Keep From Falling (Markson Grove Series Book 1)

by Amy Vanessa Miller

  The first period bell brings me back to the present. I hastily wipe up the blood dripping down my side and cover my three new scars with my shirt.

  I hurry out of the stall and wash my hands in the sink before making my way to class. I’m trying everything in my power to forget what I just remembered moments before, but I can’t push it out of my mind. My memories of him haunt me.

  When I enter my class I walk as casually as possible over to my assigned desk in the third row and take a seat without looking at any of my classmates. I take extra special care to avoid eye contact with the fifth row where I know both Parker and Evan sit.

  Mr. Clark closes the door and begins his calculus lesson after I take my seat. We are about ten minutes into a detailed explanation of time derivatives and their proper uses, when Parker walks in.

  “Mr. Michelson, better late than never I suppose.”

  “Sorry, Mr. Clark,” Parker mumbles quietly, as he saunters over to his desk in front of Evan’s. I look up at him because a simple mumbled apology, when he walks late into class, is not Parker’s style. He has a black eye and his bottom lip is busted and swollen. I sigh. This is the third time in two weeks that he’s looked like this.

  Parker looks up, having heard my sigh, and his head turns toward me. I don’t turn away though, not this time. Instead, I tilt my head to the side and look at him sadly for a moment, remembering the damaged guy I met two years ago at The Misfit Mansion. His expression softens as his eyes seem to be searching my face for an answer to a secret question.

  I notice Evan watching this exchange. His curious eyes are watching us closely, and as soon as I realize this, I instantly turn away to face the front of the class.

  Evan

  In the library during fifth period, while I’m attempting to get ahead of some homework, Kelsie rushes over to my table eagerly.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you had a free period during fifth?” she asks out of breath. The librarian hisses for Kelsie to sit and to be quit.

  Kelsie makes an annoyed face but sits down next to me anyway. She continues to stare me down as she waits for my reply.

  I shrug, “I didn’t think it mattered.”

  “Well, if you had a phone that actually worked you’d have seen what I just saw.” She pulls out her phone and slides it over to me.

  “It’s not totally broken,” I begin to say but stop abruptly when I see the picture opened on her screen. “Where did you get this?” I ask, feeling my stomach turn uneasily.

  “Facebook, Evan. You know that little social network that you never use?”

  “Who posted it?”

  “Like, five different people.”

  I slide the phone back to her. “It’s her,” I say indifferently, and her eyes grow wide with excitement.

  “This is who she’s seeing?” She shrieks.

  The librarian hisses for Kelsie to be quiet a second time. “Sorry,” Kelsie says back, which only seems to annoy the librarian even more.

  “Yeah. She’s with Skylar.” I whisper, turning my attention back to my math homework.

  “And you didn’t think to tell me that this morning?”

  “I didn’t know she was telling the world,” I return bitterly.

  Kelsie shrugs, “Maybe she’s not. She’s not tagged, neither is Skylar.”

  “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. She’s with Skylar and our kiss was a big mistake.”

  “Did she kiss you back?”

  I narrow my eyes. “I’ve already gone through all of this with Derrick. I’m done talking about it. Doesn’t change anything anyway.”

  “You went to Derrick and not me? Evan, what would make you think that would be a good idea?”

  I shrug. “Because I know you Kels, I already know what you would have said.”

  “And what’s that?” She asks curiously.

  “To leave it alone and not to mess with their relationship. I mean, it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? Why would I consider doing something like that to them?”

  She shrugs, “It doesn’t hurt to just be her friend, though. Becoming her friend doesn’t hurt anyone especially if she’s a lesbian, right?”

  “See, that’s what I’m not so sure about,” I say, sitting up in my chair and turning to face her. “She wanted me to kiss her. She told me so.”

  “Seriously?”

  I nod.

  “So when did it change?”

  “She stopped the kiss and that’s when she told me she was involved with Skylar.” I lower my head. “I was so pissed, Kels. I would have never kissed her had I known. You know that.”

  “I know that, Ev.” She pats my hand. “You should try to be her friend, though. You like her. Isn’t having her around as a friend better than not at all?”

  I sigh and shake my head. “Maybe if she was a friend already. But I don’t know her yet, and I think that’s the best way to keep it, don’t you?”

  Kelsie picks the phone up off the table and slides it into the side pocket of her backpack. “I guess that’s it then. We’ll find you someone else.”

  I squint my eyes as though the words she’s saying cause me physical pain. “I don’t want to look for anyone else.”

  Kelsie lays her cheek down on the table and looks up at me with big, sad eyes. “You’re too good of a guy to not have a great girl to spoil.”

  I laugh. “If you hadn’t fallen for that doofus, Derrick, you’d be getting spoiled by yours truly day and night by now,” I joke.

  Kelsie chuckles, “I bet.” Her face turns sober, “I’m serious though, Evan. You deserve to be happy. What Adrienne did… it sucks. But we aren’t all like her. If Bree isn’t the right one, then let me look. I’ll find you someone who truly deserves you.”

  “Not now. Maybe someday, ok?”

  “I just want you to be happy, Ev.”

  “Yeah, yeah, now get the hell back to where you’re supposed to be and let me finish my math homework in peace.” I give her a playful shove.

  She gets up from her chair and throws her backpack over her right shoulder. “Fine. I’m gone, she says with a wink, leaving me alone once again.

  I lean back into my chair and let out an exasperated sigh. What do I do now?

  Bree

  Evan spends our entire evening shift together ignoring me. It isn’t until the end of it, while I’m locking up, that he decides to speak to me.

  “Do you need a drive home?” he asks. I can’t be sure by his passive tone if he’s asking because he actually wants to, or because he’s just trying to be polite. Judging by the cold shoulder he’s given me all evening, I’d say it’s probably the latter.

  At first I consider saying no because all of my instincts are telling me to keep him far away. But after a few minutes of thinking things over in my mind I decide to take him up on his offer. “If you don’t mind,” I say.

  He looks taken aback. He wasn’t expecting me to say yes. Maybe I should have just declined. “Unless you don’t really want to,” I go on, suddenly feeling uncomfortable with my decision to accept.

  He shakes his head. “No. I mean, I don’t mind. I asked you, so,” his voice trails off.

  Could this get any more uncomfortable?

  After I finish locking up, and rushing a few doors down to deposit tonight’s cash balance, he walks to his mother’s battered green Taurus and opens the passenger door for me. He’s too perfect. This was a bad idea.

  “Thanks,” I mumble, sliding into the passenger seat. He shuts the door behind me and walks around the car to the driver’s side.

  Once he’s out of the parking lot and heading toward my house, he turns to look at me for a moment but still doesn’t say anything.

  I glance up slightly, mostly with my eyes. “Thanks for offering a drive,” I say finally because it just feels like something needs to be said here… to fill up space. And I know that thanking him for a drive is not what he’s expecting, but it’s all I can manage at the moment.

  “You’re welcome,” he replies
.

  I try to decide how to begin talking to him in a way that doesn’t make it seem like I’m just doing it to be nice. I really want us to be friends. And not only because Skylar wants it, but because there is something about him that makes me certain that he’s meant to be a part of my life.

  “Could we maybe start over?” I finally decide to ask in a small whisper.

  He sighs loudly but doesn’t reply. I shift uncomfortably in my seat and then continue with my request. “I really like you—”

  “Don’t,” he interrupts.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Just don’t.”

  “What do you want from me?” I ask.

  “Nothing. I just want to pretend last night didn’t happen,” he says.

  “Ok,” I reply. “We can do that.”

  “Oh and, by the way, I saw the pictures of you and your girlfriend on Facebook today. Great added insult to injury, thanks for that,” he says bitterly. He’s angry with me.

  I sigh. “I thought we were pretending last night didn’t happen,” I say, attempting to lighten the mood, but it doesn’t seem to work.

  “Yeah ok. Do you think Skylar will be able to pretend like it didn’t happen?” he returns with a sneer.

  I look down at my hands and chip away some nail polish from my left thumbnail. I don’t want to look him in the eye.

  “Does she even know?” he asks. “Did you tell her?”

  “Of course,” I whisper.

  He shakes his head. “This is crazy.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it just is.”

  I begin to wonder what it is that Skylar wants to come out of this friendship she insists I need to have with him. How does she expect me to get to know Evan without leading him on? Or maybe that’s her plan. Maybe she wants me to hurt him.

  “Ok. Look Evan, I’m going to be honest with you. Skylar not only knows about last night, she thinks it meant something to me.”

  “Oh,” he says and there is a long pause. “Do you think that?” he asks finally.

  I shrug. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t. I know I liked it. I liked it a lot.”

  He nods, pursing his lips together slightly. “Ok,” he says uncertainly.

  “She’s insisting I get to know you better.”

  His eyes open wide but his expression remains the same. “Better how?”

  I smile. “Not like that!”

  “What? No, that’s not what I meant,” he laughs, and it’s nice to hear.

  “Like friends,” I say. “She wants us to be friends; spend some time together, get to know each other. Do you think that would be something you would want?”

  He sighs and his beautiful smile fades from his face. “Why? So I can fall for you even more and then not get to be with you?”

  “You’ve fallen for me?” I ask quietly. I can feel the blush begin to take over in my cheeks.

  He shrugs. “Since the minute you bumped into me and broke my phone, you’ve been all I can think about. I’ve been hurt before though, I know how this story ends.”

  “That’s the last thing I would ever want. I don’t want this to end badly.”

  “Then why?”

  “Because you make me second guess myself, Evan. Because when I’m near you, my body reacts to you. Because no guy has ever made me feel this way, and I need to know what that means.”

  His cheeks begin to flush now, and he turns away quickly. I can’t believe I just confessed that! What am I doing? This is wrong… so very wrong.

  We sit in silence for a while. I don’t know what else to say and it’s obvious that I’ve rendered him speechless. I’m an idiot.

  “Would you like to meet my friends tomorrow night?” he asks finally, turning to look at me. He smiles slightly and his eyes seem to smile too. I like the hope I see in them.

  I give him a little nod. “I’d really like that.”

  Evan

  “Out of bed lazy ass,” Derrick bellows as he pounds on my bedroom door Saturday morning. I reach over for my phone on my bedside table and peer through the cracked screen for the time. 9:37. Way too early.

  “Go away, Derrick,” I groan as I roll over and cover my head with my blanket.

  “Coming in buddy, so you better be decent,” he says and without any more notice, walks into my room.

  “What part of go away don’t you understand, Derrick? Who the fuck let you in the house anyway?” I ask with my head still under the covers. I hear him chuckle, but he doesn’t reply.

  I remove the blanket from my head. He puts two coffees down on my desk and a paper bag full of what smells like breakfast sandwiches beside the coffees. In his hand he’s holding the new PS4 game he’s been talking about buying since it had come out at the beginning of the week.

  “You’re sister let me in. Jeez, Ev, just get up and stop whining. We got zombies to kill.” He tosses the game at me and plops down in my desk chair.

  “You seriously can’t go annoy Kelsie for a few hours?” I grumble.

  “Nope. This is our day, bud,” he says with a huge grin and I roll my eyes.

  “Lucky me,” I mumble, but he knows I’m not as annoyed as I’m letting on. I’m just not a morning person. That’s probably why he brought the coffee.

  I get out of bed and pull on a pair of jogging pants and a dirty t-shirt from off of my floor. My hair is sticking up in all directions, but I don’t even try to fix it. Instead, I reach for one of the coffees on my desk and begin sipping it.

  Derrick laughs. “I doubt you’d get as many chicks chasing after you as you do if you’d just let them see you in the mornings like this.”

  I shoot him a dirty look, which only makes him laugh even louder. I pull out a breakfast sandwich from the bag and unwrap it. “What’s with all the special treatment this morning anyway? Breakfast and coffee?”

  Derrick shrugs. “How else am I going to get you to play this game with me all day?”

  I shake my head. “Not all day. I have a date with Bree tonight.”

  “What?” he coughs, nearly choking on his coffee. “Dude. What the hell happened last night? Yesterday morning she was an untouchable lesbian.”

  I shrug. “It’s not a date-date or anything. She just wants to get to know me better.”

  Derrick’s eyes twinkle with excitement and I know what dirty thoughts are flying through his mind without him having to say them aloud. He smiles a mischievous grin.

  “She’s just going to hang out with us at The Loft tonight. You and Kelsie. Me and Bree. It’s not like I’m going to sleep with her or anything.”

  “You should. It’s time to get back on that horse, bud,” he says, reaching over and patting me on the back.

  “Whatever. Listen, you can’t be talking shit like this tonight, all right? I like her, but I don’t want her to get the wrong idea about tonight. We’re just trying to be friends. She’s still with Skylar.”

  “Ev, what the hell are you doing?” he asks, lines of worry visibly noticeable on his forehead. He takes a big bite out of his breakfast sandwich and follows it with a gulp of coffee.

  “It’s messed up, I’m not going to lie. I don’t even know why I agreed to it except that I couldn’t say no when she asked me. She said Skylar wants us to get to know each other.”

  “That makes no sense,” he says, shaking his head. He throws the sandwich wrapper in the trash can and reaches into the paper bag for another sandwich.

  “I know. But if you had a lesbian tell you that she wanted to spend time with you because you make her second guess herself, wouldn’t you say yes?”

  “Hell yeah! She said that? You’re shitting me!”

  I laugh and nod. “She said it,” I say as I sit on the bed across from him. I take another bite out of my sandwich and realize suddenly that I’m surprisingly starving. I practically inhale the entire thing.

  “So which is it, her girlfriend wants you to spend time with her, or she does?”

  “Both I think. She told me that
Skylar wants her to get to know me.”

  “But Evan, think about that. It makes no sense!”

  I swallow my food and take another swig of my coffee before replying. “Maybe not. But maybe it does,” I say, my voice trailing off. I’m unsure if I should mention the strange exchange I’d witnessed between Skylar and Parker yesterday during first period.

  “Something you’re not telling me?” he asks, picking up on my hesitation.

  “I saw Skylar in class yesterday looking at Parker Michelson. Like, really looking at him.”

  “Parker Michelson,” he repeats in confusion. Parker is not a typical topic of conversation for me and he knows it.

  “Yeah, she wasn’t checking him out, though, they were exchanging a look.”

  “Exchanging a look, huh?” he repeats with a laugh.

  “Shut up. I’m serious. There’s something going on between them.”

  “Nah, you’re reaching. That’s wishful thinking.”

  “Maybe,” I say, uncertainly.

  “Parker is a loser.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “No point, just saying.”

  “Anyway,” I say dismissively, realizing we’ve gotten completely off track with this conversation. “Just behave yourself tonight with Bree ok? And no talking about what I just told you about Parker and Skylar. Or about Bree questioning herself.”

  “Dude. What do you take me for?”

  “A big mouth,” I say, matter of fact.

  “That hurts.”

  “I bet.”

  He chucks his sandwich wrapper at my face and I dodge out of the way just in time.

  Skylar

  “Skylar?” Spencer calls out to me as he walks in through the door of Cecelia’s apartment Saturday evening. I’m in my bed, curled up into a tiny little ball under the covers and I don’t want to see him. I don’t want to see anyone. “I’m not up for company, Spenc,” I mumble without taking my head out from under the covers.

  I hear him approach the bed. “Come on babygirl, don’t do this to yourself,” he says quietly as he takes a seat on the bed next to me. Just knowing why he’s here makes me want to break into a million pieces and I begin to sob. My body is trembling with each tear that falls and I’m doing everything in my power not to let Spencer hear me crumbling in despair. But my heart literally aches. Broken and unfixable.