Grounding Quinn

by Stephanie Campbell

  “I wish you’d talk to me about it.” She shrugs her shoulders.

  I inhale deeply. I wish I could. But where to begin? My mom’s secret alcoholism? My pesky little klepto habit of prescription drugs and Macy’s cards? That I’m scared to death I’m going to turn out like my mom? That my dad is fucking Mena Lombardo? That I cheated on Ben with a twenty-four-year-old?

  “I can’t.”

  “Quinn, I know how it feels to have a secret. I just wish you would talk to someone, even if it isn’t me.” I think back to last year, and how hurt I was when I found out that her ex, Trevor was hitting her, and that she had never told me. Not until she had to be hospitalized after she broke up with him did I find out. I couldn’t wrap my brain around how she could keep something so major from me, her best friend. Now, I finally understood.

  “I just…can’t…” I say, as I pull into the driveway of her house.

  “Thanks for the ride.” She starts to get out of the car and I grab her arm, startling her.

  “Ben and I…were…we broke up,” I stutter. Each word burns like gasoline.

  “Oh Quinny.” She pulls me into a hug “What happened?”

  I slept with my dad’s co-worker.

  “I um…I screwed up. I mean, I cheated on him.” I should be crying. Any normal person with half a soul would be crying. I want to cry. I can feel the unbearable tightening in my throat that has been there since Ben left that day. I’m trying to will the tears to fall so they might ease the pinching and burning, but they won’t. Why?

  “Oh honey, do you want to come in?” she says. Her eyes are full of undeserved sympathy.

  “No, I don’t really want to be around people. No offense.”

  She nods, “All right. But are you going to be okay? I mean, does he know? Who was it with?”

  I know Syd, and I know she’s asking this out of actual concern and not just trying to be messy. Still, I feel my chest ache when I think of speaking the words. But if Ben is hanging out with Grant, it’s only a matter of time before Sydney knows everything. Better to hear it from me.

  “I don’t know if I’ll be okay. Yes, he knows. And it was…” I take the biggest breath of my life. “…It was with Mark, you remember from the party. The guy that works for my dad. I slept with Mark.”

  Sydney, who I can count on one hand how often a curse word has been uttered from her perfect, overachieving lips looks at me, her eyebrows raised all the way up to her widows peak, and says, “Oh shit.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Ben

  “Oh…” Quinn says as she yanks the door open, “You aren’t Sydney.” I can’t tell if her tone is that of relief, or disappointment.

  “Um, no,” I say. I shove my hands into my pockets and stare at my Converse, trying to remember how Grant convinced me this was a good idea.

  “What’s up?” she asks. She looks tired. Her eyes have dark, purple bags under them. Her perfectly pouty mouth looks dry and chapped and her long, brown hair is tucked behind her ears, but horribly tangled. The spark that is Quinn isn’t there. Even when she is in a bad mood, she still has a fire behind her, but now, she just looks hollow.

  “Could we, like, go somewhere and talk?” It takes everything in me to not pull her into my arms. She looks so exposed. So broken. I just want to make her feel better.

  “Um, we can go sit out back if you want, no one else is home.”

  There is never anyone else home with Quinn. No wonder she doesn’t want to let anyone in and is constantly pushing them away. She’s used to being alone.

  “Yeah, that’s fine.”

  “You hungry or anything? I can throw something together.”

  I shake my head, “I’m good, thanks though.”

  I follow her inside the house and then back out through the sliding glass door that leads onto the deck.

  We sat out here almost every night over the summer. We’d lay right on the deck boards, her head resting on my stomach, as we stared up at the stars and talked. The last time we had done that was a few days before school started. We’d been talking about colleges and majors, and Quinn confessed that she actually had no idea what she wanted to major in, or even if she wanted to go to college. I’d told her it didn’t matter, because once we had kids, she could just stay at home with them if she wanted to. It was the first time I’d ever talked about a future with anyone. I remember the look on her face when I said that. It was conflicted, amused, and peaceful, all rolled into one expression. Everything about Quinn was so complicated.

  When she told me a couple of week’s back that she never wanted to get married, I felt my heart sink. I never imagined even thinking about marriage while I’m still in high school, and even though I wasn’t about to get down on one knee any time soon, I knew I never wanted to give her up.

  I sit in one of the Adirondack chairs, and she slowly lowers herself on to the ottoman across from me.

  “I haven’t seen you at school this week,” I say. “Are you doing all right?” Putz, stupid question– look at her face, she looks like hell.

  She pulls a string from the bottom of her fraying shorts and twists it around her finger tightly.

  “Yeah, I just didn’t feel like going,” she says.

  I nod. I’d expected something vague.

  “Do you remember the last time we were out here together?” I ask her. Her lips twitch upward like she’s thinking about smiling, but forces herself not to. She just can’t allow herself to be happy.

  “I, uh,” I miss you.

  “You don’t have to do this,” she says.

  “I don’t have to do what?”

  She pulls another string off and twists it tightly on to the same finger. Even in the dark, I can see her skin turning purple. It has to hurt, she doesn’t seem to notice.

  “You didn’t have to come by, I get it.”

  Well, I’m sure as shit glad she gets it, because I have never been more confused in my life. I don’t really understand the hostility in her voice, either.

  “I don’t know where to go from here, but I… I want to be able to move past all this,” I say.

  She won’t look up, but I can still see that her tired eyes have grown wide.

  “Could you please look at me, Quinn?”

  “You…” she furrows her brow in confusion. She looks like she is trying to process what I said as if it is some sort of riddle. “What are you doing here?” Her voice goes flat.

  “Jesus, Quinn, what do you think I’m doing here?” I reach for her hand, but she jerks it away.

  “I think you should go.”

  “What?” This is not going the way I had envisioned.

  “I said, I don’t want you here, you need to leave.”

  “Quinn, I miss you. Please don’t do this.”

  She looks up at me for the first time since I have been here. Her face is so pained. God, I just want to hold her.

  “Can we please just talk?” I plead.

  She continues to stare at me. I can’t take it anymore; I pull her onto my lap and press her close to me. It’s a typical hot, sticky Atlanta evening, but she’s shaking.

  “We can fix this,” I murmur into her ear. “I know things haven’t been great. But I know we can find a way to fix it.” She rests her head against my chest; her weight replaces the cinder block that has been crushing my lungs for days. “I have missed you so much.”

  We sit there for a minute or two in silence, and its okay. Nothing needs to be said. For the first time in days, I feel like things are going to be okay. Now that I have her in my arms, I feel like we actually stand half a chance. But it is short lived relief.

  “Well, you shouldn’t,” she says. She pulls herself away from me and walks to the corner of the deck.

  “Quinn, baby, come on, don’t be like that,” I say.

  “Don’t be like what?” she spits. “Myself? This is who I am!”

  “There is nothing wrong with who you are, Quinn. That’s not what I’m trying to say. But you’re
so fucking scared to let people in,” I say. I don’t understand how things just changed so drastically in the last five minutes. “What is it that you think you’re protecting yourself from exactly? Being hurt? How’s it working out for you? Because as far as I can tell, you’re fucking miserable.”

  “I meant what I said before, I want you to leave,” she says. She crosses her arms across her chest defensively.

  Her words are angry, but her face is expressionless. There is no genuine emotion to back up the heated tone. I know exactly why she’s doing this, she does it to everyone she knows. She keeps her friends in the dark about what really goes on in her life to keep them at arms length. She’s pushing me away because I dared to get too close to her.

  “You aren’t nearly as alone as you think you are, Quinn.”

  I might as well be talking to my shoe, her expression is completely blank.

  “You’re your own worst damn enemy, you know that?” I say, standing up and heading for the sliding glass door.

  “Can’t say that I didn’t warn you.” She stares down at her purple finger. “You can show yourself out.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Quinn

  “Quinn,” my mom says. I close my eyes tighter, hoping she will take the hint and go away.

  “Quinn,” she repeats. This time, she smacks my foot and it falls out from under my blanket and hangs off the side of the bed. I concede that she has nothing better to do than ride my ass; I might as well acknowledge her and get it over with. I open my eyes and roll toward her. The sunlight peeking through the mini blinds nearly burns my retinas. Someone has taken down the fleece blanket I’d tacked over the window last week.

  “What happened to the blanket?” I ask.

  “What the hell is going on with you, little girl?” Mom asks. I stare at her expressionless, if she can’t answer my entirely straightforward question, why should I answer hers? The answer to her question is far more complex than the simple whereabouts of my fleece gymnastics blanket. I close my eyes in response.

  “Quinn, I’m not kidding around here. Look at this letter we got from the school.” I don’t look. “It says that if you miss five more days of school this entire year, that by law, they cannot let you graduate. Do you know how many more days of school you have left? And you can only miss five more? You have really screwed yourself this time. Do you want to be a high school graduate, or not?”

  It’s hard to have such an ironic conversation with my mother. You’d think she would’ve waited until Pops got home from the office so he could handle this one– since he actually did graduate from high school. My mom, however, did not. I’m pretty sure she was too high to even hold a convo her entire adolescence, much less pass World History, so she ended up getting her GED several years later. For this reason, I choose to plead the fifth.

  “Quinn, are you listening to me at all?”

  I am, at least somewhat. The other part of me is trying to make shapes out of the popcorn ceiling clusters. I spy with my little eye…

  “Your father and I don’t know what to do with you anymore,” she says.

  “Sorry,” I mutter. What the hell does she want me to say? I’ll say whatever it is; I’m pro at telling people what they want to hear. All I need is a clue as to what it is.

  “You have got to get your act together, or there are going to be serious consequences, little girl.” I despise when she calls me that. “You may be eighteen now, but we aren’t going to have a drop out living in our home.” There’s that word again– home. I don’t think it means what she thinks it does. “Starting Monday, you will be at school.”

  She stomps out before I can respond– not that I was planning on it anyhow.

  I spy a piece of toast!

  *******************

  This is a bad idea. I shift uncomfortably in the wrought iron chair. How did I manage to let them talk me into this? Well, in truth, I didn’t have much of a choice, they all but kidnapped me. I hadn’t left the house in days. I don’t want to be out in public, but I don’t want to have another run in with my mom like earlier today. I want to be in my room. In the dark. Alone. Why couldn’t everyone just understand that and leave me alone?

  I watch the heavy traffic pass. The air is disgustingly hot. Like nearing Africa hot. And sticky on top of it. And why exactly do we have to be sitting outside of all things? There are perfectly good chairs inside the Starbucks. Modern conveniences like air conditioning, even. Sydney and Tess obviously didn’t get that memo before choosing our table.

  All right, so I guess the fact that I’m wearing a hoodie and track pants is kind of stupid-but that’s beside the point. At least I finally broke down and took my first shower in days this afternoon. It didn’t make me feel any better, I still feel polluted and disgusting. I don’t know if that feeling will ever go away no matter how many jars of sugar scrub I go through.

  “Listen Quinn, I know things are hard right now, but I promise, in six months, you aren’t even going to remember why it hurt so bad. You’ll probably just laugh at the whole thing,” Sydney says knowingly. She picks at her vanilla bean scone, and seems pleased with her advice.

  She’s my best friend, and I know she means well, but as she talks I’m mentally calculating all the ways I could silence her. I’m bigger than her…I wonder if I could use my straw for some sort of MacGyver inspired weapon.

  “Syd is right Quinn. I mean, if he broke up with you for one little mistake, then you’re better off without him,” Tessa chimes in.

  So true, Tessa, so true. There are just two major problems with that statement.

  Number one, I didn’t make “one little mistake,” like forget to call him back, or insult his mother (not that I would ever dream of doing that!). I slept with someone else. Someone older. Someone I can’t even stand.

  And number two, Ben is the one that is better off without me. How can I explain to them that Ben came over to take me back? That he was willing to forgive me for being a total fuck up. He was willing to love me anyway? How could I explain that I just couldn’t let him do it? I don’t understand why in the world he was so willing to forgive me, but I wasn’t about to let him settle for someone like me when he deserved so much better.

  I shift my weight again. I don’t want to talk, the sooner they realize that, the sooner I can go home. I pull the hood of my sweatshirt on and yank on the strings, closing the head hole tightly around my face.

  Sydney sighs. “Do you want to go?” Finally catching on, are we?

  I nod.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Ben

  It’s total horse shit that my mom insisted I be the one to pick up Caroline from the airport. Mom has been prepping for Caroline’s arrival like she is a god damn head of state, not my ex-girlfriend. It has kept her busy all day, every day this week-except for the time that she sets aside daily to wonder out loud where Quinn has been lately. She always manages a snide smirk when she does it.

  I can’t bring myself to give her a straight answer. Not when I’m still so damn confused about what the hell happened at Quinn’s house that night. I went over to tell her I loved her, and I didn’t want to be without her. Somehow, things didn’t work out that way at all.

  I finally saw her at school last week, and even though she won’t look at me, it makes me feel a little better just being in the same building as her. Then I saw she was online the other day, I thought about sending her a message on Facebook, but how freaking pathetic would that be?

  I’m sitting at the airport, waiting for Caroline’s delayed flight. I’m on my fourth cup of coffee, and second Cinnabon since I’ve been here. There has to be some sort of FDA warning about consuming this much sugar and caffeine in one day. Although, it really doesn’t make me jittery, and does little to curb my exhaustion. I haven’t been sleeping nearly enough lately.

  The Atlanta airport is the biggest cluster-fuck I have ever seen in my life. Just to get to the bathroom, you have to wait in a longer line than for Splash M
ountain on Christmas Day. There are more concourses than I can count, a people mover and a train station. I have gotten lost in here so many times, it’s unreal. Right now, I’m watching the same couple pass in front of the bench I’m sitting on for no less than the seventh time. The most annoying thing about being here though, is their sorry attempt to make me forget that I’m miserable, and have been sitting here for hours. The airport has their own ridiculous soundtrack, where they remade R&B songs into subliminal message filled tracks to try to get people to relax, clean up after themselves and entice them into buying things. Now that I think about it, they may be to blame for this second Caramel Pecanbon. Jagoffs.

  They have turned songs like “Shake Your Groove Thing” into “Opening Day Fresh!” And the especially ludicrous, to the tune of “Fantastic Voyage”, I now know the words to “Our New Concessions”. Caroline will be glad we broke up when I accidentally break out into one of those tunes.

  Just as my ears are literally about to start bleeding, I see Caroline walking toward the baggage claim. She looks overwhelmed and lost, stopping every few steps to stare at each sign she passes to ensure that she’s going the right way. I toss my plate of and head toward her. By the time I reach her, she is pointing directions to a stranger, I feel bad for the lost soul, because they will never make it to where they are going on time with directions from Caroline. As soon as they walk away, I step toward her. Without a word, a huge smile stretches across her face, and she leaps up to hug me. In that second, for the first time in weeks, I feel…happy.

  “It’s so good to see you!” She beams. I pull away from her awkwardly.

  I think she realizes I’m not entirely as at ease as she is. “I mean, it’s been a while,” she qualifies.

  I sigh. This is not a stranger– I don’t know why I’m acting such a donkey. I pull her in under my arm and kiss the top of her head. The familiar smell of honey overwhelms me.

  “It’s really good to see you too, Linney.”

  She blushes, “I haven’t been called that in a while.” I know this is true, because I’m the only person that calls her Linney. Suddenly, I feel like I’ve breached some sort of invisible intimacy line.