Cassandra Rose McMurtrey. That’s what was on the birth certificate.
My name.
Born to Catherine Elaine McMurtrey (mother) and William Patrick McMurtrey (father) on September seventeenth, eighteen years ago. Looking at that high-quality piece of paper, you’d never know it wasn’t my original birth certificate—it’s got the official signatures and the state seal and a watermark and everything—except that it’s signed and dated in November of that year. A couple months late.
Idaho, the internet rather snarkily informed me when I looked into it more closely, is a closed-record state. As in, they’ll never give me my original birth certificate, no matter how old I am. I’d have to get a court order. And to get a court order, I’d have to have a good reason. Like a medical reason. A legally sound reason.
Curiosity, it turns out, is not enough.
So this is who I am: Cassandra Rose McMurtrey. That’s my answer.
“You’re quiet tonight,” Mom remarks.
I blink up from my phone, where I was supposed to be finding this funny cat meme I wanted to show my grandma but was actually spacing out. “I’m fine,” I mutter, because I am. Fine, that is. It was an impulsive thing, requesting my birth certificate, and nothing came of it, and that’s okay.
I’m fine.
“You’re too skinny.” Grandma pokes me in the ribs. “Isn’t your father feeding you? I swear that man thinks a person can survive on bark and pine nuts.”
I put a hand up like I’m swearing on an invisible Bible. “I’m eating three square meals a day, I promise.”
“Well, you should eat more,” she pronounces.
“Mama, back off about her being skinny.” From the hospital bed, Mom smiles at me. “My daughter is practically perfect in every way.”
“Well, I suppose that’s true.” Grandma doesn’t get the reference to Mary Poppins. She lifts Mom’s legs one by one and rolls a thick sock onto each foot, then unfolds a blanket and tucks it around Mom’s hips. After that she goes out to refill Mom’s water. Comes back with the water. Adjusts my mother’s straw in the water. Then disappears again; I don’t know where. That’s how she is when she’s here. Grandma likes to have tasks to accomplish.
“Don’t mind her,” Mom says after Grandma bustles out of the room.
“I don’t mind her.” I adore Grandma. She says what she thinks, but she’s still kind and generous and an all-around good person. I want to be exactly like her when I’m an old lady.
“How’s school?” Mom asks.
“Fine. I got a B-plus on my chemistry test, which I consider a minor victory.”
“Congratulations. And how’s the play going? Off to a good start?”
I smile. “We did a table read yesterday, and we’re going to start blocking act one tomorrow.” Just saying the lines out loud for the make-out scene between the baker’s wife and Cinderella’s prince gave me butterflies. Bastian was so funny at the reading, making everybody laugh because of how totally into the prince’s role he was.
“I was raised to be charming, not sincere,” was his best line, and he said it so deadpan that the entire cast cracked up for like five minutes.
But when we read the kissing part between the prince and the baker’s wife, he didn’t look directly at me. He was shy. It was kind of adorable.
“I still can’t believe you’re doing Into the Woods,” Mom sighs. “My favorite musical.”
“It’s going to be great,” I tell her. “I can’t wait for you to see it.”
The actual performance is months away, though. I try not to think about how there’s a possibility that she might not see it. I force myself to believe that she will. She’ll be in the front row. With Dad.
Mom gives me a weak smile. “And there’s a new boy, right? What’s his name again?” Ugh, she’s too darn perceptive for her own good. I wonder if she’s been talking to Nyla, who comes by on her own to visit her sometimes. She always brings daisies, Mom’s favorite flower. I glance around. Sure enough, there’s a fresh vase full of daisies next to the window.
“Bastian,” I say to answer Mom’s question. “He’s, um, fine.”
“Fine as in fine? Or fine as in fine?” Mom wags her eyebrows up and down. I can’t help but laugh.
“He’s reasonably attractive,” I admit.
“And . . . ?”
“And what?”
“Well, dear, you know you always get a crush on the leading man.”
I gasp in fake outrage. “I do not.” Dangit, Nyla.
Mom wrinkles up her nose. “So you don’t actually like this new boy.”
I don’t answer right away. It feels like some kind of trap, and it seems weird, sitting here in a hospital with my dy—my sick mother, and she wants to talk boys. But I also know if we were a normal family, a regular old mother and daughter, we’d talk about boys. So I decide to give in and play it up for her a little.
“I don’t know,” I confess. “Bastian is kind of perfect.”
Her eyebrows lift. “Perfect?”
“He’s cute. Funny. He seems nice, too. And he’s a theater person,” I say. “So yes, okay, fine, let’s just say I’m open to wherever the universe decides to take me, romance-wise.”
“Excellent.” Mom seems pleased that I’ve picked up on her philosophy. She sighs wistfully. “I had a boyfriend in high school. His name was Justin Irish. He was six two and had red hair and was completely dreamy.”
“You obviously have a thing for tall gingers,” I laugh. Because Dad.
“Indeed.” She grins. “And you have a thing for the leading man.”
“I do n—” I throw up my hands. “Bastian is not even the leading man in this play. He’s . . . Prince Charming.”
“I see.” Mom taps a contemplative finger to her chin. “Is this why you’re being so quiet? Because you think I might not approve of you dating someone? Because, believe me, I am fine with it, honey. You haven’t had a boyfriend yet, and that’s okay, of course. But maybe that’s a little bit my fault.”
I glance up, startled. This conversation is swiftly crossing into the no-fly zone. Like we’re actually going to act like Mom’s heart thing happened, and it was a big fricking deal.
She pats my hand. “You should take a chance on love anytime you can. So go for it—go out with this guy, if you decide you like him. Don’t feel like you have to spend all your free time waiting here with me for my new heart to show up. Live your life. That’s what I want for you. And then you can come back and tell me all about it.”
And now we’ve returned to our regularly scheduled program of “acting like everything’s normal.” I swallow. “Okay.”
“You’re still being quiet,” Mom observes.
“I’m fine. I have a lot going on right now, is all, without even adding dating to the mix. School. The play. College plans. There’s so much happening.”
Mom gets an expression on her face I can’t quite read, like she’s waiting for something unpleasant to happen. Or like she’s scared. She glances at the door.
“Hey, what’s the matter?” I ask.
She sighs. “Your father told me you got your birth certificate.”
And here we go. I’m busted. Crap. “Yes,” I say slowly.
“He said you needed it to apply to Juilliard.”
That’s the thing about lies. They’re like boomerangs. You think you’ve gotten away with something, you throw the lie as far away from you as you can, but it always comes hurtling back.
“Yes,” I say again.
Her heart rate monitor picks up speed. Beep beep beep, it goes, like the beat of a fast song at the school dance. I sit down next to her. “Mom?”
She closes her eyes for a few seconds. Takes a breath. “You can’t go to Juilliard. With the medical bills and the second mortgage and all that, we don’t have the funds to send you. I know you’ve been dreaming about going there since you were a little girl. And I know we told you that there was a mutual fund we set up for your college education, but . . .” She looks away, toward the door again. “That money’s all gone now. I’m so sorry, honey.”
For a few minutes I can’t say anything. I’m shocked. I wasn’t even being that serious when I said Juilliard to Dad. In the back of my brain I know it’s a pipe dream, really, but to hear Mom say I can’t go—it packs an unexpected punch. I shouldn’t be this surprised. I might not have known all the details, but I’ve been paying attention this past year. I know that my parents had decent health insurance through my dad’s job before my mom’s heart thing happened, but even with good health insurance the medical bills decimated my parents’ savings, gobbled up their retirement, the cake shop, the second car we used to own. Nyla’s been silently paying for me all year, slipping a twenty into my hand when we go to the movies and telling me to buy our tickets, paying for lunch, for the cute shirt she saw me eyeing at the mall, for last weekend’s pizza. Because my family’s broke.
Finally I nod. “I know.”
Mom squeezes my hand. “Your father and I do want you to go to college. You’re so smart, and you’re so talented I know you’ll get scholarships, and we’ll make it work. Somehow, we will make college happen. But we can’t afford Juilliard.”
“I don’t want to go to Juilliard,” I blurt out.
She frowns. “You don’t?”
“No. I mean, I did. Juilliard was the dream. But only five percent of the actors who apply to Juilliard get in. I’m good, but I don’t know if I’m top five percent good,” I confess. “So even if we could afford it, I probably wouldn’t get in.”
“Oh, honey.”
“And the tuition is really high,” I say quickly before she launches into some speech about how very much she believes in me. “But then on top of that I’d have to live in New York City. Which is wildly expensive, too. Honestly, I don’t know how anybody affords to go to Juilliard.”
“There must be scholarships.”
“Which I’d have to compete for, with the five percent. Which means I’d have to be like in the top one percent.”
“Sweetie . . .” Mom’s still got that wounded look on her face, like it’s her future that’s dying by the wayside here, instead of mine.
“Lately I’ve been thinking that it’s good to have smaller dreams, too. Backup dreams.”
“Backup dreams,” she repeats faintly.
“Like maybe I’ll become a teacher, like Dad. He loves it. I probably would love it, too. Teaching runs in the family, right? So I could be a high school drama teacher, and then I’d get to plan and direct like two or three shows a year, and I’d be the boss of everybody, the undisputed theater queen, which sounds like the best thing ever, and then I’d get my summers off to have fun and do community theater.”
Mom’s trying to read my expression. “You’ve given this some thought, haven’t you?”
Actually, I’m kind of making it all up on the spot. My improv skills at their finest. But I keep going. “My point is, I don’t want to apply to Juilliard. Because I don’t want to go to Juilliard. Because I have a different dream now.”
She’s looking way happier already. “Okay, so maybe . . . Boise State, then?” she suggests slyly.
I can’t hold back the groan. “Not you, too! It’s bad enough with Dad. Did you know he gave me a BSU shirt for my birthday?”
She smiles. “Well, can you blame us? That’s where we met. That’s where the magic happened, my dear.”
I hold up my hand. “I don’t need details.”
“I know BSU is your dad’s dream, not your dream,” she says with a sigh. “But it’s an excellent school, and it’s an affordable option, and I think you should give it a chance. Go visit it, anyway. Maybe you’ll like what you find there. Maybe it can be part of your backup dream, like you said.”
She’s right, I tell myself. She’s right. Of course she is.
“Okay,” I murmur.
“Okay?”
“I’ll go see it. Sometime. Soon,” I add.
She claps her hands together. “Your father will be thrilled. You want to be a teacher. And you’ll consider going to Boise State.”
For some reason this makes a lump pop up in my throat. “Go, Broncos?” I offer up weakly.
She beams. “Go, Broncos.”
Without warning Grandma blasts back into the room. “They’ve got green Jell-O today,” she says loudly, holding up a plastic bowl covered in plastic wrap. “I tried to barter for something better, like raspberry, but they told me no can do. Who in the world ever liked green Jell-O?”
She put the Jell-O on the little table next to Mom’s bed. “What’d I miss?”
I look at Mom, waiting for the boomerang to come back around and smack me in the head.
“Cass met a new boy,” Mom says instead of bringing up the college stuff. For which I am grateful. “An attractive boy, it turns out.”
“Oh dear.” Grandma shakes her head. “Is this about the sex?”
Now it’s my turn to gasp. “Grandma!”
“I was at the birthday party,” she reminds me. “You said you wanted to have sex. With the right boy. Do you think this boy is the right boy?”
“I didn’t mean what I said on my birthday,” I stammer.
“I know I said you should go for it.” Grandma keeps talking like she doesn’t even hear me. Which is entirely possible. “But honestly, if you want my opinion, now’s not the time for romance. Not at your age. You should simply enjoy being young. Don’t waste your time getting serious with anybody.”
“Mama, you got married when you were seventeen,” Mom points out.
“Look, I just met this guy,” I say, exasperated. “I don’t even know him.”
“I may have gotten married young, but no one ever claimed that was a good idea.” Grandma folds her arms across her chest. “I was in the family way. That’s what you did back then.”
Mom knows all about the “family way” thing—she was born about seven months after Grandma and Grandpa got married, and she could do the math. Grandpa died of a stroke when I was seven. But before that, from what I can remember, Grandma and Grandpa seemed happy together. So the family way thing worked out for everyone.
“You should get her some birth control pills,” Grandma adds sagely. “Or that thingy they insert up in there. No sense repeating the sins of the past.”
Oh my God. The worst thing is that I can’t tell if she means her past, with the shotgun marriage, or mine—with the irresponsible sixteen-year-old birth mother.
“We’ll get her some birth control pills,” Mom says. “I don’t have a problem with that.”
“Look, I don’t need—”
“And that vaccination for girls. And condoms,” Grandma adds. “Because there are so many diseases out there nowadays.”
That’s it. “I’m not having sex!” I yell right as the nurse walks in to take Mom’s vitals.
The nurse’s mouth opens, then closes. Then she turns on her heel and goes out again.
“Now see what you did,” Mom says to Grandma.
“Me? I wasn’t the one screaming about sex.”
I drag my hand down the front of my face. Then I burst out laughing. After a few seconds Mom and Grandma join in. It was too funny, the strangled look on that nurse’s face.
“Never a dull moment with you two,” Mom says, and she seems so much lighter than she did during the college talk. She seems relieved, like me saying I don’t want to go to Juilliard has lifted a weight off her chest. Which is how I know it was the right thing to do.
Grandma turns to me. “Well, aren’t you even going to tell me this boy’s name?”
“No, Grandma,” I say, still giggling. “I’m not.”