“What? No, I just didn’t do well at school. I’m not naturally academic, not a good pupil.”
I tut and nod at her. “That’s what they told you, isn’t it? At school? Maybe your parents too?”
“Well, yes. There had to be an explanation. That and I spent too much time in my own head making up songs.”
“What you’re describing is dyslexia,” I tell her firmly. “My brother has it.”
“Dyslexia?” she says slowly like she’s scared she’s saying the word incorrectly, or maybe she doesn’t like how it feels on her tongue. “What does that mean?”
“It means your brain struggles with reading and sometimes writing. Letters get confused. Words are hard to read. While my brain and others create shortcuts to help us read quickly and efficiently, yours doesn’t, not always. Same for my brother.”
“How old is your brother?”
I have to think about this. I’m not exactly close to him or any of my family these days. “He’s twenty-seven. Two years younger than me. But he was diagnosed in school.”
“Inschool?” Cassie jolts forward in clear shock. “By his teachers?”
“Yes, or maybe by a school doctor or therapist or something. I don’t know,” I say, and I lean forward too. “The point is, it was never about not being academic or a bad pupil or whatever you said. It was about your needs not being met when you were struggling. There are ways to help your brain read and to write too. But if you don’t know about them, then of course it’s going to be one big struggle.”
“I … I…” Cassie can’t seem to close her mouth, but it takes her a moment to actually speak. “I don’t know any different. All I know is that I just try to avoid reading and writing as much as I possibly can.”
“Well, that’s fucking stupid,” I say, and I stub my cigarette out. Then, lifting up my chair, I move around the table to sit next to her. Reaching over the table, I slide the song sheet I haven’t touched yet over to us and flip it over to the blank side. “Let’s start at the beginning.”
“What are you doing?” Cassie shifts back in her chair, away from me.
“I’m helping you.”
“Yes, that’s what I thought,” she says. “But why?”
I blink at her. “Why wouldn’t I help you?”
“Because … because you’re you,” she says. “And I’m me. We hate each other. We’re the Battle of the Bangs.”
I search her face for more information. Does she really think that little of me? Does she really think that I let magazine and tabloid gossip define me? Does she not see that we’re all just playing a big game that ultimately and depressingly lines rich, old white men’s pockets?
It’s while my eyes roam her creamy white skin, the faint freckles across the bridge of her nose, the pink in the apple of her cheeks, that I see her own gaze dip. It dips down. To my mouth. And then it pulls back up again. When I start to smile, she does it again.
“Oh, Cassie,” I say very slowly.
Her throat works as she swallows without making a sound.
“You don’t hate me at all, do you?”
CHAPTER 6
CASSIE
My vision blurs. My mind fizzes. My pulse speeds up, and I feel the telltale tingle of perspiration down my spine.
And yet in all this chaos, I see my two choices very clearly. I can deny what Pia is implying. I can laugh it off. I can explain my dazed expression on tiredness, the smoke in the room, the emotional hangover I feel at sharing – finally! – my struggles with reading and writing with someone. I can navigate this conversation back out of unchartered and dangerous waters.
Or I can tell her she’s right. I don’t hate her. Not at all. I’m intrigued by her. She fascinates me. I find her beautiful and arresting and unsettling, and so very exciting. I can tell her that in these few hours we’ve spent together, I’ve struggled to breathe in a normal rhythm. It’s been hard to concentrate, and I only found focus when I closed my eyes and lost myself to the song. But even then, I was thinking of her. I was literally singing the words to her, to this woman that other people made my nemesis, but really, right now, in this moment, she has become something close to an obsession, and all at my own doing.
“You’re right,” I say, and I swear I can feel her body warm mine, even though we’re not touching. “I don’t hate you.”
Pia’s little smirk doesn’t go anywhere.
“I don’t hate anyone,” I add, and her lips flatten into a straight line. “It’s you and the rest of your band who have no time for us. It’s you who seems to hate me, with what you’ve said in the press and the way you act whenever we’re in the same room together.”
