay, bad plan,” I muttered.

“What you need is a lawnmower and a boom box,” Toby suggested. “Or a TARDIS. You could build her a TARDIS, invite her to come away with you on an adventure.”

I knew Toby wasn’t serious, but something about that last part got to me. An adventure. Cassidy had given me one once, as an apology for the debate tournament.

“You’re not even listening to me, are you?” Toby complained.

“Nope.” Because a strange idea had started to take shape in my mind, something that certainly couldn’t be considered ordinary. I knew how I was going to win her back.



THE NEXT MORNING, I woke up at dawn. I put on dark clothes and slipped out of the house while the whole world slept. Just as the first lights began to turn on in Terrace Bluffs, I crept back home.

It was too early to take a shower, and I was afraid I’d wake my parents, so I scrubbed off the dirt and paint as best I could with a damp washcloth and changed into something more presentable.

I waited, and I paced, and when the clock hit seven, I couldn’t stand it any longer. I crept downstairs and was tying my shoes when Cooper padded into the foyer. He cocked his head at me and whined.

“Shhh,” I told him.

What’s this about, old sport? his eyes seemed to say.