Risk the Fall

by Steph Campbell

  “I thought we didn’t have ‘boy-girl-sleepovers’,” I say, with blatant snark in my tone.

  She ignores me. “And Nancy and John aren’t able to come with her; I for one don’t want her in a strange city all alone, and I would think that you wouldn’t either.”

  I sigh, “Of course not.”

  The first time I met Caroline was at the start of our sophomore year. She was sitting a couple of desks in front of me in English. She was beautiful, although I think she was totally unaware of it. She had a kind of subtle beauty, one that didn’t scream in your face like Quinn’s does. It was in the way she let her hair fall around her face while she took notes in class, or the way that she blushed when the guys around her talked about things she was obviously embarrassed to hear, or how her lip twitched when she was forced to speak in front of the class. Those were the things I originally noticed about Caroline. My mom likes to think that it was her “good Southern upbringing” and flawless manners that attracted me to her, but it wasn’t. Caroline silently fascinated me.

  One day, Brian and Alton, the two jackholes that sat near us, were enjoying their daily dirty joke-fest. Caroline was looking increasingly uncomfortable and doing her best to ignore them, but they had upped the ante by including her that day.

  “Hey, lovely,” Brian had said to Caroline. She didn’t respond. I’m not sure if she legitimately didn’t hear him, or if she was purposefully ignoring him. “Hey,” He repeated, tapping on the edge her desk.

  Caroline raised her head nervously, her cheeks were already scarlet.

  “Me?” she’d asked.

  “Who else, bunny?” Alton interjected. “Whit and I were just discussing something, and we thought you could settle a debate for us.”

  Caroline glanced around the room, our eyes met for a second and I realized that she looked more than a just nervous, she was scared.

  “Um, okay.” Caroline uneasily tucked her hair behind her ears, something I would notice her do anytime she was uncomfortable from then on.

  “So, the thing is, Brian here is hung so well, his party trick is to tie it in a knot.” She shifted in her chair, but Alton continued, “However, my ‘newspaper’ is blessed with so much girth my dog couldn’t carry it in her mouth. Which would you prefer?”

  Caroline looked like she was about to cry. Her dark brown eyes glistened, and her nose flared in and out like she was trying to calm the explosion building within.

  “I, um…” Any other girl probably would have told him to catch the short yellow bus to hell – I know Quinn would have – but Caroline just sat there staring at her hands in her lap, breathing deeply.

  “Shut the hell up,” I’d said to Alton and Brian. “Leave her alone.”

  Her eyes darted to mine, and stayed locked there.

  “We were just having fun, man,” Brian said to me.

  “Talk to her again, and I’ll show you how much fun I can be,” I scowled. Brian laughed and Alton rolled his eyes, but they both turned back around. I know they were only intimidated by my size and not my words, but it worked anyway.

  They never bothered Caroline again.

  This is what I’m thinking about when my mom mentions the idea of Caroline being stranded in Atlanta alone.

  “Good,” Mom says. “It’ll be just like old times.”

  I shrug, “Except that I’m with Quinn now, not Caroline.”

  Mom waves her hand as if she’s dismissing what I just said. Which is exactly what she is doing.

  Ben told me he loved me. L-O-V-E. Love. The only other guy to ever say that to me was Kyle, and I’m reasonably sure that was only so he could get me in the sack. It worked, by the way.

  I’m not one of “those girls”. I don’t swoon over guys. I don’t stare at myself in the mirror for hours perfecting my makeup or come hither look. I just don’t care that much. My mom and dad are proof of what love brings to your life. They married for love and look what it got them. Three kids, (only one of which actually exists to them), a big house, a big pile of debt and a whole lot of crazy. I’ll pass on that, thank you very much.

  I’m lying in bed, staring at the ceiling and trying to figure out why the hell I didn’t say it back. It’s late, or early, however you want to look at it. It’s maybe two a.m. and I can’t sleep because I can’t stop thinking about Ben’s face. He said he loved me – and he wasn’t even trying to get me to sleep with him. He meant it. I didn’t say it back, and he didn’t waver. He didn’t take it back. He actually meant it. My stomach dances every time I think of it. So, why didn’t I say it back to him?

  I hear a car idling outside. It’s probably one of the Lombardo skanks. Tina and Mena Lombardo, are the twins that live across the street. Between the two of them, they’ve successfully sucked and fucked their way through high school, and are well on their way through college.

  Tina has decided she is going to save the world through handbags, and is going to art school. She’s a fashion design major, but by the way she tells it, you’d think she was going to MIT, and hanging out in Darfur on weekends. The last I’d heard, Mena, the bigger tart of the two, goes to a Christian College, which, if you ask me, is quite possibly one of the most laughable, oxymoronic things ever. Someone needs to clue her in that she can’t screw her way into heaven.

  The car is still idling, and it’s interrupting my thoughts of Ben – and that right there, pisses me off. Turn off your car and drag your sleazy, drunk ass to the door! As if on cue with my thoughts, the car finally shuts off. I close my eyes, and bury myself deep under the heavy quilt. Finally, I’m settled so comfortably and content under the thick layers of goose down.

  Just as I’m drifting off to sleep, I hear our front door creak. My eyes fly open. Who the hell is that?

  Our front door has squeaked since I was thirteen. My mom had just been readmitted to rehab for the umpteenth time. She and Dad had been fighting a lot, which wasn’t unusual. It’s a cyclical thing. They play nice for a few weeks, and then they’ll fight for a few. It’s the natural ebb and flow of our family—and it blows. Anyway, Mom pounded a fifth of whatever she had stashed in the back of the pantry (in the brown paper bags that she somehow believes act as invisibility cloaks), plus, she took who knows how many pills before starting a stupid fight with Dad over a book of matches she’d found in his car. Dad had supposedly quit smoking, and finding those matches pissed her off to the tenth degree. Seems a little hypocritical, what with her near permanent state of intoxication, no?

  After getting sufficiently shit faced, Mom somehow managed to drive to their insurance agent’s office and cause a scene. And by “cause a scene”, I mean that she asked the girls in the office how much life insurance she had and what would happen with the payout if she were to, say, commit suicide. Understandably alarmed, the receptionist called Dad … and the police. By the time the police got there, Mom had moseyed on. She drove around for hours, before she called my older brother Carter’s cell phone to tell him goodbye.

  Then she passed out. Somewhere.

  Dad and the police drove around for hours searching for her. All we knew was she had left an empty bottle of Valium sitting on the kitchen counter. Not much to go on, but enough to scare the hell out of us.

  Everyone had been calling her cell nonstop, but she either refused to answer, or couldn’t answer. Everyone was panicked. Everyone but me. This was how Mom operated. How could everyone be so oblivious? She’d fly off the handle, and drag us all into a whirlwind of drama, and then the next day, she’d be totally over it. I, for one, had had my fill.

  Anyway, the police found her late that night, passed out in her minivan.

  Sometimes my mom has a butt-load of class.

  The police couldn’t wake her from her drug induced stupor no matter how hard they pounded on the windows of the car, and they had to jimmy the door open to get her out. Because law enforcement was involved, there was no other option but for her to go to rehab since there had been documented proof that she intended to harm hersel
f.

  The thing is— I don’t really believe she would have. I don’t know how many of those pills she actually took, and how many she just washed down the drain, but I think she’s too selfish to hurt herself. Everything is a big freaking show to her. The more drama, the better. Not that I’d want her to actually go through with any of her threats, that’s not it at all. I love my mom, despite her insanity, but it just gets old. It’s like she gets the biggest high from seeing all of us upset, and crying over her. Even at thirteen, I saw that as her main motivation for everything she did.

  So, when my dad told me I needed to call her in rehab every night to cheer her up, I refused. I told him I wasn’t falling for her games anymore, that I was done playing. Dad and I got into a huge argument, and he told me if I didn’t call Mom that I was grounded until I learned how to be a “proper” member of a family. So, he was going to punish me for failing to enable my drunken mother? That sounded like the most idiotic thing I’d ever heard.

  I started for the door, not sure where I was going. But I was getting out of there. I’d just opened the door, when my dad pushed on it with all of his force, slamming it on my outstretched hand. The pain shocked me like a slap in the face. I looked at my hand, and saw my middle and index fingers dangling at the top crease.

  Dad took me to the ER. I had two fractured fingers which were partially detached because of the force that he’d used to slam the door. I had to wait hours for a hand surgeon to come in and stitch them back together. The tips of those two fingers are still numb from the nerve damage.

  Ever since then, the front door has creaked when you open it.

  So when I hear the squeak, I shoot up in bed, instantly wide awake, like when you oversleep and jump straight out of bed without even giving it a thought.

  Carter is at school at Stanford, so it’s obviously not him going out. And Mason is the golden child—and also, twelve; he wouldn’t be going out at this hour. I run my thumb back and forth across the numb finger tips as I cross my bedroom and peer out into the darkness.

  There, looking out through my second story window, I see them. Mena Lombardo is recognizable even when the only light is from a dim street lamp. Her long blonde hair falls in perfect waves down her back. She’s pressed up against her white Mercedes, her legs wrapped around his waist. His hands are holding her face, their lips mashed together. They are really going at it. I feel my stomach lurch.

  He jerks back suddenly and raises his hands. It looks like he’s saying, “Stop, enough”. But I can’t hear anything through the glass, so I have no idea what it actually is.

  All I know for sure is that I have just witnessed my dad hooking up with Mena Lombardo.

  I can’t even find the words to explain how totally repulsed I am by my father. It’s a couple of days since I saw him out of my window and I haven’t seen Mena coming or going from her house since then. Holding my tongue isn’t something I excel at, but when it comes to my home life, I just bottle it up. I’ll add this stunt with Mena to the pile of crap my parents have pulled. The stack never seems to stop growing and at some point soon it’s going to topple over. I wonder if I’ll be completely crushed by it when it does.

  I know more than even my parents think I do. Mena is just the tip of the iceberg. I doubt Mom and Dad know that my grandfather once told me that they had blown the college funds he had set up for me, Carter and Mason on, well … blow, by the time I was five. Sure, my dad is well respected now, but I don’t think his office partner, old Mr Taylor, would think too highly of who Dad used to be.

  Even with the Mena thing playing on my mind, the thing I keep obsessing about is not telling Ben I loved him when he spilled his guts to me. I do love him, right? So, I should just say it. What am I so afraid of?

  Myself. Screwing up. Losing him. Everything.

  “So, you’re coming to my parents’ party this weekend, right?” I ask Ben as he walks me to my car after school later that week.

  “Well,” he says, kissing my knuckles lightly. “If you’d like me to, although I wasn’t actually invited.”

  Oh. Shit. “Of course you were,” I say, playfully smacking his arm.

  I’ve been in such a craptastic mood this week, I’ve completely spaced on inviting Ben or Syd. It had nothing to do with my not wanting Ben there, I completely adore him. I want him anywhere that I am, even if it is at my house…with my parents…and their company…and a whole lot of booze. I grimace at the thought of it all.

  “Is there something else?” he asks me nervously.

  “Just that…” I love you. “I’m just nervous about my crazy ass parents, and their crazy big cases of wine.”

  “It’ll be fine, baby,” he soothes. He wraps his sturdy arms around me, and everything is right in the world. I could say it now … but I don’t.

  When I get to Dad’s office later on I practically jog past Ms Mack. I don’t even pause to glance to see if she has a dress with silver buttons down the back. (Someday, I’m convinced that she will). I head to what has become my sanctuary at work— Mark’s office. Yeah, I didn’t see that one coming either, but it helps me avoid having to look my dad in the eye.

  I’ve actually managed to avoid Dad all week, I’m hoping it’s a long-running streak; otherwise, I don’t know how I’m supposed to continue to work here.

  Mark isn’t nearly as bad as I’d originally thought. He actually keeps to himself a lot, and rarely sends me to run his stupid errands any more. He doesn’t give me a whole lot of work to do and, frankly, I no longer find him half bad to work with.

  I’ve finished the backlog of filing, and have moved on to making copies of Comparative Income Statements. I only know they are called this because it’s in bold print at the top of each page, otherwise, they could have just as easily been an encrypted cipher. I’m busy fighting with installing a new toner cartridge into the copy machine, when Mark comes into the copy room and clears his throat.

  “Are you going to be around at your parent’s party this weekend?” he asks, indifferently.

  “Yeah, should be a hoot,” I say. My voice is friendly, but dry.

  He laughs softly, but doesn’t look away. He just stares at me, like he has more to say. Ok, now he’s kind of skeeving me out. I refuse to be the first to back down and look away.

  “What?” I finally ask.

  He shakes his head, and snaps out of his daze. “Oh, I have a meeting out of the office in about ten minutes. I was waiting on a contract to be delivered, but it hasn’t shown up yet.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Is it urgent?”

  He holds up his wrist and rolls his watch around so that he can read it. “Well, yeah. I need to sign them and then send them back over tonight. Would it be too much to ask for you wait for them, and then drop them by my house later on?”

  I stare back at him.

  “What?” he asks. Now it’s my turn, I guess.

  “Nothing. Sure, I guess. Where do you live?”

  He scribbles his address on the back of one of his business cards and then rushes out of the office.

  I decide not to stress about what may or may not be going on in Mark’s grey matter, I’ve got my own problems. Like why the hell can’t I tell my beautiful, thoughtful boyfriend that I love him? And why is my dad such a repulsive freak? God, I’m exhausted.

  I walk back to Mark’s office and settle down into his comfortable office chair. Propping my legs up on his desk and quickly fall asleep.

  “Hey, are you waiting on this?” a voice says.

  My eyes pop open at the sound of paper fluttering past me, and I blink furiously not fully believing what I’m seeing.

  Mena Lombardo.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I fume at her.

  She takes a step forward, not intimidated by my tone.

  “I work here.” She smirks. I fully expected that Dad would hire the princess in pleather that I saw on my first day, but I can’t believe he would stoop to hiring Mena. Although I guess she is equally as sk
anky. Plus she’s got that whole being pure evil thing going for her.

  “Work? Doing what exactly?” I can’t help it, I snort.

  “Your dad hired me. So I’ll be doing whatever. He. Wants.” She clips each of the last few words in a suggestive way that tells me she doesn’t give a shit if I know what is going on or not.

  Her choice of words causes me to double over in a fit of uncomfortable, hysterical laughter.

  “You must be kidding me.” I squeal through my laugh-induced tears. This is just too fucking funny. Real solid, Dad, hire the chick you’re having an affair with. This situation will have an awesome ending, I’m sure of it.

  “Whatever, freak,” Mena says. She spins in her obnoxiously high-heels, and storms out the door. I want to go grab her by her stupid blonde extensions and slam her stupid face into the stupid filing cabinet.

  Instead, I just sit there for a moment, trying to wrap my brain around what just happened. For the love of God, what is my dad thinking? I’m completely at a loss.

  Shaking, I grab the fax and my purse and bolt for the door before I can run into my dad.

  This time, I won’t be coming back.

  “Feel like catching a game this weekend, Ben?” my dad asks me.

  Mom is watching me scoop vegetables on to my plate so intently that I’m waiting for her to take the casserole dish from me and do it herself. Maybe she can tuck my napkin into my shirt while she is at it. Control freak.

  “Sure. Saturday is good, Sunday I’m going to Quinn’s,” I say.

  “Oh, ok,” Dad says. He nods, but doesn’t look up from his plate.

  “Why?” My mom scowls. And here we go.

  “Her parents are having a retirement party, and I was invited,” I say.

  “Retiring? Already? How old are they?” my dad asks. He sounds envious.

  “It’s not for her parents, they’re hosting it for one of her father’s partners,” I tell them. My dad is nodding. He may not remember having this conversation tomorrow, he isn’t that great with details, but he always tries to appear interested.