“I think she might notice,” I say, pulling the cover back and stroking her hair from her face so I can kiss her forehead.
“How’d it happen?” I think this question has been on her mind for hours, days maybe. I wish I could get inside other people’s heads, because I wonder if it’s the first question people have when they meet me. Was I born this way, or did something happen along the way? I don’t mind answering. I never do. But I don’t think Cass has really ever cared to know, until now.
“Accident,” I say, simple at first.
“Like, a car accident?”
I smile softly and shake my head. “No, not a car accident,” I say, pushing myself to a sitting position, my weight held by my arms for balance. Cass moves her head to my lap, and it strikes me that this is something nobody has ever done to me. It feels strangely intimate, the kind of intimacy that goes along with trust. “It was at this lake that Nate and I always went to over the summer near our grandparents’ house. There was this one area, lots of cliffs and a deep, pooled area. The summer before, Nate watched a bunch of teenagers jump from the cliffs into the water. He was too afraid to try, and he regretted it for an entire year. It was all he’d talk about.”
“How old were you two?” she asks, and on instinct I thread my fingers through her hair without even looking. It feels so natural having her lie here in my lap.
“I was sixteen. Nate was twelve. At least, when it happened. He wanted to jump because he chickened out the year before, but when the time came, he got really scared. I know I pick on him, but that’s my brother, and I don’t know…. He was this little boy, not really even a teenager yet, and he was just so afraid to try something. I’ve tried to rationalize it in my brain for years now, but at the time I just felt like I needed to help him through this. I didn’t want my brother going through life afraid to try things. I wanted him to be something. So I told him I’d go first.”
“And you jumped.”
“And I jumped.”
“And that’s when…” she says, her voice a soft whisper now.
“And that’s when I didn’t come up,” I say, a shrug of my shoulders really the only punctuation I’ve got.
“Are you ever angry?” she asks, and her question actually surprises me. Over all of these years, no one has ever actually asked me this. I talked to Kelly and Mom about it, but only because I needed to before I crumbled.
“Yeah. Sometimes I’m really angry,” I say, and I’m so surprised by my honesty that it forces me to take in a deep breath, like a reflex.
“I’m sorry, we don’t have to talk about it,” Cass says, noticing my sigh.
“No, no. I just…wow, I’ve never had anyone ask,” I say, almost laughing with my words. I smile when I look down at her, and she looks concerned. “I’m not angry now. Sometimes, yes…I get angry. But I don’t dwell on it. I don’t want to slip into a bad place. I need to stay positive, for Nate.”
“Just for Nate? Nothing for yourself?” she asks, and once again, her words give me pause. I pause because she’s right. It used to be for Nate. But the self-challenging, the drive, the focus I give to everything I can do—that’s all for me.
“You are awfully insightful. Are you sure you’re not a psych major?” I ask, kissing the back of her hand as I squeeze it. I lift her head from my lap gently and move myself to my chair. “Your roommate has been hovering in the hallway, and I like her. If it were Nate out there, I’d make him wait. But Rowe, she’s good people. So…I’m gonna go.”
“Okay,” Cass says, her eyes sleepy as she kicks her feet under her blanket and fluffs her pillow under her head. “Sweet dreams.”
“Oh, I’m going to have dreams all right. Feeling your head in my lap, that did things.” I wink, joking, not joking. “I’ll see you tomorrow for the game.”
I press my lips to my fingertips, and my hand to her cheek; she smiles this perfect goddamned smile. I have never wanted anything as much as I’ve wanted to be able to run again—until now. I want her, and I hope like hell I don’t fuck this up.
Chapter 9
Cass
The tingling is familiar. It was there when I woke up this morning. Faint, but there. A sensation in my legs—my nerve endings firing a reminder that something is not right in my body. It went away, but I’ve spent the rest of the day waiting for it to come back, terrified of a flare-up.
MS relapses are like traffic pileups that happen in my nervous system; my body gets hit with one or more of the symptoms for a long period of time. The flare-ups usually don’t go away without a few days of an IV steroid treatment, and sometimes that doesn’t even do the trick. I know my current symptoms are because of how hard I’ve been pushing myself. I’m more than fatigued. But Ty has me believing that I can do this—not just try out for, but actually make the McConnell women’s soccer team. At first, I just liked having him believe in me. But somewhere along the way, I started to want this for myself—to believe I could do it.