Falling into Forever (9 page)

“You can do this,” she said aloud, taking a final glance at herself in the bathroom mirror.

Wait
, she thought as she turned back to her reflection in the glass.

“Where did you come from?” she asked a pink-and-white blemish on her chin, growing larger by the second. “If you get any bigger, I'll look like I have two heads by lunch,” she said accusingly as she prodded her chin with a short, ragged fingernail. “Maybe with two heads, I'll have better luck understanding chemistry,” Alexandra told Jack, who grumbled at her feet.

Picking up her book bag and car keys from her dresser, she rubbed Jack's ears goodbye. “Wish me luck, boy. I think I'm going to need it.” Her shoulder was sore from yesterday's incident in the street, and on top of that, her stomach was fluttering with excitement.

Realizing she would not be taking him out the front door with her, Jack turned and crawled back to bed.

7
Strangers

Tucked away in a quiet, residential corner of downtown Atlanta, Collinsworth Academy had instructed and groomed privileged southern youth for generations. Alexandra was the first in her family to attend the prestigious and affluent symbol of the new South, and she worked like mad every year to keep the scholarship that paid the school's hefty tuition.

Its campus sprawled across a handful of magnolia-lined, ivy-covered acres at the end of Tangle Wood Lane in southwest Atlanta. A low, stone wall marking the border between Collinsworth and the rest of the world stretched the length of the school's perimeter. All students entered through the main campus gates on Tangle Wood Lane, and Alexandra lurched along in her Jeep in the usual thick backup of cars and buses clogging the street.

While Alexandra waited patiently in the traffic, her phone hummed inside of her book bag, which was on the passenger seat. Trying to keep her eyes on the younger students's school bus in front of her, Alexandra fumbled for the phone.

The early morning sun cut through the sterling-blue sky above the city, and the thick, muggy heat made Alexandra resent every stitch of the uniform that the school forced students to wear.

When her fingers finally found the phone in her book bag, she answered without looking at who was calling. She already knew.

“Where are you?” asked Taylor impatiently.

“I can't find my sunglasses,” said Alexandra as she leaned over and flipped open her Jeep's glove compartment. Hurriedly, she rummaged through a stack of fast-food napkins.

With her head bent down, Alexandra heard a crossing guard's shrill whistle and looked up just in time to see the bumper of the school bus looming in her windshield. Alexandra's tires squealed as her foot slammed against the brake pedal. Her phone flew out of her hands to the floorboard under her seat, and she threw the car into park.

“Are you all right?” she heard Taylor yell through the receiver.

Ahead of her car, the idling school bus spewed a heavy, black, diesel cloud steadily toward her as she searched for her lost cell phone. As the dark cloud billowed into her face through the open windows, Alexandra regretted spending her birthday money on a stereo system instead of repairing the Jeep's air conditioner.

When she finally wrestled the phone from under her seat, she snapped back at her friend, “Oh, I'm just fine, Taylor.”

“Well excuse me for asking,” Taylor's sarcasm bit into the phone.

“Argh,” Alexandra growled. “I'm sorry. I can't find my sunglasses. It's hot. Traffic is backed up on Tangle Wood. Should I go on for you?”

“Okay. Calm down. But just so that you know—I can't hold this parking spot forever. I've almost gotten run over twice standing here. And did I mention how hot it is? I simply
cannot
sweat before first period. Where are you?” Taylor demanded to know.

“I'm close. Tangle Wood is backed up while the little kiddies cross the street,” Alexandra explained as she watched a stream of eager parents drag their young and slightly frightened children across the road. “Can you hold on a sec?”

Alexandra put the phone down on the passenger seat to remove her blazer and unbutton several top buttons of her blouse. As she picked the phone back up, she glanced in the rearview mirror and noticed a black car with deeply tinted windows and a government license plate on its front bumper. The car's driver honked the horn when her stare lingered too long.

“I'll be there in just a few, Taylor,” Alexandra promised as the bus lurched forward in front of her toward the open gates of Collinsworth.

As promised, Taylor stood in one of the last empty spaces in the student parking lot, which happened to be next to her silver Mercedes. She waved Alexandra into the space and hardly waited for the Jeep to come to a complete stop before she opened the door and dragged Alexandra out of the driver's seat.

“Good morning to you, too,” Alexandra told her as Taylor slammed the door shut.

“It's about time. Now we only have a few minutes before assembly starts,” Taylor complained. She suddenly inspected Alexandra's collarbone area, visible beyond the shirt's opened top buttons. “Do I see a bruise near your shoulder?”

“It's too long a story to go into now, and I'm not even exactly sure what happened. I was my usual uncoordinated self. I'll tell you later,” Alexandra said, walking as fast as possible.

Taylor was already pulling a cigarette from her backpack as they walked hastily past their classmates. The other students were lazily making their way toward Drake Hall for morning assembly. Their fellow seniors seemed more concerned with finding their friends the first morning of the semester than paying attention to where Taylor and Alexandra were headed in such a hurry.

As they reached Drake Hall, the girls walked past the front door and made their way to a faint trail. The trail had been nearly suffocated and obscured over the summer by tall weeds.

“Can you believe it, Alex?” Taylor said excitedly as they went down the trail. “We're seniors. Hallelujah! Nine more months and we're outta here.”

Alexandra pushed aside a low-hanging limb and let Taylor pass in front of her down the narrow, weed-covered path. “Taylor,” she said, “do you remember what you said to me on our first day of class when we were freshmen?”

They had arrived at their destination, a hidden alcove behind the building. A few windows dotted the high, ivy-covered rear wall, but the girls knew that they still had solitude because the windows were only for storage rooms.

Their secret retreat overlooked a patch of trees and a low, stone wall (the one that ran along the entire length of the campus perimeter). On the other side of the wall sat a cemetery. Though nestled close to campus, most students ignored the cemetery, and Alexandra and Taylor preferred it that way.

Alexandra and Taylor knew that Drake Hall had been built originally as a church before the school converted the building into a meeting hall. Its wooden pews and stained glass windows remained intact.

“I say a lot of things,” Taylor answered, her long, blond hair bouncing down her back. “Remind me.”

“We had to share a locker,” Alexandra reminded her.

“Oh yeah,” Taylor said, amused, swatting at a bug from the tall weeds. “I tried to hide my cigs in there, but you threw them out on the ground. And then when I picked them up and tried to toss them back inside the locker, your face got so red that I thought you were going to spontaneously combust right there in the hallway.”

Alexandra grinned, remembering the shock on Taylor's face that a frizzy-haired, freckled-face scholarship student had stood up to her. Alexandra said, “That's when you told me, ‘I'm going to keep them in our locker, and there's nothing you can do about it.'”

Taylor swept her hair over her shoulder, the golden locks cascading down the front of her blazer. “I think you yelled back at me, ‘I couldn't possibly care less about what you want.'”

“That's right,” Alexandra agreed. “And then you said that we were going to be best friends, whether I liked it or not.”

Taylor giggled and grasped Alexandra's wrist to expound on the latest gossip. “Did you hear?” said Taylor. “We have a new student in our class this year.”

“There are new people every year,” Alexandra replied, unsurprised.

“We don't get ones like this every year,” Taylor said.

“What do you mean? Who is it?” Alexandra's curiosity heightened Taylor's interest. Most people bored Taylor immensely.

“We were introduced at Daddy's golf club yesterday. His name is Benjamin Lawson,” Taylor revealed.

Taylor stared at Alexandra as she waited for her reaction. The name sounded familiar to Alexandra; but to Taylor's dismay, Alexandra did not know why.

“Please don't tell me you don't remember who he is,” Taylor said condescendingly. “His mother is that television star, the one who married senator what's-his-name this summer. It was all over the news.”

“That explains the limo in line behind me on Tangle Wood this morning,” Alexandra said, flushing faintly as Taylor lit her cigarette.

“He rides to school in a limo?” Taylor said, incredulous, as she tried to smoke the cigarette quickly before the bell rang. “He is so going to be my boyfriend by the end of the week.”

“Does he know that? Besides, I thought Antonio was your boyfriend?” Alexandra asked.

“He's really more of a friend,” Taylor explained. “I don't think I can handle a long-distance relationship right now. I mean, look at me—I'm going to be stuck at this place.” Taylor exhaled the last drag of her cigarette before dropping it to the ground and extinguishing it with the red sole of her black high-heel. The bell tower high above their heads rang out. Squinting into the sky, they rolled their eyes together. Morning assembly was beginning, and they were going to be late unless they hurried back.

“Come on, Alex. Let's go find Benjamin. I want to introduce you,” Taylor smiled, and her mood brightened. Suddenly in a hurry to attend assembly, she rushed ahead of Alexandra back toward civilization. Her voice trailed off behind her.

Alexandra inhaled a deep breath and started down the trail after Taylor. But a glance down to her feet froze her in place. A snake slithered across the path directly in front of her, making its way toward the stone wall by the cemetery.

Lifting her gaze from the ground, Alexandra stared at the quiet field of headstones resting on the low hill that rose gently upward and away from the Collinsworth campus. At its peak, a grand magnolia kept a dignified watch over the grounds.

She stared harder. One of the tree's lower limbs swayed gently, even though the air was hot and still.

“How is it doing that?” Alexandra asked herself aloud, until she realized that a figure was sitting on the limb.

Closing her eyes, she counted to three. When she dared to open them again, the figure had disappeared. Straining her eyes, Alexandra took a step forward toward the stone wall. Suddenly she felt a hand reach around from behind her back and grab her arm.

“Alex, what are you waiting for now?” Taylor whined. “Do you want to get your first demerit before classes even start today?” Taylor yanked Alexandra down the path toward campus. Alexandra stumbled along behind, craning her neck for a look back at the cemetery.

“Maybe I imagined it,” she said as she rubbed her tired eyes.

“Imagined what?” asked Taylor.

“Nothing,” said Alexandra. “I don't know. There was something.”

Taylor rolled her eyes.

Alexandra asked, “You didn't notice anything strange back there, did you?”

“No,” said Taylor as she dragged her friend through the doors of Drake Hall, just as the bell tower stopped ringing. “Follow me.”

Behind them the entrance doors slammed shut with a wailing thud, leaving no chance for them to sneak in unnoticed. The round and balding academy headmaster, Dr. Sullivan, already stood behind the podium at the front of the assembly hall, welcoming students back for another school year.

“Pleased that you could join us,” he said, narrowing his gaze directly at the pair.

“Good morning, Dr. Sullivan,” Taylor boldly replied as she scanned the room for Benjamin Lawson. She actually managed, like a hawk, to spot the back of his blond head sitting at the opening of a pew halfway up the assembly hall's center aisle. She strutted toward him nonchalantly, all eyes in the room watching the tall blonde stalking her prey.

“Hey, stranger,” she bent down to coo in his ear. He quickly scooted over to make room for her on the wooden seat. Nestling into the pew beside him, Taylor glanced back down the aisle for Alexandra, but her painfully shy best friend had already ducked into an empty spot in the last row.

If he only knew what he was in for,
Alexandra thought to herself as she spied

Taylor put her hand on the boy's shoulder. The headmaster tapped on the microphone for the students's attention.

Dr. Sullivan did not stray from the same somber welcome and truth-or-consequences warning he recited every year. He was proud and honored to be their headmaster, he droned. Do not do anything to make him change his mind, he warned.

Staring at them from behind, Alexandra thought Benjamin and Taylor could have been mistaken for brother and sister. Both sat tall and upright in their seats and shared the same flaxen-shade of hair color. Alexandra assumed Benjamin did not have to pay for root touch-ups every four weeks, though.

Or maybe he does!
she thought to herself.

He wore his hair as long as the academy's dress code allowed, and Taylor ran her paws through it before Benjamin playfully swatted her hand away from the back of his head. As he did, Taylor leaned closer to him and whispered in his ear. As he started to turn his head around toward Alexandra, she averted her eyes to give her full attention to Dr. Sullivan.

A few minutes of Dr. Sullivan's speech passed before Alexandra dared to look at Benjamin again.
Hello, handsome,
she thought as he turned around and met her bashful eyes from across the room.