Casey Barnes Eponymous - By E.A. Rigg Page 0,5

and by, Casey.

“Where’s my shower gel?” Yull asked.

“Used up.”

“And you didn’t consider asking before you used it up?”

“It was in the bathroom we share,” she responded.

She waited for Yull to say that the shower gel, an overpriced one with acai, was purchased with summer money from the, oh how could anyone forget, paid and prestigious summer internship he did at the Kennedy Center.

“You were adopted from a family that once bred with basset hounds. You know that?” he said instead.

“Careful or I’ll dismember your Ricky Martin doll.”

“I don’t have a Ricky Martin doll.”

“But I bet you want one.”

“Barneses,” Clayton Gould said.

She took her guitar off her shoulders. “It’s time I blow this taco stand.”

“I have to shower and go to a planning meeting for Amnesty,” Yull said, “Let me guess, you’re off to see your crowd of friends at…Leigh’s?”

“The only thing cool about you is that you’re gay,” Casey said. He held up his middle finger and departed the room.

Clayton Gould sighed. “Have you given any thought to what I said about playing your songs in public?”

She stared at him. She shook her head.

4

Leigh answered the door and motioned for Casey to follow her upstairs. When they got to her room she opened the door quickly so they could slip inside. Her mother was down the hall reading.

Once there, Casey saw that Leigh had emptied the entire contents of her bureau onto the floor. She frowned. “Was there a rhyme and reason to this dumping?”

“I still can’t find it.”

“Hmm.”

The summer before, Leigh spent five days visiting her Aunt Eva in Los Angeles. Casey was fascinated with Aunt Eva. She was Leigh’s Mom’s twin sister but Leigh did not meet her until she was twelve, when Eva returned from living abroad in Europe. In her years away Eva became a respected film editor and was now doing the same job in Los Angeles. Eva was outspoken and free-spirited. In Europe she lived with a succession of lovers, including a woman, and was now living with a younger man in Los Angeles. Her freewheeling ways were sharply at odds with those of Leigh’s parents. Leigh’s father was raised Southern Baptist, in Georgia, and was an army doctor at Walter Reid. Leigh’s mother was uptight and ran a shop in downtown Bethesda that sold a variety of scented candles. Since coming back to the states Eva had visited Leigh’s family several times. The visits were always punctuated by a strange tension that centered on the fact that Leigh’s parents disapproved of Leigh’s interest in painting.

That summer Aunt Eva invited Leigh out for a weeklong visit to Los Angeles. Leigh’s parents initially said no. Then, miraculously, they changed their minds and let Leigh go. Eva took her around town and introduced her to a bunch of film industry people. On Leigh’s last night in LA, Eva’s college-aged neighbors invited her to an Arcade Fire concert. Eva told her to go and said she would not tell her parents. Leigh did, smoked pot for the first time in her life, and made out with a white guy with dreads. The ticket Leigh referred to in the library was from that show. It had gone missing.

Casey shrugged and sat on Leigh’s bed. “So what if they find it. Just tell them Eva went.”

“It’s not just the ticket.”

“What do you mean?”

“There was a roach clip clipped to it.”

“Excuse me?” Casey asked.

“I wanted a memento for the first time I ever smoked pot.”

“Whoa.”

Leigh shrunk onto the floor and curled into a ball. “I am so dead.” Casey attempted to shoot her an encouraging smile. Leigh groaned and put her head in her hands. A moment passed. She looked up. “Holy shit!”

Casey looked around. “Did it fall from the rafters?”

“No. There’s something I heard at school today that I almost forgot about.”

“I am not interested in Yull’s latest feat, thank you very much.”

“It has nothing to do with Yull.”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s about Alex Deal,” Leigh said.

Alex Deal. Alex Deal. Alex Deal. Was his name. And it was a name that had not been mentioned between Casey and Leigh since the fifth day of school when Leigh told her something about him, she threw up, and Leigh said they would never speak of him again. Alex Deal who had come into the library that day and who had left. That Alex Deal.

“What about him?”

“He and Melanie Corcoran broke up.”

“What’s your source?”

“Melanie Corcoran herself, in art class. Last period of the day or else I would’ve told you in the