Of the Trees(49)

The classes she shared with Ryan were the worst. Laney she could ignore, grit her teeth and stare past her, overlook the pleading looks sent her way. With Ryan, it was different. He wasn’t pleading her to look at him, and she didn’t have the nerve to even attempt to explain. So they both stared straight ahead, teeth gritted, jaw muscles flexing and relaxing.

What made it all the more terrible was the way, even though she would have loved to and it would have made it so much easier, she couldn’t ignore him. As if he had his own gravitational pull, she moved like a marionette puppet. If he sat back in his chair, she leaned forward. When he looked to the door, so did she. At one point she dropped her pen and leaned down to get it. Out of the corner of her eye, she was sure she had seen him move too, but when she let herself look over, he was back to staring straight ahead, his hands clenching and unclenching on his desk.

Like magnets reversing their poles, they were pushing away and then unintentionally smashing back into each other. It was awful. Cassie felt selfconscious about it at first, feeling that the way they moved around each other, skirting and avoiding eye contact, it was obvious to everyone what had happened. But by the second class, sitting near enough to him to have a constant view of the idiotic way she still responded to him, she realized no one else noticed. It was just her, and maybe him. The tension he held in his shoulder, the way his foot tapped in regular beats throughout the class, it all spoke of how angry and upset he still was. He must have noticed—it couldn’t just be her—how connected they still were, how in tune they were to the other. It was what made it so uncomfortable, sensing the hurt and anger and anguish in the other and being impotent to fix it.

The bell rang, and Ryan stood, reaching the exit before anyone else and disappearing into the rush in the hallway. There was a scrum at the door. Cassie slung her bag over her shoulder and put her head down. She moved toward the door.

The hand on her elbow stopped her.

“They can’t find it,” Roger Wilkes whispered, grinning down at her. Cassie blinked, looking up at her classmate in confusion. His brown eyes twinkled in amusement. “Settle a bet for me, could you find it?”

“Find what?” Cassie asked stupidly. Roger’s grin widened, and he yanked his backpack up a little further on his shoulder.

“The clearing,” he elaborated. “You know, where we were? Or can’t you remember?”

“After the dance?” Cassie asked. “You mean where we were hanging out? Of course I remember it. I’m sure I could find it.”

“Yeah, see, I thought so, too,” Roger said, leaning down closer to her. “But I couldn’t. I went back on Sunday. The cops were all over the place looking for it. My buddy Mike’s uncle is one of them. He said they couldn’t find it, said they thought we were making it up.”

“Why would anyone do that?” Cassie asked, confused and annoyed. They didn’t take her seriously either. Yes, a lot of that had been Laney, but a girl was dead; surely that warranted a bit of serious consideration for the people who were with her. Roger shrugged, smiling again.

“Tell you what, if you do find it again, snap me a picture.” He must have noticed Cassie’s look of confusion because he continued. “You know, another picture because I’ve got twenty bucks going that you could find your way back there. Mikey doesn’t think so.”

Cassie felt her jaw drop, a flush coming up her cheeks at his mention of the picture. Mike Stevens took this opportunity to poke his head in the emptying classroom.

“Oh, c’mon man! You’re totally hedging your bet,” he said, smirking at Cassie. “No fair.”

“Hey, I still say she remembers,” Roger said, shrugging.

“Not a chance. No girl with that look on her face would remember much of—”

Cassie pushed past them, leaving them laughing in her wake. Her face felt like it was on fire and she kept her head down. She was stopped again before she could even make it to the next classroom door. Samantha Collins stepped right in front of her, and Cassie was forced to a standstill before she ran into her.

She could barely meet the other girl’s eyes, knowing that she didn’t need a photo to know what happened to Cassie that night. She had been there, standing next to Jon as he snapped the picture.

“I told him not to do it,” Samantha said softly, ducking her head to try to catch Cassie’s eye. “I’m really sorry.”

Cassie had no answer for this. She nodded tersely and skirted around Samantha. Less because she actually needed to use the toilet and more to get out of the crushing throng that was surging up the hall, she ducked into the bathroom. She paused for a moment, her back resting on the closed, wooden door, the silence ringing after the rush of the people in the hall. She faced a partition—a solid wall of gleaming tile, pale and yet gaudy pink, the grout now graying with age. She knew beyond that were toilet stalls, white sinks jutting out from the walls attached to silver pipes. Cassie sighed, her muscles drooping in protest over the anxious tightness she had forced them into all morning. Her eyes were burning, but she refused to cry.

It wasn’t until she heard the splashing at the sink that Cassie realized she wasn’t alone. Immediately, her back knotted, her muscles aching in protest as she hunched, drawing her shoulders closer into herself. A headache bloomed, nothing terrible, but a soft throbbing at her temples. She considered leaving, but the thought of wading through the waves of humanity, limbs and hands and swaying backpacks pressing into her, pushing forward, knocking her into the walls, made her fall back into the scarred door of the bathroom again. Her stomach clenched, and she decided.