Finding Felicity

by Stacey Kade

  Shit. “Lexi, I’m—”

  “Don’t.” She stands up and grabs her backpack from the floor and starts jamming books and notebooks inside.

  I try again. “You know what it’s like, to want to fit in and—”

  She spins to face me. “Don’t you dare. This is not the same. Not at all. I was screwed over by someone I cared about. You lied. To everyone. You brought this on yourself.”

  Her words sting like a slap. But she’s not wrong.

  “I can’t believe I thought we were actually friends.” She scoops up her laptop, her keys, and her phone.

  “Where are you going?” I whisper.

  “I can’t do this with you right now, Caroline.” Lexi slings her bag over her shoulder and stalks toward the door, yanking it open. “Maybe one of your fake friends can help you.”

  I flinch. “But wait, are you coming back or . . .”

  The door slams shut on my words.

  Chapter Twenty

  Lexi doesn’t come back before the start of her first class or after it’s over. I should be up, doing homework. Or, packing my stuff, per my mom’s instructions.

  Instead I’m lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to the sounds of my floormates getting ready for the day. Shower buckets clattering down the hallway; someone running with a backpack, keys clinking inside; a shriek of laughter, followed by another voice giggling and shushing.

  Out of the corner of my eye I see Felicity on my poster. Her soft, enigmatic smile, the one that used to promise friendship, true love, and that everything will work out, now seems to be mocking me. Amused at my suffering.

  Maybe it worked out for me, but it’s sure as hell not working out for you, Caroline.

  Furious, I shove myself up to stand on my mattress and reach for the top edge of the poster, tearing it down the middle with the satisfying rasp of ripping paper. Felicity’s head divides unevenly, leaving her chin on the right side but most of her face—and that smile—intact on the left side.

  I yank that side down, struggling at first with the adhesive tabs holding the poster to the wall, and crumple it up into the smallest ball I can manage before chucking it toward our garbage can.

  Lexi’s garbage can, come Monday.

  My rage-fueled energy depletes suddenly, and I drop back to my bed, curling up in a ball on my side, knees tight to my chest. Tears drip onto the comforter beneath me.

  I should never have come here. I should never have tried. It was pointless. Even when I succeeded, I failed. At home I would have been miserable, yeah, but that kind of pain was a dull ache of unhappiness, not this sharp knife of despair.

  I lie there for a long while, the thought of going to the storage room in the dorm basement and pulling my suitcases out filling me with a depressive lethargy that keeps me pinned to the bed and crying.

  Eventually, though, I can’t ignore the need for the bathroom any longer.

  I drag myself off the bed and shuffle out into the now-deserted hall. It’s that eerily quiet gap in activity that I’ve noticed a few times before. Everyone who has to be up for a morning class is already gone, and those who don’t have class are still sleeping.

  All the better. I don’t want to see anyone. Once I’m gone, they’ll probably assume it’s because of Liam and the rumors.

  I hate that. I don’t want to leave. But I’m not sure there’s any good in staying. I just can’t figure out what everyone else seems to have mastered—knowing who they are and being comfortable with it.

  Damn it. My eyes are burning with tears again.

  I push open the door to the bathroom, and the creak of the hinges echoes inside. The abandoned feeling continues in here. No one is at the sinks, and all the toilet-stall doors hang open, but I can still hear water running. At the far end of the room, a single white flip-flop lies, discarded and seemingly forgotten, at the entrance to the shower area.

  Creepy.

  I start toward a toilet stall midway down the row—this one is decorated with magazine clippings that have chirpy headlines, like “Ten Conversation Starters He Can’t Forget” and “How to Be the One Everyone Wants.”

  But as I reach for the door, my foot slides in water. I glance down to see a thin stream trailing out from the shower area, rolling toward the sinks and the floor drain out here. I walk farther to the back of the room.

  “Hello? The water is overflowing,” I call, raising my voice to be heard over the shower.

  I pause, waiting for a response. “If you’re in the one on the far side, the drain doesn’t work right in there.” It’s the vomit stall, and it’s been screwed up since that first day.

  There’s no answer, not even the clunk of a shampoo bottle against the floor, or the clatter of a razor dropping into a shower caddy. My gaze falls on the single flip-flop.

  It’s weird that someone left it there.

  My imagination kicks into high gear, and I take a couple of steps to cautiously peer into the shower area, half expecting to see two people locked in a naked embrace or blood smeared on the wall in a serial-killer-type message.

  Instead I see, poking out from the vomit stall, tanned, slim, bare legs on the floor, toes pointing toward me. The nails are a pale shade of lavender.

  Moving faster than I imagined possible, I step forward and yank back the curtain.

  Naked, Tory lies at an awkward angle in the cramped area, her head pressed against the wall, a pile of vomit to the side of the shower spray.

  She’s not moving. Her eyes are shut. Her long dark hair is wet and sticking to her like seaweed. How long has she been in here?

  “Tory.” My voice comes out as a whisper instead of the shout I intend.

  I move into the stall, fumbling to shut off the water before bending down to her. “Tory!” I shake her shoulder. But she doesn’t respond. I can’t tell if she’s breathing.

  “Help!” The word escapes as a panicked bleat. “Help!” Should I go get someone? I don’t feel like I should leave Tory by herself. I try to pull her up off the floor, but her skin is too slippery from the water. I grab for the towel on the hook behind us. “Help!” I want to shout for Lexi. She was a lifeguard—she probably knows CPR. But she’s gone.

  The main bathroom door bangs open.

  “Help! In here!” I shout. I always thought I would be good in an emergency, but right now all I want is for someone else to come in and take over.

  When I look back, there’s Sadie, pinching the end of her braid in one hand. “What’s wro—” She stops as soon as she sees me kneeling over Tory.

  “I don’t know, I . . . I think maybe she passed out. Hit her head. I don’t know. She’s been throwing up.”

  Sadie, to her credit, nods calmly and turns as she pulls her phone from her pocket. “I need an ambulance. Ashmore campus, Brekken Hall, fourth floor,” she says as she hurries out of the bathroom door. “I can show you where.”

  “Come on, Tory, get up,” I whisper. I wrap the towel around her shoulders as best as I can.

  Lexi bursts into the bathroom at a run, her boots clomping on the floor in a reassuring clatter. “What’s going on? I was in the lounge and I heard shouting . . .”

  When she sees me, anger and confusion flash across her face. But they vanish as soon as she takes in the scene.

  Tears that I hadn’t known were lying in wait immediately pour forth. “She needs help. I don’t know.” I tug at Tory’s covered arm. “I can’t lift—”

  “Wait,” Lexi says, dropping to her knees, not caring about the water or the puke, and I move to the side. She presses her fingers against the side of Tory’s neck and then leans over to watch her chest. “She has a pulse and she’s breathing. But she might have hurt her head or her neck when she fell. We shouldn’t move her.”

  “But—” I sob.

  “Caroline,” Lexi says in a surprisingly gentle tone, “shut up.”

  So I kneel on the other side of Tory and hold her hand.

  The wait for the ambulance feels excruciat
ingly long.

  One minute the bathroom is quiet and still, except for me trying to stop crying and the occasional drip and echo from the showers or sinks.

  Then the next minute I hear Sadie out in the hall. “In there!” Lexi gets up and out of the way, taking me with her a mere second before the room explodes in activity. Two EMTs in dark uniforms run in, carrying a stretcher board with them.

  “What happened?” one of them asks as they set to work, tearing open plastic coverings on syringes, removing equipment from their bags.

  Lexi looks to me, and I find the words, push them out. “I don’t know. I found her like this. She’s . . . she’s been drinking a lot. I think. I tried to wake her up, but . . .”

  “Got it,” the EMT says without looking in my direction.

  After a few minutes they have Tory in a neck brace and on the stretcher, a white sheet covering her body but not her face, thankfully. According to television, at least, that means she’s still alive.

  And then they carry her out.

  But Tory doesn’t wake up, not even a little, during all of that.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Lexi, Sadie, and I follow the ambulance to Mercy General in Lexi’s dented red truck. I didn’t think to ask which hospital, but Lexi seems to know without question.

  The waiting room at the hospital is horrible. It’s green vinyl chairs, scuffed linoleum, and Seinfeld reruns on the television. At least it’s empty, which helps.

  Now I’m curled up in one of the chairs, arms wrapped around my legs. We’ve been here for the better part of two hours already and no one has told us anything. Sadie is studying something on her phone, while Lexi sits in her chair, seemingly unruffled except for her trembling hands.

  “Is she going to be all right?” I ask, clenching my teeth against chattering. It is so cold in here.

  “I don’t know,” Lexi says, locking her hands together in her lap. “It depends on her head and neck injuries.”

  “And whether she aspirated any of the vomit,” Sadie adds.

  “Right,” Lexi says.

  I stare at them. I don’t understand how they’re so calm when Tory could be paralyzed or dying for all we know. But then I remember: nursing for Lexi and premed for Sadie. This is what they will deal with every day in their future.

  A nurse in scrubs appears in the doorway. “You’re here for Tory St. James?”

  “Yes,” Lexi says when I can’t speak.

  “She’s awake now, but a little out of it. We’re treating her for alcohol poisoning.” The nurse gives us a censorious look as if we were the ones who poured it down her throat. “Her lungs are clear and her CT scan and X-rays came back fine. We’re going to keep her overnight for observation, but she should be ready to go home sometime tomorrow afternoon.”

  “She’s all right?” I ask, barely able to believe it.

  “Can we see her?” Lexi asks.

  The nurse leads us down a hallway to a room divided by blue curtains.

  Tory is on the left side with her eyes shut. She has a white bandage on the right side of her head, probably from where she hit the shower wall. Her hair is damp and frizzy where it’s drying, and she’s wearing a hospital gown. She looks smaller than I expected. And young and vulnerable, despite—or perhaps because of—the smeared makeup beneath her eyes and on her cheeks.

  She opens her eyes when she hears us approaching.

  “Hey.” Tory waves weakly with her non-IV hand, as we hover near the side of her bed.

  “Not too long, girls,” the nurse warns us before leaving.

  “You’re okay,” I say, my voice coming out choked.

  “You found me?” Tory asks, her gaze skating over the three of us, unfocused and dazed-looking.

  “Caroline did,” Lexi confirms. “I’m not sure if any of us would have thought to check the shower. Not that fast, anyway.” She gives a little nod in my direction.

  I told them on the way over, babbled actually, about the flip-flop and the water and the bad feeling I’d had.

  “Sadie called 911 and Lexi came to see if you needed CPR. She kept me from moving you in case you had a head injury.” The memory of the moment makes a lump rise in my throat.

  “Thanks, darlin’,” she says, reaching to pat my hand. “All of you.”

  “What do you remember?” Lexi asks. “We don’t know how long you were in there.”

  “I don’t . . . I . . .” Tory frowns. Her gaze snaps to me. “You helped me inside.”

  “That was last week,” I say quietly.

  “Oh.” She blinks. Her dark eyes grow shiny with tears. “Oh.”

  “You’ll remember more when you have a chance to rest and get rehydrated,” Sadie says with confidence. I’m not sure if that’s true or if she’s simply attempting to reassure Tory. Either way, it’s a gesture that I would not necessarily have expected from Sadie, based on my first impression of the awkward girl with her braid in her mouth at our meeting.

  Then again, that’s the same girl who kept her cool and called for an ambulance while I was freaking out. The same one who offered me popcorn and the silent invitation to join the Gilmore Girls marathon. So, yeah. First impressions are bullshit.

  “Okay,” Tory says with a sniffle. But then she shakes her head. “I’m going to have to call my parents. The hospital is already asking about insurance. And I . . . They’re going to find out anyway. . . .” She’s crying in earnest now. “I’ll have to tell them that I messed up. Again.”

  I don’t know how she messed up before, but clearly, she’s upset about her parents finding out about this. I would have pegged Tory as having everything figured out. But maybe Lexi was right—no one knows what they’re doing; it’s just that some people are better at hiding it than others.

  “It’s going to be okay. You’re going to be okay,” Lexi says.

  I squeeze Tory’s hand, careful of the needle.

  • • •

  We stay with Tory for a few hours, keeping her distracted with stories about classes or, in Sadie’s case, the herd of pygmy fainting goats her family has in their backyard at home somewhere in downstate Illinois.

  From the pictures on Sadie’s phone, the goats look super cute, and I want a black-and-white one by the time she’s done talking about them.

  The nurse comes back in to change Tory’s IV and take her blood pressure, and she kicks us out shortly after four so Tory can rest.

  Tory watches us go, and even though she smiles wearily and waves at us, I’m positive she’s going to cry again as soon as we’re out of sight. Part of me wants to hide somewhere and sneak back into her room and stay so she’s not alone.

  Lexi, Sadie, and I are quiet on the way out of the hospital and into the visitors’ parking lot. Birds are chirping in the trees, and someone is laughing nearby, like it’s a normal Friday. But with us, it’s just the sound of our flip-flops and Lexi’s boots on the pavement, punctuated by the jingle of the keys in her hand. “I realize this may be inappropriate, given everything that’s transpired today,” Sadie says as we approach the truck. “And with Tory still in the hospital.”

  Lexi and I look at her.

  “But I’m hungry,” she says, pushing up her glasses. “Vending machine M&M’s and coffee are not cutting it.”

  My stomach growls loudly in response, as if answering Sadie’s statement with a ME TOO.

  “I know a place,” Lexi says.

  None of us mentions the fact that the union cafeteria is open all day. I don’t know about Lexi and Sadie, but I’m not ready to go back to campus yet. People will have seen the ambulance and us running out after it. There will be questions.

  So we pile into Lexi’s battered pickup truck and go.

  Over the Moon is one of those real greasy-spoon-type diners, off the side of the highway on the way into the town of Ashmore. Bright pink neon sign outside. Red pleather booths inside with matching bar stools at the counter, which holds several glass stands of pies, cakes, and cookies.

  T
he cab my mom and I took probably drove us right past it on our way to school, and I never noticed.

  The sign at the entrance tells us to seat ourselves, so Lexi leads the way to a booth at the back on the right, in an otherwise empty section. I’m not sure why, until Erica emerges from the back, in that yellow uniform that clashes with both her hair and her nose-ring stone.

  Her automatic professional smile, plastered on, grows wary as she recognizes us. From our first meeting, I got the distinct impression that Erica doesn’t care for Ashmore or its college students any more than Lexi does.

  “What are you doing here?” she asks Lexi, ignoring Sadie and me.

  Lexi takes a breath. “It’s been a long day and I think we need pie. A lot of it.”

  Erica’s expression softens as she hears everything that’s happened.

  “So basically, you saved the day because you all were being antisocial,” Erica says.

  “I was studying after class,” Lexi says. And avoiding our room and me, but she doesn’t mention that.

  “I was being antisocial,” I admit.

  “I’m lactose intolerant,” Sadie says, studying her menu.

  When we look at her, she glances up. “That’s why I wasn’t in class,” she explains. “Too much milk at breakfast.”

  And for some reason, that strikes all of us, including Erica, as hysterically funny.

  “What?” Sadie asks with a shy smile. “It’s true.”

  “That makes it even better,” Lexi says between gasps for air.

  Eventually we manage to give our order to Erica, including pie.

  And once it arrives, Lexi drowns everything with ketchup from a communal bottle, which prompts Sadie to quote a study about the number of germs found on such bottles. And then Erica, overhearing as she passes by with a tray full of dirty dishes, pauses long enough to tell a story about the time someone—not her, of course—served a relentlessly complaining customer a hamburger that had been spit on by every member of the kitchen staff.

  It’s almost seven by the time we leave, but it feels closer to midnight after everything that’s happened. The sun is low in the sky, painting everything in a warm orange-gold glow. Sadie actually falls asleep in the truck, as soon as we’re in motion. Her weight is warm against my side, with the three of us jammed in the front seat, me in the middle.