by W. H. Vega
FALLING HARDER
by W.H. Vega
A Hearts Collective Production
Copyright © 2013 Hearts Collective
All rights reserved. This document may not be reproduced in any way without the expressed written consent of the author. The ideas, characters, and situations presented in this story are strictly fictional and any unintentional likeness to real people or real situations is completely coincidental.
Forward
Thank you all for reading, I hope you enjoy Nadia and Trace's story as much as I loved writing it!
Special Thanks to L.J. Anderson
for the beautiful professional cover art.
Mayhem Cover Creations
www.mayhemcovercreations.com
Contents
Part I
Prologue - Where am I?
One - Officially an orphan.
Two - Sweet Sixteen.
Three - Him
Four - Who is this girl?
Five - Don't fuck with my friends.
Six - A New Home
Seven - Creepy Fucking Paul
Eight - Almost Happy
Nine - Hard Truths
Ten - Girlfriend and Boyfriend
Eleven - The Cold of Winter
Twelve - All Alone With Paul
Thirteen - Merry Christmas
Fourteen - Trace's Gift
Fifteen - Dead Fucker
Sixteen - Another End Of The World
Part II
One - All Grown Up
Two - Safe and Sound
Three - Stateside
Four - Work Work
Five - Lost and Found
Six - Daffodils
Seven - Reunited At Last
Eight - Two Single People
Nine - Nothing Ventured
Ten - Happy Birthday to Me
Eleven - Like a Dream
Twelve - Late to Work
Thirteen - Ratted Out
Fourteen - Together Again
PART I
Prologue
Nadia
Where am I?
If I had to do it all over again, go through all of the pain and torment and heartbreak, just to meet him? I would.
A frustrated, ear-splitting scream rises just beyond the thin walls of my social worker’s office. I whip my face toward the unearthly sound, paralyzed between wanting to help whoever’s in such great pain, and wanting nothing more than to run for my life—or at least, what’s left of it.
“Should we...do something?” I ask, my voice trembling.
My social worker, a pretty but worn woman in her mid-thirties, seems barely to have noticed the disruption. She rests her elbows on the scuffed desk before her and looks at me with resigned compassion.
“You’re not used to chaos, are you?” she asks me. Her peculiar, blunt question catches me off-guard.
“N-no,” I stammer, folding my hands in my lap, “I, uh, guess not.”
I’ve been told that I can call this woman by her first name, Amy. But I can’t bring myself to address her as anything other than Miss MacCoy. My parents didn’t raise me to be so casual with adults. The fleeting thought of my mom and dad sends a slicing agony ripping straight through my core. Their sudden, unjust death is still too raw, too fresh, for me to deal with all at once
“Nadia,” Miss MacCoy says gently, “I’m going to be very honest with you, now. This transition...it’s going to be harder on you than it is on most of the kids we see come through.”
“But why?” I ask. “What makes me so different than the others?”
“Your case...it’s not typical of what we deal with,” Miss MacCoy tells me. “Most of the kids that come through here are orphans. Others have been taken out of dangerous homes. Some are dangerous themselves. But you...you’re a rarity. You’ve spent the first twelve years of your life in a loving, functional home. By all rights, you should still be there. But...things have a way of turning sour, even for perfectly good people.”
I swallow hard, gulping back the tears before they can overtake me again. I’ve spent the last week sobbing myself to sleep. It’s a wonder that I haven’t been reduced to a dried-up husk, wrung of each and every drop of water. Never in my short life have I known pain like this before. Pain that doesn’t have any edges, pain that is simply bottomless. And why would I have? Up until now, everything’s gone...perfectly.
My name is Nadia Faber. I’m twelve years old, and I’ve lived in Evanston, Illinois since I was born. I had a mother, once, and a father too. My parents loved me more than anything in this or any other universe, but now they’re gone. This is not the way my life was supposed to go. What’s left in their wake was never the life they intended for me.
Miss MacCoy pushes a box of tissues across her old, dusty desk. The simple gesture of kindness opens the floodgates, and another surge of tears spill down my cheeks.
“You’ve had a pretty long week, huh?” she asks.
“You...have n-no...idea,” I choke, wiping away the tears as quickly as I can. As nice as Miss MacCoy seems to be, I don’t want to appear weak in front of her.
“I don’t mean to upset you,” the social worker goes on, “I just want you to be prepared for what comes next.”
“What’s that?” I ask, forcing my voice to be even.
“Well,” she says, leaning back in her ancient office chair, “Normally, in a situation like yours, we’d contact the legal guardian that your parents declared in their will. You’d go stay with that person, and most likely be adopted by them.”
“But that’s...not going to happen for me, is it?”
“I’m afraid not,” Miss MacCoy sighs. “You see, Nadia, your parents never drew up a will for us to go by. I’m sure they never anticipated that they’d need to consider another guardian for you. This can happen with accidents like theirs. Usually, we can find some family member or other to get in touch with, but your family...it was really just the three of you.”
“Just the three of us,” I say quietly, “Just the three of us in the whole wide world.”
I imagine that my parents had families, once—mothers and fathers, a sibling or two. But those people are thousands of miles away, across the sea, living in some country whose language I can’t even speak. I wouldn’t know my grandparents if I passed them on the street—if they’re even still alive, that is.
My mother and father came to America when they were eighteen years old. They spent their childhoods in Eastern Europe, which is as specific as they’ve ever been with me. Their accents, the language they used to whisper to each other, the few recipes and traditions they brought with them were never talked about directly in our home. It’s like they arrived in the United States and decided never to look back, like they were afraid that if they mentioned their old home, the past would swallow them up for good. I don’t know anything about my heritage.
God, now I can't get the thought of that night out of my head.
I’d been woken by the sound of my babysitter sobbing. We’d fallen asleep on the couch, watching reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but now I was alone in my family’s living room. I could hear my sitter, Sarah, on the phone in the kitchen. She was barely forcing words out between her jagged gasps.
“Are you sure...it’s them?” she cried, the telephone cord tangled up around her legs. “You’re absolutely sure?”
I padded over the kitchen, the blue light of the TV casting its unsettling glow over the darkened house. Even though I didn’t know what was going on, there was a roiling uneasiness in my gut that I couldn’t explain if I tried. From the moment I cracked open my eyes, I knew that my world was on the brink of collapse. The seams of my entire life as I knew it were straining against impending tragedy, and I was powerless to stop it. All I could
do was put one slipper-clad foot in front of the other, and force myself not to crumble.
Stepping into the warm light of the kitchen, I caught Sarah’s eye. Her face was streaked with runny mascara, her eyes red and puffy from crying. The stern line of her mouth wobbled tremulously as she saw me, and I could practically hear her heart breaking across the room.
“Sarah?” I said, taking a step forward. “Sarah, what happened?”
She ran to me, letting the phone dangle down from its cord. Sarah wrapped me up in her thin, quaking arms, smoothing my hair down with desperate strokes.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, over and over again. “I’m so sorry, Nadia. I’m so, so sorry...”
The ring of the doorbell interrupted her sorrowful litany. I glanced toward the front hallway, feeling the closeness of despair. Whatever lay on the other side of that door was more staggering, more scary than anything I’d ever met. Pulling myself away from Sarah, I made the long trek toward the door. The journey of a few small steps seemed to take a decade. Maybe my parents would be standing there when I opened the door, with some idea as to what in the world was going on. Surely, they could tell me why I felt so terrified.
I pulled open the front door of our home flipped on the swinging light over our porch. My eyes widened into saucers as I took in the two uniformed officers standing before me. I’d seen enough made-for-TV movies to know what was going to happen next.
“Nadia Faber?” said one of the officers, taking off his hat. “Can we come in?”
Dumbly, I stepped aside. The two burly men stepped over the threshold of our home. They traded an uneasy look before turning their eyes to me.
“Where are my parents?” I asked them. I don’t know why I bothered—part of me must have already known.
One of the officers sighed lightly and kneeled down beside me. I knew he was trying to be kind and comforting, but I couldn’t help but resent the gesture. It was like he’d been through this a thousand times before, like I was just one more in the long line of people who he’d had to visit like this. I wanted to throw my hands over his mouth to keep the words in. Maybe, if he never got around to his answer, it would never come true. But my hands weren’t fast enough.
“Your parents were in an accident, Nadia,” he said, laying a big hand on my shoulder. “Someone ran a red light and slammed into the side of their car. We believe that the other driver may have been intoxicated, but we don’t know for sure. We haven’t caught him, or her, just yet.”
“Are they...in the hospital?” I asked, “Can I see them? Can you take me there?”
“We can,” the officer said, “But Nadia...I’m afraid that your parents didn’t survive the crash. There was a pileup, and their vehicle was flipped over. I’m so sorry, but both of your parents have passed away.”
For the life of me, I don’t know where my next question came from. “Did it happen fast?” I asked the police officer.
The man shot a pained look back at his partner. I could see them silently deliberating whether or not to tell me the truth.
“Please,” I said, “I want to know.”
“They, uh...they were alive when the paramedics arrived,” the man said, unable to meet my eyes, “They were trapped inside the vehicle.”
“For how long?” I demanded. I was already spiraling through the unfathomable anguish opening before me. I had a bizarre, masochistic urge to lose myself as far as I could ever go. I wanted to travel each and every inch of the pain that was waiting for me there, wanted to make sure that I went the whole length of it. I wanted to make sure that this moment would be the worst of my life, so that forever after I could at least tell myself that things were getting better.
“They were most likely conscious for a half hour after the crash,” the man said softly. “For that time, at least, there was...pain, I’m sure. But they’re free now, Nadia. They’re in a better place.”
A strangled laugh escaped my throat, and the man backed away from me an inch. I’m sure I looked a fright, twelve years old and in my nightie, cackling bitterly in the face of my parents’ death.
“Better place?” I scoffed, “There’s no such thing.”
My parents hadn’t raised me to believe in God, or religion, or happily-ever-afters. I knew the truth that no euphemism could cover up. My parents were gone forever, and there was nothing that I could do to change that. I hadn’t even gotten a chance to say goodbye.
I marched into the kitchen and found Sarah crying over the sink. Matter-of-fact as ever, I tugged on the sleeve of her sweatshirt. She blinked up at me, looking dazed and beside herself.
“I’m going to ride in the police car to the hospital,” I told her, “You can go home if you want. I’ll be OK.”
Without waiting for her response, I walked back out to meet the officers. They showed me outside to their sleek, shiny car and helped me into the back seat. We drove to the hospital, the car’s sirens silent. My neighborhood raced past the window, so many streets and corners I knew so well. But every single sight I’d memorized by heart looked different, now.
I felt as though I’d never seen any of it before in my life. My entire mind was numb and blank, shut down in the face of what had happened that night. I know now that I was trying to stave off the inevitable as long as I possibly could. I made it as far as the hospital, as far as the room where my parents were lying, unmoving and departed.
“Could you leave me alone?” I asked the sea of grownups hovering around me. One by one, they exited the hospital room. One foot in front of the other, I made my way toward my parents. They looked so peaceful, like they were simply napping on their hospital beds, catching some shuteye at the end of a long night.
It seemed so impossible that they were really gone, that they would have left me alone in this strange, unfamiliar world, that I convinced myself for a second that the doctors and police officers had been mistaken. Earnestly, I grabbed for my mother’s hand.
Her fingers were stiff and cold. And in that moment, I knew beyond doubt that it was all true. The universe of hurt that had sprung up inside of me burst. A big bang of anguish and fear and anger tore me open as I fell to my knees between my parents’ beds. I finally let myself weep for them, and for me, everything we’d lost and everything that was sure to come.
It felt like hours before someone poked their head in to check on me. I’d cried myself to sleep on the floor of the hospital room, they said. I was carried away from my parents by unknown arms, whisked away into a world I couldn’t ever have imagined.
It’s hard to believe that only a week has passed. In a week, I’ve seen both my parents buried, have been pulled out of school and my home, and finally found myself here: in the foreign office of a nice-looking woman whose job it is to determine my future.
“So what happens next?” I ask her, trying to be brave.
She leans forward and lays her hand on mine. “A foster home,” she tells me. If only I could have guessed what those three words would come to mean.
One
Nadia
Officially an orphan.
After a furious flurry of paperwork and a symphony of hushed conversations, I’m told that a foster home has been found for me. I’ve been staying with Sarah all week, but it’s time for me to move onto this next, strange stage of my life. My babysitter helps me pack up my few belongings, the things we salvaged from my parents’ home. I’m traveling pretty light, I guess. I’ve got a couple changes of clothes, my stuffed Bengal Tiger whose name is Richard, and the tiny compass that hangs on a chain around my neck.
My parents gave me my necklace for Christmas when I was six years old. While all the other girls in my class were dreaming about becoming ballerinas and mothers and wives, I’d wanted to be an explorer.
My teachers had laughed at my response to the age-old, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” question, but my parents had taken it seriously. They’d bought me atlases, and globes, and a little compass to wear around my neck.
&n
bsp; I’m sure they never could have guessed just how soon I'd be navigating strange waters. With everything I own in the world stuffed into a backpack, I wave goodbye to Sarah and let myself be ushered into Miss MacCoy’s car. We pull out of the driveway and set off together.
Evanston, the only home I’ve ever known, zips by in a heartbeat. I’m not even sad to leave, not really. My parents’ home was the real center of my world, not some town. With my parents gone, I feel weirdly unbound. Like one of those dandelion blossoms, scattered on the wind.
Miss MacCoy ferries me toward the city limits of Chicago. I’ve only been in this city a couple of times before, for field trips and adventures with my parents. Some of the streets we pass look stately, clean, and refined. But as we continue, things become a little less charming. Little hints of violence, tension, start to color the scenes playing out just beyond my window. Before my surroundings get too dark, we pull off onto a side street.
It’s a little dingy, this part of the city, but not too scary. At least not yet. We stop at a little, narrow house with a sagging but brightly painted porch out front. The small structure is in far better shape than some of those around it, and I even spot a basketball hoop hanging above the garage door.
“What do you think?” Miss MacCoy asks, turning toward me with a thin smile.
“I dunno,” I mutter, unsure of what exactly she wants to hear.
“The Goldsteins are long-time foster parents,” the social worker tells me, “I can’t tell you how many kids they’ve taken in. Dozens, at least.”
“They’ve adopted dozens of kids?” I ask, bowled over by the idea. As an only child, the notion of so many siblings is staggering to me.
“Adopted?” Miss MacCoy says, the corners of her mouth falling, “No, Nadia...The Goldsteins are foster parents.”
“I don’t understand...” I say, running my fingers nervously through my thick blonde ponytail, “I thought that I was staying with the family that was going to adopt me someday.”
