by Lily Foster
“No, but I have admired her every day from afar. She is hot. She comes into class wearing these prim little hipster-girl clothes one day, then these rocker chick outfits other days and she has these piercings snaking up her earlobe. Makes me think she’s a little minx in the sack.”
We all laughed at that one. “What’s her name?” I asked.
“He doesn’t take attendance so I don’t know.”
“You don’t even know her name?” Jimmy asked, laughing.
“Nope. I just know she’s beautiful. And I consider myself a math whiz but she blows me out of the water. Last week we got back a test that was just…brutal. I snuck a peek at her paper and she’d gotten an A. For some reason I find that kinda hot too.”
Colin laughed. “That’s ‘cause you’re practical, Terrence. You’re hoping she can fuck you and tutor you.”
“Enough of this bullshit,” Brandon said as he took the Frisbee from Terrence’s hand. “Incoming!” he shouted as he whipped the Frisbee right at the girl.
“I’m gonna kill you,” Terrence said to Brandon as the Frisbee whizzed by full speed, missing the girl’s face by a few centimeters.
“Oh shit,” we said collectively as the girl dropped a giant basket of wash all over the grass.
“You’re an ass, Brandon,” Terrence said as he started walking that way.
When she saw him approaching, her angry glare stayed fixed in our general direction and for a moment her eyes met mine. No way, I thought. Before I knew it, I was breaking into a jog and when I caught up with Terrence, my left arm instinctively went out and knocked him back, stopping him mid-stride. “What the fuck, Declan?”
Absently, I said, “I know her,” as I continued to make my way, determined, to Anna.
“I’m sorry about that,” I said, looking at her, my heart beating out of my chest. Her mouth went wide, no words, no sound.
“Declan?” she finally whispered.
“Anna, I can’t believe it’s you,” I said as I picked her up off the ground and hugged her close to me. I didn’t even think about it before I grabbed her. The level of emotion running through me at that moment overwhelmed any sense of rational thought I might have had. Seemed to be the same for Anna, as she clung to me and then I felt her body shake with…sobs?
I put her down and looked at her face with my hands resting on her shoulders. She wiped away a stray tear then and laughed as she said, “Sorry ‘bout that. I guess I wasn’t prepared for the shock.”
I noticed then that Terrence, Brandon, Jimmy and Colin were all standing around, looking at the two of us curiously. Jimmy broke in, “Introduce us to your friend, Banks.”
I cleared my throat, annoyed that they were interrupting my moment with her. “Uh, Anna, these are my friends, Brandon, Colin, Jimmy, and I think you know Terrence from calculus.”
They all exchanged hellos and Jimmy added, “I think our boy Terrence here wants to take you out in exchange for some tutoring sessions, Anna.”
Anna’s eyes went wide for a second and then she laughed. “Does that actually work for you guys? Do girls give up hours of their time to tutor you in exchange for the honor of snagging a date with you?”
Terrence pushed Jimmy in the chest. “Yeah, shut up, Jimmy. When I ask Anna out it will only be for the pleasure of her company.” He smiled at her then and she smiled back.
“Sorry, I have a boyfriend, Terrence, but if you need help with calculus, that’s no problem, really.”
Terrence looked visibly disappointed and I…I could have ground my teeth down to dust between having to stand by as my friends openly flirted with Anna and then hear her announce that she had a boyfriend.
I felt territorial over her, like she was mine. It was so long ago but I couldn’t shake those memories even if I’d tried. Not that I’d ever want to. Anna and I had spent two weeks together that summer and one very special night. I hadn’t seen her in over three years but it still felt like I was connected to her, bound to her in every way that was important.
I just stood there, staring at her as the rest of the guys bent down, falling all over themselves to pick up the laundry that had spilled out of the basket. “You boys better not say anything if you see me wearing clothes with grass stains this week. I’m not rewashing these.”
Colin said, “Brandon’s the one who aimed for you. He should have to rewash them.”
She looked at him, eyes wide. “You did that on purpose?”
He just shrugged and laughed. “Terrence has been drooling over you for weeks. Just wanted to help him out.”
“Fuck, Brandon, are you trying to kill me?” Terrence asked, pained.
Just then I saw Jimmy try to stick a pair of her panties into his pocket and I kicked him, hard. He shoved them into the basket then but his grunt had gotten Anna’s attention and she saw what had happened. She seemed uncomfortable as she said, “I’ve gotta go. It was nice meeting you guys.” Then she looked to me, “Declan? I’ll see you around?”
“Yeah,” was all I managed to get out. I watched her walk towards her dorm, making a mental note that she lived next to me in Loyola Hall. This whole time, she’d been living in the dorm next to mine?
Brandon was eyeing me suspiciously. “What the hell was that, Banks?”
I ignored him. “Seriously, Jimmy, you were stealing her underwear?”
He shrugged, “I was trying to snag a souvenir for Terrence.”
Brandon shoved Jimmy from behind. “That’s the kind of souvenir you deserve after bagging a girl, not after knocking her laundry all over the floor. Anna probably thinks you’re a freak with a weird fetish.”
Colin said, “You were right, Terrence, there’s something about her. She’s gorgeous.”
“I know,” he said, sounding far off and sad. “I watch her every day. She has a sick body, I love the way her hair smells, and she just seems nice, you know?”
“And she has a boyfriend,” I said in an end-of-story kind of way.
Brandon said, “Ok, Declan, why did you two look like long lost, star-crossed lovers when you first saw each other?”
“Did you two have something?” Terrence asked.
I wasn’t telling them shit. I couldn’t even process the fact that she was here yet, that she still existed, that she was real.
“Declan?” Colin prodded.
“I haven’t seen her in years,” I said absently as I left them standing there and walked back to the dorm. When I got there, I closed my door behind me and locked it. I needed to be alone. I sat on the bed and raked my hands through my hair.
Anna Clarke was here, at my school, sleeping in a bed just fifty yards away from mine.
Holy.
Shit.
Chapter Two
Three years ago…
Anna
The limousine drove down a long, winding path that seemed to stretch on forever after we passed the sign that read: Heart Songs. The font they used on the sign, I thought, was all wrong. I was always tuned into design, how certain shapes and patterns evoked feelings, and I thought the sweeping script used on the sign just screamed funeral home. The name too. Why not call it New Beginnings? No, that sounded like a drug rehab place. What about Camp Hope? No, that sounded hopeless. Whatever—Camp Heart Songs, Camp Heart Strings, Camp Heart Break—it was all the same.
I stayed in the car when we pulled up to the central house, taking it all in from behind the tinted windows. It was posh, I conceded. My father was right, no impoverished grieving children would be here.
The central house was stately, like a beautiful, grand Adirondack-style estate. I noticed the other cars parked out front were all of the Benz, BMW and Land Rover variety. A few kids who looked to be around my age were walking about, smiling and talking. They were decked out in the same style clothes that everyone at my school wore. We all looked like clones, in fact.
How was I going to survive this? I didn’t want to talk about it. What was there to say? It was awful, fucking awful. There was no making this
better, no bringing Will back, no bringing Drew back…no undoing of that night. My life sucked and the only thing to do was to just keep putting one foot in front of the other.
I wasn’t sure how I did manage to get through my days, but I did. My grades had dropped considerably but given the fact that I had not one iota of energy left to devote towards sustained mental effort, I thought a B-minus average was pretty fucking great.
As I emerged from the car, I must have had a scowl on my face, as my thoughts were focused on my mother and father. The nerve, the absolute galling nerve of them. I needed help? I needed help? They were unbelievable. Un-fucking believable.
“You must be Anna.”
Startled, I looked up to see a kindly looking, middle-aged man standing in front of me, his hand making its way to my shoulder. I flinched. “Sorry, Anna.” He clasped his hands in front of him then and looked at me with a warm smile. “I’m Doctor Benjamin Roth but everyone here calls me Doctor Ben. You’ve been assigned to my group, Anna.”
“Oh.” Thoughts were running through my head such as, he probably thinks I’m a freak. And from the way I just recoiled from his touch, he was probably floating theories that I was an abuse victim too.
“Anna, I’ll let Cheryl show you to your room and then I’ll see you at one o’clock group after lunch, ok? It’s your first day here so feel free to just hang back and listen. Typically campers arrive on Saturday and have an individual session first, but since you were enrolled last minute, your schedule is a little mixed up. You and I will be meeting later this afternoon for an individual, ok?”
I just nodded. My thoughts were racing again. I was last minute? What did that mean? My parents had probably paid double just to get rid of me, to shove me off on someone else. And, oh crap, did I have to really sit through a group session? I was envisioning lots of emo-type adolescents, pouring out their hearts…ha-ha, I thought, playing their Heart Songs.
The driver followed me into my room and placed my bag onto my bed. I realized then that, one, I had not spoken a word to the guy yet and, two, that he had just heard that exchange between me and Dr. Ben. I turned to him. “Thank you. Did my parents arrange for your gratuity?” I asked as I reached into my bag for my wallet. My parents were thoughtless, and somewhat cheap, that is, unless they were spending on themselves. I figured the guy had definitely not been tipped.
“That’s unnecessary, Miss Clarke. Do you need anything else?” Ugh, his expression was sympathetic. He seemed like a nice enough guy, mid-twenties, I’d guessed.
“No, thank you,” I said as I met his eyes and placed a fifty in his hand. “I appreciate it.”
He smiled warmly at me again and nodded. He held my gaze and then squeezed my hand before extricating it and the fifty. He said, “I’ll be going then. Take care of yourself, Miss Clarke.”
How odd it was, I thought, that the driver had directed more warmth and subtle comfort my way in that one short moment than my own parents had in the months since my brother had died.
My room was small but well appointed. It wasn’t the Four Seasons but it was certainly not your standard camp bunk quarters either. I had my own room, a queen-sized bed made up with quality linens, and a bookshelf filled with upbeat themed books—no Sylvia Plath-type titles in sight. Didn’t matter, I had my own books and magazines with me. At fifteen, I preferred Architectural Digest over Teen Vogue. That’s not to say I was completely disinterested in fashion or pop culture, but I did feel somewhat different from my friends in that respect. I loved math, I loved drawing detailed sketches of structures, and I loved designing rooms in my mind. Layouts, window placement, lighting, patterns, fabrics, art, you name it. While other girls were on social media twenty-four-seven, I was on homebuilding sites where you could create mock plans, or on interior decorating blogs, soaking it all in.
I was lying across my bed, already unpacked, and flipping through a magazine when there was a knock on my door.
“Anna?” the girl asked as I opened the door.
“Yes,” I answered, my tone guarded but managing a smile.
“I’m Beth. Dr. Ben asked me to get you for lunch and take you to group after.”
“Oh great. Thanks, Beth.” I took a quick look in the mirror and then grabbed my key as I followed her.
“You just got here, Anna?”
“Yeah, what about you?”
“Oh, I’m here for the entire month,” Beth said, rolling her eyes.
“I’m here for two weeks, or slightly less, I guess. I think I’m a day late.”
“Yes, you got to miss your orientation yesterday.” She paused a second. “I was going to make some lame, snarky comment just then but really, being here has helped me, as much as I hate to admit it.”
“Oh.” I didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to know why it helped, how it helped, or what circumstances had landed her here in the first place.
We walked into a dining hall where I’d estimated there were no more than seventy-five other people eating lunch. There were long tables. Some kids sat alone, some in groups of two and some in larger groups of five or six. It was just like high school; the loners, the people with one close friend, and the social butterflies. I had always been a butterfly. Since Will, though, I’d longed to be a loner but Jonathan and my other friends weren’t having it. I remained a butterfly, whether I wanted to be one or not.
Beth led me through the line and we took our trays to a table where two other girls sat. She introduced me to Jane and Olivia and I murmured my hellos. They were all going into senior year of high school, I learned. All were in Dr. Ben’s group. “So, your first day, Anna? We’ll go easy on you today,” Olivia said with a warm smile.
“Dr. Ben said I could sit back and just listen today,” I said, obviously relieved at the thought of it.
Jane said, “Today you can get away with that but tomorrow, he’ll start. He’s subtle, he doesn’t push, but there’s something about him that—”
“Makes you want to spill,” Beth interjected. “It’s an experience, Anna, you’ll see.”
That first group session was an experience. I didn’t make one peep and neither did the two boys who were in the group. At one point, Dr. Ben gently prodded one of the boys, the one who looked to be about my age, but he just shook his head and kept his gaze directed at the floor. The other boy, Trent, just said affably, “Maybe next time, Dr. Ben.”
Paulina, a slim, pretty girl, was the focus of most of the session. She went into detail about her mother’s death. She described how the house smelled when she walked in, a mixture of what she would later learn to be gunfire and blood. She described what it felt like to pick her mother’s head off the floor and rest it in her lap, the way her mother’s blood soaked through her clothes. And she depicted the time that just elapsed as she sat there, doing nothing. The police arrived and she was surprised to find out later that she’d been screaming so loudly that a neighbor had alerted them. She hadn’t recalled making a sound.
I sat there, completely rapt, unable to take my eyes off of her as she spoke. At one point I felt eyes on me and looked over to see that boy staring at me. His eyes darted back to the floor as soon as we’d made eye contact.
I don’t remember exactly what Dr. Ben said to Paulina, but I recalled thinking that I liked him. I was no longer horrified by the thought of sitting with him one-on-one.
I left with the same girls after group and went to the pool with them for an hour before my session with Dr. Ben. “Is everyone that open?” I asked as we lounged on floats side by side.
“No,” Beth said. “In fact, those were the first words I’ve heard Paulina speak since she’s been here…almost two weeks. It seemed like she needed that, right?”
“Yeah,” Jane answered. “Seemed very cathartic for her.”
“That was intense,” I said.
“Heart Songs is nothing if not intense,” Olivia said as she rolled her eyes.
“So how was group, Anna? I hope that wasn’t too much, too soon.”
“Um, it was a lot to take in but…interesting, I guess. It’s hard to wrap my head around the idea that everyone here had something so shitty, I mean terrible, happen to them.”
Dr. Ben smiled. “Yes, everyone here has had some heavy stuff to deal with, yours truly included.”
We sat in silence for a moment before I asked, “So now, is this when I’m supposed to tell you my life story, why I’m here and all?”
“I know why your parents sent you. It’s all in your file.” He kept his kind gaze on me. “I know about your Will.”
The way he said “your” Will made my heart ache. That’s who he was, my Will. My brother, my best friend, my caretaker, my protector. “Is this going to help me?” I whispered.
“Time helps, Anna. Time does help. Talking helps for me, sharing things about the person I loved with others. I don’t ever want to forget. Remembering, though, brings pain too. That’s just how it is, Anna. It’s hard.”
“It is hard,” I said quietly and then tears began to roll down my cheeks unchecked. I had cried in the days following his death—cried silently, screamed into my pillow, broken things in my own controlled, quiet way. Now, though, I was sobbing. I was six tissues in before he said, “Tell me about him.”
What followed was ninety minutes of me talking nonstop, telling Dr. Ben my life story, all about Will, about my parents, about the circumstances surrounding Will’s death and the fallout from it. It was as if a dam had been breached and I couldn’t stop the flood of my thoughts, my words or my tears.
I walked out of his office feeling as if a giant weight had been lifted but I was also utterly exhausted. It was nearly dinnertime when we finished and I planned on getting a cold drink from the cafeteria and then crashing in my bedroom. I just couldn’t be a butterfly tonight.
I was the first one there. I grabbed a flavored water drink and was about to leave when fatigue took over. The cafeteria had the air conditioning cranking. It felt so good. I plopped down at a table and closed my eyes as I gulped the cold drink. “You look like you’ve been through hell.”
