Moving in Reverse (27 page)

An hour later, we were being ushered
into the VIP room at a club in the meatpacking district. Turns out
Lauren had some connections in New York too.

“
I can’t believe you’re
going to be a model,” Madison squealed as a waiter in tight black
jeans brought us a round of rum and cokes.

“
I’m not
really
going to be a
model,” I said, already feeling the effects of the pre-party shot
we’d taken. “It’s more like a spokesperson thing, or something? I
don’t even know. There are all these contracts, and I’m scared to
give them to my mom.”

“
Casey,” Madison clamped
her hand down on my shoulder. “Call. Tanner’s. Agent.”

I giggled. “Now? Doesn’t seem very
professional.” The music in the club transitioned to a song I knew,
and I resisted the urge to start dancing and wind up in US Weekly
tomorrow for flashing somebody my underwear.

(Which, at least, I was
wearing.)

“
Besides, what’s the
point?” I was suddenly serious. “I’m not dating Tanner, and all
this stuff is going to dry up once people realize Blake is gone.
Without either of them, nobody cares about me.”

Madison looked at me
gently, suddenly seeming less drunk. “You never know, Case. How
many girls get to date the celebrity they’ve been crushing on since
they were in junior high? Or be a college girl who balances
photoshoots and paparazzi run-ins? Is it that crazy to think that
people might be interested in you
besides
just for Blake or
Tanner?”

I sighed. Even if she had
a point, I wasn’t sure that was what I wanted. Blake and Tanner
were famous for creating something. I wasn’t sure I wanted
to
stay
famous
just because I’d somehow
become
famous.

Or quasi-famous. Or whatever. I
finished the last sip of my drink, feeling an ice cube go down my
throat.

“
Whatever,” Madison said,
knowing not to press too hard. “Just stay famous enough that we
never have to wait in line, okay? That’s all I ask.”

I smiled goofily. “I’ll run it into
the ground until you take over.”

We both lay back against the plush
leather seats. The club was insanely crowded, but we had our own
little area with extra drinks and a waiter just for us.

“
Have you tried calling
him?”

I managed to answer without bursting
into tears, which was a pretty big improvement from the week
before. Still, the words ripped out my heart. “No. He made it
pretty clear that he didn’t want to see me. It’d just be pathetic
to keep trying.” I looked at her for reassurance.
“Right?”

Madison looked at me sincerely. “More
pathetic than going to bed at nine p.m. to avoid your whole
life?”

I pursed my lips. She had a
point.

“
There’s nothing I can
say.”

That was the main problem. Last
summer, when Blake and I had broken up over the lie that I’d told,
I wrote him a letter telling him how much I loved him.

It was still true, but he knew it. And
he’d made perfectly clear that either way, he still didn’t trust
me. And he was right. No matter how much I loved him, I’d lied and
lied and lied.

It wasn’t about love. It was about
something that I couldn’t get back with words. Not when my words
didn’t mean anything anymore.

“
Is there anything
you
want
to
say?”

I thought about it, my
head starting to get a little dizzy. I took another sip of my
drink.
Last one
,
I thought to myself.

“
Yeah,” I said, a burst of
energy hitting me. “Actually there is.”

Madison perked up. “So do
it.”

“
What, now?”

“
Yeah, Case. Before you go
back into clinical depression mode. Liquid courage,
remember?”

“
I can’t call him here.
It’s too loud.”

“
So write him an email.
Text him. Do something.”

There was really only one thing I
wanted to say. And it didn’t need a novel — it could fit in a
text.

I took out my phone and typed, the
autocorrect making up for my tipsy fingers.

I love
you
, I wrote.
I’m
sorry and I miss you. But you didn’t have to leave school to get
away from me. I would have left you alone if you wanted me
gone.

I closed my eyes and hit
send.

The enormity of Blake’s decision had
crushed me. It wasn’t just that I wasn’t his girlfriend anymore. It
wasn’t just that I wasn’t his friend. He’d literally given up on
his college education to get away from me.

It was like being slapped in the face,
and then run over by a truck. He wanted me gone that
much.

A tear slipped down my cheek, and
Madison must have decided that I’d had enough for the
night.

“
Come on, Case,” she said,
leading me out through the back exit so no photographers could
shoot us. She hailed a cab while I waited inside the door, too
tired and broken to notice the two or three B-list celebrities
doing the same thing.

We were tucked into the backseat,
headed downtown to Madison’s dorm, when my cell phone
buzzed.

My heart felt like it stopped beating.
Madison was completely frozen as I pulled it out and looked at the
screen.

Blake’s message was one
line.

I didn’t leave
school.

Chapter
Forty-Four

If Darby and I had been on speaking
terms, which we definitely were not, she would have been proud of
the amount of primping I did before our Modern Lit discussion
session on Wednesday.

I’d picked up a few tricks from the
hair and makeup artists I’d been around in Los Angeles. I started
by borrowing Darby’s flatiron, which I figured she owed me at this
point, and turning my hair into a sleek, shiny halo.

It was actually a lot easier to look
nice than I’d always thought. Maybe this was why most girls put on
makeup before they saw their boyfriends?

I dabbed pink lip gloss on my lips,
and brushed on a little bronzer, smiling to find the apples of my
cheeks like I’d learned to do. I dabbed a light eyeshadow onto my
lids, blending it smoothly, and applied two coats of mascara.
Looking at myself in the mirror, I had to admit, I’d done a good
job.

Not that it mattered,
necessarily.

But it also couldn’t hurt.

My legs were shaky as I walked the few
blocks from my dorm over to the English department building. Blake
hadn’t shown up for the lecture, which focused on another book by
Margaret Atwood, the same author we’d read before fall break. I’d
diligently read every word of it, and took four dense pages of
notes during the professor’s lecture. If Blake had fallen for me
because I was smart, I was going to show him that, at the very
least, I really was.

I opened the door to our classroom,
which was already half full of students waiting for the discussion
to begin.

No Blake.

I purposefully chose a seat with two
empty chairs on either side of me, and subtly spread my books over
the table next to me, discouraging anyone else from taking either
seat. I hoped he was just running late. I tapped my pencil on the
edge of the table, trying to quell the jittery, antsy feeling that
was spreading through my body.

I checked my cell phone for the fourth
time. Two minutes until class started, and Blake was never
late.

The Professor walked in a minute
early, with a stack of papers under his arm. I remembered my essay,
written the day it was due and handed in at 4:59 on the dot, and
crossed my fingers.

I was holding my breath, watching the
door close behind him, when Blake walked through it.

He looked around the room, and I met
his eyes, giving him a half smile. I gestured infinitesimally to
the seat next to me that I’d saved, taking one of my books and
moving it closer to me, creating a space for him.

Blake’s face was completely blank. It
was like he was looking straight through me.

He took an empty seat across the room,
not even nodding in my direction.

The rest of the class was pretending
to keep talking, but I could feel everyone watching us. I bit the
inside of my lip, steeling my gaze and focusing on the Professor. I
looked down at my phone, spending an extra second making sure it
was silenced.

To avoid thinking about anything else,
I counted down the seconds until class started.

Ten. Nine. Eight. Stop
thinking.

Seven. Six. Don’t cry.

Five. His eyes.

Four.

Blake.

Three.

Two.

“
In the
Blind Assassin
, everyone
has their secrets. Laura keeps the secret of her abuse, Iris keeps
the secret of her affair, they both keep their reasons and their
motivations from each other and from everyone else. But what does
it mean to be blind? What does it mean to be unable to see
something, if the person is unwilling to show you? When are secrets
destructive, and when are they lifelines? I want to focus today’s
discussion on that theme. Who wants to begin?”

My heart pounded. I looked at Blake
across the table, eyes wide. His face betrayed nothing. He picked
up his book and thumbed through to find a page.

I cleared my throat. “I think what
really matters are their motivations. Even Laura, whose secrets are
the most hurtful, keeps them out of some misguided belief that
she’s helping Alex. Her secret is the most destructive, but she
thinks she’s doing the right thing.”

Another girl chimed in. “But it’s not
so simple. It’s not just the character keeping secrets, it’s the
author, as a stand-in for the main character. Half the book is a
lie, and she teases us through it anyway. And in the end, she tells
us ‘you must know that already,’ but won’t take responsibility for
all the ways she’s misled us for five hundred pages.”

“
Exactly,” Blake said.
“You can’t justify a lie by claiming your heart was in the right
place. You have to choose knowledge, and the consequences. You have
to take responsibility.”

“
Interesting,” the
Professor broke in. “At the beginning of the book, Atwoood tells
the story of a king who shrinks his kingdom to the size of a pin to
protect it from invaders. But none of the townspeople know. They
don’t know they’ve been saved. They see light through a hole
between rocks, and think it’s the sun.”

“
But the king knows,” I
say, remembering the quote. I’d highlighted it and marked down the
page. “The king knows, and it gives him nightmares. He takes it on
himself, so they can be safe.”

“
But it wasn’t his choice
to make,” Blake said, meeting my eyes for the first time. I could
hear his voice, knife-edged and deliberate in every word. “Maybe
they wanted to fight. He’ll never know, because he shrunk them to
the size of a pin. His secret took their choice away.”

I held his gaze, not
blinking.
I’m sorry
, I tried to say without words.

“
What about the ending?”
The professor continued, turning to the student sitting next to
him. “How does the ending change the perspective on all
this?”

Blake broke my gaze and looked down at
his book again, shaking his head a little bit.

“
Well, at the end, she
passes the story on to her daughter,” the girl next to the
professor said, stumbling a little bit as she tried to put her
thoughts into words. “She chooses knowledge. She tells her daughter
all the secrets, she gives her a clean slate.”

“
Your legacy is the realm
of infinite speculation. You’re free to reinvent yourself at will,”
the Professor read from the text. It was my favorite
line.

“
But it doesn’t matter,”
Blake said, his voice hard and firm. “By the time she does it,
everyone in the story is dead. She only tells the truth when it’s
too late for it to make a difference.”

With that, he looked at me. His blue
eyes were clear and cold.

“
It’s never too late,” I
whispered, not breaking eye contact. “The realm of infinite
speculation. That’s the point.”

For a second, the class was silent.
There was a beat, a pause in the discussion, and then another
student took over and the conversation continued.

Blake’s eyes stayed locked
with mine.
It’s true
, I thought, wanting to say the words out loud. That’s the
miracle of looking into the future. Infinite
possibilities.

Blake Parker. Casey Snow. They weren’t
static, they weren’t fixed. They were what we made them into. No
matter what had come before, we were staring into a wide open
future.

An expression flickered across Blake’s
face, like he could hear my thoughts across the room.