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:  Original Outsider Girl writer, Nancy (Crosses, 1991, 2001).  Mother of Casey (OGW), confidante of Rain and Kayla (Somebody’s Daughter, OGW)

                     Moving On

                   By Nancy Keenan

 

Grab handful of necklaces:

                          Silver moon goddess

                          Turquoise healing beads

                          Long chain

                          Fat heart

                          Beaded Indian Mama

Pack:
                          Clay wolf Casey made

                          Scribbled of phone #’s

                          Purple post-its

                          Conch

                          Witch Baby

Pile into used Priority

Mail shipping box:

                          Each Day a New Beginning

                          Coraline

                          Wood Nymph Seeks Centaur

                          My Many Colored Days

                          Twelve filled notebooks

                          Buffy calendar

                          Hubble: Views of Space

Hug:

                          Big Mama Panda

Kiss:

                          Little Panda Bear

Stuff:                    
                          The box 
                          The suitcase 
                          Full

Carry:

                          It all to my car.

Say:

                          Don’t cry sweet girl,

                          We’re going to be okay.

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.