Deeper We Fall

  They’d been empty. Cold and dull and empty. I’d never seen them that way before. The girl who was always talking and laughing and bright was gone. Shattered.

  She stood there until I closed my eyes and turned my head. Like a coward.

  I bet she sure as hell didn’t want to see me.

  I shook my head at the memory and crossed the railroad tracks that ran through campus. I had no idea where I was, but I didn’t care. I passed the Field House and found myself on my way to the farm, just on the edge of campus. Perfect.

  Since classes hadn’t started, things were quiet, but there were a few horses out in the paddock. There had been a horse farm up the road from my house when I was a kid, and I’d often walked over there when I’d been mad at my mom or stepdad for whatever little thing they’d done to piss nine-year-old me off.

  I walked right up to the fence, hoping no one would come out and yell at me. That wouldn’t turn out well, I knew that much.

  Watching the horses run and chase each other helped me clear my head. I wished I’d brought the camera I’d gotten as a present from my social worker. She’d gotten me into photography as another outlet for my energy. I would definitely come back again when I was thinking more clearly.

  With Charlotte back in my life, that was highly unlikely.

  Fuck.

  I resisted the urge to bang my head on the fence.

  “Hey!” A sharp female voice made me look up. A woman who looked like she’d been born in a horse barn and would probably end her days there marched over to me, hands on her stonewashed jeans-clad hips.

  “What are you doing?”

  She had a bucket of something in one hand, and a pitchfork in the other. I would have been a complete dumbass to mess with her.

  “Nothing, just taking a walk.” I could have said anything and she still would have glared at me like I was going to mug her.

  “Well move along,” she said, jerking her chin to tell me to get lost. I fought the urge to grin at her. If I had my hat on, I would have tipped it and bid her good day. That always threw people off.

  God, I really, really wanted to get high. Just lay back and listen to a record and watch the wind stir the clouds. Or fuck the brains out of a girl. That worked too, but it didn’t last. Only about as long as it took for the sweat to dry and I pulled out and stared down at her and tried to remember her name.

  Most of the time I got it right.

  Afraid of provoking the woman with the pitchfork, I turned around and started to walk back to the dorm.

  I couldn’t go out and get high. I couldn’t go out and screw a random girl. I could, but Miss Carole, my social worker, would call me after and she’d know. She always knew, and the disappointment in her voice when she said my name was the worst sound in the world. Second only to the sound a car makes when it flips over and over.

  So I walked slowly back to my new dorm room, keeping my eyes down and hoping I didn’t run into her.

  Charlotte, Charlotte, Charlotte.

  Lottie

  I found the stairs and instead of going down and getting swallowed by the crush of people moving in, I went up to the roof. I always felt most calm when I was up high. Maybe it had something to do with the tree house Dad had built for Will and me one year when he was feeling especially father-y. Will wouldn’t go up there, so I had the place to myself.

  Maybe it had something to do with the fact that most people dwarfed me.

  There was a threatening sign on the door that led to the roof, but I wasn’t afraid of it. The worst someone would do was yell at me.

  I didn’t have anything to prop the door open with, so I pulled off one of my sneakers and shoved it in the crack so I wouldn’t be the girl who freaked out and got herself stuck on the roof and had to be rescued.

  The gravel crunched under my shoe and dug into my sock-clad foot as I stepped away from the door, putting my back to it. The discord of the cars and the voices from everyone at the street level faded, and I closed my eyes and imagined I was somewhere else.

  Anywhere else.

  “Are you screwing with me again?” I said to the nearly cloudless sky. A seagull called in the distance and was answered by another.

  I’d started this weird habit of talking to the sky after Lexie’s accident. My parents made me see a counselor, but that never helped. It was actually Will who had suggested it.

  I figured there had to be someone up there who was listening.

  “Haven’t we suffered enough? Is this some sort of lesson I’m supposed to be learning, because I don’t get it. Why us?”

  The sky offered no answers. I picked up a piece of gravel and chucked it. With my luck, it would hit someone in the head.

  “I just don’t understand.” My throat contracted painfully around a ball of tears that was threatening to come up and leak out my eyes. “Why won’t you let me move on?” I paced from one side of the roof to the other, even though I was lopsided from missing my shoe.

  I paced a few more times, resisting the urge to shake my fist at the sky, or fall to my knees and sob. I’d done that way too many times already.

  After a few more deep breaths, I pushed my way back through the door, stopping just long enough to put my shoe back on and tie it. As I pounded down the stairs, I skipped my floor and headed straight for Will’s.

  I banged my fist on his door, hoping that, first of all, I’d gotten the right room, and second, that he was there.

  He opened the door with a scowl, but it melted into concern when he saw my face.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Two words. Zack fucking Parker.”

  “That’s three words.”

  “Will!”

  “Sorry. Zack Parker. What about him?” He could be so dense sometimes. I wanted to slap him upside the head.

  “He’s here.”

  “Where?”

  “HERE. As in, he’s probably in my room right now sucking my roommate’s face off.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “Katie was talking about her boyfriend, and then there he was. He was the Zack she was talking about. So he’s here. At this school. With us.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Shitfuck.”

  “My feelings exactly.” My voice broke and the sobs finally broke through the barrier I’d try to put in front of them.

  “Oh, Lot.” Will folded me into his arms as I let myself fall to pieces. He pulled me over to his bed, which wasn’t made yet, and covered with boxes. Will shoved them aside and sat with me.

  He was the only person on the planet I could let myself go with.

  “I just don’t understand.”

  “I know, I know.” He patted my back and let me soak his shirt with my tears. Will never told me I was being silly, or I shouldn’t cry, or that I needed to move on. Before Lexie’s accident, we’d fought a lot more, especially about stupid things. After, it was like he’d decided that me not knocking on his door before I barged in wasn’t important. He’d become a hell of a lot more sensitive after that night too.

  “Do you want me to beat the shit out of him? Mom and Dad aren’t here to stop me this time.” I’d lost track to the times Will had wanted to beat Zack up. Zan too, for that matter.

  I giggled a little.

  “There’s my sister.” Will rifled through one of the boxes and came out with a washcloth. “I don’t have any tissues.” He handed it to me, so I wiped my eyes and my nose.

  “Thanks, William.”

  “Anytime.” He tossed the washcloth back in the box. Yuck. “Are you sure I can’t beat the shit out of him? I really think he needs to be in a hospital bed again.”

  “It’s okay, Will.” It definitely wasn’t, but I didn’t want him fighting my battles for me. Not that I was going to fight Zack. I didn’t know what I was going to do.

  After the accident, I’d thought of a million different ways to kill him. That probably wasn
’t normal. Actually, I knew it wasn’t normal, but that didn’t stop me from imagining him being run over by a car, or suffering intense pain or having his limbs ripped off, one by one.

  Will’s phone buzzed.

  “There’s Simon.” I sniffed one more time and rubbed my hands on my face. I probably looked like a hot mess. “I’m gonna go help him. You going to be okay?”

  I nodded, hopefully in a convincing way. Will rubbed his hand on the top of my head, effectively ruining my hair before he left the room.

  “Punk.” I leaned back against one of the boxes and stared at the ceiling.

  “What. The. Fuck.”

  I couldn’t escape the past. Not even here.

  Chapter Five

  Zan

  A slew of garbage bags and boxes spilled from my open door into the hallway. I stepped over them and surveyed the room, finding a guy about six inches shorter and a few inches wider and a quite a few hair shades lighter than me trying to find enough room for all the bags and tattered boxes.

  My roommate had arrived while I was busy staring at the horses and talking myself out of making a bad life decision.

  “Hey,” I said. “Devin, right?” I waited to see if he wanted to shake hands.

  When it came to getting a roommate, I’d had little choice. Without the option of living with someone I knew, and no one I knew was going to live with me, I’d had to take my chances with a random match-up. I’d gotten Devin Johnson’s name nearly two months ago, but we’d barely exchanged an email.

  “Yeah, you’re… Alex?” He threw one of the bags on top of the already towering pile on the bare mattress. He didn’t hold out his hand to shake mine.

  “Zan,” I said, coming all the way into the room.

  “Zan?”

  “Yeah, like Alex-zan-der.” My mom thought it was cute back when Zack and I were kids to have us both have Z names since we were so close in age. I’d never been able to shake it.

  “Got it.” He went out and came back with a backpack.

  “Do you need any help?”

  “Nah, I’m good.” He tossed the bag down and looked at the pile, as if it was Mt. Everest and he didn’t have a bottle of oxygen.

  I was curious why his parents weren’t here to help him, but that would involve asking him such a personal question, and I wasn’t going to do that. Mom and Steve would have been here, but Steve had surprised her with a trip to Vegas. He didn’t know when he booked the trip that it was during move-in weekend.

  “Knock, knock.” My brother appeared in the doorway, with the addition of his arm candy. They both had sex hair, so clearly they’d hooked up somewhere, probably in the truck. I really didn’t want to think about how many times he’d hooked up with girls in that truck.

  At least I used a bedroom. Most of the time.

  “Hey, you want to go out and get some pizza?” For the moment, he had decided to be my brother. These moments were like four leaf clovers. Rare and hard to find and sometimes I missed them, and sometimes I stomped on them, crushing them under my feet.

  “Sure.” Since we were so close in age, we played a lot together as kids. When we were little, our personality differences weren’t much of an obstacle to building a town out of blocks on the living room floor and then destroying it with our dinosaurs.

  When I was three, and he was almost five, he saved me from drowning one day at the beach, so for a few years, he was my protector. But it didn’t last.

  As we grew, our differences became more pronounced. He was competitive, always wanting to wrestle and challenge everyone. I was more solitary, preferring to run, to read, to do things on my own. The fact that he had his license and a truck brought us back together, due to my lack of transportation. Then that night happened, and we hadn’t been the same. But nothing changed the fact that he was my brother.

  “I guess I’ll see you later,” I said to Devin. He just grunted and started ripping open one of the garbage bags.

  Since pizza was the food of choice for most college students, naturally there were about three pizza places per student just outside of campus.

  On the way over, I sat in the passenger seat with Katie beside me. She made sure to scoot over as far as she could she wouldn’t touch any part of me. I slouched toward the door, helping her out. Other than that, she ignored my existence. Or she was doing a good job at pretending.

  He found a parking spot and we got out, Zack lifting Katie out, making her squeal with delight before he gave her a rough kiss and took her hand to lead her into the cramped restaurant. I looked away, regretting that I’d come with them.

  It had the typical Americanized idea of an Italian place. Black and white tile floor, Italian flags, and pictures of fat jolly chefs twirling dough and chopping tomatoes on the wall.

  We slid into a booth, me on one side, Zack and Katie on the other, wrapped around each other like ivy and a brick building. It was disgusting, really. I’d never been one for PDA, but then I’d never really had a girlfriend. Just a long line of fuck buddies.

  “What do you want, babe?”

  “I don’t know,” Katie said, glancing at the menu. I could tell she wasn’t even really reading it. “You pick.”

  The waitress came to take our drink orders, and we all got Cokes. I knew Zack wanted a beer, but the chances of getting one in a college bar without an ID were about as good as my chances of walking into a store and not having a salesperson follow me around to make sure I didn’t steal anything. Less than zero percent. Even our waitress gave me a second look before Zack captured her attention.

  I got a calzone so Zack and Katie could share a pepperoni pizza. Katie kept checking her phone and trying to fix her ponytail so it was just messy enough to show people that she didn’t care. I mostly ignored them as Zack kept sliding his hand up her thigh and trying to feel her up. Either she was oblivious, or she was doing the best she could to ignore him. Judging by the stiff hold of her neck, she was doing the latter.

  I always wanted to ask the girls he went with what it was about him. Why did they put up with him? Zack was harder on girls than he was on his truck.

  “So there’s this party next weekend at this guy Todd’s house, and you’re invited. It’s going to be a bunch of baseball guys, but it should be fun. Lots of new girls to get friendly with.” Zack had never been friendly with a girl. Not in the non-sexual way.

  “Maybe,” I said. Not that long ago, I would have been into it, but now things were different.

  “Come on, little bro. We need to get you out and social. You’ve been at that freak school for too long. You’ve forgotten how to be around normal people.” Yeah, I’d seen what he called normal.

  “And why the fuck was I at the freak school?” I said it quiet, but Katie flinched anyway, and cast her eyes down. I hated to do this in front of her, but I could only deal with Zack’s mouth for so long, especially now that he’d dropped the fact that Charlotte was here before walking away.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about her. About what she would look like when I saw her. If her eyes would still be like that.

  “Jesus, calm down, dude. I was just trying to be a nice big brother. No need to get your panties in a twist. I’m just trying to get you out of your own head so you’re not thinking about Hottie anymore. You haven’t even asked me how she looks.” I wanted to tell him to go fuck himself, that I’d hitchhike back, but that would cause a scene, so I shut my trap and finished my calzone.

  Katie had remained mostly silent and barely picked at her pizza. She looked so sad already, or maybe it was just because I was with them. But then Zack whispered something in her hear and took her hand and kissed the back of it, and she smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. He was already using her up, like a tube of toothpaste that would soon be squeezed dry.

  “So let me know about the party. You should come,” Zack said as we walked back to the dorm from the student lot. The air was still full of summer, and crickets still sang in the grass. If I was still at home, I would h
ave climbed out my window and laid in the field behind our house for a while and stared at the sky. The streetlights were on, casting that orange glow over everything and blocking out the stars from visibility.

  “I’ll think about it,” I said, twiddling my hands in my pockets and fingering the lighter I still carried around. I’d quit smoking pot, but I couldn’t give up my lighter. It was only a stupid chrome Zippo, but it had been my grandfather’s, so I was attached to it. One of the only things I’d be really upset if I lost.

  My roommate was gone when I got back, and the trash can was full of torn-up garbage bags. His bed just had a cheap thin comforter thrown on it, and most of his other stuff was just crammed here and there.

  I threw myself back on my bed and tried to keep my mind from going to the place it kept wandering.

  I pulled out the lighter and snapped it off and on, trying to focus on the little swoosh as the flame lit.

  “You got a special gal in your life?” Gramps had asked me one of the last times I’d visited. He never called them girls. Always gals.

  “Not really.” I was in the midst of trying to get up the balls to talk to Charlotte. I’d been trying different ways, but so far I’d been too much of a pussy to do anything.

  “Don’t you lie to me, young man. I know that look in your eye. You’ve got it bad. Just like I did when I was your age. What’s her name?” He puffed on his pipe and sat back deep into the recliner.

  I shook my head.

  “She must be pretty special if she’s caught your eye. What’s she like? Bet she’s gorgeous. I remember your grandmother at that age. What a set of legs.” He whistled and threw his head back, as if the memory had taken over his brain.

  “I can’t talk to her,” I said.

  “Why not? What’s wrong with you?”

  “I don’t know. Whenever I see her, I choke.”

  “That’s natural. Gals have a way of making you feel like you’ve got no tongue at all.” That was how she made me feel. As if someone had cut my tongue out. “If this gal can’t see who you are, she doesn’t deserve to see it. You’re like your grandmother. Hard shell on the outside, but real sweet on the inside.”