HDU #2: Dirt (30 page)

Amanda wrinkled
her forehead, doing her best to imagine Casey as someone who could actually be
loved by someone so innocent, pure and sweet.
 
It was difficult.
 
She searched for something to say in response to Jake but since she came
up completely empty, she forced a smile so he’d continue.

“Anyway, that’s
why I want to just… find out everything I can about her from you before we see
each other.
 
I don’t want to screw
things up again because I’m apparently really good at screwing up my
relationships with people and I’ve been…” he laughed at himself, covering his
cheeks and the excitement building on his face.
 
“I’ve been waiting for-freaking-
ever
to hang out with her again.
 
Since the day she left, really.
 
Just had to wait till I saved enough money to come here.”

Amanda stared,
trying to comprehend everything.
 
As much as she had wanted all the information, she wasn’t sure how to
process it.
 
I wish it wasn’t weird to take notes
.
 
“I… wait.
 
So
you
haven’t
talked to Casey all these
years?”

Jake flicked his
wax paper plane off of the table but only to pick it up and toss it in the
trash.
 
“Uh, yeah, it was
weird.”
 
He scratched his hooded
head, shamefaced.
 
“Me and Casey
went awhile without talking because my mom wouldn’t let us because… whatever…
and then I found her on Facebook ‘cause she kept like, a fake name so people couldn’t
find her, but I found her and she friended me back and we started messaging
again and it was super cool for awhile,” Jake explained in a kiddish
run-on.
 
“And like, she’d send me
stuff from online so my mom wouldn’t know.
 
Gift cards and stuff and this really rare pair of Jordans
once.
 
She had to send those to my
neighbor’s house so my mom wouldn’t find out.”

Amanda could
feel the way her eyebrows pinched and wriggled with total confusion.
 
From Jake’s description, Casey actually
did
sound like a cool older
sister.
 
“That’s… awesome.”

“Yeah.
 
She’s awesome.”

No, you poor child
.
 
She’s
not.
 
Not anymore, at least
.
 
Amanda forced a smile, accepting the
piece of candy that he offered her.
 
“So… you guys seemed to be close.
 
How is it possible that you went this long without seeing each other?”

Jake brought his
knees up on the chipped bench, making a face.
 
“Just this thing that happened.
 
My mom thought it was Casey’s fault and she kicked her out
and it was just,” he rolled his eyes, “really stupid.
 
Really dumb.”

Amanda cocked
her head slowly.
 
“Wait,” she
murmured.
 
Her understanding
— along with the rest of the world’s — was that Casey had chosen to
pursue show business around the age of thirteen, thus moving to New York to be
near her father, aunt and grandfather since they were all industry legends.
 
“Casey was kicked out? By your mother?”

Mid-chew, Jake’s
eyes blinked wide, realizing what he’d revealed.
 
“Oh.
 
Yeah.
 
I mean don’t tell anyone, obviously
— ”

“Of course not.”

“Okay.
 
Um, yeah.
 
This stupid accident thing happened that was my fault really
but my mom thought it was Casey’s because she was smoking weed before it, so
she just assumed, which is unfair.
 
It was my fault, really.”

“Jake —
what happened?”

Jake folded his
candy wrappers into fours, his sugar-fueled fingers staying busy though his
lips seemed in no rush to speak.
 
“Basically,” he started, taking a long pause.
 
“Basically, my mom was away one weekend because she was on a
trip with her boyfriend so she put us at our aunt’s house because she knew
Casey would just get into trouble if she let her stay at her friends’.
 
They were all like, older kids, like
some of them were sixteen and Casey was only thirteen then.”

Amanda raised
her eyebrows.
 
Okay.
 
Casey was a teen
troublemaker.
 
Older friends.
 
Already smoked weed.

“But anyway,
Casey snuck me out of our aunt’s house in the morning, like before anyone woke
up and her friends drove us to this lake — Lake of the Ozarks?”

Amanda
perked.
 
“Oh.
 
Yeah, I’ve been there.
 
I’m from Missouri too — ”

“I know.”

“Right.”

“Well, anyway,
it was really cool.
 
We went hiking
all day and there was a house one of her friend’s family owned and we hung out
there when we got tired.”
 
Jake
nodded, drumming his long fingers on the table.
 
“And then, uh, they started rolling a joint and it was
actually really funny ‘cause I was eight and everyone was like ‘no’ but Casey
let me take a tiny little puff.”

“Wow.”

“I mean really
small though,” Jake said hastily, a bit defensive.
 
“And then she wouldn’t let me go hiking with them to find
this weird path that one of the older kids was talking about.
 
Because she knew I shouldn’t walk
around if I was a little high, maybe.”

Amanda pushed
her lower lip out and nodded as she sipped her own too-sweet bubble tea.
 
She agreed with the decision as much as
she could, considering eight-year-old Jake was already high.
 
“Fair,” she said as she watched a dark
look suddenly cast over Jake’s fluttering eyes, making them look something of a
lake blue rather than the usual pale sky hue.

“I was just
like, a pansy-ass eight-year-old, I think,” he said, a laugh in his voice
though there was none on his face.
 
He rolled his eyes at himself.
 
“I got scared of being alone in the house so I went looking for them and
I got kind of lost because it was dark by then.
 
But then I heard them laughing kind of far away and I went
through a ‘No Trespassing’ sign, which was my fault, so I could try to find
them.
 
And then I fell off this
cliff.”

Amanda nearly
choked on her water.
 
Somehow, his
wording sounded comical though she knew well that it wasn’t.
 
“Holy shit,” she said, her reaction
actually quite real.
 
“It was a
cliff?”
I thought it was a ‘ledge.’

“Uh, yeah.
 
Forty feet.”

“Oh my
God
.”

Jake nodded,
seeming a bit uncomfortable.
 
“I
mean, yeah.
 
Honestly, I’m lucky
all I got from it was this limp.”

Amanda nodded,
truly impressed.
 
“Seriously
— I feel like that could’ve killed someone so little.”

Jake tilted his
head from side to side as he considered it.
 
“Well.
 
Yeah.
 
I mean they did
induce me into a coma for a week,” he said casually.
 
Immediately, Amanda’s heart sank.

“Oh my
God.”
 
Her brow crinkled into a
frown as she imagined a pint-sized Jake bruised and broken in a hospital bed,
asleep for seven days of uncertainty.
 
“That’s so awful.
 
I’m so
sorry.”

“No, it was
fine!” Jake replied with a peppiness so sudden that it startled Amanda.
 
“It was good.
 
It helped me get better.
 
Like, when I woke up, my ribs were almost all better and my
leg probably hurt less than it would’ve if I wasn’t sleeping off the first few
days.”

Amanda blinked,
nodding.
 
That’s certainly a way to look at it
, she thought, though her heart
still wrenched for him.
 
Jesus Christ.
 
I would’ve kicked Casey’s ass out of my house for that, too
.
 
Studying her unmasked look of horror,
Jake frowned.

“It really
wasn’t her fault.
 
I wasn’t even
high ‘cause I didn’t know how to smoke it.
 
My mom just overreacted because she always thought Casey had
the Mulreed blood and I had the Tatum blood.
 
But that’s not true.”

“What do you
mean?”

Jake shrugged as
he played with his drawstrings.
 
“I
don’t think she was meant to be a bad person like my dad and my aunt.
 
I think she was meant to be like me and
my mom.
 
My mom’s into fashion and
Casey always wanted to own a dress shop.
 
She used to sew stuff these fifties-looking dresses for herself all the
time.
 
That was her dream job since
before I was born.”

Amanda’s eyes
narrowed hard.
 
“Really.”

Jake nodded
adamantly.
 
“She never wanted to be
an actress.
 
At least she never
talked about that when she lived with us back home.
 
She used to sew a lot.
 
And she hated drinking, she thought it was disgusting.
 
I mean to the point where she made
me
think it was disgusting.
 
I hate partying.
 
I don’t even like watching other people
party.
 
It makes me uncomfortable
and for awhile, Casey was like that too.”
 
Jake pursed his thin lips, frowning at the skepticism knitting Amanda’s
face.
 
“I swear,” he insisted, distressed.
 
“She used to tell me stories about my
dad… like how he’d have like…
bathroom
accidents
.
 
As an adult.
 
He
pissed
his pants
all the time because he was an alcoholic.
 
Casey would never let that kind of
thing happen to her.
 
She’s always
been someone who’s in control no matter what.”

Amanda paused,
her gaze drifting as she considered Jake’s point.
 
More than anything, Casey liked control.
 
Even her image as a downward-spiraling
addict had been one that she’d carefully controlled through Ian.
 
Looking back up at Jake, Amanda tilted
her head.
 
“That’s… true,” she said
slowly, prompting his shoulders to slump hard, his eyebrows sloping with the
heaviest guilt Amanda had ever seen on anybody’s face.

“Whatever’s
going on with her right now… I know it goes back to what happened at the
lake.
 
She loved me.
 
I know it hurt her just as much as it
hurt me and it didn’t help that my mom didn’t believe her when she said she
wanted to stay and that she’d be good.”

Amanda
considered everything Jake was telling her — that once upon a time, Casey
had a good, loving heart.
 
That a
common adolescent mistake was what changed the path of her life forever, forcing
her out of her house and putting her in an industry that she actually never
intended on pursuing.
 
Giving her a
job that hardened her and turned her into the person she was now.
 
Amanda chewed on her fingernail.
 
It actually sounded to her like what had
happened to Liam.
 
Logan, too.
 
They hadn’t exactly chosen their
careers but they were too far in to leave anymore and they had already given up
so much, changed so much to stay.

Maybe that’s a common situation
, Amanda
mused.
 
But if that were the case, that
would mean that Casey did in fact have a soft spot, the same way Liam did.
 
Suddenly, Amanda remembered the words
that Casey had spoken at The Red Deer, the day that she had blackmailed over
brunch.

“
In this industry, loving someone is a
liability
.”

Which meant
Amanda had just discovered Casey Mulreed’s liability, her weakness.
 
And it was sitting right in front of
her.
 

“I swear she’s
not a bad person,” Jake insisted with big eyes, studying Amanda’s face to see
if he believed her.
 
Stunned by her
realization, she could only nod.

“No one thinks
Casey is a bad person,” Amanda finally said.
 
“The world still loves her.”
 
It was the truth.
 
The world did.
 
She just
didn’t.

Jake’s smile was
light, peaceful.
 
“Good,” he said
quietly.
 
“And
I
still love her.
 
I
want her to know that.
 
I figure if
she knows, she might… feel like she doesn’t need to drink so much or any of
that other stuff.”

“Totally,”
Amanda nodded, feeling a sudden and immense wave of guilt as Jake groaned,
sticking his tongue out for a second as he rubbed his eyes hard.
 
Oh
God, he’s crying.
 
Those are
totally tears.

“Thank you, by
the way,” he said, hugging his knees to his chest.
 
“For letting me kind of vent.
 
I know you probably didn’t want to hear all of this.”