Dear Cassie (2 page)

I felt my face tighten, felt my hands go into fists. I squeezed them hard, so hard that I could feel my nails stabbing into my palms, forming red, angry crescent-moon welts.

“Calm down, Hulk,” Ben said, laughing harder, his mouth like a back-up singer going
o-o-o
. My breath went heavy, hot. I was going to destroy him.

I had lied to Amy. I had lied to everyone. I guess I could have told her that I had actually shared that Pepsi with Aaron when he came to see me at work at Pudgie’s Pizzeria instead of throwing it in his face for being one of the guys to stand us up on prom night. That I had shared other things, too. That he bit my neck with his crooked front tooth and licked the inside of my ear and made me whimper; that I had actually fallen for him.

That he had fooled me.

Never again.

I looked at Ben; he was still laughing. I was ready to hit him, but instead I touched my stomach just below my belly button and put another piece of gum in my mouth.

“Too much cinnamon can kill you,” Ben said.

“Good,” I gurgled, practically choking on the wad. It was getting too big to chew, but there was no way I was spitting my gum out because of this guy. I pictured it growing over my tongue, my teeth, red, globular like a reptile heart.

The automatic doors swished open and a guy walked in wearing a uniform the color of a paper bag. He had one of those square heads and a brown buzz-cut so short it looked like pieces of tobacco on his scalp. I recognized the cut, army issue.

Damn, I need a cigarette.

He
was
holding a sign—two signs. One read C
ASSIE
WICK
; the other read B
EN
C
LAIRE
.

“Looks like we were waiting for the same person.” Ben snickered, heaving his duffel bag over his shoulder and walking toward the door.

Fuck.

The white van we rode in smelled like puke, which didn’t help what was already happening in my stomach. I’d never been carsick before, but I was blaming my shaken-snow-globe insides on that.

Ben and I didn’t talk as the city roads turned to country roads, turned to woods on either side of us. Trees taller than electrical poles and bark the color of brick flew past. I opened the pop-out window next to me; the air smelled like cedar and recently dug-up graveyard soil. We were very far away from anyone and anything and only going farther.

I hated the woods. The bugs, the openness, the fact that anything can come at you from anywhere, that you can be lost and
never
find your way back. Hello?
Blair Witch Project?

I felt anxious needles pinch the tips of my fingers—not a feeling I was used to and not a feeling I wanted to get used to. I gripped the seat in front of me and tried to breathe, but it was like someone was jumping up and down on my chest.

Where the hell are we going? What rehab joint is in the middle of nowhere?

The driver wasn’t talking, just clearing his throat every twenty seconds, like he needed to remind us he was there; like at this point either of us was going to do anything, anyway.

Finally, the van moved off the country road to a gravel one. Little rocks popped like popcorn under the tires as we pulled in at a sign that read: T
URNING
P
INES
W
ILDERNESS
C
AMP—HELPING
T
EENAGERS,
O
NE
L
IFE AT A
T
IME
.

Camp? Fucking
camp
? My parents shipped me all the way to California to sleep in dirt? I hadn’t gotten any details about where I was going before I left. Sure, I didn’t ask, but I just figured it would be rehab in a building, in a hospitalish building. Could they have known that this was where they were sending me? Would they have cared?

I watched the back of the square-headed guy’s square head. No explanation, no words, only his throat clearing. We passed one boarded-up shed, another, and another.

I pictured demonic kids singing,
Turning pines no turning back.
They were standing in a circle holding hands, repeating the words ring-around-the-Rosie-like, wearing dirty doll dresses and patched-up overalls.

Camp meant woods, meant bugs, everywhere, all around me, for the next twenty-nine days. I could already feel the disgusting tickle of spiders crawling on my arms—the gross daddy-long-leg ones that looked like the reflection of a regular spider in a fun-house mirror. Ticks would suction to my toes, mosquitoes would buzz as loud as helicopters in my ears.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Ben looked at me and cocked his head. I’m pretty sure my face was white and I was sweating like I was getting paid for it.

“First day is always the hardest,” he said, so quietly he almost didn’t say it. He thought I was having withdrawals, and I guess I was, but not from drugs—from civilization, from lack of bug spray. If I saw anything that had more legs than a dog I was going to lose it, and I couldn’t lose it. Not in front of Ben, or Square Head, or anyone else I was about to meet.

I didn’t
do
losing it.

The van stopped. “Wick, out,” Square Head commanded.

“Seriously, here?” I asked, but I knew I was stalling. I could live in this van for twenty-nine days. At least it had doors that locked, windows that closed, a radio.

“Now,” Square Head yelled, not even answering my question. And I realized whatever tactics I’d used to survive in the world outside this place were probably not going to cut it here. Ben turned to me and smiled, like he’d realized the same thing.

I climbed over him and reached for the door. “See you, Cassie,” he whispered. Then he winked at me. I was too freaked out to care, which was good because if I hadn’t been I might have kicked him in the groin.

A woman wearing the same brown uniform as Square Head was waiting for me in the middle of an open field. The uniform hung on her skeletal frame. She looked like a Brownie—like a very tall Brownie. The girl not the food. Her graying-black hair was in a braid and the skin on her face was so tight it was like she was in a wind tunnel.

“Welcome, Wick,” she said. I was noticing a pattern: last names were first names here. I also noticed she was wearing shiny black combat boots. Her nametag read: R
AWE
. With a name like that she must have had a horrible experience in high school. No wonder she was here trying to make other teenagers’ lives miserable.

I dropped my duffel bag on the ground and waited. It was dusk and I could already feel the mosquitoes starting to swarm, starting to jump on my arms like they were trampolines.

“You know why you’re here and you know what you’ve done. It’s my job to make sure you never do it again.” She was standing so straight I thought she might tip over.

I nodded. I had learned how to nod in court. Nodding was easier because I could be sure I wouldn’t say something I might regret.

I slapped at a bite on one arm then the other. A buzz got close, filling my ear, and I smacked the side of my head. This wasn’t rehab. Rehab was supposed to be like a spa where you woke up in your nurse-made bed each morning and pretended to give a shit. This was my nightmare.

“I’d pick up your duffel if you don’t want fleas,” Rawe said, looking down at it.

Fleas.
I pictured them crawling like ants on a giant hot dog. I picked my bag up and smacked at it like it was on fire.

“This won’t be easy,” Rawe said, making the words heavy with meaning. “This program is part wilderness survival skills, part personal rehabilitation.”

All torture.

“We are the first group to be housed at this particular camp, so we get the unique privilege of rehabilitating it as well.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“It means you’ll be fixing up the grounds and structures for future participants.”

Slave labor.

“It will be hard work. A lot of times you’ll want to quit, but you know what will happen if you do, right?”

I nodded. It didn’t matter what they were going to put us through—I couldn’t quit. Quitting would send me right to the jail time I’d avoided. She didn’t need to remind me about that—it wasn’t so much that I was afraid of going to jail; I dreaded the way my brother would look at me the morning I went in.

“We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow and another long day after that and so on,” she said. “Any questions?” Her diamond-hard eyes looked me up and down, seemingly wondering whether I had what it took to make it through.

I was pretty sure the answer was no.

“Is it just the two of us?” I flashed forward, this straight-laced woman with boot-eyeholes up to her chin and me for twenty-nine more days. It would be enough to turn anyone back into an addict—not that I was an addict. I knew I’d been sent
here
for a very different reason.

They say Karma is a bitch. I guess mine was turning out to be a bitch with fleas and a bony slave driver.

“Nez and Troyer are in the cabin,” she said, walking toward what I thought was a storage shed.

I followed her. From behind, her hair kind of looked like a skunk tail.

The “cabin” looked like a shack built by a homicidal maniac—you know, the place he keeps his blood-splattered murder tools and rotting corpses. The door creaked as Rawe opened it—that
a room you enter and may never leave creak
. It was small, had three cots and an open door that led into a room at the back of the cabin, which I hoped was the bathroom. I hadn’t peed since I’d left Collinsville.

“Nez,” Rawe said, pointing to one cot. A dark-skinned girl, either Indian or Native American, was smacking out a sleeping bag. Her uniform fit her way better than Rawe’s did; it was clear she was the kind of girl that everything fit better. She had dark eyes that seemed to have no pupils and hair that fell down her back like spilled black paint.

“Troyer,” Rawe said, pointing to a girl sitting up on her cot with her eyes closed. She was all Barbie-doll blond bangs. Her skin was covered in goose-bump-sized acne. At least, I hoped it was acne.

Troyer was also wearing the same uniform that Rawe wore. I looked at the empty cot, where a folded brown uniform lay—probably already crawling with fleas.

“Wick,” Rawe said, pointing at me.

I guess those were our introductions. Rawe turned off the one dirty, naked light bulb that stuck out of the ceiling like a nose. Both Nez and Troyer clicked on their flashlights.

“I’d like you to diary for thirty minutes about why you are here,” Rawe said, “an introduction to your leaving that part of your life behind.” She handed me this notebook and a pencil, then walked to the small room at the back of the cabin and closed the door behind her. I guess it wasn’t the bathroom.

“Diary?” I said. I wanted to ask where the bathroom was, but considering what the place looked like, I was also afraid to.

“Assessment Diary,” Nez said. “Write whatever, they don’t read it. It’s for
you
.” She mooed the word, then lay on her stomach and started to write.

I looked at Troyer. She was still sitting upright in the middle of her cot with her eyes closed.

“She doesn’t talk,” Nez said, chewing on her pencil. “Do you?”

“Usually,” I said, sizing up Nez. If she was worse than me, I wanted to know it.

“Thank cheese and crackers,” she said, her legs scissoring behind her. “I was going crazy. Not that we’re allowed to talk, but it’s nice to know you’re not mute.”

“She’s mute?” I said, looking back at Troyer, still motionless on her cot. The way we were talking about her, I wondered if she was deaf, too.

“Hasn’t said a word in the last six hours, not even to Rawe,” Nez said.

“Diary and lights out in thirty,” Rawe bellowed from behind her closed door.

Nez stuck out her tongue and went back to writing. I guess she wasn’t worse than me, because that definitely wasn’t what I would have done.

This is going to be a very fucking long twenty-nine days.

28 Fucking Days to Go

I
woke up from a dream about Aaron. One of those dreams that you know is a dream while you’re having it, which is good because you wouldn’t be doing what you were doing if it were real.