Cassandra

Thank you Saige, Horny_Virgin (hihi :)), Jester-Jami, Harlequin, and Peyton (thank you! :D)!



I apologize for the even shorterness of this chapter. /= Forgives me please!



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"But... Dave told me you were..." My jaw dropped as I let out a gasp. "Did you... miscarry?"



Cassandra shook her head, her black mane wriggling against her face. "No, I was never pregnant," she murmured in reply, taking a bite of her lasagna and looking directly ahead of her at the cream-colored wall.



I swallowed. There was no trace of hunger in my gut now; only more slush. "You lied to him?" I whispered.



Her lips twitched, the black smudge doing a short dance. Those brown eyes landed on mine, looking as blank as Dave\'s usual gaze. "Taylor," she said softly, "if you\'re trying to make me feel guilty--"



Shaking my head, I exclaimed, "No, that\'s not it! I\'m just... trying to understand why you would tell him that when it wasn\'t true." I\'d never really seen Dave look emotional at all, and yesterday when he asked about his wife\'s condition, he looked more human than I\'d ever seen. I also never thought that I would feel any sympathy for Dave, but maybe I was.



"It\'s not something I wish to discuss," she retorted, eating away at her meal as though nothing was different.



I sighed. Of course. There was nothing I could say to get her to change her mind. "You\'re right," I whispered, letting my eyes fall down to my plate. "I\'m sorry, but I\'m not very hungry. I\'m going to go back upstairs." I pushed my chair back and stepped around it. I waited for her to call me back and yell at me some more, or confess at least. Halfway up the stacks of stairs, however, there was no sound except my own breath and sock-covered feet against the wood. I frowned and made my way back to my work.



I took my time cleaning the rest of the bathroom, even reorganizing the shampoo bottles in the shower and the soap dispensers beside the sink. I cleaned the toilet twice and scrubbed down the bathtub three times to pass the time away. If I sat next to the toilet and looked out to the hallway, I could see the door to Cassandra\'s office to my left, and I knew she\'d gone in there not long after I\'d reentered this room.



Anyway, I\'d finished the bathroom, but I didn\'t want to start on something else. I pulled out my cell phone, which I used mostly as a clock or for emergency phone calls to the parents, and saw that it was only noon. Dave had said that he\'d be gone a bit later than usual, which meant maybe later into the evening. Five o\'clock possibly? Ugh. There wasn\'t anything else I wanted to do.



Sighing, I got to my feet and stumbled out of the room, flicking the light switch as I went. I averted my attention towards the office that Cassandra was in and I felt something build up inside my chest. I just... I just wanted to know the truth. I wanted to know why she would lie to Dave about that. Was I going to gossip about town and tell everyone that Cassandra Wilton was a liar? Of course not. A girl is just curious.



I stared at the door, trying to draw conclusions to that unanswered question. If Cassandra told Dave she was pregnant, he would be happy, right? Maybe she wanted to see him happy for once instead of with his stone-hard expression. Or, um, maybe they\'d been trying to conceive for a while, as horrifying as that image is, and Cassandra got tired of it -- a relieved smile flashed upon my face momentarily -- and lied, or, again, she just wanted to let Dave relish in some happiness for a while.



But how was she even going to hide the fact that she was, in fact, not pregnant? Was she going to fake a miscarriage? Come out with the truth? It\'s hard to hide the birth of a baby, isn\'t it?



The door swung open. I fell backwards onto the floor, yelping in fright. I hadn\'t realized I\'d been so close to her office door.



"Taylor?" Cassandra asked, looking down at me in confusion. Another smudge of black lay on her face, though her cheek this time. "What are you doing?"



"Uh..." I placed my hands on the wall to help myself up. "I was, um... I finished and I... I\'m not sure." My face drooped in shame.



I heard Cassandra exhale softly. "You really want to know, don\'t you?" she asked quietly. I looked up to see her face, smudged and dimple-less. Ever-so serious. I didn\'t like it as much. It reminded me too much of her husband, looking through me, but I knew that Cassandra wouldn\'t do that. Something inside of me told me that she wouldn\'t hurt or criticize me that way. "Come in," she said, holding the door open to her office.



I swallowed dryly and moved past her. Her office looked nothing like the other rooms in the house. The walls were covered in different colors, though mostly black, like the smudges on her face. On the floor was long, unrolled sheets of tan paper to catch dripping paint or what-have-you. There was a stereo in one corner, stacks of used and unused canvases in another, and multiple easels against one wall facing me, each with a separate piece of art on its center.



"You\'re an artist?" Stating the obvious was something I was rather good at.



"Something like that," Cassandra replied, carelessly walking barefoot through the splotches of wet paint on the tan paper. "I have to show you something, so come here, please," she beckoned from across the room where one of the easels was.



I walked slowly across the floor, looking out for any discarded paint that could ruin my white socks. When I stood beside her, I glanced up, suddenly nervous. Artists can be crazy sometimes. I just prayed that what she was going to show me wasn\'t something... traumatic.



"Close your eyes," she murmured, her brown eyes intent. I glanced down at the small backside of a canvas that she held. Swallowing, I did as I was told, ready to cringe in case something bad was about to happen to me. "Now open them," she said.



The other side of the picture was a charcoal painting of a tree sitting atop a grassy hill in the sunshine. The hill was colored much like Cassandra\'s yard, with shimmering blades of green grass and not a patch of dirt in sight, and the sky was a beautiful baby blue and cloudless. The tree, however, was completely black and white. Colorless. Soulless, maybe. The tree was like one of those ugly ones you see in winter because all the leaves have fallen and nothing lives there any longer. The branches are bent and repugnant. Scary. Some are broken and have fallen onto the grass, its only flaw. The trunk of the tree is dark and scribbled on, giving it an old and rusty effect. It looked awkward and horrifying there in the beautiful scenery.



"This is me," I heard Cassandra say, and I followed her finger as she pointed to the sketched, hideous tree.



I looked up the length of her finger, her arm, her shoulder, her neck and her face, falling lastly on her solemn eyes. "I don\'t understand." Cassandra was nothing like that tree. She was beautiful. Why would such an obscene object symbolize such a perfect person?



She licked her lips faintly and glimpsed away from the photo to look at me. "I have a disease," she confessed. "I have a disease that will make me ugly... broken... helpless... and alone." She touched the black etched on the canvas, stroking the eyesore like caressing someone\'s cheek.



"I will die young," she whispered, swallowing. "And I will die in solitude."



Because it was aching so much to stare at her any longer, I looked down at the picture and waited for the tree\'s ugliness to fade away.