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Chapter 17 Sidney

CHAPTER 17 SIDNEY

2000

Plattsburgh

Just three weeks later, I asked Cass to move with me to New York. Reckless and crazy, I would tell myself whenever the idea popped into my head. My rational self would counsel my impatient self that it was too soon, and the idea would disappear for a little while. But then she’d do something, say something, that made my heart a beating thing and there it would be again— Do it, ask her, fucking go for it!

We’d been seeing each other every day because I was doing all my work at her café. I helped shut the place down. My textbooks spread across two tables, papers tucked neatly inside, Cass coming by every so often to check on me, bringing me coffees on the house. Then, once all the chairs were put up and the floor was mopped, Cass and I would go for a walk—if it wasn’t too cold—or I’d take her somewhere for dinner and we’d talk. Well, I’d talk, mostly. I was still waiting for her to trust me with whatever had happened to her. The fact that something had happened was obvious. In due time , I told myself, a phrase that would essentially become my mantra.

“How about sushi?” I asked Cass one of these nights after she finished wiping down the counter. Brett had left a few minutes before, so it was just the two of us—it felt secretive, which turned me on.

“Sushi,” Cass said, rolling the word around in her mouth. “Raw fish, you say?”

“My treat,” I added, even though everything we’d ever done had been my treat.

“I’ve actually never had sushi.” She was walking toward me, and as she said this, she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear—a patented Cass gesture, I had realized, which she seemed to do whenever she felt vulnerable in some way. Watching her walk to me, I wanted to grab her hand and pull her closer, but of course I didn’t. We hadn’t yet touched in any meaningful way.

“Is it good?” she asked while untying her apron.

“It is if you like raw fish,” I said with a laugh, and she flashed me a look—she didn’t like to be on the outside of things. “Nah,” I said. “You don’t even need to have raw fish. We could get shrimp, or avocado and cucumber. You’ll like it, I think, although how well do I really know you?”

“Right at this moment, you know me better than anyone else in the world,” she said, which was an interesting thing to say. I wanted to ask a follow-up, but also, I was playing the long game, so instead I said, “Sushi it is?”

Sushi in Plattsburgh was not the best introduction to the cuisine, I lamented as we sat at a two-top in an otherwise deserted restaurant. The server was a young woman with pale skin and jet-black hair—she walked sullenly toward our table with two large plastic menus, clearly disappointed we’d decided to eat there.

“Welcome to Sushi Land,” she said as flatly as possible, extending a menu first to me, then to Cass, who looked up at the young woman and, I swear, it was like Cass was pouring energy and light into her, like Cass’s attention had reanimated the girl.

“Thank you,” Cass said with a focus I rarely saw from her—she often seemed to be drifting away on her thoughts.

“What do you like here?” Cass broke eye contact with the server to scan the menu, which had lots of pictures. “I need help, please.”

I’m a confident person, so I don’t feel shame in saying that I was jealous. Taking Cass to try sushi for the first time, well, I wanted to be the one to teach and advise her, to make recommendations. That was the whole point: to share something new, together. For the rest of her life, anytime she ate sushi, she’d think about the first time she ever had it—with me .

“My favorite is the shrimp tempura roll,” the girl was now saying, stepping a little closer to Cass and turning so they could look at the menu from the same angle. She even bent down a little. Shrimp tempura, not exactly a connoisseur’s choice, but she was probably right—it was probably the best thing for Cass to order.

“You’re charming,” I said when the girl was out of earshot. Cass was studying the menu, which she’d asked to keep. She shrugged. “I know what it’s like working in a small town.”

Beneath the table I was twirling my thumbs. As I mentioned earlier, a key part of being a lawyer was playing with the silences. Or rather, enduring them. If you were always pouncing on a witness, my professors would explain, you would never know their second thought—and the second thought was where the useful information lived.

“I used to think,” Cass began a moment later, and by watching her I could tell how hard she was working to formulate this thought, to share this in a way that would make sense. She looked away and started again: “I used to think I was going to act, like really act.” She looked directly at me for a moment, then away again. “My plan since I was a kid was to move to Hollywood and be an actor; it may sound silly, but it’s something I’ve always wanted to do. Acting is just about making someone fall in love with you so they’ll follow you anywhere—on the stage, I mean, or on the screen. Maybe also off it, I guess, if you do it well enough.”

She stopped talking, but her attention seemed to be on some memory only she could see. I kept twirling my thumbs until the silence had stretched so many beats that it became its own sound. Finally, Cass looked back at me and said, “Does that make any sense to you?”

I said, piecing it together as I was speaking, “So… you… want to be a movie star and you—”

“Want ed ,” she interrupted, really enunciating the t . I looked at her blankly, not because I didn’t understand but because I was interested in why she’d pounced so quickly on that part. (Follow people where they lead you.) When I didn’t respond, she explained, “The movie star part, you said want , present tense, but it’s past tense, wan ted .”

“You don’t want to anymore—be a movie star?”

“It’s not that I don’t want to be, it’s that—” She stopped abruptly. And I gathered that she knew precisely how to finish the sentence but decided not to.

“I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s complicated.”

As we said good night, standing a few feet apart on the sidewalk, I was purposefully standoffish. Just to see how Cass would react, if my distance would bring her closer. I stuffed my hands in my pockets, rocked back on my heels, and told her I would see her tomorrow. Cass was looking at me with curiosity—obviously I wasn’t as good an actor as she was—but said nothing.

“Good night, Sidney,” she said. Just then my coat pocket started chirping, which was still an unusual phenomenon at the time, and I pulled out the little silver flip phone—M OM , it said—and lifted it toward Cass.

I thought I noticed an emotion flash across Cass’s face. I She took a long inhale, which I couldn’t decipher, then turned and walked back the way we’d come.

Stepping back inside Sushi Land, I answered the phone. Twenty minutes later, Mom and I were finally saying goodbye, which was good timing because Annalise (Sushi Land server extraordinaire) was walking toward me. I gave her a quick wave and pushed out into the cold night.

My car was still parked in front of the café. I hustled that way, burrowing my chin into my coat and blowing hot air to warm my face. I did that repeatedly, my breath no match for the freezing wind, until I was on the same block, then I glanced up, my eye drawn immediately to the soft glow in the window of the coffee shop. I peered through the inch of glass not covered by blinds. Cass was sitting on the corner of the couch, a notebook on her lap. I stepped backward as my mind flew through explanations, trying to make one stick, then I looked again and yes—absolutely Cass. Whatever games I was playing earlier felt stupid. I knocked on the glass. How would she react to me seeing her?

She looked up, but sat unmoving and her deep embarrassment hit me like a sonic wave through the glass, and then it disappeared. Had I made it up? She was uncurling herself from the couch and padding toward me in socks, no shoes. Her head was down the whole way, so I couldn’t read her face. Then she was at the door, unlocking the deadbolt, opening it just wide enough for her face.

“Hi,” she said, and it was the softest I’d ever heard her. She met my gaze for only a moment, then looked down, and even though there were so many other things to think about, I couldn’t help it—my mind began fixating on how much freezing air was seeping inside. Cass was wearing black socks pulled up to mid-shin, white cotton shorts, and a hooded gray sweatshirt with the small Champion logo on the breastbone. She looked cozy like an underwear ad, and I wanted to touch her—but first we had to stop the flow of cold air.

“Can I come in?” I asked, and in response she stepped aside, and I turned sideways and slipped in, helping her close the door behind us—a relief. Without a word, she shuffled back to the couch, and I followed her. In those few seconds, the coffee shop stopped being a place of business and became an intimate living room. We sat and the lamp’s small halo of light trapped us in its glow.

Cass held the closed notebook on her lap and was looking down at it. I was sitting arm’s length away and slid closer, cutting the distance in half, then I leaned forward and took off my coat, laying it behind me on the couch.

“Am I imagining this?” I asked, swirling my finger in the space between us like I was calling for another round at the bar. Cass seemed caught off guard, and I wondered if maybe she’d been preparing some lie. Now I was making her consider this other thing, and she wasn’t ready. As we sat there, the question of why she was shoeless in the coffee shop after hours seemed secondary to some other, bigger feeling.

“Imagining what?” she said finally, and I thought, Okay, she needs me to spell it out, to buy herself time .

“It feels like there’s something really big on your mind,” I said. “There’s like a weight, a thickness, that’s vibrating off you.” Then I added, just to give her a release valve if needed, “Although I could be imagining it—that’s a possibility.”

She shook her head. “No, you’re not imagining it.” She could have gaslit me, and I half expected her to, saying something like, What? No. I don’t know what you mean .

She looked down, quietly moved the notebook to the side, slowly bent forward over her legs, and for a moment I thought she was going to be sick. A second later she interlaced her fingers against the back of her neck. She looked like someone who thought the plane was going down. Then she started squeezing her elbows in tight, pulling on her neck, and I could see her eyes were pressed shut and her face was contorted like she was bracing herself for pain or maybe already enduring it. A moment later she began rocking back and forth, her toes pressing into the hardwood.

I slid myself even closer and put my hand on her back to steady her—just to let her know I was there. I watched as my hand began rising and falling, her breaths deep and fast. Whatever she was feeling, it seemed big and scary, and she was just holding on for dear life.

I kept repeating, my voice a whisper in her ear, I’m here for you, I got you. Twice, I tried folding myself onto her back and wrapping my arm around her, to steady her, but she was shaking so violently—the position was awkward. How long did we sit like this? Long enough that I went through every possible explanation—death, murder, rape, insanity, a blend of all or none, something else my mind couldn’t even imagine. She sobbed; I categorized. I tried to convince myself that I didn’t need an explanation—that the honesty of her pain and vulnerability was enough. But that wasn’t true—I wanted to know.

Eventually, her breathing slowed, became more regular. A minute after that, she released her neck, began slowly pushing herself upright. Her eyes were swollen, and her nose was running. She covered her face with her hand, held it there for another few minutes, her shoulders still lifting and falling with quieter sobs. Finally, she cupped both hands over her nose and mouth like someone facing a terrible, monumental decision. My right hand was resting gently on her bare knee. A second later her hands dropped and she turned to me—a decision had been made.

“I left home,” she said. “It’s been a month or so, and I’ve been living out of my, my car.” She paused, and her hand covered her eyes, but only for a moment, to steady herself. “My best friend she’s… she’s… I don’t know what she is, she’s hurt really badly, maybe even worse, I don’t know.”

Tears were dripping, but I wouldn’t say she was crying. Crying is an action. This felt passive—she was leaking.

“And I left. I just left. I took the car and drove away,” she said, like she couldn’t believe it, like she was hearing it for the first time—baffled by herself. “The two of us, we were going to go to LA together. It was a whole thing we’d had planned for years, to get out of that town, and when it happened, I just felt out of control, like I had to leave.” Her eyes flew to mine, then she said it again, “I had to leave.”

“Okay,” I said. “It’s okay.” (Was it okay? I didn’t know yet.)

“My whole life, I’ve just been waiting for it to start, and I had all these big dreams of who I was going to be, and now I think—” She hiccupped then and flashed me a look like, And now I’m fucking hiccupping—my entire life has imploded, and I can’t even explain how because I’m hiccupping . She waited, hiccupped once more, then started again: “And now I’m trapped—I’m trapped either way. If I go back, my life will be nothing, just cleaning rooms like my mom or working at the grocery store, figuring things out with Amanda, but now, I think it’s even worse because I’m—I’m not even doing any of that. I’m like a ghost or something.”

Her eyes were rimmed red, and her face was so puffy she looked like she’d been stung by a bee.

“How are you a ghost?” I asked.

“I play it out in my mind every night: I imagine that I make it big and what would happen if I did, you know? Amanda would see me, or someone from home would, and then they would come for me, I know they would.”

“Who would come for you?” I was still trying to understand if she’d done something illegal. That’s how I was trained to think.

She hopped over my question and continued. “Everyone would find out what a terrible person I am—I’d be the one who did that awful thing.” She shifted her voice to a whisper, like someone gossiping about her: “ Can you even believe it? Who could do that to their best friend? And now I’m trapped in my own life. Unless I go back, and then I’m trapped in that other life.”

“Is it that bad?”

Her eyes flew to mine, and she said, slowly, “Yes, it’s that bad.”

“Tell me, then. I can handle it, whatever it is.”

After I said this, she dropped her head against the back of the couch and took a few long breaths, steadying herself. Then she told me, in vivid detail, reliving each beat of that afternoon: the boat ride, the old house, the zip line, the pool, everything. And somehow it was both better than what I’d imagined, and immeasurably worse. When she was done talking, she twisted her shoulders and put her arms around me, pressing our bodies together, and she asked me if I could help her, please could I help her. I told her I would—of course I would.

That night in the café, I inhaled the scent of her hair, and it smelled like apples, II and I ran my hands through the long brown strands again and again. Eventually, when she seemed calmer, I separated her from me, and now our lips were only inches apart. It felt trite, but I took my thumbs and brushed the remaining tears from her eyes. Being close to Cass lit my body up. I couldn’t help it; I wanted to taste her. I tilted my head and slowly, so slowly, slow enough that she had time to pull away, I put my lips on hers. An electric current shot through me, and then I was slipping my tongue into her mouth and willing her body to respond.

“Come with me,” I said, breaking from the moment, wanting Cass to know how serious I was about her—how committed I was to being the person who got her through this awful time. She was touching her mouth as if stunned at what just happened. Funerals , that’s the word that was going through my mind. That age-old thing about how grief and sadness turn people on. What was happening between us here wasn’t strange—it was part of the human condition.

“Come with you where?”

I could feel her leaning away, but I firmed my hands against her back and held her steady.

“I’m leaving for New York after the semester,” I said. “Come with me. It’ll be a fresh start, for both of us. You can become whoever you want to become.”

She reached down to the coffee table, and my eyes followed, and there was the spiral notebook I had given her after her first class. She touched the cover, lifted it open briefly, then said, “I want to be a writer.”

“Okay,” I said, then added, “I think there are a few writers in New York.” I meant this last part as a joke and Cass smiled. I could feel her body softening into me and I kissed her again and she finally kissed me back.

“Is that a yes then?” I asked.

She whispered into my ear, the feel of her breath sweeping down my spine, “It’s a yes.”

I . Note from Cate: When I read this part from Sidney, I was shocked at how astute her observation of that moment was. I remember it well. A few things were tied up in it, for me. Reading the word “Mom” teleported me to Bolton, which as you can imagine was not a place I wanted to be reminded of just then. The mind works quickly. What Sidney read as a “flash of emotion” was for me a series of intricately connected thoughts: Mom-childhood-Bolton-Amanda-accident-fleeing-coward. This call from Sidney’s mom was absolutely the reason everything happened later that night. (Not unrelated: I was jealous. Imagine having a mom who called for no other reason than to just hear your voice. Just imagine .)

II . Note from Cate: I was obsessed with the Bath & Body Works line of products scented Country Apple. To this day, whenever I pass a store, I go inside and find the Country Apple Body Splash because it transports me back to Amanda, who also loved it, but hated that she loved it. (Apples, New York, cliché, etc.)

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