Deeper We Fall

by Chelsea M. Cameron

  “Hello?” I said. She hadn’t called me in a very long time.

  “Hey.” She took a breath before she continued. “I’m just calling to say that I’m sorry about the whole Lottie thing. I should have figured it out sooner, but Zack never mentioned her last name.”

  “It’s okay. It’s not your fault.”

  “This is going to make things weirder. I mean, weirder than they already are.”

  I couldn’t deny it, because things were going to be weird. As if we didn’t already have enough tension.

  “Look, just, don’t do anything. Please,” she said.

  She was one to be giving me advice. Not that long ago she was pretending I didn’t exist.

  “I won’t.”

  “Damn, Zack is back. Bye.” She hung up on me.

  Lottie

  “We could go out to the movies.” It was clear Will and Simon wanted to keep me away from the dorms. Too much drama in one day.

  “I guess,” I said as they shoved me into the truck.

  We saw a crappy action movie that I didn’t bother to watch. Afterward I begged Will to take me to the bookstore. I needed some paper therapy.

  The first thing I did was to go for the romance section and pick up a few of the bargain titles. As far as I was concerned, the only bad book was a book that didn’t have any pages in it.

  Will and Simon went for the science fiction section and then to look at the movies. I made my rounds, hitting the young adult section, the fiction section and the classic section. Of course I found a leather-bound Complete Works of Jane Austen that I had to have. Will just sighed heavily when he saw me staggering to the checkout counter. I didn’t know why he was so surprised. When my high school boyfriend, Clark, and I broke up, I’d gone on a paperback binge and had cleaned out entire shelves at our local used bookstore.

  “Where are you going to put them?” Simon said. Of course, his first concern was storage.

  “I’ll find a place. You wanna loan me one of your tubs?”

  “What?” he said as if I was asking to borrow a kidney.

  “Never mind. I’ll buy my own.”

  At least the boys helped me carry my latest fix back to the car.

  “We can set up something for you on the floor, to sleep tonight,” Will said as we pulled into the student parking lot.

  “It’s fine. I’m going to have to face this for the rest of the year, so I might as well get it over with.”

  “Are you sure?” he said.

  “I’m sure,” I said, hoping that he couldn’t tell I wasn’t. “Look, I’ll text you tomorrow morning for breakfast. Okay?”

  Will wanted to say something else, but he shut his mouth.

  “You should call Mom.”

  “You haven’t called her?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Will!”

  “What? I was too busy making sure you weren’t going to freak out and stab someone.”

  “Oh, please.” We stopped outside Will and Simon’s door. I only knew it was theirs because someone had put their names on it while we were at dinner.

  “Um, Lot?” Simon said, pointing.

  “What?”

  “Look.” The door on the right of Will’s had two names on it. One was Devin. The other was Zan.

  “Seriously?!” I screamed at the ceiling, throwing my hands up in the air.

  Simon and Will looked at each other and I could tell they had no idea what to do. I didn’t know what to do, either.

  “I’m going to my room,” I said, taking my bags of books from them and heading for the elevator. I was so tempted to take it to the roof again, but I shoved aside the latest development. I couldn’t deal with one more thing today. My brain would explode and spill out of my ears and I really didn’t want that to happen.

  When I opened the door, I thought I had the wrong room.

  First of all, the pink was worse than I remembered. Second, there were a bunch of girls in it I’d never seen. And of course, they were all gorgeous.

  “Hey,” I said, to alert them to my presence. They were all on Katie’s bed, looking at something on her computer.

  “Oh, hey. This is my roommate, Lottie. This is Britt and Karina and Ashley.” She didn’t specify who was who, so that was going to be a challenge. Two were bleach bottle blonde and the other was artificially dark-haired. They clearly all shopped at the same store, because they had shirts with the same brand splashed across the front.

  I wasn’t being judgmental at all. Seeing Zack and Zan kind of flipped my bitch switch into hyperdrive.

  “Hi,” I said, setting my books down. The one with the dark hair sort of looked me over. I wanted to glare at her, but she quickly looked away.

  The four of them ignored me as I started sorting through my books. Katie glanced over, probably wondering if I’d gotten anything pink.

  “What did you get?” She glanced at the bags with interest. No, there was nothing pink in them.

  “Um, some books.”

  “Books?” She said the word as if she’d never heard of them before. “Don’t you already have a bunch of books?” What kind of a question was that? We were college students. And whoever heard of having too many books? Damn, I was losing big in the Roommate Roulette.

  “Oh my God, you have to see this, Katie,” the one with the dark hair said, pointing to something on the laptop and laughing with glee.

  “I’m going to go take a shower,” I said. “It was nice to meet you.” The three friends just sort of stared at me blankly.

  The shower was actually better than I thought it would be. The water pressure was freaking amazing. I stayed in much longer than I would have at home. There was no one else knocking on the door, telling me they had to pee, or that I was using too much hot water.

  It was heaven, if only for a moment.

  Katie was alone when I got back, with some vampire show on the television. The silence was so thick, my mouth decided to fill it with meaningless chatter.

  “So, um. Your parents seem nice,” I said. “I mean, not that they wouldn’t be. You really like pink, don’t you? I had a pink phase when I was four, but Will, my brother, well you met him, he took all my pink stuff and set it on fire. Well, it didn’t really burn, because some of the fabric was flame retardant, but…” Balls. I’d done it again. She reached for her phone and started typing on it. A clear “go away” signal if I’d ever seen one.

  “Sorry about that.” I clamped my jaw shut and went to throw my dirty clothes in my hamper so I didn’t have to face her.

  “Sure,” she said. She’d barely looked up from her phone during my verbal word spew.

  “I’m, um, going to call my mom.”

  “Uh huh,” she said, still visually attached to the phone.

  “And then I’m going to cut my arms off and beat you in your sleep with them.” She didn’t even react.

  With that, I went down to the study lounge, which was empty, seeing as how classes hadn’t begun. I had to get my books the next day, and then Monday we started.

  “Hey, Mom, how was your event? Raise lots of money so the roof doesn’t cave in?”

  “What’s wrong?” Of course hello was too traditional.

  “Why do you think something’s wrong?”

  “Mother’s intuition.” Damn her Mom Superpowers.

  “It’s nothing, I’m fine.”

  “No, you’re not. Since I got a text from your brother, I’m going to assume neither of you has been killed or dismembered, so you might as well tell me what it is.” My mother didn’t tolerate secrets. She could make Will and I sing like songbirds when we were kids and tried to hide things from her. Yet another one of her powers.

  “Zack and Zan Parker are here. In this dorm. Oh, and Zan is living right next to Will. And my roommate is dating Zack. Also, I forgot to bring my cell phone charger.”

  “How did that happen?”

  “I have no idea. I thought I packed it, but I can’t find it.”

  “I wasn’t
asking about the cell phone charger.”

  “I know. I was just screwing with you.”

  “Language.” The woman could read a book full of filthy language, but she would never let one of the words pass her lips, or those of her children.

  “Mom, I don’t know what to do.”

  “Mockingbird.”

  “Mom, I don’t think reading about Scout for the millionth time is going to help in this situation, despite how much I love it.”

  “The words of Atticus Finch are relevant in any situation, especially this one. You would do well to remember them.” Great. I’d insulted To Kill A Mockingbird and made Mom mad. It was worse than if I’d take the Lord’s name in vain.

  Mom had this idea that any situation could be solved by reading the right book. When I hit puberty and got my period, she handed me every Judy Blume book she could find. For when I liked a boy who didn’t like me back, she handed me Jane Austen. When I was all moody and hated the world, I got Poe and lots of other dark poetry to soothe my angst. To Kill A Mockingbird worked for anything and everything. For the love of Shakespeare, the woman named me after a talking spider.

  “That was a long time ago, Lottie. People deserve second chances.”

  “Not for something like that.”

  “You can’t hold grudges like this. They’ll eat you up.” I wanted to yell at her. I wanted to scream that it wasn’t her best friend that had been put into a coma for a week. It wasn’t her best friend that had been in the hospital for months. They’d had to cut a part out of Lexie’s skull so her brain could swell without killing her.

  She didn’t understand.

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You should figure it out. You have to live there for at least one semester.”

  “I know that.”

  I could picture her pursing her lips and giving me the stare down. “Do you want to talk when you’re not so worked up?”

  “I’m not worked up,” I said through gritted teeth. This call had been a bad idea.

  She chose a less-treacherous path. “What’s your roommate like?”

  “You ready for this? She’s obsessed with pink. I’m living inside a gum bubble.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  We moved on to the topic of pink, and that carried us into other safer topics.

  “Tell your brother that he best be calling me tomorrow if he values my patience.”

  “I will. Love you.”

  “Love you too, Lottie.” We made kissy noises and hung up. I sat back on the blue DU couch with the white antlers on it.

  “What are you doing out here?” Will’s voice roused me.

  “Talking to our mother. You’d better call her tomorrow or else she’s going to drive up here and yell at you.”

  “Okay, okay. What did she say?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Mockingbird?”

  “Yep.”

  “Dad emailed me.”

  “How’s the plankton?”

  “You’d think he was discovering water on Mars.” Dad was as passionate about ocean currents and sediments and tiny water bugs as Mom was about books, which was why I’d chosen marine bio as my major. I thought Dad was going to cry when I told him that was what I’d decided on.

  It wasn’t that I was in love with science, but I didn’t know what else I wanted to do. Sure, I loved books almost more than breathing, but Mom had discouraged me from the literary path.

  “You don’t make any money. I want you to be able to support yourself.” It was true that Dad was the main breadwinner in our family. Who knew plankton could be so profitable?

  Somehow Will had gotten off the hook of fulfilling our parents’ hopes and dreams, and was going to be an athletic director. I was convinced it was because he was a boy.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to crash on my floor? Simon brought an extra blanket.”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  “Okay, then. Goodnight.” He hesitated, as if he didn’t want to go. Will and I had never slept so far away before, at least not for any length of time. We shared a bathroom, and it was going to be weird waking up tomorrow morning and not banging on the door so he’d get of the shower and I could brush my teeth.

  “Goodnight,” I said, getting up and giving him a hug.

  He left and I wandered back to my room. The glow of the television greeted me again. Even in the dark, the pink glowed.

  “Are you, um, ready for bed?” I was about to sleep only a few feet away from a complete stranger who was dating one of the people I hated most in the world.

  “Sure,” she said, turning the show off and flipping onto her back, still staring at the phone.

  After brushing my teeth, I came back and grabbed my iPod, shoving the earbuds in. I closed my eyes and turned over so the glow of Katie’s phone wouldn’t disturb me.

  “Goodnight,” I said.

  “ ‘Night,” she said.

  Chapter Seven

  Zan

  I popped in another piece of the cinnamon gum that Miss Carole had given me to help replace my more destructive coping mechanisms as I walked back from breakfast the next morning. It didn’t really work, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to give it a shot. She hadn’t given up on me yet, despite my efforts to make her.

  Running had also joined the gum in my repertoire of destruction-avoidance. I’d done it when I was younger, but the accident had dampened my passions until Miss Carole had suggested it. The thing I liked about running was that it gave me the same masochistic thrill as anything else, but it was more socially acceptable, and even encouraged.

  I’d gotten a few texts from Tate, one of the only friends I’d had at Foster Ulham Academy (or, as Zack called it, Fuck Up Academy), but I hadn’t returned them. I knew what he wanted, and I was not letting him come up and hang with me. Hanging with Tate meant some combination of drugs, alcohol and mayhem, not necessarily in that order. He was a good guy, he just went too hard and too fast sometimes.

  “Life’s a bitch, then you die,” he’d say. “So fuck it all and do whatever you want.”

  “That doesn’t rhyme,” I’d say.

  He’d take a drag from whatever he was smoking at the time and blow it out. “Who cares?”

  It was a pretty grim worldview, but Tate had a lot of reasons for a grim worldview. Being abandoned by your parents and then being in a series of bad foster homes could do that to you. Not to mention all the stuff he wouldn’t tell me about. I knew there was plenty of that, too.

  I really shouldn’t feel so shitty about my life. I shouldn’t bitch all the time, even if it was just to myself. Miss Carole was always trying to get me out of that habit. She could be a bit too sunshine and rainbows sometimes, but for some reason, it had worked to bring me out of my darkest place.

  The time I’d gone stoned out of my mind to one of her sessions and she’d screamed at me for fifteen minutes straight had also helped. Because I knew she actually gave a fuck. No one had for a while, not even Mom or Steve, and it was just the slap in the face I needed.

  I’d told her the truth that day, the first person I’d ever actually told. It was like ripping the words out of my throat to get them out, but I did. She listened, not making a sound, and somehow that made it easier. When she put her hand on my shoulder, it was like she was holding me up, because she was.

  I glanced up at the sun, that lazy globe in the sky. Tomorrow I started my first classes. I hadn’t picked a major, despite Miss Carole helping me make list after list of what I was interested in. The truth was that I didn’t have any interests that could easily translate to an actual career.

  Listening to old records, reading and running until I fell over weren’t career paths. She’d suggested working in a music shop, a bookstore and an athletic shoe company as possible places I could try until I decided.

  The sun glinted on the hood of a car, making me shade my eyes, and then I saw her walking toward me.
/>   Lost in thought, she didn’t see me until we had almost met on the sidewalk. I realized we were almost to the dorms. Her mouth opened just a little in shock before she snapped it shut and jutted her chin out, looking over my shoulder instead of at me.

  I couldn’t stop looking at her. Once again, she was the eclipse, drawing me in. It sounds intense and it is, being drawn to look at someone like that.

  Her chin trembled as she marched, trying to get past me. A part of me wanted to say “fuck it”, grab her arm and make her listen to me. To force the truth down her throat until she swallowed it. I wished that part was dominant. More dominant than the part of me that was scared out of my mind of what would happen if I did touch her, did tell her.

  So I let her stomp by. Let my eyes follow her body, even though I had to crane my head to look backward. The wind caught her ponytail and it streamed out behind her.

  I stood, until she turned a corner and I couldn’t see her anymore, and I was finally able to breathe. Yes, Zack had said I was whipped, but it was more than that. Charlotte didn’t just shake my world. She created an earthquake that had irrevocably changed the landscape of my life.

  I changed out of my jeans into some grey workout pants and a long-sleeved t-shirt. I was going to boil, but it saved me from getting weird looks. Then I put on my running shoes, and set my iPod to shuffle, wondering what it was going to give me.

  ‘Circle Game’ by Joni Mitchell came on and I smiled. Perfect song. Her thin, haunting voice was just what I needed, singing about the carousel we all ride on, and how it goes up and down. Can’t go back, just forward. I burst from the dorm and took off, looking for the first trail into the woods I could find.

  I didn’t have to go too far before I could veer off the straight dark pavement and onto the uneven ground of a trail. The trees swallowed me up as Joni’s voice devoured my ears, blocking out everything except the pounding of my feet, the sound of my breath and the beat of my heart.

  I stopped chanting her name in my head and thought just about moving my body forward, keeping it going.

  It started to rain, but I kept going. Rain never bothered me. My hair streamed in front of my eyes, but I pushed it away and ran harder, my feet splashing against the increasingly wet ground. Lungs screaming, heart racing, I kept going.