Because You Exist (Light in the Dark #1)

by Tiffany Truitt

“Don’t,” she warned.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Play the I want to get to know you act.”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “You were.”

  Count to ten.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  Four.

  Why does she have to be such a bit...

  She lifted a book from the cart, but I grabbed it out of her hand. “Enough.”

  Carrie snatched the book back from me, and pushed the cart into my stomach. The smile she wore only moments before fell. She glared at me. “You’re right. Enough. You want to talk about this now? How about when you saw me in the hallway? Didn’t seem like you wanted to talk then.”

  “I know you’re not down with social norms, but that wouldn’t have been the ideal place to discuss the end of times,” I said, my voice rising. I kept waiting for someone to ssshh us like in the movies, but no one did. But then again, who spent their Saturday afternoon in the library? Especially in the...Human Growth and Sexuality Section.

  Oh God.

  “Right. Don’t want any of your posse to see you talking with someone like me. That’s it. Right? How self-centered can you be? I mean self-actualized. Sure. Great. But when you’re so wrapped up in yourself you can’t see a crap storm on the horizon, then we have some issues. I mean do we only talk about the end of the world when it’s good for you?”

  “Ugh. God. I didn’t say that. I’m just saying that wasn’t particularly the best time. I had other obligations.”

  Other obligations?

  Excuse me world. You will all perish because I have other obligations to attend to.

  “Sorry, dumbass, but I don’t think the apocalypse can be put on hold so you can screw your girlfriend.”

  “I just...I just needed some time to process,” I stammered.

  “No. You needed some time to pork your girlfriend’s brains out. Now go home. Or at least get the hell out of my way. I need to keep my job.”

  She gave the cart another shove, but I was quick enough to brace my foot against it. “You have no idea how I spent my night, or any of my nights for that matter. And what I do or do not do with my girlfriend is none of your concern. In fact, I’m starting to wonder why you care so much about her in the first place?”

  Carrie rolled her eyes. “Great. So, now I’m a lesbian. You’re pathetic. I only know because you and your bonehead friends have talked about this weekend every day for the past week in math class.”

  She was in my math class?

  I had to admit she was right. I loved Jenna. I really did. And even though I considered myself a great deal more mature than most of my friends, it didn’t mean I was above bragging.

  Carrie didn’t wait for a response, shoving an earplug back into her ear. I reached up to pull it out, and she froze. Right. She didn’t like to be touched. I held my hands up in a mock surrender. With a heavy sigh, Carrie pulled out the earplug.

  “Listen, I’m not asking you to like me. I’m asking for your help. I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings yesterday. I’m not proud of it. I just needed one more day to pretend that everything could be okay. One more day to pretend the things I saw weren’t possible. I have no idea what happened to us, or what it meant, but I need your help.”

  Carrie looked away. She tugged on the drawstrings of her hoodie. She didn’t want to help me, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t.

  “Please,” I asked again, my voice cracking. “This is bigger than you and me. This is about saving the people we love.”

  Did she love anyone or anything?

  Carrie stared at me for a long time, and I thought I was going to have to walk away with silence as her final retort, but then something in her expression changed. She didn’t look angry anymore, only resigned.

  “Do you even know my real name?” she asked.

  It was a simple question, but somehow it carried with it my past, my present, and my future.

  “No. I don’t. I only know the nickname.”

  “The nickname you gave me,” she charged.

  I nodded, finding it difficult to meet her eyes.

  “Follow me,” she said, pulling her hood back over her head with a resolute tug.

  I followed her into the break room. I stood awkwardly in the doorway as she grabbed a brown grocery bag from the closest. She sat the bag in front of me on the floor. “Study these. We’ll talk on Monday.”

  “You went through all of these last night?” I asked as I began to rifle through the bag.

  She nodded.

  I held up the box set of season five of Lost. “And how is this supposed to help?”

  She almost smiled. Almost. “Watch episode eleven.”

  I wanted to tell her she was crazy, but knew it would be like taking two steps off the edge of a cliff in an already shaky partnership. I turned to leave when the sound of her voice stopped me.

  “My name is Josephine. If we ever become friends, you can call me Jo.”

  “All right. Well, if we ever become friends you can stop using those ridiculously lame nicknames.”

  “Fair enough, loverboy.”

  Chapter 8

  “So, I heard a rumor.”

  “Um. Cool?” I replied.

  “Don’t you want to know who it’s about?” Alec asked.

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  Alec draped his arm over the top of my locker and leaned towards me. We were already five minutes late to class, but it didn’t matter. Mondays and Fridays were jersey days. We had Spanish first block, and Senor Rubin was one of the teachers who pretty much let us doing anything we wanted while wearing the Shepherd coat of arms. Besides, Mondays were also Starbucks days.

  “Not really. Here,” I said handing Alec my frappuccino. I reached down into my locker, having to use both of my hands to get my Spanish notebook out from underneath all the crap that threatened to spill out onto the floor.

  Today was a quiz day. Usually, Senor Rubin let us football players use our notes. I didn’t really take notes, but that’s what cheerleaders and eager-for-attention Drama Club girls were for; they’d copy their notes for me, and I would shove them in my notebook. I respected Senor Rubin enough to at least pretend to have written down the notes myself. He was cool. He understood the pressures and long hours that came with being a football player.

  I’d like to see one of the honors kids spend three hours practicing out on the field every afternoon, attempt a social life, and try to fit in homework concerning stuff they would never use in their real life. Quadratic equations? Really?

  “Focus,” Alec said, snapping his fingers in my face.

  “If you drop my frapp...I swear to God Alec,” I said, pointing to the two cups he had pressed against his chest with one arm.

  “The rumor was about you and Scary Carrie.”

  I ducked my head into my locker, pretending to search for something. I could feel my face heat up. It was the one thing that would always keep me from being any good at lying.

  “Me and Scary Carrie? I can’t even imagine how anyone could connect the two of us” I said, continuing to shuffle through all the junk in my locker, throwing around a half-eaten Chick-fil-A biscuit from God knows when.

  “Cut the crap. Bernie from JV told me you were having them snoop around for where she worked this weekend.”

  You can do this.

  You have to do this.

  Besides, no one would believe the truth. Something about the end of all hope is hard to accept.

  I slammed my locker closed. “We’re working on a project together.”

  Alec grinned.

  “Stop,” I said, grabbing my drink from his arm. I slung my book bag over my shoulder and began to walk down the hallway. I didn’t wait for Alec. It’s not like we were best buds or anything. We played football together since peewee. It was a relationship born out of similar schedules.

  Alec was just as ruthless in life as he was out on the field. “So, how crazy is the sex?” he
asked me, running to catch up.

  “Ssshh,” I hissed.

  “Come on. Details, Middleton.”

  “I don’t know what you’re even talking about.”

  “There’s no way you’re hanging out with Scary Carrie unless you’re getting some. I can see the appeal. A girl like that would do all sorts of wild things, like torture and stuff. Probably a nice break after Missionary Jenna.”

  I stopped abruptly and turned to face Alec. “I suggest you stop talking. Now.”

  If it came down to a fight I would lose, but we both knew it wouldn’t. If we got in a fight it would mean suspension. Which would lead to no game on Friday. We weren’t complete idiots.

  “Now don’t get yourself into a hissy fit, Middleton. I was just helping. Bernie told me you called him last night and asked him to try and get her number. And here it is,” he said, slapping a piece of paper into my palm.

  I had to devise a plan to get a hold of Carrie. Er. Josephine. I couldn’t well talk to her openly in class, not while all of Shepherd High was looking on.

  “Also, you might want to remember that while you’re the quarterback of this team, I’m the defensive captain. Bernie’s been vying for a defensive position since last year. If you’re secretly slumming it with Scary, you might want to be a little more discreet.”

  I clenched my jaw to keep from telling Alec off because I was in his debt now. And we both knew it. There was a code among teammates when it came to cheating, real or imagined—we would keep our mouths shut, but that didn’t mean we wouldn’t make you pay for the silence.

  Last year, I lied to Mary Simpkins, a friend and fellow cheerleader of Jenna’s. Lance, her boyfriend since sixth grade, had gotten a blow job from some tourist staying at the Oceanfront. The team had rented a few hotel rooms to celebrate our win at State. We only had one rule: no girlfriends. We told the girls it was because we didn’t want their drama, and that it was an all boys weekend. Half the team ended up calling other Shepherd High girls down, or hooking up with some tourist who was too poor to stay during peak season. I mean who vacations in Virginia Beach in February?

  A lot of guys cheated that weekend but Lance was the worst. Mary was one of Jenna’s best friends, and lying to Mary meant lying to Jenna. Jenna knew I was lying of course, and I knew she knew. Yet, I continued to lie for a kid I didn’t even really like. I’m not sure why I did it. Jenna and me almost broke up over it. She kept saying that she couldn’t trust me. I promised her I never did or would ever do anything of the sort, but she said when people start lying they begin to have a hard time deciphering the truth from the lie. Something about lying to yourself most of all.

  She was always saying stuff like that which completely went over my head.

  I made Lance pay for it though. He did my biology homework for the rest of the year, or he got some cheerleader to do it. Either way my homework was always done and correct.

  With a sigh, I pushed Josephine’s number into my pocket. “Thanks,” I mumbled to Alec, refusing to look up at the smirk I knew was all over his face.

  “No problem, QB1. Oh. And only pussies drink frappuccinos. Grow some balls.”

  Alec. Reason one for not trying to save the world.

  Chapter 9

  “Thanks for meeting me.”

  “No problem. I’ve just been dying for some boy to ask me to secretly meet him in a Taco Bell attached to a gas station. I can’t wait to go write about it in my dream journal. I mean this tops the dream I had the other night about making this boy who hated me fall in love with me amidst end of the world carnage and destruction,” Josephine said, infusing her words with as much fake enthusiasm as any soap opera actress could only hope to muster.

  I rolled my eyes and shoved the tray containing the two hard shell tacos, nachos, quesadilla, and large soda that Josephine demanded I buy her during our brief text battle across the table. When I texted Josephine in one of the bathroom stalls in between Spanish and history, time was of the essence. A guy only went into the stall for one thing...well, maybe two. I’d rather someone thought I was doing either of those things than for him to know I was texting the school’s new dominatrix. Apparently, the whole team knew of my supposed fling with Josephine, and the stories kept getting crazier and crazier. Dungeons. Chains. Safety words—all the things teenage guys claimed to be doing but only ever saw on some movie channel late at night. It took everything in me to stop myself from going off on those dickheads every time of one of them gave me a thumbs up or a knowing nod. Josephine was okay to screw, but beyond that she still remained a social outcast. I had to be careful when it came to anyone thinking sex wasn’t the basis of our relationship. Friendship. Doomed partnership.

  Josephine didn’t make it any easier. She texted every pointless question she could think of in response: Who was I? No. Really. Who was I? How did I get her number? Why didn’t I just talk to her in class? Was I really going to make her meet me in a gas station?

  The girl was clueless.

  I made her agree to meet me at a Shell station down the road after football practice. I promised her I read over all the books and watched the Lost episode. Which actually was true. I never said I understood any of it because if I had said that it would have been a lie.

  Josephine stared me down as she took a long gulp of her soda.

  “So. Um. Did you have a nice day?” I asked.

  Josephine choked on her soda and began to cough out a laugh. “Just peachy, Mr. Sunshine. Just peachy.”

  I gritted my teeth.

  Josephine took a bite of her taco, and I wondered if our meeting would consist of me watching this girl eating dinner in a gas station while the fate of the world hung in the balance.

  “All right. So, tell me your thoughts. What did you think of the books?” Josephine asked, not letting the silence settle between us. Maybe she did understand just how important all of this was.

  I reached forward and grabbed a chip off of her tray. I took my time popping the chip in my mouth and chewing. I showcased the pensive face I always put on every time my uncle started talking about football scholarships.

  “I think that Godel guy might have been on to something with the whole...the whole...”

  “Closed time-line curve,” Josephine offered.

  I nodded.

  “Maybe. The idea that we can revisit our past seems a bit far-fetched, but we did see the future. At least that’s what we think we saw. You know Steven Hawking says that time travel can only occur on the sub-microscopic level,” said Josephine.

  “The Chronology Protection Conjecture,” I replied.

  Josephine dropped her chip.

  “You didn’t think I read the books? Did you?” I challenged.

  “I...I mean, I thought...”

  “Look, this is important to me. I have to save Jenna, and if that means reading a ton of crap I don’t understand in order to find my way back to that place so I can fix it, well so be it.”

  Jenna was the reason for everything. When I saved her, it all would be worth it.

  Josephine nodded, “All right. Well, let’s continue then.” I couldn’t help but notice she looked a bit impressed, and how strange it was that I was happy about it.

  “What are your thoughts on wormholes? I mean we both agree we are at least meant to believe that we time traveled. Right? If so, how the hell did we do that?”

  “I guess mathematically wormholes could exist. Aren’t they just like these crazy space tunnels or something? Like you could travel through them to the past or the future?” I added.

  “Yeah. I guess that’s the idea. But did you read about how these wormholes would like fall apart before you could even get through them?”

  “What about traversable wormholes?” I asked.

  “The ones that last long enough that you can supposedly travel through? According to the theory, even in those it would only be possible for matter with enough negative density to control and stabilize them. And that’s only if you could predict
where they’d be.”

  “Right.”

  I remembered reading everything she was talking about, but that didn’t mean I understood any of it. I had spent the weekend studying wormholes and theories of time travel when only days before I had dreamt of doing unmentionable things to my girlfriend all weekend while her parents were away—another example of the failed American dream.

  I told Jenna I was doing the research for an extra credit creative writing assignment for English. English and history were the two classes I didn’t let cheerleaders or the drama club girls do my homework for me. I actually liked those subjects. I had C’s in both of them because I only ever got half the work done, but at least I earned those grades on my own.

  Jenna was a saint and helped me read over the books. She even made me little flash cards and quizzed me on the theories and the theorists connected to them. She got a little antsy when we started watching Lost on Saturday night. She snuggled close to me and began to nuzzle my neck. I could tell she wanted to fool around, but every time she got too close to me all I could see were the maggots and her rotting skin. Touching my girlfriend literally made me sick to my stomach. I kept her at bay by cocking up some story about having to focus so I could get my assignment perfect. I told her I was in danger of getting kicked off the team if I didn’t pull up my grades.

  Jenna never complained or acted like she thought something was up. That didn’t mean she didn’t think something was wrong. Neither Jenna nor I particularly sought out conflict.

  “...it just seems like some weird science fiction crap.”

  “I liked the Lost episode,” I blurted out, hoping Josephine hadn’t noticed I completely spaced out while she was talking.

  Josephine handed me one of her tacos. I didn’t originally get any food for myself, fearing all the time travel and end of the world talk would leave me feeling queasy, but the truth was talking about it left me feeling like for the first time since the start of the weekend I had my feet on the ground. I was moving toward the end, and that felt better than waiting for the end to come to me.

  “Yeah. I kept thinking of that episode after Mr. Ambiguous said that thing about that world being our present but not the present we were used to.”