Falling in Deep Collection Box Set

by Pauline Creeden

  “I’ve wanted and loved you from the first day I saw you, Lena.”

  Why does want always come before love, Truman? The question remains inside my head as he grips my waist and pulls me closer to him. As his fingers trace up my spine, I let my mind wander back to a time where Truman consumed me and I was earnestly happy in his arms.

  Before I can react, he is unclasping my starfish; it is falling toward the floor to land in a pool of silver and pearl against the berber carpet. So I am not allowed my small victory after all. A gasp escapes my lips as he pushes inside of me and I close my eyes tightly so that I can freefall into memory.

  Chapter 10

  When We Met

  A charity case.

  That’s all I am to this school, to whatever socialite do-gooder has made it their week’s mission to give X number of state wards scholarships and access to a “better” education. My current foster family said it is an opportunity I shouldn’t pass up, that it will give me a future. What do they care? I’ve only been with them three weeks and I can already see it in their eyes—they are ready to be rid of me. I’ll be amazed if another family will take me in. I’m nearly sixteen, an undesirable age for fosters and adoptions.

  I feel like I am walking around with the word orphan tattooed on my forehead, much like it is tattooed on my heart—a constant, aching reminder of the family I’ve never known. The family I’ll likely never know.

  I keep my head down and it makes me mad—the shorn locks, courtesy of my newest foster mother, provide no curtain of protection. It’s so short—a lopsided bob cut at chin level that does nothing to flatter my face. I have to keep the left side pinned back to make it look even remotely even.

  My first class is calculus. I hate math, so I am not surprised that the torture of my first day here is compounded by my first class being the worst, most frustrating subject that ever existed. Stupid Fibonacci and Euclid and Fermat. Stupid everyone that ever thought of anything to do with math. Stupid creator of math.

  I am so lost in my own thoughts, my demonization of all mathematicians who have ever lived, that I do not see him.

  We are a jumble of arms and legs and flying paperwork. “Jesus, watch out!” I quip; my voice is high-pitched and angry.

  “You ran into me, princess.”

  “Did my designer clothes give it away? Daddy said I should try and act normal here, so the common folk don’t get agitated.” The words expel from me; I mean them to be sharp and stinging, but instead they sound like a joke and he snorts with repressed laughter.

  We are still entangled. I’ve yet to see his face fully, but his clothes are rich, expertly aged with rips in the dark jeans and fading around the elbows of his tailored, salmon-colored dress shirt. It is not the school-approved uniform, the monochromatic palette that washes me out so severely.

  He stands up, our bodies finally separated, and hovers over me. Light floods in from a nearby window and makes the dark gold of his hair come alive. His eyes are brilliant, dancing things. I am mesmerized. And ashamed.

  Ashamed of my shoddy haircut and secondhand uniform.

  But he is smiling down at me and the look of it is genuine and beautiful. I want to bathe in it, let the warmness of it wash over me in endless waves. I’ve never been looked at like that. I don’t want it to end.

  It ends, though. The sun is shadowed by a passing cloud, and although he is still smiling at me and he is still handsome, the moment has passed and I know it will not return.

  “No. I’m definitely right. You’re a princess.” He puts out his hand, the fingers spread wide. It is an invitation, only I am too nervous to accept. All my wit has abandoned me now that I see him fully. “Well, if you’re suddenly a mute, then that will be a welcome change from the gossipy prattle of the bimbos here.”

  He leans down now and takes my hand. I want to pull it away, but there’s something about his forwardness I find appealing. I do not like being forced to do things… it’s a way of life in the foster system… but when he pulls me to my feet, I find that this sort of forcefulness is somehow securing.

  We are standing next to one another; he keeps a hold of my hand a bit longer than necessary.

  He’s a playboy, I decide. He’s found prey in me—the new girl. Should this make me pull away? Race to my dreaded calculus class and never look back?

  My hand is released; he clears his throat. “What’s your name?”

  Flexing my fingers, I find that I miss his hand already. I swallow, nervousness arresting my voice.

  “So you have gone mute. Well, that’s all right. I know a bit of sign.” And then he stands there in front of me, the stragglers in the hallway, the janitor emptying the can near the girls’ restroom, and he begins to wave his hands about manically. His facial expressions change too, suddenly and comically shifting from happy to sad to anxious. I begin to laugh. I can’t help myself.

  And that’s when I fall in love with this boy, so funny and rebellious, standing outside what I now realize is the principal’s office, surely in trouble for wearing jeans and a bright-colored shirt instead of his uniform.

  I can’t stop laughing. I do not realize how loud I am being until he has stopped acting like a fool and returned to his simple, open smile. His teeth are perfect. I stop laughing, because my bottom teeth are crooked, sad things that desperately need a dentist.

  “Lena. My name is Lena.”

  “Just Lena? No middle or last? That’s quite mysterious.”

  I can’t stop the small smile that stretches my mouth, but I keep my lips closed to hide my teeth. “Lena Meri McMillan.”

  “Lena Meri.” He sort of whispers my name, and his fingers find their way to a stray maroon lock of hair that has escaped the clip. “You’re not like other girls, are you, Lena Meri McMillan?” He shakes his head slowly. “No, definitely not. Just wait until my mother sees you, you gorgeous, strange girl. She’ll—”

  The door to the principal’s office swings open. It is time for the troublemaker to get his comeuppance. “Miss McMillan, being late to your first class isn’t going to make the best impression.”

  I am startled that the stoic woman in the dark suit knows my name, but I should not be. I am the charity case, the orphan; I’ve forgotten the tattoo on my forehead that tells the world so.

  “Mr. Kent, I’m getting tired of your fashion stunts. Please go home and change.”

  The door closes. It is my impression that she has become accustomed to this boy and his rebellions, knows they are innocent, and chooses to rob him of the attention he is so obviously craving. Well-off boy, good family, surely loved by a mother and father. He wants for nothing. I am suddenly envious and angry that he should act this way.

  Then his amazing smile reappears and I am no longer angry. “Now you know my last name. I think I’ll make you guess my first.”

  “That’s not fair.” I try and act upset, but I am not. I cannot be upset with this boy.

  “Goodbye, Lena Meri McMillan, long-lost princess of Saint Andrews Academy.”

  He is skipping away from me now. Skipping. Literally. It is a stunt, another foolish act that is charming despite the silliness.

  Chapter 11

  When We Met

  ~Truman~

  She’s so different.

  I am out of her sight now, no longer skipping to make her smile. She seems like she needs to smile, more and often. I’ve never really cared about a girl’s feelings before. I don’t have to; they all like me no matter how I act. They like my car, my money, and the parties I throw when my parents are away. I don’t need the added depth of sincerity and charm. That’s for the unattractive boys, the poor boys.

  Beneath the strange desire I have to make this girl happy, this Lena Meri McMillan—I find the name rolls like water through my mind, fluid and cleansing—is another thought. Mother will hate her. With a sick satisfaction I know I will pursue Lena, not because I find her beautiful and sad and different, but because pissing off my mother is always on my to-do li
st.

  ***

  Dad is at home when I arrive. He’s always at home now that his business has gone bankrupt. We’re living off of mother’s money now; it’s enough to maintain the world we’re used to—the mortgage and car loans and outward appearance that make us the Joneses everyone is trying to keep up with. It’s just another façade now, like my parents’ marriage. Mother… Peggy… has found a dozen new diversions to keep her away from the house, away from the husband who has become a colossal disappointment. One of those diversions is her tennis instructor.

  “Truman, is that you?” His voice is slurred; he’s been drinking again. The liquor cabinet was nearly depleted last night. This morning, I am sure it is completely emptied of bourbon and scotch and the terrible peach schnapps Grandfather Leonard left last Christmas.

  “Yes,” I answer curtly. I don’t want to deal with him this morning.

  “I need you to drive me to the store, Truman.” He stumbles in, holding the wall for support. “I need to get a few things, Truman. I need you to drive me.”

  “Dad, you need to go to sleep. You’re drunk.”

  “I need you to drive me, Truman!” He yells at me, pushes himself away from the wall and comes at me, fists raised. It would not be the first time he has hit me, but he’s so drunk, his large stomach sloshing audibly with liquor, that I easily sidestep his attack and he falls onto the marble floor.

  “Go to sleep, Dad.” I say the words firmly.

  He pulls himself across the floor, latches his right hand around my ankle. “Drive me to the store… please… drive me to the store.” His last words crumple into a sob. It’s pitiful.

  I despise him. I kick him away and he draws his knees toward his chest, trying to get into the fetal position. But his gut is too large. He looks ridiculous, like a beached whale; yet he also looks so small against the white floor.

  “I hate you.” And I do. I hate him.

  I am not changing my clothes. I am not going back to school. Lena and her burgundy hair will have to wait; provoking mother’s rage will have to wait.

  As I leave the house, my father’s whimpers follow me. I can still hear them even after I slam the front door.

  Driving away, I close my eyes. I know the curves of our long driveway so well that I do not need to see them. Behind my eyelids, I see her instead. I see Lena the princess. And I wonder why I am truly fixating on her. I wonder if the purer motive will win out over the deceitful one.

  My eyes are open again. I am driving toward the place I go whenever life sucks so much that I cannot feign being the careless playboy. It is a small stretch of beach, secluded and difficult to reach, impossible at high tide. There, nothing can touch me. Not distant mother, drunken father, or achingly beautiful girl with an incredibly bad haircut.

  Chapter 12

  Wash it Away

  He is asleep now, so I roll off the bed, trying to be as quiet as I can, and I retrieve my necklace. I want it on again. When it is off, I feel a piece of me is gone. And… if it is magic, then I will need it in the bathwater.

  As I shuffle quietly across the floor, an aching comes alive between my legs. Truman continued to make love to me—if you can call it that—even after I began to cry, and I am sore now. Perhaps he did not notice the tears. I remember it like a dream now, how I began to sink into the motions of it, letting him finish while I closed my eyes and thought of other things, another face. Connor’s face.

  I have to get him off of me.

  Making love to Truman used to be wonderful—it really had been. When we were still in high school and sometimes on long college weekends, he’d take me to this little stretch of beach, hidden and unmarred, and we’d lie on a blanket together under the stars. He’d told me it was his special place, where he felt safe.

  And he shared it with me. So eventually, I shared with him myself, every part of me, as we’d bobbed up and down with the waves—high school students both needing to be loved. It had hurt and then it had been wonderful. Like being weightless on the inside, like it wasn’t only my physical body floating.

  God, how people change.

  Not wanting to wake Truman, I make my way to the guest bathroom with the little silver dish of shell soaps. This bath is not so deep, and when I fill the tub and sink in, the water only rises to below my breasts. If I try to fill it further, the water just seeps out. But I want it higher. I want to be immersed, so I stuff a bleach-white washcloth into the drainage hole and I turn the water back on, scalding hot, until it has risen to the very edge of the tub lip. If I move, even the slightest bit, I will send a waterfall of wetness cascading over the side of the rarely-used bathtub.

  The throw carpet will be soaked, the travertine will be slick.

  I’ll clean it up—that’s what towels are for.

  I slide into the water, the tub beneath my body smooth and reassuringly unyielding. No dream this time, no illusion, nothing to pull me from reality. It is night, after all, and one cannot daydream at night and Vera has dubbed me a daydreamer.

  This is silliness, though.

  I love the water when it is hot, so hot it makes my skin an ugly shade of red that is unattractive when paired with my purple-auburn hair. I am in that first bath again now, feeling everything change.

  I am in the burning hospital shower, cavorting with a flounder.

  The water is spilling out of the bath and everywhere, but I do not care. Not even a little bit.

  A tingling in my fingers draws my gaze. I expect to see red, but instead I see green, that shimmering silvery-jade I’d witnessed on my hands when washing the hand-painted china. It was real after all. Or am I imagining it again? No, I am sane. I am sane. Then why do I feel so crazy now?

  This time I do not gradually change, mutate, feel the softness of my hair become the seaweed and coral crown. It is jarring and sudden. I am, in a flash, a girl in the midst of a vast ocean. I am, in a flash, a girl with silvery-green skin and a strong, muscular tail covered in the mother-of-pearl scales that are so translucent and transformative.

  Flounder is here. He is darting about in front of me, happy to see me.

  I once again feel that thing calling to me in the distance. I am drawn to it. I must find what it is or I will never be whole again or human. I move so fast through the water this time. I do not want to wake up, be pulled from this fantasy—not before I have reached my destination. Flounder is by my side; he is remarkably fast for such a little fish. We are getting closer, so close that the feeling that compels me forward is no longer just a feeling. It is words. The same string of words chanted over and over, melodic, like a song crafted so perfectly that the tune will never leave your brain, never be replaced.

  “Come home to us, Meri, Ocean Eyes, sea child. Come home to us. Come home to us, Meri, Ocean Eyes, sea child. Come home to us.”

  The word home is what fills my heart with hope, what makes me will my tail to beat with more force. Home.

  Home… I have a home. Do I have a home?

  Knock. Knock. Knock.

  What is that sound?

  Knock. Knock. Knock.

  Quicker now, more urgent.

  “Lena?”

  My name. Is it my name? Or am I Meri? Am I Ocean Eyes? Who am I?

  “Lena? Lena, are you all right?”

  ***

  Like awakening from the deepest kind of sleep, my brain finds itself caught between two realities—one of ocean and one of bathwater. My tail is gone. My hope is gone.

  “Lena!”

  “I’m fine. I’m fine, Truman. I’m sorry, I must have dozed off. The water was just so warm.” I am repeating words that I have said to Dr. Lenderman. The water was just so warm…

  “I don’t want you to lock the bathroom doors. Please don’t, Lena. I woke up and you were gone. And then you didn’t answer me. Just don’t…”

  It’s funny, but when he is scared for me, I hear the Truman I used to know reemerge. And I love him again.

  “Lena. Come out now.”

  A
nd then he is ordering me about, and the love dissolves as quickly as it came.

  “Yes… I’m coming.”

  Standing up, I revel in the sensation of the water running down my body. I do not bother to dry myself properly, but instead slip still damp into the black nightgown I’ve brought from the bedroom. It is simple, cotton and unadorned. I prefer it to lingerie and silky gowns.

  Before leaving the bathroom, I pick up one of the moonshell soaps and I scrub my hands. The silvery-green is long gone, but I am desperate for one more glimpse, one tiny sign that everything is real. I am disappointed.

  Truman is sitting on the arm of the sofa when I exit. He stares at me, his eyes flitting to the necklace around my neck again, and I stare at him also. We do not see beneath the surface, though—not like we once did… if we ever really did.

  “Come to bed.”

  I nod and walk to “our” room. I know he is behind me and soon he will be beside me, beneath the covers and close to my body once more. I want to go back to the water, stay changed in that other reality.

  But I don’t know how to turn around and defy him. I don’t even know if it is possible now that I am nearly dry beneath the gown.

  Chapter 13

  Compassion

  ~Vera~

  “A girl?”

  “Yeah, yesterday morning, maybe around ten. She could have been older, I guess. Fake-looking burgundy hair, definitely cheap box stuff, but pretty eyes. Really blue.” The younger nurse blew a bubble and popped it loudly, pushing her tongue against the gum and pulling it back into her mouth to chew like a mannerless cow. “I don’t know. She asked for your number and just seemed like she wanted it a little too much, you know? Real desperate.”