her tongue stud against her teeth.
“It wasn’t my treasure to take.”
This witch certainly had a vengeful streak, but she also had integrity. And that’s more than I could say about how I’d conducted myself for far too long.
“It wasn’t mine either,” I said. “I didn’t deserve to open it.”
“Cassie Worthy”—Zoe paused—“wasn’t worthy.”
I groaned because it was so on-the-nose and also because it was true. I was a disappointment to everyone I’d come in contact with all summer, but no one more than the person who had introduced me to the treasure hunt in the first place.
“Are you worthy now?” Zoe asked.
Not yet, but I hoped I was getting closer. I still had amends left to make.
47
MIXED
I almost expected Sam Goody to be wearing the same shirt I’d seen on Sylvester and Sonny Sexton. Didn’t everyone in the Pacific Northwest wear flannel? It was a relief to see him in the same outfit he was wearing the first time I laid eyes on him: employee T-shirt, pegged black jeans, boots. It occurred to me that I’d only seen him wearing that same exact outfit, and I wondered if I’d ever get a chance to see him in anything else.
I’d chosen my own outfit with care. For the first time since I’d gotten mono, I finally filled out my favorite jeans again. I’d paired them with the cream, collarbone-baring shirt Drea had designed for my disastrous date with Slade. In the weeks following that night, my stomach turned at the sight of that shirt crumpled in a ball on my bedroom floor. It might still be there if Kathy hadn’t picked it up while we were packing my suitcase for school.
“What a nice top,” she said, stroking the petal-soft material. “You should take better care of it than this.”
My mother was right. So I handwashed the shirt in my bathroom sink and let it air dry on the clothesline in our backyard. Drea’s design now smelled of fresh air and sunshine. It was even better than new. Next time, I’d complete this outfit with oxblood Doc Martens I was determined to buy before the end of first-year orientation. In our phone call over the weekend, Simone Levy had promised to take me to Eighth Street in Greenwich Village because that’s where she always went to get the best deals on shoes.
Sam Goody had his back to me. He was standing in front of the Billboard 100 wall, removing CDs from some slots and returning them to others. Customers were constantly putting merchandise back where it didn’t belong, and a good part of Sam Goody’s day was spent correcting other people’s carelessness. Freddy must’ve been really hungover because he was playing a deeply strange song combining Gregorian chants and French pillow talk over hypnotic rhythms. It was a hallucinogenic soundscape, and I had to focus extra-hard to stay grounded as I put one penny-loafered foot in front of the other.
I reached Sam before he turned around.
“Hi.”
He pivoted away from the shelf and toward me. Conflicting emotions crossed his face in quick succession: surprise, sadness, suspicion, surrender.
I reached into my knapsack and took out a cassette tape.
“I made this,” I said quickly. “And I want you to have it.”
I didn’t say I made it for him because that wasn’t exactly true. When I was picking out all my favorite songs by all my favorite artists, I thought I was making this mixed tape for myself, to play in my dorm room. I wasn’t trying to impress Simone Levy or anyone else with my tastes—I just wanted ninety minutes worth of music I loved listening to. When I found myself with under seven minutes left of tape on side two, I agonized over the final choices. Two songs ran too long—the second kept getting cut off. One song was too short and left too much dead air. Through trial and error, recordings and rerecordings, I finally struck the perfect melodramatic marathon of a song. Coming in at six minutes and forty-seven seconds, “How Soon Is Now?” left just two seconds of silence. Only after I played it back did I understand who this mixed tape was intended for all along.
Sam opened it up to read the track listing.
“Cassie’s T-shirts,” he said. “That’s a good title.” He paused. “Cassie.”
I had brainstormed many others—Hatchback Jams, Tunes in the Key of Sorry, Parkway Center Blues, Sturm und Drang Songs—before settling on that one.
“I figured if I put my name in the title, you’d never forget who gave it