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The Possibility of Us

Entangled Publishing, LLC

Cassie

"Ben better not be there," I said, wiping away the condensation that had built up on the window of Laura's black Range Rover. The snowbanks whizzing past us on the side of the road were so white and flawless from the storm the night before, it made me shiver. I also could have been shivering because it was the first time I had been out of my brother's apartment in months, other than working in the kitchen at the Veteran's Association Medical Center downtown.

"What am I, your ex-boyfriend's keeper?" Laura asked. She seemed more confident than she had been when we met at Turning Pines Wilderness Camp for Troubled Teens this past summer — calmer, less afraid — but that could have been because she was driving a car bigger than a damn elephant rumbling down the highway like a tank.

"No," I said, preparing for one of my patented snarky comebacks, "you're a fucking —" But I stopped. What happened with Ben hadn't been Laura's fault.

"You're 'a fucking ex-boyfriend keeper,'" she pressed.

I felt my skin turn as white as the snow. It hadn't been her fault, but that didn't mean she needed to be a dick about it.

She turned to look at me, her mouth tight. It was obvious she wished she were mute again as soon as she saw my face.

Voluntary silence had been her issue at Turning Pines, but it was clear she had gotten over it. At least when she wasn't saying something that made it look like her tongue wanted to fly out of her mouth so she could slap her words back in there.

But I knew being mute was what she used to cover up her real issue — diagnosed as kleptomania. Of course, her psychologist parents had attributed her silence to that, as well. They had told her she was "stealing her words."

I'd been sent to Turning Pines as part of my probation for a drug arrest, for drugs that weren't even mine. Of course, I did steal them. Maybe I was more like Laura than I even knew.

My real issue had been something only she and my brother knew about. A word I couldn't even utter until after I'd spent thirty days at Turning Pines. I guess I'd covered it up with swearing and anger. My new issue had started once I met Ben.

Clearly, I was covering that up in much the same way.

"Sorry," Laura said, staring straight ahead. Her sun-lightened blond hair was up in a bun. The severe bangs she'd had at camp had grown out, and her hair was slicked back as tight as a ballerina's, her green fleece zipped up like a turtleneck.

Before, when Laura had been mute, when she communicated only with looks and a notepad, she had reminded me of a turtle.

Now she reminded me of a bitchy turtle.

I never should have let her convince me to come.

Two days ago, Laura had inserted herself back into the life I'd managed to carve out after Turning Pines, after Ben: subletting my brother's apartment, working at the VA for the people who were lucky enough — or unlucky enough, depending on your perspective — not to be deployed again like he was.

As usual, I'd woken up and clicked into Facebook on my phone, ready to do my daily Internet-stalking of the people I'd spent thirty days with at good old TP — seriously, TP. It wasn't until I'd left Turning Pines that I realized what the first two letters had been an abbreviation for. Hindsight really was fucking twentytwenty.

It was the end of January. A whole new cold year had started. It had been six fucking months since then, and I wasn't legally a minor anymore, but I guess I still felt like one, still frozen as the girl I was at seventeen.

As an adult now, I should have known who I was, who I wanted to become. But since leaving Turning Pines, I had lost Ben, turned eighteen, and was filling up my brother's empty bed while he was fighting in Afghanistan.

Even with my job, it wasn't much to Facebook-brag about.

I'd clicked into my news feed and started scrolling. Not like I could count on anyone saying on Facebook how they were really doing, but I wanted to make sure no one was doing better than I was. Pretty messed up, considering everyone I went to camp with was majorly fucked up and deserved to do better.

Well, except for Ben. He wasn't fucked up at all. He'd been sent to Turning Pines because he was taking the fall for something his older brother had done, which might have made him codependent, but Laura was the one with the psychologist parents, not me.

The thing was even I deserved to do better. The life I'd carved out for myself was definitely not everything I wanted my life to be. Not yet.

That was what Turning Pines was supposed to have taught us: how to live without our vices, our demons, our unhealthy ways of coping with the shit of life, whatever they were. Some were easier to leave behind, like Laura's. Some were harder to leave behind, like mine.

A chat box had come up from Troyer, Laura, once she noticed me online. I still thought of her by her last name sometimes. Still thought of everyone from Turning Pines that way, because, like the military-grade place it was supposed to be, it was how we had referred to each other.

Except, of course, Ben and me.

Go look at Rawe's page, her message read.

Rawe, Fanny had been my counselor — the woman who'd made my life hell for thirty days, and then made me understand my life didn't have to be hell anymore. I didn't check her page much because she was always posting things about God. Not that I had anything against God, but it definitely felt like he had something against me.

Don't want to, I wrote back.

Do it, Cassie, Laura wrote.

Surprisingly, I listened to her. I actually cared what she thought about me, even though I could give two shits about everyone else.

I clicked over to my friends and searched for Fanny Rawe — her real name and, honestly, probably the reason she worked at a place that used last names only.

But Rawe's page wasn't hers anymore. It was a tribute page, because she had died.

DIED.

She had been killed in a car accident that week, noted in a post on her wall from a youngish-looking woman with the last name Rawe, too. Probably her sister.

I couldn't even imagine having to post something like that on my brother's Facebook wall — to turn his account into a tribute page. It was something I worried about every minute since he'd been deployed again, but I also knew if he were safe here with me, he would have forced me out of his apartment by now.

I read on. The page also included the date and time of her funeral and a place to send donations and flowers. I started at the beginning and read the whole post again. Not because I didn't believe it, but because I couldn't believe it. My stomach was empty, hollow, as cold as the wind whipping through the snowbanks outside the windows of my brother's shitty apartment. Rawe and I had our issues, but I never would have wished her dead.

DEAD.

I guess, unlike me, some people had gone on living the lives they wanted after Turning Pines. Living enough to die.

You going? Laura wrote.

Where? I replied like the total smart-ass I was. At least with Laura I could act like a smart-ass, even if I couldn't usually get away with it.

Funny, she wrote. Actually, not funny at all.

I hadn't checked anyone else's pages yet, but my guess was no one from Turning Pines was doing worse that day than Rawe.

Why would I go? I typed.

Why wouldn't you?

There were a lot of reasons. Even though I shuffled through that part of my life constantly while I lay in my brother's bed at night trying to sleep, it wasn't like I wanted to be around all those people again — especially one person.

I'll pick you up. And don't even tell me you're busy, she wrote. You can DVR Jerry Springer for two days.

I sighed. Fucking Troyer.

I'd tried to deny how much I missed Ben, missed everyone from Turning Pines, but Laura could tell. She was no dummy. It was part of the reason I loved her so much.

"Ben wasn't ever my boyfriend," I said now, turning to look at Laura in the driver's seat. I stared at the edges of her profile, her chin and nose as pointy as candy corn.

That was a lie. He had been, but now Ben was the guy whose heart I broke and who had broken mine.

Who had broken me.

Unfortunately, I'd learned the hard way that people who are broken can't do anything but keep breaking when it comes to their hearts.

I guess he had, too.

"Really?" she asked, squinting from the reflection off the snow. "What was he, then?"

"A fucking illusion."

She sighed and shook her head. "You're so dramatic."

I knew it sounded that way, but that was how everything seemed when it came to Ben and me. When we'd been together in California for the two stolen months we spent after camp, we were playing the roles of people who believed they could last. We even looked like real Californians, Ben in his neon board shorts and me in my cutoffs and tank top. But our perfect outfits were some of the only clothes we owned.

I can remember holding hands as we walked along the boardwalk in Santa Cruz, our fingers laced up tight like my hiking boots. The sun was just setting over the giant Ferris wheel, making huge spiderweb shadows and spindles of light fall over everything, including Ben's brown eyes, which brightened like amber.

It was the beginning of fall and getting colder each day that passed. The smell of popcorn and fried carnival food was so strong it seemed to cling to our skin.

I sniffed the wrist of the hand not holding tight to Ben; salt and butter and the unmistakable smell of browned oil wafted up. My mouth watered uncontrollably. We hadn't eaten since the night before.

"Maybe if it gets really bad, we can eat my arm," I said.

He lifted our clasped hands to his lips, kissed mine lightly, then bit each one of my fingers, the perfect combination of gentle and rough.

My throat thickened thinking of those lips grazing mine; my abdomen quivered, craving it.

"I call the thumb." He touched his lips to the soft underside of it. "I've heard it's the most nutritious part."

"Really?" I laughed as his tongue darted out and tickled my skin, gliding down the palm of my hand, toying with me. Only Ben could get a giggle out of me with a move like that.

He nodded. "Think about it. We couldn't do anything without our thumbs. They're valuable, like the lobster of human body parts."

"Then I want my thumb," I said.

He smirked and circled his mouth around it, his wavy brown hair falling in his eyes. "Not giving it back," he said, sucking on it gently, sliding it in and out of his mouth.

Having his lips on me was always calming, like they were glue and I was something damaged they put back together. I let him linger there, squinting my eyes at the falling sun, wondering how cold it would be on the beach that night; if our bonfire could keep us warm enough.

"I think I want both thumbs," he said, grabbing for my other hand greedily.

"What the fuck am I going to eat?" I asked, laughing again like a stupid girl in love, because, with Ben, I was. I played my part perfectly, and I never had to tell him his lines.

We walked past a surf shop, boards stacked against the window like the huge petals of a flower — he loves me, he loves me not.

"Hey, they're hiring," he said, pointing at it with both our hands.

"There's no way I'm saying fucking dude and gnarly all day."

"Do you have a better idea that doesn't involve thumb cannibalism?" He was joking, but it was the start of a much more serious and painful conversation.

I didn't and neither did he. Without a permanent address, we had no way to get jobs, anyway. We were running out of money and out of time. The only thing we weren't running out of was a whole lot of fooling ourselves.

As it got colder, we had to make a decision about what to do with the rest of our lives. But forever was a very long time, and neither of us had been ready to follow the other. It was one thing to be on neutral ground. It was another to decide to be in someone's life, in a city and a state different from yours. Ben couldn't move to New York with me, and I couldn't move to Maine with him.

We'd fought about it. Both said in our own ways I don't understand why you can't just come with me.

Even though we knew exactly why; we were ready to go home. I missed my brother, and I guess Ben missed his. We probably also missed knowing exactly what we could expect from each day, when we would wake up, when we would sleep, what we would eat and where. Life at home might have been boring, but at least it was dependable.

I called Ben "shitty" and he called me "stubborn" and then we never called each other again. It made me wonder if this last shove, this last rejection, had pushed us both too far.

And maybe I also knew if I went to Maine, or if Ben came back with me, it would all fall apart eventually. Forget seeing a glass half-empty when it came to relationships. I shattered the fucking thing against the wall.

We'd also never said the L word to each other. If fuck was my go-to, the L word was my run-from. Just like everything it represented had been until I'd found Ben, until he'd found me.

It was again, now that I'd lost him.

"Without Jerry Springer, I need to get my drama somewhere," I said, coming back to the car with Laura. Anyone would have told you vegging-out at my brother's apartment was my true escape, but — nothing new — I wasn't listening to anyone.

"I doubt he'll be there anyway," Laura said, her hands tight on the steering wheel. "Rawe was our counselor, not his."

"You'd better hope you're right," I said, playing with the lock on the door — clicking it over and over, my hands needing to do something to get my mind to stop. Because as much as I said I didn't want to see him, I couldn't help but hope he might be there.

I had no idea what the fuck I would do if he were. It had been almost three months of radio-silence and I wasn't looking forward to figuring out how to keep it up in person if he did decide to show.

I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the window as I continued clicking the lock. My face looked thin, my brown eyes numb. I'd seemingly aged years in the snow globe I'd made of my brother's apartment that winter. I'd trapped myself securely inside. It was just like Laura to come along and shake the shit out of it.

It was just like me to let her.

"Seriously, Cassie, keep doing that and we'll be going to a different funeral."

"Whose?" I smirked. "Yours?"

"Only if I don't kill you first."

I sighed. "I'm not allowed to smoke in here. What else am I supposed to do?"

"I can't believe you still smoke," Laura scoffed.

"I can't believe you still give a shit."

Laura didn't have to be friends with me anymore. She had survived Turning Pines and started college. She had a whole new life she was living two hours away at the University of Rochester, but I understood she felt responsible for me, like I felt responsible for her.

"We can stop in Springfield," Laura acquiesced.

"Only three hours to go," I replied sarcastically. "I guess even your fancy school hasn't taught you the definition of chain-smoker." I stopped clicking the lock, but I hugged myself tight. It was what I did now instead of punching myself in the stomach. The thing I'd done to punish myself for my real issue.

Even Rawe would have to admit that was progress, even if what had happened with Ben, what was still happening with Ben, was probably its own brand of self-harm.

Laura looked at me; her white-blue eyes were the color of ice. "Are you seriously okay?"

"I'm on my way to a funeral with my best friend," I said, staring out the window. "Why wouldn't I be fucking okay?"

Ben

My brother Drew's usual crazy rock-star-spiked hair was matted down in a red winter hat. He had insisted on driving my car. It was the only way I could get him to agree to come with me.

Plus, he owed me, even though I tried as much as possible not to think about that.

"You sure you don't just want to go to Boston for the weekend or something instead? I have a box's worth of condoms burning a hole in my pocket," he said, smiling his Drew smile: a combo of burned-out skater and I could kick your ass.

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Excerpted from The Possibility of Us by Lisa Burstein, Stacy Abrams. Copyright © 2014 Lisa Burstein. Excerpted by permission of Entangled Publishing, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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