Deeper We Fall (Fall and Rise #1)(18)
Author: Chelsea M. Cameron

“That’s intense. I bet you couldn’t get away with anything.”

“I never had to,” she said. Uh oh. The awkward now had now morphed into tension. I kicked Will’s foot under the table. This was all his fault.

“Do you live on campus?” Creepy, Will. Now she’s going to think you’re a stalker.

“Yeah, in Halscock.” If Audrey wasn’t a hot girl he wanted to impress, Will probably would have made a penis joke. I could tell he really, really wanted to.

She didn’t elaborate. The tension was starting to stink.

“Have you started that paper that’s due next week?”

“I just wrote an outline,” she said with relief. Clearly, talking about academia was in her wheelhouse. I steered the conversation onto more stable footing. Will tried, but he didn’t have much to say. Poor boy. He usually had an easy time with girls.

Audrey finished as quick as she could and said she had to get to her next class. I knew for a fact that she didn’t have class for at least another half hour, and she knew that I knew. I said good-bye and said I’d see her in Brit lit. As soon as she was gone, I texted my apologies.

“I’m such an idiot,” Will said, raking his hands through is hair.

“Yeah, you are. What happened to that guy who charms every woman in a five-mile radius, regardless of age?”

“He’s not here right now. I’m pretty sure he abandoned me. Come back later.”

“Aw, Willy, it’s okay. You can’t win ‘em all. Buck up.”

“I know, I know.” He was so grumpy, he didn’t even finish his second taco. Poor thing.

“I’ll see you later,” he said, giving me a sad smile. I tried to think of something shiny.

“Hey, you want to go do something this weekend? Movies? I think they’re having a battle of the bands here on Saturday night.”

“Sure,” he said, still miserable. “I’ll see you later.”

“Have you found a job yet?”

“I’m still looking.”

“Okay, well could you at least make something up so I can tell Mom? She’s up my butt about it again.”

“Okay, okay,” Will said before shuffling off. Great, he was going to have PMS for at least a few days. Pissy Man Syndrome.

“Hey, Hottie,” a slimy voice said behind me. I turned slowly.

“Why don’t you go f**k yourself?” I said with a teeth-hurting smile.

He shook his head. I hated the fact that he was standing while I was sitting, so I got up and grabbed my tray.

“That’s not very nice language for a sexy girl like you.”

“Don’t you have a girlfriend? She’d be awful upset if she heard you saying that about another girl.”

“No, I don’t think she will, because you’re not going to tell her.” He was right, I wasn’t. I couldn’t say anything bad about Zack without looking like a vindictive bitch. He had me right where he wanted me.

“See you later, babe,” he said, his hand barely touching my ass as he walked by.

“Touch me again, and I will f**k you up. I swear to God.”

He just smiled, as if I was a child saying that I wanted to be a unicorn when I grew up. He leaned in, and I fought the urge to knock his teeth out.

“Anytime, anywhere.”

I felt like I needed a shower the second he left. He’d always left me feeling like that, although I didn’t notice it so much when I was younger. Now it was like a bright red flashing light.

I went downstairs to the bookstore and bought a tiny container of pepper spray and a rape whistle.

I wasn’t going to underestimate the Parker brothers a second time.

Chapter Fifteen

Zan

To keep my mind off Charlotte, I threw myself headfirst into schoolwork, like slipping into a cool lake on a summer day. I dove into calculus and English and biology and European history and physics. I shut out everything else but that, so when a voice spoke to me as I was getting up to leave from calculus on Wednesday, I didn’t pay attention at first.

“Do you have a lighter?” It was Stryker.

“Yeah, sure.” I pulled out Gramps’ lighter, and handed it over. “Just be careful.” I followed him as we walked outside.

“Thanks, man. I’ll, um, give it back.” He lit his cigarette and handed the lighter back to me with care. “You want one?” He offered me one from his pack.

Normally, I would have just shaken my head and that would have been it, but for some reason, I decided to talk to him.

“No thanks.” He puffed a cloud of smoke over his shoulder so it wouldn’t blow in my face.

“So what’s your deal? You don’t really have that college-boy vibe.”

“Neither do you.” That made him laugh a little and he blew out another puff.

“It’s all an illusion,” he said, making smoke rings. I’d never been able to do that. “People look at me and assume I’m on drugs, going nowhere, dumbass fuck-up.”

Been there, done that.

“And you’re not?”

“Used to be. But once people put you in a box, you can’t do anything to get out of it.”

“I’m Zan,” I said, sticking out my hand. Stryker held his cigarette between his teeth as he took my hand and gave it a good shake.

“Stryker.” He leaned back against the building. “So what’s your deal?”

I shrugged.

Stryker put his cigarette out in the flower pot filled with sand outside the building.

“Thanks,” he said, handing me the lighter. “See you on Friday.”

“See you,” I said, pocketing the lighter.

I thought about what he said the rest of the day. That once people decided what they thought of you, that was it. You’d been judged. You got a stamp on your forehead that you could never wash off.

***

My roommate crashed through the door in the middle of the night, bringing with him the stench of puke mixed with alcohol. I was a light sleeper, thanks to Carter. Never knew when someone was going to hold a sharp object they’d made to your throat and ask you for drugs or money or whatever else they wanted.

I didn’t know the kid’s middle name, but I got his nasty clothes off and into a garbage bag, held the trash can for him and got some crackers and water into him. He finally passed out into a drunken stupor around four. I cleaned the room and knew I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I went for another run. The only people I passed were the mid-week drunks on their way home, and a few early risers from sports teams that had to fit their workouts in where they could.

A misty rain started, and I finally decided to strip off my shirt once I was ensconced in the safety of the woods. I tied the shirt around my waist and kept going. Seeing the scars brought the memory forward, as sharp and clear as it had been on that night. I avoided looking down when I was in the shower and mostly changed in dark rooms.

I remembered the screams from Lexie as the car swerved out of control to avoid the deer. The lurch in my stomach as the truck flew over the guardrail and threw itself down the embankment, the horrible crunch and crash of the truck as it turned over. And then the silence as my body came to rest and the truck stopped moving. That was the worst part. The silence. Wondering if I was dead.

The next sound was of Zack. I’d never heard him scream like that. After that followed sirens and chaos and bright lights and lots of people touching and talking and moving.

“What happened?” That was the first thing Zack said to me when we got to the hospital. I stared at him, unable to comprehend how he couldn’t remember what had just happened.

“You were in a car accident, sweetie,” the nurse closest to his head said. “Do you remember anything?”

“What?” He tried to move, but, like me, he was strapped to a backboard and had a C-collar on. I remembered every single second in crisp detail.

“Where’s Lexie?” I whispered. My throat hurt for some reason I didn’t understand. There were people all around me, but no one was listening to me. I had to repeat myself before someone took notice.

“They’re doing everything they can. You just worry about you right now.” That didn’t answer my question, but when people said things like, ‘doing everything they can,’ meant things weren’t going well.

It wasn’t until the next day I found out how bad it was.

I ran as the sky went from washed out blue to a muted grey, to the brighter shade of a new morning. The rain stopped, and the rising sun sparkled on the moisture that clung to the trees. I stopped to rest, leaning against a large trunk. I glanced down at my chest, looking at the tattoo I’d gotten only a month before.

The dark ink that intertwined with the scars that crossed my skin still threw me off every now and then when I saw it. The artist had done a beautiful job. My fingers traced the outline of a little mockingbird that sat in one of the branches of the tree that dominated my left side.

It was really because of Boo Radley that I’d gotten a tree. Because of those magical little things he’d left for the Finch children in the tree in front of his yard. I hadn’t thought of what I was going to get before I went to the tattoo place, just that I’d know when he asked me what I wanted.

My copy of To Kill A Mockingbird had be lying on the dashboard of the truck when Zack and I got in to go to Connecticut, so that was what I thought about the whole way. I didn’t think getting a giant mockingbird was going to cut it, or be very masculine, so I needed something else. While Zack was busy finding a radio station that wasn’t “gay,” I flipped through the book until I found something that struck me.

There it was, as Zack sang at the top of his lungs to Satisfaction. Somehow I was able to describe what I wanted in enough detail that the artist did an amazing job, and it looked like a painting and not like a cartoon. Zack got one too, his baseball number on his left pectoral. I didn’t bother to point out that his number was going to change. Zack did what Zack wanted. Always.

I came to a bend in the trail and turned to go back, even though I didn’t want to. More words from Rumi echoed through my head.

‘I run from body. I run from spirit.

I do not belong anywhere.’

Lottie

“Thank God you’re here, Q of S is on a rampage,” Trish said when I walked into work on Friday afternoon. It was only my first week, and she’d already adopted me, but it wasn’t totally her fault. Within about five seconds of talking with her, it was like her soul and my soul did a fist bump and said, Hey, I know you!

“Uh oh.” I punched in, being sure to avoid the office area before I donned my apron and got to the cutting counter.

“Any more interactions with the B’s of D?” Of course the entire Zack/Zan saga had spilled out of me during my fifteen minute break on my second day. I didn’t mean to tell her, but it just sort of happened. Like most of my rambles.

“Not since the thing in the rain that I’m not talking about.” The fact that I was limping had triggered the explanation in the first place.

Trish narrowed her eyes at me and then swiped her hair back.