Days Like This Read online

  “Make it better,” I said. Somehow. Whatever that was. Apologize.

  “The best way to do that is to lay it all out there. No turning back. No excuses. Say your piece, accept what he has to say, and move on.”

  “That sounds easier than it will be.”

  “You’re right. It does.” Dr. Lambert leaned forward in her seat. “But, Cassie, if you want to find your path, to set the bar like June said, then you have to let go of the past or you will never be free from it. Do you want to spend your whole life running?”

  “No,” I said. And I really meant that.

  “I was going to wait, but I think this is a good time to bring it up.” Dr. Lambert paused. “Joyce and I have been talking, and I’d like to do a group session with you and her and me.”

  “In one room?”

  “I want you to tell your mother the things you’ve told me. I think she’s ready. I think you’re ready. You both need this.”

  “I don’t know if I can.”

  “You can,” she said. “And you should. Set the bar, Cassie.”

  “When?”

  “Soon,” she said.

  I exhaled. “Okay.”

  Dr. Lambert smiled.

  ROHAN’S SONG “GONE Gone Gone” played everywhere—and it was clear that I couldn’t ignore this. I didn’t want to be haunted by that song for the rest of my life. I sat cross-legged in my room, and dialed Rohan’s number. My heart was in my throat while it rang. Twice, three, four times.

  “Hey,” he said breathlessly.

  My words rushed out. “Hey, it’s Cassie.”

  “This is Rohan. I’m not around my phone, so leave me a message—”

  Someone screamed in the background, and another bandmate’s voice popped on the line. “And check out our fucking song on iTunes, bitches!”

  Rohan laughed. “What he said.”

  Voicemail. My stomach churned. It would’ve been easy to leave a message. If I said, “Hey, I’m sorry,” and left it there. The automated voice told me to leave a message and I wanted to, but I couldn’t do that. I had to face this myself. I’d left a note once and this time I needed to talk to him. I hung up as someone knocked on my door.

  “Harlen?”

  “Come in,” I said, but June was already opening the door.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I tried Rohan—no answer.”

  “You called him?” She was almost proud.

  I nodded. “I need to fix it. Every time I hear that song I cringe. I need to apologize to him and to explain why I left.”

  June smiled and plopped onto my bed. “Then you’re telling Graham?”

  I shook my head. It was already early June. August wasn’t that far, and with August came his independence. “I’m not telling Graham.”

  “I think you’re making a mistake.”

  “I’m not,” I snapped.

  “I really wanted you two to make up before I left so I could hear all the sexy details.”

  There weren’t going to be sexy details. “Left? You’re leaving?”

  She nodded, and bit her fingernails. “Saturday.”

  Saturday? “But it’s already Monday! You didn’t tell me.”

  “It happened this morning,” she said. She picked at the corner of her fingers, and she seemed nervous. June was never nervous.

  “Where you going?” I asked

  She shook her head and curled her legs under her. “LA. My sister is there.”

  “Foster sister?”

  June shrugged. “Real one.”

  “You have a sister?” I asked. She’d never mentioned a sister. I studied her face looking for some clue about how she felt, but she kept her face motionless.

  “We’re not that close.”

  A sister. Why wouldn’t she tell me about a sister? “So why leave then?”

  “I have family shit too, Cassie.”

  “Right. Of course.” I liked her being here. When she left, I’d be alone here with my mom. Not that it was the worst thing, but when she was here I could pretend I had something waiting for me. If she was gone then that was gone too.

  June slapped my leg. “Are you getting clingy? I swear to God I will drop your ass, too, Harlen.”

  “Me? Clingy? Never!” I threw my arms around her and she laughed, but she didn’t move away from my hug. She hugged me back.

  “One thing we have to do before I leave: go to your miraculous beach.”

  “That we can do.”

  35.

  Graham

  I WAS WALKING to my truck, off to do another job that James needed some help with because extra money was always a good thing. I opened the front door to see June spread out in the backyard, in a bikini and an overgrown hat. She read a book with some shirtless guy on the cover.

  “You know that the sun is bad for you, right?” I yelled, as I walked down the yard near her.

  She spread her arms out. “Yeah, but a girl needs a tan, and the sun is free.”

  My eyes wandered past her toward the house, but it didn’t look like anyone was in there. No music, no lights. “All alone today?” I asked.

  She nodded and lowered her book to the ground. “Cassie and Joyce had an appointment. I’m relaxing before I go to LA.”

  “You’re leaving?” I had a feeling that Cassie probably didn’t like that idea. I didn’t know June well, but she was good for Cassie. She needed more people to call her out on shit.

  “Yup. Gotta go see my own family,” she said. “We’re going to the beach tomorrow, if you’re around.”

  The beach all day with Cassie in a bikini? I’d seen her in a bikini, and I wasn’t that dumb. I knew there was no way I could do that. I was too weak. “Can’t. Enjoy your sun though.”

  Cassie in a bikini was glued in my brain. She used to have this pink one with polka dots. I shook my head trying to force it away and took a few steps before June yelled my name. “She’s different, you know.” I turned back to her. “Cassie. She’s not the same as she was when she left you.”

  Not the same? June didn’t even know Cassie before she left. How could she judge that? She didn’t know what went on in her head—hell, I didn’t even know that half the time.

  “You didn’t really know her,” I said back. I didn’t need this; I was going to be late, but I was also curious. What did she think she knew?

  June stood and moved closer to the fence between us. “I didn’t know her then, but I know her now,” June said, getting nearer to me. I could’ve left. I could’ve walked away because I didn’t even know June in any way that mattered. I didn’t have to listen, but my feet wouldn’t move.

  “I knew her right after. Met her the first week of school and she was this fragile little thing. I always knew she had something big, some kind of sadness that she was lost in.” June was only inches from me. I could smell the coconut sunscreen. “I know because lost people—we can sense the confusion in other lost people.”

  “You’re lost?” I asked. June didn’t seem lost. She seemed sure of herself.

  “I’m fucking Peter Pan.”

  I took a step away from her. “Well, thanks. I’ll keep that in mind if I need to never grow up.”

  “You’re lost, too,” she said a little louder. I turned back to her again. “I can see it.”

  What the fuck was up with this girl?

  “I’m not lost. I know exactly where I’m going,” I said. “To work.”

  June smiled as if I’d said the funniest thing ever. Crazy, that’s what she was.

  “There are different kinds of lost. Cassie lost her way, but I think you’ve lost something else completely. You just don’t want to admit it.”

  I scoffed. “You don’t really know me, June.” Only I couldn’t help but feel something tugging inside me. She was hitting a nerve. One that I didn’t even know I had.

  “I’m not trying to make you mad, I’m merely saying what I see,” June said. She walked away from me back toward her spot. It was an out. I should’
ve left it there, but I wanted to know what she thought she knew. Whatever it was, she was wrong.

  “Which is what?” I yelled.

  June faced me again, and took a step. “A guy who’s trying really hard to ignore the fact that he’s still in love with the girl next door.”

  “I’m not—” I clenched my fist. I wasn’t in love with Cassie.

  “A guy who’s really scared right now, almost as much as that girl he’s trying not to love.”

  June challenged me with a look in her eye. Her face was serious. She really believed this. She really thought I still loved Cassie. I wasn’t scared. What the hell did I have to be scared of? Even more…

  “What does Cassie have to be afraid of?” I asked. It was a little more aggressive than it should’ve been, but this wasn’t cute anymore. She was digging up stuff that she didn’t have any idea about. I didn’t like it. “Leaving was her decision. I’m the one she hurt. I’m the one she left behind!”

  “Have you ever asked her why she left?” June yelled. I paused. I hadn’t. I still hadn’t. I’d thought about it, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. June shook her head at me. “For someone who says he knows where he’s going, you don’t really seem to be looking for the answers.”

  “I don’t need answers,” I said. And I didn’t need them. Cassie didn’t want to get married; she didn’t want me or to do any of the things we’d talked about. She’d left. She did all of it without talking to me. Those answers were pretty fucking clear.

  June removed her sunglasses and looked me square in the eye. She seemed like she was going to say something, but then changed her mind. “My crack whore mom abandoned me when I was four years old for her drug dealer. My dad was never around. My sister left me for a foster family with lots of money and pretended I didn’t exist for years. I never asked why—not why my mom left or why my dad left or why my sister left me to bounce in and out of shitty foster home after shitty foster home.”

  The words came out quick in one breath. June paused, glanced away from me, and then started again. “I never asked, but that didn’t mean I didn’t want answers. I did, but I was too scared to search for them, and of what they meant for me when I got them.” She paused. “So fine, I don’t know you that well, but I know how important answers are, and the source to all your answers lives twenty feet from where you’re standing.”

  I did have an opportunity to find out something, and I was too scared to hear her tell me why I wasn’t enough. I could pretend that Cassie and I were friends, that I didn’t think about what we had before or what we could have again, but it was pretending. Friends didn’t think about their friends the way I thought about Cassie. They didn’t feel whatever it was I felt. I glanced back at June, trying to think of what to say to her story, but I didn’t have anything. She was right though: I had to stop being scared.

  June smiled and slipped her sunglasses back on.

  “It was really great to meet you, Graham,” she said. With that, she turned away from me, lowered herself back onto her towel, and shoved her earbuds in her ears.

  36.

  Cassie

  THERE WAS NOTHING else I could say to my mom. I wasn’t sure what others things were valid. For the last forty minutes, Dr. Lambert made me tell her story after story, to rehash all the things my mom and I had been through and how I’d felt about them all. Mom sat on the other side of the couch, a whole cushion between us. She wasn’t permitted to respond until my story had ended, but she cried the whole time I spoke.

  Dr. Lambert was in front of us, and in the distance between Mom and me, it felt a lot closer than normal. I wondered if this was how she was when it was just Mom. Her voice was softer today when she spoke. “Joyce, what’s running through your head at this moment?”

  Mom shifted on the couch; I didn’t want to be near her, but I couldn’t look away. I had this need to see that what I’d said had really been heard. I didn’t know what good it would do, but it did feel better to have it all out there.

  “I understand what you said before about how my denial of this problem has caused pain to those I love the most. To Cassie.” She looked at me when she said my name.

  “It’s not a problem, Joyce.”

  Mom nodded her head. “Right. This disorder. A problem I can fix but the only way to ‘fix’ bipolar is to accept it and take actions to keep it under control.”

  Mom recited that as if she’d heard it all her life. A song that she loved and could hum without hearing. I watched her with Dr. Lambert, and it was familiar, open in a way that I never had with anyone. Not even with Graham.

  “I want to take my life back,” Mom said. I stared at her. Mom had this freedom now, all because I said what I said. How was it possible that I had that much power over her emotions?

  Dr. Lambert turned her attention to me. “Cassie, what are you thinking at this moment?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Yes, you do,” she said. I closed my eyes. “This is a time to be honest.”

  “I’m jealous.” I hadn’t meant to say that, and as soon as the words were out, I regretted them. The looks on their faces, the shock at my answer, pierced me. I hadn’t known I was jealous.

  “You should probably clarify,” Dr. Lambert said.

  I waved them off. This was stupid. “Never mind. Forget it.”

  “Cassie—”

  “Mom gets to come here and I get to unload all my shit on her, so she can decide to change her life. It’s awesome, really. It seems so easy after everything. I love her.” I looked at Mom. “I love you. I do.”

  “I sense a ‘but’,” Mom said.

  I crossed my arms. “But life isn’t that easy. We make a mistake and we have to work our asses off to fix it.”

  “It’s still going to be hard. I promise you this is only the beginning for Joyce, Cassie,” Dr. Lambert said. I didn’t want that promise. Beginnings were hard. Endings were hard. Everything was fucking hard.

  “I know. I know it’s going to be hard, and I will be here, just like I’ve always been,” I said.

  Dr. Lambert placed her hands in her lap. “Then, why are you jealous?”

  I looked at Mom instead. “What do you want, Mom? More than anything—what do you want?”

  She bit her lip. She seemed hesitant, but then she said, “Forgiveness. Understanding. A chance to move past this and to live again.”

  “Exactly.” I stood and paced around the room. I wasn’t supposed to stand, but I didn’t care what I was supposed to do that day. “You know what you want and you get it. I don’t.”

  “You don’t get what you want?” Dr. Lambert asked. Mom watched us go back and forth like a Ping-Pong ball.

  “I don’t,” I said. “I don’t even know what I want beyond the thing I can’t have anymore.” I picked up a slinky off the table and moved it through my hands. “That’s the part about all this that sucks, because I can tell you all the shit that went down my whole life. The things you missed, the messes you made because you were sick—but the one thing that your bipolar condition caused that I can’t fix is the one thing I can’t blame on you. Because I did it all on my own.”

  Mom paused and inhaled. “Graham.”

  I stopped a few inches from my side of the couch. “I was going to marry him, Mom. I never told you that.”

  “I know,” she said.

  I never told her that. I didn’t get to. “You know?”

  She nodded, scratching her neck quickly and twisting to see me. “He came by the night you left asking for you. That’s when he found out about school, and I found out about your proposal.”

  “You never mentioned it,” I said, lowering myself to sit on the back of the couch.

  “Neither did you.”

  I stared at Mom. Of course Graham told her—they’d been here together without me. I just assumed, I guess, that since he never told his parents he’d never told mine. I bet he was pissed when she didn’t know. That was the one thing I was supposed to do on my own.
It was the whole reason I went over there.

  Dr. Lambert cleared her throat. “Cassie, perhaps you should back up. Tell your mom what happened.”

  I moved to the window. I knew I should’ve sat down, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. “Why did you always tell me that dad died?” I blurted.

  “Richard?”

  I nodded and turned, leaning against the window. “You spent my life telling me he died. I went over that night to tell you Graham proposed to me, and you were in a state. Your room was a mess, and you were lost in your own memories. You thought I was someone else, and you told me dad left you because he couldn’t handle you. Couldn’t handle it.”

  Mom shook her head and looked away from me toward the floor. “I don’t really want to talk about Richard, Cassie.”

  Dr. Lambert touched Mom’s shoulder. “But Cassie does, Joyce. You should tell your daughter the truth. It seems like she needs it.”

  “I don’t think I can,” Mom whispered.

  The room was quiet, save the ticking of the clock counting down the time left in our session. I count them as they pass. What was so bad that Mom couldn’t tell me? Did I really want to know the truth? Yes. Yes, I did. I needed to understand how she lied. How she kept something so important from me all my life. I kept moving around the room, unable to calm myself enough to sit.

  Fifteen minutes later, Mom spoke up.

  “It was 1977,” she said. Her voice was low, but it seemed like a scream in the silent room. “I was twenty, brand new to the music industry, and I had a this little nothing-now band who were the openers for Fleetwood Mac. Richard was their roadie.”

  I knew that part. That they’d met at a Fleetwood Mac concert. Mom spoke louder as the story continued. “He was such an ass, called me ‘little girl’ and had this cocky smile. The whole time before the show we fought; that’s all we’d done for days, but we were arguing about something when Stevie came on and started singing “Angel.” I don’t even remember the fight anymore—something silly I guess—but then he said, ‘You are the most infuriating woman in the world,’ then he kissed me.”

  I’ve never heard that whole story. I lowered myself into my spot on the couch, and Mom was smiling. It was barely there, but it was a smile.