“It's only five after,” he said. “I know. I'm late.” He leaned in and kissed me again, a good long one, then kept his hand on my knee as he drove up the street, turned around at the pool, and cut back toward my house. He slowed down in front of my house, idling the engine. “Well,” I said. “I'm going now.”

“So you said,” he replied.

I opened my door and got out, noticing the light next to my father's chair, by the window, was still on. “Bye,” I said, walking around the front of the car, wondering if I'd ever see him again or if he just cruised the county, seducing cheerleaders on some eternal quest, obsessed with letter sweaters and pompoms. It was a full moon as I walked up my front steps, bra in my pocket. In less than seven hours my entire life had shifted and changed, starting with that man yelling Cass's name and ending here, as I listened to Rogerson Biscoe start his car and rumble slowly down the street. It was like it had all happened to someone else, but each thing, each kiss and thought, were strangely mine. He beeped the horn, once, and I turned back to watch as he hit the gas, taillights growing dimmer as he picked up speed over the bridge, to the highway. Once inside, I washed my face, put on my pajamas, and crawled into bed, reaching under the mattress to pull out the dream journal. I flipped to the first page again, where I'd only written that one sentence, and looked at the blank lines ahead of me. I wrote as if Cass would someday read it, telling her everything that had happened, from start to finish. Her name, my fall, Rogerson, the full moon, and what I'd done. When I was finished, I'd filled up four pages, my hand cramping as I shut the book and slid it back under my mattress, holding all my secrets in. I turned out my light and just lay there, seeing Rogerson's glittering green eyes in my head. For once, I didn't think about dreamland and finding Cass there. And as I drifted off, I heard Stewart's bike brakes squealing as they came closer, and knew without looking that he was drifting down the slope of the yard, faster and faster, before ducking the clothesline one more time to ease into home, safe.

Chapter 5

Rogerson didn't get in touch with me the next day, or the day after, or even the day after that. The first two days I sulked, eating multiple Clark bars and lying on my bed studying the ceiling. I'd felt so different in just the short time I'd spent with him, like I'd finally stepped out of not only Cass's shadow but my own as well. It was a letdown to just be the old me again. By day three, however, something else happened to make me forget about him, at least temporarily. It was after school, one day when I didn't have practice, and I was sitting in the living room with the TV on, half watching it while half reading the two chapters I'd been assigned for Social Studies. I was flipping between a movie, an after-​school special about the perils of steroid use, and MTV, when I somehow landed on the Lamont Whipper Show. The topic was “You're Too Fat to Be All That!” and at some point one woman began yelling, every other word bleeped out but just barely. I looked up at the noise, ready to change back to the steroid show, and saw my sister. She was standing off to the side, by the edge of the audience, holding a clipboard up against her chest, a pen tucked behind her ear. The Lamont Whipper Show was famously low-​budget, and you often could see different staff members standing around, watching and conferring it added to the real TV, no-​holds-​barred image. Now the woman onstage, who was short and redheaded, was jabbing a finger in her sister's face, telling her off, and in the background Cass was watching intently, reaching back at one point to brush her hair away from her face. I jumped out of my chair, sending my book flying, and leaned in closer to the TV, just so I could see her. She looked the same, although her hair might have been shorter. Her nails were painted and she was wearing a black turtleneck she'd borrowed from my closet and never returned. It was funny how I'd forgotten about that, until now. “Caitlin?” I heard my mother from behind me: She was coming up the hallway. “Can you turn that down, please? All that yelling”

And then she just stopped, in mid-​sentence, and as I turned around I saw her hand fly to her mouth, her face shocked. “Oh, my God,” she said in a low voice, coming closer and leaning into the TV, where we could still see Cass standing there, now jotting something on her clipboard and nodding as a big guy in headphones said something in her ear. On-​screen, the woman's sister was yelling, “If you'd treated him better he wouldn't have come looking for anything from me!“ This was rebutted by a long series of beeps, punctuated only by the audience making oooohhhhh noises. ”It's her,” my mother said, and on-​screen my sister smiled, laughing at something the guy next to her said, and hugged the clipboard back up to her chest. “Look at her. It's Cassandra.”

“I know,” I said. “Look at that,” she said softly, kneeling down in front of the TV, her face just inches from it. Cass brushed her hair out of her face again, twisting one strand around a finger, and my mother's face crumpled. “Oh, my God,” she said, and as I watched she reached out one hand and pressed it against the TV screen, running her own finger across Cass's face. Cass, unaware, half-​smiled. “Mom,” I said, and I was almost sorry now she'd seen it, she looked so pathetic crouched there, reaching out, with one of those hollow-​eyed dollsthe Sunday School Teacher, apple and Bible in handwatching from beside the magazine rack. Just then the sisters disappeared from the screen, as did Cass, replaced by Lamont Whippet's big face. “Coming up next: Judy and Tamara's older sister, who has a secret about one of their husbands to share with themand with us! Stay tuned!” A Doublemint commercial came on but my mother remained crouched there, hand on the screen, as if she could still see Cass in front of her, close enough to touch. “She's okay,” she said softly. I wasn't even sure she was talking to me. “She's alive.”