The Beginning of Everything (10 page)

We all bit into our burgers. Three tables away, a kid too big for his high chair screamed for dessert while his parents calmly ate their food, ignoring him.

“Faulkner, you didn't come to my party!” Jimmy accused.

“Yeah, sorry. How was it?”

“Connor MacLeary showed up wasted and tossed the keg into the pool.” Jimmy shrugged philosophically. “And my bitch-ass neighbor called the cops. We had to pretend it was a church barbecue.”

“That actually worked?” Toby asked, floored.

“No.” Jimmy took another bite of his burger.

“So,
Cassie
,” Charlotte said brightly, “Where did you move here from, again? Chino? Compton?”

Cassidy smiled at the insult, as though she found Charlotte extremely funny.

“San Francisco,” Cassidy said. “But I've lived all over the world, really. London, Zurich, even down in Louisiana for a couple of years.”

“Oh,” Charlotte's face fell as she considered this. “I've always wanted to visit Europe.”

“Well, where does your class trip go?” Cassidy wanted to know.

We all looked at her blankly.

“You don't have those?” Cassidy asked, disbelieving. “Seniors don't go to Spain or somewhere to traipse through museums and churches for a week?”

I started laughing. “We go to Six Flags.”

“Good thing it's not
Disneyland
,” Charlotte said sweetly, with a glance in Toby's direction.

At this, Evan burst out laughing.

“Babe,” he spluttered, trying to get it under control, “you're pure evil.”

“Whatever, you love it,” Charlotte retorted, touching her index finger to the tip of his nose. It was so adorable that I almost threw up all over my adorable pile of fries.

“So, has everyone studied for Mr. Anthony's quiz?” I asked, hurriedly changing the subject without thinking.

“What quiz?” Jimmy asked nervously.

“AP Euro,” Cassidy said.

“Dude, none of us are in AP.” Evan chuckled, cramming a fistful of fries into his mouth.

“It's senior year,” said Jimmy. “I've only got five classes, counting tennis.”

“Counting tennis, that takes balls,” Toby muttered.

Cassidy snorted, and I tried not to.

Evan reached over and snagged a handful of fries off Charlotte's plate. She fake-pouted and slapped at his hand as he crammed them into his mouth, laughing.

“I'm hungry,” Evan said by way of apology. “Rocked it hard at practice this afternoon.”

“Hell yeah!” Jimmy affirmed. They bumped greasy fists over the napkin dispenser. Toby winced.

“So Ezra,” Charlotte said, “how come you're not sitting with us at lunch anymore?”

All eyes were on me. I shrugged and took a pull of my drink, stalling. The family with the screaming kid left their trays and trash at the table as they got up.

“It's, well . . .” I trailed off, unsure of how to answer.

Did she honestly want me to say it out loud? That it felt wrong for me to go back, like they only wanted me around out of some sense of residual pity? That they'd been lousy friends when I was in the hospital? That she'd cheated on me the night of the accident, and that, just a little bit, I blamed her for what had happened? That, if it came to it, I'd rather eat lunch on a cot in the nurse's office than bear daily witness to Charlotte sitting on Evan's lap?

Thankfully, Toby came to my rescue.

“Faulkner's on the debate team now.”

They all burst out laughing, as though Toby had claimed I'd joined forces with the kids who brought their laptops and headsets to school to play
World of Warcraft
during lunch.

“Dude, for real?” Evan asked.

“Sure,” I said. “Why not?”

“Can we talk?” Charlotte batted her eyelashes, her smile curving dangerously.

Unasked, Cassidy and Toby got up so I could extract myself from the booth. In thick, awkward silence, I followed Charlotte over to the condiment bar.

We hadn't talked. Not since Jonas Beidecker's pre-prom party, when she'd run after me insisting I better not back out of prom. And there was so much to say, and to avoid saying, that I didn't know where to begin. But Charlotte clearly did.

“What is
up
with you?” she demanded. “You're hanging out with
Toby Ellicott
and joining the debate team?”

Charlotte was still in her song squad skirt, ribbons tied around her ponytail, a little blue paw print painted on her cheek. But her expression was far from cheerful.

“Well?” she asked, waiting for an explanation.

But the thing was, by my reckoning, I didn't owe her one. Not for something as trivial as whom I chose to eat lunch with.

“So you and Evan,” I countered. “Awesome. You'll have my vote for Homecoming Court.”

“Oh, please,” Charlotte protested, a little too vehemently. “That's
not
why we're together.”

“Of course not.” I held back a smile, noting how my comment had infuriated her.

“This is ridiculous,” Charlotte said. “You should come back to our lunch table. It's not your place to sit with those losers. Bring your snotty prep-school girlfriend, even. I don't care.”

“They're
not
losers. And Cassidy and I are just friends.”

“Yeah.” Charlotte laughed. “Because
so many
girls see you and think, ‘Now
that's
a guy I'd like to be
just friends
with.'”

“What are you talking about?”

I was fairly certain that most girls saw me and thought,
That's the kid who almost died at Jonas's party. Used to be a star athlete, but he's, like, crippled now. Isn't it so sad?

I raised an eyebrow, waiting for Charlotte to voice the truth of what everyone wasn't saying. Instead, she sighed and swished her skirt as though I exasperated her. It was a move I recognized from the halcyon days of junior year, when we'd just started dating.

“Ohmigod, Ezra! Get a clue. You're all brooding and depressed now, and don't
even
ask me why, but dark, deep, and twisty
totally
works for you. You could have anyone you want, so ditch the social outcasts and stop sulking over your sprained knee.”

My sprained knee—right. I didn't even know what to say to that, so I did what I always did around Charlotte—around all of my old friends, really. I shrugged and said nothing.

“Listen,” she said, stepping closer and pouting cutely. “I'm having a party next Friday. You're coming, right?”

Now I was
sure
she was flirting. But the thing was, I wanted no part of it.

“Actually, I'm not. I'm busy.”

“Doing what?”

“Debate tournament,” I said, enjoying myself. “All weekend, unfortunately. Out of town.”

“You're not serious.”

I leaned in, closing the distance between us and knowing that I would get away with whatever I said next.

“I'm as serious as a car crash.”

I gave her my most winning smile before heading back to the table.

 

AS WE WALKED
back to my car, I turned around only once. The sun was setting, and the lights strung between the palm trees in the parking lot had just come on. But even in the purpling night, with the glow of hundreds of tiny lights reflected against the In-N-Out window, I could see them sitting there in the large corner booth, the one they'd taken for just the three of them. Their food was finished, but they hoarded the best table in the place as though it was theirs as long as they wanted it.

Not so long ago, I would have been there with them, inhaling a Double-Double after tennis practice, dipping my fries into my milk shake just to make Charlotte squeal in disgust. I would have laughed at Evan and Jimmy's antics, because we all knew they were only doing it to see how long until I made them stop.

“We're going to get kicked out,” I'd warn, shaking my head. “They'll take a mug shot of us in those stupid paper hats and hang it on the wall to shame us.”

And eventually, when Justin Wong came over to pointedly clear our trays, I would have shot him an apologetic look when the others weren't watching, knowing that we'd been wrong but had gotten away with it anyway.

“Well,” Cassidy said, climbing into the front seat, “that was exquisitely unpleasant.”

“Welcome to the OC, bitch?” Toby offered.

“Let's just go.” I put on some music, not wanting to talk about it. Arcade Fire was on the local college station, crooning about growing up in the suburbs. I concentrated on the lyrics until I turned back onto Princeton Boulevard.

“Tumbleweed,” Toby noted. “Fifty points if you hit it.”

“In Soviet Russia,” I said, doing a terrible accent, “tumbleweeds hit you.”

“There
are
no tumbleweeds in Soviet Russia,” Cassidy put in. “But speaking of the KGB, what was up with your ex-girlfriend?”

I laughed hollowly.

“She informed me that I'm upsetting the status quo. And also that she's having a party next Friday.”

“So are we,” Toby said. “And I can guarantee you, ours is going to be far better, and far more exclusive.”

“It will,” Cassidy assured me. “You've yet to experience the undiluted awesome that is a hotel-room party.”

“My single regret in life,” I replied.

“I don't know,” Toby mused, “that mullet you had in sixth grade was pretty bad.”

Cassidy laughed.

“He's lying,” I said. “It's physically impossible for my hair to mullet.”

“Since when is
mullet
a verb?” Toby grinned.

“Since you started lying about my having one,” I said, turning into the school lot. It was just starting to fill up with cars for that night's football game.

“I'll drive Cassidy home,” Toby said, digging for his keys.

“I'm
fine
,” Cassidy protested. “I don't know why you're all so afraid of coyotes.”

“I'm not,” Toby said. “I'm afraid Faulkner's gonna offer to put your bike in his trunk again, and we all know he'll kill himself lifting it.”

“You're an asshole,” I informed him.

“At least I didn't have a mullet in the sixth grade!”

14

CASSIDY AND I
never told anyone where we'd gone during Teacher Development Day. We hadn't sworn to keep it a secret or anything, but it felt strangely private, tangled in the things I'd confessed and in the brief moment when she'd pressed her lips against my cheek. Somehow, though, Toby could sense that something had passed between us, and he was less than thrilled about it.

“That's why I drove her home,” he explained in the lunch line on Friday. “It's . . . she's not what you think. She's unpredictable.”

“Then stop trying to
predict
that she'll wreck me,” I replied, paying the lunch lady for my sandwich. “What's this about, anyway? How well do you even know each other?”

“Biblically, Faulkner. We know each other biblically.”

“Yeah, I'm sure.”

“Well, our teams hung out sometimes. We invited each other when we had room parties,” Toby said. “And there are these little flirtations that happen—debate-cest or whatever you want to call it. She'd act like she couldn't get enough of someone for about a day, and then she'd lose interest completely. She leaves a trail of broken hearts, and she either doesn't realize or doesn't care.”

I took my change from the lunch lady.

“That's the problem? Remind me never to tell you what goes on at tennis camp,” I said, grabbing some napkins.

“I'd make a dropping-the-soap joke, but I sense that the lunch ladies won't appreciate it.” Toby picked up a Styrofoam container of “General Chicken” and gave it a dubious sniff before handing over some crumpled dollar bills. “There's something different about Cassidy this year, and I don't know what's changed, but I have a bad feeling about it. Now what do you think? Is this chicken in general, or some specific type of chicken they've neglected to identify?”

“It looks disgusting.”

“Obviously. But does its disgustingness remind you of anything?” Toby pressed hopefully. “General Tso's chicken, perhaps?”

I glanced at it again.

“It's generally disgusting chicken,” I informed him.

“Hmmm,” Toby regarded it sadly. “I think you're right.”

 

I SPENT THE
weekend digging myself out from beneath a pile of work. Moreno wanted a “practice essay” on
Gatsby
, which apparently differed from a real essay, most likely in a way that didn't exist. Coach Anthony wanted fifty key terms by Tuesday, handwritten, to prevent us from using copy-paste. And I had a take-home quiz in Calculus. The only bright point was Sunday night, when Cassidy finally flashed Morse code at me from her bedroom window.

HI, she said, flashing it twice. HI HI.

I still remembered Morse code from my Cub Scout days, and I reached for the switch on my desk lamp and flashed HI back at her, wondering and half hoping that she'd ask me to slip out and meet her in the park.

But her window stayed dark after I replied, even though she knew I was there, watching. So I went to sleep thinking of her, of the curve of her back in a light cotton dress, of her hair twisted up into its crown of braids, of her, leaping from the zenith of the plastic swing set and clearing the sandbox, turning a neat lap around the whole of Eastwood, California, while I stood there, trapped in the dreariness of it all, numbly watching.

 

TOBY CALLED TWO
practice sessions for the debate team after school that week. We matched up for mock debates on Tuesday, and I got paired with Phoebe. Cassidy played judge, sitting cross-legged on Ms. Weng's desk and toying with the fringed ends of her scarf.

Toby had just taught me how to flow, or take notes, the day before, and I was still using one of those photocopied grids with the arrows drawn in. It made me feel remedial. The only good thing was that Phoebe, whom I'd suspected would crush me, wound up being surprisingly terrible at debate, and had only competed at one tournament so far. After our closing statements, we handed Cassidy our notes and went over to examine the trophy case in the back of the classroom.

The most impressive ones were a few years old at least; the legacy of students long graduated. What had once been a championship team had become a nerdy hangout destination, with its participants seeking fun rather than glory. I couldn't imagine such a thing ever happening to our school's tennis team—or any sports team, really.
You'll have fun if you're winning,
my dad used to say, as though it was possible to control such things.

“Any of these recent?” I asked Phoebe, nodding toward the case.

“A couple. The hilariously little one is Toby's. And the plaque is Sam and Luke's, they're actually decent team debaters when Sam doesn't get carried away with his Republican agenda.” She laughed slightly. “You're surprisingly good at public speaking, you know.”

“Yeah, well, you may have a decent delivery, but your flow's a mess,” Cassidy said, climbing down from Ms. Weng's desk and passing back our notes. Mine looked like her pen had hemorrhaged all over it, while Phoebe's only had a few marks.

“And you're the opposite,” Cassidy continued, frowning at Phoebe. “The outline's solid, but your delivery is unconvincing. Come on, let's see how you two do with a different topic.”

We practiced until four thirty, when Austin had SAT prep and I had to get out of there for PT, only I said it was the dentist. I know physical therapy's nothing to be embarrassed about, but it still sounded bad: “therapy,” as though I needed professional help to function.

At least it was just PT, not one of those trauma counseling sessions the hospital had insisted upon after the accident. Those I couldn't stand, but thankfully I was down to like once a month with Dr. Cohen, the world's biggest douchenoodle of a clinical psychologist. Seriously, his teeth were so white that they probably glowed in the dark.

So I sheepishly drove over to the medical center, where I spent an hour on the stationary bike and treadmill, listening to the sample debates Toby had given me on audio file and trying not to wonder about Cassidy. She acted as though she'd never gotten upset over my signing her up for the debate team, and I couldn't understand if she'd just overreacted, or was hiding her anger.

Maybe it was like Toby had said, and she was just unpredictable. But I doubted it. Because, every night around eleven, from the other side of Meadowbridge Park, Cassidy's bedroom window would darken, and her flashlight would blink the same greeting at me in Morse code. Always HI. HI HI. Nothing more. A beginning of an unfinished conversation that I didn't have the guts to take control of.

I went to sleep every night that week waiting for whatever it was between the two of us to start traveling at the speed of flashlights, but it never did. As always, she left me wanting more, and dreaming of what it would be like if I ever got it.