"Okay," Jimmy says excitedly. The five of them - Brian, Jimmy, Lamia, Zeke, and himself - are all at the old treehouse just outside town. The treehouse has been falling down for years, but they still gather around the base as a meeting place. "So, we're doing this on Saturday."
"What is this, exactly?" Zeke asks questioningly. He's lived in Oklahoma since he was eight, but he still carries the faintest hint of an Australian accent. "All I was told was that there was a gang meeting after school."
"Same." Lamia looks over to Brian, who, despite his new 'I'm cool because I'm damaged' act, is still regarded as the ringleader.
"Fine." He sighs, but the slight twitch at the corner of his mouth gives away his excitement. "We're going to do an Initiation."
There's a collective - not gasp, exactly, just a sort of stunned silence.
"I'm out." Lamia is the first one to speak. "Cassandra's sweet, okay? She's fragile. And I don't know how the hell you can even imagine doing another one after Eddie -"
"Eddie was a mistake." Brian says coolly. "That wasn't our fault."
"What happened to Eddie is absolutely our fault." Lamia steps up closer to him. "And if you think for one second that I'm going to let you try something like that again -"
"What do you think your parents would think," Brian utters slowly, in a voice that's completely cool and collected, "about your girlfriend?"
Lamia goes white. "You wouldn't." She says in a low voice, and when Brian doesn't respond, her expression is one of utter betrayal. "They would kick me out, Brian - and that's a best case scenario. Everyone in the town would hate me -"
"Then maybe you should keep your mouth shut." Is the icy response. "We won't make the same mistake twice - she'll be fine. It's a harmless prank."
"Fuck you." Lamia hisses with pure venom, before turning her back and stalking away.
"I dunno, man." Zeke says. "I mean, I'm all up for fucking with the new girl, but if we get in any more trouble -"
"Ezekiel, my man." Brian claps him on the shoulder. "I need you in this. C'mon. An easy way to let off some steam, welcome our new neighbor. She'll never even know what hit her."
"Alright." Zeke acquiesces. "But I reserve the right to back out any time I think my anonymity is gonna head out the window."
Yeah, Jake thinks, because you only ever care about yourself.
"Okay," Jimmy starts, "so this is what we're gonna do . . ."
When Cassandra gets home, both her parents are out. She feels a little guilty for being happy about it, but hey, she hasn't had some 'me' time in forever. She grabs some cold pizza from the fridge (she doesn't bother to heat it up, because contrary to popular belief, cold pizza is the best), and settles on the couch with her homework.
She finishes it all in under an hour (her teachers took pity on her - all except Mr. Franklin, but his was math homework so it was easy-peasy), and since her parents still aren't home she grabs her iPod and throws on her favorite 1975 album and a pair of socks and starts a dance party. The floor in this house are super sleek and Cassandra is in sock slide heaven as she goes dashing around the various rooms, singing at the top of her lungs. Seriously, this is so great. She can almost forget about the mostly-terrible day at school, and how when her parents are home they are absolutely going to be mad at her for some reason or another.
She collapses after a good forty-five minutes of dancing, and just lies on the couch panting. She's sweaty and gross, but she's also really, really happy, so it's worth it. Until Sex comes on, and before she can turn it off she finds herself singing along to the lyrics. A familiar ache shows up in her chest, and so instead of shutting the music off she sits there, motionless, until the song ends and she can kind of breathe again. She should've deleted that song three months ago, but instead she'd sat in front of the computer, unable to hit the remove button.
She wishes her mom or dad would come home to jerk her out of her nostalgia, but she's getting the hint that this is one of the nights that she waits up until the early hours. So instead she turns the tv onto some sitcom, and goes to clear up the kitchen with the cheesy laugh track going off in the background.
Once she's finished with the dishes she goes on facebook, and sees a bunch of notifications. Things like missing you already, and how's hickville? and anytime you're in the big apple shoot me a message! 3 Only a few are from actual friends, so those are the ones she replies to. The whole thing leaves her drained and homesick, and even more nostalgic, so she rests her head in her hands and clicks the 'x' button, instead opting to go on pinterest. She'll never actually cook any of the delicious recipes, but the combination of those and the adorable puppy pictures on her dashboard help to take away most of the gnawing feeling in her stomach.
She spends a couple hours there, then finally goes to get changed into her pajamas and bring up her netflix queue. She has four more seasons left on Supernatural, but the lack of female characters is starting to get to her, so instead she clicks on Pushing Daisies and settles into her pile of blankets with her roll of pre-made cookie dough for a marathon. (Salmonella is really not that common. Besides, cookie dough is way better than actual cookies.)
It's 3 am when her parents get home, and instead of facing them she closes her eyes and pretend to be asleep. It must just be one of them, because all she hears is the soft patter of feet. She breathes out a sigh of relief, and lets herself fall asleep for real.
"Hey, dad." Jake says when he gets home - they're all sitting around the table, waiting for him.
"Grace first." His father says, gesturing for him to sit down. Jake obligingly pulls up a chair and clasps hands with his mother and Naomi. "Dear Lord," his father starts, "we thank you for this meal. We thank you for family, and for friends, and for the hands that prepared this food. Bless Cindy and Abel on their spiritual journey, and allow us to use their example to grow closer to You. Amen." There are echoes of amen from around the table, and then Naomi jumps up to grab the spoon for the potatoes.
"Naomi! Wait for your turn." His mother admonishes. "It'll come around to your side of the table in a minute."
"Yeah, ma." Naomi says sulkily, dropping the spoon and instead going to grab a piece of steak, which is closer.
"So, dad." Jake says once they've all dished out. "I'm going to be doing some studying for midterms with Zeke this week, so I won't be able to help out on the rig after school."
"Fine, fine." His father says acceptingly.
"I'm sure Ezekiel's parents will be thrilled he's finally taking his school seriously." His mother adds.
"Yeah, they are." Jake lies. He isn't sure what Zeke told his parents he'll be doing - but they'll have to sync up their stories later. The worst thing about living in a town where everyone knows everyone is that it's really hard to come up with foolproof excuses.
"I'm doing lots of school stuff, too." Naomi adds petulantly, sulking that the conversation has drifted away from her.
"And what stuff has Ms. Elwell got you doing now?" Their mother asks.
"We have to read Ramona Quimby, Age 8 all by ourselves." Naomi crows proudly. "We had silent reading time, and I got through a whole chapter!"
"Our baby girl's growing up to be a genius." Their father says with a grin, leaning over to plant a kiss on the girl's head. She giggles and squirms away.
"I'm not a baby. I'm going to be eight in two months."
"You'll always be our baby girl." Their mother adds with a smile.
Jake's stomach flips over, and for some reason he thinks of Cassandra. It'll be fine, he tells himself for the nth time. If they start to go too far, I can stop them.
He ignores the fact that, historically, he hasn't been so great at standing up to Brian. It'll be different this time. He'll make sure it is.
Cassandra goes swimming the next morning. The pool is tiny and the water is ice-cold (maybe the heater stopped working?), so much so that she doesn't notice that her foot is bleeding until she steps out of the pool and notices the stream of blood. "Dammit." She curses, debating whether to keep the towel around her goosebump-ridden shoulders or to mop up the blood with it. She ends up going with the second option, because having blood all over the pool floor isn't at all sanitary, (even if she has donated blood twice, so it isn't like she has AIDS or anything,) and she doesn't want to make someone else mop it up.
At this point she's probably going to get hypothermia, or something. She runs back to the change room and stuffs the blood-soaked towel into her bag. It takes longer than it should for her to change, because her fingers are stiff from the cold, but when she does it's a welcome relief to be in warm, dry clothes. It's a little less of a relief when she steps out into the sunlight and the warmth starts sending pinpricks of pain into her body, but even this is a welcome break from the sheer ice of the pool. She'll call tomorrow before she comes, and make sure the heater is working. And she will definitely, definitely stick a toe in before she jumps into the deep end.
When she slips in the door, she sends up a quick plea to whatever god might exist that her parents won't be up. But despite that, her mom is sitting at the kitchen counter. See, this is why she's an atheist.
"Did you go out for a swim?" She asks, despite Cassandra's dripping wet hair.
"Yep." Cassandra replies shortly. If she can just make it to the laundry room -
"Is that blood?" Well, there goes that plan.
"Yeah, I, um, cut my foot, and I had to mop it up -"
"It's your second day here, Cassandra. Can you try and keep the theatrics to a minimum?"
Cassandra can feel her breath hitching. "I'm sorry. I'll clean it up."
"Yes, you will." Her mom replies shortly. "Because your father and I are both very busy, and we can't spend this entire year babysitting you."
"You won't have to." Cassandra replies quietly, but her voice is too soft and her mother's voice is taking over.
"And what happened to your eye? Please don't tell me you got into a fight."
"I walked into a post."
"Really, Cassandra." Her mom sighs. "If this is some sort of cry for attention -"
"I'll cover it up." She whispers. "You won't even be able to tell."
And then her mom sighs, and Cassandra takes the cue to slip past. She throws the towel into the laundry room sink, and tries to tell herself that the wetness in her eyes is from the bleach.
When Jake gets to school, he slips into the library for his few precious minutes of reading. He looks around for Cassandra, and tries to ignore the faint pang of disappointment he feels when he doesn't see her. She's probably avoiding him, anyway. He settles down into a collection of Tennyson poems and reads until the alarm on his watch beeps to let him know that he needs to leave. It's a little bit like his morning alarm - he keeps wanting to hit the snooze button, say five more minutes. But in this case, he can't, so he just places the book back on the shelf and walks around the school to enter through the front doors.
He spots Cassandra as soon as he rounds the corner - she's covered up her black eye with makeup, but it's still slightly visible, and there's a band-aid poking it's edge above her polka-dotted sock. If he didn't know better he would start to think - but, no, Lamia had told him that she'd been with Cassandra when she walked into the post. So she's just really, really clumsy.
She quits glaring at the ground long enough to look over and see him watching her, but she doesn't immediately storm off so he takes that as a sign that maybe he isn't completely forgiven, but he can at least come and talk to her.
"Hey," he says as he falls into step beside her. "So do you have a competition goin' on as to how many bruises you can get before the first week of school? So you can look more bad-ass, or something? Because I can tell you right now: it ain't gonna work."
Cassandra glances down at her ankle and flushes. "I went swimming." She says by way of explanation. Jake snorts.
"Yeah, don't, uh - don't do that. Heater's been broken forever."
"You couldn't have told me that yesterday?" She asks, twisting her fingers together, but there's a teasing note in her voice. "I'm pretty sure my limbs just about broke off."
"Well," Jake says with a grin, "let me be the first to say that I'm really glad that didn't happen."
She gives him a small smile back. So, maybe he is forgiven.
He's more than a little happy about that.