Gramps comparing me to candy made me grin just a little.
“So, you going to talk to her?”
“Sure.”
“Good man,” he said, slapping me on the shoulder.
Three weeks later he died.
Six months later, I tried to talk to Charlotte. A half hour after that, everything went to hell in fucking hand basket.
Lottie
“It’s been so long!” Simon’s face split into a grin and he pulled me in for a hug, yanking me off my feet and spinning me around. His glee at seeing me made me put on a happy face and shoved the dark clouds that had descended on my first day aside.
“I saw you this morning,” I said as he set me on my feet. Simon and Will were nearly the same height, but they looked like night and day. Simon had dark hair and green eyes and the most infectious smile in the world. A few girls who walked by gave him the once over, and it was clear that they liked what they saw.
Girls were always coming on to Simon, almost as much as they did to Will.
“What can I say? The ladies love me,” he’d always say.
“So I heard about your little encounter. Do you want me to pretend it didn’t happen and just be my normal charming self? Or do you want me to make a voodoo doll? Or I could sit and watch chick flicks and cry with you.” That was another good thing about Simon. He was so shiny and bright and happy, he could brush away even the most morbid and depressing of thoughts.
“I’ll take option one.”
“Done,” he said as Will struggled in behind him, carrying three clear storage tubs.
“You have a problem, you know that?” he said, setting the tubs down. Simon was the most organized person I’d ever met. He said he used to freak out when his mom threw all his food in his lunchbox and didn’t divide it up in separate compartments, and he’d asked for a label maker for every Christmas and birthday since he was five until he’d gotten one.
“Are you sure you’re going to be able to live with Will? You’ve seen his room.” Not that Will was a pig, but he wasn’t Simon, the Master of Organization. Will gave me a look, but I ignored him. We were back to being normal again.
“I am going to convert him to my way of life.”
“Oh really? And how do you presume to do that?”
“I have my ways,” he said with a wink.
“Excuse me, I’m standing right here,” Will said, waving his arms.
“Yes, we see you, William.” Will pouted and Simon shoved him. “Is it just me, or is it smaller than I remember?” Will shoved back before plunking himself down on the stack of tubs.
“Maybe it’s a magical room that changes size. Like Hogwarts,” I said.
“I’m pretty sure they had better beds,” he said, sitting down on his with a horrible metal screech. “Oh, that’s going to need some WD-40.”
“We haven’t even been here for five seconds, and you’re already fixing something,” Will said, as Simon snapped his fingers for him to get off the tubs. One of them was marked Tools.
“I can’t sleep on a rickety bed,” Simon said, diving into the box. Will looked like he was going to say something, but I shook my head and went to go get some more of Simon’s tubs.
Seven trips later, we had all Simon’s stuff inside, my arms were like Jell-o and Simon had not only fixed the squeaky bed, but had tightened the screws on all the chairs and re-arranged all the bookshelves. He was like a one man Extreme Makeover Home Edition team. All he needed was a megaphone and a tape measure.
Will had given up and gone to get pizza after the third trip to the car, the slacker.
“How freaking long does it take to get pizza?” I said as Will came through the door.
“You’re welcome,” he said, handing me a box marked mush&extrachz.
“Hey dude, you made it.” They fist-bumped and Will opened a box and held it out to Simon. They each grabbed a slice, folded them in half and started munching. Boys.
“You have any paper towels?” I said.
“In the supplies box,” Simon said, glancing around. “Here.” He kicked the box with his foot. I got some out, handing them to both of the boys. Inevitably, one or both of them was going to spill.
“I saw him again. Zack,” Will said around a mouthful of cheese. “He was parking a pretty sweet ride, and I saw him sucking the lips off your roommate.”
“Thanks, Will. I haven’t been thinking about it at all.”
“Maybe he’ll get kicked out,” Simon said. “Maybe Zack will get wasted and the University will decide he’s a menace to the campus and get rid of him.”
Simon had never met Zack. He’d moved to Seaport, Maine after the accident, but he was as invested in hating the brothers as Will or me.
“Unlikely,” I said. “Katie told me Zack’s here on a baseball scholarship. You know how easy it is for athletes to get away with everything.” His name tasted like the bitterest cough syrup in my mouth.
Even though Zack had been drunk when the accident happened, he’d gotten off without being punished. Zan, on the other hand, ended up in the state youth facility, and then was shipped off to a school for delinquents up-state. At least I didn’t have to worry about seeing him. He still had another year of high school.
“This is batshit,” Will said.
“Pretty much,” I said.
“So what do we do?”
“There’s nothing we can do. Just avoid him, I guess.”
“Just promise me that you won’t act all brother-y and do something stupid,” I said, sticking out my pinky.
“I would never do something stupid,” Will said.
Simon and I both snorted.
“Yeah, okay,” Simon said.
“Just promise.”
“Yes, yes, I promise,” he said sticking out his pinky.
“Twin promise?”
He sighed.
“Twin promise.” We linked pinkies, then spit on our hands and shook.
“You two are so strange,” Simon said, getting out some anti-bacterial wipes. Will just wiped his on his pants, and I used my paper towel. I’d been sharing Will’s germs for more than 18 years.
“So, I think I need to see this pink monstrosity you’ve been talking about,” Simon said. “Come on, you’re going to have to go back to your room sometime. If I can come out to my crazy conservative parents and live, you can face this jerkoff.” He had a point. He put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me to my feet.
“If you want me to punch him for you, I will. Just say… um… duckling, and I’ll do it,” Simon said.
“Duckling?”
“What? You got a problem with ducklings? They’re adorable.” That was Simon for you. Will shrugged.
“Also, I may or may not have several knives at my disposal. If you ever ask me about it, I will deny it. Nevertheless, they are at your disposal if you ever need them,” Simon said, pointing to the Tools box.
Katie and Zack were nowhere to be found, but there was a note on the door, written in pink pen no less with the I’s dotted with little hearts, that said they’d gone out.
“Holy carp, it looks like this is where pink came to die. How are you going to live like this?” Simon said.
It was even worse than when I’d left, with the addition of pink curtains to cover the one window at the end of the room, and a pink throw rug that rested between our beds. I finally looked at the pictures on her side of the room and saw Zack’s grinning face. How had I not seen it before?
“Maybe I’ll become desensitized and get used to it,” I said.
“Or maybe you’ll become pinkblind and everything you’ll see will be pink,” Simon said.
“If you were pinkblind, you wouldn’t be able to see pink,” Will pointed out.
Simon gave him a look. “You knew what I meant. Wow, it really is awful. It’s like she murdered a Muppet and made pillows out of its pelt.” He pointed to the pile of pillows.
My phone buzzed and I pulled it out of my back pocket.
It was Lexie. I took a calming breath before I answered.
“Hey, Lex!” I said as brightly as I could manage. “Lexie,” I mouthed at Simon and Will. Simon handed me a tissue from a fuzzy pink box on Katie’s dresser.
“Hi, Lottie! What are you doing?”
“I just moved in. How are you?”
“I’m fine. I went to the zoo.”
“Awesome! What kind of animals did you see?”
“Um, I saw a lion and a bear and an el—um…” she struggled to find the word.
“An elephant?”
“That’s it. It was huge.”
“I bet.”
“Are you busy?”
“I’m never too busy for you, Lex.”
“Good.”
I sat down on my bed and chatted with Lexie. I’d gotten used to how different she was, but today, after seeing Zack and having the flashback, it was especially heartbreaking.
The damage to Lexie’s brain had been so extensive, at first they didn’t think she’d be able to walk or talk again. She’d proved them wrong, but certain areas were never going to recover. Her memory had been affected, as well as her emotions. She was prone to rages, and I always had to be careful what I said so I wouldn’t set her off. Her fits of anger were both violent and scary.
“Are you coming to see me soon?”
“Definitely!” Kay, Lexie’s mom, got on the phone and we hammered out details for me to come the next weekend. My parents accused me of picking Dirigo University because it was only a half-hour away from Lexie’s house. When Will and I had been choosing colleges, he’d been the one to suggest it. We’d made an unsaid pact that we would go to the same college.
“I love you, Lex.”
“Love you, too.”
Chapter Six
Lottie
Katie didn’t come back until later that night. Simon and Will had stayed in my room, just in case she came back with Zack and they needed to lay the smackdown. Their words, not mine.
When she did come back, Katie had a blissed out grin on her face until she saw Will and Simon.
“Oh, hey,” she said.
“Katie, this is Will’s roommate, Simon.”
“Nice to meet you,” Simon said, nodding. I hoped she didn’t mind that we were breaking in her television with a marathon of The Walking Dead. I flipped it to another channel and Will and Simon groaned.
“Did you already have dinner?” I asked Katie as the guys got all pouty.
“Yeah, Zack took me out.” She sidled into the room warily, as if we were all going to pounce on her. She paused before she sat back on her sea of pillows.
“You kind of freaked out when you saw him. I thought you were like, an ex-girlfriend or something, but he said it wasn’t that,” she said.
“So he set the record straight?” I said with a little bit of an edge. Will put his hand on my back and pinched my spine. He knew I was getting ready to blow.
“Yeah, he said that he dated your best friend and that they were in some sort of accident.”
Not exactly.
“You know what? I’m a little hungry myself. I thought I’d go down to the dining commons. You want to come with, Lot?” Simon said, standing up. Of course, we’d had pizza only a few hours before, but Simon had the appetite of three normal guys.
“Um, sure,” I said, knowing it was a ruse to get me out of the room before I blurted something out that would make her hate me. I’d done that more times than I could count.
“I’ll come with,” Will said, also standing.
“I guess we’ll see you later,” I said to Katie as I was dragged out of the room. She waved hesitantly.
“You guys didn’t have to do that,” I said as we walked down the hall. “I wasn’t going to do anything.”
“No, but you were about to do that thing when you start just saying whatever comes into your mind, and I don’t think she’s ready for that yet,” Will said. Simon nodded in agreement.
“I was not,” I said, crossing my arms.
“You know you can’t lie to me, Lottie,” Will said. “My twindar is strong.” He tapped his forehead. Any moment he was going to start quoting Yoda.
“Avoid confrontation, we should,” he said. I pretended to punch his stomach, and he clamped my neck under his arm and messed my hair up. I went limp until he let me go.
“Annoying, you are,” I said as I tried to fix my hair.
When we reached the front door, Simon went to open it, but someone else was coming in and got there first. He stood back to let us pass. Simon nodded to whoever it was and I looked up to say thank you and stared right into a set of deep, dark eyes. His face had matured over the years. He was still tall; taller than when I’d seen him last. His hair was longer, and hung on either side of his eyes.
Zan fucking Parker.
Will crashed into me because my legs decided to stop working.
“Lottie, you wanna keep walking there?”
I couldn’t answer. Zan seemed frozen as well.
“Lottie, seriously.” Will stepped around me to see what held me up.
“You coming, Lottie?” Simon said, turning around and realizing I wasn’t right behind him.
“Zan,” Will said, first clenching his jaw and then moving to stand in front of me.
“You’re Zan?” Simon said.
I continued to gape until there were a few people behind me that wanted to get through.
“Um, could you keep moving?” A girl said in a snotty voice.
“Lottie, move,” Will said, taking my arm and leading me away. I stumbled, but he kept dragging me until we were outside the building.
“Oh, fuck,” I said, going to lean against the building. “This is not happening.” I closed my eyes as Simon and Will tried to decide what to do in barely-hushed whispers.
“Charlotte?” Oh no, this was not happening.
My eyes snapped open to find him standing ten feet away, with Will and Simon between us, like the lions that guarded the New York Public Library. “What the hell do you want? You’re not even supposed to be here. You should be a senior in high school.”
He started to say something, but then decided against it.
“I think you’d better leave,” Will said, puffing himself up. My protective little brother.
“I skipped a year,” he said before he turned and went back in the building.
“Shit,” I said. I struggled to pull air into my lungs.
“You okay?” Simon said.
“How could both of them be here? And in this building?”
“Shitty luck,” Will said. “How did he skip a grade? I heard he’d been sent to that youth facility and then that school for kids who set their beds on fire and tried to kill their parents and stuff.” Will didn’t have my gift of gab, but he could hold his own in the rambling department.
“You must have murdered a bunch of people in a past life and you’re making up for it now, Lot.” Simon said, watching Zan go back into the building. I didn’t feel like I could breathe until the door closed behind him.
“Shut up, Simon,” Will said.
“Whatever,” I said, peeling myself from the building. I was not going to let them ruin my first day of college. “I feel like I should get drunk and make some bad decisions right now.”
“Lottie, only girls in books do that. And not even good books. Just those crappy romance ones you hide from mom,” Will said. He was right, of course. I had to smuggle in trashy paperbacks so my mother wouldn’t see them.
“Let’s just go to dinner,” Will said, taking my arm and not giving me another option.
Zan
I knew I would see her eventually, I just didn’t think it would be so soon. I hadn’t even had time to rehearse what I could possibly say to her if we ever bumped into each other in the laundry room, or the dining hall. If I’d had time, I might have come up with something better. Something that didn’t make me sound like a dumbass.
I knew it would happen sooner rather than l
ater, given the fact that her brother was my neighbor. I’d seen them putting up the names on the doors, and heard him moving his stuff in, and I’d stayed in my room like a coward so he wouldn’t see me. I didn’t really feel like getting punched in the face on my first day. I also realized that Will’s roommate was the guy who had offered to hep me with the weights earlier. He seemed nice, but I knew as soon as he figured out who I was, his attitude toward helping me was bound to change.
I hadn’t seen her in two years, but there was no mistaking Charlotte Anders, even though her hair was longer and she looked like a woman instead of a girl. Her sadness was as palpable as it had been when I’d seen her after the accident. And her rage. I could feel that, too.
Her eyes weren’t dead anymore. They snapped on mine like lightning, and the world stopped moving for a moment as I was yanked back in time to the night of the accident. Back to when I was just a boy who had a crush on a girl and couldn’t get up the courage to talk to her.
But things had changed since then. Now the biggest emotion I felt when I looked at her was guilt. The other feelings were still there, too, and they all mashed together. What was guilt about the accident and what was part of the crush that was leftover and what was this urge to get her to see me as someone else, I couldn’t separate.
She’d flinched when I’d used her full name, as if I’d slapped her in the face.
Just a few months ago, seeing her would have led me on another downward spiral, but I couldn’t do that now. College was supposed to be my fresh start. A new chance. A place to be around people who didn’t know who I was, didn’t make assumptions about me based on what they had heard.
I wanted to say something to her. So many somethings, but all I could tell her was that I’d graduated a year early from school.
The girl with the angry blue eyes had completely disarmed me. Another Rumi quote spun through my brain: what you seek is seeking you.
I was fucked.
I went back to my room and lay on my bed, wondering where my new roommate was. My phone rang, and I looked to see who it was before I answered. Huh. It was Katie.