“Yeah, sure.”
He winked and pointed to the weights. “Be careful with those.”
“I’ll try,” I said.
Zack finally appeared again after I’d gotten all of his stuff into his room, including the rest of his weights and a lifetime supply of protein powder.
It took only three trips to get all of my stuff into my new room. My roommate hadn’t gotten there yet, so I picked the left side of the room and swapped out the mattresses. It was larger than the dorm rooms I’d had before, but it wasn’t anything special. I had about three feet of space between my bed and my roommate’s, a desk, dresser and a closet. At least I was allowed to have a microwave. I wasn’t at the other places. Too dangerous. Might put my head in there and try to kill myself or take it apart and make a bomb.
“You sure you’re going to be okay with this? I just don’t want you calling me in the middle of the night saying you need to hide a body that you beat the fuck out of. I would do it, but I’d rather not.”
I didn’t respond. Words weren’t my strong suit. I always seemed to pick the wrong ones these days. I couldn’t count how many times I’d said the wrong thing and ended up getting myself in some deep shit.
Zack’s phone vibrated and he smiled as he answered the text message. By his smile, I could tell the message came from someone of the female persuasion. It was the smile of someone who knew they had complete control, and could get anything they wanted.
“If you’ll excuse me, I gotta go see my girl.” He winked and strolled out, giving me a pat on the shoulder. “Text me if you need anything.”
I nodded and he left, calling his girlfriend, Katie. She was a sweet girl, but she wouldn’t be when he was done with her.
I glanced around the room, taking it in. It was a tight fit, but at least I only had to share it with one other person. Also, it had a decent amount of shelves for my books. I had to look at the bright side, no matter how dim it might seem.
Fuck the bright side, Zack would have said.
Moonlight floods the whole sky from horizon to horizon; How much can fill your room depends on its windows. Or so said Rumi, the thirteenth century Muslim poet, according to Miss Carole, my social worker. She’d given me a book of it a while ago, and I used to memorize lines when I was feeling especially destructive. Those poems had gotten me out of a lot of trouble.
“You have to open your windows,” she’d say.
Hard to do when there are padlocks on them, and you tossed the key away.
Chapter Three
Lottie
“What if she’s one of those people who becomes obsessed with you and tries to steal your identity and then kill you, like in that movie?” Will said as he set a box of bedding and pillows on my bed. I plunked down my box of books, and narrowly missed dropping them on my foot.
“Then I’ll sleep with a knife under my pillow,” I said, rolling my eyes. I’d talked to my new roommate, Katie, online, and so far so good. Even though she also used way too many emoticons in her emails. Will had begged me to stalk her on the various social media outlets, but honestly, I didn’t want to know ahead of time. Then I would have just spent the entire summer having nightmares about her.
“If she’s hot, I guess the crazy doesn’t matter,” Will said, as if it had just occurred to him.
“First, you’re disgusting and second, I have no idea what she looks, like and she definitely mentioned a boyfriend.” Several times.
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“Um, I think it means she’s in a relationship, dumbass.” I moved the box of books with my foot and stretched my spine. I was going to sleep like a rock tonight.
“Well, you should have found someone you knew to room with instead of playing Roommate Roulette, Charlotte.” I ignored the use of my full name. No one called me that unless they were trying to get my attention.
“Yeah, because I had so many options.”
“What about that girl from your bio class? The one who moved in halfway through senior year? What was her name?”
“Glory,” I said, shuddering. I didn’t want to bring anything from my high school with me, and that included a roommate. Also, she had an unfortunate foot odor problem.
“Her parents must have been high.”
“No doubt. Hey, why don’t you help me with that desk,” I said. I’d already moved it three times, but I’d finally decided I wanted it at the foot of my bed.
“Again?”
“You’re a guy. You’re supposed to be used to moving heavy objects for us delicate females.” I went to the desk and pretended to move it. “Oh, I do declare, I might swoon,” I said, putting my hand to my forehead and collapsing on the bed.
“You’re such a drama queen,” Will said, flopping down next to me.
“Whatever, little bro,” I said, shoving his shoulder. Voices drifted up and down the hall as people moved boxes and bags and garbage bags of their worldly goods into tiny dorm rooms that were barely big enough to breathe in.
Our parents were supposed to be here helping us move, but Dad was off studying plankton in the Caribbean for his lab and Mom was busy with a library charity auction. She tried to get out of it, but being the Head Librarian, she didn’t really have a choice.
“Knock, knock,” A sweet voice said just before a round, cute face peered around the doorway. I hummed the Miss America theme song in my head. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said when she saw Will and I on my bed.
I looked from her to Will and back. Oh, she totally thought we were…
I burst out laughing as I got up from the bed.
“Hey, you must be Katie, I’m Charlotte, but everyone calls me Lottie, and this is my brother,” I said, sticking out my hand. She gave me a limp shake. Not a good sign. There were a few people behind her, carrying boxes.
“Is this it, Katie?” A woman who must have been her Mom said over an armful of pink pillows.
Katie was only about an inch taller than my 5’1, but she looked… vulnerable. Young. She had these big brown eyes that made me think of Bambi, wandering around in the woods after his mother was shot. She had her hair in a high flippy ponytail and her tanned legs in a pink pair of shorts. In contrast, my hair was hastily tossed into a clip that couldn’t really hold my thick blonde mane and cargo shorts that may or may not have originally been Will’s.
“This isn’t so bad,” a man who must have been her dad said, as he ducked into the room. He was so tall, the top of his head almost scraped the doorway.
“Hi, I’m Katie’s roommate, Lottie. This is my brother, Will. He’s living on the second floor.” Will got up, put his hands in his pockets and tried to look both cool and attractive at the same time. Now that she knew he was my brother, she had definitely noticed him. People always noticed Will.
“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Lottie. I’m Glenn and this is Regina.” Katie’s Dad took my hand, then Will’s, giving both of us a hearty shake. That was more like it. Regina set to work immediately getting Katie’s fluorescent pink bedding out and starting to put it on the bed. Wow, it was even more obnoxious when it was all spread out like that. I hoped it didn’t glow in the dark.
“Gina, why don’t we get the rest of the stuff in before we do all that.” Regina was already fussing. Katie must have been an only child, or at least the youngest.
“Do you need a hand? We’re nearly done with our stuff,” Will said, jumping right into the “helpful young man” role.
“Oh, that is so sweet,” Regina said. “Katie’s boyfriend is moving in today too, or else he’d be here to help us.”
“Okay, well, I’m going to get the rest of my stuff from the truck and then I can give you a hand too,” I said, giving Katie a smile. She smiled back. Maybe this was going to work out.
I got the rest of my junk, including two more boxes of books. I passed Will in the hallway, bringing in another box of what looked like pink stuff for Katie. Oy.
Regina had already gone back to work on the bed, arrang
ing so many throw pillows on it that there wouldn’t be much room for Katie, who was busy hanging a gigantic photoboard on the wall. Of course, all her friends were equally cute and attractive and photogenic.
Katie’s phone rang, treating us all to ‘We Found Love’ by Rihanna, as Regina began to straighten Katie’s bed skirt so it would be perfect. Will would have choked if he’d heard it. As it was, I had to stifle a giggle.
“Hey, babe. Where are you? No, come on up. Four-oh-seven. Love you too. Bye.” Katie let out a little sound of glee that punched my eardrums. I really hoped that wasn’t going to be a frequent sound.
“Zack’s coming up. My boyfriend,” she said, as if I needed clarification. “You’ll love him. He’ll be here a lot, so I hope you get along. He was going to go to UMaine, but he got a baseball scholarship to come here.” Why did I have a sinking feeling? Maybe it was the fact that I hadn’t eaten in a few hours. Will had consumed all our road trip snacks about ten minutes from home.
“I’m sure we will,” I said, trying to inject my voice with sunshine and rainbows.
“You’ll love him,” Katie said again with a dreamy look. Her mom smiled at her as if she’d won the biggest prize at the science fair. I gave Will a look as he brought in another box of pink crap. Our room was beginning to look like the inside of a Pepto Bismol bottle.
Katie’s Dad went to get the last of her stuff and Will decided to go back to his own room to unpack and wait for his roommate Simon to get here.
“Pizza? There’s a place just up the road,” Will said. I glanced at Katie’s heart-shaped pink plastic clock. Leave it to Will to know where the nearest pizza joint was. If I let him, he’d eat pizza, baked potatoes and Cheetos for the rest of his life. “Simon should be here in soon.”
“Yeah, he texted me earlier,” I said. Will and Simon had been best friends since Simon moved to Seaport two years ago. Even Simon coming out of the closet and confessing a secret crush on Will hadn’t broken their bond. In fact, it had just made it stronger.
“Cool. I’ll be back in a few. It was nice to meet you,” Will said to Katie, Regina and Glenn. I fought the urge to make him stay. The idea of being alone with them made me feel uncomfortable. When I got uncomfortable, I had a tendency to babble and say things I wouldn’t normally say and go on, and on, and on…
“Simon’s Will’s roommate,” I said to Katie as she put up even more pictures. I didn’t look too closely at them. There were just too many. They were like a fungus that I knew would somehow migrate to my side of the room. I’d wake up one morning and see her cute face pouting at me via photo.
“Oh, I see,” Regina said, as she handed Katie another picture while they shared a look. “Is he cute?”
“Will’s more his type. Simon’s gay,” I said, which put a stop to that line of questioning. “I mean, I always knew, but it wasn’t until he told me how much he really, really loved Channing Tatum that I finally confronted him and made him tell me. Then we had this whole intervention-type thing with Will, but he didn’t really care. I mean, some guys would be weird about living with a gay guy, but they’ve been best friends for so long –“ I was finally able to cut off the flow of words there. My word explosion was met with a stunned silence.
“Oh,” Regina said. Glenn cleared his throat and asked Katie where she wanted her television.
We’d agreed ahead of time that she was in charge of bringing electronics, since her parents had already bought them last year. I had my own stuff, but hers were top of the line.
Katie’s phone buzzed with a message and she made that God-awful squealing sound again. Looked like I was going to have to get used to that. Or just learn how to not use my eardrums.
I was busy alphabetizing my books by author’s last name (in series order) when I heard a voice behind me.
“Hottie Lottie?”
The books I’d been shelving hit the floor. I turned slowly, hoping against hope that it wasn’t who I thought it was. I hadn’t heard that voice in years; thought I’d never hear it again.
In one second, his voice brought back that night, the full memory. The smoke in my hair, the cool of the moonlight, and the fear that filled my stomach like hot lead as Zan, Lexie and Zack got in his truck and drove away.
I swallowed back bile and turned all the way around, just in case I was having an auditory hallucination. Nope. There he was. Zack Parker. Two years ago, I’d seen him laid out in a hospital bed, his body bruised and crushed and battered. I remembered looking at him and wishing he was dead.
They found Lexie ten feet from the flipped truck. None of them were wearing seatbelts, and the deer came out of nowhere. Zan had swerved and the truck rolled, throwing all of them from the truck. Zan and Zack had broken bones, but Lexie suffered a traumatic brain injury.
That night had changed everything. Lexie went from a girl who loved horses and strawberry ice cream to a girl who had to learn how to walk again. A girl who couldn’t remember my name. When I visited her in the hospital after she woke up, I had to wear a nametag and keep reminding her who I was.
“Hey, babe!” Katie squealed and flung herself at him as if they were reuniting after he’d come home from a long deployment. Regina smiled and Glenn scowled. Clearly, he wasn’t won over by Zack’s charm.
“Hey,” he said, glancing at her before looking at me. I’d never seen Zack shocked before, but for just a blink he was. Then he quickly smoothed it behind his smirk. I wanted to take that smirk and shove it so far up his ass a proctologist couldn’t find it. “Nice to see you again.”
“I have to get something out of the truck,” I said, hiding my shaking hands behind my back. I would not let him see me this way.
So I ran.
Chapter Four
Zan
There was a knock at my door as I was putting my clothes in the dresser. My roommate still hadn’t showed up yet, and I was beginning to wonder if he ever would.
“You will never guess who’s here,” Zack said, his arm around Katie, as if she was solely there for the purpose of letting him lean on her. She eyed me warily, as usual. I wanted to tell her to run while she still could. To run while she could still stand and he hadn’t crushed her under the weight of his arm. Granted, she wouldn’t listen to anything I had to say.
“Who?”
He smirked. “Hottie Lottie.” The nickname made all sorts of things explode in my brain at once. Many of them were curse words, but her name was the loudest.
Charlotte Anders. Everyone called her Lottie, but she’d always been Charlotte in my head. It suited her better.
Charlotte Anders was here. At the same University.
“Are you sure?” I stuttered.
“I think I’d remember the girl who had you totally pussy-whipped for years.”
I didn’t bother to contradict him. It wouldn’t do any good. I had to sit down on my bed so I didn’t fall over. I never thought I would see her again. My chest constricted and my hands shook so I put them in my pockets.
“She’s also Katie’s roommate. Right, babe?” Zack clearly got a sick thrill out of doing this to me. I wasn’t the only one who looked uncomfortable, though.
“Can we go?” Katie said, nudging him in the chest. He looked down as if he’d just remembered she was there. His face slowly arranged itself into a smile, and he tweaked her nose, which made her smile back at him.
“Sure, babe. See you later, Zan. We’ll have to go out soon. Just the guys.” He gave me a wink and steered Katie down the hallway.
“Bye.” How like Zack to drop a bomb like that and walk away.
It wasn’t until after he left that I remembered I was supposed to tell him to call Mom. I’d probably end up doing it so she wouldn’t worry.
She and I were like two people who only spoke half of their words in the same language, so only half of what was said on either side was understood. I was going to put off calling her as long as possible.
It hadn’t always been like that, but after the accident the distanc
e between us had gotten so big and wide and deep, we’d never been able to cross it again.
I wasn’t ready to talk to anyone, so I just kept unpacking and repeating her name in my head.
Charlotte, Charlotte, Charlotte.
I was definitely going to run into her at some point, if we were living in the same building. I looked around the room, and it suddenly started feeling smaller. The familiar tight feeling in my chest and lightness in my head told me I needed to get out of there. Now.
Without my medication to press the Stop button in my brain, there was no telling what could happen. What I could do. Everything just built and built and built in my brain until I had to get it out, and usually that involved destroying things to prevent the guilt and pain and regret from absolutely crushing me. I’d gotten control of it over the past two years, but seeing her threatened to send that spinning into chaos.
I almost forgot my key card, which would get me back in my room, but I grabbed it at the last minute before the door slammed behind me and I headed for the nearest exit. I almost crashed into some guy, but didn’t even pause to say I was sorry. It wouldn’t have mattered.
Once I was outside, I started walking. There were far too many people around. I had to get away from them. From their loud happy voices and their loud happy energy. There weren’t many places you could find on a college campus to be alone, but I was damned if I wasn’t going to find one.
Just the act of walking was helping me. If I could focus on walking, I could stop focusing on the insanity going on in my head.
Charlotte, Charlotte, Charlotte.
What was she doing here? Her brother was probably here too. They’d always been together back in school, but that was two years ago. Maybe they were different now. Maybe she was different now.
The last time I’d seen her, I was in a hospital bed, and she’d been standing in the open doorway of my hospital room, staring at me. I’d never forget that look in her eyes. Those blue eyes that reminded me of the sky reflecting off lake water on a summer day.