Mistakes Were Made(16)

But it was about more than proving the test wrong. She’d always wanted to fly. As a kid, she’d spent entire summers outside, sunup to sundown. She climbed every tree she could. She rode her bike, a little farther each time, until she knew every street in a ten-mile radius of their town. It was about freedom, and going fast, and getting away. All things she still wanted to do. She’d never been out of the eastern time zone. California seemed dazzling. Sunshine and palm trees and a whole other ocean. More than two thousand miles from the trailer she grew up in. It was a different world.

Working in the shop was better than hanging out with people anyway. She didn’t like that many people. Leaving Acacia behind in Greensboro freshman year had been one of the hardest things she’d ever done. Keckley was a small school, but it was still full of strangers. Going from a best friend who’d known her basically since before she’d known herself to a place she knew no one had Cassie retreating into herself. She’d found Seth, and fell into a friend group, but she’d still always felt on the outside of it.

In the shop, though, Cassie fit. Her head didn’t go quiet, exactly, it just focused. Numbers and calculations and how to make whatever she was working on go faster. She never felt sad or scared or lonely. She didn’t worry about money. Things just made sense in the shop. She belonged. In a way she never had anywhere else. Certainly not in Greensboro, which wasn’t even that small, but felt it. Everyone always knowing her business, or thinking they did.

She was that poor girl with clothes from Goodwill. She was the skinny white kid who tagged along with the homeschooling Black family. In high school, Cassie was the promiscuous bisexual who probably wouldn’t be into chicks if she’d had a father figure. After her third speeding ticket, cops acted like she was reckless with her life, instead of understanding she just liked going fast.

And it always came back to her family life, or lack thereof. No one ever understood that Cassie was over it, past it, better without them. Her mom had never once chosen her, not over drugs or alcohol or some scraggly dude who often looked like he would’ve chosen Cassie, if he’d had the chance. People never knew what to do with that—most hadn’t in Greensboro, so she decided not to give people at Keckley a chance to not get it. She didn’t share. She’d tell stories of Acacia and Mama Webb and her favorite classes in high school. She’d skip over the absent mom and never-known father and the way she’d wanted to get out of that town so badly.

Seth had known. Cassie had told him enough that he understood, mostly. She’d opened up. Look where that had gotten her.

Weird homeschooling family or not, the Webbs were her saving grace. Who knew what kind of trouble Cassie would’ve gotten into without them? Mama Webb’s warning Cassandra Maureen Klein, and Mr. Ben’s quietly raised eyebrows when she and Acacia were pushing things too far, as if saying You sure you want to do this? or his heavy sigh, the physical manifestation of I’m not mad, just disappointed.

Who knew what kind of rut Cassie would get stuck in now, if Acacia didn’t drag her out of the workshop Friday night, force her into a shower, and demand she come to a party?

That was how Cassie ended up in someone’s house with way too many people, everyone drunk and loud and rowdy. She was watching beer pong when Parker came tumbling into her.

“Cassie, Cassie, Cassie,” Parker giggled. “Cassie. You need to take my phone.”

“We pregamed the same amount, princess,” Cassie said. “How are you already this drunk? Why do I need to take your phone?”

Parker ignored the first question. “You need to take my phone so I don’t do something stupid like text Sam inappropriate things I want to do to her, okay? Okay, great.”

She slipped her phone into Cassie’s pocket and headed back to the living room-slash-dance floor.

Cassie would not be joining. She’d never been one for rhythm, saw more grace in fuel injectors than in the way people in the living room were writhing against each other. Everyone was pressed together. Cassie did not need that many people touching her, thank you. Parker, meanwhile, had already disappeared in the crowd, back to Acacia’s side, likely; Kaysh had loved dances since her mom stopped homeschooling her and she’d finally been allowed to go. Cassie slid her hand into her pocket next to Parker’s phone and went looking for a bit of quiet.

The thumping bass was muffled in the backyard, at least, though there were still plenty of people around. Cassie slipped to the corner of the porch, as secluded as she could get. She kept her hand on Parker’s phone the whole time. Parker was trying to break her habit of drunk texting, so instead she’d picked up a habit of handing her phone off to Cassie or Acacia. For all the self-control that girl had while sober, get her drunk and she lost every ounce of it. Last week, playing king’s cup in Parker and Acacia’s room, Cassie hadn’t paid enough attention. Parker had pickpocketed the phone back, shot off a text to Seth before Cassie could stop her. She knew to be vigilant now.

Then Cassie had a really stupid idea.

It was a hideously stupid idea; she knew it was. There was absolutely no good reason to get Erin’s number out of Parker’s phone. She would never be able to explain to Parker why she had it if she ever found out. There was no way she would ever even use it.

That rationalized it for her, though. She wasn’t actually going to text Erin or anything. But wouldn’t it be funny if she had her number? There was nothing wrong with having it if she didn’t use it.