I was the last one out.
The music was loud as the cold air hit me, and I was already thinking of my backflip when I heard someone over my head yell, “Cass!”
I stopped dead in my tracks, causing Caroline Miter, the mascot, to crash right into me. I don’t know if everyone was yelling my sister’s name: The one voice was the only one I could hear. And for one fleeting, crazy second I thought she must be there, somewhere close, in the places I’d always searched for her in my dreams.
“Cass!” the voice yelled again, and I looked up to see a man pumping his fist. He was talking to me. His breath was coming out in small white puffs. “Cass!”
“Come on,” Caroline said to me, her voice muffled under her tiger head as she yanked me by my sleeve out onto the field. “Hurry!”
I scrambled behind her into formation, but I couldn’t stop looking at that guy as he yelled my sister’s name at me again and again. I was barely aware of the dance routine as I did it, everything in slow motion as the girls squatted and built the pyramid and I climbed up. When I stood, knees wobbling, the crowd was a blur of noise and color in front of me. It was so cold as I reached up to touch the scar over my eye, tracing its length and feeling my pulse there. I tilted my head back and looked up at the stars; I could still hear Cass’s name in my head, and suddenly I felt wide awake.
The world is speaking to you every day, she’d said to me so many times. You just don’t always know how to listen.
I was listening, then. I could hear everything.
“Cass!” The guy was still shouting, or maybe he wasn’t and I was only dreaming, really dreaming now. I closed my eyes. “Cass!”
And that is the last thing I remember before falling.
It is nothing short of a miracle that Eliza Drake happened to look up and see me begin to fall backward. Regardless of her feelings for me, she jerked out from under Lindsay White, who fell and broke her nose, to stagger backward and catch me. Those new fifteen pounds in her butt and hips most likely saved my life.
When I opened my eyes, my ears were ringing and the first thing I saw was a circle of cheerleaders standing around me in purple sequins, pom-poms limp at their sides. I wondered for a second if I’d died and gone to hell.
“Caitlin?” I turned my head to see a man in a paramedic outfit. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes,” I said, and sat up, slowly. I found out later I’d been lucky enough to fall square on Eliza, who suffered only a bad hip bruise and scraped elbows from catching me. I’d escaped pretty much unscathed, other than some scratches, a bad scrape on my arm, and a cut on my knee that didn’t even require stitches. My mother, who herself had almost passed out after seeing me fall, kept telling everyone it was nothing short of a miracle.
When Eliza, Lindsay, and I all finally stood up to walk to the ambulance to get bandaged up, the crowd stood and gave us a standing O. We went on to win the game big, but my topple made everything else anticlimactic.
“It’s a miracle,” my mother said to me again as we stood watching the ambulance drive off, a new white bandage wrapped around my knee. I’d already thanked Eliza Drake, who was now somewhat of a hero and suddenly popular, and apologized to Lindsay, who was forced to wear nose splints for two months and subsequently kiss her teen modeling career good-bye. My temporary pyramid insanity, clearly, had serious and far-flung ramifications. “Can you imagine how bad it could have been? What if you’d been seriously injured?”
“I know,” I said.
“You’re just so lucky,” she said again, squeezing my arm. “And next game, you’ll be right back out there.”
But something had changed in me, even if I didn’t know what it was just yet. All I could think was that I felt alive for the first time since my birthday. From wherever she was, Cass had finally spoken to me, reaching out from dreamland to where I stood in this waking world, half-asleep and wobbly, under those bright, bright stars.
My mother had wanted me to come right home, sure I had a concussion or at least some broken limb the paramedics had missed, but my father let me go to the team party over her objections. On the way, me, Rina, and another cheerleader named Kelly Brandt stopped at the car wash to vacuum out Kelly’s Camaro. The car was trashed; the night before her boyfriend, a tailback named Chad, had gotten sick in the backseat. She’d done the best she could with towels and Lysol spray, but at the car wash we had to get down to business.
“This is so disgusting,” Kelly said between clenched teeth, wiping the seat with the towel. As she did so she sprayed a cloud of Lysol around her head, to balance out the smell. Kelly was a nice girl, kind of a mother hen, and had taken me and Rina on to show us the ropes since she had a year over us and therefore some kind of squad seniority.
She looked out at me and Rina where we were sitting by the vacuum station, smoking cigarettes. I didn’t usually, but after the game everyone had been pressing around me, talking about my fall, and I needed something to calm me down. I still felt strange, as if everything was crackling and alive all around me. Kelly said, “I can’t believe you’re not even helping me.”
“Chad’s your boyfriend,” Rina pointed out. “If he was mine, I’d be on puke patrol.”
“Funny,” Kelly growled. She hit the Lysol again, the smell wafting out into the cold air. We were all still in our cheerleading uniforms and the cut on my leg was throbbing a bit under my bandage. The car wash was deserted.
“You know he’s just going to do it again,” Rina said to Kelly, blowing out a huge cloud of smoke. She tossed her hair, drawing out one curl to inspect the ends. “I don’t even see why you’re bothering.”
“Because it stinks,” Kelly snapped. “And he’s not going to do it again.”
“Whatever,” Rina said. She was in a hurry to get to the party and Bill Skerrit, the quarterback, a short little guy, all pointy and pock-marked, but whenever I asked her what she saw in him she just smiled and shook her head.
“You’ll see someday,” she’d say, and I’d look at Bill again and wonder what she meant. She’d spent all week pushing me together in the courtyard and on the bus with Mike Evans, a running back who was tall and a little dopey with pretty blue eyes. We were meeting him and Bill at the party and I was under stern instructions to accept his letter jacket—which would signify that we were now officially dating after the past couple of weeks of flirting—if it was offered to me.
There was another spurt of Lysol from inside the car and Kelly said, “Hey, Caitlin, grab that dollar out of the ashtray and go get some quarters, okay?”
“Okay.” I hopped down and reached into the car for the money, then walked down past the washing bays to the change machine. There were no other cars except a BMW convertible, at the very end. It was black and parked crooked, with the top down.
I put the dollar in the machine and four quarters clanked out into my hand. As I turned around to walk back, my breath clouding out around my face in the cold, I got my first look at Rogerson Biscoe.
He was standing next to the black BMW, arms crossed, looking down at the car. He was in a short-sleeved shirt with a kind of tribal print, and old khaki pants with worn cuffs. His hair was brown, a mass of curls thick enough that they were almost like dreadlocks, and he had a dark, kind of olive complexion. He wore a leather cord necklace around his neck and penny loafers with no socks on his feet. He didn’t look like Bill Skerrit or the rest of the guys I knew. He didn’t look like anybody.
As I passed he looked up and watched me, staring.
“Hey,” he called out just as I passed out of sight. Around the corner Rina was talking, her voice high and light, and I could smell Lysol.
I took a few steps back and suddenly he was right there; he’d moved to catch up with me. Up close I could see his eyes were a deep green. I realized I was staring but somehow I couldn’t stop.
“You got change for a ten?” he said suddenly, holding up a bill folded between two fingers.
“Uh, no,” I said. “I don’t think so
.”
He smiled, then looked me up and down. Suddenly I knew I looked idiotic in my cheerleading uniform, not to mention the sequined top: I felt bright and tacky enough to explode. “Nice outfit,” he said. I couldn’t tell if he was joking.
“Oh,” I said, looking down. “Yeah, well.”
He glanced at the bandage on my upper arm, then asked, “What happened to you there?”
“Caitlin!” I heard Kelly shout. “Where are you?”
“I’m coming,” I called back, then said to him, “I fell off a pyramid earlier tonight.”
“Ouch,” he said, and before I could even move he reached out and touched my bandage, running a finger across it. Then he looked up at me and said, “You okay?”
“I ... I don’t know,” I said. This was strangely true at that moment.
“Caitlin, we’re going to miss the whole party—” I heard Rina saying suddenly behind me, her voice growing louder as she impatiently rounded the corner, her cheerleading sneakers squeaking against the pavement. I turned around and she stopped suddenly, staring.
“I’m coming,” I said quickly. I glanced back at the strange guy in front of me and he was smiling, his green eyes almost glittering.
“Okay,” she said just as fast, and I heard her backing away around the corner.
“I should go,” I said, but it was like someone else was talking. My head felt fuzzy and strange, and I wondered if maybe I had whacked it on the way down.
“Sure,” he said nodding. “See ya around, Caitlin.” And he raised his chin, backing up, keeping his eyes on me.
I stood there, my breath clouding out around my face, as a police car raced by on the road facing us, the siren screaming.
“Wait,” I said, and he stopped. His hands were in his pockets. “You didn’t tell me your name.”
“Rogerson,” he said, and then he turned his back and walked away, leaving me to stand there and watch him go.
When I came back around the corner Rina and Kelly were both right there waiting for me, identical in their letter jackets, stomping their feet to keep warm. I walked straight to the car and climbed into the backseat while they tumbled in behind me, already asking questions.
“Who was that?” Rina said. The smell of Lysol, pungent, was hanging all around us in a big cloud. “I know he doesn’t go to Jackson. I would remember him.”
“I didn’t even get to look at him,” Kelly complained.
“Too bad for you. He is hot,” Rina told her, and there was that smile again, sly and clever.
“His name’s Rogerson,” I said. Just saying it felt weird, like I suddenly knew him or something.
“Rogerson,” Rina repeated, trying it out. “That’s sexy.”
“You think everything’s sexy,” Kelly said in a flat voice. To me she added, “Do you have my quarters?”
I was surprised to find that I did: They were clutched in my hand. She held out her palm and I dropped them into it, one by one. She said, “I guess I’ll just skip the vacuum.”
“Please do,” Rina said, settling into her seat and crossing her legs. She flipped down the vanity mirror and checked her face. “We’re late as it is.”
Kelly started the engine and pulled around the vacuum station, rolling down her window. As we cut through one of the bays to turn back to the road, we passed him again, standing by his car, hosing it down, the water steaming in the cold. I took it all in again: the curly dreadlocked hair, the bright printed shirt, the cord around his neck. Here I was, on the way to a party where, if everything went according to Rina’s well-laid plans, I could go home with Mike Evans’s letter jacket, all mine. But now, something was different.
“Is that him?” Kelly asked, whispering. We were all staring as we passed him, slowly, like tourists at a wildlife park watching elephants from the safety of their station wagon. He lifted his head, seeing us, and looked right back, still hosing off his car.
“Yep,” Rina said. “Isn’t he something?”
“He looks like a drug dealer,” Kelly said. She was kind of uptight, the mother of the cheerleading squad. Any man not wearing a letter jacket was dangerous, in her opinion.
“He’s got that wild look,” Rina said in a low voice.
“Yes, he does,” Kelly agreed, like it was a bad thing. Then she said, “Does it still smell back there, Caitlin?”
Rogerson was still watching us, as if the sight of a carful of girls ogling him did not faze him in the least. I wanted to think he was only looking at me, but I couldn’t be sure.
“No,” I answered her softly, as we rounded the bays and pulled onto the road. Then I turned in my seat and watched this Rogerson disappear, car length by car length, out of sight.
“Looks like we didn’t miss much,” Rina said as we came into the party. Most of the football team was in the dining room, bouncing quarters off what looked like an antique table. In the living room Melissa Cooper, school slut, was already making out with Donald Teller, who’d thrown the winning pass that night. Everyone was looking at me, patting me on the back as I passed, and making jokes about my fall. I felt prickly and strange, and each hand that touched me seemed heavy and hot against my skin.
“Chad!” I heard Kelly yell from behind me, and then she was off like a shot down the hallway to the kitchen. Chad was sitting on the floor, up against the refrigerator, a beer clutched in his hands. He looked like he was asleep. She knelt down beside him and made sure he was breathing, then pulled him to his feet. Kelly was what I later learned was called co-dependent.
“There’s Mike,” Rina whispered, poking me in the side. I looked over to the dining room, where Mike was sitting and watching us. He waved, smiling, in his letter jacket. Mike was a nice guy but very, very bland. Like a big saltine cracker.
“Come on,” Rina said, taking my hand and pulling me behind her into the dining room, where Bill Skerrit was at the head of the table.
“There you are!” he said, and she immediately sat down in his lap and took a swig of his beer, while his hands moved easily around her waist.
“Give me that quarter,” she called out, wriggling in his lap. Mike, on the end, slid it across to her.
“That’s my girl,” Bill said.
“Caitlin,” Rina said in a low voice, and when I looked at her she cocked her head very obviously toward Mike. “Go on.”
And so I did, working my way around the table, squeezing past chairs and bodies to sit in the chair next to him.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi.” He smiled and lay his hand loosely along the back of my chair. This was all arranged. I had learned there was no room for chaos theory or chance in the carefully choreographed world of jock love.
I sat there with Mike, but I still felt strange. Like every inch of me was alert, on guard, ready for what might happen next.
By the time Rogerson appeared in the open doorway of the dining room it was like I’d been waiting for him, wasn’t even really surprised to see him standing there in the next room, hands in his pockets. I had this crazy thought that he’d come for me.
“Hey, Bill,” one of the running backs, Jeremy Light, called out. “Someone here to see you.”
Bill Skerrit turned around, with Rina still in his lap. “Oh, hey, man. Hold on.”
We were all looking at Rogerson. And as he scanned the room, all of Jackson High’s best and brightest, he saw me.
“Who is that?” Mike Evans asked me, and without even really realizing it, I pulled out from under his arm, one quick movement, costing him all the progress he’d slowly attained in the last thirty minutes.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Excuse me.” And I stood up and squeezed back around the table, then pushed my way into the kitchen. It was littered with beer cans and empty Bud twelve-packs. There was a small, scared-looking dog on a blue blanket in the corner who looked up, distressed, upon seeing me.
I walked across the kitchen toward the bathroom, and as I passed the hallway that led to the front door I saw Bill Skerrit
, quarterback, handing a few folded bills over to Rogerson, who handed him something back in return. Then they just stood there, by the door, talking, before Bill turned back to the dining room. Rogerson put the money in his pocket and turned to the door, pushing it open.
“Caitlin?” I looked at the door to the dining room and saw Mike Evans standing there, beer in hand. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said quickly, and as I spoke Rogerson turned back from the open door, seeing me. “I was, um, cold.”
“Cold?” Mike looked around the room, as if he might see something to corroborate this, like icicles or penguins.
“Yeah,” I said. I glanced back at Rogerson. “The door’s open.”
“Oh.” We faced off across the shiny tiled floor as the tiny dog made a squeaking noise and lay back down, closing its eyes. “Well,” Mike said, “you can have this.”
And with that, he slid off his letter jacket, holding it out to me like an offering. And I stood there, frozen. From the open front door, Rogerson was watching me.
I looked over at him. “Hey,” he mouthed soundlessly, smiling that wicked smile again. “Come on.”
Mike was still holding the jacket out to me, and now he started to come closer. This was a Big Deal. It meant we were together, that I was his girl, and would lead to Homecoming Dances and proms and a hundred Saturday nights, a big class ring on a chain around my neck. I knew this. I’d seen Cass do it all before.
“Here,” he said, holding the jacket up so that I could slide right in. He shook it a little bit, encouraging me, and then said, “Go ahead.”
I glanced back at Rogerson. He lifted his chin at me, smiling. It was a gesture I would associate with him for the rest of my life. And I saw myself, then, setting out across uncharted territory, places Cass had never been or seen or even heard of. My world was suddenly wide and limitless, as vast as the sky and stars I’d been dazzled by earlier, and it all started there with the door he was holding open for me.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Mike Evans and his jacket as I walked down the hallway to where Rogerson was standing, ready to help me along as I stepped past him and into the night.