Jeremy’s face flashed in my mind, but I knew I couldn’t go to his house. No way he’d want to see me after suspecting me of causing what happened, especially when he was right.
I couldn’t face my aunt either. She’d see the guilt written all over me, I knew it.
There was only one other option. I pulled out my phone and dialed. “Can I come over?”
His answer was immediate, no questions asked. “Sure.”
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” I hung up the phone and walked out of school. Alone.
Twenty-Six
It’s always darkest before it turns absolutely pitch black.
—Paul Newman
Ransom answered the door on my first knock, his eyes widening as he took in my disheveled appearance.
“Are you okay?”
He stepped forward to take my arm and lead me inside before closing the door behind us.
I sat down on the sofa, shaking my head. Mute. What had I done?
He left my side and walked to his small kitchen. Sounds of the faucet running carried my way. He reappeared holding a tall glass of water. “Here, drink something.” When I didn’t move to accept it, he set it down on the coffee table in front of us.
“Sam, what’s wrong? You’re starting to freak me out.”
I shook my head in a daze. My skin froze and burned like fire all at once.
He moved a few inches closer to where I sat unmoving and reached out to take my limp hand. “Talk to me. What happened?”
I’d be sent away. My aunt would be so ashamed. Jeremy would never speak to me again. And I’d deserve all of it.
What was I even doing here? I shouldn’t be here. I should be at the hospital, trying to find out if Jessica was okay.
I didn’t know what to do. The feel of Ransom’s hand on mine finally registered. When I lifted my head to look at him, his eyes crinkled with worry.
“I think I really hurt someone.” I blurted out.
His eyes widened, but he tried to cover his apparent shock at my words. “Who? How?”
I noticed he didn’t ask why. Maybe he thought it didn’t matter.
Beads of condensation pooled around the glass of water on the table. I picked it up; it slipped in my hand and I barely caught it before it fell. I took a small sip to cool my parched throat.
“A girl from my school. Jessica. The one I told you about. I think I may have seriously hurt her.” I could barely choke out the words.
Ransom cleared his throat. “Uh, you’re going to have to give me a little more detail if you want my help.”
Waves of nausea crashed over me and I set the glass back down on the scarred table. “No. That’s not why I came here. There’s nothing you can do.”
Ransom leaned back against the side of the couch. “Oh. Okay. Then what do you need?”
“Never mind.” I shook my head.
Silence fell.
“Anyway, I’m not even sure what’s going on with her. I ran out of the gym after it happened. I just know an ambulance came and got her and rushed her to some hospital.”
He took a drink of my water. “So, you gonna tell me what happened?”
I filled him in on the whole thing, from instructing Becky to make the drugged brownies to Jessica’s free-fall during the pep rally. He nodded here and there while I talked, but didn’t interrupt. When I finally finished, he folded his hands and stared at them.
“You need to find out her condition.”
That made sense. “Do you think they’d give me information if I called the hospital?”
He shook his head. “Doubt it. They’d probably only talk to immediate family. All the privacy laws and shit.”
“Then how do I find out?” I was getting frustrated. “I can’t handle this!”
“First, you need to calm down.”
He seemed pretty cavalier about the whole thing. Then again, he wasn’t the one responsible.
“Look, isn’t there anyone you can ask? It seems like that’s the easiest option.” He shrugged one shoulder. “Someone might have seen or heard something after you ran out. It could be there’s nothing for you to even worry about.”
“She fell off the top of a pyramid! I heard the crack!”
“Bones crack. Doesn’t mean she’s seriously hurt.”
I shook my head. “You didn’t hear it. It was so loud. And her face before she fell…” I trailed off, shuddering, remembering her look of terror.
“I don’t get it.” He leaned back and crossed his legs up on the coffee table.
I turned to face him. “Get what?”
“You. This. All of it. How freaked out you are.” He shrugged again.
“What are you talking about?”
“Isn’t this the same girl who made your life a living hell for years? Who helped send your dad to prison? The one you swore to get revenge on?”
“Well, yeah, but—”
“Then why do you care so much if something happened to her?” He rubbed his head. “Seems to me you’d be doing the world a favor if she’d fallen on her head and bit it.”
“Ransom!” I stared at him, aghast.
“What? It’s the truth.” He paused. “Look, I can understand you worrying about getting caught, but I don’t think that’s gonna happen. You covered your bases. Let it go.”
He reached out and began to play with a piece of hair spilling over my shoulder. “Sam, relax, you didn’t do anything wrong. You pulled a harmless prank. You didn’t know she’d go up there and fall. It’s not your fault.” He moved closer as he spoke, his fingers brushed the skin just inside my collar. “It’s fine. You’re fine,” he whispered, leaning in close. “Better than fine.”
My eyes drifted closed as his mouth touched the sensitive skin of my collarbone. A part of me felt disgusted that I wanted him to touch me after what happened with Jessica, but another part of me wanted to forget for a while, completely forget everything. And Ransom offered the perfect escape.
My head fell back against the cushion, allowing him easier access to my neck. I felt a slight tug on the front of my shirt, and seconds later, his hand moved across the top of my chest. I forced myself to relax. Besides, the way he was touching me didn’t feel horrible; his touch was feather-soft, as if I were a fragile piece of glass. And in a way, I was. Like I’d simply shatter into millions of pieces if one more thing went wrong in my life.
Suddenly, his lips were on mine, and his tongue sought the inside of my mouth. Even though I willingly opened my mouth, granting access, my mind went blank. I felt nothing. Not excitement, not revulsion, just…emptiness inside.
Ransom’s hands were on both of my shoulders then, and I felt myself being lowered onto the sofa. His weight pressed down on me, but it wasn’t suffocating, it was a welcome heaviness. I stared at the ceiling as he continued to kiss my neck. It was made of white squared tiles. They had speckles.
“You’re so hot,” he whispered into my ear. His hands moved from my shoulders down my body. The pads of his thumbs brushed against my breasts.
Even though the last rational part of me knew I was using him as a distraction, I didn’t care. I couldn’t care. If I allowed myself to open the floodgate to all of my real emotions, I might never get my head above water. I’d drown.
I began to count the rows of tiles.
He trailed kisses down my neck, and lower. His hands were everywhere. Touching, stroking, teasing. I arched against him, needing to be closer, needing to feel alive. I wanted to feel anything at all.
“God I want you,” he growled. His hands moved to my bare knee, then slid higher, to my thigh. Higher.
The realization of what we were about to do crashed into me.
Jeremy’s face flashed in my mind out of nowhere. I’d always fantasized that my first time would be special, exciting, something I’d always want to remember.
It’s not like I expected rose petals strewn across the bed while cheesy music played, but still. I certainly hadn’t imagined it going d
own on some guy’s beat-up sofa. I didn’t want to use sex with some guy I didn’t even care about as a distraction. I was through with making horrible decisions.
I pushed him off of me and stood up, pulling my sweater back into place.
“What the hell?” His eyes were wide, and it was obvious by his annoyed expression that he didn’t much appreciate me putting on the brakes.
“This isn’t going to happen.” I shook my head, and motioned to him then myself. “You, me. It’s just not going to happen.”
He stared some more. “You’ve been putting out mixed signals from the time I met you. One minute you act like you want this, want me, then the next…” He sighed. “I mean, what the hell?”
He was right, I had been. But I knew I didn’t want this, not with him. He was an escape, and it was a shitty thing to do. “You’re right, so to clear up the signals, you and I aren’t going to happen. I shouldn’t have come here.” I actually felt bad about it, until he opened his mouth again.
His face hardened slightly. “You know what? Whatever. This is why I don’t have sex with virgins.” He shook his head. “Oh my god, the drama.” He rolled his eyes.
Who was this person?
In that second, I knew I’d made the right decision. I wanted to knock his teeth down his throat.
“Just stop. Please.” I held up my hand. “Just don’t say anything else, okay?” Bile rose in my mouth, sour on my tongue.
We stared at each other for what seemed like minutes, neither of us saying a word. Although mere inches apart, there may as well have been a football field dividing us.
“Look, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.” His gaze didn’t quite meet my eyes. “I don’t know what else to say. Sorry things got out of hand.”
Understatement of the year.
I stood. “I gotta go.” I headed to the door.
He jumped up after me. “Sam.”
I ignored him.
“Samantha, wait.”
I kept going.
“Would you please hold up? Christ.”
I looked over my shoulder and held up a hand to stop him. “Don’t. I want to be alone right now.”
“Well, do you want a ride?”
Was he serious? The thought of sitting close to him right then was too much. I needed space. I shook my head. “I’ll be fine. I want to walk…clear my thoughts.”
“You sure?”
I nodded, a quick jerk of my head.
“I guess I’ll see you later.”
That would be a cold day in hell. But I nodded again, a bobble-headed robot. “Yeah.”
He stepped closer and leaned down like he was actually about to kiss me. I turned my head, and his kiss landed on my cheek instead. He sighed and pressed his lips together as he straightened up, but he didn’t say a word.
As I reached the door, he said quietly, “I warned you that I wasn’t your knight in shining armor.”
I didn’t turn around. “Yeah, you did.”
I opened the door and walked out, offering a halfhearted smile, so as not to be accused of being a drama queen, before I closed the door behind me. As soon as I heard him cross the room, away from the door, I slid down the corridor wall, and buried my face in my hands. The day simply couldn’t get any worse.
I may have seriously hurt Jessica.
I’d almost lost my virginity to some guy I’d met a freaking week ago who was turning out to be a real asshole.
And I desperately needed my best friend. Only I’d ruined that too.
I sat and stared blankly across the hall, not having the energy to begin my trek home. Zigzagged cracks slivered across the dirty wall. Small flakes of paint stuck out along a huge Y-shaped crevice that ran midway down the surface all the way to the floor. It looked like someone started to repair it and gave up.
I heard footsteps and then Ransom’s muffled voice carried through the door. “Hey you. What are ya doing?” His voice sounded warm, flirtatious.
Unable to add one more thing to my list of why the day would go down in history as the suckiest of all sucky days, I tried to rationalize what I’d heard. Maybe it was completely innocent. His sister or something. There was no way he’d be calling some other girl right after what just happened between us.
Too bad I didn’t believe the lies I tried to tell myself. I’d been too caught up in my plan, and I’d let common sense fly out the window. The only thing I could think was that he’d played the role he’d needed to in order to gain my interest to try to get me in his bed, and I’d been too dumb to see through his false charm. Too angry at the world to really stop and think of what I was doing and more importantly, why I was doing it.
Footsteps sounded again, moving away. A door closed somewhere inside his apartment, and then I heard nothing at all.
The day’s events were simply too much. I had to think about something else, forget worrying about Ransom, about Jessica, or even what had just happened.
The familiar numbness slowly returned. I welcomed it. I stared at the chipped wall and watched a spider cross one of the cracks and crawl down onto the floorboards. It didn’t seem to be worried about anything. I envied its oblivion.
I pushed myself up like an old, tired lady and headed toward the steps to begin my long walk home.
Twenty-Seven
There are no regrets in life, just lessons.
—Jennifer Aniston
My aunt was asleep on her chair in the living room when I got home almost an hour later. In sleep, she looked older than I was used to seeing her…small and frail huddled under the knit afghan. I sighed. She’d probably worried when I hadn’t come home after school.
I walked through the kitchen, noticing the lack of food warming on the stove or dishes in the sink. It didn’t look like she’d eaten anything.
“Aunt Lor?” I shook her shoulder gently, not wanting to startle her.
Her eyes opened immediately. At first they appeared frightened, until recognition dawned.
“Samantha. What a nice surprise.” She smiled. “Are your mother and father here with you too, dear?” Her wrinkled face looked hopeful.
I sucked in a breath. I opened and closed my mouth, but nothing came out.
I’d gotten somewhat used to her forgetting things. Small things, like what day it was, or if we’d eaten dinner. But not like this.
She reached out and patted my hand. “Sit down, sweetie. I’ll get you something to drink.” Her small body struggled up from the chair. I stopped her with a shaking hand. “No. That’s okay, I’m fine.” What else could I say?
“Here. You look tired. Why don’t you go lay down awhile?” I tried to smile at her, offering encouragement. She started to protest, until I convinced her I’d get myself some iced tea and watch television.
“If you’re sure.”
I nodded and helped her to her room and into bed. I clicked her light out, the darkness hiding my tears.
I couldn’t ignore the reality that she was getting worse, much worse. And I didn’t have any idea what to do about it.
I crawled into my own bed after a long, hot shower. Everything in my life seemed to be spinning out of control. Had I really ever been doing the right thing, or was I turning into all of the things that I despised the most?
Jessica had publicly humiliated me in school since the first day of classes our freshman year and hadn’t let up since. But could that justify what I was doing?
I remembered back to our first day of high school, a day I’d dreamed about since I was a child and so desperately wanted to seem grown-up. I’d waited and waited for Jessica to pick me up like usual to give me a ride to school, not wanting to believe we really weren’t going to be best friends anymore.
Back then, I’d still wanted to forgive her. I’d still wanted desperately for us to remain friends and get past the drama between our families.
Only, she’d never shown up. Whether initially her choice or her mother’s refusal to give the convict’s daughter a ride…I never k
new. And when I’d approached her by our lockers that first day of high school and asked her why she hadn’t come by, Jessica had glanced around the hall at the throngs of curious onlookers and chosen sides.
“Why would I give you a ride?” Her pert nose wrinkled, and she looked around again to be sure she had everyone’s attention. She did.
I stared at her, my eyes pleading with her to remember who we were to each other. Or at least who we’d been.
But the rules of ninth grade social climbing prevented her from giving in. “Look, Sam. The only reason people even know you exist is because you’re the kid whose dad went to jail.” She smoothed on some strawberry Lipsmacker and shrugged before twirling away with a catty smile.
I shook my head to clear the cobwebs of hurt and heartache. Even if Jessica was a bitch, I needed to find out what had happened with her. I picked up my cell.
The phone rang in my ear, and for a minute I thought he wouldn’t answer.
“Hello?” His voice sounded resigned, but at least he’d picked up.
“Jer?” I wanted…needed things to go back to the way they used to be. I hoped he’d hear my unspoken plea. Prayed he’d forgive me and feel the same way.
“What do you want?” He sighed, a quiet sigh that spoke volumes.
I wanted my best friend back. I settled for, “How are you?”
“I’m fine, Sam. What’s up?”
I closed my eyes and pulled my blanket tighter against me.
“Did you hear anything about Jessica?”
“She’s gonna be fine. They took her to the hospital, and Pete and some of the other guys on the team went over too, to make sure she was okay.”
My heart began beating again. My voice shook as I said, “But she fell. So far.”
“Disappointed?”
“How can you ask me that?”
“Just stop lying to me, Sam. Please. I saw the notebook. All you want to do is destroy her.”
“Bring her down, yeah. Not physically hurt her!” I tightened my hand around the phone so hard my knuckles turned white.
Jeremy above all people should know me better than that.
“She broke her arm, and they said she has a mild concussion. She was still in the emergency room when the guys left, but they said she wouldn’t have to be admitted.”
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