The Beginning of Everything

There is growing fear because of the coyote sightings, which dominate current neighborhood conversations. The irony that the coyote is Eastwood High’s school mascot is not lost on Ezra and his friends. The debate team, minus Ezra, are signed up for a tournament on the weekend, and Toby points out that the Barrows School is on the list. Toby asks Ezra if there is anything he’d like to know about Cassidy. Ezra replies that he’d like to know what happened last year to make her leave. Deep down, following the blowout at the therapist’s office, Ezra feels that nothing Toby finds out will change anything between himself and Cassidy. Over the weekend, Ezra is bored and cannot concentrate on his work, waiting for a call from Toby with information about Cassidy. Toby finally calls and tells Ezra that he missed “a sick party” (302). After hearing about how Luke peed the bed (in another team’s hotel room) and other stories of drunken fun, Ezra gets the sense that Toby is deliberately avoiding the subject of Cassidy. Eventually Toby tells Ezra to sit down and shares what he found out: Cassidy dropped out of school because her brother died suddenly of a heart condition. Before Ezra can get any more information, Toby hangs up to go to his debate, leaving Ezra staring at his phone, stunned, and rethinking everything he has concluded about Cassidy.

Ezra reassesses his relationship with Cassidy. He now understands why she sometimes wears boy’s clothes and why she chose a small town where nobody knows her. Ezra understands that she doesn’t want to be “marked by tragedy” (305), and he feels terrible for what he said outside the therapist’s office. Ezra replays every moment with Cassidy from the night of the dance, trying to figure out what triggered the memory of her brother and why that made her push him away. He concludes that she went to the park to think and was caught off guard by him, not realizing how late it was. Unable to tell him the truth, Cassidy invented the boyfriend lie to get him to leave her alone but then didn’t know how to take it back. In Ezra’s mind, everything is falling into place, and he thinks: “If I’d gotten it right, then we were never meant to break up that night in the park, and we were both hurting because of it” (308). Ezra thinks he has solved the mystery but is unsure how to approach Cassidy about it.

That evening, Ezra’s father talks to him about his future plans, and to Ezra’s surprise, his father supports the idea of the East Coast schools he has been secretly looking at. Even his mother’s cooking is tastier than usual that evening as they talk about Ezra’s future. Immediately after dinner, Ezra drives to Toby’s house to see the article about Cassidy’s brother for himself. Ezra wants to go to Cassidy’s house with flowers to tell her that he understands, but Toby talks him out of it, reminding him that this is Cassidy—flowers will not work. Toby jokingly suggests that Ezra build her a TARDIS (a time machine from the Doctor Who series) and invite her on an adventure, something more her style. This, combined with the gaudy Christmas decorations displayed in the neighborhood, give Ezra an idea.

The following morning, Ezra slips out to Cassidy’s house at dawn, taking Cooper with him, to check on the five-foot tumbleweed snowman that he built the night before. The “snowman” is still standing, complete with button eyes, a licorice mouth, and an old scarf around its neck. Ezra calls Cassidy and asks her to come outside. Cooper is acting strangely but hides with Ezra as Cassidy comes out. She bursts out laughing when she sees the snowman and tells Ezra it’s “wonderful.” Then Cassidy stuns him by saying she’ll help him take it down. Ezra angrily tells her that he spent all night making it, and she replies that she didn’t ask him to. They start to argue and Ezra turns to go, furious that Cassidy will not admit that her brother’s death is why they broke up. Ezra slams the gate to the park open, but Cooper refuses to go in. Ezra, in no mood to stay, goes into the park anyway, and Cooper reluctantly follows. Ezra hears Cassidy scream his name, initially thinking, “She hadn’t let me walk away after all,” but then she screams “Ezra, run!” (317). A huge coyote stalks Ezra and Cooper through the fog. Cooper yanks his leash out of Ezra’s hand and lunges at the coyote, snarling and barking. Before Ezra or Cassidy can act, the two animals are locked in a ferocious fight. After subduing Cooper by biting his neck, the coyote slips away, leaving Cooper limp and bleeding. Ezra, desperate to get Cooper to the vet, tells Cassidy to get his car. She runs across the park as Ezra cradles Cooper, trying to stem the flow of blood from his wounds.

At the vet, Ezra gives his jacket to a shivering Cassidy. Ezra goes to the bathroom to clean the blood from his hands and face and stands numbly with the water running until Cassidy comes to get him. They sit down in the waiting room, legs touching, and talk quietly. Eventually, Cassidy asks Ezra how he found out about Owen, and the uncomfortable conversation about the night of the dance resumes. Cassidy admits that she owes Ezra an explanation, and she leads him to the truth by explaining about Owen. Her parents, who are both doctors, forced Owen to go to medical school. There, Owen suffered a psychotic break triggered by the stress of medical school but was unable to tell his parents that he wanted to quit. When he sounded suicidal, Cassidy persuaded him to fly home, promising that she would help him tell their parents. They went to a restaurant, but the conversation didn’t go well. Owen, who was drunk, grabbed their mother’s car keys and roared out of the restaurant. With tears in her eyes, Cassidy says she didn’t run after him to get the keys back. Ezra cuts in at this point, confused: “But he died of a, um, heart thing. […] Not a car accident” (326). Cassidy explains that Owen took their mother’s black Land Rover, the same car that slammed into Ezra the night of the prom.

Ezra reels from this information, and they sit in silence together. They talk quietly about the moment Cassidy realized the connection, during the call from the florist. She shares that Owen told them he hit a tree, and that he died at home from an embolism four days later. Cassidy explains that they can never be together because when she looks at Ezra, all she sees is Owen. Ezra replies that it would be a tragedy to lose what they have because of something neither of them did. He tells Cassidy that if it hadn’t been for the accident, and for her, he wouldn’t be applying to East Coast colleges. Cassidy gently points out that he made the decision not to squeeze “into the narrow corridors of everyone’s expectations” before he’d even met her (329). Cassidy begs Ezra to understand that she is not the “bohemian adventurer” she appears to be, but a “sad, lonely mess who studies too much” (329). She wants Ezra to “misremember” her as the mysterious, adventurous girl rather than to know her for who she really is. Ezra realizes that Cassidy will always be trying to escape reality, always striving to be the perfect image of what everyone expects of her. He gently tells Cassidy that he doesn’t want them to be over, but he sadly knows they are. The vet comes to talk to Ezra, breaking off their thoughts with the devastating news that Cooper has died. As Ezra follows the vet, holding Cooper’s tags, Cassidy disappears from Ezra’s life.