Risk the Fall

by Steph Campbell

  But it also makes me feel like I don’t belong here more than ever.

  I may be dressed in flannel holiday duds and scrubbed fresh and clean, but that doesn’t change the partying, intoxicated rebel I am at heart. Suddenly I’m not all that sure I can just pop up and change my ways. No matter how conscientious I am, I may never be the perfect addition to this little storybook scene.

  It breaks my heart, even while it gives me this thrilling sense of freedom.

  “The church though, they all know what she was doing. They all smelled the alcohol on her,” Mom moans. She wrings her hands together, just like I guessed. “We’re going to have major damage control to do this week. How are we going to have a solid youth group when we can’t even keep our own daughter under control?”

  Some of the benevolence I was building up leaks away. I know my mother is more worried about how other people see her than she maybe should be, but she could give a tiny bit more of a crap about me and how I’m doing, instead of focusing all her attention on how everyone else in her life will see the situation.

  “All we can do is pray for her,” Dad says.

  The unwavering solution to everything in his eyes. I wish I believed in anything as much as my dad believes in his faith.

  Dad carefully arranges a few gifts under the tree. I love that they still play Santa, waiting until Christmas Eve to put all the perfectly wrapped presents out when they think I’m asleep. I’m so far past the age of believing in Santa—or anything really, but they still put forth that effort.

  That tiny, sweet gesture solidifies my decision to play by their rules. To do the right thing and be the right person. I have to stop fighting it and at least give it a shot.

  Dad pauses as he sets a tiny box in the branches of the tree. He keeps working on trying to balance it without knocking off any ornaments when he says, so low I almost miss it, “I’m more worried about Celeste.”

  My mother gasps, and winds up knotting the bow she was tying into a perfect decorative flourish.

  “Why would you say that name?” Mom asks, her voice chilly. I’m a little shocked. My parents are pretty old school when it comes to their marriage. Mom is definitely all about Dad being head of the house, and she hardly ever disagrees with him.

  What the hell could have made her so upset?

  I immediately start scanning my memories for anyone named Celeste who would invoke the look of horror currently in my mother’s eyes, but I come up empty.

  Dad reaches over and pats Mom’s arm. It looks like he wants to pull her in for a hug, but she turns away. I’m so shocked, I almost slide down the stairs.

  Dad retreats. “I don’t mean to upset you, darling, but if Shayna keeps down this path, we may need to consider that she is more her mother’s daughter than we had hoped. That maybe all of our nurturing couldn’t compete with nature.”

  My mother’s daughter? What? Nature vs. Nurture? What the hell are they talking about?

  “I am her mother,” Mom hisses firmly, with a look of fury I’ve never seen darkening her face.

  “I know that. You’re more of a mother than any child could ever dream of having, and Shayna is so lucky that she ended up with you. But there may be something to what the specialists said when we adopted her. There may be things about her real parents and their pasts that we can’t fight.”

  All of my breath leaves me.

  My lungs burn like I’ve spent the day in the pool and they are clouded with chlorine.

  I paw at my throat, willing the air to return but it won’t.

  Adopted?

  No.

  No, no, no, no!

  I must have misunderstood. How could that be? And how could my parents keep it from me for so long? It makes no sense. None.

  It’s impossible.

  Not. Freaking. Possible.

  “I’m not willing to accept that,” Mom says, finally letting Dad pull her close and dropping her forehead onto his shoulder. “When we adopted her, we made a promise that we would love her and protect her. That our love would be enough to quash any of that. Anything that may be in her blood or family history wouldn’t matter because we would love her enough.” She balls her fists into Dad’s sweaters and says the words like they’re some spell that will come true if she just believes hard enough.

  I feel like all my bones have melted. I feel like a helium balloon, unmoored and floating above everything. I knew I let my mother down. I knew I hurt her. I had no idea just how much. I raise my fist to my mouth, pressing my knuckles to my lips to stifle back the sobs.

  Dad nods, smoothing a hand over her hair. “I know. I know our reasons for not telling her, Trish.”

  I reach a shaky hand down to my own arm and pinch it hard to see if I can feel it.

  “Exactly. If we accept that that is just the way she is going to be, that’s the same as telling her she came from a drug addict mother and a felon father, David. I’m not sentencing her to a life of knowing that,” she growls, reminding me of a lioness defending her cub. “We’ll get through this. We will.” She keeps repeating it like a mantra while Dad smooths her hair.

  I shake my head, hard, willing myself to wake up from this insane dream.

  But the clouds don’t part and, as my parents cling to each other and comfort one another, I know that my plan—what I came down here to tell them—is just as strong now as it was ten minutes ago.

  My father said I was selfish. I’m not.

  I know I’m probably in shock, probably not able to process, but I’m not the one who’s hurting here. I’m not the one who’s worried and worked and prayed for another person so tirelessly.

  They’ve kept this from me for a reason, and I’m not willing to let them down. I don’t want to succumb to a life like the parents they are describing.

  My parents.

  My parents?

  I sit up straight on the steps.

  My parents are David and Patricia Gillan, the people who have loved me and cared for me since I was born.

  They have never once treated me like I was anything but their daughter, never once lashed out at me like I really had the blood of drug addicts flowing through my veins, I wasn’t going to become that person they were so afraid for me to be now.

  I can’t make sense of all of it right at this moment, but I know one thing: my resolve is strong.

  If they know that I know, they will have no choice but to change the way they treat me—I’ll no longer be their daughter. Not in the way I always have been. I will be their adopted daughter. The one who has problems because it’s who I am, twisted in my DNA and building in every chromosome.

  I will not become that person. Not now, not ever.

  I’ll help protect their secret. Lock it away in my brain. No one ever needs to know. I am Shayna Gillan. Daughter of Pastor and Mrs. Gillan.

  Period.

  “Mom? Dad? Are you guys awake?” I say, my voice small.

  I watch their necks straighten as they snap to attention. Mom uses the back of her wrist to wipe the tears from under her eyes, and Dad clutches her hand. They exchange a quick, panicked glance.

  “Merry Christmas,” I say, rubbing at my eyes like I’ve just woken up and haven’t heard anything. I did the same thing when I was six and saw them putting gifts under the tree. I let them think I still believed in Santa for four more years.

  Visible relief washes over both of them.

  “Merry Christmas, honey,” Mom says, her smile warm and happy. She glances at my dad, and her look says, See! There’s our girl. One little bump wasn’t worth all that worry. She’s still our angel.

  I give them both my biggest smile and reach out to hug them both, allowing the three-person group hug to wash over me. I’m the good daughter they both raised with so much love and hope.

  New, determined, good-girl Shayna starts now.

  ***

  Seven months. That’s how long I’ve been in this… relationship, for lack of a better word.

  You know, if I wer
e the type of girl that kept track of those types of things, that is.

  It’s not like I know how long we’ve been dating because it’s been seven months of bliss and I cherished each and every day. It’s not like I’ve been counting down, excited at the prospect of ending up in this swanky restaurant, hoping that he remembers what a special day this is, too.

  Or better, that he has some expensive gift tucked away in his crisp, well-tailored pants.

  Nope. I know this is my seven month anniversary because it was a reminder from my mother before I left this evening.

  “Shayna, that boy may have something up his sleeve for tonight, and you’d better be ready for it!” she’d said.

  “Like what? Bowling instead of fencing?” I asked with a sigh I quickly disguised. Operation Perfect Daughter was stretching into another grueling month. I knew I was doing it for all the best, noblest reasons, but I sometimes doubted Navy Seals went through this kind of endurance testing.

  Mom pulled the pin from my hair, letting the long blonde strands fall loose. “You look better with your hair down. And no. Tonight is your anniversary, or did you forget?” She fluffed my hair with her fingers and looked at me in that dreamy way that let me know she wouldn’t really be listening to anything I said.

  “Anniversary of what? Selling my soul?” I griped. I would have felt guilty if she looked crushed, but Mom didn’t even flinch. In fact, she smiled like it was some kind of funny joke.

  “No, of dating Nolan,” Mom scoffed, shaking her head and tugging playfully on my hair.

  “Oh, so sort of the same thing,” I mumbled. No matter how much my parents have tried to change me, the one thing they haven’t been able to work the kinks out of my snark.

  “Don’t mumble, Shayna,” my mother sing-songed. “And put on a different dress. This could be a special night, and you’ll want to remember it as such. That dress won’t do.” She picked at the skirt of my perfectly fine floral print sundress and frowned.

  My mom’s presence always made me feel like I was living in a different century.

  “How long has it been?” I asked, swirling the brush into my bronzer and not meeting Mom’s stare.

  “You mean you don’t know?” Mom looked at me in the mirror, her eyes trying to search mine so she could gauge whether or not I was kidding.

  “Can’t say that I do,” I said evenly. I really had no idea. It hasn’t been a whirlwind romance. In fact, it was sort of been the opposite.

  My mom sighed dramatically and shook her head like she was going to chalk it all up to me being so twitter pated in love or something. “Seven months. In my day, seven months was definitely long enough to hope for a… proposal.” She waggled her eyebrows suggestively, and I put on way too much makeup, trying to concentrate on not deliberately gouging my eyes out.

  Perfect daughters do not use their makeup tools to show how their spirits are being crushed.

  My parent’s set me up with Nolan to help curb my wild behavior, but if I scored a ring out of it, that’d just a bonus for them. A big bonus. They’d finally feel like they could ease up on me a little. That I’d be safe.

  I tried to keep my breaths even, to not let on that the thought of a proposal made me want to hurl into my vanity drawer.

  The only thing that calmed me enough to walk out the door was the sight of my phone illuminating next to my makeup bag. A text from Carter, just saying hi.

  I’d found his number in my car on Christmas morning. He’d left it with a note saying to call anytime. We may not have properly said good-bye on that night months ago, but we started texting back and forth often. We never said much, just a joke, a good morning, a picture of the ocean while he rested on the beach next to his surfboard.

  And those things were enough to make me smile.

  To make me feel a little less alone in this crazy charade I was living.

  When I was thirteen, my parents made me do cotillion.

  I know it’s old school, but they thought it would give me the foundation to be a good Southern girl through and through—because that was their biggest goal as parents. To raise a proper Southern girl with poise and manners. Someone they could present to their massive church as an example of what a life with God could bring you.

  They said cotillion would be a night I’d never forget. I had to do it all, the manners classes, the ballroom dancing, interview classes, the big ass dress. Charles Thompson escorted me, and he had warts all over his hands. That’s the most prominent detail of that so-called unforgettable night. Because afterward my parents allowed me to go to a get-together with the other debutantes and their chaperones, which was where Charles’s twin brother, Kevin, gave me my first joint.

  I didn’t even really like the taste, and the buzz was only alright, but what I was instantly hooked on was the high of being able to present one persona to my church elder parents and another to my friends.

  Even if pot was the highlight of my cotillion experience, one thing I do remember from all of those classes is how to eat properly. So I can’t help but cringe as Nolan scratches his fork on his plate, again and again, twisting his spaghetti around the tines. The more he twists, the less pasta there actually is wrapped around it.

  “You may want to use a spoon, too,” I say, holding mine out to him.

  “A spoon?” Nolan looks up like an over-eager puppy about to learn a new trick. He takes the utensil from my hand, but looks confused.

  I tuck back a sigh and explain patiently. “You twist your fork onto the spoon rather than the plate, it makes it a little easier.” I’m blowing his mind with this basic knowledge. “Or, you could use the side of a bowl or something.”

  This is how the majority of our dates go.

  We do something low key like dinner or a movie where our main interaction consists of staring at the screen while we share a tub of buttery popcorn or focusing on our plates of food. Nolan is fairly quiet, and when we do manage some conversation, it usually revolves around pretty boring everyday crap or the occasional lesson in etiquette from me. Which is kind of ironic and ludicrous.

  Or, if we’ve seen every single movie playing—including kiddie animated stuff and cheesy rom-coms, which I hate but put up with—I tag along to the fencing school he attends so I can sit in the corner on my phone and pretend I understand the rules or have any interest while he practices. Every once in a while Nolan lifts his mask and gives me an eager grin as he wipes sweat from his face. I press my lips up in the best smile I can manage, trying to fake the part of being the perfect supportive girlfriend.

  What we never, ever do is talk about anything real or important. As much as thoughts of my adoption race through my brain day and night, I never say a word to Nolan. We don’t drive out to deserted lookouts and talk and kiss under a smattering of stars. He never touches my leg and makes shivers go up and down my spine. He never pierces me with a single look and demands to know what I want. We never unwrap the perfect shiny paper and see what lies underneath.

  We both put on a good front, are perfectly polite and nice to each other, and play the parts we were assigned.

  It’s fine. It’s all part of the plan.

  The one that levels out my life and turns me back into the daughter my parents always imagined they’d end up with.

  The parents introduced me to Nolan at a church New Year’s Day coat drive. His father was the new minister of the other mega church in town, something that would normally drive my father batty—even the Jesus business is cut-throat and Dad always hated when a competing church would get a new—or even worse, younger pastor because that meant his head count might be in jeopardy.

  But he perked up when he learned that the Bryant’s had a son two years older than me, and wasted no time pushing us together when the opportunity presented itself.

  It’s okay, I needed a break from the life I was living. If I didn’t step back, I’d probably end up on some cheesy reality show by now, Rich Girls Rebel or something. Because the truth is, I had no reason to be
acting the way I was. I mean, I didn’t have shitty parents like my friend Quinn, or blatant self-esteem issues like Tessa, I was just… bored.

  The thing is, when I came stumbling in last Christmas Eve after Carter dropped me off at home, I wanted to change. I hit my own personal rock bottom. But I guess you really do need to be careful what you wish for, because the changes my life wound up taking were nothing like what I had in mind.

  I keep going back in my head to that moment I tiptoed out to the pool house and raided the liquor cabinet, trying to forget the way my evening ended with Carter. The way he looked at me with sad eyes, like he knew what I was feeling, but couldn’t fix.

  I keep wondering what might have happened if I managed to keep quiet as I made my way into the main house. What could have happened if I didn’t end up falling down in front of Mom and Dad and a pile of their church friends, if my parents never had to put their foot down? If I had never heard the secret they’d kept from me and had my life click together in a way I never imagined possible?

  I have a theory.

  A crazy theory.

  I think I would have gone up to my quiet, cozy room. I think I would have slipped out of my party dress and into my thin cotton nightshirt and shorty shorts. I would have taken a deep breath… and I would have called Carter.

  I was always the kind of girl who got liquid courage after enough to drink, and I think that night I would have wound up talking to him. All night.

  And I think I’m right about it because we wound up doing exactly that a few times since Christmas Eve. It took a couple of weeks for me to get the guts to try texting sober… and a couple more for me to get up the guts to sneak just a little vanilla vodka and call very late and a little tipsy.

  Conversations with Carter have run the range from awkward to hilarious to soul-bearing… and they always feel a little surreal. I turn over the things he’s said to me.

  Stop trying to please everyone else, Shayna. You’re so busy worrying about what other people want for you, you forget how to want for yourself.

  Did I ever tell you your eyes remind me of moonstone? Don’t laugh! I was really into geology when I was a kid, and that was my favorite stone. Yours look like that… and I think a lot about how they looked that night.