Boy Crazy (14 page)

A
t work the next week, Cassie couldn’t shake her feeling that everything really had ended. She told herself it was just the simple fact that it was nearing the end of August. September was just around the corner. As she took her tours around the island, Cassie told herself she could feel a slight change in the air, in the quality of the blue sky above and the sea below.

But she suspected the change was really in her.

She did her best. She put on a happy face around her friends and tried to adhere to the summer code of never mentioning that it was coming to a close. She was thrilled that things with Greta were back on track, and that in many ways the whole blowup over Trey had brought them even closer than they’d been before. But she also
knew that Greta felt that now that the air was cleared, the truth about her prom fiasco with Trey revealed, everything was good. And Cassie had to run with that, when in reality things were far from good. She ached. She thought sometimes, when she was alone in her car driving to and from the ferry stop, Missy Higgins blaring and no one to pretend for, that the sadness might permanently damage her.

As long as she kept up appearances, though, she thought she’d be fine. Eventually, she’d forget about Trey. Eventually, she’d actually feel the way she was pretending to feel. She was counting on it.

“This has been a great summer,” Billy told her one morning, over one of the bike wheels he was repairing. “You really bring a nice energy to the place.” He leaned back on his haunches and grinned. “Even if you do have horrible taste in music.”

“Not every band can be the Grateful Dead, I know,” Cassie said, rolling her eyes.

“You said it,” Billy agreed with a smirk. “You’ll be wearing tie-dyed shirts before you know it.”

“I don’t think so, but thanks,” Cassie said with a big smile. And then congratulated herself for managing to fool her boss too.

“Why not take the rest of the morning to yourself?” Billy suggested. “You have a big tour this afternoon—fifteen people, I think it said.”

Great. More empty hours to spend alone, trying not to burst into tears. Trying to cope with the knowledge that Trey wouldn’t be appearing when she least expected it. At least when she was sitting in the shop, she had to concentrate on being normal around Billy. There was nothing to stop her from collapsing on Crescent Avenue and sobbing her heart out.

But, obviously, part of acting normal meant pretending to be delighted with a few extra hours to herself.

“Awesome!” Cassie chirped, getting to her feet. “I’ll see you after lunch!”

She wandered down to one of the benches that overlooked the harbor, and very deliberately did
not
think about the night of her first real date with Trey, when they’d sat together and almost missed the ferry back to the mainland. No, she definitely wasn’t thinking about that, or about the way he’d kissed her later while the ferry cut through the waves and the salt air surrounded them like a hug.

“If you were a good person,” Cassie muttered to herself, “you would not have to work so hard to
not
think about someone you shouldn’t be thinking about in the first place.”

But she missed him. Even if she knew she was better off without him.

“He’s nothing but a jerk,” she told herself, and then smiled serenely at the nearby tourist couple, who raised their eyebrows and politely averted their eyes.

Terrific. Now she was scaring people.

She practically wept with joy when her phone buzzed at her, announcing an incoming message. A distraction!

HUGE END-OF-SUMMER PARTY TONIGHT IN SANTA MONICA
, Greta texted.
DRESS TO KILL
!

Cassie stared at the text and sighed. She didn’t know what she wanted to do, but she knew it did not involve any parties, huge or otherwise. She thought the last, fateful party she’d attended might actually have created a permanent aversion to summer parties. And she knew that while she could fake a certain level of being okay, she was never going to make it to a party level tonight.

U ONLY HAVE LIKE A WEEK OR
2
LEFT
2
CLAIM UR TEN-BOY-SUMMER TITLE
, Keagan texted, presumably to Greta.
OR TRY. I AM TOTALLY KICKING UR ASS
!

IT IS ON
!!! Greta texted back.

Cassie knew she was not going to be up for some Project Kiss final battle. At all. The very idea made her stomach kind of clench.

I HAVE A GIGANTIC TOUR THIS AFTERNOON
?, Cassie texted.
MIGHT BE TOO FREAKING BEAT TO DEAL. WILL KEEP U BOTH POSTED
!!

She just couldn’t do it. As long as she kept up her happy face, she told herself, staring out at the harbor, things would be fine. Greta and Keagan wouldn’t mind
if Cassie bailed, as long as she wasn’t lying about stuff again. Which she wasn’t.

She was annoying herself, she decided then, and got to her feet. It was high time to snap out of this funk—she just had to figure out how to do it.

A little while later, she wandered into the café and waved at Ryan as he delivered a tray of food to a table of laughing older women, all of whom seemed to want to pinch his cheeks.

“Look at you,” she teased him when he came over to her. “Making time with the ladies!”

“Trolling for tips,” Ryan corrected her. He flopped down into the chair across from her and grinned. “And believe me, I am good at it.”

“I believe you,” Cassie said with a laugh. But something must have been off about it, because Ryan frowned at her.

“You okay?” he asked.

Cassie wanted to tell him. She felt it inside of her, like a wave, but she knew that if she started she would never, ever stop. It would take her down and she wasn’t sure she’d ever find a way to stop crying.

“Never better,” she told him, smiling. She expected him to continue their usual banter, but Ryan was still studying her expression, that concerned frown between his eyes.

“You can tell me, Cassie,” he said gently. Too kindly—it caused a lump to form in Cassie’s throat.

“Really,” she said. “I’m fine.”

“Okay,” he said, easily enough, though Cassie could see he wasn’t really convinced. “Then tell me what happened with that hot stalker of yours. The one who was so deliciously Chuck Bass and didn’t want to take no for an answer. I haven’t seen him around in a while.”

That one went straight through her heart. Cassie forced a smile.

“It’s all way too boring,” she said. “What about you? The last I heard, you were deciding whether or not to give your ex another chance.”

Ryan sighed and rolled his eyes. “This is someone who repeatedly cheated on me, for months, with some skanky boy he met at the gym,” he said. “It wasn’t a
slip.
It wasn’t an ‘Oh my God, I was so drunk.’ No. Cody and I were together for six months and he was cheating on me for five of the six months.”

“Yikes,” Cassie said. “You said he was evil, but you didn’t tell me
how
evil!” She sat forward—thrilled to be thinking about someone else’s romantic problems for a change. And at least Ryan’s—unlike hers—were always entertaining.

“Because I’m over it,” Ryan said with a shrug. “And I was over him too, but now suddenly he wants to come back, he tells me he’s in love with me, he wants to know if I can forgive him and blah blah blah.”

“I thought you were sort of seeing that other guy,”
Cassie said. “The one you met in the dog park.”

“I sort of am,” Ryan said. “And behold the drama that is my life—Cody knows the dog park guy. Cody took it upon himself to
call
the dog park guy and
demand
that he stay away from me!”

Cassie clapped her hands over her mouth. “He did not!” she squeaked out through her fingers.

Ryan sat back in his chair. “Oh yes,” he said. “Can you believe it?”

Cassie knew that this, finally, was something she could handle. She couldn’t do anything about Trey or what had happened. She couldn’t seem to make herself stop longing for him, or wishing things were different. She couldn’t turn back time and keep all of it from happening in the first place. All her yearning and all her sadness and all the things she felt she needed to hide beneath a smiling, happy exterior—she couldn’t do a thing about any of them except wait for them to fade.

But cheating, manipulative boys who were hurting someone else? That, she could weigh in on, and with gusto.

“You need to tell him a few home truths,” she told Ryan, leaning in close with the light of battle in her eyes. “He’s not in charge of you—you are.”

“Sing it, Cassie!” Ryan cried appreciatively.

And so she did—feeling like herself for the first time in ages.

I
can’t believe it,” Greta said at dinner a week later. “I can’t believe it’s really almost over.”

“I thought that was a summer foul!” Cassie reminded her. “I’m pretty sure I almost got thrown off a rooftop for saying the exact same thing!”

“It is completely a summer foul,” Greta said with a sigh, “but I can’t help it.”

“Tell me about it,” Keagan chimed in glumly. “I’ve actually had to face my summer reading list, before it’s too late.”

The three girls looked at each other, and then out at the still-perfect summer night around them. Greta had announced that she and Keagan would be taking Cassie out to dinner in celebration of their summer—and also
in recognition of the fact that Cassie was leaving for her senior year at Siskiyou in a week. Cassie had had to say goodbye to Billy, the bike shop, and to her beloved Catalina already. Billy had presented her with a collection of Grateful Dead CDs and told her the job was hers next summer if she wanted it. But Cassie couldn’t think about next summer yet. There were trips to Target to plan, and new school clothes to buy, and less time, suddenly, for all the summery activities she’d been involved in since June.

California didn’t make the transition easy, Cassie thought, propping her chin on her hand as she looked out at the crowd milling around the Grove, the outdoor mall at Third Street and Fairfax Avenue that felt kind of like Disneyland. The girls had commandeered a table on the outdoor patio at the Italian restaurant, and shared a pizza as they people watched. There was a fountain that leaped and shimmied to Frank Sinatra tunes, streetlamps, and even a trolley car. The summer night was no cooler than any other night; no leaves turning or early frosts to hint that the season was changing. California weather required that Cassie be on top of the reality of things, no matter how summery the night might feel.

“Here’s to Project Kiss,” Keagan said, lifting her drink into the air. The other two followed suit. Cassie tried to keep her expression from coming across as too rueful. After all, her summer had been less about ten boys and
more about one boy who’d hit her with the impact of ten.

But she wasn’t going to talk about Trey. She wasn’t going to think about him, either. Too bad she had to keep reminding herself, and too bad she kept missing him so terribly.

“My total is a measly five,” Cassie said, smiling as if her heart wasn’t still broken from number four, and the fallout from number five.

“Five is good,” Keagan said, too encouragingly, and they all laughed.

“Mine turned out to be an eleven-boy summer,” Greta said, setting her drink back down and reaching for another slice. She wrinkled up her nose as she looked at Keagan. “And don’t even tell me your total, you hussy!”

“Thirteen, thank you,” Keagan said, and executed a mock bow in her seat.

Cassie laughed, and clapped for each of them.

“I should have known you would beat me at my own game, K,” Greta said with a sigh. She licked pizza sauce off her thumb. “How about double or nothing between now and Christmas break?”

“Twenty guys?” Keagan asked. She shook her head, making her pale blond hair shimmer in the lights from the fountain. “I don’t think so. I definitely had fun this summer. It was kind of liberating to just be in it for, like, a notch on my belt or whatever.”

“It’s totally liberating,” Greta agreed.

“But I think it’s better as a one-summer experiment,” Keagan said. She reached over and grabbed Greta’s wrist. “Don’t be mad.”

“Why would I be mad?” Greta propped her elbows on the table. “Really, the goal was for you not to mope about Zachary Malone all summer long.”

“Mission accomplished,” Keagan said fervently. She cocked her head in Cassie’s direction. “What about you?”

“I definitely didn’t think about Daniel,” Cassie said with a laugh. Something occurred to her then, and she made a face. “I just realized I’m going to have to see him in a week. How weird will
that
be?”

“My prediction is that you won’t care at all when you see him,” Greta said. She waved a languid hand in the air. “He will then fall madly in love with you, and you won’t even notice. Same old story every time.”

Cassie allowed herself a satisfying little fantasy of Daniel begging for her time and attention, and smiled. “I kind of like that story,” she said.

“I’m a little bit torn,” Keagan admitted. “I was definitely into the fact that I felt I could do whatever I wanted—I want to hold on to that part.” She shrugged. “But I also think I ended up making out with some guys just because they were there, and because I knew I was counting. Like they might not have made the cut if I wasn’t.”

“Kissing is always fun,” Greta said, drawling out her declaration so that the cute guys at the next table could hear her. “No matter why you happen to be kissing someone.”

Cassie thought of the guy she’d kissed at the club, when she’d called herself Delilah. It had started out fun—because it had been so novel. But then it had quickly turned awkward. Maybe that was because Delilah wasn’t her. Just as Project Kiss wasn’t her, exactly. She’d been living up to her idea of who Greta was—but not even Greta was that strong, fearless, untouchable person. Maybe nobody was. Maybe it was time for Cassie to be strong in her own way.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I want to agree with you, Greta, but I don’t think I do.”

“If I couldn’t convince you guys after a whole summer of living it up Greta style,” Greta said with a theatrical sort of sigh, “then I guess I never will. But I want you both to know I think it’s totally your loss.”

“We get it,” Keagan said with a laugh. She looked down at her watch. “Are we going to catch that movie? Because I think it’s about to start.”

“We’ll make it,” Cassie said, basking in the pleasure of hanging out with her two oldest, best friends in the world. “And if Greta stops talking about kissing random guys for even thirty seconds, I’ll buy the popcorn.”

She jumped up out of her chair when Greta threw her
napkin like a homing missile, and decided that everything was perfect after all. Boys and kisses were the unimportant details. What mattered were Greta’s grandiose threats, and Keagan’s trademark giggle. That’s what she’d take with her back to Siskiyou Academy. And long after the sad parts of the summer faded, that’s what she’d remember.