The Beginning of Everything (23 page)

“You're not serious,” she protested.

“Doorbell,” I threatened. “Outside. Five minutes.”

And then I hung up.

“Time to hide,” I told Cooper, but he wouldn't cooperate with me at all.

He was acting strangely, his ears perked, body rigid, hackles raised.

“Come on, Coop,” I urged, tugging his leash. “You'll give us away.”

Finally I managed to coax him across the street, behind a parked car, just as Cassidy slipped out of her house.

She'd thrown on jeans and that green sweater she always wore. She looked so beautiful—so vulnerable—hugging her arms across her chest in the gray light of early morning as she padded down the front walk.

She was frowning, and then she caught sight of the snowman and laughed. It was the happiest I'd seen her in a long time.

“Ezra?” she called doubtfully.

“Yeah, hi,” I said sheepishly, joining her on the lawn.

Cooper rubbed his nose against her leg, and she yawned, scratching him behind the ears.

“Hello, gorgeous,” she cooed. “Did you make me this snowman?”

“He did,” I said. “All by himself. He dragged me here so I could call you to come see it.”

“It's wonderful,” Cassidy said, and then she bit her lip, her expression serious. “Here, I'll help you take it down.”

For a moment, I didn't think I'd heard her correctly.

“You'll help me take it
down
? I just spent all night
making
the freaking thing.”

Cassidy sighed. Stared at the grass. Pulled her sleeves over her hands.

“I didn't ask you to,” she muttered.

“No, you didn't,” I said angrily. “God, I'm trying to apologize for what I said, okay? I'm trying to give you something interesting and weird and wonderful so that maybe you'll finally talk to me about your brother, and you want me to take it
down
?”

“I want you to take it down,” Cassidy said coolly, her eyes darting up to meet mine. “And I told you to let it go. I told you it was better not knowing.”

“Evidently I didn't listen.”

“Yeah,
evidently
,” she said, mocking me. “Now if you're not going to help get rid of this snowman, please, just—please
leave
.”

“Fine,” I said. “Come on, Cooper, we're going. Cassidy doesn't want to talk to us right now because she's mad I figured out why we broke up.”

“You didn't,” Cassidy called after me. “You just found the riddle.”

But I was sick of riddles, and I was sick of Cassidy's unpredictable moods, and I was sick of never, ever being good enough for her.

I slammed open the gate to the park, and Cooper promptly sat down on the sidewalk, refusing to budge.

“This is the last thing I need,” I told him. “I can't drag you. You have to walk.”

Cooper glared at me, like maybe he thought I should go back there and help Cassidy wreck another thing I'd mistakenly thought she'd wanted. Finally, he got up and followed me into the park.

The haze still hadn't burned off, and it was almost impossible to make out the bright blue of the swing set, much less the other side of the park.

“Ezra!” Cassidy called, and I turned, squinting back at her across the park. She was at the gate. She hadn't let me walk away after all.

“Ezra, run!” she screamed, her voice tinged with panic.

And then I saw the coyote.

It was enormous, five feet long at least, gliding soundlessly through the fog.

“Run!” she screamed again, but I couldn't, and part of me knew that the coyote could sense it. I stood frozen in terror, watching that huge animal stalk toward me through the amorphous fog.

And then Cooper let out a ferocious bark and yanked his leash from my hand. He bounded toward the coyote, snarling and barking, his leash dragging behind him over the damp grass.

The two animals were scrabbling for purchase at each other's necks, locked in fierce combat at the lip of the sandbox, while we both watched helplessly.

I limped toward them, Cassidy's screams turning into choked sobs as she pressed her hands over her mouth. But what chance did Cooper have? A sixteen-year-old poodle against a wild coyote?

“Get out of here!” I screamed at the coyote, but there was already so much blood. The coyote's jaws were locked around Cooper's throat, and Cooper was bleating, making these horrible whining noises, and my heart was pounding, and all I could think was
no, this isn't possible, this can't be real.

“Cooper, no!” Cassidy wailed. “Please, no.”

Cooper went limp, and the coyote, apparently satisfied, released its grip on his neck and trotted off, slipping through the fence and disappearing into the hiking trail.

I didn't care that I was sitting in the middle of a park on a foggy Sunday morning. I didn't care that it had started to drizzle. Cooper's head was in my lap, and my hands were pressed over his wound, and his fur was already matted and wet with blood, and my hands were red and dripping.

“Oh God,” I gasped. “I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, boy. You're going to be okay. Just hold on. You're a hero, Coop. It's going to be okay.”

I looked up at Cassidy, who had gone so white that I was worried she might faint.

“He needs help,” I said. “Your parents are doctors.”

“They're on call.”

“We have to do something! We'll take him to the animal hospital. I need you to get my car keys out of my pocket.”

I kept my hands pressed on Cooper's wound, and Cassidy reached her hand into my pocket and somehow managed to extract my keys.

“What you need to do is run straight to my car and pull it around.” I was surprised at how calm I sounded.

“I don't drive,” Cassidy said, her voice quivering.

“Bullshit you don't drive. Get the car.”

Cassidy nodded numbly, and took off across the grass, her hair streaming behind her like it was a flame and the fog was smoke.

Cooper let out a heartbreaking whine, and I pressed my hands harder against the gash in his neck, trying to keep it, and us, together.

Cassidy honked the horn at me when she pulled into the parking lot.

“I can't lift him,” I yelled, my voice cracking shamefully.

Cassidy came and helped, and we managed to wrangle Cooper into the backseat. She climbed in after him, placing her hands over mine on his wound.

“You drive,” she insisted. “There's too much fog.”

I turned on the low beams and drove, the car thick with silence, and the steering wheel slick with blood.

32

CASSIDY AND I
sat staring straight ahead in the frigid air-conditioning of the animal hospital's waiting room. It was like a bad dream, and I was slightly hazy on the details, but this much I knew: it was seven thirty in the morning, and Cooper was in trouble, and I was terrified that they wouldn't be able to save him.

Cassidy shivered, pulling her hands inside the sleeves of her sweater. I shrugged out of my leather jacket and handed it to her.

“Thanks,” she murmured, putting it on and curling her legs up under her, like she was trying to fit completely inside that jacket.

I was in shock, dazed by the vastness of what had just happened; we both were. The waiting room was empty. It was just us, and the animal scale that looked almost like a treadmill in the corner. The receptionist, whose presence I'd sort of forgotten about, cleared her throat and frowned in my direction.

“Excuse me, sir?” she called. “Why don't you use our bathroom to clean up?”

Her smile didn't quite match her eyes as she pointed out where she wanted me to go. Numbly, I drifted toward the bathroom and turned on the light.

A specter leered at me from the mirror. Gaunt cheeks, face too pale, button-down shirt streaked with blood. My hands were particularly gruesome. I thought bitterly that this was a far better Halloween costume than the one I'd attempted.

I hunched over the basin, watching the metallic orange water swirl down the drain, and even long after the water ran clear, I couldn't bring myself to turn off the tap and go out there again.

I kept replaying it in my head: that coyote ghosting toward me through the fog, and the way my heart had lurched when Cassidy called my name and screamed for me to run. The way Cooper had fought the coyote even when the ground was coated with his blood, and how it was all my fault, because I'd known about the coyotes and hadn't listened.

Eventually, there was a knock at the door.

“Ezra?” It was Cassidy, and she sounded concerned.

“Just a second.” I splashed some water on my face and opened the door.

“Hi,” she said. “It's been forever. I was worried about you.”

I raised an eyebrow at this, and Cassidy looked away.

“Do they know anything yet?” I pressed.

Cassidy shook her head.

“Come on,” she said, taking my hand in hers. My hands were icy from the sink, and I felt her flinch, but she didn't say anything about it. We sat back down in the waiting room, and she scooted up next to me so our jeans were touching. I didn't know how she meant it, but it gave me a small glimmer of hope, the feeling of her—of us—touching, like maybe the distance between us wasn't as permanent as I'd once despaired.

Cassidy pulled my jacket tighter around her shoulders.

“I remember the day we bought this thing,” she said, half to herself. “We made out on top of your lost library. McEnroe and Fleming watched the whole thing. Your wrist brace got stuck on my bra.”

“And here we are,” I said, trying to make a joke of it. “You and me and Cooper. We're like a positively charged molecule, the rate we're attracting tragedy.”

“Don't,” Cassidy said. “Don't build me a snowman out of tumbleweeds and say things like that.”

“I'm sorry?” I tried.

“I'm the one who should be sorry,” Cassidy muttered.

Outside, a fire truck sped past, its siren wailing, on its way to someone else's disaster.

“How did you find out about my brother?” Cassidy asked, and I didn't blame her for being curious.

“Toby,” I admitted. “The tournament last weekend.”

“And now you know why I don't compete anymore,” Cassidy said.

“I do, and I'm sorry,” I said quietly, realizing how useless the word “sorry” had become.

“It's okay. I mean, it isn't. It's completely
not
okay about Owen, but I guess I don't mind anymore if you know about him.”

“Well, if you'd decided that three weeks ago, it would have saved us both a lot of trouble,” I said, and Cassidy's shoulders rose slightly as she stifled a laugh.

“It's just . . .” I said, and then started over. “I don't get why you had to lie about it that night in the park. I would have understood that you didn't want to go to that stupid dance for whatever reason, but you just pushed me away, and it hurt like hell.”

“I had to,” Cassidy whispered. “God, I can't believe I'm even talking to you right now.”

“I want you to talk to me,” I insisted. “I've been
trying
to get you to talk to me, hence the snowman, which you hated.”

“I didn't
hate
it. I actually really loved it? I just didn't want my parents to see it and ask where it had come from.” A look of anguish came over Cassidy's face once more. “Ezra, I can't do this. I'm sorry, but I can't. You're right, though—I
do
owe you an explanation. So I'll play Sherlock Holmes for you, just this once.”

She toyed with the zipper on my jacket for a moment, and I listened to the nervous rhythm of it, like a heartbeat.
Zip-zip. Zip-zip. Zip-zip.

“The thing about Owen,” Cassidy began, “isn't how we'd mess with the universe or talk about subversive graffiti artists or sneak me into college classes. It's how all that stopped when our parents forced him into medical school and it wrecked him. He'd call me, convinced his cadaver was someone he knew, an old teacher or someone. He'd break down on the phone over stuff like that, how he was trapped in that lab, expected to cut open human flesh and fill out charts before washing the blood off his clothes, and to tell people that they were dying, or their loved one was dead, or their insurance wouldn't cover it, or there was nothing more he could do to take away their pain, and he was just completely terrified that this was going to be the rest of his life. He started showering a lot, because he said that no matter how much he washed, there were bits of the dead and the dying and the sick that clung to him, and little by little he was turning into a ghost, but he couldn't take it back because he'd already wasted college studying the requirements for this, and he was too afraid of our parents to tell them that he wanted to quit.”

Cassidy lapsed into silence again, and I didn't blame her. I reached for her hand, and we stared down at our hands clasped together. At mine, calloused from tennis but growing soft. At hers, small and freckled and trembling, with gold nail polish that had largely chipped off.

She pulled her hand away, wiping her eyes and sniffling even though she wasn't quite crying.

“One night,” she continued, “he snuck a scalpel out of his lab and into his dorm room. And he called to tell me he was so scared, and so sorry, and so stressed, and I told him to fly home. I told him I'd take the train down that weekend, and we'd talk to Mom and Dad together. But they were awful about it. We were at this stupid fancy restaurant out in Back Bay, and they kept ordering drinks and arguing low over our entrees, and finally Owen grabbed Mom's keys and just slammed out of there. And I didn't stop him. I didn't run after him and make him give me the keys.”

Cassidy turned to me, choking to hold back her tears.

“But he died of a, um, heart thing,” I said. “Not a car accident.”

“Ezra,” Cassidy said, begging me to understand. “When he left the restaurant, he took our mom's black Land Rover.”

I felt my whole soul twist as I realized what she was telling me. The car. The one at Jonas Beidecker's party that hadn't stopped after it crashed into the side of my roadster.

“No,” I said as the full weight of it hit me head on. I was slammed back into the memory of that night, the jolt of our collision, the sickening skid of everything I'd wanted and everything I'd had slipping through my outstretched hands. It was the answer to the wrong mystery—the mystery I didn't ever want to solve.

And so we sat there in the sickening sillage of the truth, neither of us angry, or upset, just muddling through this shared sorrow, this collective pity. And as much as I wanted to sound my tragic wail over the rooftops, and let go of the day, and crawl back toward that safe harbor, and give in to the dying of the light, and to do all of those unheroically injured things that people never write poems about, I didn't.

“How long have you known?” I managed.

“The afternoon of the dance,” she said. “When you called me from the florist.”

“Voldemort the Volvo,” I said, remembering.

So that was what had happened. I'd supplied the missing details of the accident. And once I'd unknowingly told her, she'd wanted to get as far away from me as possible. She wasn't running from me, she was running from the obligation of having to look me in the eye and tell me exactly who'd driven that black SUV through the stop sign.

“You know, he told us that he hit a tree.” Cassidy shook her head. “And my parents were furious, but they believed him. I went back to Barrows, and he stayed home since he wasn't feeling well, but I figured he was just avoiding school. He thought it was panic attacks, you know? Because there's this horrible joke that med students always think they have some fatal disease, and he didn't want to be laughed at. But he had this embolism from the accident, and the clot got into his heart. Four days later, my parents came home and found him dead.”

Cassidy squeezed my hand and stared up at me, as though asking forgiveness. For what, I wasn't quite sure.

I was thinking about how her brother had died in that house. It made an odd sort of sense, the way it had always felt ghostly to me, haunted. No wonder she never wanted to go home.

“I'm so sorry,” I mumbled.

Cassidy shrugged, because as far as I know, scientists have yet to discover the proper reaction to “I'm sorry.”

“What I can't figure out,” she persisted, “is why he didn't say he hit anyone. Maybe he was so out of it that he honestly thought you were a tree.”

“Or maybe it wasn't him,” I said, hardly daring to hope. “There are lots of black SUVs in Eastwood.”

“Ezra,” Cassidy chided, like I was being irrational. “The Friday night before prom, around ten? The roads between Terrace Bluffs and Back Bay? It was him. I couldn't tell my parents. I haven't told anyone, except you.”

She smiled sadly, and squeezed my hand again, in a way that constricted my heart.

“Well, I'm glad you did,” I said. “It's better this way. We're two sides of the same tragic coin. It's like we were tied together before we even met.”

“No,” Cassidy said fiercely. “It's
not
like that. Don't you see? We can't
ever
be together. When I look at you now, all I see is Owen. I see him dead in you. The way you're sitting with your leg out, I see him crashing that car into you. And I think, how can I introduce you to my parents? The boy their dead son cripp—injured, sorry. So we can't. Not ever.”

I considered this. Stared at the industrial clock on the far wall without really seeing it. Ran a hand through my hair. And then I looked over at her, aching to hold her close to me but knowing not to. Maybe part of me had already started to understand that reaching for Cassidy was the same as pushing her away. Maybe I'd already guessed that the physics of us didn't defy any laws of gravity, and with her, there was always an equal and opposite reaction.

“I wish you'd let me decide what I want to do,” I finally said. “Because I'm serious, none of this changes that I miss you and want you back. We're so good together, and it's a tragedy in its own right to throw that away because of something neither of us did. Because the way I figure it, everyone gets a tragedy. And all things considered, I'm glad that car accident was mine. Otherwise I wouldn't be applying to East Coast colleges, or on the debate team, or any of those things, because I wouldn't have met you.”

“But I didn't
do
any of that,” Cassidy insisted. “Ezra, the girl you're chasing after doesn't exist. I'm not some bohemian adventurer who takes you on treasure hunts and sends you secret messages. I'm this sad, lonely mess who studies too much and pushes people away and hides in her haunted house. You keep wanting to give
me
credit because
you
finally decided you weren't content with squeezing yourself into the narrow corridor of everyone's expectations, but you made that decision before we'd even met, back on the first day of school when you shot your mouth off in AP Euro.”

I'd totally forgotten about that. About the day we'd met, when I'd already gotten kicked out of the pep rally, been a smartass toward my coach, and ditched my friends at lunch. In my memory, it had been her, always her, as the motivating force behind my actions.

“There,” she said smugly, because my expression must have changed. “You see? You're just figuring it out now, but I discovered a long time ago that the smarter you are, the more tempting it is to just let people imagine you. We move through each other's lives like ghosts, leaving behind haunting memories of people who never existed. The popular jock. The mysterious new girl. But we're the ones who choose, in the end, how people see us. And I'd rather be misremembered. Please, Ezra, misremember me.”

There was a pleading quality to Cassidy's eyes that I hadn't seen before, and I realized that it didn't matter whether any of what she said was true; she believed it so completely that there was no convincing her otherwise.

To Cassidy, the panopticon wasn't a metaphor. It was the greatest failing of everything she was, a prison she had built for herself out of an inability to appear anything less than perfect. And so she ghosted on, in relentless pursuit of escape, not from society, but from herself. She would always be confined by what everyone expected of her, because she was too afraid and too unwilling to correct our imperfect imaginings.