LITMIR.BIZ

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to me, right up until they reached down and invited her to climb up and join the pile.

      “Maia and those girls.” Karen rolls her eyes. “I honestly don’t know what Cassie sees in them.”

      That they see her, I want to say. In a way you never did. But then, I’m hardly one to talk. At the beginning, Cassie tried to hide how proud she was that she’d been invited to join the Rainbow Coalition at one of their “hangouts.” Not “parties,” because that would be “so basic.” (And yes, they actually talk like that.) She pretended that she was doing it for research purposes only. It was at the very first Rainbow Coalition “hangout” that Cassie met Jasper. And after that, she seemed to care a whole lot less about pretending anything.

      It was exciting for her. I did get that part. But I also thought Cassie would get over it pretty fast, that she’d come to her senses. Instead, she just got more and more drunk at more and more parties. More than once, I played back to her what she had always told me about her dad: that she never wanted to end up like him. I told her again and again that, as her friend, I was worried. But what did she need me for when all I did was make her feel bad about herself? She had the Rainbow Coalition to fill her days and, at night, she was falling in love, hard. I could see it, but I was trying hard to pretend it wasn’t happening. Because Jasper Salt didn’t lift Cassie out of the gutter the way a real friend would, the way someone who really cares about you does. No, he grabbed Cassie’s hand and leaped with her right down the drain.

      “You know, Jasper really is a good person, Wylie,” Cassie had started in the Monday after Thanksgiving. “You need to get to know him.”

      We were eating lunch at Naidre’s, the one coffee shop near school where upperclassmen were allowed to go off campus. Soup and a sandwich for me, a dry bagel for Cassie, which she was busy tearing into small pieces and rearranging on her plate so it seemed like she was eating.

      We’d only been together five minutes after not seeing each other for four days and already we were back in a fight. But really, things had been off between us since Cassie came home from fitness summer camp at the end of August. “Fat camp,” Cassie had called it when her mother had forced her to go the summer before eighth grade. But this time had been Cassie’s idea. Even though it was hard to see how she had any more weight to lose. When she got home, she was absolutely skeletal, a comparison that delighted her.

      It wasn’t just the weight loss, either. Cassie also had new hair, longer and blown straight, and stylish clothes. It was hard to believe she was the same person who’d hunched over that toilet with me. I wasn’t surprised weeks later when the Rainbow Coalition had come knocking or even that somebody like Jasper—popular, good-looking, an athlete (and an asshole)—had noticed Cassie. I just couldn’t believe how much she’d liked them back.

      “I know everything about Jasper that I need to know,” I said, then burned my mouth on my tomato soup.

      Rumor was he had knocked some senior out with a single punch his freshman year. In one version, Jasper had broken the kid’s nose. I still couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t in jail, much less still in school. But I hadn’t liked Jasper even before I’d heard about that punch, and maybe some of those reasons were shallow—his body-hugging T-shirts, his swagger, and his stupid, put-on surfer lingo. But I also had proof that he was an actual asshole. I had Tasha.

      Tasha was our age but seemed way younger. She hugged people without warning and laughed way too loud, always wearing pink or red with a matching headband. Like a giant Valentine’s Day card. But no one was ever mean to Tasha; that would have been cruel. No one except for Jasper, that is. A couple of weeks after he and Cassie started hanging out—the beginning of October—I saw Jasper talking to Tasha down at the end of an empty hall. They were too far away to hear, but there was no mistaking Tasha rushing back my way in tears. But when I told Cassie about it afterward, she just said Jasper would never do something mean to Tasha. Which meant, I guess, that I was lying.

      “Jasper might not be perfect, but he’s had a really hard life. You should cut him a break,” Cassie went on now, readjusting her bagel scraps. “It’s just him and his mom, who’s totally selfish, and his older brother, who’s a huge asshole. And his dad’s in jail,” she added defensively, but also kind of smugly. Like Jasper’s dad being a criminal was somehow proof that he was a good person.

      “In jail for what?”

      “I don’t know,” she snapped.

      “Cassie, what if it’s something really bad?”

      “Just because Jasper’s father did something doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with him. It’s actually really messed up that you would even think that.” Cassie shook her head and crossed her arms. The worst part was that she was right: it was pretty awful that my mind had jumped there. “Besides, Jasper understands me. That matters more than his stupid dad.”

      I felt a flash of heat in my chest. So here it was, the real truth: Jasper understood her and I did not.

      “Which you, Cassie?” I snapped. “You have so many faces these days, how can he even keep track?”

      Cassie stared at me, mouth hanging open. And then she started gathering her things.

      “What are you doing?” I asked, my heart beating hard. She was supposed to get angry. We were supposed to have a fight. She wasn’t supposed to disappear.

      “I’m leaving,” Cassie said quietly. “That’s what normal people do when someone is awful to them. And in case you’re confused, Wylie”—she motioned to herself—“this is normal. And you are awful.”

      “Anyway, I did speak to Maia and the other girls,” Karen goes on. “They said they last saw Cassie in school, though none of them could seem to remember exactly when.”

      “Have you talked to Jasper?” I ask, trying not to sound like I’ve already decided that he is—in spirit if not in fact—100 percent responsible for every bad thing that has ever happened to Cassie.

      Karen nods. “He exchanged texts with Cassie when she was on the bus on her way to school, but that’s the last time he heard from her. At least, supposedly.” She squints at me. “You don’t like Jasper, do you?”

      “I don’t really know him, so I’m not sure my opinion means anything,” I say, even though I think just the opposite.

      “You’re Cassie’s oldest friend,” Karen says. “Her only real friend, as far as I’m concerned. Your opinion means everything. You don’t think he would hurt her, do you?”

      Do I think that Jasper would actually do something to Cassie? No. I think many bad things about Jasper, but I have no reason to think that. I do not think that.

      “I don’t know,” I say, being vague on purpose. But I can’t even half accuse Jasper of something that serious just because I don’t like him. “No, I mean. I don’t think so.”

      “And Vince hasn’t heard from her either?” my dad asks.

      “Vince,” Karen huffs. “He’s hanging out with some new ‘girlfriend’ in the Florida Keys. Last I heard he was going to try to get his private detective’s license. Ridiculous.”

      The insane part is that Cassie might actually call her dad. Cassie is crazy about Vince, despite everything. They email and text all the time. It’s their distaste for Karen that unites them.

      “You should probably try to reach him,” my dad suggests gently. Then he heads over to the counter, picks up his wallet, and peers at the little hooks on the wall where we hang our keys. “Just in case. And you and I will go out looking for her.”

      Karen nods as she looks down at her fingers, still working them open and closed around the mostly shredded tissue.

      “He’s going to blame me, you know. Like if I wasn’t such a hateable hardass, Cassie would still be—” Karen clamps her hand over her mouth when her voice cuts out. “And he’ll be right.

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