Worship You

Chapter Four - No Time For Anyone But You.

After that first night, all the time I wasn't doing something THEY were forcing me to do, I was with Cassie. If she hadn't talked me down, I would have made her run away with me. I didn't want to do anything but be with Cassie. That was all I wanted. And it was never enough. 

"Don't be silly, Baby. We're just kids. What would we do?" 

And I had to turn away from her so that she didn't see the mean black thing that came over me then. I hated those words, "just kids." I wouldn't accept that. There was plenty I would do. There was nothing "just kids" about me. But then I tried to picture it, living some place, working in a gas station or something to pay for some dump of an apartment. And working the way my father did before he ran away, working like an animal and bringing home the wrinkled nasty dollar bills. And getting old that way. I didn't want that. I wanted to be with Cassie not at some stupid lousy job, coming home every night angry and tired, having spent the whole day making myself small for everybody so they'll spit some money at me, like a monkey in the zoo with peanuts. I could see it all so plain because I had seen it before, seen my father turn on my mom and hate her. And I didn't care what I had to do, I wasn't going that route. No way. I didn't care what it took. And I looked into the distance of the future trying to see a way for me and Cassie, a way that kept us together and young and more and more in love.  

But it's all dark up ahead there in the future and there's no way to know what's going to happen. No way at all. 

So we stayed in the moment. Meeting in the hallways of the school, between classes, touching quickly and intense, hands going everywhere, and then running on to some stupid class where I would sit with her fingerprints burning on my neck, clocking each tick of the clock, until I could see her again in the hall on the way to another stupid forty-five minutes of maximum security lockdown without her. 

Then when the bell rang and they let us go, running down the waxed shining floors, through halls past the trophy cases and the posters to the broad triple-double doors, banging through the bar and out, jogging easily down the fresh-laid-this-year sidewalk to the parking lot and my car, and open the trunk and throw the books inside not to be looked at until tomorrow. And then waiting, watching until I saw her coming. She ran so beautifully, her long dark hair bouncing first one side, then the other, and to know that she was running for me, to me, made me whole and real and good and worth it. If this person could care for me, what wasn't possible? I could do, have, be anything. Why not? But I didn't care about that or even want it! All I wanted was to be with her. Cassie.  

The Autumn passed and we never went to a football game. When everybody was over at the field crammed into the bleachers screaming for a touchdown, so they could feel like their stupid lives meant something for once, we were someplace- any place - else, kissing and feeling each other inside our winter coats, looking into each other's eyes and seeing the truth.  

We did the same things day after day and never got tired of them. When Cassie finally let me pick her up to take her to school in the morning, it was a rocket-to-the-moon of happiness and a preparation for when we would... I don't know what- live together maybe and... go to our jobs and stuff. And that old awful drab gray future came into my head and I had to shut it off and not think. Just wait to see her. 

I had to park the car down the block, not go to her door, she was firm about that.  

"No!" she said, "You come at 7:30 and park down the block, at the side of the Monick's house. He won't see you there. I'll leave the house at 7:35 and come straight there." I wanted to go to the house and make her family acknowledge me and my right to be with her. I never thought "own her" but that's the way I was. Greedy. Possessive. But she didn't want me to see them, these people she was forced to live with. I didn't know anything about them. I didn't really want to know. 

I died when I had to leave her, as late at night as we could work it, and hanging on counting hours until as early in the morning as Cassie would allow... She needed her sleep, at least some. Then the same touch-and-go through the day until lunch. We sat together and Cassie told me everything that had happened: who was popular, who wasn't, and her all-important gossip about who was with whom, the relationships. The alliances of high school power which were all-important. I was jealous of her interest in these others. But this was the power politics of our world and we had to know about it, she said. Cassie explained it all to me and she had given it a lot of thought. She had been off the grid until now, undercover, but now she was getting ready to make her move. To conquer her world. 

Then after class, into the freedom of my car which was a very old but very cool Dodge Charger. It had been a muscle car in its day and I had worked hard to buy it and rebuild it.  

It was our home and I had all the happiness of a homeowner when Cassie started to make her own improvements and leave bits and pieces of her stuff, assuming, knowing that she would be back. One day I found a little black silk scarf that she had used to tie back her hair. And I didn't give it back to her, I kept it, carried it with me all the time. It's embarrassing, but I don't care, I lay in my bed at night and pressed that scarf to my face, smelling Cassie. And the scent never died, that was strange. It just got stronger. 

My car was an accomplice to our love. I can't tell you, burning rubber out of a red light and tearing down the road leaving everything behind was the mind blowing miracle that happened night after night. The two of us together together together. And Cassie running the radio tunes, (no CD player, no iPad, I was too poor) jumping at the dial and punching the buttons and turning the knobs and then going "Oo! Ooo! This is good! Listen to this now. I mean it. This is important!" 

And once, on the alternative station where they played the real versions of the songs, Pink came up singing Fucking Perfect (instead of what she sang on the mainstream... What? Freaking? Fully? Furry Perfect? I don't remember) and Cassie started to cry. Silently at first and then harder. And harder. Until she was really wailing, the way I never heard anybody cry in my life, except my mother tha one time. So hard, I had to pull over and hold her which was so good, holding her, because she didn't allow that often in the daytime but it got scary because she didn't stop crying. Not for a long time. 

I tried to get her to tell me about it, but she wouldn't.