by Piper Lennox
So much for catching up.
It’d be simple to tell him the truth: I do, in fact, remember where I’m from, even if the details are still a mystery.
Simple…but not easy.
The amnesia thing never fooled Van. He stopped believing it about twelve hours after I moved in with them, when I first got my nightmares. Some were about the day I left, but most were normal depictions of my daily life.
My best friend, Rebecca. My mother.
Barton.
But those were the most terrifying dreams: average scenes that tricked me into believing I was back at that place. That I’d never left at all.
That finally seeing that hazy, wavering light from the stables, and that boy stretched out like he was waiting for me all along, had been the dream.
I’d wake up drenched in sweat. Always, the first thing I’d do would be to pat the entire bed around me, telling myself it was real.
The second thing I’d do: roll over and find Van’s outline against my closed door.
“I heard you crying. Talk to me.”
“I don’t want to talk.”
“Then tell me how to make it better.”
We are impossibly far from those days, now.
As Van disappears from sight over a hill, I shake my head at myself. I can’t tell him, any more now than I could back then. I don’t want to talk. That’s the only way to make it better: to forget.
I’ve got seven years of proof that sometimes, you can’t move on. You just move forward.
And even if I could tell him, would it matter anymore? He’s right—they gave me so, so much, and I repaid them horribly. Nothing can change that.
I believe in karma, or some kind of cosmic balance. Maybe there’s an afterlife; in fact, I hope there is. But rather than buying into the idea that our good deeds on this earth translate into some kind of redemption currency in the next, I think all our acts—good and bad—are repaid to us in this one. And, more often than not, it’s up to us to consciously restore the balances we upset.
In other words: if you do something wrong, you need to atone where possible, and accept your punishment regardless.
Stealing and lying to the Durhams after they tried to help me was awful. My punishment? Van’s deep, completely justified hatred. The loss of my protector.
All I can do is accept it. And maybe, one of these days, I’ll get an opportunity to atone for what I did.
Be careful what you wish for.
When I come up on my campsite, I’m flooded with relief, because the vehicle that was in my spot is gone.
About half a second later, I’m flooded with nausea.
My Transit is several yards closer to the lake than it was before. The little camp I set up marks its old spot like a gravestone.
I circle the vehicle. My bumper is dented.
“No,” I say, but I breathe it inward, the word carving up my lungs when I follow the tire tracks all the way down to the lake, where Van is standing halfway in the water.
Also in the water is the vehicle that was parked where I now stand. Only a single muddy corner peeks out of the calm, lapping lake.
The string of curses that’s been escaping Van’s mouth this entire time halts; he inhales and dives under the surface. I watch him come up for air, too furious to hold his breath longer than a few seconds.
I get out my phone. The signal is weak, so I toss it onto some leaves where he left his.
Without thinking, I unlace my boots. While I pull back my hair, I eye the water, already feeling it chill my skin.
Whether this counts as atonement, or punishment...I’m not sure.
Five
We manage to save a few items each before the silt underneath the vehicle starts to give way, and the entire thing skids even deeper. We’re way farther from shore now than when we started this impromptu salvage mission.
“Van,” I shout, when he surfaces from the driver’s side, “we can’t keep touching it, it’s moving.”
He ignores me, readying to dive back under, but I flounder across the roof and stop him.
“Let me go!”
“It’s moving! We have to leave it, we can’t—”
He tears away and disappears once more.
I hear, and feel, the vehicle lurch deeper.
Back on the rocks along the shore, I cough up water I didn’t know was in my lungs. “Van!” I shout, chest burning. “Van, it’s not safe!”
Finally, he surfaces.
Or, more accurately: the top of his head surfaces.
The thick canopy of storm clouds that’s gathered since we got here now covers the sun. It’s early afternoon, but looks like dusk. I can’t see his face.
I can’t see if his nose or mouth made it above the water.
My limbs shoot me back in his direction. Never mind that I can barely keep myself afloat, let alone another person; my instincts are screaming to get to him.
He’s not moving.
I try to pull him along, but he slips out of my hold. He’s stuck.
I go under and open my eyes. Through the suspended debris and soil kicked up around the car, I see his foot tangled in the seatbelt on the driver’s side.
Air.
I need more of it. Now.
My hands can’t reach the door for leverage. My legs can’t kick fast enough.
With nothing else to use, I grab Van’s shoulders and push myself to the surface.
Drawing in two burning breaths, I cough, hold the third, and propel myself back under.
My fingers fumble with the slick strap until his foot comes loose. His shoe sinks like a rock, swallowed in the darkness.
I loop my arms under his from behind and get my foot on the car’s roof, walking us onto it with painful slowness through the water.
My sinuses burn; my eyes can’t blink fast enough against all the debris. The corners of my vision fade.
With a distorted groan, the car moves.
Through my adrenaline and panic, I realize this is my only chance to get us both to the surface. His car is settling deeper, the depths claiming it as their own. One more push, this push, and it’s gone.
I tighten my hold around Van. My legs launch us upwards with all the force I can manage, then kick like it’s all I was born to do.
The water lightens. I shove my face through the surface and gasp. Most of my inhale is water, or at least feels that way, but it’s enough to keep me kicking. Enough to keep fighting.
Please, I beg the universe, God, karma, nature: everything I’ve ever believed in. Please, give me something to save him.
Whatever hears me, it must have a sense of humor, because I suddenly feel something spongy and slimy poke my shoulder.
A pool noodle.
It’s blackened with grime, corroded, and thoroughly disgusting after its journey across the lake.
But it floats—and that alone is enough to make me grab it like the magnificent gift it is.
I jerk it free from the fallen branches it was tangled with, loop it under Van’s arms, and practically cry with happiness when his face floats to the surface. I grab his shirt collar in my fist and fumble back to land.
“Van,” I croak, as soon as I’ve gotten him past the rocks and onto the shore. My body yanks me away to vomit. Foamy stomach acid and lake water land in the tracks his tires left behind.
I turn back and shake him before I’m even finished, watching his lips for signs of breathing. They’re blue.
Digging through my waterlogged brain for whatever knowledge of CPR I’ve gleaned from television and movies, I place my hand overtop the other and press hard on his sternum. Then again, and again.
Breathe for him.
His skin is cold when I cover his mouth with mine, pinch his nose shut, and push air into his lungs. Feeling his chest rise under my free hand floods me with premature relief, and I have to remind myself he didn’t draw the breath himself. Not yet.
I alternate between pushing on his chest and breathing into his mouth. I don’t know i
f I’m using the right durations or rhythms.
All I know is…I’m doing all I know. All I can.
Please.
As soon as I sit back on my feet, shaking and silently begging the universe not to give me this, the one punishment I couldn’t possibly live with...he coughs.
“Van!” I scream, with a noise somewhere between a sob and exclamation of pure joy. “Van, oh, thank God.”
Water bubbles out of his mouth. Quickly, I pry him onto his side as he retches.
“It’s okay,” I tell him, crying and laughing as the water leaves his lungs, and that first burning, beautiful breath takes its place. “We’re okay.”
Six
“You’re very lucky.”
I sneer at the doctor and take my prescription slip.
It’s a course of antibiotics so I don’t develop an infection, either from inhaling murky lake water or exposing every cut and scrape on my body to it at once.
Icing on the cake: the meds have to be taken with food, and my entire pantry is at the bottom of Lake fucking Linon.
Okay, so I didn’t have a pantry in there. Just Pringles and beef jerky. But he doesn’t know that.
He does know—because I’ve ranted and raved about it non-stop since I woke up in this hospital—that everything I own is ruined, so his continuous use of the word “lucky” is such a smartass move, I’d clap back with some devastating joke about his gingivitis breath if had the energy.
God, I’m tired.
“I still strongly advise you to stay overnight.” He says it like warning his enemy not to step on a landmine: strictly for his conscience’s sake.
Picking at my IV tape, I jerk my chin to the window. Dawn slashes through the blinds. “I did.”
He sighs, then swats my hand off the tape. “Can you wait until noon, at least? I’m sure it’d make your friend happy.”
He’s been doing that all night—referring to Juniper as my friend, with an inflection meant to signify more. Great diagnostic skills, Doc. Juniper’s nothing to me.
And this development certainly reinforces that.
I don’t remember much: stepping over the flower-child setup at what had to be Juniper’s camp, finding my Sprinter in the water, then diving in to save whatever I could. Clothes, shoes…I think I even took the ruined car manual, I was so desperate.
Next thing I knew, I was in a hospital bed.
Oh, yes. So damn lucky.
“Van?”
Juniper huddles in the doorway. The doctor gives me a smile I’d like to slap off his face.
“I’ll leave you two alone for a while.” To Juniper, he adds, “Maybe you can convince him to stay a little longer.”
As soon as he’s gone, I start picking at my IV tape again. “Get out of here.”
“Van, I’m so sorry. I...I don’t know what happened to make my car roll into yours, but I promise—”
“Your promise means jack shit to me.” I wince. Removing this drip on my own was an empty threat; I kept hoping, if the doctor saw me screw with it enough, he’d send in a nurse to get it out before I tore open my veins.
Guess he’s calling my bluff. I give up and flop back into bed.
Her presence hovers closer. I don’t hear her, just feel that she’s nearby. That’s how it always was, with her.
The day she took off, in fact, I knew before anyone else, before I even went out to the carriage house and confirmed it. I didn’t feel her, anymore.
I felt nothing again.
Nowadays, my emotions aren’t total blown fuses. I’m really good at feeling anger. Happiness sometimes hits a little wrong—flat and static, like a cardboard cutout you thought was a real person—but it’s there.
Even sadness is welcome, because at least it reminds me I’m not totally dead inside.
“All my stuff,” I sigh, shaking my head as the weight hits me again. “The whole damn car. Cameras, laptops, my board lights....”
“I’ll pay you back for all of it, I swear. It won’t be right away, but I’ll do it. Whatever it takes.”
“Fine.” I glance at her. “Give me yours.”
“Trust me,” she smiles, picking at the edge of the tape I abandoned, “you don’t want the Transit. It’s decorated far too femininely for a man of your tastes.”
“Don’t make jokes, Fairy Lights.” I yank my arm away, even though she was doing a good job removing the tape. “I might look exhausted—and I am—but I’m so goddamn furious at you.”
There she goes, doing that shrink-thing again. “Lucky for me you’d never harm a woman.”
“Physically? No way. But I’ve got half a mind to psychologically torture you until the debt’s repaid.” I grab the bed remote and angle myself so we’re eye level, when she sits in the armchair by my bed. “How would I even screw with a mind like yours, though? Do yoga all wrong and refuse to let you correct my posture? Feed you non-organic chips and slip meat into some soup?”
“I’m not a vegetarian,” she smirks, “and I eat plenty of junk food, unfortunately. So that’d be a waste of your time. The yoga thing might work, although I’d probably just be happy to see you attempt it at all. You’re incredibly tense.”
“I’m the new definition of tense. You launched all my shit into a fucking lake.”
“And I said I was sorry. If you choose not to believe it…well, that’s on you.”
“Maybe you’d like a lawsuit on you.”
She draws a breath and gets the last bit of tape off my arm. I didn’t even notice she’d started peeling it again.
“I have nothing, Van. A grand in savings, a few hundred each month from my social media…but, yeah, a vehicle and some decent equipment. So I guess you could take my stuff, and we’d call it even.”
Whatever painkiller they gave me, it wasn’t enough. The migraine clawing up my skull flares as I shut my eyes again and tell her, “I don’t want your shit. I want mine back.”
“Exactly. So let me think of a way to repay you, okay? No courtroom. And besides, it’s not like your....”
My eyes fly open. She stares at her lap.
“Not like my dad can’t replace it all with one little check, right?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“It’s what you were going to say.”
Juniper wets her lips. “I’m just saying, you have a safety net. I don’t. Everything I own? That’s it.”
“And? Same for me. Except—Spot the Difference time—one of us doesn’t have to salvage their belongings with a fishing pole.”
“Come off it, Van. You’re a Durham.” She sits back in the chair and props her foot against the bed, arms folded. “You’ve got a New York penthouse full of stuff, a gorgeous ranch, and probably three or four other properties I don’t even know about.”
“You don’t know shit, actually. I moved out of Dad’s penthouse and into a place of my own as soon as....”
My voice fades. Juniper assumes it’s because a nurse just entered, finally here to fish out my IV, so I shut up and let her think it.
“I don’t accept anything from my dad, anymore,” I tell her from the bathroom, while we’re waiting for my discharge papers. I change out of my gown into some stiff new jeans and a shirt that still has the sizing stickers on it, which I’m too tired to remove. Damn, this hospital even gives you new underwear and flip-flops?
“Okay.”
She doesn’t say it sarcastically, but I glare at her like she did. I’m used to people not believing me when I tell them I’ve been on my own for years. Even my cousins were skeptical, until Wes moved in with me and saw the evidence for himself.
“I’m serious.” I zip my fly when I step out, shocked at how well the clothes fit. “There’s no pride in being handed everything. I wanted to prove I could be successful on my own.”
“To who?”
Hesitating, I glance at the flat landscape outside the window. We’re about thirty minutes from the lake, in the middle of unknown suburbia. Everything’s white pickets and pl
anned trees, just so perfect. I can’t stand it.
“I guess myself, when you get right down to it. Certainly don’t care what anyone else thinks of me.”
She nods, but stays completely silent until the nurse comes back with the verdict: I’m free.
It’s almost eleven a.m. by the time we get downstairs. Dr. Halitosis made sure to drag the exit process out until as close to noon as possible. Bastard.
“Oh,” Juniper says near the gift shop, “we forgot to fill your prescription. Come on, there’s a pharmacy back there.”
“First of all, I’d rather swing by a CVS. Second—and I cannot stress this enough—there’s no ‘we’ involved here.”
I start moving again. Of course, she’s right on my heels.
“I’m just trying to help.”
“I don’t want your help. I want my car out of that lake. I want my life exactly how it was”—I check the clock on the wall as we pass through the front entrance—“approximately nineteen hours ago, before you showed up and ruined it. Just like the first time.”
Again, it’s not a noise, or lack thereof, that tips me off she’s no longer nearby. I just feel it, the second she stops walking and hangs back on the curb.
This time, though, I don’t look back.
Seven
“How did I ruin your life, the first time?”
It’s been over thirty minutes since either of us spoke. Van looks like he wants to shove me in the gutter we’re standing near, waiting on a rideshare he’s got no choice but to share with me. Most of his money was in the form of actual cash, which was stuffed into his mattress...which went down with the rest of his ship.
“I mean,” I venture, when he stays quiet, “other than your dad thinking you stole the money at first—”
“Oh, he still thinks I stole it.” His pockets rattle with the antibiotics I finally made him call in, at the first pharmacy we found after leaving the hospital campus.
When he pulls out the cigarettes he also bought there, I turn away and bite my tongue. If he wants to smoke after nearly drowning, on top of having asthma, that’s his completely idiotic prerogative. I’ve met my life-saving quota for the week.
