Underwater (2 page)

My cheeks scalded behind my curtain of dark hair. I hated being babied, even when it was necessary.

She sighed behind me. “I said,
excuse me
.”

A kid with white-blond hair and wearing a football jersey—even though football season ended months ago—gave Evey the once-over. I shuddered as soon as we made eye contact. In a school of a thousand students, why oh why did I always find myself in the same hallway as Ian McClendon?

Kevin, Ian’s zit-faced toady, demanded, “What’s the magic word, Prosser?”

I heard the plastic underneath my sister’s fingers groan as she gripped my chair. Evey hadn’t inherited my fondness for speaking up. Unless she was on the softball field, she preferred to shrink into the inspirational, anti-drug posters lining the walls.

She cleared her throat. “Please?”

His oily red face twisted into a smirk. “Nope. Try again.”

Ian pulled his gaze from mine and dutifully punched Kevin in the arm. “Knock it off, Kev.”

I grabbed my wheels and lurched my chair out of Evey’s grip and into the back of Kevin’s legs. “Is the magic word
dickhead
?”

When he stumbled, his backpack swung off of his shoulder and rammed into the girl walking next to him. Kevin usually preferred cramming himself halfway up Ian’s backside, which caused more than a handful of problems when Ian and I had dated sophomore year. Seemed like every time he’d gone in to kiss me, Kevin had popped up and taken a cheap shot at me: my looks, my family, the worn-out old Victorian house we lived in, which apparently wasn’t as cool as the posh lakeside cabin where he and Ian’s families lived.

Unfortunately, he was also the person who’d taken the news that I would likely never walk again and turned it into hot gossip in the halls of Sandpoint High. Ian, who was one part nice-guy, one part popularity-obsessed jock, quickly decided that breaking things off with me was the smartest choice. According to him, I
needed to focus on recovery
. But realistically, he needed to focus on dating the head cheerleader with the giant boobs and two working legs.

Not that I was bitter.

A few more heads turned, and Ian’s expression softened as soon as our eyes met again. “Sorry about that, Luna.”

“Right.” I shoved past him and ran over Kevin’s toe. The wall of teenagers parted, and we finally sidled past just as the first bell rang. I hated the fact that Ian looked at me with pity. It made me want to punch him in the face. If only I could reach it.

He shifted between his feet and shoved his hands into his pockets. “I’m sorry, all right?”

Kevin straightened up, rubbing his arm as he glared at me. “Gimp bitch.”

Ian glared down at his friend. “Dude. Shut up.”

I didn’t respond. I was used to it. As much as I hated to admit it, my parents were right when they whined to my doctors about
kids today being so cruel.
There was a kid I’d gone to school with since the third grade who missed the bulk of our freshman year because he’d been fighting testicular cancer. The kids in my school still tormented him by calling him One Nut Nick.

I rolled right up to Evey’s locker, and she dropped her pack to the floor with a thump. “Kevin’s a jerk.” She narrowed her eyes behind her glasses. “I don’t know why Ian puts up with him.”

“Because Ian’s a tool.” I picked at a thread hanging on the strap of my bag.

“He said he didn’t see you.”

I pinched the strap between my fingers. “He also said he didn’t like redheads, but look who he’s screwing now.”

“You’ve known him since you guys were in junior high.” She opened her locker and shifted through its contents. “You have to be nice to him eventually.”

“I don’t
have
to be nice to anyone.” I tilted my head and looked up at Evey. “Why are you suddenly so defensive of Mr. Jockstrap?”

She busied herself filtering through the contents of her locker. “I’m not.”

A younger version of Ian—bearing the same blond hair, but a rounder, softer face—walked by. “Hey, Evey.”

She glanced up and offered a smile, small and prim.

I raised one eyebrow. “Does this have something to do with his brother?”

My sister’s face flushed, and she pushed her glasses higher on her nose. “No. Geez. Be quiet.”

I rolled as close to her legs as I could get without knocking her down. “Come on. You like Hayden, don’t you?”

She watched his back as he sauntered away. “No. Yeah. I dunno.”

I followed her line of sight. Ian and I had lamented about our equally annoying thirteen-year-old siblings. We didn’t know that two years later, we’d be broken up in a very made-for-TV-teen-drama way and our fifteen-year-old siblings would be crushing on each other. Fate was peculiar sometimes.

We watched as a senior passed Hayden and slugged him in the gut so hard he doubled over. Papers and a baseball glove slid through the open zipper on his backpack, hitting the floor among all the walking feet.

“Tell your brother hi,” the older kid said with a snide chuckle.

Hayden moved quickly to gather his things. The hierarchy in my backwoods school was maddening. The popular kids were never nice to the younger kids, even if it meant betraying a sibling. So long as it made you appear cool and aloof, nobody cared about how much of a jerk you looked like.

“Hayden hates it when they do that,” she hissed down to me.

“He should. It’s rude.” Casting an evil glance at Ian’s back as he strutted away with his friends, I shifted in my seat. “I can’t stand watching crap like that.”

“He says that when they’re at home, Ian is cool. That’s why Hayden doesn’t get mad.”

I watched as Hayden shoved his way past a group of staring girls, keeping his head down. “I’d say he’s plenty mad. He’s just not saying anything because his brother is Mr. Sandpoint High.”

A hand came down on Hayden’s shoulder, stopping him as he barreled toward the corner.

His startled voice carried down the hall. “Sorry. Didn’t see you.”

I leaned back in my seat so I could see which teacher would lecture poor Hayden. I couldn’t see what faculty member it was, but the color drained from Hayden’s face. Poor guy was having a crap morning.

The surrounding kids scattered like mice, their eyes wide with unabashed curiosity. When some girls scuttled past Evey and me, I heard one of them say, “Where did
he
come from?”

Evey peered around her locker door, and her mouth dropped open. “Holy cow.”

I reeled my head back in Hayden’s direction. “What’s all the fuss about? I…oh.”

It was if things were suddenly moving in slow motion as he came around the corner. The first thing I noticed was his arm connected to the hand on Hayden’s shoulder. It was so defined that it looked as though it’d been Photoshopped. When my gaze rolled upward, I saw that the guy was cut enough to stretch the armholes of his worn black T-shirt. The knees of his faded black jeans were torn to shreds, as were the ankles, which were slit at the sides to make room for his dirty, scuffed boots.

When his face came into focus, my stomach tangled itself into a figure eight. His square jaw was dusted with whiskers; his cheekbones looked like something carved out of marble. On the each side of his neck were three tattooed lines, drawn at a diagonal just below his earlobes. Dark brown hair the color of chocolate hung in waves around his face. His mouth pulled upward atone corner in a smirk that made my heart grind to a halt.

“Who’s that?” Evey said.

I couldn’t focus on my sister. The hot dude was monopolizing my focus. “I…uh…I don’t know.”

Evey’s eyes locked on him as he sauntered down the hallway. His head was half a foot above everyone else’s. “Well, whoever he is, the girls are all staring at him the way Dad looks at a prime rib.”

“Huh.” I fingered a long strand of my dark hair, faking indifference while my heart coughed and groaned to a reluctant restart. She was right. Every single set of female eyes in the hallway was locked on the mystery boy.

He approached us, and the air around me filled with the aroma of the water grass that grew between the rocks along the edge of the lake.

Evey immediately turned to her closed locker, pretending to check and recheck the padlock. My fingers froze as soon as he fixed his gaze in my direction.

His eyes were the clearest, most crystal blue I’d ever seen. They looked ethereal, the same color as a robin’s egg, and slightly iridescent. I swear to all things holy that they could see right through me to the metal lockers behind my chair.

He scrolled his gaze down to my scrawny legs, which were covered in dark gray tights and propped on the footrest of my chair. His stare strayed from my legs, travelling over the metal framework of my chair as though he’d never seen one before.

The side of his mouth dropped, and his smile faded away. It was as if the sun slid behind a cloud, and I was inexplicably disappointed. I waited for his nerves to take over. The shifting eyes. The fidgeting. I’d seen it all.

None of that happened. Instead, he held out his hand. Whether he knew that he was setting off tingles up and down the back of my neck, I had no idea. But he did, and it felt amazing.

“Hello, Luna.”

Chapter Two

After The Pretty—as I’d dubbed him—held his hand out to me, I just sat there, staring at him like my little brother stares at his video games for five seconds until Evey kicked my chair. When I raised my palm and put it in his, I realized my sweat glands had thrown themselves into overdrive. I was good and clammy when he slowly shook my hand.

“Your hand’s shaking.” His voice was deep and rich, like the drinks my parents made at their coffee shop in downtown Sandpoint. It wrapped itself around me like a heavy, warm blanket, and the trembling stopped. “There,” he said. “That’s better.”

I opened my mouth to speak and then closed it again. All of my witty, scathing one-liners eluded me, and I suddenly felt as though I were completely stoned on a handful of painkillers. During the first few months after the accident, I’d spent plenty of time being medicated, and this guy apparently had the same effect.

Most of the activity in the hallway ceased as The Pretty held my hand and smiled down at me. Lockers stopped slamming. Feet stopped walking. And all eyes—especially those belonging to the girls—locked themselves on our exchange. My school was just small enough that a new kid usually warranted stares and whispers. But when a kid walked into our school with bulging muscles, a jawline that could cut stone, and inexplicable tattoos on either side of his neck…kids froze in place with their mouths hanging open.

Right as the silence between The Pretty and I stretched into uncomfortable territory, he leaned his head forward, pressed a quick kiss to my knuckles, then dropped my hand. I blinked a couple of times, trying to clear the warm fuzzies and form words, but he walked away before I regained use of my tongue, and he spoke to no one else before turning down the west hallway.

After school, as we were leaving, my wheel bounced in a parking lot pothole, splashing my leg with rainwater. “Hey.” I bent to swipe at it as Evey pushed me to the back fence where we met Mom every afternoon. “Slow down there, slick.”

My sister giggled. “Sorry. I’ve got a need for speed.”

“Well, it’s a good thing I can’t feel how cold the water is.” I glanced over my shoulder at her. “Otherwise I’d be pissed right now.”

“Not funny.” Evey’s green eyes narrowed for just a moment before looking around. “So?”

I tugged my hair into a makeshift bun on the back of my head, fastening it in place with a pen. “So, what?”

Evey and I came to a stop at our waiting place.

“Come on, Luna. Spill it.”

I had to laugh at my sister. She was staring at me with such an intense gaze that I thought my chair was going to sink into the gravel a few inches. “There’s nothing to spill.”

“Don’t give me that.” She sat down on top of her backpack. “Did you see him again? Did you have any classes together?”

I raised my eyebrow at her. “Who?”

She looked at me over the top of her glasses. “Please. The guy. With the T-shirt and the muscles and the…the hair and stuff.”

“Wow, that was some description.” I pulled a compact out of my bag and started to reapply my dark red lipstick. “And no. I didn’t see him again. Amber and Jessie saw him in the hallway, but we didn’t see him in any of the classes. He sort of disappeared.”

She flared her nostrils at the mention of my friends. She wasn’t exactly their biggest fan. Protective sister and all that. “Lucky them. So he disappeared, huh?”

“Poof.” I waved my hands with the lipstick still extended. “Like magic.”

She twisted a strand of her ponytail around her finger. “How did he know your name?”

“Besides my wild reputation?” I watched as a rowdy group of boys emerged from the back of the school, pushing and shoving each other like ten-year-olds. When I caught sight of my sister gaping at me with unabashed curiosity, I held up the thick canvas strap of my bag where my name was spelled out in metal studs. “I think he saw the poor crippled girl in the chair and felt sorry for her. Nothing epic.”

I’d grown used to people’s pity. Not that I liked it. Because I didn’t. I actually loathed it. There was a time when I warranted looks from guys because I was cute and filled a pair of skinny jeans like nobody’s business. Now my calves and ankles were so thin and weak, my skinny jeans hung loosely around them.

“Oh.” Her shoulders drooped. “So you didn’t find out his name?”

“Nope. You saw what happened.” Dropping my lipstick back into my bag, I rubbed my lips together.

“It looked like he liked you.” She opened a stick of gum and offered me half.

I snorted and popped it into my mouth. “You’re dreaming.”

“Shut up, I’m serious.” She pushed up her glasses. “The way he looked at you. It was so intense. Like he could see through your skull at the lockers behind you or something.”

My head jerked in her direction. “That’s exactly what I thought. Talk about X-ray vision.”

“Exactly.” She nodded. “Intense.”

Shuddering as the March wind danced around us, I pulled my sweatshirt around my body. The Pretty had looked at me with an intensity that still made my insides heat up and churn like lava in a blender. Why me? Of all of the girls in the hallway, including my own totally-beautiful-but-doesn’t-even-know-it sister, he stopped and talked to
me.
It didn’t make sense.

“Pity,” I spat.

“Huh?”

Sadness chilled and hardened the lava in my stomach. “He was looking at me with pity. Because of this.” I tapped the side of my chair, and my rings made a dinging sound against the metal.

“Luna.” She twisted away from me. “You don’t know that. You’re still pretty.”

Shaking my head, I pulled my hood on and searched the parking lot entrance for our minivan. I’d been told that so many times over the past year—that I was
still
pretty—the words made me roll my eyes. As if having beauty made up for the fact that my legs were useless. There were times when I wished my face had gotten mangled in the crash instead of my spine. I might not look as presentable, but at least I could walk to the kitchen for a drink of water at night. If my mother held my face in her hands one more time, and told me,
You’re still so pretty, Luna. You see? The accident didn’t take away everything
, I was going to puke. The accident
did
take away everything. A person has the right to move when she wants to move, walk when she wants to walk, and dance when she wants to dance. Being forced to be stagnate was like a prison sentence I would never climb out from under.

“Hey, look!” She tugged on my sleeve and pointed across the lot to the football field. There walking along the tree line at the edge of the school property was The Pretty. His dark clothes stood out against the bright green of the brush as he strode along with his hands fisted tightly at his sides.

“No books.” My sister’s voice sounded very far away.

“Huh?” I didn’t glance at her. I didn’t want to look away. His head was down, and even though he was so far away, I could tell he was frowning. There was a shadow on his face that hadn’t been there that morning. Where had it come from? Had he been assigned Mrs. Josephson for chemistry? She was a complete lunatic. Did the jocks give him a hard time? They considered screwing with the new kids a sport.

“He’s not carrying a bag. No books.” She wrapped and rewrapped her blonde hair around her finger.

“I’m not entirely convinced he even went to class today.”

The Pretty took a sharp left and darted into the woods. He was quickly swallowed by the brush.

“Good grief, we have roads. Where is he going?”

The sound of a car rumbled across the parking lot, its tires popping and crackling. Evey stood up, tugging her backpack onto her shoulders and pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Maybe his Harley’s parked out there. He looks like the Harley type.”

“Wouldn’t that be something?” I laughed, as the red minivan skidded to a stop in front of us.

My mom was in a typical hurry. She never went anywhere at a normal pace. The Sandpoint traffic cops knew her by name.

“Hey, guys, hurry up,” she called out the window, adjusting her apron underneath the seatbelt.

For the last five years, my parents owned and operated the Deep Lake Coffee Company and proudly served the best coffee and specialty drinks in the Inland Northwest. They didn’t turn much of a profit and spent most of their time bickering because of the fact that they were living paycheck to paycheck, but they had a recipe for a chilled chai tea with nutmeg that could make your eyes fill up with grateful tears.

Evey opened the passenger side door and waited for me to roll over to it. After tossing my bag in at Mom, I placed one hand on the inside of the door and the other on the seat, then hoisted myself up. I felt my mom’s hand grip my elbow, but shook it off.

“I’ve got it,” I grunted, feeling sweat pique at my hairline. Pulling all of my strength from my shoulders and core, I managed to get my hip onto the seat and then shimmied myself the rest of the way by wiggling my hips and what little of my upper legs I controlled.

Evey climbed into the seat behind me and slid the door shut with a slam. “Luna’s got a boyfriend.” I could practically feel her smiling at the back of my head.

“Can it.” Folding my arms across my chest, I hunkered down in my seat and glowered at a couple of kids walking past the van. They’d stopped to watch me get into my seat.

My mom pressed on the gas pedal, and we lurched forward. “A boyfriend?”

The back of my head hit the headrest. “Don’t listen to her. She’s high.”

“She’s what?” My mom looked in the rearview mirror. “Evey?”

“I’m kidding, Mom.” I scanned the edge of the woods as we drove away, searching for a glimpse of black T-shirt, but saw nothing.

“Well, aren’t you starting to feel ready to date again?” My mom pulled the car onto the road. The enthusiasm in her voice made my headache. Sometimes I felt like if I scored myself a boyfriend, it would be the proof she needed to believe that I really was OK after all.

“Ugh. I don’t know.” I stared out the window and watched the buildings start to dwindle as we sped to the outskirts of town toward our house.

“I think you need to date again. It’ll be good for your confidence.”

“My confidence is fine, Mom.”

“No it’s not,” Evey called out in the backseat. “The new guy introduced himself to her, and she clammed up like…like—”

“Like you did when you saw Hayden?”

“Now it’s your turn to shut up.” Evey pushed on my shoulder playfully.

“Hayden? Hayden who?” My mom turned our car onto the winding two-lane road that would take us to our old house by the lake. “You mean Hayden McClendon? Didn’t you use to date his brother, Luna?”

I nodded, but remained silent and kept my gaze fixed on the scenery blurring past my window. Maybe if I kept quiet, my mother would drop the subject of dating, and I wouldn’t have the urge to whack my head against the glass.

“Luna says he’s a douche canoe, though.” Evey giggled.

“Hey. Language.” My mom steered us around an oversized puddle, making me sway in my seat. She glanced at me, her gaze heavy on the side of my face. “So starting next week, you’ll be home with Declan on your own.”

I didn’t look at her. “Yep.”

“Which means you’ll have to be better about answering your phone when I call.”

“Which means you’ll need to call less frequently and learn how to trust me.”

Evey sighed in the backseat. She knew when I was pushing Mom’s buttons and hated it. If it were up to Evey, we would all get along like a television family from the fifties, no matter how often we had the urge to punch each other.

The road thinned even more, and the trees connected overhead, creating a lush green tunnel we careened through. “I do trust you.” Mom flipped on the blinker. “I just worry.”

“What is there to worry about?” I picked at my black nail polish and grit my molars together. Even the mere sound of her worrying made my muscles tense up. “I don’t go anywhere. I don’t do
anything
.”

“You go down to the water alone all the time,” she pointed out, our van bouncing in the rivets and potholes.

I rolled my eyes. “The water is in our backyard. Which, I repeat, constitutes not going anywhere.”

“It
is
going somewhere. It’s going to the water without supervision.”

“What’s the big deal?” My voice rose, and I heard Evey squirming around in the backseat. I turned my upper body so that I was facing the side of my mom’s face, which was pulled downward in a tired scowl. “A few years ago, you didn’t care if I swam, and now you act like I’m a three-year-old who still needs swimming lessons. What the hell, Mom?”

She looked at me. “Watch your mouth, Luna.”

“I can still swim! I swim every week in therapy, for Pete’s sake! I’m not going to drown. What’s so different now?”

“You’ve got Conus Medullaris Syndrome, Luna.
That’s
what’s different now. If all you’re using to swim is your arms, and you got a cramp or were too fatigued, you’d sink right to the bottom. And we live on the deepest lake in the state. Do you understand me? If you went under, we would never find you.”

My heart pulled when I saw that my mother’s green eyes had filled with tears, so I fisted my hands and tucked them underneath my thighs. Much like when she used my whole name, it usually meant business when she used the full name of my injury. Like that was enough to rattle my cage enough to make me back down.

I remembered every word the doctor had said and every detail of the moment. I even remembered that he’d had a small shaving scab on his upper lip. As he talked about my spinal cord being compressed by a hematoma, resulting in paralysis of my leg muscles from my knees down, and the damage likely being permanent, I’d watched as that scab bounced up and down on his face. Even now, when my mother pulled the medical terms out for impact, I instantly pictured the doctor’s scabby upper lip.

“You’re probably thankful I’m stuck at home all the time.” My voice was quieter now. Our house peeked into view through the trees. Suddenly my legs felt even heavier and more useless than before. “I know you don’t like to be without something to freak out about.”