What I Thought Was True(70)

I groan. “No, bunny rabbit.”

He fixes me with an exasperated stare. Then nudges Hideout at my stomach, saying fiercely, “Hideout bite you.”

When I roll over, pull the pillow over my head, he moves on to Mom, then Nic, then Grandpa Ben. When none of us agree that it’s a lesson day he just puts on the suit and sits by the door, legs folded, Hideout in his lap.

I worry about it to Vivien. “This was not such a hot idea.

He’s like obsessed with Cass.”

“Must run in the family.” She tips her head to scrutinize the daisy she’s just painted on my big toe.

“You’re hilarious. I’m being serious, this could be bad. What happens when Cass gets bored and moves on? Where does that leave Em? Waiting for Superman.”

She snorts. “Give me your other foot. God, Gwen, what do 241

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you do to your soles? They’re like leather, and the summer’s barely begun. It’s too soon to have summer feet.”

“Mine are permanent. I’m scared for Emory, Vivie. Pay atten-tion.”

She scrabbles in her big aluminum folding nail case for a pumice stone, frowns over two, selects the rougher. “I know you are. I hear you. You’re afraid Cassidy Somers is going to show up for Emory. Dazzle him. Then let him down. Hmm. I wonder where that fear comes from.” She drops the pumice, setting her palms together, tapping her fingers, movie-therapist style.

“Thank you, Dr. Freud. Ouch. Don’t take all the skin off, Viv.

Jesus. It’s not farfetched. He let me down. Why won’t he do the same to Emory? Maybe letting people down is what Cassidy Somers does.”

“Maybe expecting good to end badly is what Gwen Castle does. Sweetie, it’s different. You guys are nearly adults. You had sex without knowing each other. That never ends well—” She holds up a hand to forestall my inevitable comment. “I know, I know, what would I know? But I do. Things may be solid with me and Nico, but that doesn’t mean I’m blind and deaf to high school drama. I know about Ben Montoya and his never-ending soap opera with Katie Clark, who won’t put out, so he sleeps with girls who do, then ditches them for Katie, making everyone, including himself, miserable. I know about Thorpe, who’s in love with Chris Fosse, who is straight and never going to love him back, so he had that fling with the college boy from White Bay, who fell for him, and now Thorpe is all guilty and conflicted.”

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“Wow, I totally missed out on that scandal.”

“Oh, very dramatic. Supposedly the college kid like sere-naded Thorpe outside his window, and then Thorpe had to come out to his parents, who apparently were the last people on the planet to know where Thorpe stood.”

“Where was I when this happened?”

“Pining over Cassidy Somers. Or maybe Spence Channing,”

Vivien says, reaching for the foot lotion, eyes cast down into her box.

“God. Never Spence.” I groan.

She gives me a sharp look over her glasses. (Vivien is really farsighted and has to wear these little granny glasses to do her intricate toe designs.) In the silence that follows, I realize exactly what I’ve revealed by what I left out. I rub my forehead.

“The thing is, Viv—”

“What I’m saying,” she continues smoothly, “is that you are in a sex situation with Cass. That gets cloudy. There’s none of that with Emory. No hormones, no drama. He’s just a kid who needs help. Cass knows how. Why would he screw that up?”

“Was. I was in a sex situation with Cass. Not now.”

“Uh-huh,” Vivien says. “Of course not. Because we all choose who we choose. With our brains and nothing else.

You’re right, Gwen.”

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Chapter Twenty-four


“Positive you don’t need some permit for this?” Mom asks, watching me line up pencils at the kitchen table.

“Mom, it’s not daycare. It’s teaching.”

She regards me dubiously as I rip open a stack of yellow lined-paper notebooks.

“This is the polite boy, with the abs?”

“We’ve been through this. Yes. Nic’s teammate. I’m helping him pass an English test. No abs involved.”

Mom’s hovering. She never hovers. She has to know what’s up with Nic and Vivien, but I’ve never seen her show it by word or glance—not when Nic comes in at the crack of dawn after “dinner at Viv’s,” not when Vivie and Nic vanish into the bedroom when Grandpa Ben is out and I’ve got Em. Why do I get the suspicious eyes?

I guess because I’ve never brought a boy home. “Nic’s teammate” sounded nice and distant and official . . . but kind of like a lie. Not the real story. Like every other way I define Cass.

Mom, who never gives me sharp looks, keeps studying my face. I consciously try not to blush.

She realigns the placemats on the table. Nic, Grandpa, Em, 244

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Mom, me . . . one two three four five. Mom frowns, readjusts number five.

“Mom. It’s tutoring. Not a date. What are you worrying about?”

“Nothing, Gwen. Just making sure.”

After a series of firm knocks, Cass shifts back on his heels outside the door, wearing dark jeans and a button-down cobalt-blue shirt. His face is faintly flushed and freshly shaved—there’s a tiny cut near his chin. Still damp, his hair appears to have been recently combed. Basically, he comes across as though he’s taken trouble with his looks.