Casey Barnes Eponymous (20 page)

“Casey,” Leigh whined.

“Don’t be crazy,” Yull said.
 
They heard footsteps in the hall outside
the room.

“Are you guys going to sleep soon?” Tricia asked from the other
side of the door.

“Yes mom,” Casey and Yull said in suspicious unison.

Tricia paused outside the door for a long moment.
 
“Okay.”

“Goodnight,” they called out.

Yull stood.
 
“Throw
those things out first thing in the morning.”
 
Casey narrowed her eyes.

Then Yull did something that, had he not done, might have
caused the events of the night to take a different course.
 
What he did, though, instead of calling
her ‘shit-for-brains,’ and thus initiating a verbal smack down, was shoot her a
condescending smile.
 
Yull knew she
had seen Alex kiss Maxine.
 
She watched
as he left the room.
 
Once he was
gone she set the alarm on her cell phone for three in the morning.

When it went off, Casey slunk to the closet and woke Leigh
up.
 
“Come on.”
 

Leigh sat up.
 
“We’re
not actually going to do this.”
 

But Casey was already pulling jeans and a sweater on.
 

Twenty minutes later Casey pulled her bike over a block from
Leigh’s house.
 
Leigh rode up behind
her.
 
Casey leaned the bike against
a tree, took the brownie packet out of her bag, and walked towards the
house.
 
Leigh followed.
 
“Casey,” she whispered,
“Seriously!”
 

She heard Leigh’s footsteps quickening behind her and ran so
Leigh could not catch up.
 
She reached
a bush five feet from Leigh’s front door, hunched down, and saw that Leigh was
hiding behind a tree a few feet away.
 
She motioned to Casey.
 
But
instead of coming back, Casey ran to the front door, dropped the packet, and
ran back to the bush.

And that was when things veered off course.
 

For Casey was not actually planning on leaving the packet of
pot brownies there.
 
Her intention
was to leave them long enough for Leigh to tell Yull the next day, thus causing
Yull to think Casey didn’t care about Alex kissing Maxine, and then to retrieve
them.
 
That was the plan,
anyway.
 
However after Casey
returned to the bush and shot Leigh her best hyena smile, the front door to
Leigh’s house opened, her father came out, picked the packet up, and went back
inside.

Casey gasped.
 
Leigh’s mouth fell open in horror.
 
Casey ran over, took her by the elbow, and the two bolted to where the
bikes were parked.
 
They pedaled
furiously until they were a block away.
 

Leigh got off her bike and threw it on the ground.
 
“I can’t believe you did that!”
 

“The house was dark.”

“My Dad walks around in the middle of the night.
 
He’s an insomniac.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that?”

Leigh threw her hands in the air.
 
“Like
that
would’ve
stopped you!”

“Well, yeah,” Casey said weakly, “I wasn’t really going to
leave them.”

A moment passed in which Leigh processed Casey’s words.
 
“You mean that whole thing was just to
freak me out?”
 
Leigh asked.
 

Casey shifted her weight from one foot to the other and looked
at the ground.
 
“Yeah.”
 

“I can’t believe you,” Leigh said icily.
 

“First of all,” Casey began, “they don’t know who left it
there.”
 

“Who else would leave pot brownies on their doorstep in the
middle of the night?”

“They have no proof.”

“They don’t need
proof
,” Leigh
said, “All they saw was a roach clip and they decided to ship me off to
boarding school.
 
This is real live
pot.
 
They’ll probably have me sent
to jail.”
 

“I’ll take the fall for it.”

“That’s not going to do any good,” Leigh snapped.
 

“Sure it is.
 
Anyway
it really was all me.”
 

Leigh picked her bike up off the ground.
 
“I really, really wish you hadn’t done
that.”
 
She got on it.
 
“Don’t follow me.”
 

“Where are you going?” Casey said, “Hey, wait!”

Leigh pedaled off, and quickly too.
 
By the time Casey got on her bike and
pedaled after her, she had reached the end of the street and turned.
 
And by the time Casey reached the turn
she split off again, and Casey could not tell which direction she took.
 
She stopped and got off her bike.
 

There was a time, as recently as a few weeks ago, when Casey
would have let the image of Mr. Robinson sniffing pot brownies overshadow guilt
at getting Leigh into more trouble.
 
When she would have found the whole thing pretty funny.
 
But she wasn’t feeling so great, in that
moment.
 
And she could not get the
conversation she had with Ben at Glen Echo out of her head.
 

She got on her bike and headed towards her house.
 
Surely Leigh would be waiting there when
she got home, she told herself.
 
But
she also knew the direction Leigh went in would not take her to Casey’s.
 

She passed Ben’s house, which was closer than she realized, and
looked up.
 
There was a light on in
an upstairs window.
 
She hoped she
wasn’t about to be wrong about the nocturnal activity of a suburban home for
the second time in one night, but she had a hunch the light was coming from
Ben’s bedroom.

She put the bike down and walked to the area of lawn under the
window.
 
She stared up at it.
 
“Psst!”
 
Nothing happened.
 
She waited a moment.
 
“Psst!” Still nothing happened.
 
She picked up a small stone.
 
With her luck she would break the
window. But if she hit the frame it might get his attention.
 
She aimed carefully and threw.
 
Miraculously, the rock hit the frame
just to the right of the window.
 
Ben’s face appeared in the window.
 
He saw Casey and his expression softened.
 
She waved for him to come down.
 
He motioned to the back of the house.

He met her at the sliding glass door that led to his
basement.
 
“Guess I forgot to add
the three a.m. band practice to my planner,” he said.

“Figures,” she replied.

He motioned for her to follow him inside.
 
She plunked herself down on the
couch.
 
“What are you doing up at
this hour, anyway?” she asked, “Shouldn’t you should be getting your beauty
sleep in anticipation of the big audition tomorrow?”

“Of course.”

She paused.
 
“I just
did a stupid thing.”

“What?”

“You know Leigh, my friend who’s currently living in my
basement?”

“Yes.”

“Well so we, I, really, took these pot brownies to her folks’
house.
 
I put them on the doorstep
but was just going to mess with her for a moment then take them back.
 
But her dad came out of the house and
grabbed them and went back inside.”

“Where’s Leigh now?”

“Not sure.
 
She got
pissed and went pedaling off into the night.”

“Did her dad see you guys?”

“No.”

“Where’d you get the pot?”

“From my stepfather.
 
But he doesn’t know we took it.”

“I see.”

A moment passed.
 
“Her dad won’t eat the brownies,” Ben said, “Who would?”

Casey sat up straighter.
 
“Good point.”

“But that’s not the point.”

“No?”

“No.
 
The point is you
pulled a prank on your best friend, who, I gather from the fact she ran away,
hasn’t been having a great time lately.”

“If you’re trying to make me feel bad it’s not going to work.”

“That’s debatable.”

“So what do I do now?”

“Apologize.”

“Remember when we went to Glen Echo and you said ‘someday
you’re not gonna need to have a comeback for everything’?”

“I do.”

“The next time you say something like that are you gonna tag on
‘
and
you’re not gonna play tricks on your
best friend that go horribly awry’?”

“Where are you going with this?” he asked.

“Are you?”

“No.”

“Sure?”

He nodded.
 

Something unexpected bubbled up in Casey’s head.
 
Maybe it was because of the time.
 
Maybe it was because she didn’t want Ben
to end up with someone who listened to John Mayer.
 
Maybe it was because Ben was looking at
her in a way that lacked its typical snarkiness.
 
Whatever the reason, Casey suddenly was
curious about what it would be like to kiss Ben.
 
So she leaned over and tried it.

He was surprised for a moment there.
 
But then he put a hand on her knee.
 
They went on like that for about a
minute.
 
Kissing, that is.
 

She pulled away.
 
He
grinned.
 
She studied him.
 
“Don’t think this means I’m going to
favor you over Sukh at band practice.”

“Why would I?” He leaned over and they kissed again.
 

When that time finished Casey realized something.
 
Ben--gawky, weird Ben?--Ben was a good kisser.
 
Just how had he come to be such a good
kisser?
 
Had there been some sort of
girlfriend out in California?
 
She
felt jealous and studied him more closely.
 
He studied right back.
 
They
heard footsteps above.
 
Ben’s mother
was up and walking around the house.
 

“I should go,” Casey said.

Ben nodded.
 
They walked
to the sliding glass door.
 
When
they got there she turned.
 
“You
never told me what you were doing up in the first place.”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“Why not?”

“Just couldn’t.”

“You should try warm milk.”

He kissed her again.
 
She smiled, turned, and exited through the sliding glass doors.

27

There was an email from Leigh first thing in the morning.
 
I’m okay.
 
Don’t freak out or call the police or
anything like that.
 

Casey responded gunfire-quick.
 
WHERE DID YOU SLEEP LAST
NIGHT?
 
Also, I ran into Ben after I
saw you and he pointed out that in all likelihood your parents won’t even eat
the pot brownies.
 
Nothing’s gonna
happen. I think.
 
But something did
happen last night, between me and Ben.
 
Write when you can.