She's a fairy-child, with little legs and a tiny body; with the same brown eyes except they're shadowed by cheap make-up she buys at the store, filling her bag she purposely splattered with paint with Revlon and Maybelline, gem-colors, gem-stones like magic talismans that gleam emeralds and pinks that match the tattoo-image of her face.
Her mother says that she's beautiful.
"You're an angel, Cassandra," her mother sighs, and then clips her long curled hair into place. Cassie's tried over and over again to tame her wild hair, to straighten it, but it always rebels against the white-hot iron and curls in on itself. "You're beautiful the way you are."
"I know, mama," she says, and her mom still has this worried look in her eye, the look that she got ever since the letter from Restoration had arrived on her doorstep. "I know."
"You don't need to lose any weight or anything. You're perfect, Cassie."
"I know, mama," and she doesn't bother correcting her mom, explaining that it's not because of her weight that she does it. It's for the feeling. When you're full, there's nothing. No craving, no hunger, no longing, no nothing. When you're full, you stop caring.
When you're empty, everything's sharpened and bright, closer-focused, clear. Hunger is just a hollow pit in her stomach. She's gone weeks without eating before; she can do it again just as easily. She doesn't need parties or Michelle's cigarettes to become an addict, she already is one.
Her mother smiles and then leaves. She doesn't understand and she will never understand.
Cassie stares at herself in the mirror for a moment, awkwardly moving her shoulders in, and then out. They're thin, too-thin; enough to make people on the street stop and stare at her.
"I know your secrets," she whispers to the mirror, "you are so afraid."
She goes downstairs in her prettiest dress, gauzy and gold and shiny. Michelle had called earlier, some boy named Sid she'd been introduced to at some party or other. They were supposed to fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. Fucketty fucketty fuck.
Her stomach growls and cramps a little, and she puts a hand over it. She clamps her lips. Don't be hungry, she thinks. Don't.
"Sweetheart! Going out tonight?" her mother calls out to her between panting breaths. Her parents are both panting, and Cassie can't see them but she knows that they're about to fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
"Stay safe! Have fun!" her father amends, and then there's a giggle and a shriek and a meshing of clothes and flesh. Cassie turns away, calls Michelle.
"Michelle?"
"Took you long enough to call. We're heading out at seven."
"Okay."
"Something wrong?"
"Nothing, let's just blow this shit."
They take a taxi. Michelle does her makeup expertly, smiles with just the right amount of flirt. Cassie stiffens and straightens her skirt, feeling short and ugly and inadequate next to her. You're an angel, Cassandra.
"Want me to tell you about Sid?" Michelle's applying lip liner, the expensive, fluid kind. The kind that Cassie could never afford.
"Okay."
"He's shy. And he's in love with me," Michelle smiles a little crookedly now. Her lipstick smudges at the left of her lip. "But I love Tony. His best friend. You'll see."
"And we fuck."
"Yes. You two will fuck. Be nice to him, okay? It's his first time."
"Alright." Cassie feels her stomach ache more, and she keeps her eyes fixed on the dark road. Her hand fists in her skirt.
"Poor Sid," she says out of nowhere. Michelle doesn't look at her.
"Yeah. Poor Sid."
Cassie feels her makeup, cheap and dry, start to cake her face. She suddenly wishes she had asked Michelle to borrow her eyeliner sticks and glosses.
Sid is skinny, though she shouldn't be one to judge, and he's nice and awkward when he isn't staring hopelessly after Michelle. Cassie shrugs this off, though. She smiles at him, a little too brightly and a little crazed, a little hungrily—not because she's hungry, it's just what it is—the smile of starvation.
They reach the party and she excitedly jumps up at their blonde, Barbie-host, "Where's the kitchen? I want to see the kitchen!"
She grabs containers of snacks and beverages, stacks them up into a pyramid. And then a building. And then in neat little lines. Her stomach isn't growling so much, now.
Sid comes in on her, watches her with a bemused expression.
"Are you hungry or something?"
She freezes, and then laughs a little nervously. "Oh," she says, "no, you mustn't eat it. You've just got to arrange it." She moves a tin of canned peaches next to some creamed corn. "They haven't got this place organized properly at all," and she feels Sid's worried, afraid eyes on her back. She steps back, satisfied, and then jumps down from the chair.
"That's better," she murmurs, and then looks at Sid, the sweetie, the nice boy. Her eyes are glazed when she smiles her glinting smile at him, like shining knives. Her sticky smile.
"I don't feel sick now," she grins.
Cassie jumps up and down on the trampoline, experimenting. She smiles when she starts flying.
"Whee! Whoa! Whoa whoa whoa, wow!" she yells happily, and then she falls down. "You've got to bounce, Sid!"
He clambers up and falls over her. She reaches for him and kisses him shortly, tastes weed and air and bitterness. She falls back down, in an artless pile.
"It's no good, though, is it Sid?" she whispers, and he grunts.
"You can't see me," she whispers quieter.
He stutters a bit in protest, but she knows—knows more than anything, knows as much as she knows the stutter of her bones poking out against her hips and the way her stomach is just one long, big ache inside of her, that Sid can't see her, and that no one can.
"You really love Michelle," she sighs, and she nudges her hand against his.
"It shows?" he's embarrassed now, and that's always fun, and Cassie plays with fun. So she plays.
"Fuck right it shows." She leans her head back, settles down.
"Anyway. She told me."
"What?" Sid, in a panic, in a flurry—little bits and pieces of chaos, shattered and then all smashed together, something optical and fucked-up and beautiful.
He's talking now, but she isn't listening anymore—she feels the wind against her hair and the cold weather, and the permanent ache in her stomach, and that's it. That's all.
She wants to feel. She wants to hurt. She wants to be scared.
"…I mean, what would you do, if…if everything was so fucked up?"
She smiles, this time—her true smile, the one she never uses because it's the truth and the truth is always ugly, no matter how many pounds it's lost.
"I stop eating until they send me to hospital," she whispers.
So, they don't end up fucking.
It doesn't exactly turn out that way.
Apparently she passed out.
"I love the boats," she murmurs, leaning against the window. "They go places. Like, overseas and everything." She can't imagine the world beyond her, the life that glossy college brochures and those grief-counseling pamphlets they have at Restoration have promised her, the future that she can take, if only she'd tried. She can't imagine anything outside of what's in front of her.
She looks over at Tony, who's fumbling around for drugs. Tony—beautiful, perfect, more statue than human. They aren't really friends, but he's the most similar to her in a very, very special way.
Too cold and you'll freeze, Tony. She thinks maliciously. And then maybe you'd die and then Michelle could fall in love with Sid instead, and he'd be happy. You're making him miserable.
We are misery together, Tony.
And that's about the time when Tony drives the car into the water.
Adam gave her an apple.
He left it on the sheets that they hadn't fucked on, along with a messily-written note and a broken promise. She curls and cries, her sobs wracking her too-thin body.
She thinks of Chris and his shivering, wracking body and blood out of his mouth-
Nobody ever waits.
No. Not nobody.
Sid.
Her boy with a golden heart.
"I'm sorry," she whispers to herself, to Chris, to Sid, and to Adam, "I'm sorry."
Sid finds her. Brings her back to Bristol.
"You can't keep running away forever, Cas," he whispers to her and she just looks at him, through him. It's love, but it's the love of a ghost.
I'll love you forever, Sid.
Really?
Yes. That's the problem.
She goes to Chris's grave because she missed the funeral. Jal's there.
"Where the fuck have you been?" Jal whispers, but there's no venom in there—just a vast weariness, bone-deep and utterly destructive, and Cassie silently promises to herself that she'll protect Jal, if she ever needs it—Jal did it for her, once. Jal loved Chris.
Jal can't take another hit. Cassie won't let her.
She stares at the scented candles in front of Chris's grave, the ones Jal put there, and the bouquets that Michelle had picked out, and the pictures and the food and the love put down to rest along with him, and she decides, yes.
"Enough, now," she whispers to herself, tears of fury in her eyes—furious that she had dragged this on for so long, furious that she had waited for a boy to die first, before—"Enough."
She goes home and finds her parents there, unconcerned as usual. They don't pay attention to her, as usual.
She remembers.
Cassie, pass the peas.
You're not hungry today, Cas? Go upstairs then, off to bed.
The first day she'd started, she hadn't really tried to start anything. She just wasn't hungry.
But they noticed.
And that made all the difference.
She goes over to Michelle's house. When she answers the door, Tony's there behind her.
"I forgive you." She states simply, and Michelle just stares at her. Cassie looks up and smiles at Tony. "And I'm glad you've changed, Tony, because if you can do it then I know I can, too."
"Right." He says nervously, nods. "Sure."
"Cas, are—are you alright?" Michelle asks, and Cassie smiles at her again.
"I'm going to get better at this," she says. "I'm going to grow up. I have to. I can't—" she breaks off. Can't wait for another boy to die for me to realize again. What if it's Sid next time? What if it's Adam? What if it's Tony, or Maxxie or Anwar?
"I can't wait for people to clean up my messes anymore," she says, and she turns away, ignoring Michelle's concerned eyes.
"Cassie! Where are you going?"
"Nowhere."
She's going over to Maxxie's house when she bumps into Effy. Effy, Effy, silent as stone Effy. More statue than human. More statue than her brother. Not anymore, though.
"Hello, Cassie," Effy says. Cassie stares at her and sees.
"You'll be great, one day, you know." She says. "Like your brother. You'll both be amazing."
Effy smiles, albeit confusedly. "Thanks, Cas. You too."
"No." Cassie shakes her head. There had been potential, before. A big potential, pulsing and bright and rippling with life, the voices screaming at her to take it, take it!
But she chose this.
"No, I won't be great. Not like you." She looks into Effy's eyes, and they're the same as Tony's—cold fire.
And she knows that Effy's already passed her, outreached her potential. Cassie never stood a chance against the Stonem siblings, anyway, and she's not sure that she wants to.
"You'll have your own story, later." Cassie grins. "It will be hard and horrible and sad, but marvelous. Spectacular. It's all waiting for you."
"Right." Effy takes things like this into stride, and Cassie likes her for it. Effy couldn't give a shit about anything.
Your brother's keeper.
His story's ended, Eff. Yours is just beginning.
"Bye, Eff." She leaves, and in doing so, knows that she's leaving behind a whole other legacy.
Maxxie welcomes her back, and Anwar does too, and they all jump and hug and laugh themselves sick. Anwar asks her if the girls are hot in America, and everything is normal again, blurry and unreal and drunk and happy.
"We'll keep in contact, no?" Maxxie laughs before closing the door, "Call us! We'll be in London!" She promises she will, and then says goodbye.
(Later, she will cry and cry and cry because she will miss both of them terribly, so much, she can't breathe. And she will call them, and Maxxie will answer with Anwar on the other side, and they're happy to hear her voice and they haven't forgotten her and they're alright, and—that's enough, really, that's all it takes. They won't be best friends but they'll be okay. They'll definitely be okay.)
She knocks on Sid's door and his mother answers, her face tired and old and worn.
"I'm here for Sid," she announces, and his mother grumbles a bit, but calls him down. Sid runs down the stairs to sweep her up in a hug.
"Still in one piece, I see."
"I know."
She sits down with him in the living room.
"I love you."
"Jesus, Cas, I know. You'll love me forever."
And it's enough.
They go into his room and fuck and then she gets up in the morning, dresses, kisses him goodbye.
Now for herself.
She goes into the first restaurant she sees and hands the bartender a couple of bills.
"I want a hamburger and fries. And a coke. And a small ice cream float, please." The bartender eyes her warily, looking at her bone-thin body. "You trying to gain weight, lass?"
"Something like that," she slides down into a booth.
"What, you got a boyfriend to impress or something?"
"Something like that," she says again.
She eats, and eats, and eats until she's full and she can hardly breathe.
And then she feels everything.
"Oh," she whispers. "Oh."
She had forgotten.
"I know what this is," she laughs, and then skips down the street. "I know what this feels like. I remember."
She remembers, and then she sheds her skin and flies.
END.