Fall (Roam Series, Book Two)

by Stedronsky, Kimberly

  “She existed!” I shouted, coughing and crying into his shoulder. He held me as I tried to catch my breath.

  “We don’t know… what happened. We know you can’t go back twice… and you can’t carry the baby through.”

  I spread my hand over my stomach, through the blanket and hospital gown. “And my baby? Here?”

  Logan cupped his hand behind my neck, his eyes shifting down.

  I knew. It was all over.

  Eva was gone, and so was my other baby.

  “Get me out of here,” I reached for my inner elbow, yanking at the IV needle in my arm. It detached, sending blood and water splashing across my arm. I welcomed the pain; Logan held my arm, calling for a nurse. “Get me out of here! I want to leave!”

  I marked that moment as the end.

  Words were ineffective; I stopped speaking. I turned inward, sleeping most of my day and night. I moved in and out of nightmares, some new, some old, but all muted through whatever drug the doctor had ordered for me to help with the anxiety.

  The more medication he gave me, the easier it was to escape, and I finally understood how West lost control in 1977.

  I succumbed to the hum in my brain, screaming when the world around me became too vivid or real. At some point, Morgan’s voice penetrated the shield in my mind. I recognized that it was snowing, and slowly the world came into focus around me. “…to fill out. Now, these applications are exhausting, and they all have these fees, and you have them all color-coded, but I have no idea what your system is. I think the one for Yale has subtypes or something… were you thinking a dual major? That’s the only thing I can think of, and-…,”

  “Morgan?” I watched her face. She lifted her eyes to mine, raising her eyebrows. I watched them as they jumped near her forehead. “You got your eyebrows done?”

  “No, I did them myself. There isn’t much to do in here, waiting for you to come back to life.”

  “I died?”

  “No, you… gave up.” She glanced at the hospital room door nonchalantly. “Before I alert the guards… are you really here? Do you fully comprehend what’s happened, and you’re ready to join the living again?”

  “What is today?”

  “December first.”

  More than a week has passed?

  I turned my face away from her, toward the window of the hospital room. Beautiful poinsettias lined the shelf near the wall, next to a bowl. Narrowing my eyes, I stared at the bowl. “What is all of that?”

  “Get well wishes. Poinsettias are pretty popular right now, I guess.” She walked to the shelf, touching the small cards in each of the arrangements. “The May’s… the Rush’s… your class… your kickboxing instructor,” she screwed her face up disgustedly. “A lot of help those lessons were when you got mugged.”

  “What’s in that bowl?” I cringed, touching my throat tenderly. She grabbed the card between her fingers, shrugging.

  “Your hot history teacher. He sent you a water lily. How weird is that?”

  Water comforts you.

  I pressed my fingers between my eyes, holding back a dam of tears. “Were they all here?”

  “Everyone’s been here, Roam. No one is allowed in but me, Logan, and Dad.”

  “Even my teachers?”

  “The hot one has been here. A lot. Very entertaining. And your friend Violet? I never met her.”

  I nodded.

  She moved to the bed, crossing her arms over her chest. “Okay, I’m going to give it to you straight, before everyone comes in here and coddles the hell out of you.” She pulled her chair closer, sitting down next to me. “We’ve been down this shit road before. Life isn’t fair.” Grabbing my hand, she held it tightly, and I let the tears slip down my cheeks as I listened to her.

  “I know that your heart is breaking. We have to distract until it heals. That’s the best way. So… like I was saying,” she pulled the massive stack of folders from beneath the chair. “We need to get all of the applications done and sent in before January.”

  “Sounds good. Can we maybe… wait until I get home? I need to… I need to get out of here,” I said softly.

  “One thing at a time- sounds like a plan.” She stood up, wagging her thumb at the door. “I’m going to get the troops now. Are you sure you’re normal again?”

  I stared at her blankly. Finally, I decided to answer honestly. “I’ll never be normal again, Morgan.”

  “Well, normal’s boring.” She hurried from the room, returning with what would be a parade of doctors, nurses, psychologists, and psychiatrists. Logan stayed with me the entire time, comforting, reassuring, and promising that we’d be leaving soon… always soon, that was the answer everyone would give me.

  In the middle of the night I stared at the television, tiredly resigning to a rerun of SpongeBob Squarepants. I couldn’t stand any real drama, not even the tense infomercials. Would the stain come out? Could he lose the weight? Will the solution clear the acne? Logan slept in a reclining chair in the corner. His phone lay on the adjustable table next to my water.

  I reached for his phone, flipping it open. Scrolling down through his contacts, I found exactly what I was looking for. I made sure the sound was completely down, and turned SpongeBob up slightly.

  West… it’s me. They keep telling me soon… but I’m getting nervous. Am I being held on a psych thing? Logan won’t give me a straight answer.

  I hit send. And I waited.

  His phone lit up in less than a minute.

  You’re on suicide watch for another 24 hours. I can’t get to you, and it’s killing me. Roam, none of this is your fault. I love you, baby.

  I closed his phone, shaking. I covered my stomach, trying so hard not to think of her tiny fists… her warm mouth, or her button nose…

  She crept in, and the sound of her cries in my memory shattered me. I turned into the pillow, sobbing, my throat strangled in agony. My heart broke and then broke again with every thought of her, sending waves of misery coursing from the pit of my stomach to my chest. Logan stirred and sat up quickly, moving to me in one stride.

  “Cam…,”

  “She was real?” I begged him, grasping the collar of his shirt in my fists. He nodded, holding me as close as he could.

  “She was real,” he promised, helping me find my sanity. “You fed her. I held her. We watched her sleep. She was real.”

  “I’m on suicide watch?”

  He looked taken aback, and then glanced at his phone in my lap. Cursing softly, he flipped it open, scrolling to his texts. “Asshole.”

  “Don’t… it’s not fair that you keep that from me.”

  “No one wants that idea in your head.”

  I stared at him, my expression vacant. “Do you think I’d do that to myself? To Morgan… or my dad… or you or West?”

  “The doctors don’t even know half of what you’ve been through.”

  Turning the hospital bracelet on my wrist absently, I cleared my throat. “Please let me use your phone. I want to call him.”

  “You’ll talk to him soon enough-…,”

  “Please, Logan,” I sniffed, taking a shaking breath. “Please.”

  He flipped his phone open and dialed before handing it to me.

  Half a ring sounded before he picked up. “Logan?”

  “It’s me,” I cleared my breaking voice. “It’s me.”

  “Oh Roam… please tell me you’re okay.”

  I closed my eyes tightly. “You were right… you were right from the beginning, West.” I began to talk through my tears, my voice thick with heartache. “Nothing good… nothing good comes of us. We have to find another way.”

  “Roam.”

  “I don’t want to see you… for a while,” I held Logan’s phone so tightly, I expected it to snap at my ear. “I need things to be how they were… before. For a while,” I repeated.

  “Baby.” His voice was strained; I heard his breathing accelerate. “I didn’t know she’d just disappear… I had no idea
.”

  “Stop,” I begged, pressing my palm to my forehead in an attempt to hold myself together.

  “I love you,” he struggled with control. “I love you.”

  “I love you too,” I closed the phone softly, handing it back to Logan. He held me while I cried, for much of the night, on and off as the nurses changed shifts and noted my condition. Let them write a novel about me. I’m sad… I have every right to be.

  Sometime in the morning, I fell into a dreamless sleep. After speaking to the psychiatrist on call around lunch time, he gave instructions for me to be discharged. We talked for more than a half an hour before I found the magic words that made him nod with satisfaction.

  “Maybe it all worked out… for the best.”

  In my bedroom, I curled into my bed, staring at the falling snow out my window. My dad’s truck had been returned, and Logan said that ultimately, less than an hour had passed while we were gone. Though I was given a note excusing me from school for the following week (or until I felt better) I planned to go back tomorrow. I stared at myself in the full-length mirror across from my bed. My swimming medals hung from the corner of the glass, but something else caught my eye.

  The ultrasound snapshot was wedged in the frame of the mirror, the arrow drawn to indicate the tiny, black bubble that no longer existed.

  What is real? I pulled the pillow up to block my vision, too tired get up and rip the photo down. The nightmares, North Carolina, Russia, the dreams of the ice castle, 1977, 1955…

  Eva…

  “Roam,” Morgan knocked softly. “Can I come in?”

  I closed my eyes, pretending to sleep. Eventually, I pretended hard enough to make it happen.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Wow… OMG, he totally grabbed you,” Ally-May cringed at my neck, and I self-consciously adjusted my gray, cable knit sweater, lifting the gray and green scarf. “Don’t hide it, everyone knows what happened to you. It’s just so awful.” She lifted her hand to her mouth, as if telling me a juicy secret. “You’re never going to believe this, but you’re already getting early nods for prom queen. No joke.”

  “I really… just need to get back to normal, you know?” I shifted the books in my hand, returning waves from people I barely spoke to. Everyone knows what happened?

  No one knows what happened.

  “Well, I’m here for you. Let’s hang out on Saturday, okay? Shopping?”

  “Okay.” I nodded, fishing in my locker. “Do you have a pencil?”

  “Sure,” she handed me a mechanical pencil. “Oh, girl, you’ll never believe… well, I’ll just let it be a surprise,” she grinned and winked, skipping off toward her first period class. “See you at lunch?”

  “Okay,” I turned toward my history class, slipping in just as the bell rang.

  I moved to a seat against the wall in the back, gathering my hair to my left shoulder. When Logan picked me up for school, I could barely find words to speak to him in the car. He let me sit in silence, not pushing me to talk about how I was feeling. He talked about Violet going back to Virginia until winter break, and how she wanted to have said good-bye to me before she left.

  Now, I wished I’d stayed at home. The constant chatter in the classroom, the hectic halls, the bell clamoring; my nerves were on edge, and it was only first period.

  “Ugh…vacation’s over,” Michelle glanced at the front of the classroom and rolled her eyes, finishing a quick text as the door closed with a heavy thud.

  My heart stopped.

  “Hey, Mr. Perry,” two boys in the front gave him a laughing welcome, reaching for fist-bumps. He obliged, his eyes scanning the seats.

  He froze when he saw me.

  He wore exactly what he wore on the first day of school; khakis, white dress shirt, brown leather loafers. His face, cleanly shaven, held no marks of the brutal beating he’d received in his basement. His eyes, the deepest blue of all oceans, touched me with their gaze.

  “What, they just gave you your job back?” I blurted, my words wavering. The entire class fell silent at my incredibly intrusive outburst.

  He loosened his collar before running his hand through his hair. I can’t cry in the middle of class. How could he do this to me, with no warning?

  “Good to see you, Miss Camden. I didn’t think you’d be back until next week,” he smiled curtly, but his eyes sent silent apologies. I would have told you. I couldn’t answer; my throat was tied in knots with my stomach. He watched my eyes fill with tears and quickly turned his back to the class, moving to the board. “I’m told you finished off with The Rise of Russia. We’re going to move on to World Economy, specifically 1500-1700. Causation and the west’s expansion-…,”

  “…was the result of men, and their conquering visions to expand and rule the whole world.” I grabbed my books, ready to walk out of the classroom.

  “Hormones,” Brad Joric murmured, laughing under his breath. I felt my knees buckle before I could stand up.

  West turned to Brad, his jaw clenched. His eyes turned thunderous gray. “Get out of my class,” he growled, pointing to the door.

  Brad jumped back defensively, rolling his eyes at me before heading for the door. The entire classroom was frigidly uncomfortable, silence roaring down each aisle. I cleared my throat, adjusting the scarf to better cover Troy’s crushing handprint. “And without leaders… like Cortes or Vasco da Gama, there would have been no voyages or settlements in Asia or the Americas,” I rambled, my voice quivering.

  West gazed at me, the fury in his eyes simmering to the same intimate love and compassion I’d known from him for so long. “Absolutely correct, Miss Camden. You’re just as brilliant as I remember,” he managed an impartial smile, turning back to the white board.

  I shifted in my seat and opened my notebook, trying to apply my shaking pencil to the paper. He thought I’d be at home… do I want him here?

  I do.

  I watched him teach, charming the class with the history of our world’s economy, and I paid extra attention to his every look my way. His deep, even voice soothed me, and after a half an hour, my hands finally stopped shaking. Now that I knew him like I did, I realized that he spoke of history as though he was simply recalling memories, describing people, places, and events in a way that had the entire class enthralled.

  “Maps continued to change with every newly discovered land.” He glanced at the clock on the wall, placing the cap on his dry erase marker. The board was covered in his neat, capitalized handwriting. “Your assignment tonight is to make a map of the world from the year 1500. That’s it. It can be as detailed or as crude as you’d like. Tomorrow, I’ll ask you to change a specific detail, and I’ll continue to do so for the rest of the week. We’ll see how closely our maps relate by Friday, when you’ll turn them in. Fifty points.”

  The bell rang. I slowly gathered my books, watching him as he moved between desks to walk to me.

  “Roam,” he said softly, coming as close as he could without touching me, “you should be resting at home, in bed,” he scanned my face.

  I exhaled sharply, my stomach flipping. He smelled like aftershave and fabric softener…

  And Eva.

  “You smell like her,” I whispered in one exhaling breath. I tripped on the desk, and he caught me before I lost my footing.

  “I want you to go home. Now,” he pleaded, his restraint obvious as he struggled to not touch me. “It’s too soon.”

  “I got her,” Logan’s voice broke through the torrent of pain that consumed me. “Come on, Cam. Statistics.”

  “Wait.” I held my palm in the air, taking deep, calming breaths. “Wait.” I turned to West, trying not to cry. “I am staying. I need to bring my GPA back up. I will… lose myself… at home,” I borrowed Logan’s words. “I’m glad that you’re here, all day, in the same place as I am, West. But please… give me space. Don’t talk to me for a while. Just let me… be.”

  The pain slashed across his face, and I hated myself for putting it th
ere. His professional mask returned before I could blink. “I will respect that, Roam. You know where to find me,” he said softly, giving Logan a sideways glance before returning to his desk.

  I walked with Logan into the halls, and he gripped my arm tightly. “It’s good that he’s here, Cam. Just let him be in the background while you… heal.”

  “Did you know he’d be here?”

  “I knew he was going to try to get his job back. I didn’t know it’d be so soon.”

  “I have to get to class.”

  I made it through the entire day without seeing West again. I spent much of the evening diving into his map assignment, thankful to keep my mind occupied with something other than the horrible emptiness that threatened every time my thoughts wandered. The prescription sleeping pills that the doctor had given me sat unopened on my dresser. I chanced another night without dreams, and, luckily, woke the next morning without a single nightmare.

  The next day, when I walked in, he greeted me with polite distance, moving on with the lesson. He walked around the classroom looking at our maps, stopping at a few to comment. “Michelle, you may want to check your information. I’ve never seen a map from the 1500’s with Ohio on it.”

  “This is a map of the future,” she explained.

  He nodded, continuing down the aisle to where I sat in the back row….

  …and rolled his eyes so that only I could see.

  I couldn’t stifle the burst of laughter in time; it escaped from my chest, almost relieved. Curling his lips inward to refrain from laughing with me, he looked down at my map. “Nice... class, take a look at Miss Camden’s map.” He lifted my paper, taped together using six sheets of manila construction paper. “This is called a Cantino planisphere. Notice the two focal circles, and the elaborate compass rose. Venice, Jerusalem… even the Alexandria lighthouse. She needed six pieces of paper to make this work, and what a great job.”

  “The original map was made of six glued parchment sheets,” I murmured softly, without looking at my classmates. “It was obsolete within months because the Portuguese continued to make so many mapping voyages. But- it was important because it showed the Italian’s knowledge of Brazil’s coastline, and how much of the Atlantic Coast of South America extended to the south.”