Dear Cassie (26 page)

His flashlight entered the tent before he did. It went from my face, which made me squint, to my chest.

“So I guess you were waiting for me.” He laughed, ducking his head as he stepped inside.

I looked down. I was still in my bra and underwear. “Oh, fuck you, Ben,” I said, hiding myself under my sleeping bag. “I was hot, okay?”

“You are hot,” he said, his eyebrows going up and a smile quivering playfully on his face.

“I thought you weren’t talking to me,” I said, my cheeks going as red as the tent as I desperately tried to change the subject.

“I was worried about you.” He looked at his hands.

“I don’t need you to worry about me,” I said, even though his words fell on me like raindrops after a blistering hot day, the kind of rain you open your mouth and try to catch.

“You’re lying in the middle of the woods half naked. I’d say you do.” He held his flashlight at his waist. I saw he had his backpack with him.

“You running away?” I asked. “If so, I’d keep going. This place sucks.”

“I figured if I got caught I could say I was gathering wood, since you guys kind of messed that up today.”

“Thanks for the reminder,” I said.

“I think you’re sitting in the reminder.” He laughed.

I looked down. Until that moment, I had forgotten that I was still essentially naked aside from my sleeping bag and I hadn’t kicked him out of the tent yet.

I guess he realized it, too. “I’ll go outside and wait while you get dressed so we can smoke,” he mumbled, zipping up the tent behind him.

I pulled my uniform on in the dark. My brother would have come out here in the middle of the night to make sure I was okay.

And Ben had, too.

He sat against the tree next to my tent. His cigarette was already lit. In the night it was orange, glowing like the way the sun looks in outer space.

I sat down next to him, clicked on my flashlight, and put my bra-strap-crumpled cigarette in my mouth. He pulled out his lighter and lit it. I sucked in smoke. It seemed like it filled every empty part of me, like air inflating a ball. I looked up. The stars were tiny crystals above the trees, so bright it seemed like they were whistling with heat.

“Is Nez okay?” I asked, exhaling heavily, the smoke gray in the flashlight beam. I could have asked him so many things:
Why did you come all the way out here? Why did you risk everything to do it? Why do you give a shit about me at all
? But I knew I couldn’t. Sitting next to him felt like all I could handle right then.

“Do you care?” he asked.

“Not really. I mean, I guess a little,” I said.

We sat there for a moment in silence, except for the quiet shush of cigarette paper burning as we inhaled.

“You weren’t really with Nez, were you?” I asked.

“With her?” he asked, like he really didn’t know what I was talking about.

“Don’t make me ask again,” I said, looking at my cigarette, staring into the cherry of it like it could hypnotize me into saying the hard things I was starting to be able to say, feel the things I was starting to let myself feel.

“No,” he said, the pebbles underneath him crunching as he shifted. “Why? Did she tell you I was?”

“Yeah,” I said, feeling so stupid that I’d ever believed her.

“Nez is fucking crazy,” he said, shaking his head, smoke dancing around him.

“You think I am too, don’t you?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

“Then why were you ignoring me? I know it’s because of what happened at the infirmary.”

“I—” He paused, took a long drag. “I just don’t want to let you down again.”

“Again?” I asked. “You’re, like, further up my ass than Rawe.”

He laughed.

“At least you were,” I said, unable to look at him when I did.

“I understand it’s not about me,” Ben said, his face illuminated in the flashlight beam, his eyes big, like they were the brown paint from two watercolor sets, “but I figure it’s got to be another guy.” He exhaled smoke.

“You finally guessed right,” I said, taking a long drag. “I wasn’t abducted by aliens.”

“Anyway,” he said, ignoring me in the way people do when they need to say something no matter what you’ve said first, “I get why you keep pushing me away and if that’s what you want, that’s what you want.”

“I don’t know what I want,” I said.

“I’m just trying not to hurt you,” he said. “It seems like you’ve had enough hurt in your life.”

I felt a warmth in my belly that glowed like my cigarette when I inhaled. Ben’s words were like oxygen stoking a fire, and my body a spark. I reached for his hand in the darkness. He rubbed his thumb on the underside of my palm so gently, so deliberately, the kind of touch that, if you let it, has the power to make you go blind.

“You really came all the way out here to have a cigarette with me?” I asked.

“I guess.” He laughed, picking up our hands. “Well, and this.”

For the first time, I wasn’t afraid to hold on.

I woke up; the sky was gray. Ben was snoring next to me, a spider web like a lace canopy above us. We had fallen asleep outside the tent with our hands still clasped, sitting in the silence of the woods.

The early morning was gauzy with dew. I looked at Ben’s face, his soft skin, so calm. It was obvious that he didn’t have nightmares when he slept like I did. Whatever reason he was here for, whatever he kept doing, it wasn’t something that caused him to scream in the night. Unlike me, it was something that allowed him to sleep. Sleep soundly, even.

I guess it took my brain a few seconds to really wake up and realize Ben shouldn’t be here at all. That sleeping next to me meant he wasn’t in his tent, where Nerone would be looking for him in a matter of minutes.

“Ben, crap, you slept here!” I said, shoving him.

He snorted and turned over. Yes, this boy slept just fine with his guilt.

“Ben,” I said, smacking the back of his head.

“What the hell, Cassie?” He rubbed where I’d hit him. I guess it had been harder than I thought. He didn’t look surprised to find himself here, waking up next to me. I tried not to think about that.

“You need to get up,” I said, grabbing his shoulder.

“What?” he asked, wiping his doe-brown eyes like this was any other morning he was waking up to. Except it wasn’t; he was waking up to getting his ass kicked by Nerone if he didn’t get a move on and get the hell back to camp before the sun came up.

“You need to leave. You’re going to get in trouble,” I said, talking to him like he was drunk. I mean, he was sort of acting like it. I considered asking him what he had in his canteen.

“I’m going to get in trouble,” he said, yawning. He closed his eyes again. The sun was about to come up, like a diver hesitantly standing on a diving board.

“Ben, seriously, go,” I said, pushing him.

“All right, all right,” he said. He stood up and stretched; his brown hair had leaves in it, pine needles. I didn’t bother to tell him, but I combed at my own hair.

“Don’t worry, you look great,” he joked, his smile as wide as the open sky above us.

“I’m certainly not worried about that,” I said, glancing past his shoulder. What would happen to him if he got caught out here with me? What would happen to me?

“You going to be able to make it through another day and night?” he asked, looking down. It seemed like he wanted to add
without me
, but he didn’t.

“I’ll be fine,” I said, not really wanting to think about it. I could have said,
No, no don’t leave me,
and held onto his leg like I was about to fall into quicksand, but I think we both knew I wasn’t going to do that. I think no matter what he’d said, I would have told him I’d be fine.

He turned to go, then stopped like he remembered something. “I’ll try to come back tonight,” he said. His face was hopeful, as hopeful as the sun that was about to rise.

“You sure are willing to go through a lot for cigarette smoking and hand holding,” I said.

“You need to try and remember that.” He watched me. Maybe for the way the sun was starting to color my face, or maybe for the way my eyes were on his, unable to look away.

Finally he ducked into the woods. I could hear him start to run, the sticks on the ground beneath him breaking with each step. I listened, his footsteps getting quieter as he went back to a day of using his training.

I went back into the tent. Ben had left his backpack there, and I wondered how he would explain not having it. He would probably get busted, get sent into his own solitary. Would probably be unable to come back tonight by no fault of his own. It was easier for me to consider that than how I was afraid he would decide not to. Would decide that it wasn’t worth it for cigarette smoking and hand holding.

I opened his pack, hoping there was some water inside. I knew I could go and try to find some to fill my own canteen, but the woods weren’t any less scary to me during the day. I understood that there were predators that arrived when the sun came out that I didn’t want to see. Snakes, for instance, or deer that could bore me like a charging bull with their horns. I would much rather boil in my tent than deal with whatever I might find outside of it.

Luckily, Ben’s canteen was full and, as excited as I was to see that, I was even more excited when I found his Assessment Diary.

Well, maybe the word wasn’t excited, it was
interested
. If I read it I would be able to know exactly what he thought of me. His words were nice and I was starting to believe them, but reading his real, uncensored thoughts . . . that was something else. I took a long gulp from his canteen and picked the diary up. It felt hot in my hand—or maybe my hand felt hot holding it.

I stared at it. From the outside it looked like my Assessment Diary, but it wasn’t mine. It was Ben’s and it held every secret thought he’d had since he’d been here. Like mine did. I knew I shouldn’t open it—if anyone read mine I would seriously skin them alive—but there were a lot of hours between now and when Ben might come back. A lot I could learn about him if I took a peek.

When I cracked the notebook open, I swear my crazy-solitary mind heard it squeak, like it was an attic door or something. He wrote so neatly—print, not cursive, his words little match sticks. The first pages were a lot like mine:
What am I doing here? I shouldn’t be here. This place sucks. It is not my fault.

Blah, blah, blah. Whine, whine, whine.

I looked for my name, but it wasn’t in the beginning entries. I guess Ben was smarter than me and understood that he needed to keep some secrets hidden. Maybe everyone was smarter than me. I considered that I was the only bozo stupid enough to actually use this thing for my real thoughts. I kept looking, but my name wasn’t there. Whatever he felt about me was hidden deep in his brain.

I guess what he’d said was true: it wasn’t always about me.

The name
Andrew
was mentioned a lot. I thought about the guys in the boys’ camp. None of them was named Andrew and as I continued to skim I realized Andrew’s name was on every page.
I did what I had to do for Andrew. Andrew would have done it for me. Of course, I don’t think I would have put Andrew in that position. Especially not twice. But I’m under eighteen and have done this for him before and that matters more than the truth.

What was the truth?

I knew a lot about hiding and denying the truth, more than I would probably want to accept. More than I would be able to defend if someone went behind my back and read my Assessment Diary. I knew I should stop reading, but I couldn’t. Maybe I wanted to see if anyone was as fucked up as I was. Maybe I wanted to see if the reason why it seemed that Ben sort of liked me was because he was that fucked up.

Maybe I wanted to try to understand one person, since I found it so hard to understand myself.

I read on, flipping through, looking for the name
Andrew
to try to get some answers, when I found my name.

Hey Cassie, I knew you liked me and I let you win at basketball. –Ben

Mother fucker.

I heard branches crack outside the tent. Finally, Rawe was coming to check on me.

Perfect fucking timing.

I stuffed the Assessment Diary back in Ben’s pack and hid it under my sleeping bag. I felt my heart start to pound, my forehead start to sweat. Maybe Rawe wasn’t only coming to check on me. Had Ben been busted and now it was my turn? I crouched on my sleeping bag and waited.

Rawe banged on the tent, like it was a front door and she was locked out. I unzipped it, bracing myself, and found Troyer standing there.

I was relieved not to see Rawe, but it also meant
she
had still not come to check on me. Yet another person from camp had snuck over to see me, but the person who was supposed to be “caring” for me had left me to swing in the wind. I wasn’t sure what that meant.

Before I could say anything, Troyer walked over and sat down against the tree in the same spot Ben had, like this was a TV show or a movie and I was the one everyone went to for advice. The tree was my bathroom stall, or backseat, or whatever. It was a good thing it wasn’t really a TV show because there was no way I should have been giving anyone advice.