The Secrets of Boys (22 page)

“Eric?” Larissa gasped.

“Wow. It really
has
been a long time since we talked.”

“
Not
Eric? I think I need to sit down.” Larissa dragged Cassidy’s beanbag chair toward the bed and sat with her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands, looking at Cassidy questioningly.

Cassidy found herself telling Larissa the whole story—how she and Eric had broken up and the disastrous effect of Zach coming into her life. How she’d been scared of her feelings toward him but unable to resist them at the same time. How they’d tried to avoid hooking up for so long, but when it happened, it had felt so right and inevitable and then how terrible it had been breaking up with Eric. When she got to the part about losing her virginity, Larissa yelped and clapped her hand to her mouth.

“I can’t believe you actually did it!” she squealed.

“So you lost it to him and then—what, he dumped you?

What a jerk!”

“Not exactly. He went back to school in New York and … well, you know.”

“He ‘just couldn’t handle the distance thing’?”

Larissa air-quoted.

She was so right on that Cassidy had to laugh.

“That’s the worst.” Larissa sighed. “I just read this article in
Cosmo
about how something like ninety percent of summer romances end that way. I wish I’d been around to warn you.”

“I wish you had too!” Cassidy said. “It would have saved me a lot of grief.”

“Well, sometimes you have to be kicked in the ass,”

Larissa said. “But I have something that’ll make you feel better. Give this a go.” She pulled a large roll of what looked like Saran Wrap from her oversize tote.

“What is that?” Cassidy asked. Larissa unrolled the Saran Wrap, which turned out to be full of air bubbles.

“Pop some,” she commanded, handing it to Cassidy.

“You want me to pop bubble wrap?” Cassidy asked.

“Why?” She didn’t want to pop bubble wrap. She wanted to fly to New York City and make out with Zach!

“You’ll see,” Larissa urged. “Just try one.”

“Fine.” Cassidy pressed her thumb down on one of the air pockets and squeezed.

Pop!

It
did
feel good. Cassidy squeezed another and felt it explode under her fingers, then began popping more and more quickly. It seemed like with every pop, the knot in her heart loosened a tiny bit. Before she knew it, she’d demolished the sheet Larissa had given her, and her entire body felt lighter.

“You think that’s good.” Larissa smiled, reaching into her tote again. “Try
this
.”

She pulled out another, larger sheet with air bubbles twice the size. It took Cassidy both thumbs to pop just one.

“What is this, industrial grade?” she asked.

“If you’re having trouble …” Larissa continued, removing a hammer from her tote.

Cassidy cracked up even as she took the hammer in her hands. She placed the bubble wrap on her bed and slammed it so hard that her plush rhinoceros went flying.

“Feel better?” Larissa asked.

“Yes!” Cassidy screamed over the exploding bubbles, swinging the hammer with all her might. She missed the bubble wrap by a good six inches and collapsed in a pile on her bed, laughing. She couldn’t believe how good it felt to get some of the negative energy out. She’d been crying so much over the past few days she had started to think she would never laugh again. “Got any more?” she asked, sitting up and smoothing her hair away from her face.

“All out.” Larissa shrugged. She found her tote bag on the floor and began pulling things out of it. “But I have something else that does wonders for a broken heart.”

“What, an industrial-size bottle of Captain Morgan?”

Cassidy joked.

“No,” Larissa said, triumphantly producing a shiny box with a picture of a woman smiling from the cover.

The woman had brown hair laced with stunning gold highlights. “This.”

“A home highlighting kit?” Cassidy asked dubiously.

“Exactly. New Cassidy, new hair. Makes sense, right?”

Cassidy looked at the box. It could be fun, and she wouldn’t mind a different look for the beginning of the school year. Now that she was done being a wallflower, maybe her hair should reflect that.

“Okay,” she said finally. “I’ll do it. Only this time, we’re trying a test patch first to make sure I’m not allergic.”

“Not like last time,” Larissa said solemnly before they both burst into the longest, loudest, most freeing bout of laughter Cassidy had ever had.

From:
[email protected]

Sent:
September 1

To:
[email protected]

Re:
Good luck!

Hey, Cassidy,

Just wanted to wish you good luck on your French presentation. I know you can do it! Just remember all those times you did it for me in your undies and you’ll be all set ; ).

New York is fine. I’m happy to be here. I was getting kind of antsy in Malibu—not because of you, though. We writers just have to keep on the move, always seeking out the next

adventure.

Stay well,

Zach

Cassidy woke on the morning of her presentation already sweating and feeling nauseous. She couldn’t believe she had to get up in front of nearly twenty people and speak in French for ten whole minutes about impressionist art. She considered crawling back under the covers and never coming out again, but she knew that wasn’t really an option.
Might as well get it over with,
she thought as she climbed out of bed and into the shower.

By the time she got to school, though, she was a nervous wreck. She kept wiping her palms down the length of her skirt, hoping the sweat wouldn’t show against the conservative plaid pattern she’d picked out.

She’d checked her bag to make sure her notes were there at least sixteen times, but seeing the index cards held neatly together with a small red rubber band didn’t make her feel any better. As her kitten heels clicked down the hallway, she had to physically resist an urge to duck into the ladies’ room and hide there until the class was over.

“Nervous?” Benjy asked as she sat down next to him.

“Nervous? Not me!” she said, wondering if he could hear the tremor in her voice.

“Liar,” he teased. “I’m shitting myself, so I know
you’re
nervous.”

“And just what is
that
supposed to mean?” Cassidy asked, arching an eyebrow. At least kidding around with Benjy was taking her mind momentarily off the dread knotting its way through her stomach.

“Is everyone ready?” Madame Briand asked in French, her eyes glittering with excitement. To her, final presentations were a
fun learning experience
. Maybe because she was
completely delusional
, Cassidy thought.

“Now, who wants to go first?” she asked, looking straight at Cecilia before she even had a chance to raise her hand. Cecilia leapt up from her seat and bounced to the front of the room. She unrolled a large piece of poster board and stuck it to the wall. Great. Not only did Cecilia have eleven-and-a-half minutes of solid facts about the French economy, she had also drawn a
graph
.

When she finished, Madame Briand burst into applause. The rest of the class reluctantly followed. Cecilia grinned like she’d just won the Nobel Peace Prize.

“And who is next?” Madame Briand asked, looking around for hands that didn’t go up. Nobody wanted to follow an act like Cecilia’s. Silence filled the room as everybody shifted their eyes from the person sitting next to them to their own shoes on the floor, avoiding Madame Briand’s gaze and hoping that she wouldn’t pick them.

In the silence, Cassidy realized that the sooner she got this over with, the sooner she would be able to stop worrying about her French presentation for the rest of her life. So she raised her hand.

“Cassidy!” Madame Briand gasped, clearly trying to hide her surprise. Cassidy felt her stomach recoil. What had she been thinking? She got to her feet slowly, her pulse pounding in her temples. As she stood up, the classroom whirled around her.
Chill,
she commanded herself.
It’ll be over soon.

As she walked to the front of the room, her hands so damp they were smudging the neat writing on her index cards, Cassidy wondered if the rest of the class could see her shaking. She felt like she was standing in the middle of the Arctic Circle in the wintertime wearing nothing but her underwear. And then she remembered the way Zach had her take off her clothes when she practiced for him, the grin on his face when he said that if she could do it in her underwear, she could do anything. She felt his smile spread to her own face.

Cassidy placed her note cards on the podium, took a deep, shuddering breath, and began. At first, her voice came out as a squeak, so high-pitched she could barely hear it in her own ears. She cleared her throat and began again.

“When France the nation was reborn as an atheist,”

she said in French, and paused. She’d meant to say reborn as an
artist
, not an atheist. She winced but kept going. Probably nobody would even notice.

Then she realized she had just called the king a bird.

Who knew buckling knees could make it so hard to pronounce things? Then again, who cared? She knew she was flubbing every other word, but she slogged on. As she talked, she noticed the class shifting uncomfortably in their seats. When she accidentally recited a whole paragraph in the conditional instead of the past tense, Cecilia giggled outright. Cassidy stiffened.
“Et la merde
de Picasso,”
she continued, and the entire class cracked up. Madame Briand looked like she’d just been socked in the head. Had Cassidy really just referred to Picasso’s mother as his
shit
?

Who cared? She was doing it. She drew another long, ragged breath and stumbled through the final paragraph so quickly the words all ran together, masking both her pronunciation and her inability to correctly conjugate a single word. She spit it all out, grabbed her index cards off the podium, and looked around the room. Everyone was staring at her, dumbfounded. Cecilia wrinkled her nose in a way that suggested Cassidy should be turned into escargot feed.

A single clap echoed from the back of the room.

Followed by another. And another. Cassidy looked up to see Benjy slowly bringing his hands together, a determined smile on his face. Gradually the rest of the class joined in.

“Merci,”
Cassidy said, practically running back to her seat. “Did that suck?” she whispered in Benjy’s ear.

“Totally,” he whispered back. “But at least you’re done.”

“Right,” Cassidy said, suddenly dizzy with a sense of accomplishment. So what if her presentation had sucked? She’d been the brave, new Cassidy, and that was what mattered. “It’s over,” she whispered to herself, lov-ing the sound of the words as they rolled off her tongue.

* * *

“I’m
ba-ack
!” he said in a high-pitched, silly voice like the Joker when she picked up her phone.

“Joe!” Cassidy screamed into the receiver. “You’re really home?”

“Just two doors down,” Joe said. “I’m not unpacked yet, but I’d like to see you.”

“I want to see you too.”

“So come over,” Joe said. “I’ll be up in the tree house, trying to slowly acclimate myself back to life in the real world.”

“Okay. See you in five!” Cassidy flipped her phone shut and was about to run out the door when she caught sight of herself in her bedroom mirror. Her new blond highlights would look even better if she brushed her hair first, she decided. And while she was at it, maybe she should brush her teeth and put on some lip gloss too… .

Joe probably hasn’t seen a girl without twigs in her hair all
summer,
she told herself. That’s why she was making herself look nice. But it didn’t explain the tiny nervous flutter in her stomach, which increased as she walked around the side of his house.

“I’m here!” she called, shielding her eyes from the sun’s mid-afternoon glare as she looked up into the branches of the giant oak. Sure enough, the familiar Chuck Taylors dangled from the entrance, and a voice called for her to come on up.

“You sound different,” Cassidy said as she grabbed the bottom rung of the ladder. His voice was deeper somehow, more mature.

“It’s the fresh mountain air,” he replied. “Good for the vocal cords. Or some such crap.”

Cassidy couldn’t suppress a gasp when she reached the top of the ladder and crawled inside. Joe didn’t just
sound
different—he
looked
different too. The Idaho sun had bronzed his skin gold, and his gangly limbs, which she’d remembered as being so skinny and white they almost glowed, were toned and muscular from hiking and trail work. But the most astonishing difference was in his face. It wasn’t just the killer tan and chiseled jaw.

There was a spark of wisdom in Joe’s eyes that hadn’t been there before, and they seemed to shine with knowledge and compassion.

“Wow,” Cassidy couldn’t help saying. “You look amazing.”

“Don’t I always?” he joked, pretending to be offended.

“No, it’s just …”

“I know,” Joe said. “I don’t look albino anymore.

You don’t have to explain.”

Cassidy laughed. Just being around Joe for a few seconds made her feel relaxed and comfortable, like she didn’t have to try and impress him or be on guard about what she said. He’d been reading her letters all summer and he knew exactly who she was.

“You look good too,” Joe said. “I really like what you did with your hair.”

“Thanks. I finally got a makeover from Larissa that actually works for me,” Cassidy joked. “Oh, here. I brought you a welcome-home present.” Joe’s eyes lit up when she handed him a box of Cadbury Creme Eggs.

“Thanks for saving my life this summer. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

“You would have been fine,” Joe said as he eagerly unwrapped the brightly colored foil. “Trust me, you would have figured everything out on your own. I had faith in you.”

“I think that’s exactly what I needed,” Cassidy said.

“Someone to have faith in me. Someone to just be there and tell me everything would be okay.”