Dear Cassie Part 9

We were being treated worse than horse s.h.i.+t. Fossilized horse s.h.i.+t.

Rawe handed us each a rake and pointed us to a stall. Mine had a burnished wood sign hanging on it that read PEANUT.

"I don't do horses," Nez said, her lips tight.

"I thought you did everything," I said.

Nez stuck her tongue out at me.

"The horses are long gone, Queen Nez," Rawe said, doing a fake bow. "Rake out the hay."

Troyer lowered her head and entered her stall.

"Why are we doing this?" Nez asked, holding her rake upright next to her.

I guess I was glad she asked and I kinda wondered why I hadn't. It was just the kind of question I ordinarily would have snarked out, either loud enough for Rawe to hear or under my breath. But I hadn't even thought to say anything. I just took my rake and entered Peanut's sad old stall. Was I changing without even realizing it, like Rawe had said? Or was I tired, so incredibly tired in my body and in my mind that I couldn't even be baseline normal Ca.s.sie?

Or had I lost her before I even got here?

"I'll be back in twenty minutes, so you better hope you're done," Rawe said, slamming the stable door behind her.

"What's her problem?" Nez asked.

"Who knows?" I said. Rawe was acting like a completely different person than she had been the day I found her praying. Maybe she wasn't that person. Or maybe for some reason, she was only that person with me.

I started raking. The hay was high, as high as gra.s.s that hadn't been mowed in weeks. It crunched under my feet as I thought about Peanut. He was probably a pony, a light brown pony that all the campers must have loved and fed apples and carrots to.

When I was a kid and my brother and I would ride, that was what we would do: watch as the orange carrots we fed our trail horses were crunched and crunched and disappeared into their big, spongy mouths. We would pat them as they chewed, their fur as soft as a dog's ear. I might not have missed being home, but I guess I missed my brother.

I heard Nez and Troyer in the stalls on either side of me, also raking. Nez was grunting, like she was hooking up with the hay, and it made me wonder why she hadn't complained yet that the boys weren't there. She hadn't even snuck out since the night she was with Ben, or had claimed to be.

As I raked, I couldn't help thinking about the kids who'd gone to this camp, whose parents came to watch them ride on visiting weekend. They probably had the kind of parents who would always tell them they were awesome, even when they sucked. I had the kind who told me I sucked when I sucked. I couldn't even remember a time they told me I was awesome, but maybe that's because I never was. Maybe that was because my mom was too busy drinking instead of talking and my dad was too busy killing other people's children with army-issue weapons.

"This stinks," Nez said over the stall, in her typical Nez way.

"You stink," I said, in my typical Ca.s.sie way.

Troyer said nothing. I was beginning to wonder if part of the reason she didn't talk was because she didn't want people to figure her out, didn't want to have a guy like Ben make it his daily mission to.

"I'd much rather be rolling in the hay than raking it," Nez joked.

"How about we work for a change?" I said. I actually liked raking and thinking about Peanut. How I would have liked to ride Peanut and brush her blond mane. I probably would have liked going to this camp. I might have turned into a completely different person if I had.

"If I don't talk, who's going to?" Nez said over her heavy breaths. "All you do is swear and all Troyer does is drool." I knew Troyer could hear Nez from her stall, but she didn't stop working, didn't even act like she could hear her. I listened to Troyer's rake move along the floor of the stall, scratching at dirt and hay.

I ignored Nez, matched Troyer's movements.

"I'm trying to stay sane," Nez said. "What are you trying to do?"

"Get the h.e.l.l out of here," I said, still raking. My shoulders burned like they had the day we split all that wood. The hay was as heavy as the snow I had to shovel from our driveway when my brother conned me into doing it for him.

"Just make sure you don't lose it before then," Nez said.

"Just make sure you don't trip over your v.a.g.i.n.a before then," I said.

"At least I know how to use mine," Nez said.

There was no way she could have known what had happened before I came here, but when she said things like that, it was like she did.

"This sucks," I said, slamming my rake against the hay below me. "f.u.c.k," I spit.

"Why do you swear so much?" Nez asked.

"Because I like it," I said, not turning to look at her. "Why do you sleep around so much?"

"Because I like it," she replied.

"It's f.u.c.king disgusting," I said.

"So is swearing," she said. "It's like swallowing the whole pit toilet and then spewing it out again." Her words were like tea-calm, warm.

G.o.d, I hated Nez in a way that I never hated Lila. Nez was definitely as vain as Lila, but there was something else about her, something where just hearing her voice could make my skin crawl.

I heard the stable door open: a heavy, dusty creak. "Troyer, Wick, tack room," Rawe yelled. "Nez, you finish the stalls."

"All of them?" Nez wailed.

"You have other plans?" Rawe asked.

"You have to be flicking kidding me," Nez said, huffing.

Maybe Rawe did actually care.

Troyer and I followed her into the tack room. Saddles and bridles hung from the wall. A desk, empty except for a s.h.i.+ny cowboy belt buckle paperweight, sat in the center.

"Dust," Rawe said, handing us two rags. "Don't move anything, don't touch anything. Don't take anything. Understand?"

"Yeah," I said. I wanted to ask her how we were supposed to dust without touching anything, but Rawe had been nice enough to remove Nez from our lives for a short time. That had to be worth me keeping my mouth closed. I also wondered what there was to take. I wasn't really in need of a saddle. But maybe I could use the bridle to shut Nez the h.e.l.l up.

"Troyer?" Rawe asked.

She nodded, just once, fast and sharp like the blade of a guillotine going down.

"Okay," Rawe said, leaving us to work. "You have ten minutes."

I started on the saddles. They hung on wooden dowels adorned with golden labels, a girl's name on each of them.

A girl's first name.

Troyer started dusting the top of the desk. "At least this is better than hiking," I said, realizing that even in a room with someone who didn't talk, I felt the need to make conversation. I hated to think it, but maybe Nez was right. Maybe we did have to do whatever we had to do to stay sane.

Not that anything I had tried yet appeared to be working.

Troyer looked at me, then back down at the desk. She picked up the belt buckle paperweight and held it in her hand.

"My brother and I used to horseback ride," I said as I s.h.i.+ned one of the labels. Rachel. A girl with a saddle. A girl who probably didn't smoke pot, who probably didn't get arrested and then fall for stupid boys who made her feel more stupid, who made her do stupid things she could never forget.

Troyer looked up but didn't write on her pad. Maybe she didn't have it with her and maybe she didn't care that my brother and I used to horseback ride. I mean, why would she? It was the first time I'd even bothered to think of it in years.

Troyer wasn't listening anyway, so I stopped talking and dusted. The smooth leather of the saddles started to s.h.i.+ne like caramel under my rag. They were English saddles, the kind that rich kids used. This was probably a rich kids' camp. A rich kids' camp that some poor messed-up kids were now cleaning. Rachel was probably at an Ivy League college right now. One like maybe Amy would have gone to if she hadn't started hanging out with Lila and me. Even before all this, I knew an Ivy League school was the kind of place I would never see.

Rawe stuck her head in the tack room door, her white skin stark against the worn, dirty wood. She spoke like her words were a snare drum. "Troyer, come help Nez load up this hay. Wick, finish up, grab the rags, and turn off the light when you're done."

I watched Troyer leave. From behind, her blond hair reminded me of what Peanut's mane might have looked like.

All alone, I took the chance to sit in the desk chair. I wiped my forehead-it was covered in sweat. My hands were dusty. Dirt crusted in my nails. Without a shower in two days, this was clean now. Without a cigarette, this was relaxing now. I looked in the desk drawers, opened each one slowly and quietly so Rawe wouldn't hear, but they were all empty.

I don't know what I was hoping for, maybe that the equestrian counselor was a smoker and left her smokes behind on the last day of camp.

I got up, pushed the chair back in, and noticed the belt buckle paperweight was missing. I looked on the floor, thinking that Troyer must have knocked it over while she was cleaning, but it wasn't there. Had she swiped it? Maybe that was why she was here. Maybe that was why she was afraid to talk.

I might not be able to figure her out, but I know who I am taking with me to steal those cigarettes from Ben.

19 f.u.c.king Days to Go W e were crunching on our allotted afternoon snack of trail mix-the s.h.i.+tty kind without chocolate chips, because, hey, we are being punished-when the letters came. In plain white envelopes like we really were in prison. Rawe gave Troyer and me one each, and then handed Nez a stack as thick as a deck of cards. Maybe all her s.e.xual partners had written her specially to thank her for giving them gonorrhea.

"I didn't even know we were allowed to get mail," I said, looking at my envelope. I recognized the handwriting; it was from my brother. Nez got letters from hot boys. I got a letter from my brother.

Aaron truly had ruined me.

"Well, someone in your family read the manual," Rawe said, "even if you didn't."

"I read it," I said, because I was feeling argumentative. Really, I had figured I could learn the rules when I got here, that I would have more than enough time to learn them when I got here. I should have read it. Then I would have known I was coming to the n.a.z.is' idea of a relaxing vacay.

"Great," Rawe said. "I guess you missed the section on approved mail, and also the one on approved language."

Nez laughed.

I shrugged.

"Twenty minutes to read," Rawe said. "Then we start the dinner fire."

She went into her room at the back of the cabin with her own envelope, maybe from someone who knew her by her first name, like the people who had written our letters knew us. In that moment I realized that I didn't even know Rawe's first name. I probably never would.

The dinner fire sucked. If we couldn't start it, and by we I mean Nez, Troyer, and me, then we didn't eat. There had been several nights we didn't eat. I considered leaving the rest of my trail mix for later just in case.

"I'm definitely going to need longer than twenty minutes," Nez said, rifling through her letters.

"You better get started then," I said. I considered adding "shut the f.u.c.k up and" before "get," but I wasn't in the mood to fight with Nez. I had my own letter to read.

"What the h.e.l.l do you know? You got one letter and it's probably from your mommy and daddy," Nez said. "Like Troyer's."

Troyer looked up from her envelope and gave Nez the finger.

"Say it or I can't hear you," Nez said.

Screw you, Troyer's lips said, but no words came out.

"It's from my brother," I said.

Nez bounced on her cot and looked at me excitedly. "Is he hot?"

"Do you ever turn off?" I asked.

"So that means he's not," she said, frowning.

"It means you make the cast of Jersey Sh.o.r.e look like prudes," I said.

"Jealous," Nez smiled, fanning herself with her letters.

I ignored her, picked up the envelope, and looked at my hands. The areas around my nails and on my palms were cracked and bleeding from rock climbing that day. They looked like they were made out of b.l.o.o.d.y wax paper. I wiped them on my uniform; it was dirty anyway.

Troyer was already reading, her face hidden behind a stack of stationary pages. I wondered who her letter was from. Maybe she had a boyfriend at home. What a catch, a girl who couldn't b.i.t.c.h at you.

I looked over at Nez. She had turned away from us and was lying on her stomach reading one letter at a time.

I opened my letter. Inside were two envelopes: one from my brother and one from someone else. The only someone else it could have been was my mom or my dad.

c.r.a.p, what the h.e.l.l did they have to say to me?

Rather than find out, I opened my brother's first.

I unfolded the letter. In the middle of the page were three lines:

You can do this.

You will do this.

I love you.

Sometimes I wished I could meet a boy like my brother and sometimes I wondered if my brother was the only boy I would ever meet like him.