The Beginning of Everything(76)

“Excuse me, sir?” she called. “Why don’t you use our bathroom to clean up?”

Her smile didn’t quite match her eyes as she pointed out where she wanted me to go. Numbly, I drifted toward the bathroom and turned on the light.

A specter leered at me from the mirror. Gaunt cheeks, face too pale, button-down shirt streaked with blood. My hands were particularly gruesome. I thought bitterly that this was a far better Halloween costume than the one I’d attempted.

I hunched over the basin, watching the metallic orange water swirl down the drain, and even long after the water ran clear, I couldn’t bring myself to turn off the tap and go out there again.

I kept replaying it in my head: that coyote ghosting toward me through the fog, and the way my heart had lurched when Cassidy called my name and screamed for me to run. The way Cooper had fought the coyote even when the ground was coated with his blood, and how it was all my fault, because I’d known about the coyotes and hadn’t listened.

Eventually, there was a knock at the door.

“Ezra?” It was Cassidy, and she sounded concerned.

“Just a second.” I splashed some water on my face and opened the door.

“Hi,” she said. “It’s been forever. I was worried about you.”

I raised an eyebrow at this, and Cassidy looked away.

“Do they know anything yet?” I pressed.

Cassidy shook her head.

“Come on,” she said, taking my hand in hers. My hands were icy from the sink, and I felt her flinch, but she didn’t say anything about it. We sat back down in the waiting room, and she scooted up next to me so our jeans were touching. I didn’t know how she meant it, but it gave me a small glimmer of hope, the feeling of her—of us—touching, like maybe the distance between us wasn’t as permanent as I’d once despaired.

Cassidy pulled my jacket tighter around her shoulders.

“I remember the day we bought this thing,” she said, half to herself. “We made out on top of your lost library. McEnroe and Fleming watched the whole thing. Your wrist brace got stuck on my bra.”

“And here we are,” I said, trying to make a joke of it. “You and me and Cooper. We’re like a positively charged molecule, the rate we’re attracting tragedy.”

“Don’t,” Cassidy said. “Don’t build me a snowman out of tumbleweeds and say things like that.”

“I’m sorry?” I tried.

“I’m the one who should be sorry,” Cassidy muttered.

Outside, a fire truck sped past, its siren wailing, on its way to someone else’s disaster.

“How did you find out about my brother?” Cassidy asked, and I didn’t blame her for being curious.

“Toby,” I admitted. “The tournament last weekend.”

“And now you know why I don’t compete anymore,” Cassidy said.

“I do, and I’m sorry,” I said quietly, realizing how useless the word “sorry” had become.

“It’s okay. I mean, it isn’t. It’s completely not okay about Owen, but I guess I don’t mind anymore if you know about him.”

“Well, if you’d decided that three weeks ago, it would have saved us both a lot of trouble,” I said, and Cassidy’s shoulders rose slightly as she stifled a laugh.

“It’s just . . .” I said, and then started over. “I don’t get why you had to lie about it that night in the park. I would have understood that you didn’t want to go to that stupid dance for whatever reason, but you just pushed me away, and it hurt like hell.”

“I had to,” Cassidy whispered. “God, I can’t believe I’m even talking to you right now.”

“I want you to talk to me,” I insisted. “I’ve been trying to get you to talk to me, hence the snowman, which you hated.”

“I didn’t hate it. I actually really loved it? I just didn’t want my parents to see it and ask where it had come from.” A look of anguish came over Cassidy’s face once more. “Ezra, I can’t do this. I’m sorry, but I can’t. You’re right, though—I do owe you an explanation. So I’ll play Sherlock Holmes for you, just this once.”

She toyed with the zipper on my jacket for a moment, and I listened to the nervous rhythm of it, like a heartbeat. Zip-zip. Zip-zip. Zip-zip.

“The thing about Owen,” Cassidy began, “isn’t how we’d mess with the universe or talk about subversive graffiti artists or sneak me into college classes. It’s how all that stopped when our parents forced him into medical school and it wrecked him. He’d call me, convinced his cadaver was someone he knew, an old teacher or someone. He’d break down on the phone over stuff like that, how he was trapped in that lab, expected to cut open human flesh and fill out charts before washing the blood off his clothes, and to tell people that they were dying, or their loved one was dead, or their insurance wouldn’t cover it, or there was nothing more he could do to take away their pain, and he was just completely terrified that this was going to be the rest of his life. He started showering a lot, because he said that no matter how much he washed, there were bits of the dead and the dying and the sick that clung to him, and little by little he was turning into a ghost, but he couldn’t take it back because he’d already wasted college studying the requirements for this, and he was too afraid of our parents to tell them that he wanted to quit.”