Casey (Somebody's Daughter excerpt)

1.

Casey

            As I walk into the kitchen, I snatch the recorder from my mother’s hand.  I don’t press “record” of course, because I’m not getting involved -- but I pretend to speak into it, with a fake reporter-y voice:   “And now, a News Channel Mom exclusive:  Daughter’s Best Friend Raped, Mother Tries to Get Rich Off the Story.”

            My mother gives me a look that includes half a smile, and it’s like what the eff?   She never takes me seriously!  Obviously, she thinks I’m not really mad at her or something.  She thinks I’m kidding.  Well, I may joke in my own dark way, but fact is, she never even asked if it was okay with me if she wrote this book.  So what am I supposed to feel?

           

            Still with the half-smile, and now adding a rolling of her eyes in an “Oh Casey,” kind of way, my mother takes back her recorder.  She gives me the full smile.

            Oh.  My.  God.

            Her smile is totally a slap in my face.  My legs suddenly feel weak, drained of the strength that originally brought me downstairs to try and talk my mother out of doing this stupid book.  Because, A:  It’s a stupid idea.  B:  She shouldn’t be opening up wounds and poking around inside my friends.  And C:  She doesn’t have a clue what she’s getting into.

            I can’t talk to her when she’s like this, when she’s in writer-mode, when she’s all full speed ahead and screw the consequences.  When she’s smiling.

            Did I mention, I want to scream? 

            Only I won’t.  A:  My mother would like it too much.  She gets off on seeing my emotions.  She thinks it means we’re really close because I let her see me cry.   And B:  It’s too late to scream now anyway. 

            All I know is, I didn’t scream when it counted, and I’m all cried out.  I ache all over.   I can’t, I don’t...

            I don’t understand what I feel, what I want to feel, what I should feel.  In the past, I would’ve asked my mother, or she’d have told me anyway.  But that was before.  Like, before she adopted my friends for her book. 

            She hasn’t actually asked me to participate.  And I won’t say it out loud but inside, I’m all like, what, has she forgotten I’m her daughter and plus, I was there at the party too?  

Nancy

Nancy is Casey's mother, both from OGW and from the novel I recently finished, Somebody's Daughter.  Nancy's daughter and her friends have been at a party -- their first keg party.  Nancy freaks out and goes looking for them at 3 am.  Read the first 21 pp. of Somebody's Daughter at http://www.writing.com/authors/shelley2007.  Read more from Kayla, Casey, Rain and Nancy in OGW:  10/1, 11/5, 11/12, 12/10, 12/31, 1/14, 2/11, 3/25.


Nancy:   I woke up with a start at three AM, sitting straight up and shaking my head, as if a bucket of water had just been thrown on me.  I rubbed my eyes frantically.  I remember thinking, Something’s wrong!  Casey! and hurrying to her room.  She wasn’t there.  Grabbing my keys and my cell, I was dialing her number as I slid my feet into my Berks.  She didn’t answer, and I left a quick, “Where the hell are you?” message before fumbling with the door downstairs which shit!  -- always stuck in summer.  I threw my shoulder against it and finally smashed through, ran to my car, left the house door open behind me and didn’t care.

Brian Kepler’s house was quiet.  Too quiet.

“Casey!”  I yelled in the backyard.  “Casey!  Casey!”

Backyard strewn with empty and broken bottles.  Pool table in the garage felt torn.  Running, slipping, running, shouting.

“Shut up or I’ll call the cops!”  I heard from the house behind the back fence.

I should’ve called the cops, but I ran into the house through an open door instead, dialing as I went.  “Casey!” I yelled into the house and the phone at the same time, stupid voice mail.  Stupid party.  Stupid mom.

Upstairs, I threw open doors.  Threw open one, and Kayla was in a boy’s bed, but no boy.  She was sleeping, tucked in all nice.   

“Kayla!  Kayla!  Wake up!  Where’s Casey!  Where’s my daughter!”

Kayla opened her eyes, snapping awake the way I had back at home.  “Mrs. Shaw?”  Kayla fumbled under the covers.  “Oh God,” she said.

“Looking for these?” I said, throwing her underpants at her.  “Where is Casey?”

“I don’t--”

“Forget it!  You’re useless.  You stupid little--”  I didn’t say bitch, but I was thinking it as I left the bedroom and continued throwing open doors, shouting as I left open the doors, revealing girls and boys making out, having sex, passed out in vomit, stoned, stupid.  “Casey!”  

The door at the end of the hallway opened, and a boy, Brian, that was who it was, Brian Kepler, I thought.  

He tried to stop me from going in.  “You can’t --”

“Casey!” I yelled, pushing past the boy, into the room.

I froze.

“Look, I don’t know what happened, but I told them they have to go.  I don’t know--”

“Shut UP!”  I yelled in Brian Kepler’s face.  I noticed the top button of his shorts was undone.  He wasn’t wearing a shirt.  “Don’t you move,” I told him.

God help me, I forgot about Casey when I walked into that room.  All I saw was Rain Rikowsky, eyes shut, legs spread. -- (I don’t know how to say this, I’ll just do it) -- a boy with his shirt off and shorts around his ankles, pumping on top of her.  A couple half-naked boys, boys with their zippers undone and their hands moving fast, groans, shouts and cheers swallowed when I’d burst in.  The boy on the bed jumped down and grabbed his shirt off the floor, tried to run.  Brian Kepler stopped him.  I tore a handheld video camera out of another boy’s hand.

“I think you broke my thumb!” he yelled at me.  I slapped him.

“Shut UP!”  I said, rushing to the bed and throwing a stained bloody sheet over Rain’s lower body.  I rushed to her head, I said, “Rain, honey, wake up, Rain, are you there?” Her head lolled.  Someone snickered, but mostly the boys were trying to get away.  Many did escape.  But Brian threw camera boy down and shirtless boy against the wall.  For about half a second I wondered whose side Brian Kepler was on.  He seemed to be on ours.  But I hated him.

I called 911.  I gently stroked Rain’s face.

“Oh God,” I heard from the door.  It was Kayla.  “Rain... Brian... oh God oh God oh God oh--”

Brian tried to hold on to Kayla, but she shoved him, sudden power bursting out of her.  She ran to Rain and held her hand.  I dropped the camera I’d confiscated.  I looked at Kayla.  “Where’s Casey?” I tried to say, but it was hard to talk.  I couldn’t get a breath, and I couldn’t stop crying and I couldn’t find the ground with my feet anymore.  

Kayla/Somebody's Daughter

Kayla is a frequent OGW writer.  Her story, along with those of Nancy, Casey and Rain, became the inspiration for a new novel, Somebody's Daughter.  Read the first 21 pp. of Somebody's Daughter at http://www.writing.com/authors/shelley2007.  Read more from Kayla, Casey, Rain and Nancy in OGW:  10/1, 11/5, 11/12, 12/10, 12/31, 1/14, 2/11, 3/25.  Here's a little more from Kayla:

Somebody’s Daughter

Kayla:  Interview 4; recorded Monday, 9/13/10 at 3:35 pm:

I’m recording this now because Mommy you need to know this, you need to hear me, please don’t be mad:  

Here’s what happens when a heart breaks:  You feel it in your back and around my ribs.  The focal point is in your heart, a heavy coldness that spins inside, jagged edges cutting out your center, your self.  The pain extends around like a rope, tying all of you into the loss.

Your stomach feels empty, even though you’ve just eaten a small mountain of chips and spicy melted cheese hoping to fill it and be a normal teenager again, when you’ll never be normal or quirky or pretty or promising or loveable...

You can’t fill yourself, and you grasp with your fingers, without even thinking about it – your fingers open and close, reach and pull.  You want to get something, anything inside.  Even if it’s anger.  Or self-loathing.

Nothing can go right when your heart is breaking.  You get out your paints to try and show the darkness inside on the outside, and the brush flies out of your hand and is lost under the bed where you can’t reach without getting a splinter in your belly. Jesus fucking Christ Give Me a Break!  You yell in a whisper at the ceiling and at all the Gods of all the religions who let this happen to you.  

You get out another brush and paint anyway, but the color over color over color turns to mud, and it only drags your spirit into the mess of your aching body and the final picture doesn’t cover the hole inside you, it makes you cry, and before long you’re  wailing as you try to paint the canvas, and fail, and start painting yourself brown and ugly like you feel.  

You feel like everything you’ve worked for – hoping and dreaming and praying so hard – it was all a lie, a great cosmic lie.  The way you felt just hours before the party – swollen with excitement, fat with pleasure, open to possibilities, one with the whole fucking fabric of the universe or some shit, well it’s all gone now because it wasn’t just waking up and not remembering, and it wasn’t just finding the only boy you ever loved in the room with your best friend -- it wasn’t just your innocence…

It was all of you.

Kayla

Kayla is caught up in a bad situation at Brian Kepler’s party…  Kayla has been a frequent character at OGW, and is now a main character in my next book, Somebody’s Daughter.  To catch up with Kayla and her friends in earlier parts of this thread, read OGW 10/1, 11/5, 11/12, 12/10, 12/31, 1/14, 2/11.

Kayla:  I feel weird.  Everyone is looking, and I don’t like to be looked at.  I’m Rain’s best friend, but I’m not like her, especially not tonight.  She’s more than her usual self, like possessed or something. 

“Come on, Kayla,” Rain whispers.  “You want Brian to notice you!”

I look around the hot tub.  Brian isn’t noticing me, that’s true.  He doesn’t even know I’m here.  I want to pretend he’s looking at me out of the corner of his eye, and he isn’t talking to me because he respects me too much to grab my breast the way he just did that other giggling girl, oh shit, I am a loser.  I can’t believe it took me two beers and this stupid, insanely stupid, visit to the hot tub for me to realize that.  Where is Casey?  I want to just go home, so I stand up. 

Like an idiot, like a little baby, I want to cry, and I’m just standing there, shivering, when Rain stands up next to me, and she’s all “Oh yeah, you go Kayla,” and she’s bumping my skinny hip to make me dance and now everyone is looking and we look so stupid, Shit Rain stop!

She doesn’t stop.  Before I can even say, “let’s go,” she’s pulled off her bikini top!  Before I can even grab her and pull her under the water and ask her what she’s on and why she’s doing this, before I can even—

She pulls off my top!  Holy shit!  My nipples are cold and hard, and I don’t feel good, but now Brian is looking, and he’s forgotten about the other skanks, and he’s cheering us on! 

Someone hands me a jello shot, which I swallow, and then a beer, which I chug, and then I, little, meek, pathetic eleventh-grader at a senior party, not-even-invited girl, I wiggle my hips, and dance with Rain.

She says, “They want to see a show, Kayla, should we give them a show?”

My head is a little swimmy.  I see Casey coming toward us, and she looks concerned and nervous and as if she’s about to put a stop to all this.  For a moment I’m torn between the comfort of my old self, promised by Casey, and the promise of following Rain’s lewd behavior and branding myself in Brian’s mind forever -- but then Brian’s best friends Kris and Damien from the basketball team, they get in the way so I can’t see Casey anymore.  All I see is how happy Rain and I are making the boys and I’m thinking, Brian will never forget me, and when Rain squirts me with beer, I squirt her back with the beer that magically appears in my hands, and now those other girls who were in the hot tub before have disappeared, fucking disappeared!  It’s all Rain, it’s all me!  We play fight, and everyone is cheering, everyone loves us.

We put on an awesome show.  Rain spreads beer foam on me and you won’t believe this, but I lick it off her stomach, because that’s what the crowd wants!  They love me!  Afterward, when I’m sweaty and breathless and drunk, Brian – Brian Kepler! -- gently lifts me out of the hot tub and ties my bathing suit top back on for me.

“You don’t belong up there” he says. He smiles at me!  He likes me, me!  “Come on,” he says, grinning, “let me get you a beer or something.”

Arm in arm, Brian and I walk to the keg, if you can call what I’m doing walking.  Really, it’s more like I’m floating.

Rain

Rain, missing her Mom and in a way, her Dad too, takes care of herself – she thinks.  Here she’s getting dressed and drunk just before the big party.  For previous parts of this story from Nancy, Casey, Kayla and Rain, check out OGW 10/1/09, 11/5, 11/12, 12/10, 12/31, 1/14/10.  This thread of OGW has evolved into the skeleton of a new novel, called either “The Party” or “Raped”, I think.

Rain:  I emptied my Dad’s ashtray, and put it on the kitchen counter.  Took one of his cigarettes out and lit it.  Coughed, some.  Felt a little woozy – then a lot, like I was going to throw up and-or pass out.  I sat down quickly on the floor, putting my head between my knees until the feeling passed.  Stood up and inhaled from the cigarette again.  It had an awful taste, like soot, but the second hit was smoother than the first, and I figured I could get used to this.

Next – retrieved the vodka from the coffee table, poured a shot into a glass, added OJ like my Dad had taught me, and gulped. 

Whew.  Fuck.  ‘Nother head rush.  Sat down on the floor again, cooling my bikini’ed butt on the tile.  In a minute I was already on my feet again, because I always get up again, and I always will no matter what, fuckin remember that world.

As I started my second drink, I was feeling way better.  Less tense.  Smooooth.  I swiveled my hips and ran my hand over my belly, savoring the warmth, appreciating my body, which wasn’t exactly slim, but it wasn’t fat anymore and it was strong.  Like me. 

      I didn’t even want to put something on over my bikini, wanted to go to the party just like this, slinky and warm and smelling of smoke.  But Casey’s mother would freak, I was sure of that, and then she wouldn’t take us to Brian’s house.  What a bitch.  Mothers. 

I looked down at the red spot around my bellybutton piercing.  The vodka sure cut down on the throbbing.  I wished it didn’t look so new.

Upstairs in my room, I fumbled through my makeup and found a cover-up stick, which I smeared around the new piercing.  It worked pretty well at covering the red.  I looked at myself in the mirror.  Swiveled my hips again – Look, Mom, I’m dancing.  Thinking about my mother killed my buzz, made me suddenly sad.

Fuck that, I said.  Yanked a spaghetti strapped, low-cut, tie-dyed long dress from Target off its hanger and pulled it on.  Tripped going into my parents’ bedroom looking for a scissor.  Fuck!  I pulled in my knees and held on for a moment, trying to stop crying.  Gotta grow up Rain!  Not a little Mommy’s girl anymore.  Gasping for air, I pulled it together, found the scissor and cut down the dress to fit my height – sort of tall, but not enough to match my cup size, so the big dress.  The vodka I’d drunk plus the blur from my tears made me cut a jagged edge, but it was okay.

No one was going to be looking at my hem anyway.

The phone rang.  “Mom?” I said, a sudden rush of hope flooding my synapses -- hoping she was waiting at the train station now for a ride.

Stupid Rain.  I hung up on whoever it was because it wasn’t her. Felt my heartbeat slamming in my chest and tears starting again because it seemed like I wasn’t just on my own tonight.  No one lived here anymore. Not even my Dad, not really.

Not even Rain, myself, not always.

Tonight I would be someone else.  I hurried downstairs, leaving all the lights on as I went because in spite of the hard, all-together, strong person everyone knew me as, I was scared of everything, even the dark.  In the kitchen, I tossed the pack of cigarettes and my Dad’s lighter into my tote on top of my towel, did a shot of vodka straight from the bottle, and left the lights on in the kitchen and living room as I passed through to the front stoop to wait for my ride.  I felt better already.  But I stayed in the halo of light by the front door just to be safe.

Casey

It’s the night of the big party, and Casey still has to convince her mother (Nancy from CROSSES) that she’ll be “good”.  Of course, Casey has other plans.  No one, however, expects how wild the party will really be…  If you’re following this thread, re-read OGW 10/1, 11/5, 11/12, 12/10, 12/31.

Casey:  “Mom, you look fine.  Mom you’re beautiful!  Leave your hair alone!  You’re fine!  It’s not like you’re going in—“

“Is that a threat Casey?  Because you should just be glad you have a mother who will jump up on a mement’s notice—“

“Can we go now?”

     “Where’s the fire, Casey, huh?”

     “Mommy, please—“

     “What’s really going on?”

     “There’s nothing going on Mom, let’s just go.  Please!”

     To tell you the truth, I don’t know if something’s going on or not, I just know that Rain called me and said she wasn’t going to the party if Kayla wasn’t going, and Kayla was crying when I called.  She wasn’t going to the party on her bike, ‘that’s for sure’is what she said. ‘I’m never riding that piece of junk again’  I asked did she mean the mountain bike she got for Christmas because—and she just said, ‘You wouldn’t understand Casey.  You’re only fifteen.’  I was like, ‘Thanks Kayla, why do you have to say that to me?  You said age was just a number—‘  She goes, “I was talking about Brian and me, Sweetie,’ and I thought I’m not your sweetie and you’re only sixteen anyway, but then I said okay, and I called Rain back then because she usually drives us all around, but she said no way was she driving tonight because she was going to have fun for once.  I was like, ‘I can’t do any drugs, my mother made me promise,’which was almost true.  Rain was all yellin’ and shit then about ‘who said anything about drugs, don’t be such a baby Casey, tell Kayla to get her Mom to drive us’so I was like, ‘Whatever,’ but only to myself and after I hung up, while I was calling Kayla back, who only started crying and saying maybe she shouldn’t go to the party at all but then she said she was getting a text, and it was Rain, and whatever it said calmed Kayla down so she said to me, “Casey, could your mother drive us?” I sighed, and I really really didn’t want my mother to drive us because she was going to act the way she was now—

     “Okay, I’m ready.  Is there anything between my teeth—“

     “Mom, you’re just driving, you’re not going in, please please pretty please?”

     She sighed.  She rubbed toothpaste on her teeth, and I did the same, and we saw each other in the mirror and grinned.  “I love you Mommy,” I said.

     “I love you too Casey.  Let’s go.  Does my hair really look okay?  Do you think I should grow it out?”

     “You’re beautiful.  You’re the best, Mom.”  I pretended to ruffle her spiked hair, which of course you couldn’t really do because it would probably bite your hand, that’s just what I thought because it was so stiff with mousse, and also because it belonged to my Mom and she got really mad if you touched her hair and plus she would bite you herself if you rubbed her the wrong way. 

     “Do you need help?” she asked me when we were in her car, a red Mustang convertible with fangs for sure.

     “Mom, I think I can buckle my own seatbelt.”

     She leaned over me anyway.  I rolled my eyes and gently pushed her away.  “Remember what I told you,” she said. 

     “I know Mom, I’ll never ever no matter who offers it to me or how old I am, I’ll never take a pill.  I promised you that already!”

     “Just checking.  Maybe I should check in with Michelle, see how she’s doing.”

     “Please Mom!  Kayla will have a cow.  Please, just drive and be quiet please.”

     I was thinking, as we drove in the warm night air, how good it felt to be driving with my mother, and going out with my best friends, and going to my first kegger.  I was also, I admit it, thinking, if someone offers me an Oxy, I’ll probably take it. 

Kayla

Kayla first appeared in OGW Oct.1.  She has also appeared as Rain’s best friend in OGW, Nov.12, and Dec.10. Both girls are friends with Nancy's daughter, Casey (OGW, Nov.5).  The setting is Saturday afternoon, before the three girls will go to a party on Saturday night, their first party with boys, alcohol, no parents and... I'll keep after this thread until their story together becomes clear.  I know where it’s going now, and you’ll want to keep up with these three girls.

Kayla:  Waiting, waiting, waiting!  I’m always waiting for something, like for instance, I remember waiting for my breasts to grow big like my mothers -- which aren’t huge, they’re only size C’s, but I only had size A pimples on my chest for it seemed like forever. I wouldn’t have even thought of falling in love with or even liking a guy like Brian Kepler until my breasts grew… only I did like him so thank God my breasts blossomed this summer.  So now is the time for us to fall in love, but it hasn’t happened yet.  Which is why here I am, waiting again, right now waiting across the street from Brian’s house for him to come home.

     I spin a pedal.  Yes, that’s right, I’m so lame I still have to ride a bike.  I have my learner’s permit, and I’m not stupid -- I know how to drive, okay?  But no, I don’t have a car, and no, my mother wouldn’t let me drive hers if I were twenty-one or forty-five or a hundred, so she’s certainly never going to let me drive her car when I’m still sixteen.  Just wait though, next year my Dad will let me drive his car anytime, just wait.

     OMG, waiting again!  Why oh why do I always have to wait for everything?  If Brian ever asks me to kiss him, I won’t wait, that’s for sure.  But he hasn’t asked, so I’ll wait. 

     Sweat slides in a thin river down between my breasts.  I spin the pedal on my bike again, peering through the spokes of the back wheel at Brian’s house.  When he gets home, I’m hoping he’ll see my bike upside down and come over to see what’s wrong.  Maybe he’ll invite me inside for a Coke.  Then he’ll admit he has loved me since last year when we had gym class together, and he doesn’t care if he’s a senior and I’m only a sophomore because age is just a number.

     Oh shit, that’s his car!  I’m so startled to finally see him pull around the corner I fall back onto my butt.  Scrambling up to my feet, I find my legs have stiffened up from squatting next to my bike watching his house for the past whatever, half-hour?  I’m all knees and elbows and I feel like a scarecrow and wearing this tank top was so stupid, but it shows off my breasts and makes me look older I think maybe, except I also don’t think I’m really pulling it off with my stick legs barely holding me up.  I am not looking like a woman.  I’m not looking like the girl Brian will fall in love with, and shit crap damn!  There’s Amber and Caitlin.  They do look old enough.

     Amber and Caitlin giggle and follow Brian inside.  He doesn’t even see me!  And… now he’s gone.  I wait some more, in case he’ll come back, but of course he doesn’t.  But I’m going to his party tonight.  I’m going, and he’ll see me then.

     I hope he sees me then.

Nancy/Me

Nancy:  Nancy, originally from my novel Crosses, is grown up now.  She is also, as she’s always been, the most like me of all my characters.  For my holiday blog this year, I’ve taken my own experience, wrapped it in Nancy’s persona, and made something new.

Nancy:  I do not know why I wore platform heels to the Christmas Tree Shops, just to stand in lines… lines through the front door, lines around in circles and swirls, to the gift tins I came for, and around one side to get a glass strawberry-dipped-in-chocolate ornament and a deep red heart ornament that makes me think of Twilight.  Lines in and out of heaps of reduced-price baubles and stupid things, only not so stupid since I need these last minute massagers and coloring books, reed diffusers and faux-crystal santas.

     At the checkout, the woman behind me is complaining about my full basket and the long wait in line.  I look up and see that she is a nun, which makes me smile inside.  I remember when Casey was little, she shouted “A nun!  A nun!  Mommy, I saw a nun!” inside a McDonald’s.  As if she’d seen a unicorn.

     I tell the nun to go on ahead of me, since she only has one item.  She is surprised at first, then politely declines.  Whatever.  Score one for me with God anyway, is what I figure.

     And you know what?  The baubles and other gifts aren’t worth much money, but are my way of saying, “I’m glad you’re in my life,” and they’re good gifts because of that.  The thought really does count.  And Casey will love the Twilight-ish ornament.  I feel pretty good, as my aching feet lead me out the line out the door and all the way back to my car a lot away.

     My feet ache, but when I get home I’ll change into sneakers and sit down and write, and when Christmas comes, I’ll say, I did all right this year.  

Nancy

Nancy,originally from Crosses, was my first outsider girl.  Now Nancy is grown-up, with an outsider girl of her own -- daughter, Casey, fifteen.  Fifteen… the age when Nancy met Katie, the age when Nancy began cutting herself in earnest, when she started drugs, dating.  Will Casey follow the same path her mother did, or will she find her own?

Nancy:  With everything I’ve done, I still have no problem at all saying to Casey, “Promise me you will not ever, no matter who gives them to you, no matter what they’re for, you will not ever take a pill.  Not from me, not from a stranger, not from your best friend.  Whatever you do—“

“I know Mom!  I won’t ever take a pill!  I won’t shoot heroin either—“

“I know you think I’m saying this just because I watched that Intervention—“

“I know you’re just saying it because you don’t want me to go out with Kayla this weekend.”  Casey lights a cigarette, and I want to cry, because it's my fault.  She took the smoke from my pack after all.  

I never made her promise not to smoke.  You have to choose your battles -- “If you want to try drinking or pot, we can talk about that—“

“If it’ll make you happy, I’ll talk to you before I take a sh—“

“What’s that on your arm?  Have you been biting yourself?”

“Mom, it’s not like that—“

“I can’t believe after all we’ve been through in this house—“

“Mom!  I’m not trying to hurt myself!”

“Don’t you think I would—“

“You don’t know everything, Mom.  It’s just a hickey.”

“Oh Casey, don’t you know it’s not cool to be branded, who’s the guy—“

“There’s no guy—“

“The girl?”

“Mom, I did it to myself!”

“Isn’t that what we were just talking about!  Casey, sometimes you drive me crazy!  Please, let’s talk about this.”

“Mom, no one needs to drive you crazy, you’re already there.”

I rush to the freezer to get two ice cubes, which I grip hard, one in each hand, while I breathe deeply, cooling-down breaths.  Casey sighs, comes closer, and wraps her arms around my waist.  “Kidding, Mom, kidding!  I love you!”

I smile.  I breathe.  “And another thing,” I say, “Never, ever get in a car—“

“With someone who’s been drinking.  I know, Mom, but holy crap, I’m only fifteen!  It’s just a party.  It’s no big deal, Mom.”

OhmiGod.  Fifteen.  “When I was fifteen—“ 

“I know! I know all about you and Katie, you’ve told me a thousand times—“

My face tightens, and ice water streams from my hands as I squeeze the cubes, a trick I learned, a trick Katie and could’ve used.

“Mommy, I’m so sorry!  I shouldn’t have said—“

“It’s okay, Case.  I’m sorry I’m such a basket case. I just love you so much.”

“I know, Mom. I’ll be home by midnight.  Jonas will drive me home.”

And there it is.  And now it begins.