Dear Cassie Read Online Free Page B

embarrassed for her. I didn’t understand.
    But now I do. I know my mother would say she drank because she missed my father, because she didn’t know what else to do. It makes me sick that I know this, that I understand what it really feels like to not know what else to do.
    That I punish myself, make myself remember, because I don’t know what else to do.

27 Fucking Days to Go
    I t was still dark in the cabin when I woke up. Troyer was sitting in her bed, a flashlight on in her lap. Even from the side, I could tell that her eyes were closed. I guess she was meditating, but I wondered why someone who didn’t talk needed to meditate. Wasn’t she able to keep the noise of the world out by keeping her mouth shut?
    “What are you doing?” I whispered into the dark cabin.
    She turned to look at me, her eyes opening slowly like a bullfrog sunning itself. She blinked once, twice, then turned back and closed them again. Forget Nez—I was beginning to wonder what Troyer was capable of.
    I could see Nez, a lump in her sleeping bag, could hear her even, long breaths from across the cabin. I tried to fall back to sleep, back into one of the ways I used to turn my thoughts off, but I couldn’t. I tossed and turned, seeing Aaron, seeing Ben, seeing the flashing lights of a cop car. I rubbed my eyes and knew that sleep, along with the cinnamon gum that had been confiscated, was another thing that could no longer keep me sane.
    After morning chores and a shower (!), we stood around the bonfire pit waiting for Rawe to speak. The pit looked like it had been used in the past for the kind of singing, marshmallow-roasting fires we were sure never to have. Our fire was all about survival—staying warm and cooking food and, apparently, scaring away the bears that lived in this neck of the woods. I did also consider that Rawe might use a bonfire as a way to get us to open up, the way she was doing with our diaries. Even I knew there was something about being in the dark with a fire going that allowed you to talk like you’d had a couple beers—well, at least when the people sitting around it were normal. It was becoming obvious that we were not.
    “Okay, get on your knees,” Rawe said, not getting on her knees. We were going to learn how to build a fire without matches or a lighter—as if my hands weren’t already fists of tenderized meat on the end of my arms. As if they weren’t already raw, Rawe.
    “There is no way I am getting on my knees,” I said, kind of surprised that I did, but maybe like Rawe appeared to be testing us, I was testing her. What would she do if I said no?
    “Wick,” Rawe said.
    “Here,” I said, still pushing. It was hard to be afraid of her, she was so thin. Honestly, if it came down to it, I was pretty sure I could take her.
    “I’m not going to ask again,” Rawe said.
    Troyer nudged me, her eyes screaming, Can we please just get this over with?
    I looked at Nez. I could see she was trying to stifle a giggle.
    “Only because I’m tired of standing,” I said, kneeling down. Troyer was right—there was something to just getting this over with.
    “No boys today?” Nez asked.
    Rawe shook her head and held two sticks in front of her. They kind of looked like drumsticks, which made me think of Ben and made me glad he wasn’t here. At least I wouldn’t have to expend the energy I was supposed to put toward building a fire toward failed attempts to ignore him.
    “Awesome,” Nez said, her body in full mope.
    Rawe placed one stick between both hands and threw the other on the pile of kindling below her. I tried to picture her at the kind of bonfires this pit was meant for, telling ghost stories and tales about her grandmother who used to make her apple pie that she would eat with whole milk. It wasn’t easy to picture, yet I knew she had to have a life before this one, like we all did.
    Rawe started rubbing her hands together—the stick in the middle as if she were warming her hands to give