Always You

by Cecilia Gray

  “No,” Emma said. “It’s the End of the World, not the Zombie Apocalypse. Have some respect for the theme.”

  And that was the last word on the subject of blood packets.

  * * *

  Lucy and Rick arrived at the auditorium together. Lucy appeared to have miraculously injured her other ankle in the interim, since Rick was helping her balance from the other side of her body.

  “Anne!” Lucy waved at her from across the auditorium.

  Anne threw a tufted cushion on a couch and reluctantly waved back.

  “Stop being nice to her and she’ll leave you alone,” Emma said between gritted teeth. She stabbed at a cushion with a pair of scissors and pulled out some cotton tufts. “It’s worked for the rest of us. She only bothers you and Ellie because you’re both still dumb enough to be nice to her.”

  “It’s good practice to be nice, period.”

  “Not when the person on the other end of it has no sense of social cues,” Emma said. “She’s hurting you by putting these ridiculous moves on Rick, just like she did with Tran and with Edward. Three strikes and she’s out.”

  “To be fair, Edward was her boyfriend at the time.”

  Emma brushed aside her logic. “If you’re not going to blame her for being a twit, then blame yourself for letting this happen.”

  Anne reeled back from the sting of that comment.

  “Anne!” Lucy cupped her hands around her mouth. “We came, Anne.”

  With a heavy sigh, Anne turned away from Emma and walked toward Lucy. While she did think Lucy was using her recent injury in an attempt to get closer to Rick, she also knew the girl had legitimately hurt herself. She smiled at Lucy and managed somehow not to look at Rick, who was close by her side. “How’s the wrist?”

  “Better,” Lucy said. “Good enough that I think I can help.”

  “That’s okay.” Anne glanced across the ballroom. “We’re almost done. We just need to hang the red streamers off the ceiling.”

  Rick finally spoke up. “I’ll take care of the streamers.”

  “How can I help?” Lucy asked him. She rested a hand on his chest and tilted her chin up to smile adoringly at him.

  Anne could think of a million ways that Lucy could be helpful, and they all involved her taking a jump in a lake.

  “Just stay at the bottom of the ladder,” Rick said. “Make sure it’s steady.”

  They walked away from her without another word, and all the hope Anne had felt that morning shrank into a cold pellet in the pit of her stomach. She watched them and fisted her sweatshirt hem so tightly she thought it would tear. He hadn’t glanced at it. Hadn’t given it a second thought. Had just moved on with his life, like she should.

  Lucy took one end of the streamers in her hand and Rick took the other and climbed to the very top of the ladder. As he progressed, Lucy fed him more and more streamer length.

  Emma was right.

  She couldn’t really blame or hate Lucy. She was torturing herself by watching it happen. Lucy didn’t know about her feelings for Rick. Rick didn’t even know about her feelings. Did she even know her own feelings?

  Lucy held on to the ladder with one hand, her head tilted back in an expression of utter adoration. Her eyes lit up as she watched Rick. She seemed to have no problem at all putting her feelings on display for anyone to see. Lucy had always fallen hard and fallen openly, even though she’d been rejected time and time again.

  In some ways, Lucy was the bravest of all the girls. She was never afraid to declare herself even if she would be hurt. Anne had spent the better part of the year feeling sorry for the girl, when really, Lucy should have been the one pitying Anne. Anne was the pathetic one who couldn’t stand up for herself or her feelings.

  Lucy took a step up the ladder, as if drawn by Rick.

  And another step and another.

  Anne shook her head to stop her pity party as she realized what Lucy was doing. “Lucy, be careful,” Anne yelled across the room. She reached out as though she could put a stilling hand on Lucy’s shoulder, even though she was far away.

  Lucy took another step, stealthily. As if she wanted to creep up on Rick and surprise him. Was she stupid or insane?

  Anne placed both hands by the sides of her mouth. “Rick!”

  When he didn’t turn or even glance down—couldn’t he feel the ladder shaking?—she jogged across the auditorium. She leaped over a bulky pile of lights and skirted around the punch bowl that Emma had placed on a table dead center in the dance floor.

  Lucy had made it more than halfway up the ladder, but she only had the use of one hand and the steps narrowed as she climbed higher and higher. Rick had also nearly reached the end of his streamer pile. He gave a tug on the last bit, which yanked it out of Lucy’s grasp.

  The tug upset her balance. Her foot slipped. Anne watched in growing horror as Lucy gasped and her arms windmilled. She arched away from the ladder and back—into space.

  Rick glanced down, finally noticing her, a look of shock registering on his face.

  Anne sprang into action. She grabbed the cushions from the nearest sofa and dumped them on the ground beneath Lucy just as she dropped with a hard thud to the floor.

  Despite the softer landing, Anne grimaced at the crunching sound that was soon followed by Lucy’s wail. Lucy curled in on herself, her mouth open in a high-pitched whine. Rick leaped from the ladder and landed by Lucy’s feet.

  “Is she okay?” he asked, his eyes roving wildly over Lucy.

  Anne got down on her knees. “Someone get the nurse,” she said before turning to Lucy and rubbing her back. “I’m going to feel around your shoulder, okay?”

  Lucy shook her head, sobbing.

  “It’s okay, Lucy. Shhh, I just need to check your shoulder. You landed on the same side as your sprained wrist, so let’s sit up. You can do it.” She squared off Lucy’s shoulder, but her left side protruded at the socket.

  “What is it?” Rick asked. He knelt by her side. “It looks bad. What do you need me to do?”

  Lucy’s eyes were wide with fear, and she was shivering.

  Anne spoke in a soothing voice. “Lucy, you’ve dislocated your shoulder. I can get it back in now if you want, or you can wait for the nurse.”

  “Now, now, now,” Lucy said, the words coming out from between chattering teeth.

  “Lie down, okay?”

  A crowd had formed around them and several people had their cameras up, filming, but Anne didn’t let that distract her.

  “Rick, I need her flat. Can you remove the pillows from beneath her?”

  Rick did as she asked, and she gently placed Lucy flat on her back.

  “I’m going to rotate your elbow outward. You’re going to feel the muscles in your shoulder spasm for the next few minutes but don’t worry, your shoulder is going to relocate.” At least, that’s what the video she’d watched on chimp shoulder dislocations had seemed to imply. She only hoped this worked the same way. “It’s going to hurt a lot, but you have nothing to worry about. Nothing is wrong. It’s just your body trying to make itself right again.”

  “I’m scared,” Lucy said, gripping her hand.

  “Rick, can you hold her hand?” Anne asked. “I need both of mine.”

  Rick leaned over and took Lucy’s hand. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I should have been paying attention.”

  “Lucy, listen,” Anne said, her voice soothing, “if it hurts, you just squeeze Rick’s hand, okay? As hard as you need to. He can take it. Here we go.” Anne pinched Lucy’s elbow between two fingers and pulled her arm away from her body. Lucy’s muscles tensed and spasmed beneath her fingers just as Lucy screamed.

  Then—pop—the shoulder slid back into place as Lucy let out another shrill howl. Lucy sat up and threw her other arm around Anne.

  “It’s okay,” Anne said soothingly. “You’re going to be okay. But you’ve definitely earned a painkiller drip. How about we get that for you?” She pulled away and glanced around for t
he nurse, but it seemed everyone had been so intent on being bystanders that no one had actually gone for her. “Rick, maybe you can carry Lucy to the nursing station?”

  Rick scooped up Lucy against his chest.

  “Anne, don’t leave me. Please,” Lucy said.

  “I won’t leave you.” Anne followed them out as Emma tried to contain the chaos they’d left behind. They ran into the nurse on the way back into the building, and Anne filled her in on what had happened.

  “Where did you learn how to do a Hennepin maneuver?” the nurse asked Anne.

  “Online videos,” Anne admitted. She left out the on animals part.

  “Maybe I’ll make you my personal assistant.” The nurse directed Rick to lay Lucy on the mattress in the nurse’s unit. This time, the nurse didn’t ask Anne to leave, so she watched as the nurse ran Lucy through a series of diagnostic tests and then medicated her.

  Once Lucy was dozing, the nurse led Anne and Rick to the waiting room. “She’s probably going to sleep for a few hours. I need to call her parents. It would be better if you went on with your day.”

  Anne began walking back to the dorm when she realized Rick had followed her in a daze. She slowed to a stop in the empty hall and looked at him with questions in her eyes.

  “It’s my fault,” he said finally.

  “It’s nobody’s fault,” Anne said. “If anything, Lucy should have known not to climb that ladder.”

  “But I should have noticed,” Rick said. “If I hadn’t been so busy trying not to notice, if I hadn’t been so busy blocking out y—everything around me…”

  Anne knew there was no point in trying to change Rick’s mind. He took responsibility seriously. He’d quit the military academy and moved across the country to be with his mother when she first got sick. If he’d got it in his head that it was his fault, then nothing anyone said would change his mind.

  “She’s going to be fine,” she said instead. “You heard the nurse.”

  “If you hadn’t been there… If you hadn’t acted so quickly…” He stuffed his hands in his pockets and smiled sadly. “Have you thought about becoming an emergency room doctor when you’re on break from being a veterinarian?”

  “Assuming it doesn’t take away from my time serving as president.”

  He assumed a somber expression. “Of course not.”

  She breathed in the moment of normality. Silly conversations used to be their norm.

  “I’m going to stay here with her,” Rick said.

  “But the nurse said—”

  “In case she wakes up. I don’t want her to be alone. It’s the least I can do.” Rick rested a hand on Anne’s shoulder and squeezed. Was it her imagination, or did he let his palm linger against her sweatshirt? He leaned forward and kissed her above the ear. “You were amazing today.”

  Then he turned around and walked back toward the nurse’s room.

  Toward Lucy.

  Chapter Six

  Emma, dressed in her canary silk tuxedo, angled the camera tripod. “Too much light,” she muttered. She yanked her dorm room’s curtains closed and hustled back behind the camera, which was pointed at her five friends, also dressed in their prom outfits. “There, that’s more like the way the lighting will be. Can everyone take a step to the right?”

  Lizzie, Ellie, Kat, Fanny, and Anne all dutifully took their steps. Emma had styled their hair and done their makeup. She had even made them put on their shoes for her “photo dry run”—a term she’d thrown out as though they should have known that it was common practice to dry-run one’s prom photos a few days before the big event.

  Anne glanced over Emma’s head at her reflection in the mirror. Emma had pulled back strands of her hair and pinned them in curls and waves at her temples while the rest cascaded down her shoulders.

  “A girlish, feminine look,” Emma had said, “to soften the sexiness of the red cocktail dress. Normally I’m not one to soften sexy, but this is prom.”

  Anne would have let Emma shave her head if she thought it was a good idea.

  Emma bent over and peered through the lens. “Practice smiles? Good, okay. Less teeth, Ellie. Trust me on this. There, that’s perfect. Now make a spot for me between Fanny and Anne.” She pressed the camera timer and scuffled toward them in her high heels. With model timing, she turned, rested her hand on her hip, angled her face downward, and posed. “Remember, chin down, eyes up, smile wide.”

  A flash lit up the camera.

  “Now everyone change angles.” Emma pivoted to the right.

  Anne tried to follow but was pretty sure her eyes were crossed when the next flash went off.

  “Now face away from the camera and look over your shoulder,” Emma said.

  Anne did the best she could. At least she was facing in the right direction.

  “Take a break, beautifuls.” Emma picked up her camera, reopened the curtains, and scrolled through the pictures. She zoomed in, reviewing each one critically.

  Ellie immediately kicked off her heels and lay back on her bed. “Maybe I need to rethink the heels,” she muttered as she rubbed her feet.

  Emma said, “I sent the pictures out to you. Take a look. Remember, no public posting. I want the dresses to be a surprise for the guys.”

  Each girl took up a different perch, either on the bed, the floor, a chair, or leaning against a desk, and checked their phones for Emma’s pictures. As Anne pulled up the photo, she received a notification from her mom.

  I know where we’re going to live!!!!!

  If she hadn’t already been sitting in a chair, she would have felt her knees give way. Her mother had been in Barcelona when they’d last talked. Had she forgone Florence to fall in love with Barcelona’s stone churches, afternoon siestas, and lazy dinners that went on for hours? Maybe she’d found a sprawling villa or a cozy chalet.

  They would be closer to Mary, and Anne felt the romantic pull of believing she could have a better relationship with her sister, something like the ones she had with her friends. But this seemed like the latest of her mother’s over-the-top ideas. They should be minimizing and living within their new means. Not buying new property. She should at least be able to convince her mother of that.

  “Did you send the photo to your mom?” Emma asked.

  She looked down at the red cocktail dress that she knew her mom would hate because of its color and simple symmetrical cut. The material was smooth against her skin, and if she whirled around fast enough, the knee-length skirt billowed out and spun, almost like a ballerina’s tulle.

  “Not yet,” Anne said. “I might wait until after prom.”

  “What’s the matter?” Lizzie asked. “Are we looking at the same picture?”

  Emma’s lip trembled. “Do you hate the hair? You do, don’t you?”

  “No, no, that’s not it.” Anne slipped the phone to her lap. “You know how my mom is. She’s obsessed with me being like all the other Escobars, and Escobar women wear long, asymmetrical dresses to formal events. My mom has a whole fashion line based on it.”

  “But this is your prom,” Lizzie said. “There’s never even been a Jane Austen Academy prom.”

  Kat nodded. “Exactly. There’s no precedent. You’re trailblazing here.”

  “Isn’t that what your mother wants?” Ellie asked. “She can’t expect you to trailblaze while you’re always doing the same thing as all your relatives.”

  Anne had never considered that before: that the mere act of being just like her mother and grandmother and all the Escobar women before her—the mere fact of trying to be just like them—was going against the very Escobar nature.

  She was supposed to be different. Contrary.

  Her great-great-great-great-great grandmother hadn’t chased after gold when everyone else was searching for precious metals. She’d done what she wanted. As had every Escobar following.

  Anne glanced at the picture and zoomed in on her own face. She didn’t have her mother’s pointy nose or long, delicate neck. Her
hair was thicker, her eyes more deeply set. She wasn’t as quick to smile or laugh. No, she was not much like Guadalupe Maria Concessa Pacheco Escobar.

  She was Anne Sophia Amalia Pacheco Escobar. Maybe she was not a railroad magnate or a Gold Rush pioneer.

  Maybe that was the point.

  * * *

  Feeling empowered to do what she wanted with her life was one thing. Telling her mom? Something else entirely.

  Anne had picked up her phone several times to try to make the call, to tell her mother she wanted to stay in Merrywood or move north. That there was no way she was going to Florence or Barcelona. That she wanted to go to vet school. She wasn’t cut out for a life of leadership or entrepreneurship or social circles, and to her, being a trailblazer meant doing what she wanted, which was entirely different from anything any Escobar had done before her.

  But every time she picked up the phone, she felt dark pinpricks of panic bleed into the corners of her vision.

  Anne needed to fortify herself. If only she felt as strong as she had after she’d treated Lucy’s shoulder. Maybe a visit to Lucy would help. Her dorm room was up one floor, so Anne climbed the stairwell. She had to read all the names taped to the doors—they all had two names, one for each roommate—until she found a room at the very end with only one: Lucy.

  At her knock, she heard a faint, “Come in.”

  She pushed open the door.

  She’d never seen Lucy’s room before. It had been set up as a double, but the second bed and desk were shoved into the corner, bare, dusty, and unused. Lucy was propped up in a bed that had been set in the middle of the room.

  The Jane Austen Academy used to have single rooms. Anne remembered being so annoyed when they’d been forced to take on roommates at the beginning of the year—especially when that roommate turned out to be Lizzie, whom she had only seen as an annoying, judgmental busybody.

  How times had changed. Now, Lucy’s room felt too big, too lonely.

  Anne’s best memories of the Academy—the ones that didn’t involve Rick—involved quiet moments with Lizzie. Trying to rouse her roommate for breakfast or studying for exams or watching movies until they fell asleep, bowls of popcorn on their laps.