My exam. I missed my exam.
I grab the cell phone from my rickety bedside table and flip it open to call Sarah, or Garret, or anyone who could help. I see that I have a voicemail. I press play.
“Ms. Sutton, this is Jack Hermann, the Assistant Dean of Academic Integrity at your university. We were informed that you were not present at your exam this morning and as such, have failed the class. Given your situation, we are unable to confer a degree or allow you to graduate as scheduled this semester. Furthermore, since the deadline for course withdrawal passed several months ago, we are unfortunately not able to refund you for the cost of the classes in which you were enrolled. Please contact my office if you have any questions.”
Oh shit.
Old Jodie would never have done that.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Sarah wraps her arm around my shoulder as tears stream down my face. My whole body lurches with each racking sob. I dig the heel of my palm into my eye, trying to dry the tears, but they keep coming endlessly, torrentially.
“Sarah, what am I going to do?” I bluster in between coughing fits. She shushes me and strokes the back of my head tenderly.
“Shh, honey, shh. It’s gonna be okay. Just try to breathe,” she murmurs. “It’ll all gonna be okay.”
I hit play on the phone again. The tinny, amplified voice of the voicemail rings out of the speaker. “Ms. Sutton, this is Jack Hermann, the Assistant Dean of Academic Integrity – ” The sound cuts off as Sarah mashes a button.
“Turn that shit off, Jodie. You don’t need to hear it again. You’ve listened to a thousand times already. It’s not going to tell you anything new.”
I say nothing. Sarah sighs. We sit in silence for a few moments. She inhales sharply a few times, as if to say something, but falls quiet again. Eventually she squeaks out a hesitant question.
“How did this even happen?” she says. She talks slowly, choosing her words carefully. “You’ve been … different lately. I feel like Old Jodie would never have missed an exam.”
The words cut through the fog swarming my head like a whip, in spite of Sarah’s reluctance to voice them.
Old Jodie. I had lost all contact with any concept of Old Jodie. The forces that had compressed her, shaped her, poked and prodded her have been afterthoughts lately. I haven’t thought about my mother in months. I don’t fear Bellamy the way I once did. Even the sick nausea that he used to inspire in me has cooled.
“I don’t know,” I say. She sighs again.
“C’mon, Jodie,” Sarah urges. “Just talk things out. It’ll help, I promise.” She wipes a tear from my cheek.
Where to start? I wonder. With the magazine in Bellamy’s office? With that first kiss? That first concert? Or did it all go back farther – is Mother lurking behind the picture somewhere, still tugging and yanking at my thoughts? Is this her doing? Would she laugh at me now?
“I don’t know, I don’t know,” I whimper. “I don’t know.”
I shake my head to clear the swirling miasma of thought. Too much rationalizing, too much fruitlessly spinning my wheels. None of it would fix things. I had missed my exam; that was my fault. I try to trace back the sequence of events, but I can’t even begin to touch the memories from the tour bus. That particular time span is so overwhelming that it makes my heart flurry and my head swim and my gut churn every time that I even start to picture a red backpack.
A wave of discomfort roils through my stomach. I lean forward to puke, but can only heave a gag with my face buried in the trash can.
This is the bottom, I think. I blew it.
So many figures are wrapped up in the sickly tide of thoughts surging through my head: never-ending iterations of Garret and Bellamy and Carla and Mother and Sarah and myself, so much of myself, so many different Jodies, all whirling in the furious currents of my mental purging. They all collide, morph, rot, decay, and disappear, over and over again.
I try to give shape to the flood. I tell Sarah about the tour bus debauchery and all the lines I have crossed since Garret first kissed me – all the rules I’ve broken, the self-imposed boundaries that once dominated my life. The crumbling is physical as much as it is mental. As I speak, the breadth and depth of my crying dwindles to a slow trickle.
Eventually, my story dies down, too. Sarah sits quietly for a while.
“Look, Jodie, babe,” she begins. Her voice is gentle but admonishing. “You told me yourself a long time ago that you need to put your priorities first. You’ve got bills and class, right?” I nod. She continues, “And aren’t those the most important things?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Of course.”
“So here’s the cold, hard truth,” she says. “Garret isn’t helping with any of that. He’s hurting you, Jodie. You have to see that.”
She pauses to let that sink in, wincing. I can see that she is trying to be tender. She doesn’t need to be, though. She is right. It isn’t hard to acknowledge that. A small voice piques up in my ear, a voice I haven’t heard in a long time. It sternly echoes Sarah.
You have to see that, Jodie.
“You know what I think?” Sarah says. The words rush out of her mouth. “I think you’re gonna keep getting hurt if you don’t get back to your priorities. I think you put yourself in a dangerous place with Garret. You need to stick to what you used to do – school, work, just surviving, you know? All this rock star lifestyle bullshit? It isn’t for you.”
In my chest, I feel a weight shift like a balance tipping. The voice urges it on.
“The drugs, the sex, Garret – that’s not you, Jodie. That’s not what you’re about. It shouldn’t be. It can’t be.” The caring in her voice only makes it sting more.
I feel buffeted about by winds from every angle. I have been coasting on those winds for so long now, but Sarah’s words remind me that I am not a bird. I can’t handle this. I can’t fly.
“I just want the best for you, Jodie. But you need to get back to the old you. You can’t keep doing what you’re doing now.”
Something clicks, something final, it seems. The last of the tension leaves my body.
“He’s distracting you from what’s important, Jodie. You have to see that. Do you see what I’m saying?”
Sarah is right. Click. The voice doesn’t say anything, but I can almost hear it smile, all too pleased.
***
My voice warbles out a timid “Hello?” I can hear Garret breathe into the mouthpiece.
“What’s up, Jodie?” he replies nonchalantly. I want to vomit. My whole body is writhing with so many conflicting sensations that it is a miracle I don’t simply shatter.
I am not a bird.
“Garret?” I say. It is like speaking into a well, a cavern, something that swallows my words and offers nothing in return. I stare at the ceiling, gulp, and try to give shape to my thoughts.
“Yeah?” he drawls, distracted. He can’t see the fear on my face or the quaking of my hands.
“Garret…” I repeat dumbly. I feel slow and thick. My lips won’t work.
“Jodie? What’s up, babe?” A tinge of concern piques his voice, just a shade of it though.
“Garret, I…” My voice chokes itself off. I can’t do this. I need the freedom. I need what he gives me, what he makes me. I can’t go back to my life before this.
He’s distracting you from what’s important, Jodie.
I hear Sarah’s voice and the dean’s voicemail echo between each thought. They intertwine and play off one another like coiling snakes. I feel so cold. I feel so heavy.
A dozen times, I try to speak and can’t.
You have to see that, Jodie.
Click.
I am not a bird.
I can’t hear; I can’t think. There are so many voices and shapes in my head. The tide surges. The world churns in front of my eyes.
The warmth I used to feel when I heard Garret’s voice is sloughing away through the mouthpiece. The cavern of the silence is consuming it, stealing it. The
foggy weight that I hadn’t felt since that first kiss is stealthily resuming its familiar perch on my neck and shoulders, over my eyes, and surrounding every breath. I can’t fly, after all.
I am not a bird.
“Garret, I missed my exam,” I blurt. That wasn’t what I meant to say. I know he doesn’t care about that. I know what he will respond, and he does: “So what?” I can picture him, lounging in bed, lazily plucking at a guitar while a joint dangles from between his lips. The epitome of flight.
I can’t fly with him, can I? No.
I cough and shiver. Why won’t my hands work? Why won’t my voice work? Why is there a thick jelly over my mind that reduces every thought to a damp, slippery halt?
Sarah’s voice booms in my head. You have to see that. You have to see that. You have to see that!
She is right. The balance thumps with finality. The voice clamors for me to do it. It wants me to say what I need to say. Like a crowd at an execution, it roars for the action.
I say it.
“Garret, we need to talk.”
I hang up the phone and cry. Garret hadn’t said much after I finished rambling. Just a muted, “Okay, I hear you. Do what you gotta do, I guess.” Then he was gone, his voice and his jaw and his eyes sucked away into the recesses of 'Did that really happen?'
I cry for a long time, lying curled into a question mark on my bed. Every nerve aches and cries with me. The balance in my chest remains resolutely locked, although the stern voice continues to whisper soft condolences.
You did the right thing.
You had to break it off.
This was necessary.
I feel cold. The heat in my apartment won’t work. I press my face into the pillow and cry harder.
***
I am wrapped head to toe in jackets, tights, and a pair of conservative boots. A scarf winds around my throat and chin. Still, though, cold stabs through every chink. I am hollowed and emptied and I have no familiar bulk against which to lean or reassure myself. The wind batters me back and forth.
I slink into the bank building, struggling to pull the massive bronze door shut behind me. An old woman glares at me as gusts seep through the cracked opening. I try to offer a quick apology, but my throat won’t work. Instead, I cough, flush red, and turn my head, hurrying to the back of the line.
The swathes of people in front of me are slumped in a raggedy queue. I scan the crowd with dull disinterest. A tall, rapier-thin black man dressed in a slim navy suit, a squat Cuban lady with hair in tight, damp ringlets against her scalp, a – Wait.
My heart clogs my throat. I squint at the figure – a broad-shouldered, leather-clad man with combat boots and blond hair that hangs shaggily down to his shoulders. His back is to me, his head down as he eyes the message on his cell phone. The timpani pounding in my chest ratchets up another notch. I swear I recognize that jacket, those particular boots. I have seen that hair before. The glint of a familiar earring…
He hears a noise and pivots to face me.
It isn’t Garret. The eyes are set too close together, the lips drawn too thin and tight. The nose swoops in a brazen, scarred hook, not the straight arrow I remember. I let loose a deep exhale and realize I haven’t been breathing. I am flushed, sweating.
Ever since that phone call, I have been seeing variations of Garret all over the city. Every rocker in a leather jacket, every teen with long blond hair, makes my stomach plummet and my head ache.
You did the right thing.
You had to break it off.
This was necessary.
I sag through the rest of the day, shivering throughout. I haven’t felt warm in weeks.
I am not a bird.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The pain behind my eyes throbs, branching from temple to temple. Lines of ink squirm and wriggle on the pages in my hand. I shuffle back and forth between them, trying to make them make sense, desperately pleading for the figures to add up into a confirmation that I will be able to survive another week, but it looks bleak. I check once, twice, but nothing is working. No matter how many times I rehash the money or shuffle between bank accounts, I can’t find a way to stay afloat.
I drop my forehead onto the desk surface and close my eyes. For a few blissful seconds, I see nothing and hear nothing. Then the whine of the feeble heater sputters to life, letting a few weak tendrils of warmth seep out from the vent to caress the back of my neck before the aching cold steals them into the sparse corners of my apartment.
The stacks of paper on my desk flutter lazily in the air flow. Mountains of bills, notices of overdue rent, and threats of eviction are piled from edge to edge. Try as I might, I can’t make them disappear. They stare at me, loom over me, coldly impassionate in their blankness.
I sigh and grab my scarf. The assistant manager of the local department store had told me to come back in at five o’clock to ask her boss about a job opening. I glance at the clock and see 4:45 looking back at me. Suppressing a cough, I button my jacket up to the neck, stuff keys in my pocket, and rise.
Before I walk out the door, I look back at my desk. The papers don’t move. I shudder and leave.
***
“So you have nothing?” I plead. “I will literally take anything. I’m desperate. Please.” I wring my hands together in front of me. The pitiful pitch of my voice makes me sick. I picture mother laughing at me – her bracelets jingling as laughter spews from her mouth, her finger pointing at me, stabbing in my face, as if to say, “Look at this girl, this pathetic little girl.” A shiver courses down my spine. I blink rapidly to clear the images from my head.
The manager looks at me quizzically, interrupting her sentence to ask if I am okay. “You sure you’re doin’ alright, hon’?” he asks. It is the same tone of voice one would use to comfort a cat dying in the gutter.
“Yes, I’m fine,” I say. I don’t believe the words coming out of my mouth, but I say them anyways, mechanically and distant.
He goes on. “Well, sorry, but like I was saying, we’re not hiring right now. And frankly, even if we were, I’m not sure we’d be able to find room for you,” he says.
Mother's bracelets. Her finger. Ha. Ha.
“Thanks for your time,” I say automatically as I spin on my heel and slump out into the cold. The manager’s words should have hurt me, but the sensitive flesh of my psyche has already endured rejection after rejection this week.
“I’m sorry, we just don’t have room.”
“We can’t afford to take on another employee.”
“There isn’t a job here that suits you.”
“No.”
“No.”
“No.”
The chorus of denials is expected now. Every time I voice my plea for a job, it's like releasing a tiny balloon out into the ravages of an uncaring storm. I hate the way I sound when I beg. I hate the way my knees buckle and my armpits sweat and my lips tremble. I hate knowing in advance that there isn’t a chance. The face of every hiring manager, as they look me up and down, is exactly the same – icy.
The doorbell announces my exit with a muted jingle as I step out into the cold. I wrap my scarf tightly around my face. Night is howling around me, whistling against the sharp edges and blunt triangles of darkness that drift between buildings. Car horns wail.
I take off in the direction of my apartment, though I don’t know what I will do once I arrive. The only thing left there are the skyscrapers of debt and textbooks that no longer serve a purpose.
Shadows lurch across my path, extending from the alleyways. I look to my right as I pass a gap between two squat storefronts. Dumpsters and squalid trash cans line the path. The winter wind eats stray garbage and one light flickers with a noxious insect buzz. Behind the corner of a pile of cardboard boxes, I see a ratty tail whisk. The rodent emerges, sniffing for something. Something shines in the darkness behind it.
I peer closer. Two bright orbs appear and disappear in rapid succession. I see dark slits down the middle and realiz
e I am looking into the eyes of an alley cat. It blinks again.
The rat crawls closer to the patch of shadows. Panic leaps into my throat. I want to reach out a hand, to stop what I can see happening. His pink nose snuffles along the ground in search of a tantalizing scent. The cat’s eyes shimmer with intention. For the briefest of moments, I could swear it is looking at me.
“Stop!” I start to cry, extending a hand towards the rat, but I am too far away to intervene. A few passers-by look at me strangely.
Boom. Everything happens quickly and silently. The cat pounces, rips the rat in half with a scything claw, and drags the bloody pieces back into the darkness. Right before it vanishes completely, it looks back over its shoulder at me and hisses. Then he is gone.
Devil's Angels Boxed Set: Bikers and Alpha Bad Boy Erotic Romance Page 46