First Down

by Paula Mabbel

  *******

  Adaline could hear the buzzing noise of her cell phone in her dreams. The noise was drifting through the air on her private beach. She tried to ignore it so that she could stay in the one piece of paradise she had left. The noise wouldn’t allow it, though. It continued to play through the air as it disturbed the calming waves and distorted the flow of the palm tree leaves.

  “Adaline, if you’re going to get calls at 6 a.m., then can you at least answer them?” Lea’s voice cut through Adaline’s dream and woke her up.

  “What?” Adaline asked in a state of confusion as she opened her eyes and found herself being attacked by sounds and words.

  “Your cell phone is ringing,” Lea said moodily before she turned over and put the pillow over her head.

  “I thought you said you never slept,” Adaline said quickly. She felt a smug sense of pride swell up in her chest over how quick her wit had just been, before Lea interrupted her sudden good mood.

  “Well, I never will if you don’t answer that phone.”

  “I’ll take this call in the hallway,” Adaline said as a peace offering.

  “Oh, how nice of you,” Lea said with sarcasm dripping off her words in a fermented ooze of bitterness and resentment.

  “Right,” Adaline said, as she took her phone and pulled herself out of bed. The floor was cold beneath her feet, but she didn’t stop to put anything on them. She could feel the angry energy rippling off of Lea and she wanted to leave it as quickly as she could. “Hello?” she said into the phone when she’d closed her dorm door and answered the call that had been the cause of the entire grievance.

  “You’ll never guess what!” Cee Cee said excitedly on the other end of the phone.

  Adaline frowned. “Cee Cee it’s 6 a.m. How are you so…so…perky?” Adaline asked when she managed to find the right word.

  “Well, it’s because I’ve got good news,” Cee Cee said in a singsong voice that told Adaline it might be a while before they actually got into the news.

  “And this news couldn’t have waited until later?”

  “Well, it could have done, I suppose, but then I’d have been really bored,” Cee Cee answered quickly. “Anyway, I’m going to need you to come out to the front of campus and let me in. The security guard here seems to think that I might be a murderer or something and he wants to talk to you.”

  “What?” Adaline asked, because nothing that Cee Cee had just said made any sense to her.

  “I’ve come to visit you because you sounded so down on the phone the other day, but the guards won’t let me through. I wanted to knock on your door and surprise you, but apparently years of loyal friendship mean nothing to these people,” Cee Cee said with a pointed voice that was clearly meant for the guards who were listening to her phone call.

  “Give me two minutes and I’ll be there,” Adaline said quickly, and then she hung up. She looked down at her bare feet and then to the dorm room with its closed door. She wanted to go in and get changed quickly, but she knew that, in the process of doing so, she’d probably wake up the angry dragon that seemed so dainty and sweet on the surface. She sighed as she realized that she was making the trip across campus in her sleep shorts and vest top and then headed over to let Cee Cee out of the fake prison she had managed to get locked up in.

  Adaline got to the small security cabin and knocked on the door quickly. She’d managed to get across campus without being seen, but she knew that would change when the door opened. She held her breath as it started to creak, and plastered a smile on her face. The security guard who opened the door eyed her with curiosity.

  “You know, you could have gotten changed before you came to collect your friend. She wasn’t in any real trouble, although if you could hear the things she’s saying you would have thought that we were locking her up for life,” the guard said wearily as he stood to one side so that Adaline could walk into the cabin. She walked in without giving the guard second glance and was immediately attacked by the arms of her excited friend.

  “I thought you were never going to come,” Cee Cee said in a high-pitched, overwrought voice that didn’t belong to the situation she was in. “I thought I was going to be locked in here forever,” she continued.

  “Were the doors even locked?” Adaline asked the second guard, who blushed when she looked over to him. She gave him a dry look as she realized that he’d been examining the clothes that she was wearing, and then turned back to Cee Cee. “I bet they don’t even lock the doors,” she said to Cee Cee as she linked their arms together and pulled her to the cabin’s exit.

  “Enjoy the campus,” the first guard said to Cee Cee with a grin on his face that told me he was glad to see the back of her.

  “Thanks,” Cee Cee said without looking back at the man she had tortured with her shrill voice since her arrival.

  “What made you think it was a sane idea to come over here so early?” Adaline asked Cee Cee when she pulled open the door to the dorm building.

  “It was an early flight,” Cee Cee said with a shrug. “Aren’t you happy to see me?” she asked with big, sad eyes that told Adaline that she’d been missed back home.

  ******

  “So, let me get this straight,” Cee Cee said with focused eyes, as she filled her spoon with cereal and brought it up to her mouth. She took the mouthful and chewed thoughtfully before she continued. “The reason you are in the cafeteria in your sleep wear is because you’re afraid of your new roommate? A roommate you weren’t supposed to have? A roommate who has been a bitch to you since you started college and to whom you’ve been nothing but nice?” Cee Cee finished rounding up what Adaline had told her and looked at her friend with a frustrated glisten in her eyes.

  “Well, yeah, but it’s not like that. It’s like she’s got this deep grudge against me for some reason, but I can’t work out what the reason is. I’ve asked her and she says it isn’t me.”

  “You’ve asked her?” Cee Cee said with a sneer on her face. “Since when did girls like us just ask about things? God, Adaline, you’ve gone soft since you got here. If this girl is giving you a hard time, then why aren’t you giving her one back?”

  Adaline didn’t say anything for a moment. Cee Cee was right; this wasn’t her normal reaction when a girl gave her attitude. Her normal reaction would have been to make her life hell, not just roll over and take it. Why had she been acting like that with Lea? What had made Lea so untouchable in her eyes?

  “You need to do something about this,” Cee Cee said with a determined look on her face and another spoonful of cereal rising up to her lips.

  “I know,” Adaline said in an absent way as she tried to work out what had gone so wrong in the situation she was in.

  “I mean there is always the other option of calling your dad,” Cee Cee said with a wicked glint in her eyes.

  Adaline frowned for a moment. She knew the wicked glint in Cee Cee’s eyes. She had seen it before, when they had been mocking other girls. “I don’t think he’s willing to budge on my sleeping arrangements,” she said, as she tried to work out why Cee Cee had thought it was okay to mock her.

  They finished their breakfast and Adaline dropped Cee Cee off at her dorm room before she headed out to class. She had considered ditching classes for the day so that Cee Cee wouldn’t be left alone, but she was struggling enough to keep up and it was only her first week there. The last thing she needed was to fall behind in her classes when she already had so much going on in her personal life.

  The class seemed to drag on forever, but Adaline finally found herself breaking free from the stuffy classroom and the professor’s droning voice. The weather was still almost unbearably hot, but Adaline was starting to get used to the scorching sun that left her skin tingling with warmth long after it had allowed nighttime to push it out of the sky.

  The hallway to Adaline’s dorm room was empty, but the air was bouncing with the loud sounds of things being thrown and papers being ripped. Adaline looked down the ha
ll curiously, as though whoever was on a path of destruction would suddenly appear from their rooms, but when she started to listen closely her stomach dropped, as she realized the sounds were coming from far down the hall, and that meant her room.

  She felt her feet swiftly bring her outside her door and she found the crashing sounds that had been muffled at the entrance to the dorm building were almost deafening from where she was standing. She opened the door quickly. She didn’t know what to expect, but whatever her mind conjured in the few seconds, it didn’t come close to what her eyes were showing her.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Adaline asked Cee Cee in a voice that was so sharp that it cut through all of the noise in the room and made her friend stop dead with a page half torn out of a book.

  “I’m helping you,” Cee Cee said with a soft frown pulling her eyebrows together and setting little lines into her delicate skin.

  “I don’t understand,” Adaline said. She could feel her head shaking. “How could you possibly think that you are helping me? I mean, what possessed you to do this?”

  “You said she was giving you a hard time, so I thought I’d have a look through her stuff when you were in class. This girl is insanely boring. I mean she just had a load of books and stuff, but I did find this under her mattress,” Cee Cee said with a sly smile.

  Adaline looked across at Lea’s bed and saw her lamp broken on the floor next to it. She managed to piece together the initial banging she had heard, before the page ripping had started. “You’re going to have to replace that lamp,” she said blankly as she tried to think of a way to explain all of this to Lea when she got back.

  “Screw the lamp,” Cee Cee said as she gestured wildly. “Don’t you know what this is?” she asked as she lifted up the book that she had been tearing pages out of for Adaline to see properly.

  “It’s a book,” Adaline nodded at her friend. “It’s Lea’s book and you’re destroying it.”

  “It’s Lea’s diary,” Cee Cee corrected her. “I’ve read some of it, and I have to say, there are some pages I think you’ll find pretty interesting,” she finished as she finished ripping out the page that she had been destroying when Adaline had walked in and then picked up the others she had already pulled out. “Here,” she said as she passed them over for Adaline to look through.

  “I’m not going to read these,” Adaline said and she could feel the disappointment in her friend swelling up.

  “You have to read them,” Cee Cee disagreed. “They're about you.”

  “I don’t care what they're about, Cee Cee, I’m not going to read them. I think you should go. Like, now, before you can do any more damage. I’m already going to have to explain all of this to Lea.”

  “So what? You’re, like, in love with her, too?” Cee Cee said with her nose wrinkled in disgust. “I thought you had better taste than that, Adaline. I guess I always thought you were cooler than you really are,” she said with a shrug as she stood up.

  “Yeah, well, I guess I never really saw you for the bitch that you are,” Adaline shot back as Cee Cee walked passed her and out of the room.

  Adaline didn’t bother to watch her supposed friend as she left. Her eyes were glued to the devastation she had caused in the room and her mind focused on how she was going to explain any of it to Lea.

  *******

  Adaline sat on the edge of her bed and held her breath when she heard the door opening in her dorm room. She’d spent the rest of the afternoon since Cee Cee had left trying to clean up the mess, but there was no way she could get away with the ripped out pages. The door opened and Lea walked into the room with a concerned look on her face. Her eyes glanced down to the space where her lamp had been, and then across to Adaline.

  Adaline took in the questions she was asking, but wasn’t speaking and looked down at the ground quickly. “I think I’ve got some explaining to do and I know you already hate me and this isn’t going to help, but I’d really appreciate it if you’d just listen to until the end, okay?”

  Lea nodded and sat down on her bed without speaking. Her eyes were focused on Adaline with an intensity that was making her feel uncomfortable.

  “The phone call I got this morning was my friend Cee Cee. She’d managed to get pulled by the campus guards and they wanted me to confirm that I knew her. I didn’t know that she was coming today; it was a surprise visit and obviously I still had classes and stuff to go to, so I left her here when I went to them. I don’t know what got into her, but she went through your stuff and broke your lamp. I know that she damaged one of your books, too, and I’m sorry. I’ll replace everything that can be replaced, I promise.”

  “What book was it?” Lea asked with a curious look in her eyes that seemed tinged with worry.

  “My friend said it was your diary. She said you’d written something about me in it and I needed to see it,” Adaline said with big, apologetic eyes. “I didn’t read it, though,” she added quickly.

  “Yeah, like I believe that,” Lea said with cold eyes. “I bet you both had a real laugh over it all, didn’t you? Poor, pathetic Lea, in love with the cool kid who doesn’t look twice at her,” she said bitterly, as she revealed secrets that Adaline had been kind enough to look away from.

  “Lea, please stop. I promise you I didn’t read it. Cee Cee did and I kicked her out. I told her to leave because what she did today was wrong.” Adaline could feel the desperation in her eyes as she tried to get Lea to believe her. She could feel all of Lea’s scrutiny bearing down on her as her words were examined.

  “That lamp was expensive, you know,” Lea said as her cheeks turned bright red and she avoided Adaline’s eyes.

  “Just find a replacement and let me know where it’s from,” Adaline said with a faint smile on her lips. She could tell from Lea’s cheeks that she believed her. She could tell from the way that Lea was avoiding her gaze that she’d said more than she had been comfortable saying. “You know,” Adaline said when a heavy silence had fallen between them, “I think Cee Cee was a real bitch for what she did. I wouldn’t do that to anyone, I hope you know that.”

  “I know that,” Lea said quietly and with an almost nothing nod. “Do you want some coffee?”

  “Sure,” Adaline said with a warm smile, as she watched Lea stand up and walk over to the small coffee maker that was balanced between the sink and a desk. She had a slight sway to her walk that made her hips glide from left to right in an almost hypnotic way. It was like her curves were working in unison to entice anybody who admired beautiful things, and this mean that Adaline’s eyes were glued to her.

  “You look miles away,” Lea said when she reached the coffee maker and turned suddenly to Adaline.

  Adaline could feel her cheeks start to burn red as she realized where her thoughts had taken her, and she nodded to Lea without saying anything. A lot had gone on that day and Adaline knew that she still had a lot to process, before she would be able to understand, but one thing was shining through all the confusion and that was that Lea had admitted to having feelings for her. That had relit a burning hope in Adaline’s stomach that reminded her of the person she had been before she had started college.

  It wasn’t until Lea was sleeping and Adaline was watching the sunrise light up the curtains that she realized what had been different about Lea. It had been a question she had been working on since she had been sitting in the cafeteria with Cee Cee earlier on the day before. Why had she let Lea give her a hard time? Why did she care so much about what Lea thought about her, and what made Lea so special that she would turn her back on a lifelong friend just in defense of her?

  The realization came to her, though, when her mind had started to drift off, and images of Lea’s pretty blue eyes and delicate pink smile were circling her thoughts. The difference between Lea and every other person on the planet was that from the moment Adaline had laid eyes on her, she had loved her beyond reason and without doubt.

  That’s why she cared so much about what Lea though
t about her. That’s why she had told Lea that she could borrow her books. She had thought that perhaps Lea would start to see her in a better light to the one she had so judgmentally cast down upon her.

  She held no resentment for Lea’s judgment of her, though. She could understand them after she had witnessed the way that Cee Cee had behaved the day before. She’d been like Cee Cee when they had lived together in their hometown. She’d been that girl who took revenge on any person who dared to speak against her or her friends, and it was only now that she could see how very wrong that had been.

  It was only now that she had allowed Lea’s judgment to sink passed her shallow surface that she could see that there was more to life than having people being constantly nice to her. There was more to life than shallow revenge plans and parties by the beach. Lea had opened her eyes to what an intelligent conversation could be like. She’d opened her eyes to how she was really being perceived in the world and she wanted all of that to change.

  She wanted to change. She wanted to become the person that Lea felt comfortable revealing her feelings to. She didn’t want to feel like some dirty little secret that someone was ashamed to have. She could feel herself frowning over her thoughts and she tried to clear her mind. Lea was still sleeping and, every so often, her breathing would stop and then start again just to upset the rhythm in the room.

  Adaline wasn’t sure when she fell asleep. She was sure that the sun had made a pretty decent climb into the sky, though, when she did, and it wasn’t until Lea returned from her classes and slammed the door closed that she managed to pull herself back out of the dreams that had cushioned her sleeping mind.

  ********

  “You know, it’s no wonder you’re not sleeping at night when you stay in bed until this time,” Lea said with a disapproving look when she walked into the room and saw Adaline just sitting up in her bed.