The Path We Take (Young Love Book 2)

by Kylie Key

  I waved them goodbye, my smile and laughter fake. Because reality had hit, life was going to go on without me. Everyone would carry on as normal, my friends had plans, they had things to do, places to go, people to see.

  Without me.

  And Lucy and my gymnastics squad would keep training, keep competing.

  Without me.

  I went back to my room, lying on my bed crying, knowing that the world as I knew it had changed in the blink of an eye, because of one stupid soccer game at one stupid party.

  Because of one stupid boy.

  Taylor Jensen.

  CHAPTER 3

  The last week of school flew by with my doctor's appointments, physical therapy sessions and Damon's graduation. It was hard to believe that in a few months Damon would be off to college, that my big brother would be leaving home. It was something I should have been excited about, but all I was doing was wallowing in my own pathetic tragedy.

  And instead of summer vacation being something to look forward to, now I dreaded it. Just weeks ago I’d envisioned a schedule of gym camps, beach parties, shopping expeditions and trips away. But now it was going to be a tortuous wait until I got knee surgery. A scan had revealed my worst nightmare, a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament which required full knee reconstruction.

  My life could not possibly get any worse.

  Yet it did.

  Taylor Jensen had texted, many times in fact. He’d called and left voice messages: Let’s get together, Can’t wait to go out again and I miss you Domi.

  I texted back that it was over, my exact words were: I don’t think it’s going to work between us. Sorry, Domi. I could see no future with him. As cute as he was, I couldn’t forget that he hadn’t accompanied me to the hospital in my darkest hour, and that he didn’t visit me at home when I’d been confined to the couch.

  Stupidly, I assumed that would be it. Our relationship would fade into the sunset, I would forever remember him as my first crush, my first date, my first kiss, and he would go back to dating cheerleaders and surfers.

  It was Trieste who sent me the screenshots of what he’d posted online in a group chat. That he’d dumped me, that I, Dominique Strauss, was a lousy kisser, that I had the kissing skills of a fish.

  At first I was outraged — how did a fish kiss? How did he know what a fish kissed like? Had he kissed one?

  Then I was angry — how dare he talk about me in a group chat that I couldn't access?

  Then I was sad — why would he try to degrade and belittle me? Make my life miserable? Ruin my reputation? For what reason?

  I had never blamed him for my injury, though maybe secretly, deep down, I held him accountable. I'd never said a bad thing about him, never mentioned his lousy, slobbery kisses to anyone, even my best friends.

  It had been another instance where I'd been reduced to sobbing into my pillows. And this time, Dad caught me.

  "Hey, hey, hey, Blossom, what's going on? Are you okay?"

  "No I'm not and it's all your fault," I cried.

  "My fault? What's my fault?" I hated it when parents spoke serenely while you were in the throes of hysterics.

  "You let Taylor Jensen take me out on a date. And now he's telling everyone I'm a bad kisser. I'm going to be the laughing stock of the whole school."

  "Hey Blossom, it can't be that bad," Dad said, again in that quiet, gentle tone that riled me up more.

  "You're not the one who's reputation is being destroyed. My life is over!" I dramatically buried myself in the mountain of throw pillows.

  It seemed that in the past three weeks I'd cried more than I ever had in my whole life. How had things gone so wrong so quickly? Why was this happening to me? What had I done to deserve it?

  Was it because I answered my parents back? Or that I didn't help enough around the house? That I'd laughed at Mariana when she missed her vault landing and ended up on her butt? Or said that Selina's new shoes were ugly? What about when I'd ratted out Damon when he was an hour late on his curfew?

  "Hey, hey," Dad said, "he's just one boy."

  "But he's telling everyone I'm a lousy kisser and I kiss like a fish."

  "He's a jerk then," Dad stated.

  "My life sucks Daddy," I whimpered, "everything is going wrong." And I couldn't stop the tears.

  "No, no, no," Dad soothed, stroking my hair, "it doesn't suck. Your knee will get fixed, you'll be back at gymnastics in no time."

  But his words could not console me. I could think of nothing but the throb in my knee and an uncertain and unknown future. I could only see a wall of pain, a shattered life with no meaning, no direction, no hope.

  I had no back up plan. Gymnastics had been everything. I couldn't dance, I couldn't sing, couldn't act, couldn't play a musical instrument, tell jokes or write stories. I couldn't bake cakes, paint pictures, sew, draw or design. I was talentless.

  Except for flips, somersaults, swinging on bars and walking along a four inch beam.

  But not anymore.

  Now I was an injured, washed-up gymnast, who couldn't even kiss.

  IT WAS A MONDAY EVENING and on Mom's instruction I was preparing a salad for dinner, which entailed opening a bag of lettuce leaves and putting them into a bowl. Cassian walked into the kitchen, going straight to the fridge and pouring himself a glass of milk.

  "Just help yourself, why don't you? Anyone would think you lived here," I playfully growled at him.

  He grinned. "And how's your day been?" He took one of the cherry tomatoes that I was assembling in the bowl. I shooed his hand away.

  "Good," I snapped, though I hadn't done much more than move from my bed, to the couch, to the pool. "Dad's not back yet." Dad had taken Daniela and Ryder for a drive down the coast. He'd wanted me to join them but I had told him I needed to do my rehab. I considered lounging in the pool water therapy.

  "I know," he said. He sat himself down at the breakfast bar, across from me. I moved the bowl out of his reach. "I wanted to ask you a favor."

  "Sure," I said, opening a jar of marinated feta, assuming it would be a babysitting request. If he and Paola had an evening out I was usually asked to help out, and I never minded. He always paid generously.

  "Would you be interested in some volunteer work?" I looked up and frowned at him. "At the hospital. I thought it would be a good thing for your résumé, you know for college applications."

  College applications. I immediately guessed that Mom had put him up for this. With my gymnastics scholarship now in doubt, I obviously had to start thinking about Plan B and up till three weeks ago there had never been a Plan B. Hadn't needed one.

  "It can never hurt to do some community work..."

  "What's it doing?" I interrupted, picturing myself pumping out hand sanitizer to every visitor to the hospital. It seemed like the worst thing imaginable.

  "Visiting a patient." I looked up with interest and he paused. "I have a burns patient." My curiosity was piqued. "A young boy. He's been very badly burnt. He's going to be with us for some time. I thought you could visit."

  "How often?" I asked warily.

  "Once a week. For an hour?"

  An hour a week? It was an appealing proposition, a teeny tiny commitment to get my résumé upgraded and Mom had been mentioning the importance of having outside activities to boost my college applications. I had been thinking I might help coach younger kids at the gym, but that would come after my surgery. "What would I do?"

  "Just talk to him, maybe read, listen to music? He doesn't have family close by."

  "How badly burnt is he? Does he look...?" I'd seen pictures of burn victims and I wondered if I had the stomach to see scars in real life.

  "He's bandaged up," Cassian said, "so you won't see the burns. He's burnt down one side of his body."

  "How did it happen?"

  "He was in a car accident," Cassian said, and he sipped on his drink. "Do you have physical therapy tomorrow?" I nodded. I was having two sessions a week and doing my exercises at home. "Well,
pop in after your appointment and I'll introduce you."

  MOM ACTED SURPRISED that I was doing volunteer work (like she hadn't been the one to encourage it) and she suggested I take some books and CDs along. I told her CDs were outdated and she looked offended. She selected a stack of books, including Harry Potter, Where The Wild Things Are and The Very Hungry Caterpillar, figuring that they covered what "a young boy" might want to read. I didn't argue, but felt sure there would be a bunch of books and games at the hospital.

  Cassian met me at the elevator when I texted him to say I was on my way up to the burns unit. At the reception desk he introduced me to Jill, who was Spider's lead nurse.

  "Spider?" I asked, trying not to wince. "That's his name?" Who in this life was called Spider, even as a nickname?

  Cassian didn't answer, but he nodded behind him to a room where I could see a patient on a bed. He opened a door into a small alcove where he instructed me to put on a hat, gloves and face mask.

  "It's not that we want to hide your face," Cassian said, with a wink, "it's to stop the risk of infection. The biggest danger to burn victims is infection."

  "Oh," I said, as I struggled to pull on the vinyl gloves, starting to feel incapable, that I might be in way over my head.

  “Okay then," Cassian said, and he adjusted my hair under the hat. There was no mirror to check whether he'd made me look better or worse.

  "Are you sure I can do this?" Through the glass door I could see more closely that the person on the bed was bigger than a child, but he was facing the other side of the room. There were all sorts of machines surrounding the bed. "I'm just reading him stories, aren't I?"

  Cassian squeezed my shoulder. "You'll be fine. No need to be nervous," he said, correctly sensing my apprehension.

  He put on his face mask and I followed him through. The room was quiet, though the television screen flashed on the wall at the end of the bed.

  "Hey there, how are you doing?" Cassian said, sounding like his big brother voice and not like a doctor at all. I stood half hidden behind him, feeling afraid to look at the bandaged body. But Cassian eased me to his side and I tried to keep my eyes expressionless as I registered the boy lying on his right side. He wore a black beanie on his head, making me think his hair might have been burnt off. He must have been my age, or probably older as he appeared to have a tattoo on his right cheek. With the way his head rested on the pillow it was hard to see what it was and I didn't want to be seen as staring. I knew I wouldn't be reading him The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

  "Hey Doctor Cash," the boy said, his voice sounding weak and husky. He slowly raised his right forearm, holding up his hand with his fingers spread. Cassian touched his gloved hand to it, holding it there for a few seconds, like some weird Star Trek greeting. The boy's eyes turned to me, eyes of ice blue and something in his gaze unnerved me, making me lean closer into Cassian.

  "Spider, this is my little sister Dominique." I made myself smile, though my mind was full of jumbled thoughts: He's not a 10 year old, he's tattooed, I've not nothing in common with him, he doesn't look like a Harry Potter fan, what could I possibly read to him?

  "Pleased to meet you," I said, though terrified was probably a more accurate word.

  "Pleased to meet you Dominique," he said, and he raised his hand again, so I assumed I should give him the same palm salute that Cassian had. I noticed an IV line attached at the elbow and a cannula attached to the back of his hand. Bandages covered three quarters of his chest, leaving the skin from the top of his right shoulder down to his torso exposed. That skin seemed normal. A sheet covered his lower body.

  Cassian laughed. “I see you two are going to get along just fine!"

  I looked back at Spider to find him watching me. I took my hand away, embarrassed that I had made him hold it there for so long.

  Spider's hand dropped down to the sheet as if it had been an effort to hold it up and he closed his eyes for a moment.

  "So," Cassian said, pulling up a chair for me. I sat down gingerly on account of my knee; bending it increased the discomfort. He continued in his doctor's voice, "Spider has been with us for eight weeks now, after having a car accident on the interstate. We had him in an induced coma for the first four weeks, so he doesn't remember much." Spider gave the barest of shakes of his head. "His whole left side from his neck down has been burnt. The pressure bandages help the healing. They have to stay on all the time. But they get changed everyday and the skin gets washed. He's going to be with us for awhile, six to eight months." My mouth dropped open and Cash added, "All going well."

  "Wow," I said, my mind trying to comprehend how someone could endure being in hospital for so long.

  "Now, Dominique is a fantastic little gymnast," Cash carried on, "but she took a tumble and tore her ACL which is the ligament on her knee and it’s put her in a brace for the summer." I felt the slightest quiver of my lower lip and quickly bit at it, afraid my emotions would burst out. "She's having physical therapy and is awaiting surgery, but that's why I suggested she could visit, on the days she has to come in for therapy." He grinned at Spider, "And you know how you've been having trouble sleeping? Well, an hour of her rambling should cure that!"

  I gasped and Cassian crouched down to my level and squeezed my shoulder. "Just joking, kiddo," and he winked at Spider.

  I poked my tongue out, but realized he couldn't see through the mask so I said sarcastically, "You're so funny, you should have been a comedian."

  Cash laughed it off and stood. "I'll try and make it back shortly, but call Jill if you need anything," he said to me. Then he turned to Spider and said quietly, "Pain okay?"

  Spider nodded and I watched Cassian leave, pulling the sliding door shut. I watched him take off his mask and gloves and bin them and then go out into the corridor. My heart started to beat faster as I wondered what I was supposed to say to this boy. I rearranged the bag at my feet and angled my chair, brushing at the denim skirt I was wearing, adjusting my knee brace. I couldn't think how I could possibly keep a conversation going for ten minutes, let alone an hour.

  "I'm sorry about your knee," Spider said, and I looked up and in that moment I felt overwhelmed, that this boy who was burned beyond horror, who faced a future of pain and scars and disability, was apologetic for my insignificant, pitiful, fixable injury. In that one sentence, uttered with a raspy effort, he tore my heart to shreds.

  "Thank...thank you," I stuttered, relieved that he couldn't see my wobbly chin. "And I'm sorry about your accident too."

  He smiled, a weak smile, like it was hard work, like it hurt, but his eyes told me he was putting in a hundred percent effort. It made me feel feeble, shallow, that I had spent the past three weeks angry and bitter and full of self-pity that my future had been stolen away from me. Like I self-righteously deserved to have the future I had planned and dreamed about.

  Yet, lying in front of me was a boy who had survived a horrendous car crash and was lucky to be alive.

  "Do you need anything?" I asked, "A drink of water?" A jug and a glass with a straw sat on the bedside cabinet. Spider shook his head. "Do you want me to read to you?" I reached down for my tote bag. "My Mom made me bring some books, but we thought you were ten years old, so she gave me some kids books."

  "You thought I was ten?"

  "Cassian said a young boy. So we just guessed." I pulled out The Very Hungry Caterpillar and faced the cover to him.

  "Sure," he said, with the faintest of smiles.

  "Really?" I asked, convinced he was just trying to be nice. "This is for kids. Cassian's daughter loves it. You've probably read it a thousand times."

  Spider shook his head. "I don't think so."

  "You don't think you've read it?" I asked. "But every kid reads this book." I opened a random page and showed him, "It has holes in the pages where the caterpillar has eaten. You must remember?"

  Spider shook his head again and he lifted his head up a little, moving it against the pillow. I could see now that the tattoo on
his cheek was a spider's web. It covered most of the cheek, the web going from his lip to his nose, up to his eye and out to his ear. It trailed off down his neck. I was accustomed to tattoos, but I didn't really like them. Dad had some old ones on his arms, done in the time when tattoos were an act of rebellion, and Magdala's husband Nathan was tattooed over his whole upper body and arms, most of them a testament of his love for her and their children. Though certainly not his face. In the world I lived in facial tattoos were synonymous with trailer trash, motorbikes or gangs. I wondered what category Spider came into.

  I averted my eyes back to the book, aware I'd stared a little too long. "Okay then," I said, disappointed with myself for wanting to stereotype this boy, "The Very Hungry Caterpillar. By Eric Carle."

  I held up each page for Spider to see, and I wiggled my fingers in the page holes, like I usually did when reading it to Daniela and Ryder. I could see he was trying to smile, trying to stay alert, but by the time the caterpillar spun his cocoon, Spider's eyes were closed. I read to the end of the book, unsure of whether I should get up and leave. Seemed Cassian was right; I could put people to sleep.

  I tried to quietly return the book back into the bag, inadvertently shifting my chair, causing a scraping sound.

  "I'm not asleep," Spider said, surprising me.

  "I thought Cassian was right," I joked, "I thought I performed a miracle."

  "You're not leaving?" I heard a hint of desperation in his voice, and he opened his eyes.

  "No," I said, noticing his watering eyes. "It wasn't that sad was it?" It was supposed to be a joke but to my own ears it sounded condescending, as if I'd mocked him. Embarrassed, I rummaged in the bag again. "Do you want another story?" I spoke quickly, "I can read you something else. I've got Harry Potter."

  The tears dribbled down his cheek, and I felt a little freaked. Had I just made him cry? "Do you want me to get Jill?" I asked in a panic, "I could go and get her."

  It took him a few seconds to answer. "Just talk to me." The tears on his cheek looked like dew on a spider's web.