I told Cassie the next morning that she needed to stop drinking or something terrible would happen. But by then I wasn’t her only friend. I was just the one telling her the things she didn’t want to hear.
“Are you okay, Wylie?” My dad is staring at me. And he’s been staring at me for who knows how long. I realize then why. I’ve got myself pressed hard up against the back wall of the living room like I’m trying to escape through the plaster. “Why don’t you sit down?”
“I’m fine,” I say. But I do not sound fine.
“Oh, honey, I’m sorry.” Karen looks at me, seems again like she might cry. “The last thing all of you need is my, is our—” She forces a wobbly smile, looks even closer to falling apart. I stare down. If I see her really start to lose it, I will too. “Cassie will be fine, Wylie, I’m sure. The police are probably right that I’m overreacting. I can have a bit of a short fuse for this kind of …”
She doesn’t finish her sentence. Because of Cassie’s dad, Vince, that’s what she means. Cassie’s parents were already divorced when we met, but Cassie told me all about life before. And Vince was never a quiet drunk. Fights with neighbors at summer barbecues, calling home to be rescued from whatever latest bar he’d been tossed out of. But the final straw was the second DUI, the one where he’d crashed his car into a mailbox downtown. Karen is as afraid of Vince’s history repeating itself in Cassie as I’ve been. When I glance up from the carpet, my dad is still looking at me.
“I’m fine,” I say again, but too loud. “I just want to help find Cassie.”
“Wylie, of course you want to help,” my dad starts. “But right now, I don’t think you—”
“Please,” I say, willing my voice to sound determined, not desperate. Desperate is not my friend. “I need to do this.”
And I do. I don’t realize how bad until the words are out of my mouth. Partly because I want to prove to myself that I can. But also, I do feel guilty. I didn’t agree with the things Cassie was doing, was scared about what might happen to her if she didn’t stop. But maybe I should have made more sure that she knew I’d always love her no matter what mistakes she made.
“It was so selfish of me to come here.” Karen rests her forehead against her hand. “After everything all of you have been through—I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
My dad’s eyes are on mine. Narrowed, like he’s assessing some tricky quadratic equation. Finally, he takes a deep breath.
“No, Wylie is right. We want to help. We need to,” he says. And my heart soars. Maybe he can hear me after all. Maybe he does understand a little bit of something. He turns back to Karen. “Let’s back up. What exactly happened this morning?”
Karen crosses her arms and looks away. “Well, we were rushing around getting ready, and Cassie and I were snapping at each other as usual, because she wouldn’t get out of bed. She’s missed the bus five times in the last two weeks. And I had to be somewhere this morning and I couldn’t—” Her voice tightens as she pulls a crumpled tissue out of her pocket. “Anyway, I totally lost my patience. I—I screamed at her, Ben. Completely let her have it. And she called me the most horrible word. One that I won’t repeat. A word that I have never in my life said out loud. But there was Cassie calling me that.” Her voice catches again as she stares down at her fingers, twisting the bunched tissue between them. “So I told her I was finally going to call that boarding school and have them cart her away. So they could scare some sense into her.”
My dad nods like he knows exactly what Karen means. Like he’s yelled the exact same kind of thing at me countless times. But the only time I can remember him ever yelling at me about anything was one Fourth of July at Albemarle Field when I was barefoot at the fireworks and almost stepped on a broken chunk of bottle.
“The worst part is that what started it—my big rush—wasn’t even about a work meeting or an open house or a prospective client. Nothing I needed to do to put food on our table. Nothing that actually mattered.” Karen looks up, toward the ceiling. Like she’s searching for an answer up there. “It was a yoga class. That’s why I lost it.” She looks at my dad like maybe he can explain her own awfulness. “I fought Vince through the entire divorce for Cassie to live with me, so I could be there for her, and now—I am so selfish.”
Karen drops her face in her hands and rocks it back and forth. I can’t tell if she’s crying, but I really wish she wouldn’t. Because I am worried about Cassie. But not that worried. Ironic that I—of all people—would ever be less worried than anyone else. Makes me feel like maybe I’m in denial. And whatever it is could definitely be bad. Would any of the people Cassie hangs out with these days really call for help if she needed it? Would they stay to make sure she didn’t vomit in her sleep, that no one took advantage of her while she was passed out cold? No. The answer on all fronts is no.
“Karen, you can’t do this to yourself. No one is perfect.” My dad steps toward her and leans in like he might actually put a hand on her back. But he crosses his arms instead. “Was Cassie absent from school?”
“There was no message from them. But I guess—” Karen twists her tissue some more. “Cassie could have deleted it when she came back to leave the bracelet. She did that a couple weeks ago when she skipped school. I was going to change the school contact number to my cell, but I forgot.”
Cassie’s been skipping school, too? These days there is so much about her I don’t know.
“Why don’t you try texting her now, Wylie?” my dad suggests. “Maybe hearing from you—you never know.”
Maybe she’s just not answering Karen. He doesn’t say that, but he’s thinking it. And after Karen threatened her with that boarding school boot camp, Cassie might never talk to her again. But then if she’s avoiding her mom, she’ll probably avoid me, too, for the exact same reason: we both make her feel bad about herself.
“Okay, but I don’t know …” I pull my phone out of my sweatshirt pocket and type, Cassie, where r u? Your mom is freaking. I wait and wait, but she doesn’t write back. Finally, I hold up my phone. “It can take her a minute to respond.”
Actually, it never does. Or never did. The Cassie I knew lived with her phone in her hand. Like it was a badge of honor to respond to every tweet or text or photo within seconds. Or maybe it was more of a life vest. Because the skinnier and drunker and more popular Cassie got, the more desperate she seemed.
“Can you think of anywhere Cassie might be, Wylie?” Karen asks. “Or anyone she could be with?”
“You tried Maia and those guys?” I ask, hating the feel of her name in my mouth.
The Rainbow Coalition: Stephanie, Brooke, and Maia—still best friends after all these years. All except me. They started calling themselves the Rainbow Coalition freshman year because of their array of hair colors. (And they seemed not to care that their all being white