Surviving Today

by Mande Chambers

  He laughed softly at the thought. It was morbid and sad, but pathetically true.

  Either way, they needed to figure this out soon.

  Danick and Rhyder were getting a little too suspicious and things were extremely awkward with her under the same roof as him.

  Until they figured things out, it was imperative they kept what happened to themselves. As long as they were under the same roof, every action, every word said was under intense scrutiny.

  The consequences of Danick finding out about that night weren’t a risk he was willing to take. At least, not until he knew exactly what was going on. He hated lying to him, even by omission. Danick was his best friend and secrets weren’t something they did.

  Luckily, this would only be a major issue for another week.

  The alarm went off again. D turned it off reluctantly and pushed off the covers. Swinging his legs over the edge of the bed, he placed them on the cool carpet and stretched.

  He then reached down and grabbed the nearest shoe, preparing to wake up…

  Danick was lost in his own thoughts. He had been up for a while, but since the alarm clock was closer to D’s bed, he let him handle it. He would let him know when it was time to get up.

  Since he was sick of thinking about his own screwed up relationship with his girlfriend, Jenna, he turned his thoughts to what was going on with Shanna and D. There was something more going on beyond their normal I-hate-you attitudes.

  He just couldn’t figure out what it was. He also wasn’t ready to call them out on it yet.

  He stared at the wall, keeping his back to D. He wanted his friend to think he was still asleep as he attempted to unravel the mystery that had been driving him nuts for months.

  He knew D and Shanna were keeping something from him. He would even bet his next paycheck that something had happened between them.

  Or, at the very least, was happening between them.

  He knew they thought he would be upset if he found out something had happened, but he wouldn’t be. He knew D well enough to know he had feelings for Shanna.

  What pissed him off was the fact that they lied straight to his face about it. A blind man could see something had changed between them.

  A shoe lightly hit him upside the head, bringing his silent contemplation to an end.

  Danick grunted, rolled over, and picked up the shoe. He debated what to do with it.

  It held so much potential…

  Rhyder sat up in his own bed, catching the shoe neatly in front of his face. “Nice try, bro. I’ve been up for the last forty-five minutes listening to the two of you toss and turn. I’m surprised you guys can’t smell the smoke from the two of you thinking so hard.”

  D laughed as he flipped on the overhead light. “I didn’t know I slept so loud.”

  Rhyder tossed his covers aside, standing up as he stretched. “You wouldn’t sleep so loud if you weren’t tossing and turning so much. You’re hand hit the wall every time you moved.” He glanced at Danick. “You. Don’t even open your mouth. You snore like a freaking freight train when you’re upset.”

  “Ain’t that the truth,” D said as he surveyed his closet for something to wear. “Wait. Only when he’s upset?”

  “I was trying to keep the references to this incident.”

  “Ah. Good thinking.”

  Danick didn’t even try to deny it. He had absolutely no idea if it was true or not. Instead, he said, “So… Who wants the task of waking up her majesty?”

  He and Rhyder stared at D expectantly.

  D swore colorfully and headed out of the room, not even bothering to throw on a shirt.

  Shanna shot up in bed like a rocket as ice cold water shocked her system. She sputtered and wiped the frigid water out of her eyes. She pushed her flat, wet hair out of her face as she glared at a laughing D.

  “I know you’re pissed as hell at me, Tiern,” she said evenly, pulling the covers up over her chest, the white tee she had worn to bed now see through, “but that was crossing the line.”

  “So worth it,” he managed through spurts of laughter.

  “Payback’s a bitch,” she warned.

  He doubled over with laughter, holding his sides and wiping tears from his eyes. He shook his head, snorted, and laughed louder as he did the gentlemanly thing, turning his back on her.

  “So are you, so bring it on,” he finally managed to reply.

  She bolted from the bed and was locked in the small bathroom connected to her room in less than three seconds. She stripped, turned the water up as hot as it would go, and jumped into the shower.

  She would get even with him. It might not be today or tomorrow, but she would get him back when he least expected it. She would make it sooner, but she was scared to death of her feelings for him, so she did the sensible thing and hid from him like the coward she was.

  It made things somewhat easier for her to live in denial and it frustrated him, which was always a bonus.

  She squeezed out a small amount of her favorite shampoo into her hand. She lathered her never ending mass of hair, wondering why her refusing to talk to him bothered D so much.

  She would have figured that he deemed that night a mistake and would be more than willing to forget it ever happened. It had been a mistake—they both knew it—so, really, what was the point in talking the subject to death?

  All that was going to do was reopen a wound that had barely begun to heal and further complicate matters that were already complicated enough.

  It had taken her a long time to recuperate from what that encounter had done to her. She was used to being used in one way or another by people. It kind of came with the territory of who she was. Recuperating from those instances was a walk in the park compared to the emotional damage that one night had done to her.

  For all their issues, D had never once used her prior to that night. She knew he had been drunk, but it still hurt more than it should.

  Of course, there is still that other issue complicating things…

  She shushed the annoying voice in her head with its unwanted observations. She rinsed her hair, turning off the shower. Once out, she dried off, wrapped herself securely in her cotton robe and walked back out into her room to ask D why this was such a big deal to him.

  There was only one problem with that plan.

  There was no D in her room.

  Their private school was located in downtown Akron. It was built into a hill, so, from the front, it looked like a one story building, but was actually a three story building that housed around five hundred students.

  The dress code was business casual. No uniforms, but also no long hair or unshaven days for the male population. Jeans were only allowed on dress down days and pajama bottoms were only allowed on select spirit club days with “sleep” or “night” in the tittle.

  Shanna slammed her first floor locker, which happened to be across from the student union, shut. She could literally look through the wall of glass doors and see the kids milling around as they decided what they wanted for lunch. She leaned back against her locker, cursing Cristian’s obsession with flaunting his money.

  She relished the much needed breather before she headed around the corner to her fourth period lit class. She ran a hand through her hair, watching the kids in the student union. She spotted D and Danick over by the vending machines. She knew, without hearing their conversation, that they were debating the merits of Mountain Dew over Pepsi.

  It was a never ending pointless debate between the two of them.

  “We need to talk.”

  She was really sick of hearing those four words.

  She stared at Karmichael Miler like he had just sprouted a second right before her eyes, trying to figure out where the hell Rhyder’s best friend had materialized from.

  She didn’t plan to talk to him about anything. “I have a date with English, but nice try,” she replied. “I give it a solid A for effort.” She turned to head around the corner.

  “You kn
ow, that’s not a nice way to treat your boyfriend after two months apart.” He leaned a shoulder against the locker beside hers, crossing his arms over his chest.

  She stopped, turned back towards him, and laughed. “Wow. Really? I think boyfriend may be overstating your status a bit.” She narrowed her eyes, her glare ice cold.

  Karmichael scratched his head. “If memory serves me correctly, that was how we left things before I left for London, love.” Her heart skipped a traitorous beat as his British accent come out to play.

  “And, if memory serves me correctly, I didn’t hear a peep out of you all summer. I didn’t even get a postcard. You dropped off the grid.” She flipped a strand of hair over her shoulder. “Now, suddenly, school has started and you’re stuck back in the states. So you find yourself wanting to play house, so to speak, again. Yeah, thanks, but no thanks.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “What crawled up your skirt and died?”

  Seriously?

  Wow.

  “First of all, I’m not wearing a skirt. Secondly, really? And lastly, if your memory is so damn good, you’ll figure it out. You’re not as stupid as you pretend to be. After almost two months of the silent treatment, your girlfriend is a bit pissed. Imagine that.” She tucked a stand of hair behind her ear, her eyes narrowing to near slits. “You heard something. That is what this whole thing is really about.”

  He flinched at the sarcasm in her voice, ignoring her last statement. “Can we at least talk about graduation?”

  She hesitated. They honestly should. Neither one of them had technically called things off. They had just ended up taking an unscheduled break.

  In light of recent events, though, talking wasn’t such a good idea.

  “You chose to drop off the map,” she pointed out.

  “And, while I’m wrong for that, do you honestly blame me?” He stared at her expectantly, awaiting her answer.

  “No,” she mumbled.

  “So we still need to talk about it, right?” he pressed, watching her face carefully.

  What was she supposed to say to that? She knew that look in his eyes well and he had a valid point.

  “You need to come over—”

  He cut her off. “Tiern’s house. Yeah, I know.”

  Oh, his tone was not good. This so wasn’t cool. She knew where this was heading.

  “I was right. This whole thing is about something you’ve heard.”

  He shrugged, heading in the opposite direction. “You’ll just have to wait and see, won’t you?”

  She watched as he walked down the hall and wondered how the hell she’d gotten herself into this mess.

  “You know they’re still together, right?” Mercedes Carlisle asked conversationally as she sat down across from D.

  She watched as he continued to stare out the glass doors at the scene playing out between Karmichael and Shanna. She bit into her sandwich, a small smile playing on her lips.

  D grunted in response.

  “Seriously. He didn’t talk to her all summer. Apparently something went down at graduation that neither one of them will talk about. They never officially broke up, though.” Her voice was gentle, innocent almost, but she was extremely satisfied to be the one dropping this little bombshell on him. “Should be interesting conversation, don’t you think?”

  D finally looked over at the annoying brunette. “And you would know this…how?”

  “The same way I know you two hooked up this summer. I have my sources.”

  He didn’t bother denying it.

  Instead he studied the scene through the doors again, muttering, “I just bet you do.”

  Shanna flinched as the back door slammed shut after school. She didn’t protest or answer her brothers’ questioning looks when D unceremoniously grabbed her by the elbow and dragged her towards the basement stairs caveman style.

  Yep, this was about how her whole day had gone.

  Yep, he was pissed.

  Nope, she hadn’t planned on ever telling him.

  She collapsed silently into the cloth recliner in the basement common room, deciding it was safer to let D initiate the conversation.

  He was standing across the room, his back to her, bracing himself against the wall with his hands, his head bowed. His body was rigid with anger. She watched his back rise and fall with every breath he took as he attempted to maintain control.

  “Tell me,” he ground out slowly, his voice controlled, “that you and Karmichael ended things before that night.”

  Shit.

  Her heart split in two, feeling like it was being ripped from her chest.

  She sat quietly, her hands neatly folded in her lap, her eyes memorizing the carpet pattern at her feet. She didn’t know how to respond. A tear slipped undetected down her cheek.

  She had given him hell about Veronica as a defense mechanism. She had made him feel guilty, like the biggest asshat on the planet for what he did to her, and here she was no better than him.

  Their situations were a little different, but they had both technically cheated on someone.

  The real difference was that he had never hidden that fact.

  D snorted. Then he asked softly, “Shanna, what happened at graduation?”

  She froze, swallowing hard. She wasn’t ready to go into that. It wasn’t what he thought, but she still couldn’t talk about it.

  Her silence spoke volumes.

  He pushed back from the wall and headed for the stairs. He stopped at the bottom, careful to keep his back to her. “I guess there’s nothing left to talk about then.”

  And then he was gone.

  Later that night, Shanna was in the kitchen, eating straight out of a pint of mint chocolate ice cream, when she heard the back door open and someone step quietly into the room. She pulled the spoon out of her mouth, glancing at the wooden owl clock on the wall in front of her.

  It was eleven.

  She dug the spoon into the ice cream, violently bringing it out again with a mountain of chocolate, and stuck it in her mouth before she said something stupid.

  She could feel D standing uneasily behind her. “You really haven’t got a reason to be pissed.”

  She jerked the metal spoon out of her mouth. Digging into the slowly dwindling ice cream, she fought the urge to stick the cold spoon into his eye. Instead, she simply asked, “So, who was she this time?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Did I stutter?”

  “No…”

  “Good. Then you understood me. Who. Was. She?”

  “You’re imagining things, Corelsand.”

  She shook her head. “Nice try. I really think you should rethink calling me paranoid after your little temper tantrum this afternoon. I know you better than you’d like to admit.” She left the spoon sticking out of the ice cream, her appetite gone. “I really hope she was worth it.”

  “You know, you have some nerve taking that attitude with me. Suddenly, now that you’re busted, you want to talk. Well, it’s a little too late. You had plenty of chances to tell me what was going on, Shanna. You had plenty of opportunities to let me in.”

  Ouch. That one cut to the bone. He was right, of course.

  And that pissed her off even more.

  “Just remember, D, you’re the one that deals with your problems by bed hopping, not me.”

  She didn’t bother to wait for his answer. She disappeared into the basement, leaving the ice cream melting on the table.

  CHAPTER 17

  December 1999

  It had been almost four months since the incident of D finding out about Karmichael. Shanna had continued to see Karmichael, conveniently forgetting to fill him in on what happened over the summer. To her credit, she did tell him about the events leading up to Kai and Cristian disappearing.

  It was back to being World War Three between her and D. With the way Karmichael had reacted last spring when she had told him about D kissing her—see, she could tell the truth—she didn’t
really see the point in reopening that particular can of worms. Honestly, she wasn’t even sure Karmichael would care after what had happened graduation night. She just wasn’t ready to admit the events of the summer out loud.

  There was the little issue of Karmichael refusing to talk about his summer. It was hard to be honest with someone who wasn’t being honest with you.

  Luckily, Shanna was now safely living in Lisa’s attic and not in the Tiern basement. While she hadn’t wanted to continue her relationship with Karmichael, she knew her chance with D had been ruined by her lie of omission. He didn’t have the right to act all sanctimonious about it all, but, to his credit, she had known the entire time he was still dating Veronica. D hadn’t known he was trespassing on someone else’s property, in a manner of speaking.

  Shanna tapped her pencil against her math book, blankly staring at the equation she was supposed to be solving. Things had been tense in the household over the last few months. No one had tried to question her and D’s strained relationship, mainly because it was normal for them to be at one another’s throats, but Danick had found out about the kiss back in March and the one in June. D’s defense on spilling the beans was that he had to tell Danick something to get him to back off.

  Danick didn’t know it all, but he wasn’t happy about what little he did know, so keeping the rest a secret was imperative.

  Rhyder wasn’t too happy she had cheated on his best friend.

  She set the books aside. Sliding off her bed, she walked over to the radio on her dresser. Switching it on, she started singing along with the song currently playing.

  She climbed back onto her bed, leaning back against the headboard. She pulled the books back into her lap, knowing full well she wasn’t going to get her math homework done anytime soon.

  She cared for Karmichael. He was a familiar and safe presence. He was someone who kept her from feeling completely alone. He also knew more about what had really gone on at home with Cristian and Kai than even her brothers did. He knew the truth. The reason she was treated the way she was.