A gorgeous contemporary romance about two ex-best friends, Cass and Syd, on a life-altering road trip following the reunion tour of the Darlas—the band Cass’s mom was in when she died. Perfect for fans of Nina LaCour, Mary H.K. Choi, and Jandy Nelson.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Kate Sweeney’s This One’s For You, which is out February 7th!
After their high school graduation, former best friends Cass and Syd are gearing up for their futures. Cass has planned to go to college to become an engineer, while Syd—despite the fact that her family thinks she’s messed up her whole life—has lined up a sound internship at a historic music venue.
But Cass is keeping secrets. Though his dad has forbidden it, Cass has been playing music, taking trips to San Francisco BART stations to play and make money. Somehow, it’s become a way for Cass to connect with his mother—who was also a musician—who died in a drunk driving accident on the way back from a gig when he was one.
But after Syd catches Cass playing at the BART station, and Cass finds out his mom’s old band the Darlas is going on a reunion tour, everything changes. On impulse, Cass invites Syd to the first Darlas show, and without telling anyone, they make a break for it. Turning one show into a cross-country journey, the two former friends throw away all their plans for the future and embark on a life-altering road trip following the tour, keeping it a secret from their friends and family.
Along the way, they’ll untangle the messy threads of how they became “ex”-best friends, experience the power of nature and music, and decide what they really want their lives to be. Maybe, through it all, Cass and Syd can find a way back to each other, too.
CHAPTER 12
THE LAST DAY OF MY FRIENDSHIP with Caspian started out like this: I woke up in his bed, melted by a hundred sunbeams. I was hopelessly snarled in his gangly limbs, enveloped in the smell of birch-bark soap and sleeping teen boy sweat, and something about the combination was so good that for a moment I thought I could stay like that forever: wrapped up in Cass, huffing him like airplane glue.
The thought was jarring enough to vault me into full wakefulness. “Cass,” I hissed. “Get off!”
“Shhhhh,” he mumbled, sliding a hand across my mouth. “Sleeping.”
I kicked my way out from under his leg, which was hooked across mine like the number four. I was trying to strangle the weird new part of me that wanted to turn my body sideways, to press against Cass from collarbone to knee. I’d woken up in this bed on a thousand other mornings; it had never felt like this.
“I gotta go,” I said, trying not to panic. “It’s almost seven.”
Under Caspian’s hot palm it sounded like “Gahagamo. Miahaman.”
I stuck my tongue out to lick Cass’s hand, my usual trick for this situation, and Cass released me immediately, laughing.
“Shit,” he said, rubbing his eyes, oblivious to my lust meltdown and squinting at the grandpa-style wristwatch he always wore, as if he could see the face of it without his glasses or he’d actually understood what I’d said about the time. “You’re right.”
I sat up, watching him fumble around for his glasses, trying to catch my breath. It felt like slow motion, Cass’s shoulder-length hair, dark and thick, falling across his eyes. His chest looked strong and brown from working outside with his dad; I noticed a line of freckles on his left shoulder that looked like Orion’s Belt.
Cass’s hand stopped and his eyes met mine, sliding down to my chest for a millisecond before flying back up again and sort of looking at the wall, color staining his cheeks. My own face warmed and I felt my mouth fall halfway open.
For a second my heart actually ached.
Oh, shit.
I propelled myself out of bed, pulling on my ratty black hoodie.
“See you out front in twenty?” I mumbled.
He peered at me, head tilted to the side.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said, turning toward the door. “I just don’t want to get in trouble.”
He laughed, and something about the laugh was so musical and sweet that I accidentally tripped and fell over as I was hopping around, trying to put on my sock. “I don’t believe that for a second,” he said.
I’ve got to get out of here. I smoothed down my hair, shoving all the weird feelings down down down. Then I gave Cass my best devil grin and slipped down the stairs, out the back door, and across the backyard like a neighborhood cat.
—
Now Cass drives us up I-80 and into Pinole, to the trail next to the train tracks and the water treatment plant, the marsh where we used to race our bikes as kids. I climb out of the car and cross the tracks, stepping gingerly in my bare feet to avoid broken glass, walking toward the sand. It’s low tide and the air smells like sulphur as we thread the needle between tall reeds and squawking sea birds. I can sense Cass behind me without even turning around, like I used to when we were kids and he’d trail after me everywhere with his shoelaces untied.
There’s a lot more garbage out here than there used to be, plastic bags and press-on nails, disintegrating fiberglass chunks of an old boat, an extra-large Jack in the Box drink cup. But it still feels peaceful.
We walk down the beach for a while without really talking and I tightrope my way out over the sticky marsh on a long, weathered piece of driftwood. I’m thinking about all this plastic floating out of the bay, out to sea, out to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch—1.6 million square kilometers of trash-filled ocean—clogging up pelicans and seagulls until their bodies burst. Thinking about plastic always makes me think about death.
Caspian steps out onto the driftwood and the whole thing sinks and rises under his weight.
“Where were you today?” he asks again, and when he looks at me with his serious brown eyes, thoughts of death scatter like dandelion seeds.
“I’m pretty sure it’s your turn to share,” I say without turning around. I’m still not even sure why I’m here, except for the fact that every step toward my house had felt like an act of infinite divisibility, smaller and smaller by half, slower and slower. Maybe I’d never have made it home, creeping down Loma Vista Road forever, in one long loop of my favorite panic symptom: impending doom.
This morning, before graduation, Mom sat me down, with Dad this time, for another talk just to let me know that they are serious. Dad didn’t say a word, dressed in his button-down and Salesforce fleece, itching as usual to get out the door, but I could tell she’d won him over; it’s internship or bust.
“You first,” Caspian says, ever the enigma.
I turn around to face him and we’re standing on the log like Baby and Johnny in Dirty Dancing—Mom’s second favorite movie—except the tension between us isn’t sexual. It’s two years of neglect, a yawning canyon of disuse and distance and growing apart.
“You promised you’d tell me if I came with you,” I say, crossing my arms.
He shrugs. “I changed my mind. But it’s okay, we don’t have to talk.”
He stares at me and I stare at him and all that space between us seems to creak and groan like the driftwood. Then he turns around and jumps back onto the beach.
“Caspian Forrester, you’ve changed,” I say.
He laughs, and it sounds dry and hollow and lost.
When my feet hit the damp, muddy sand, I say, “I don’t know why I didn’t go. It just sort of happened.”
“It just sort of happened that you missed your high school graduation?”
I shrug, picking up a flat rock and pressing the corners into my fingers.
“I hated that place anyway.”
Mountainous hills and hilly mountains ring the bay, softly jagged, green on gray on blue on blue, water, clouds, hills, sky. I remember my dad naming them for me as a child, Mount Tamalpais, Mount Diablo, other mountains I can’t quite remember.
“So that’s it?” Caspian says.
“That’s it,” I say.
“Huh.”
He pushes his hair out of his face, then turns and starts walking back down the beach.
I call after him, “Your turn!” and it sounds weirdly shrill and I’m feeling childish now that I’m the one trailing behind, owed. I promised myself to never want anything from Cass ever again.
I have to walk fast to keep up with him, and the tiny shells in the sand poke the soles of my feet. I look down, falling into the muscle memory of searching for treasure on the beach: bones, sea glass, clams, nautiluses. The nautilus was always Cass’s favorite. I’d find one and press it into the squishy palm of his hand and he would smile at me, revealing the gap between his teeth that I almost never saw.
After a few minutes, I start to fall behind, back into the feeling of not caring. I start to remember why I stay away. A mourning dove calls out long and low through the thick air, singing about death, and right in the middle of the sound Caspian stops, turns around, speaks.
“The Darlas are getting back together,” he says.
I stop walking.
He looks out onto the mud flat, which seems to stretch endlessly out into the bay. In a few hours, this place will be covered with gently lapping water, but for now it’s just sucking mud for what seems like miles.
“They’re having a reunion tour.” He pulls his phone out of his pocket, looks at the time. “It starts in two and a half hours.”
“The Darlas,” I whisper to myself, and a rush of remembered imaginings rises like colored smoke. Ever since Cass led me up to his attic and showed me the old photographs and photocopied show posters of the rough-looking group of girls holding guitars and making rude gestures and tough faces, the Darlas have lived in a cherished corner of my heart. The Darlas: a secret seed that germinated, rooted, and bloomed into a possibility I had never even thought of.
For a while, Cass and I tried to find them. We both pretended that it was just a fun detective game. But I saw the tension in Caspian’s shoulders as he hunched over the keyboard of his dad’s desktop, googling phrases again and again. Back in my room, I’d pretend for hours to be one of them, playing air guitar and drums to the wildest music I could find.
Caspian looks back toward the parking lot, sighs in this way he does when he’s deciding whether or not to give up on something.
“We should go,” I say. “You’ve wanted to see them your entire life.”
“Can’t,” he says. He shoves his hands deep down into his pockets.
“Where is it?” I say.
“Sacramento.”
“Then let’s go to Sacramento.”
“I—”
He looks utterly lost. Bewildered. Like his life is passing in front of his eyes and he can’t move his fingers to grab it.
“Do you have anywhere better to be?” I ask.
He opens and closes his mouth.
“Big plans to get wasted at Kelso’s house?” I say, twisting the screws,
hitting all the soft spots I catalogued when we were kids. “Maybe trying to rekindle with your perfect girlfriend?”
“Fuck you, Syd,” Cass says, his face hard in a way I don’t remember.
He turns around, and we walk all the way back to the car without saying a word. But when we get to the freeway, he takes the ramp for I-80 east, toward Sacramento.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kate Sweeney was born in Athens, Georgia, and has since lived many places, including Los Angeles, New York City, and Salt Lake City. She began writing when she was sixteen. Her father–a novelist and screenwriter–had died five years prior, and in writing she found a way of bringing his voice back to her ears. For the past ten years she has resided in the Bay Area, where she spends her time making music with her band, Magic Magic Roses, teaching literacy, and working with her husband at the family art-framing business. She can be found online at @katesweeneywrites on Twitter and Instagram, and at her website.
