Chapter 16 Sidney Collins

CHAPTER 16 SIDNEY COLLINS

2000

Plattsburgh

Lawyers, we get a bad rap. We’re just storytellers. The only difference is, unlike a book or movie, we don’t say whether the story is true or false. That’s for other people to decide. Besides, they say each time a memory is recalled, the mind slightly alters it. This memory I’m about to share may no longer resemble the truth, so frequently have I retrieved it. What I can promise is no conscious embellishments. Just clear-eyed recollections.

I remember the classroom in which I first saw Cass was bright from the artificial ceiling lights. The desks were the ones most high schools had, shaped like a kidney bean; slipping in and out of them was an art form. Older me looks at those desks now and sees a tweaked lower back, but at the time, I moved easily while grabbing my backpack off the floor, twisting out.

I was pursuing a prelaw degree, and taking an arts elective felt inconsequential, but in a good way—like you can try without worrying about failure. I loved Creative Writing 107. Everyone is always turning their hobbies into jobs, but not me. I still love a good turn of phrase, but the law pays my bills, and the law is enough pressure.

The semester was nearly halfway over when a new student joined. It was a small class, just a dozen people. We pulled those awful kidney bean desks into a circle so we could see each other’s faces. The class had good vibes. We’d each already workshopped a piece, and everyone had been kind and thorough with each other, which I can personally confirm never happens in law school. “I love your use of em dashes,” a classmate once told me at the end of his critique of my work. He nodded, impressed. I’ve loved ’em (haha, joke) ever since—my signature punctuation.

That afternoon, I was earlier than usual. I had just pulled the desks into a perfect circle when a woman walked in. She had light brown hair down to her elbows, parted in the middle. As she sat, she tucked the right side behind her ear. For a moment, she didn’t look at me, like she hadn’t noticed I was in the room, then she quietly raised her head and made eye contact, and I took in the richness of the brown, the perfect eyebrows—the way her eyes sagged at the corners. She nodded once, then ducked her head, fixed her hair again. My first emotion was confusion: Who was this person and were they in the wrong class? But right on its heels: I want to look at her again, more, for a longer time. I stared.

She lifted herself slightly from the chair and dug something out of the back pocket of her jeans—a piece of loose-leaf paper. Folded into a square. Like a note to be passed in class. She opened it once, twice, three times, then smoothed it down against the desk. It was blank.

“Do you have a—”

“Pen?” I interrupted, already rummaging through my bag, because providing was what I did best. I twisted out of the desk, took one big step, lunged with the pen outstretched. She barely had to move—just a slight lean forward. I put myself in rewind, sat back down, then said—and I debated whether to say it or not, but ultimately thought, Chances, they must be taken —“A writer can never be too prepared.”

“Are you?” She uncapped the pen, scribbled on the top corner of her paper to make sure it worked. (It did.) “A writer?”

“When I’m in this class I am, but no, prelaw,” I said. I’d had a flitting thought as I said it that I hoped it would impress her, this very adult thing I would be. She leaned back as if hit by a stiff breeze and said, “Wow, that’s very grown-up,” and a tingle of excitement danced up my spine—our brains worked on the same wavelength. But with her tone, I couldn’t decipher if she liked grown-up things.

“What about you? Are you a writer?”

“You know… I don’t know yet.” She put the pen in her mouth, seeming to forget it was mine, although I appreciated the gesture because it made me notice her mouth—a plush lower lip, thinner upper. “I think I might be.”

“How’d you get in this class? It’s so late to add,” I said just as Professor Moore walked in. He looked harried, which I’d come to realize was probably his natural state. He used his hand to sweep the hair out of his eyes. “Oh, good, you’re here,” he said to the new girl. “And hello, Sidney,” he said to me. “You two have met?” He gestured between us.

“I’m Sidney,” I said. “Lender of pens.”

“I’m Cass.” She paused, and I could see her brain churning, then a small smile. “Auditor of classes.”

Professor Moore was unpacking his bag, but at this he jumped back in, said, “That’s right. Cass here is going to be sitting in for the rest of the semester.” He winked at Cass and thankfully the gesture came across as fatherly instead of creepy. “She’s a writer, but she’s never been taught-taught.”

Then Cass looked at me, lifted the pen and single sheet of paper, and steeled her face as if going into battle. I grinned. I was grateful for Professor Moore because between me and him, Cass was clearly aligning with me.

When class ended, and we were all packing up our things, Cass was out the door first. Scrambling, I shoved everything into my bag and pulled out a spiral notebook I hadn’t yet used. A plain red cover—nothing fancy. While hustling after her, I almost stopped myself, my older sister’s words ringing in my ears. Why don’t you just chill, maybe let things come to you for once . She also said I had no sense of humor, which is blatantly ridiculous. She’d called this “advice” but what it sounded like was criticism, a proxy for you’re so annoying .

But my sister had dropped out of college the year before, was back home reassessing her life, whereas I loved what I was doing and was kicking ass. Quietly excelling in undergrad, applying early decision to NYU for law school, so why was I letting her old words haunt me? I hadn’t been cool in high school—too lanky and odd with my short hair and slacks. And yet, as far as I could tell, being cool in high school was a death sentence. No pain to fuel you later.

“Cass!” I called out at a half jog. The girl was slippery, already around the corner and somehow, despite her striking beauty, blending into the crowd. The writing class was in the student union—she’d already merged into the food hall. But I had my eyes on her: She was wearing slip-on checkered Vans (or knockoffs), a detail so specific to this memory that I have never, in all the years since, seen someone wearing checkered Vans and not thought of this moment.

She looked over her shoulder, slowed, waited for me.

“Hi,” she said, sounding cautious, curious. “Sidney?”

“Yes, or Sid… both work.”

Everything about her body language was asking, Why are you following me? As an answer, I immediately held up the spiral notebook, presenting it like those name cards chauffeurs hold up at the airport. “I had this extra notebook in my bag, and I thought, if you still think you might be a writer, maybe you’d want it?” I realized then that a cheap spiral notebook was probably a dollar at the student union.

She squinted, but the corners of her mouth lifted. Reading people was something my law professors talked frequently about. Why do people do what they do, say what they say—how a lawyer must stay one step ahead. I wondered if Cass would be one of those people who rejected gifts because they believed it indebted them, made them feel inferior, or if she’d be someone who welcomed the generosity of others. This beautiful, mysterious girl was about to give me one piece of evidence about herself.

“Thank you,” Cass said, gently taking the book in her hands. She hugged it to her chest. “That’s really nice of you.”

“No problem at all,” I said, because seriously it wasn’t. A moment passed, then another, and I quickly started to feel anxious. What now, what now, what now . I hadn’t planned any further than giving her the book. The anxiety didn’t seem to reach Cass. After a few more excruciating seconds, during which I practiced the ancient lawyerly art of letting the other person say too much , she filled the terrible silence. “Well, I have to get going.” Then she lifted the book as if to say thanks again and off she went. I liked the way she walked. At that age, so many kids kept their heads down, or rounded their shoulders to take up less space. Cass walked with purpose. It was in that red notebook that she began the first draft of The Very Last . I

Just when she reached the main doors, I yelled after her, “Wait up!” Then I jogged to open the door for her, asking, “Where can I find you?”

An otherworldly level of patience is what it took to not go downtown to the coffee shop where she worked the very next day. And when I did allow myself to go, the day after, I tried to be low-key—slip in without Cass noticing. I ducked inside with my head down. I wanted to find a discreet seat, probably in the corner, that allowed me to see what I was working with. This is the lawyer in me. I found a spot along the back wall between two oversized plants. The shop’s decor was busier than I expected: pillows, plants, advertisements for concerts and farmers markets—stickers on the wall. The bohemian vibe wasn’t really my style.

When I sat down, I scanned the room for Cass. No sign of her. Just a dude with greasy black hair behind the counter. But then I heard a door behind me fling open and a moment later I saw her from behind—a crate of milk in her arms. She craned her neck toward me. Why, I don’t know, but eventually I learned that, like me, she always had her head on a swivel, always wanted to know what was in her blind spots.

That sly smile, the crinkle of her eyes—a trademark from those earliest days. She lifted her eyebrows—a greeting—then walked away and stocked the fridge with milk. I watched, waited. She’d come back, I knew it. But she didn’t. She busied herself behind the counter with various tasks for the next hour, then the shop was closing. I stayed anyway. I stayed even as the dude with the greasy black hair started wiping down tables and stacking chairs, ominously making his way toward where I was sitting.

“Still here?” Cass appeared again from the back room, arms finally empty.

“Well, I came to see you,” I said.

I’m a very point A to point B kind of person. A few times I thought about packing up and leaving without talking to Cass—who didn’t seem interested in talking to me anyway. What kept me there? The belief that someone like Cass should be mine, that I was good enough for her, that she should realize it, too.

Cass laughed softly. She seemed to respect the directness of my approach, and I could sense that she was debating with herself about what to do next. “You know what, why don’t you come out back, sit with me for a while?”

Winter had come quickly that fall. “Out back?” I said. “For a… while ?”

“Aren’t you from around here?”

“Burlington,” I said.

“You’ll be fine, come on,” she said. “Unless you’d rather not.” And the way she said this last part, like she really didn’t care either way, felt callous—hurt my heart a little.

“So, where are you from?” I asked once we were out back. The coffee shop’s back door led to four rotting wooden steps that looked out on a row of black trash cans and a narrow alley lined with a chain-link fence. We sat on the last step, just wide enough to fit the two of us shoulder to shoulder, which I was thankful for because then we could share warmth. Growing up in Vermont didn’t make the cold more bearable—it simply made me more respectful of it.

“Got a smoke?” Cass asked. I chuckled; I’d just been thinking, sitting there, staring at the alley, that it seemed like the quintessential setting for a smoke. But no, I didn’t have one. And come to find out, Cass wasn’t even a smoker. She just thought it felt like the right thing to say.

“Do I look like a smoker?” I asked.

“No, you don’t, you actually look more like—”

“Careful,” I jumped in. I wasn’t sure I’d like the end of that sentence.

“I was going to say…” Cass paused, dipped her head so she could see my eyes, which seemed kind of flirty to me. “I was going to say that you look like the CEO of the cigarette company who’s too smart to smoke.”

I liked that. Gone now was the sting of her earlier indifference, replaced by a buzz from this compliment.

“Why thank you.” I smiled and bumped my shoulder into hers. “I feel seen.”

“You’re welcome.” She fake-lit a cigarette, fake-took a drag, fake-passed it to me. Since I’d never held a cigarette, I pinched my fingers, brought them to my lips, sucked deeply, passed it back. Cass continued, “The list of things I know about you: you’re from Burlington, you’re prelaw, you appreciate very specific compliments, and you drink hot chocolate.”

That’s what I’d ordered while waiting for her attention. I guess I’d been secretly getting it—I felt that buzz again.

“Pretty much sums me up, actually,” I said. She was right—the cold was nothing to me then. All night, I’d happily sit out there with her. I would tell this girl anything. She had this casual yet insightful, whimsical yet serious, chill yet chic vibe that felt completely natural coming from her but would have felt obnoxious and cultivated on anyone else. She did not seem native to the area. My previous girlfriend—not that I was thinking of Cass as my girlfriend at that point—but my previous girlfriend wore puffy coats and hiking boots and always seemed in reaction to her environment. Cass, though, blended seamlessly. At least, that’s how it felt in the early days. That first night she was wearing a knee-length winter coat, cream sweater underneath, knit hat, II just effortlessly smoking her imaginary cigarette.

“What else do I need to know?” she asked.

I took the question seriously. What could I share that might impress her? I ticked through a list: I had one sister, a stay-at-home mom, and my dad worked for the Environmental Protection Agency. Maybe that I played basketball in high school? Then I remembered my law school application— bingo .

“Well, I’m starting at NYU Law next fall,” I said, which wasn’t yet true, but would be soon, I was sure. I pinched my fingers and reached for the fake cigarette, excited to be able to show her that even though I had serious career pursuits, I could be playful, too. Telling her about my future filled me with a tingly feeling. Who even was this girl?

At this news, Cass nodded in appreciation. She looked off to the left a little as she took a drag—exhaled out of the side of her mouth. Fake smoking was a talent and she had it.

“New York.” She put an inflection on the end, like it was a question she was considering. She seemed to lean into me a little more, or maybe that was my imagination, III some wishful thinking, but my body reacted like it was a purposeful touch.

“Interesting,” she said, putting out the fake cigarette on the railing.

I . Note from Cate: I debated whether to add a footnote here or let it go, but there’s something about fully surrendering this piece of The Very Last origin story that I couldn’t stomach. Memory is a strange thing, but here is mine: I don’t remember Sidney giving me a notebook. My recollection is that Amanda gave me a notebook—“To put all those big, juicy thoughts in,” I remember her saying—at the end of senior year that I never used, so it was in my backpack when I left Bolton Landing. The fact that I wrote the first draft of my book in a notebook given to me by Amanda always soothed me in some small way.

II . Note from Cate: I was always channeling Amanda when I dressed. Looking effortless, Amanda would say, comes only from an absurd amount of effort. Another Cosmo -ism, I’m sure.

III . Note from Cate: This was, in fact, her imagination.