My Sweet Escape

  Yeah, I remembered that little girl. She’d grown up, and now she was gone.

  “Pasta’s getting cold,” I said, using my pen to point at the large pot. Renee seemed to snap herself back into place and remember that she was in the middle of making dinner. She went back to the sink and drained the pasta as I took my unfinished homework downstairs. I’d deal with it later. I had at least done the reading and made notes for Pam’s class. No way I was looking like a moron in that class.

  Dinner was pretty quiet. Darah was at work, so there was one less member, and it felt weird to not have her there, getting on everyone about putting their elbows on the table and using napkins and not damaging the finish on the table.

  Renee and Paul seemed to be okay again. I caught him whispering in her ear and giving her a hug. He always knew the right things to say to her. Most often, the best thing to do with Renee was to make her think she’d gotten her way and give her some space to realize that she didn’t know everything. She’d come around and apologize and promise never to do it again, even though she’d do it again in two hours.

  * * *

  “At the risk of sounding like I’m asking you out, do you want to come to this thing I’m going to this weekend?” I said to Hannah before class the next day.

  “What kind of thing?”

  “One of the guys I live with is in the Steiners and they’re doing a show at the Union and everyone in my house is going.”

  “Wow, you know one of the Steiners? It’s crazy hard to get into. Plus, guys who can sing are super hot.”

  “He is pretty hot, but he’s taken.”

  She sighed and got out her bag of Skittles. She must have a case of them in her dorm room or something. “The good ones usually are.”

  “Still, you could meet my pseudo family. If you wanted to.”

  “Sure, why not? Beats sitting in my dorm room and watching a bunch of episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

  “I’ve never seen that show,” I admitted. It never really appealed to me when it was originally on.

  She shook her head sadly. “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll come to see the Steiners with you if you come and hang out and watch two episodes of Buffy with me on Sunday.”

  Renee would be pissed if I said yes without asking permission.

  “Deal,” I said, holding out my hand.

  Pam called the class to order and I snapped my head forward. She called roll and seemed pleased that I was still here. And of course I was the first one she called on, but I was freaking ready. She fired questions around the room like Ping-Pong balls and you had to think fast. Hannah got a few tough ones, but she volleyed with the best of them. Pam seemed satisfied with both of our answers, and I was glad I’d survived by the end of it.

  “Bravo, girl. You did good.” We didn’t talk about getting lunch—we just sort of walked toward the Union anyway. I heard a girl walk by and gasp when she saw Hannah’s face.

  “Take a picture. It lasts longer, bitch,” she said under her breath. “I know I seem all Zen about this.” She waved her hand to indicate her burn. “But sometimes, I just want to wear a fucking mask or scream at people or something. I mean, at least in the olden days I could have joined a freak show and made some money or something.” Wow.

  She yanked open the door and didn’t hold it for the person coming in behind us, who muttered under his breath.

  “Suck it,” Hannah said in response, but not loud enough for him to hear.

  We got our food and found a table.

  “It’s just like, yes, I have a burn, but it’s not like I’m disabled or mentally challenged. Also, I’m not deaf. I can hear it when people are talking about me, and it pisses me off. But you know what would happen if I freaked out and yelled at people? Fucking nothing. So why waste the words?” She exhaled slowly. “Okay, I’m done. Pity party over. I’ve shut it down.” She made a slashing motion with her hand.

  “Keep going if you need to. It doesn’t bother me.” At least she had something to actually be pissed about. Unlike some people who couldn’t breathe without bitching about something that didn’t need to be bitched about.

  “Nah, I hate going to that place. It just gets me down sometimes, but I swear, I’m back.” She smiled and picked up her burger. “So none of the guys you live with are single?”

  “Nope. Not one. There are three couples...and me. It’s a bit like living in a weird reality show.”

  “It sounds kind of awesome, not going to lie.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Sensing my reluctance, Hannah switched subjects.

  “So, you found any man candy?”

  “Not if you count my other stalker,” I said, picking up a French fry I’d dropped on the floor.

  “Um, details?” She snapped her fingers.

  “It’s not even anything worth talking about. He’s just this guy who keeps popping up. He’s friends with one of my roommates. Actually, you’ll get to see him on Saturday. He’s a Steiner.”

  “Oh, really?” She raised and lowered her eyebrows suggestively. Wow, she was reading way too much into this.

  “It’s seriously not like that. It’s not anything. I shouldn’t have even brought him up.” Why had I brought him up?

  “What about at UNH? Did you have a guy there?”

  Oh, fun. The ex talk. “Yeah, I did. We broke up this spring.”

  Hannah’s eyes lit up.

  “Sounds like there is a story there.”

  There was, but I wasn’t going to share it with her.

  “Not really. He was in love with a girl I wasn’t. Took both of us a while to realize it, but eventually he did.”

  “Did you love him?”

  “Yeah, I did.” I couldn’t lie about that. I had loved Matt, but that love was part of that other girl, and when I let go of her, I let go of that love. It was easier than it should have been. “And what about you? How about we talk about your love life?”

  Hannah laughed.

  “Yeah, that’s a really short story. It can be summed up like this...” She held up her hand, making a circle. She peered at me through the hole in the middle. “That’s it. There aren’t a whole lot of guys lining up to fuck the freak.”

  Jesus, she was blunt. I liked it.

  “I usually have to get them good and drunk first, but by then they usually can’t perform, so I end up leaving them to sleep it off.”

  Was she serious?

  She burst out laughing.

  “I am totally screwing with you, and the look on your face was totally worth it. I haven’t really done the boyfriend thing.”

  “Ever?”

  “I spent my high school prom at home with my cat, so that pretty much gives you an accurate picture of my dating history. I’m not bitter about it—don’t get me wrong. I guess I’m just old-fashioned, at least when it comes to that. I don’t want to waste my time on a guy that I’m not going to spend my life with, you know? I don’t see the point in dating a bunch of losers just for the chance of finding out one of them might be decent. I trust my instincts when it comes to people. Haven’t been wrong yet.” She winked at me and stole a fry from my plate and popped it into her mouth.

  I wished I had her confidence in my own instincts. Right now, I didn’t trust them at all.

  Chapter 9

  “Brought you something.”

  Dusty was standing in the lobby of Neville Hall when I opened the door to go to English that afternoon. He had his trademark smile in place and a bag of Skittles in one hand and a bag of M&M’s in the other and was holding them out to me like he was very pleased with himself.

  “Okay,” I said, looking at him and then back down at the candy. I really wanted it, but I didn’t want him to know that I wanted it.

  “I’m going to p
retend you said thank you. You’re welcome, Red.” He shoved the candy at me, and I had to catch it so that it didn’t fall on the floor. “Are you always this rough on people when they try to get to know you?”

  “If it’s so hard, then why are you doing it?” I needed to hurry my butt to class, but I wasn’t letting him have the last word.

  “Maybe I like a challenge,” he said, but he wasn’t grinning. I saw something else on his face. Determination. Yes, Dusty Sharp was a guy who was used to getting what he wanted; anyone could see that. He even walked with a swagger that broadcast it to the world, but instead of leaning toward the cocky douche-bag side, he just seemed confident. Self-assured. A lot of women found that sexy.

  “I have to get to class. Thank you for the unnecessary candy. It was...sweet of you.”

  “I’m a sweet guy.”

  Uh-huh.

  “Shall we?” he said.

  We walked together up the stairs, and I left him on the second floor.

  “Later, Red.” There was that wave again.

  I copied him and he laughed. “’Bye, Dusty.”

  * * *

  My first assignment in my creative writing class was to write a two-page paper about something I had never done before. Greg gave us our assignment with the attitude of Santa presenting orphans with shiny presents.

  How the hell was I supposed to write about something I’d never experienced? Seriously, how?

  Everyone else seemed just as perplexed as I was, and a guy sitting near me was muttering under his breath and most of the words weren’t complimentary. We had the entire class period to complete the assignment, so I got out my notebook and a pen and tried to figure something that I could write so I could just complete the damn thing.

  Well, the first thing I could think of to write about was completely out of the question. My still-intact virginity was a relic from my other life. I’d been way too focused on school and other things, and it didn’t mesh well with my political aspirations.

  There was also something romantic, I’d thought at the time, about saving that milestone in my life for marriage. My ex had been completely on board with it; in fact, he’d been more for it than I was. We’d done things here and there, but every time it got heated one of us stopped it, citing our vows of chastity. The funny thing was, it never really got all that heated.

  The kissing was fine, but I never found myself wanting to just rip his clothes off like in some horny teenage fantasy. There was probably something wrong with me. I had no problem getting myself off, so my sex drive wasn’t broken, but I never fantasized about getting hot and heavy with Matt. He wasn’t a hot-and-heavy kind of guy.

  Honestly, I didn’t care anymore. It was low on the list of things I was concerned about. Right above floods and right below zombie apocalypse.

  I tried to think of something to write that would fill two pages with my small handwriting. Some of my classmates were already writing away, but others were just as stuck as I was.

  Music. I wanted to write something about music.

  The only thing I could think of was that I’d never performed onstage, at least not outside of a late-afternoon fantasy. I’d actually never really sung in public. I’d been in choirs in school, but had never tried out for anything where I had to sing a solo.

  I wrote a sentence, and then another, and then another. I described the stage and the lights and the fluttery feeling of captivating everyone in the audience with just my voice and maybe a guitar.

  Before I knew it, I had filled three pages, front and back.

  “Okay, everyone. Just hand in what you’ve got and I’ll go make copies. Don’t worry about neatness or spelling. That’s not the point of this exercise. The point is just to write what comes to your mind, to stretch it and see what happens.”

  Greg left and people broke out talking, mostly complaining about the assignment and how lame it was and that they’d bullshitted their way through it. Yeah, like Greg wasn’t going to see right through that. At least I’d been honest about mine. No one talked to me, for which I was grateful. Greg came back with a huge stack of papers and handed them to each of us.

  “Okay, so your assignment for next time is to read everyone else’s and make at least three comments on each paper. Got it? You’re dismissed.” He waved his hand, and I wondered if he’d been British in a past life. He certainly talked like it, even though he didn’t have an accent.

  I was freaking about everyone else reading my paper because it was so personal. I hadn’t meant it to be, but the words had sort of come out of nowhere. Nothing I could do about it now.

  I pulled the Skittles and M&M’s out of my bag and tore them open, pouring an equal amount into my hand before folding the bags back up and putting them back.

  You and your weird snacks. Sometimes I wonder if there’s something wrong with your taste buds, Jossy.

  I cracked an M&M’s between my teeth and chased it with a Skittles.

  * * *

  That night I finally got around to updating my music blog. I’d gained ten followers that week, which made me want to dance for joy. It didn’t sound like a lot, but for being relatively new, I was gaining followers pretty steadily. My happy was taken down a notch when I saw how many stupid spam comments I had to delete.

  “Jos!” Renee yelled from upstairs. I had my headphones around my neck and my music on low, so I was able to hear her over my new Lenka CD.

  “Yeah?” I yelled back.

  “What are you doing down there?”

  “Nothing.” This was ridiculous. I went to the top of the stairs. “Why?”

  “You’ve just been down there forever.”

  “Well, I’m not setting my hair on fire or slitting my wrists, if that’s what you were worried about.” I leaned in the doorway. She was killing my blog-updating momentum.

  “No, I just think it’s silly for you to be down there alone.” The living room was full of people, as usual, and also full of half-done homework, open books and too many highlighters. Darah had a thing for using different colors for each class.

  “Maybe I like being alone.”

  She didn’t have an answer to that. Renee hated being alone. Being raised with so many siblings had had the opposite effect on me.

  “Oh, come on, Little Ne. Why would you want to be alone when you can hang out with us?” Mase was twisting Darah’s hair around his fingers, and she was trying to concentrate on a textbook open in her lap.

  They weren’t going to leave me alone, so I went downstairs, got my laptop and came back up. Mase moved over so I could squish next to him on the couch.

  “See how much more fun this is?”

  Hunter and Taylor were sharing her e-reader and he kept yelling at her for skipping to the next page too fast. Once she was sure I was within her eyesight and not doing anything bad, Renee went back to her books and Paul did the same. Just another night at Yellowfield House.

  I turned my music back on and put my headphones over my ears. With them on, I couldn’t hear any conversation around me, even if I wanted to, so it was kind of like being alone, except for when Hunter stole the e-reader and Taylor chased him around. She eventually got a hold of his ear and twisted it until he gave it back.

  “You play dirty, Miss. I might have to punish you for that.”

  I was mentally gagging.

  “Shh, that’s the kind of thing we don’t talk about in front of everyone,” Taylor said, sitting back down on the couch. I had no doubt that they normally talked like that, but me being there put the kibosh on the sexy talk.

  “You guys know that I am aware that you all have sex with each other. I mean, not at the same time, because that would be super creepy, but I’m not an idiot.” All eyes turned toward me. “I can hear you when I’m down there.”

  Ha. They all looked sh
eepish. Even Mase.

  “I’m not saying that I care. I’m just saying that I’m aware of it. I mean, Taylor and I are nearly the same age. You guys have to stop treating me like a child.”

  Mase cleared his throat.

  “You’re right, Jos. I think it’s that we all sort of went into protective mode when you came here.”

  “I wonder where you got that idea from,” I said, glaring at Renee.

  “What am I supposed to do? You are my little sister. I’ll always think of you that way, even when we’re old and gray.” I was a bit uncomfortable talking like this with everyone watching, but it was bound to happen sooner or later.

  “I know that.”

  “You could loosen up a little, Ne,” Paul said. I was surprised. He never usually provoked Renee if he could help it. I’d have to thank him later.

  “Okay, everyone gang up on me—that’s awesome.” She got up and stormed up the stairs. Yup, I could have called it.

  “Sorry, Jos. I was trying to help,” Paul said, getting up and going after her.

  “I know. Thanks, Paul.”

  “I don’t get what she’s so bent out of shape about,” Mase said. “I mean, I know you’ve only been here for a short time, but you don’t really seem like juvenile-delinquent material. No offense.”

  “None taken. It’s just...complicated.” I was shocked Renee hadn’t given them every gory detail.

  “Most relationships are. Complicated, I mean,” Mase said, looking at Darah. “But the complications can be the best part. Right, Dare?”

  Darah nodded and he kissed the side of her head.

  Chapter 10

  I texted Hannah and told her I could pick her up at her dorm and walk down to the Union with her, and she took me up on my offer. Taylor and Hunter had gone over earlier because he had to be with the group. She also mentioned meeting her friend Megan, who I had yet to become acquainted with.

  Hunter had been acting really weird that morning, and everyone had noticed. He tried to play it off that he was nervous about the performance, but I was pretty sure Hunter had never been nervous about anything like that in his life. He oozed confidence, so clearly he was either up to something, or he’d done something stupid. Or both.