“It’s okay. Mine wasn’t one of the remarkable ones. I mean, it was to me of course, but not the rest of the world.”
I reach into my bottom drawer and grab the photos I hid there the other day, then join Cass on her bed. Just as I did with Nate, I recant the basics—mental illness, man with a gun, our cafeteria, Josh and Betsy.
“This is Josh and me at the winter formal,” I say, showing her my favorite picture of the both of us. I like this one because we look so much older than 16. Maybe I like pretending we got to grow up together after all.
I have fewer pictures of Betsy, but I show her the few I’ve kept. Betsy was my other half, the girl who really knew me. We met in kindergarten and were inseparable ever since.
“So Betsy didn’t make it?” Cass asks, handing the small stack of photographs back to me. I shake my head no and look down at them in my lap—all that’s left of the two most important people in my life summed up in seven pictures.
“Wow. Well that’s…” she pauses for a few seconds, bobbing her head side to side while thinking of the perfect word. “Sucky. That’s just sucky.”
Her choice makes me laugh, and laugh hard. Because yeah, it is sucky, and that’s really the only perfect word there is for my story. “Oh my god, it is soooooo sucky!” I say, putting on a Valley-Girl tone. Mocking my own tragedy feels good, and I wish I had done it sooner.
“Riiiight? I mean, like, oh my god, what a lame way to start your summer!” Cass is speaking Valley Girl with me, and I’m laughing so hard my stomach hurts.
“Totes!” I say back to her in between laughs. We’re rolling on our backs, tears falling from the creases of our eyes when Paige comes in.
“Oh my god, so like, Paige, do you totally want to hear my sucky story?” I say, barely able to finish my sentence, I’m laughing so hard.
“Uhm, I guess?” Paige says, moving to the closet to hang her sweater on the hook on the back of the door.
“Like, when I was sixteen, this guy came to my school and shot my boyfriend and best friend. I mean, right? Who does that?” Cass is holding her stomach she’s laughing so hard, her face turning red, and I’m almost gurgling in between my speech.
Paige steps out from the closet, her eyes wide and centered on me; I realize she’s not really in on the same joke Cass and I are, and then I realize that yeah, I’m probably being really insensitive and maybe a little bit crazy right now. But I don’t f**king care.
“Rowe, if you’re making this up, I swear to god I will smack you. That’s not nice, and it isn’t funny,” she says, her hand on her hip, which only makes my laugh break through again.
“Oh, Paige. If only this were a joke,” I say, my tears half from laughing and half from the truth, and the escape feels euphoric.
Once I calmed myself down, I shared the photos with Paige, too. She was a lot more serious in her response than Cass, more like my parents and others from my hometown. She was sympathetic and kind, but I think I kind of liked Cass’s response better. I need more people to treat me like that—normal.
Paige told us she was moving out next week to the Delta house, and I could tell Cass was happy about that. I think she relished the idea of not being a twin for a while, not that there was anything remotely similar about her and her sister. Surprisingly, though, Paige’s departure made me feel a little sad. She was more than her appearances, and I felt like I was just getting to know the real her.
Paige left in the late afternoon for a date—apparently she moved on quickly from her crush on Nate to a member of the football team. For the last hour, I’ve been sitting still, watching Cass try on outfits for the dinner I was half-invited to, and when Cass realizes I’m not getting ready, she questions me.
“Are you just going like that?” She motions to my shorts and plain blue tank top.
“I’m not sure Nate really wants me to go. He was sort of…I don’t know, weird about it,” I say.
“Hmmmm,” Cass says, reaching for my hand to pull me up to a stand in front of her. When I’m fully up, she slings my arm forward, pushing me toward my clothes in the closet and slapping my butt while I pass by. “Here’s the deal. I don’t know what you mean by weird, but Nate had about a two-hour prep conversation with Ty and me the other day trying to get up the balls to ask you to dinner. So if you don’t show up, we’re going to feel like failures. Now put something pretty on, and hurry, we’re late.”
I love Cass. It’s decided; she is now my best friend.