Corrine:
After our earlier argument, Cassidy and I piled our clothes in a line
between us, a soft wall that is six inches high and as long as our bodies,
which is the same thing as saying as long as our tent, since we are relegated
to sharing a tiny pup tent, as usual on these family camping trips – or should
I say, these family trauma dramas.
We used to cling to each other
during thunderstorms, when the rain always soaked through the walls of our
tent, and the wind threatened to blow us into the lake. We used to stay up all night by the light of
our dim camp-lamp, talking until the lamp’s big battery died. We used to, we used to, we used to.
I used to…
Well, never mind.
My nylon sleeping bag crinkles as I
adjust to see my journal better. I
remember when I was fifteen, and it came in the mail from my crazy aunt in
California, the fucked-up one, or so my equally fucked-up other aunts called
Rachel. I remember I was like, wtf, I
mean the blank book was pretty with it’s heavy pages, torn edges, real flowers
pressed into the cover. But I’m not a
writer, wasn’t then, anyway.
Suddenly, the sipper to our tent
goes up, and it’s my Uncle Tim, and without thinking, I close my book and start
to unzip my sleeping bag. He’ll say he
wants to show me the stars or something.
“Cassidy, come out! I have something special to show you,” he
says to my sister.
My sister, not me.
There was a note that came with the
delicate book my aunt sent on my fifteenth birthday. It said to the journal was a secrets
book. A place to keep my secrets. At the time, I didn’t have any I dared write
down. But now the book is nearly full,
full of secrets, all but the big one, the one I still haven’t written.
And now
Cassidy is going to have secrets of her own.
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