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certainly didn’t make any effort to straighten her out on this account. In fact, I preferred her to think I was sleeping with guys—even if my head count would never appear anywhere nearly equal to hers. Whose was? And sometimes I even concocted wild stories (based loosely on the trashy magazines I’d discovered lying around the Tuttle’s house) just to convince Bryn that I was really “doing it” when she grew suspicious that I might’ve been holding out on her.
    Oddly enough I was still getting asked out by boys—mostly ones in high school and never any that I cared much for, and mostly, I think, because they’d heard overblown rumors about me and Bryn and how we had these “reputations” for being wild and easy and all. I have to laugh now when I think how these things get started. For instance, I can just imagine Kurt Laurence (the first guy I went out with) lying to some other guy about how willing I was. I mean, what was he going to say? That I wasn’t? That he, a senior who played in Pete Jackson’s rock band, couldn’t even get anywhere with Little Miss Nobody? Of course not. Guys love to brag about these kinds of conquests, even if their conquests are only a mere figment of their hormone-driven imagination and ability to spin a lewd and outlandish tale.
    I would go out with these older guys, and while I’d make out and stuff, I never, ever went all the way—and, oh, did that tick some of these guys off. And occasionally it would give me a real, scare, too. Like the time Rick Stone simply would not take no for an answer. He started getting really rough with me, and I swear if I hadn’t been the daughter of an abusive drunk I might not have been able to defend myself in the manner in which I did. Oh, the things that Daddy never realized he taught me in the ways of self-defense. All the same, it was a long and chilly walk home for me that night. (And as a result I slowed down that whole dating business after that.)
    I must give my daddy some credit, though. He completely avoided alcohol for several months right after the New Year. I think he could’ve almost died after a serious binge on New Year’s Eve. He’d gone to some party with an open bar, and I suspect he’d taken full advantage of all the free booze. Someone brought him home in the early morning hours, just dumping him on the couch like a big, old sack of potatoes. I remember standing there and staring at him, white-faced and limp like he was half dead. And I suppose he almost was. I even considered calling for an ambulance when he didn’t regain consciousness for the better part of the day. But I was afraid if I did, he might get mad. I knew that we didn’t have any health insurance coverage and ambulances were fairly costly, even back then. And so I just hung around and waited. Finally, I saw him move, and I made him a pot of coffee and encouraged him to take a shower.
    It was after that when he really did try to give up drinking. Every single week he tried, always on a Monday. And sometimes he’d actually make it until Saturday before he’d go out drinking again. Fortunately for me, he somehow managed to preserve his job at Masterson Motors, but he wasted so much money on liquor that we just barely managed to pay the rent and keep a little bit of food in the fridge. And most of the time it was pretty slim pickings at my house.
    I remember how shocked Bryn was the first time she saw our barren kitchen. She went through all the cupboards and the fridge and then finally turned to me and said, “No wonder you stay so skinny, Cass. You guys must live on air around here.” I considered making up some big old tale about how it was shopping day that day and how we’d just cleaned out our cupboards last night. But too many times I’d witnessed her twisting and turning in some crazy whopper she’d gotten herself caught up in, and I simply decided to stick to the truth.
    “Well, I guess this is what comes from having a drunk in the