Take Me On (36 page)

Lila

So the guidance counselor asked me what I wanted to do with my life. I answered—rock climbing. He said it wasn’t a profession and to get serious. That if I wanted to get into a decent college I needed to apply myself now.

I told him I was serious. That I loved rock climbing. He said that was a hobby and that I needed to become realistic about my “goals.”

I told him it wasn’t my damn fault he pissed away his life to make thirty grand a year and to drink cheap coffee. And then I asked him to kindly stop dumping on my dreams. He gave me two days’ detention. Did I mention the guy’s an asshole?

Do you know the last time I had detention? Never. I’m no saint, but I keep my mouth shut and head down. Rules suck. Society sucks.

Josh followed the rules and now he’s dead. He liked riding horses. Maybe if he had looked that damn counselor in the eye and said, “I want to ride horses for the rest of my life,” then my brother would still be alive today.

~ Lincoln

Sitting cross-legged in the middle of my bed, I turn over Lincoln’s letter. My fingers slide over the deep indentations of words obviously written in agitation. Words written so quickly, I wouldn’t have been able to decipher most of them if I wasn’t already familiar with his handwriting.

He sent this one to me in the fall, a week after he started his senior year. Lincoln hated his guidance counselor. He was the one who convinced Lincoln’s brother to join the Marines out of high school. It’s because of that fateful decision that I met Lincoln.

“Lila,” says Echo, her voice a bit disjointed from the speaker. “You still there?”

“Yeah,” I say and glance at my phone lying on the bed next to me. My best friend is in freaking Iowa with the freaking love of her life on their way to freaking Colorado. Right now, I despise happy people. “How’s Iowa?”

“Kansas,” she corrects.

“Whatever, it’s flat and they have tornadoes.” I pick up one of the many stacks of letters from Lincoln cluttering my bed and easily find the one I’m searching for. The one that promised he’d come with me to Florida.

Cluttering
isn’t the right word. Nothing about me is cluttered. Each stack represents the month the letter was sent, and each letter is arranged by the date on the postmark. My favorite letters have a pink highlight marking the side.

My entire life is systemized like this. My books alphabetized by author on my cherry bookcase. Within the matching glass hutch, my Precious Moments figurines are organized by date received. My scrapbooking materials are boxed in color-coordinated Tupperware. I like plans and organization and not boys who promise to attend the University of Florida with me and then screw it all up by not graduating from high school.

“Lila?” says Echo. She pauses for way too long. “Did you give him a chance to explain?”

The envelope crunches in my hand. “He didn’t graduate from high school, Echo, and he didn’t tell me about it. Do you have any idea how I felt when I had to find out on my own that he lied?”

I found out only by accident, when I searched online at his local newspaper to print out the list of graduates to complete the scrapbook page I made for Lincoln’s present. His name was not listed among the one hundred and fifty graduates. I should know. I checked—three times.

She sighs through the phone. “Maybe you should talk to him.”

“You’re biased,” I snap. “You’re on Lincoln’s side because of Aires.” Lincoln’s older brother, Josh, and Echo’s older brother, Aires, were part of the same military unit. No one knows the whole story, but they died two and a half years ago in Afghanistan, in a roadside bombing. I met Lincoln at Aires’s funeral.

“If I remember correctly,” Echo says with an attitude that has very rarely emerged over the past two years, “I’m the one who said you shouldn’t be writing a stranger and I’m the one who said you needed to stop writing him because you were falling for him.”

And I’m overwhelmed with the urge to punch something—hard, because... “I know. Sorry. That wasn’t fair.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

We’re silent for a few moments. I crossed a line with her by throwing Aires into a fight. I pick at my thumbnail. We’ve been best friends since birth and we never stay mad for long, but I don’t want to get off the phone with her angry at me. At least not tonight.

“Hotel, motel or tent?” I slur the last word as a curse. More silence, then a rustle of sheets. Please, please, please play along, Echo. I need my best friend.

“Motel. We slept in the tent for the past few nights,” she says in a light tone that causes me to smile. Yeah, I hate happy people, but Echo deserves happy. “Noah’s in the shower.”

“So...” I draw out the word. “Have you had sex?”

“No.” She chokes. Hand to God, she chokes. I giggle as she coughs.

“Well, if you do,” I say when she recovers from her hacking fit, “don’t let your first time be in a tent. That would be awful.”

“I think a tent could be romantic.”

“Traitor,” I say. Echo used to be in the only-if-there-is-room-service camp, like me, but then she permitted the hot and mysterious Noah to sway her to the dark side. “Dirt and bugs and snakes, Echo. Just saying.”

In the background, I hear Hot and Mysterious’s deep voice. Echo fumbles with the phone while she answers him. I check out the clock on my nightstand. Midnight. My mouth dries out as I smooth back my hair. Another night by myself.

No moon tonight, so the entire world beyond my window is pitch-black. I don’t want Echo to let me go because then I’ll be alone again in this big, empty house.

Part of me hates Noah. If it wasn’t for him, she wouldn’t be in Iowa or Kansas or where the hell ever and would instead be staying the night with me. She wouldn’t be spending all of her time with him and his friends: that scary guy with all the tattoos and Biker Chick Beth. Tattoo Boy and Biker Chick Beth also live with Noah’s foster parents, and they were a year behind me and Echo at school. Echo says they aren’t a couple, but I’d bet the new heels I received for graduation they are.

If it wasn’t for Noah, she would need me more...she would still be insecure, she would still be obsessing over the scars on her arms. She possibly wouldn’t have recovered her memory of the night she got them. If it wasn’t for him, she wouldn’t be moving on with her life. Damn him for being a great guy.

“Guess I should let you go.” Yep, I said it in a way that indicated that is
so
not what I want to do.

“I’ll stay on,” she says. “We could keep our phones on all night. Just like we did in elementary school.” Only then it was landlines. She would, because that’s what best friends do.

I swear I hear Noah groan in agony. Guess he doesn’t like BFF breaking in on make-out time.

“No. I’ll be fine.” It’s a lie. I stare at the scrapbook page that I lugged back to my room earlier and wonder where Lincoln’s sleeping tonight. I should think I could sleep tonight, but the exhaustion only increases my terror...and deepens my sadness over Lincoln. I should have heard him out. Why didn’t I listen?

“I think you should talk to Lincoln,” Echo says, reading my mind like always. “Maybe wait until you’ll know he’s back home, like tomorrow evening, and DM him again.”

My thumbnail clicks as I mess with it. “I thought you wanted me to stay away from him.”

“Yeah, well, you already fell for him. Now I don’t want you to have regrets.”

Regrets. The moment I slammed the door on him, I sort of regretted it, and then I fully regretted it when I heard his engine accelerate down the road.

I hate that he won’t be in Florida in the fall. I hate that I’ll be alone at a strange college, in a strange state, and not know a soul. I’ll be a complete and utter outsider. But what I really hate is that I’ll never get to figure out if Lincoln and I would ever have been more than just friends.

Even with the lie, what I don’t hate is Lincoln.

Echo remains on the phone with me as I lock every single window and every single door. It’s only when I reach the front door and peek out onto the porch that I finally let her go.

My heart does this funny little tumble. Lincoln left the roses and an envelope.

I should have kept Echo on the line, and I almost press Send to reconnect, but curse myself. If I can’t open a door and grab flowers and a letter then I should kiss Florida goodbye.

I undo the lock with an audible click. Thoughts of every urban legend and horror movie I’ve ever heard or seen flood my brain. My hand hesitates over the doorknob and adrenaline pumps into my blood. Oh, my God, I’m such a wuss.

With disgust I wrench the door open and step out into the humid night. It’s not an envelope but a piece of paper with the words:
I’m sorry. I haven’t given up on Florida. I swear. Lincoln.
He listed his cell phone number under his name.

I drop to the top step and caress the roses. Even in the heat, the petals are silky and cool. Lincoln is the only guy who has ever bought me purple roses. Sure, guys have bought me plenty of red ones, but not purple. Not my favorite.

Is it possible that he does know me that well?

I jerk my head toward a rustle in the thick overgrowth next to the driveway. My entire body pulses. Part of me panics and begs to run back inside, but the frustrated part stubbornly stays planted on the wooden steps. I’ve sat here countless times by myself in the middle of the night. Granted, my parents were asleep inside at the time, but why should now be different?

I swallow and dig deep for courage, snickering at my patheticness. With a sigh, I press Lincoln’s number into my cell. Yeah, it’s midnight, but he’s either driving home or asleep somewhere. Either way, I’ll leave a message.

The phone rings once, but then all I hear is footsteps: the snap of rubber hitting blacktop. My hand lowers from my ear as my eyes strain to scrutinize the dark road. The sound becomes louder, indicating it’s coming nearer. I stand, my hands shaking at my side. My heart misses beats as it drums in my chest.

And that’s when I see it: a silhouette, a shadow...blackness in a form. Then there is breath. I scream.

Lincoln

...and we’ll be about an hour from the beach and I think we should go there every weekend. Oh, Lincoln!!!! You’re going to the University of Florida, too!!! This makes everything better.

I’ll tell you something that I haven’t told many people. Actually, only two other people: I was thinking of backing out of Florida. The thought of being away from home and knowing no one, it scared me. I don’t have to be scared now. I have YOU!!!!!!!

~ Lila

Each word from the letter she sent to me this past fall is embedded in my brain. From the moment I left my entire family slack-mouthed and shocked in the living room, I’ve been trying to form a plan to fix all the mistakes that led to me not graduating. If I can clean up this mess and somehow go to Florida, then maybe Lila will forgive me.

The windshield acts as a recliner while my legs stretch out on the hood of my car. My clasped hands serve as a pillow. The air doesn’t move. It’s stagnant and strangles me like a twisted blanket. Sweat drips down my back as the cicadas celebrate the heat by chanting in the woods. From a few campsites over, children giggle near a crackling bonfire.

Josh, Meg and I used to laugh when we roasted marshmallows at a campfire. That was before Mom and Dad began arguing over money, before Josh left for the military, before Meg got pregnant, before I started ditching school.

Today was jacked up. I walked out on my family and drove ten hours for Lila to slam the door in my face. Lesson learned: I need to talk faster. Or type faster.

In general: just be faster.

My parents remain ignorant of the fact that I didn’t graduate today and of my exact location. But I’m not that bad a son. I called, so at least they know I’m alive.

On the hood next to me, my cell brightens and vibrates. I peek over and practically slide off when I notice the area code. Lila! The hood makes a booming, popping noise as I grab for the phone. It slips from my grasp and falls to the ground with a thud. “Shit!”

The buzzing continues. I scramble over the side and search on my hands and knees through the dirt. A quick wave behind the tire and I snatch the cell, pressing Accept. “Lila, I’m sorry.”

As I take a breath to tell her what happened and how I plan to fix everything, I hear a high-pitched scream.

Chills spread across my skin as ice enters my bloodstream. “LILA!”

She sobs, begging God to help her. My hands dig into my jeans pocket, yanking out my keys. “Talk to me!”

My engine growls and the people from the adjoining campsite shield their faces from the glare of my headlights. Rocks kick up and hit the belly of the car as I tear out of the camp. “Lila!”

A thump on Lila’s end accompanied by tapping draws my attention back to her. She continues to cry. A rush of panic washes over me. Lila’s alone. Her letter last week told me about her parents leaving and how she was terrified of an empty house.

And I abandoned her.

Then there’s no noise. No tapping. No cries. Silence. A glance at my cell and my gut rips open. Call disconnected. The car shakes as it veers off the winding forest road. I jerk the steering wheel to the right. My eyes dart between the gravel and my desperate attempt to reconnect. Her phone continuously rings. Lila’s cheerful voice fills the line. But it’s a recording. A damn recording.

“Shit!” I slam my hand against the steering wheel. What the hell is wrong with me? I left her there—defenseless.

Near the exit to the campgrounds, a park ranger waves at me to stop. As he opens his mouth to explain campsite hours, I spit out, “Call the police! Call them now!”

* * *

Red and blue lights become a homing beacon. My fingers drum the steering wheel as I coast into her driveway. The fear recedes as I see no ambulance, but then my frayed nerves explode in terror. What if the ambulance already took her? What if she’s dead?

Nausea spreads through me, making me dizzy. I can’t lose someone else I love. I can’t. Please, God, please let Lila be okay.

I dash out of the car, the memories of my parents breaking the news of Josh’s death replaying in my mind like a sick movie. I never got past the front door. I just saw them there, my parents crumpled together in a heap on the living room floor. My father holding my mother. My mother holding my father. Both of their faces consumed by tears.

I knew in that moment my brother had died.

My chest tightens and a crazy panic causes my hands to shake and my feet to quicken their pace. Not Lila. Not Lila, too. A police officer spots me and turns his head as if he’s going to say something, but I move faster—my feet pounding up the wooden stairs, my hand twisting the sun-baked knob, my shoulder forcing the door open.

My legs wobble when I see her standing in the middle of her living room, and if it weren’t for the two police officers in the room, I’d fall to my knees.

She runs a trembling hand through her rumpled golden hair as she wraps her other arm around her stomach. Even with the warm summer air creeping into the air-conditioned living room, goose bumps form on her arms. She wears only a tank top and shorts.

“Lila,” I say to expel the idea that I could be dreaming.

Both she and the police officer who speaks to her in a low, soothing tone glance at me. Relief smooths the lines on her forehead, and her arms drop to her sides. “Lincoln.”

My name leaves her mouth in a relieved, airy rush, as if she’s glad to see me. As if she wants to see me. And those gorgeous blue eyes stare at me like I’m her man. My heart squeezes.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

She bites her bottom lip while nodding.

Having no clue what to say, I scratch the back of my head. “I—”

And I don’t finish. Lila half stumbles, half runs into my body. The fact that she’s touching me, holding me, causes me to lose my balance. I quickly recover as her arms become steel bands around my waist.

I inhale, trying to figure out what to do. Ah, hell, she smells like her letters; like lavender. I press my cheek against her silky hair and ease one hand onto the small of her back while the other hugs her shoulders.

Lila falling into me is peaceful, like landing on a feather bed. She’s warm and soft, all curves and gentleness—alive, fitting perfectly into my body. Just as I imagined.

“It would be best if Miss McCormick isn’t alone tonight. Will you be staying with her, sir?” asks the police officer, but the way she tilts her head and smirks at her partner informs me she can guess my response.

“Yes,” Lila answers for me as she burrows her forehead into my chest. Her grip on me tightens. “I know him. He’ll stay.”

Everything stills. I have never heard sweeter words. She knows me and she wants me to stay. I’m not a stranger to her. Not some guy she barely identifies with. She
knows
me.

“Sir?” the officer prompts.

“Yeah,” I say. “I will.” I slide my hand along the curve of Lila’s spine. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

Her nose moves against my chest as she nods. “Yes. Just freaked.” She pauses. “I’m sorry for sending you away.”

Lila peeks up at me and I give her a half smile. “I deserved it.”

For a split second, light shines in her eyes. “You sort of did.”

The police officer clears her throat and Lila steps away from me. My arms feel empty without her. It’s crazy. I’ve dated more than a few girls and have never had this reaction.

“Are you okay now, Miss McCormick?” the officer asks.

“Yeah,” she answers. “Thanks for coming.”

The police officers inch toward the door and I block their path. “Whoa. Wait. You’re leaving?”

“Lincoln...” Lila rubs her biceps. Her mouth scrunches to the right, calling my attention to her lips. “I...uh...was calling you...and I thought I saw someone...and I guess you answered right as I screamed...and I, ah...dropped my phone...then it turned off...and then the police came and said you called them and...yeah.”

And...yeah. Not buying it. “Blood. Curdling. Scream.”

Her eyes dart to the police, then away. “Well, I thought I saw something, but I was probably wrong.” Then she looks at me, her eyes pleading, begging for me to drop it.

The muscles in my neck tighten.

“We searched the property,” says the officer with a pitying smile at Lila. “And we didn’t find anyone. Miss McCormick knows she can call us if there’s an issue.”

They think it’s her imagination, yet I heard her terror. That type of scream can’t be created by a fear in your head. That’s death hovering in front of you wielding a bloody ax.

Lila thanks the officers and shows them out. With a click, she shuts the front door, and for the first time in my life I’m completely alone in a room with the girl I’ve fallen in love with. What the hell do I do now?

I should immediately tell her what happened with school. I should tell her my plan to fix things, how when I return home I’ll sign up for summer school. I should tell her that the thought of losing her paralyzes me. Instead, I follow my gut. “You saw somebody, didn’t you?”

Lila collapses against the door and her face drains of all color. “Yes. No. I don’t know.”

Her head dips forward. “I can’t prove it. The police think I’m crazy. And ninety percent of me thinks everything’s okay because if there was somebody outside they would have hurt me. But ten percent of me is pretty positive that someone is messing with me.”

I fold my arms over my chest, not liking the thought of anyone screwing with Lila. “What are you saying?”

She shrugs and smiles at the same time, making it clear she doesn’t believe the words. “Maybe I have a stalker.”

Maybe? Knowing what to do to help calm her nerves, I hold out my hand. “Start talking, because I’m not leaving until I know you’re safe.”