Deeper We Fall (3 page)

Katie’s Dad went to get the last of her stuff and Will decided to go back to his own room to unpack and wait for his roommate Simon to get here.

“Pizza? There’s a place just up the road,” Will said. I glanced at Katie’s heart-shaped pink plastic clock. Leave it to Will to know where the nearest pizza joint was. If I let him, he’d eat pizza, baked potatoes and Cheetos for the rest of his life. “Simon should be here in soon.”

“Yeah, he texted me earlier,” I said. Will and Simon had been best friends since Simon moved to Seaport two years ago. Even Simon coming out of the closet and confessing a secret crush on Will hadn’t broken their bond. In fact, it had just made it stronger.

“Cool. I’ll be back in a few. It was nice to meet you,” Will said to Katie, Regina and Glenn. I fought the urge to make him stay. The idea of being alone with them made me feel uncomfortable. When I got uncomfortable, I had a tendency to babble and say things I wouldn’t normally say and go on, and on, and on…

“Simon’s Will’s roommate,” I said to Katie as she put up even more pictures. I didn’t look too closely at them. There were just too many. They were like a fungus that I knew would somehow migrate to my side of the room. I’d wake up one morning and see her cute face pouting at me via photo.

“Oh, I see,” Regina said, as she handed Katie another picture while they shared a look. “Is he cute?”

“Will’s more his type. Simon’s gay,” I said, which put a stop to that line of questioning. “I mean, I always knew, but it wasn’t until he told me how much he really, really loved Channing Tatum that I finally confronted him and made him tell me. Then we had this whole intervention-type thing with Will, but he didn’t really care. I mean, some guys would be weird about living with a gay guy, but they’ve been best friends for so long –“ I was finally able to cut off the flow of words there. My word explosion was met with a stunned silence.

“Oh,” Regina said. Glenn cleared his throat and asked Katie where she wanted her television.

We’d agreed ahead of time that she was in charge of bringing electronics, since her parents had already bought them last year. I had my own stuff, but hers were top of the line.

Katie’s phone buzzed with a message and she made that God-awful squealing sound again. Looked like I was going to have to get used to that. Or just learn how to not use my eardrums.

I was busy alphabetizing my books by author’s last name (in series order) when I heard a voice behind me.

“Hottie Lottie?”

The books I’d been shelving hit the floor. I turned slowly, hoping against hope that it wasn’t who I thought it was. I hadn’t heard that voice in years; thought I’d never hear it again.

In one second, his voice brought back that night, the full memory. The smoke in my hair, the cool of the moonlight, and the fear that filled my stomach like hot lead as Zan, Lexie and Zack got in his truck and drove away.

I swallowed back bile and turned all the way around, just in case I was having an auditory hallucination. Nope. There he was. Zack Parker. Two years ago, I’d seen him laid out in a hospital bed, his body bruised and crushed and battered. I remembered looking at him and wishing he was dead.

They found Lexie ten feet from the flipped truck. None of them were wearing seatbelts, and the deer came out of nowhere. Zan had swerved and the truck rolled, throwing all of them from the truck. Zan and Zack had broken bones, but Lexie suffered a traumatic brain injury.

That night had changed everything. Lexie went from a girl who loved horses and strawberry ice cream to a girl who had to learn how to walk again. A girl who couldn’t remember my name. When I visited her in the hospital after she woke up, I had to wear a nametag and keep reminding her who I was.

“Hey, babe!” Katie squealed and flung herself at him as if they were reuniting after he’d come home from a long deployment. Regina smiled and Glenn scowled. Clearly, he wasn’t won over by Zack’s charm.

“Hey,” he said, glancing at her before looking at me. I’d never seen Zack shocked before, but for just a blink he was. Then he quickly smoothed it behind his smirk. I wanted to take that smirk and shove it so far up his ass a proctologist couldn’t find it. “Nice to see
you
again.”

“I have to get something out of the truck,” I said, hiding my shaking hands behind my back. I would not let him see me this way.

So I ran.

Chapter Four

Zan

There was a knock at my door as I was putting my clothes in the dresser. My roommate still hadn’t showed up yet, and I was beginning to wonder if he ever would.

“You will
never
guess who’s here,” Zack said, his arm around Katie, as if she was solely there for the purpose of letting him lean on her. She eyed me warily, as usual. I wanted to tell her to run while she still could. To run while she could still stand and he hadn’t crushed her under the weight of his arm. Granted, she wouldn’t listen to anything I had to say.

“Who?”

He smirked. “Hottie Lottie.” The nickname made all sorts of things explode in my brain at once. Many of them were curse words, but her name was the loudest.

Charlotte Anders. Everyone called her Lottie, but she’d always been Charlotte in my head. It suited her better.

Charlotte Anders was here. At the same University.

“Are you sure?” I stuttered.

“I think I’d remember the girl who had you totally pussy-whipped for years.”

I didn’t bother to contradict him. It wouldn’t do any good. I had to sit down on my bed so I didn’t fall over. I never thought I would see her again. My chest constricted and my hands shook so I put them in my pockets.

“She’s also Katie’s roommate. Right, babe?” Zack clearly got a sick thrill out of doing this to me. I wasn’t the only one who looked uncomfortable, though.

“Can we go?” Katie said, nudging him in the chest. He looked down as if he’d just remembered she was there. His face slowly arranged itself into a smile, and he tweaked her nose, which made her smile back at him.

“Sure, babe. See you later, Zan. We’ll have to go out soon. Just the guys.” He gave me a wink and steered Katie down the hallway.

“Bye.” How like Zack to drop a bomb like that and walk away.

It wasn’t until after he left that I remembered I was supposed to tell him to call Mom. I’d probably end up doing it so she wouldn’t worry.

She and I were like two people who only spoke half of their words in the same language, so only half of what was said on either side was understood. I was going to put off calling her as long as possible.

It hadn’t always been like that, but after the accident the distance between us had gotten so big and wide and deep, we’d never been able to cross it again.

I wasn’t ready to talk to anyone, so I just kept unpacking and repeating her name in my head.

Charlotte, Charlotte, Charlotte
.

I was definitely going to run into her at some point, if we were living in the same building. I looked around the room, and it suddenly started feeling smaller. The familiar tight feeling in my chest and lightness in my head told me I needed to get out of there. Now.

Without my medication to press the Stop button in my brain, there was no telling what could happen. What I could do. Everything just built and built and built in my brain until I had to get it out, and usually that involved destroying things to prevent the guilt and pain and regret from absolutely crushing me. I’d gotten control of it over the past two years, but seeing her threatened to send that spinning into chaos.

I almost forgot my key card, which would get me back in my room, but I grabbed it at the last minute before the door slammed behind me and I headed for the nearest exit. I almost crashed into some guy, but didn’t even pause to say I was sorry. It wouldn’t have mattered.

Once I was outside, I started walking. There were far too many people around. I had to get away from them. From their loud happy voices and their loud happy energy. There weren’t many places you could find on a college campus to be alone, but I was damned if I wasn’t going to find one.

Just the act of walking was helping me. If I could focus on walking, I could stop focusing on the insanity going on in my head.

Charlotte, Charlotte, Charlotte
.

What was she
doing
here? Her brother was probably here too. They’d always been together back in school, but that was two years ago. Maybe they were different now. Maybe
she
was different now.

The last time I’d seen her, I was in a hospital bed, and she’d been standing in the open doorway of my hospital room, staring at me. I’d never forget that look in her eyes. Those blue eyes that reminded me of the sky reflecting off lake water on a summer day.

They’d been empty. Cold and dull and empty. I’d never seen them that way before. The girl who was always talking and laughing and bright was gone. Shattered.

She stood there until I closed my eyes and turned my head. Like a coward.

I bet she sure as hell didn’t want to see me.

I shook my head at the memory and crossed the railroad tracks that ran through campus. I had no idea where I was, but I didn’t care. I passed the Field House and found myself on my way to the farm, just on the edge of campus. Perfect.

Since classes hadn’t started, things were quiet, but there were a few horses out in the paddock. There had been a horse farm up the road from my house when I was a kid, and I’d often walked over there when I’d been mad at my mom or stepdad for whatever little thing they’d done to piss nine-year-old me off.

I walked right up to the fence, hoping no one would come out and yell at me. That wouldn’t turn out well, I knew that much.

Watching the horses run and chase each other helped me clear my head. I wished I’d brought the camera I’d gotten as a present from my social worker. She’d gotten me into photography as another outlet for my energy. I would definitely come back again when I was thinking more clearly.

With Charlotte back in my life, that was highly unlikely.

Fuck.

I resisted the urge to bang my head on the fence.

“Hey!” A sharp female voice made me look up. A woman who looked like she’d been born in a horse barn and would probably end her days there marched over to me, hands on her stonewashed jeans-clad hips.

“What are you doing?”

She had a bucket of something in one hand, and a pitchfork in the other. I would have been a complete dumbass to mess with her.

“Nothing, just taking a walk.” I could have said anything and she still would have glared at me like I was going to mug her.

“Well move along,” she said, jerking her chin to tell me to get lost. I fought the urge to grin at her. If I had my hat on, I would have tipped it and bid her good day. That always threw people off.

God, I really, really wanted to get high. Just lay back and listen to a record and watch the wind stir the clouds. Or fuck the brains out of a girl. That worked too, but it didn’t last. Only about as long as it took for the sweat to dry and I pulled out and stared down at her and tried to remember her name.

Most of the time I got it right.

Afraid of provoking the woman with the pitchfork, I turned around and started to walk back to the dorm.

I couldn’t go out and get high. I couldn’t go out and screw a random girl. I could, but Miss Carole, my social worker, would call me after and she’d
know
. She always knew, and the disappointment in her voice when she said my name was the worst sound in the world. Second only to the sound a car makes when it flips over and over.

So I walked slowly back to my new dorm room, keeping my eyes down and hoping I didn’t run into her.

Charlotte, Charlotte, Charlotte
.

Lottie

I found the stairs and instead of going down and getting swallowed by the crush of people moving in, I went up to the roof. I always felt most calm when I was up high. Maybe it had something to do with the tree house Dad had built for Will and me one year when he was feeling especially father-y. Will wouldn’t go up there, so I had the place to myself.

Maybe it had something to do with the fact that most people dwarfed me.

There was a threatening sign on the door that led to the roof, but I wasn’t afraid of it. The worst someone would do was yell at me.

I didn’t have anything to prop the door open with, so I pulled off one of my sneakers and shoved it in the crack so I wouldn’t be the girl who freaked out and got herself stuck on the roof and had to be rescued.

The gravel crunched under my shoe and dug into my sock-clad foot as I stepped away from the door, putting my back to it. The discord of the cars and the voices from everyone at the street level faded, and I closed my eyes and imagined I was somewhere else.

Anywhere else.

“Are you screwing with me again?” I said to the nearly cloudless sky. A seagull called in the distance and was answered by another.

I’d started this weird habit of talking to the sky after Lexie’s accident. My parents made me see a counselor, but that never helped. It was actually Will who had suggested it.

I figured there had to be someone up there who was listening.

“Haven’t we suffered enough? Is this some sort of lesson I’m supposed to be learning, because I don’t get it. Why us?”

The sky offered no answers. I picked up a piece of gravel and chucked it. With my luck, it would hit someone in the head.

“I just don’t understand.” My throat contracted painfully around a ball of tears that was threatening to come up and leak out my eyes. “Why won’t you let me move on?” I paced from one side of the roof to the other, even though I was lopsided from missing my shoe.

I paced a few more times, resisting the urge to shake my fist at the sky, or fall to my knees and sob. I’d done that way too many times already.

After a few more deep breaths, I pushed my way back through the door, stopping just long enough to put my shoe back on and tie it. As I pounded down the stairs, I skipped my floor and headed straight for Will’s.