“No.” She looked past me at my table. “Do you have lunch with him every day now?”
“Sometimes,” I said. I really did, but one day he had missed lunch.
She leaned toward me to whisper. “Listen carefully to the way his friends talk. It will tell you a lot about him. If they make sexual references in your company, and he lets them, that will tell you something important about him and how much he really respects you. Understand?”
I nodded. Had she come here just to tell me this? It made me feel as if the relationship between girls and boys was really just some game, some contest, and she was assuming the role of my coach. In a real sense, I realized that she was.
“Same with the other girls in your company,” she said, still looking past me at my friends. “If they giggle or don’t seem embarrassed, you know they’ve been promiscuous. You remember what that means?”
“Yes, Cassie. Don’t worry so much.”
She pulled her face back. “Don’t tell me not to worry so much. What happens to you happens to me. I thought you understood.”
“I do. I’m just … it’s all right. I’m being careful.”
“Um,” she said, looking past me again at the boys and girls at my table, as if they were all part of some gang doing sex and drugs. I felt like bursting into tears. She was embarrassing me. I could see other students starting to pay attention to us. “Okay, we’ll talk later.” She turned and walked out.
I stood for a moment, trying to catch my breath and calm down. On the way back to the table, I fumbled for an explanation. They were all surely going to be curious.
“Anything wrong?” Kent asked immediately.
“My mother had a little setback a few days ago, and my sister stopped in to tell me she had gone to the doctor and all was well,” I rattled off. I started to eat again to make it seem like nothing.
It worked for a while. My girlfriend Bobbi talked about life with a much younger brother, and Kent’s friend Noel described what it was like for him to have a much older brother. Then Kent said, “Your sister’s pretty tough. My brother Brody says most of the boys in her class and his are afraid of her. But she’s the smartest kid in her class, so maybe she knows something the others don’t.” Everyone laughed.
Noel changed the conversation, and we didn’t talk about Cassie anymore. On the way back to class, Kent repeated how much he was looking forward to seeing the game with me. “And afterward,” he added with a smile that a few days ago, I would have welcomed, would have warmed my heart, but today put little butterflies in my stomach. I only nodded and went into the classroom quickly, feeling terrible that I hadn’t seemed more enthusiastic. I tried giving him a warm smile, but I could see he was concerned.
The moment I got into the car with Cassie at the end of the day, she began her cross-examination.
“So tell me,” she said, “was I right? Did you hear and see what I anticipated?”
“No,” I said, and then I thought I would get her off the topic quickly by telling her the things Noel and Bobbi had said about having big differences in ages between themselves and their brothers and sisters. It worked, because it got Cassie back to one of her favorite topics: The Foolish Pregnancy.
“People live as if they’ll live forever, be young forever. They don’t plan their lives intelligently. Everything was going just fine in our family.”
She ranted and raved about it all the way home. I didn’t have to say anything. Then she surprised me by telling me not to worry about my after-dinner chores tonight.
“Just get yourself ready to go to the game and your party. I’ll take care of everything after I bring you to the school.”
“Thank you, Cassie.”
She seized my arm as I started to get out of the car. “You know I only want what’s best for you, Semantha, because what’s best for you is best for me and for the Heavenstones.”
“I know, Cassie. Thank you,” I said.
She held on to me a moment, as if she could read my inner thoughts through my arm to see if I was being honest. I didn’t doubt she could. Finally, she smiled and let me go. I got out quickly and hurried in, first to see how Mother was and then to go to my room to choose what I would wear. I found Mother in the kitchen, up and about and preparing dinner. Cassie came flying in behind me.
“What are you doing?” she cried. “You know you shouldn’t be on your feet this long, Mother. I told you I would prepare dinner tonight. I can do those veal chops just the way Daddy likes them.”
“Oh, I felt a lot better, Cassie. I’ve been putting too much on you. I know you have your own work to do,” Mother said, smiling. She did look a lot stronger.
Cassie seemed to deflate with disappointment. “You’re disobeying the doctor’s orders,” she said. “Daddy will be mad at me.”
“Oh, no, he won’t, honey. He’s been here twice today checking up on me,” she said.
“Twice? How can he do that and be overseeing the new store in Lexington?” Cassie asked, as if she were Daddy’s boss and disapproved. “This is taking him away from important work.” That wiped the smile off Mother’s face so quickly it was as if she had dipped her head into the path of a raging tornado.
“Don’t worry,” Mother said. “He said he had to spend his day at the local office today.”