Faster We Burn

by Chelsea M. Cameron

  “Wow. You are so gone. I knew it. I knew it.”

  “You can think whatever you want to think, Trishella, but you’re way off.” I knew using her full name would piss her off and might change the subject.

  “You said you would never call me that again.” Her eyes had gone back to dangerous and narrow. “You swore.”

  “Yeah, well, I lied. Look, I have somewhere to be, so if you don’t mind.” I didn’t, but even if I had to get in my car and drive somewhere random to get rid of her, I’d do it.

  “Okay, okay. Don’t worry, bro, your secret is safe with me.” She got to her feet, and I could hear her laughing to herself as she walked out the door. “By the way, we’re doing a welcome back dinner this weekend, and your attendance is required. See yah.” She wiggled her fingers and vanished down the stairs.

  “Son of a bitch,” I said.

  Her laugher echoed until I heard the front door close.

  I wasn’t in love with Katie. Okay, I liked having sex with her and laughing with her and that apology dinner had been so sweet. No one had ever done something like that for me. And I still couldn’t get the image of her wearing my shirt and boxers out of my head. But none of that meant I was in love with her.

  I stared around my apartment, and I knew I had to get out of it. I didn’t know where I was going, but I had to get out. To a place that didn’t make me think of Katie.

  ***

  I ended up at a park downtown. Mostly so I could smoke and walk around without people staring at me. A homeless man shivered on a bench, a woman walked her dog, and a mom played with her kids on the swing set. I huddled in my jacket, pulling the collar up and lit another cigarette.

  My mind ran in circles, and more often than not, those circles led back to one thing.

  Katie.

  What Trish had said pissed me off. What I had done with Ric pissed me off. What Katie had written on my chest pissed me off.

  Everything was pissing me off. One of the kids screamed as his mom gave him a big push. He threw his head back and his arms out, like he was flying. I remembered doing the same thing, only I didn’t have anyone to push me. I’d pushed Trish more times than I could count. Just like the little boy on the swing, she always screamed for me to push her higher. I always did and she’d laugh and pretend she was scared.

  “Don’t worry,” I always told her, “I’ll catch you.”

  The mother caught me watching and her eyebrows knit together in concern. I blew out a smoke ring and walked away from them so she wouldn’t think I was some sort of threat. I paced the park in circles. It seemed like everything was going in circles.

  I’d think I was moving toward something new, something different and I always ended up at the same place, back at the beginning.

  Damn motherfucking circles.

  Katie

  It was a relief to get back to classes and homework and things that didn’t involve Stryker or feelings or fighting with my mother. My study habits left a lot to be desired, and I knew I had to change. Again.

  “Library?” Lottie said after dinner as we were walking back to the dorm. “Aud’s going to meet us.” She gave Will a look, but he just kept walking, whistling a tune.

  “Yeah, I’m in.” If there was anyone who could push me to stop being a slacker, it was Audrey.

  “You in, Zan?” She tugged on his hand, as if she was trying to get his attention. As if it wasn’t already on her.

  “Sure thing, L.” He tucked her under his arm, and she let herself sink into him, as if he was protecting her from something.

  Maybe he was.

  “You talked to Stryker yet?” she said innocently. I knew she’d been itching to ask me all day.

  “Nope. The point of giving him space is to put space between us, which means not contacting him. So that’s what I’m doing.”

  “Have you talked to him?” She turned her attention to Zan and I breathed a little sigh of relief.

  “No, he skipped class today.” Zan’s eyes were on me, and I pretended to be really interested in a sign on the door advertising a band named Peach Pit Apocalypse that was playing the next weekend on campus.

  She kept prodding. “You text him?”

  “Yeah, he never got back to me.”

  “You think he’s okay?” We headed for the stairs because we couldn’t all fit on the elevator.

  “Yeah, I asked Trish and she said she’d stop over to see if he was still alive and she messaged me that he was still breathing.”

  “Such a way with words, that girl,” Lottie said, shaking her head.

  I wasn’t interested in Stryker skipping class. It made no difference to me if he went to class or not. It made no difference to me that I hadn’t heard a single peep from him in days. It made no difference that sleeping alone sucked worse than sleeping on the ground at summer camp, with part of a stump up my butt and a rock under my head.

  Nope. Made no difference to me what he did or didn’t do.

  ***

  “You know what I think you need?” Lottie said as we walked back later that night from the library. For the first time since everything happened with Zack, I was back on track with my homework and assignments. It actually felt good, like something I could control.

  “What do I need?” I said, thinking that I probably wouldn’t like the answer.

  “A makeover.” Her eyes sparkled under the orange glow of the streetlight.

  “A makeover?” Usually I was the one suggesting that, but I had the feeling that Lottie wasn’t suggesting the kind of makeover I usually did.

  “Not like, with clothes or anything. More like…a life makeover? Wow, that sounds bad. Like there’s something wrong with you. I mean…”

  I decided to stop her there because even though I couldn’t see her blushing, I could hear the embarrassment in her voice.

  “No, I knew what you meant. My life could use some…making over.” More like a complete overhaul. A do over. Like that was actually possible.

  Stryker’s words came back to me: So now you have to figure out who you are, Katherine Ann Hallman. When you do, let me know.

  Screw him.

  “What did you have in mind?” I said, shoving Stryker out of my mind and turning to Lottie.

  “I was thinking,” she said, preparing as if she was about to insult me, “that you could pick a major. We’re going to be signing up for classes soon, so now would be the best time.”

  It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but that didn’t mean it was something I thought I could do.

  “Do you have anything in mind?” Zan walked beside Lottie, his arm linked with hers as if they were a couple out of an old movie and he was escorting her to a ball.

  I shook my head. The truth, the thing I didn’t want them to know was that I had no idea what I wanted to do. Not a clue. Sure, Lottie was only majoring in marine bio to make her dad happy, but at least she had that, and she could always be a writer, or a librarian or a teacher or…anything. She could do anything.

  I couldn’t do anything. When other little girls wanted to be ballerinas or astronauts or presidents I never knew what to say. I always just said an actress or something so at least I’d have something to say. I’d thought about singing once, but that dream was long gone.

  “What about fashion?” Lottie and I had had this conversation more times than I could count. Yes, I enjoyed giving makeovers, but that didn’t mean I wanted to do it for a living, or even attempt it. The world of fashion was cutthroat and you had to want it more than you wanted anything else. You had to devote your life to it, and I didn’t know if I was ready to do that.

  What did I want to devote my life to?

  I came up completely blank. When I grow up, I want to be…I had nothing to fill the rest of that sentence.

  “I don’t know,” I said, wishing I could change the subject.

  “You should make a list or something. You know, all the things you like to do and then careers you could do with that.” I wasn’
t going to tell her that I’d done the same thing in high school and I never came up with any answers.

  “Look, you can do whatever you want. You’re smart and strong. Not everyone gets the chances you do,” Lottie said, the smile fading from her face. I knew that she was thinking about her friend Lexie and that made me feel even worse.

  I had all the chances in the world. I had parents who were footing the bill for my college education and I was wasting it. I knew I was wasting it.

  Zan swooped in and changed the subject, saying something about an assignment from the class that he and Lottie shared.

  I didn’t give him enough credit, but he was really a decent guy. Even after everything he’d done, he’d found a way to start over, start fresh. So why was it so hard for me?

  Chapter Seventeen

  Stryker

  “Long time no see,” Zan said when I walked into class on Wednesday. I kept my face neutral.

  “Wasn’t feeling that great.”

  “Rough weekend?”

  “Something like that.”

  I’d timed it so that I would get to class right before Quan started, and I planned on bolting as soon as I could. I pulled out my notebook and started drawing like I always did in this class. If attendance didn’t count toward my grade, I would skip every class but the test.

  I let my pen take over, drawing random designs on a fresh page instead of adding to another drawing I’d already started.

  It wasn’t until class was over and half the page was filled that I realized I’d done a duplicate of the drawing on Katie’s wrist.

  “That’s nice,” Zan said, shoving his books in his bag while I tried to hide the drawing.

  “Thanks.” I fished in my pocket, but I couldn’t find my lighter. It was a way to try to prevent myself from smoking. I had the cigarettes, but if I couldn’t light them, I couldn’t smoke them. In theory it worked, but not so much in practice. Zan always had that old Zippo on him.

  “Can I borrow your lighter?” He handed it over and followed me to the designated smoking area outside the building. I always offered him one, but he always refused and today was no exception.

  He watched me smoke, silently waiting for me to start talking. There was something so unnerving about a silent person.

  “I had sex with someone else,” I blurted out after about thirty seconds of silence. Zan took the lighter back and flicked it in his hand out of habit. On. Off. On. Off.

  He waited for me to elaborate.

  “It was a mistake and I was drunk, but to be fair, I did break it off with Katie before it happened.”

  “Then why are you hiding it?” He flipped the lighter off and put it back in his pocket.

  I shook my head and tipped my face up, blowing the smoke toward the clouds.

  “I don’t know.” Trish’s words came back with a vengeance.

  “Look, I know I’m not good at talking, or giving advice, but this is my two cents,” he said, leaning next to me against the building. He had to tip his head down to meet my eyes.

  “You and Katie have something together. We all saw it that night at the party. Whether you want to admit it or not, there is something there, and it’s not just attraction or lust. It’s something more. Something deeper. You care about her and she cares about you, despite everything she’s been through. You’re both trying to stop it, but here’s the thing. It’s going to happen anyway. Something that powerful is like a speeding train. You can slow it down, but it’s never going to stop.” That’s how it felt with Katie. Like I was standing on the train tracks, waiting to be demolished by a thousand pounds of metal coming at me.

  “When it’s real like that, you can’t fight it. I know what you’re going through.” He looked up at the sky. “I tried to fight it with Lottie, but we just kept getting pulled together. And then the reasons I was keeping her away dissolved and they didn’t seem like reasons anymore, just roadblocks on our way to finding one another.”

  I thought there would be more to the speech, but he just exhaled and looked back down at me. I stubbed out the rest of my cigarette and shoved my hands in my pockets.

  “For a guy who’s not good with words, you sure sound like a fucking poet. If only you could make that shit rhyme, and you’d be the next Shakespeare.”

  Zan gave me a brief smile and shrugged.

  “I have to get to class. You wanna hang out this weekend? Banjo session?”

  “Yeah, sure thing. I’ll let you know.”

  He nodded again and went to walk to his next class as I pulled out another cigarette and stared at it wishing I’d brought my lighter.

  ***

  Katie had banged on my door so many times, I figured it was time to return the favor. I had no idea if she’d be there, but it was her face that I saw when she opened the door. She seemed surprised for a moment and I thought she was going to slam it in my face.

  “I thought my people were going to call your people when I ‘found myself.’” She put air quotes around the “found myself” part.

  “Yeah, well, I figured you’d showed up unannounced at my place enough times that I should see what it’s like on the other side.” She leaned against the half-open door as if she wasn’t sure if she should let me in.

  After a moment of deliberation she rolled her eyes back and sighed as if I was a huge inconvenience.

  “Come on.” She flung the door wide and I stepped in behind her. I would have thought my eyes had adjusted to the amount of pink from being around her, but it was like I was being eye raped by it. She never had given me an answer on why she was obsessed with it.

  She spun to face me, her arms crossed over the pink shirt that draped over her shoulders and hung long over her black pants. “So, what do you want?”

  I swallowed, trying to bring moisture into my dry throat.

  “I got your little note. Took me two showers to wash it off,” I said, gesturing to my chest.

  “That was why I used permanent marker,” she said, her voice icy, but I could see the shadow of a smile tugging at her lips. She leaned back against her bed and sat down. I remained standing.

  Something that powerful is like a speeding train. You can slow it down, but it’s never going to stop.

  I had to keep my distance from her. Even just being in her room and being submerged in her scent was making my head buzz.

  “So what do you want? If you’re here to fuck me, sorry, not in the mood.”

  “I’m not here for that,” I said, although if she would have said, hey, let’s go for it, I wouldn’t have said no. Not this time.

  “Then why are you here, Stryker Abraham Grant?” She stood up and walked until there was only a breath of space between us, our chests almost touching.

  “I have something I have to tell you,” I said, but I was interrupted by her cell phone ringing. I wanted to tell her to ignore it, but she snatched it and was answering before I could form the words.

  “Hey, Kayla. What’s up?” I watched as her eyes went wide, her other hand went to her mouth and she let out a sound as if someone had stabbed her.

  And then she was falling to the floor, as if her legs had decided they didn’t want to support her anymore and had gone on strike. I caught her just in time.

  The phone slipped from her hands and she screamed. No, it wasn’t a scream. It was the sound of a soul ripping itself in half. Pure agony.

  I was finally able to speak.

  “What happened?”

  She was only able to get out two words.

  “My. Dad.”

  I looked down and realized Kayla was still on the other end of the phone call. I picked the phone up.

  “Hello?”

  “Who’s this?” She sounded stuffed up, and I could tell she’d been crying.

  “Stryker. What happened?” I was still trying to hold Katie up. She was silent, as if she’d gone into shock, but her body shook, like she was freezing. I had to figure out what was going on.

  Now.

  Kati
e

  Kayla’s words banged in my head over and over like a sledgehammer. I heard them over Stryker talking to me, and Stryker talking to Kayla and trying to figure out what had happened to me.

  Dad had a heart attack.

  We took him to the hospital.

  He didn’t make it.

  Words strung together in a particular order that had dropped me to my knees. Words that made sense, but didn’t.

  “Katie!” Stryker waved his hand in front of my face and then smacked me in the cheek. The little sting of pain brought me around.

  “I have to go home. Right now.” I used his arms to pull myself to my shaky feet. “Where are my keys?” I knew I’d just seen them a moment ago. They had a stupid pink elephant on the keychain that Kayla had gotten for me.

  Stryker wouldn’t let go of me.

  “Let go. I have to go home.” I thrashed, but he wouldn’t budge.

  He shook his head and blinked, as if he was stunned himself.

  “No, I’ll drive you.”

  More words strung together.

  “I have to get there now. We’re wasting time.”

  He didn’t make it.

  He blinked rapidly. “It’s okay, I’ll drive you. Right now. Let’s go.”

  Before I could protest, he was shoving my arms into my coat, grabbing my purse, throwing my phone in it, and dragging me down the stairs. The next thing I knew he was putting me in his car and buckling my seatbelt with hands that shook just a little before peeling out of the visitor’s parking lot.

  “Shit,” he said, trying to fiddle with the GPS. “Can you give me directions to the hospital?”

  “Yeah,” I said, and my voice didn’t sound like mine. It sounded like it belonged to someone else.

  “Are you okay?” Before I could answer he swore again.

  “I shouldn’t have asked you that,” he said under his breath as he took a corner too fast and almost hit another car. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  “Slow down,” I said.