How I Fly (14 page)

It seems like she actually can’t walk!

She’s begun shaking top to bottom, and her next step shows that she’s dragging both legs. She’s also leaning on the crutches with left arm gone completely limp as though it, too, has become a dead weight. I get right she’s trying not to cry.

Damn her CP for holding her hostage, but it’s more than that. I think she’s actually trying not to collapse in front of us. My heart breaks, because I can feel shards of it cutting me from the inside out. The back of my throat chokes up, because I get that she’d rather die than ask
me
for help.

Nothing in my whole life has prepared me for the pain that idea causes me.

As she sways again, Professor Perry leaps forward and places his arm on her shoulder to steady her. Ellen leans on him and gasps as though she’s actually startled herself with how incapacitated she’s become. “Ellen, you’re scaring me, and I don’t scare easily.”

“I swear. This is normal for me. It…happens…s-s-sometimes. Embarrassing, mostly.” Her voice has gone mouse-small, the last word ending on a breath that sounds like she’ll never be able to speak again after this.

Professor Perry sends me a look over Ellen’s head without noticing that
my
lungs have turned into water-filled bricks, or noting that
my
legs are also shaking so badly I now think
I
can’t walk. But this is not allowed to be about me, so I pull myself together and manage to lock on a mask as I take a step in their direction.

The guy jerks his head at the side door, just as students have begun piling into the room from the doors located at the top tiers of the room.

“Camden, do you think you can escort her to the nurse’s station? It’s near the dining hall.” He glances at the clock. “They’re on duty at nine. I’ll excuse you. However long it takes—even if you miss your first class, it will be fine. We’re simply commenting on shots from the last project. It’s possibly for the best you aren’t here so you won’t learn how I graded the shots before you turn yours in tonight. Can you help her? Stay with her as long as she needs?”

I nod.

But I don’t mean it.

I want to scream at this guy that I absolutely can’t do this because she obviously doesn’t want me. But he doesn’t understand that for me, helping Ellen Foster is exactly how all of this horrible pain started. He also doesn’t understand that if I step in and “help” her again, she will ultimately hurt way worse than she does now.

“Ellen. Are you okay with this plan? You do know each other, after all.” Ellen moves her head. It’s not a yes or a no, but the professor smiles and says, “Good. Good. Off with you two, then.”

Suddenly, twenty or so kids have piled into this room and are watching us like this lower area is some sort of stage. Ellen sways even more precariously than she did before. Because I know she hates when people stare at her, I say, mostly to her, “I’ve got this. I know what to do.”

And then I simply step forward and place myself next to her in the spot I know is best for her to lean on me. My body seems to remember hers, and even though my mind is fried, frayed, and burned, I realize that I
do
know exactly what to do. In less than two seconds I’ve taken the crutch out from under her weaker left side so I can gingerly place my arm around her waist to take up her weight.

All of her limbs and curves snap in to place next to me, like she’s that last lost puzzle piece I’d been searching out for so long. While her expression might be fighting this, her body seems to remember what to do next to mine. Her arm goes around me. Her hand—the bad one—tangles oh so familiarly into the far edges of my shirt.

Her small frame, her warmth, her all-too-familiar trembling is all the same, and I’ve missed the feel of this—of her—so much. But then I realize that her hair smells completely different—like vanilla mixed with flowers…or is it some sort of warm sunscreen smell?

That indefinable, unfamiliar air between us wrecks me completely.

If I hadn’t been holding her, it would have brought me to my knees.

I don’t know her anymore. She doesn’t know me…and it’s not just her shampoo…but everything has changed, hasn’t it?

Professor Perry quickly opens the door for us, muttering more directions as to how and where the nurse’s station is located, and then he shoves us into an empty hall.

After a very long moment of silence and trembling that is half mine and half hers, I try to meet her gaze.

She doesn’t try to meet mine, and though she and I are now joined together just like old times, the way she’s avoiding my eyes has me feeling further away from her than I felt when I was locked up way across the country.

“Do you really need a nurse?” I ask.

She betrays her stony mask with that same shattered but shaking voice she’d used inside the classroom. “I don’t want to see anyone like this. Patrick a-a-and L-l-aura…I’ll need to warn them. And you and I…there’s much to talk about. So…much.” She pauses, finally offering me a small glimpse of her eyes.

My nod—or possibly it’s our eyes tangling helplessly with memories and longing—crumples her face. She goes all red and gasps out this dangerous sounding sniffle-sob.

I tear my gaze away from hers, and she sniffles again, leaning her head sideways against my arm so her long bangs and my arm hide her face. “Um. The whole left side of my body is on a shutdown. I’ll use the boot and the crutch to stabilize what I can, but you’re going to have to literally handle the rest…of…
me
.” Her voice drops to a whisper. “I’m also much slower than I used to be.”

“You were never slow to me, Ellen.”

“Please…don’t.” I see two tears streaming down her face.

“Don’t what?” I ask, but all I want is to get down on my knees and beg her not to cry.

She whispers, “Don’t say my name again. Please. I’m not ready to hear your voice saying my name.”

“Okay.” I nod, completely understanding that, because if she said my name right now…I have no idea what it would do to me.

“Take me to that door.” She points to the dark end of the hallway. “It’s a shortcut. Let’s just…
go.
”

My own eyes water dangerously as she grips on to me, because it makes me realize that somewhere deep down she must still trusts me. She’s leaning so heavily against my arm, I feel as if her life depends on it. Me.

Heat as well as tears flooding out of those eyes now soak into my T-shirt sleeve. Thankfully she doesn’t talk to me anymore. If I had to respond to her right now, the feeling of fresh air in the back of my throat would let loose my own tears in front of the few people already staring at us curiously in this small back hallway.

I adjust the grip on the crutch I’d taken from her and pull her in under my opposite arm just as close as I can and I try one step, then another. She struggles to find a decent gait with me holding her awkwardly like this, but after a few stops and starts, we’ve got it down. I get her to the door she’d pointed to. It’s marked:
Staff and Handicap Access Only
. She hands me her ID badge, and next to it is her set of small electronic key cards they gave us to get in and out of the buildings and dorms, only this one’s different because it’s got a blue and white wheelchair graphic on it, and the words
Special Access Pass
.

I hold it next to the sensor and it pops open the lock. I’m struggling some as I figure a way to stick out my leg to prop the door wide while navigating both of us through without banging her around. She seems to relax some once we’ve exited the building. After we go around the corner, I realize we’ve ended up in this cool little garden that faces the back of our dorm room hallway. “Wow. This is…nice,” I say, but my voice has betrayed me. Each word I just uttered fell out sounding wobbly and scratched.

“I have a favorite bench over…over…” she starts, her breathing and voice going more ragged than mine. The sound of it shreds the last of any strength I might have had in reserves. I’d meant to play this all cool. Say little. Interact hardly at all. Wait to see what she said first.

God help me, but just the sight of her face back in the classroom got to me worse than any kryptonite could ever crush Superman.

And now…
now
? Feeling her cling to me, hearing her cry because of me, I couldn’t hide myself from this girl if someone pointed a gun at me and ordered me to try. I’m raw…exposed…completely at her mercy. From the way she seems to have lost every ounce of her own air, making her already light frame go weightless in my arms, I know she’s in the same damn terrible vacuum.

My eyes track the way a natural pathway goes around a little pond. A pond that’s complete with a tiny island and ducks. Before I search for Ellen’s favorite bench, I look for exits. Ways to run out of here should all of this get to a point where leaving Ellen alone becomes necessary. Like when her CP attack is over and she tells me to get the hell away from her, just like I deserve. I spot the two ornate rod iron gates that lead out to the main quad before searching out what bench she wants me to bring her to.

One bench is on the pathway near a sunny grassy area, a second bench is on the far side of the pond that’s got a pretty view of the quad, and the third one is almost hidden under some dwarf willow trees nearest the pond.

I don’t need to ask which bench is Ellen’s favorite.

She’ll want the bench that’s under the trees.

Ellen

I’d already begun to cry the second he touched me. I think it’s the way his hands feel so familiar on my waist—the way his arm settles around my shoulders—the way he knows just how and where to carry my weight. I’ve been trying to hold it together, trying to shove months of emotions, fears, longing, and love back down my throat so I can lock it all up and be cool and silently aloof, like I know I’m supposed to be right now.

Instead I start bawling when we make it out to the garden.

Ugly bawling.

I see nothing. I only feel.

My relief that he’s here and he seems relatively okay is what buckled my legs back in the classroom. How he looks almost unrecognizable to me—because he’s pale, and almost bald, and he’s bigger than I remember—is causing the typhoon of tears. The sound of his own ragged breaths and the way he’s pulling me tighter and tighter, as if he could fix everything that’s been missed between us for months with this one awkward embrace, is why I might not ever be able to stop crying.

*Because damn him and damn me, and damn time and…damn…damn…damn.*

“I waited for you,” I choke out as he brings me under the trees by the pond. “But then…” I sob, “I stopped waiting. I’ve—I’ve moved on and I—and I—I’m…”

“Shh. Shh. Shh.” One of his fingers wipes away some of my tears. “That’s good. I begged you not to wait. I didn’t want you to wait. I would never expect that or want that for you.”

“I know. And that’s just what I—I—” I start sobbing incoherently again.

We get to the bench, and as we sit, he pulls me onto his lap so the top of my head is nestled under his chin, just how I used to love sitting. My cheek is resting next to his heart. As I cry and cry, he softly cradles me and says, “Ellen. God…Ellen, Ellen…Ellen.”

Even though I told him not to say my name, it’s now all I want to hear. It’s as though my name is food and someone’s starved me from hearing it. I fist my good hand into his shirt, because I’d like to pummel him for what his voice is doing to me, but I don’t. Instead, I leave my hand still because his heartbeats have startled me. They’re pounding against my hand so harshly that I can actually feel how his pain levels match mine.

I don’t need to add to it by raging at him. Cam’s always been amazing at hurting himself from the inside out, and he’s probably spent the last months carving himself up inside from guilt and his thoughts alone.

I suddenly understand the serious and desolate expression my mom always has when she shakes her head and says that line when she wants me to let things go:
It’s water under the bridge, honey. Water long under the bridge.

I’d always pictured this small brook over a tiny bridge when she’d said that. One where anyone could just drop down and recover that water should they ever want it back. But now I see my mom’s bridge is bigger than the San Francisco Bay Bridge. It’s covering the kind of water rushing so fast you never even saw it go by—the kind of bridge that’s so high, and over water so deep dark and cold, that people jump into it so they can die.

That’s when I cry even more.

I cry all of the tears I’ve held back from my mom, Nash, Patrick, and Laura since before my surgery in early December. I use Cam as a lifeline to soak up the feeling of his heart next to mine, of his arms around me, his hand sliding over the top of my hair, his soothing voice—all the things I lived without while I was recovering.

All the things I wanted more than air or food or water for months and months.

“
Shh. Shh. Ellen. Ellen
. Please don’t cry. Please. Ellen. Don’t cry.”

Eventually, I cry myself out to the point I’m completely empty.

My throat feels raw; my face feels like I took out my eyes and cheeks to replace them with bruised peaches. I’m embarrassed because the entire front of Cam’s T-shirt is soaked through where I’ve been clutching it.

*Thinks: Cam. Cam. Cam. Cam. Cam.*

Now that I’ve thought his name, I can’t un-think it. I’m actually proud right now that I’m not chanting it out loud.

Because he’s been stroking the top of my head this whole time, my bun’s all torn up and half out of its bun twist. When I try to open my eyes and see if I can breathe normally at the same time, the first thing I focus on is his shoes. He’s wearing these military-style boots, kind of like the winter pair of Doc Martens Patrick always wears, only these are light and canvas and sort of tattered, like he’s been wearing them inside and outside for a long time…for…like…

I whisper my thoughts out loud: “Seven months. It’s been seven months, you know?”

“Seven. Plus one week.” His voice is sandpaper mixed with pain, just like mine.

*Thinks: Seven months, plus one week, plus one day, plus however many hours passed by this morning until I saw you talking to Professor Perry. That’s how long it’s been.*

I pull away from his warmth and slide off his lap to gain my own seat on the bench. Not until I’m solidly balanced do I look up to find his familiar, gorgeous moonlight and gray eyes boring down worriedly into mine. His expression is blank, but his overlong lashes betray him with saltwater-thick points that prove he’s just finished crying along with me.

I re-memorize the new, more angular lines of the face that’s haunted my dreams since he went away, and I breathe in his familiar, warm, safe smell. “You look thinner. And you look…like you grew all the way up without me. Why are you using the last name Reece?”

“It’s my mom’s maiden name. She and the courts registered me here under that name.”

“Oh.”

He leans back, and his eyes survey me top to bottom. “Aside from the black metal boot, you look the same. Possibly younger and smaller?”

“Very funny. I always look like a kindergartner after I’ve been crying.”

“I know. And don’t get me wrong, even the same to me you look…great. I’m happy to see you.” He swallows and looks away.

I suddenly feel like I need to prove something to him. “I’m not the same. Not at all. I’ve learned so much about myself, what I’m capable of, what I want for my future. All that…so I might still look puny, but I’m stronger thanks to all that’s happened these months. So much stronger.”

“Despite how bad it all sucked…I’m also much stronger. Especially on the inside. With myself, my own goals—all that.”

“Good…and your hair is so much more…”

“So much more what?”

“Er—short?” I pull in a ragged breath.

“Is it bad?” He raises his brows, his hand going over the top of his head self-consciously. “I was thinking of keeping it like this.”

“No. I like it. It’s just…”

*Thinks: Hot. Sexy. Perfect.*

Because he’s blinking at me, waiting, I add, “…just such a drastically different look than what I remember. I almost want to ask you if you got a bunch of tattoos and piercings. Did you?”

“Ha. Please. Because all people who’ve been to jail get those? None yet, anyhow.” He laughs. “I’m just worried I look kind of ugly and out of place, that’s all.”

How can he not know the look has made him more model-beautiful? He looks twenty years old, and not at all like the high school seniors we’ve only recently become. The haircut has made those perfectly balanced cheekbones more prominent, the square chin even more square, and, without the sandy blond fluff to soften the edges of his face, my eyes go to the only soft thing left on his countenance…

His perfectly shaped lips.

Before I can think what I’m doing, the back of my good hand, as if acting on its own, brushes against one of his cheekbones then goes up higher to test the what the top of his head feels like.

“Ellen…” He flinches away from my touch and pushes me off his lap and literally leaps off the bench as though I’ve burned him.

Who do I think I am?
I’ve had no right to crawl into his lap, cry on his chest, and now touch him how I just did. Mortified, I cross my arms against my chest. “Cam…I’m sorry. Really sorry. That was totally inappropriate and out of order and…I’m so sorry. So sorry.” And then, because I’m feeling really guilty for the direction I just about took us in, I quickly add, “I also need you to know…that there’s someone else. I wasn’t trying to—do—anything, I was just curious.”

“Someone else?” He turns back to me, placing both hands on the sides of his head as though he’s trying to stop a bad headache. A headache I’ve given him, I’m sure. “Well. Good to know. As long as he makes you happy, that is.”

“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “So…sorry. I didn’t mean for you to feel like you had to run away from me.” I’m not sure if I’m saying those words to Cam or to Harrison, who’s not even here…or am I saying them to myself?

His voice is back to shaking. “Please don’t apologize. We’re having this conversation so
I
can apologize. Not you…so don’t say that word to me. Not now, and not ever again. I jumped up because sitting next to you was scrambling my concentration, like it always does, and—being so close to you after all this time—I was going to—I was going suddenly—way off track, that’s for damn sure.”

“Well. So was I.” I sigh. “But I guess we should have expected that. It’s not like either of us could expect how things are supposed to go when we saw each other again. Not after all of what we’ve been through…” I shake my head. “I actually think we’re doing okay.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. It feels comfortable—almost easy to talk to you. Do you feel that, too?”

“Yes.” He sighs. “But let me at least be the one who’s sitting here apologizing. Not you. I get to be first. Last. And always. I’m sorry. About all of this.” He spreads his hands wide, then points at my legs. “I’m sorry that you cried, that I left you how I left you, that I didn’t communicate at all. I’m so damn sorry about all of it. Not. You. Ever. Got it? And I’m happy if you’re happy. Are you?”

“Yes.”

*Maybe. No. Yes. Maybe. No. Yes. I don’t know.*

Unable to look at him now, I quickly ask the question that hurts the most: “Why? Why didn’t you call me?”

He blinks. “I was in this juvenile detention foster home place. I didn’t have access to a computer or cell phones until last week. The one text I sent to you happened because I’d stolen a phone from my social worker. That move which got me into more trouble, when I was already in trouble for stealing a car and my dad’s wallet to try to get back to you.”

What’s left of my heart crumbles. Maybe I didn’t wait long enough? “That’s why?”

“Yes. But if I’d had a second chance—if they had given me internet access this whole time—I would have broken up with you the same way. I didn’t think I was coming back.”

“Neither did I. I found out some of what happened to you only last month.”

“Yeah, well.” He shrugs. “You needed to move on.”

“But—you’ve had cell phone access this whole past week. What about this past week? Why didn’t you contact me? Why?”

“Honestly? I was too afraid. Terrified I’d hurt you more and I—”

I hold up my hands, and thankfully, he stops talking. I shake my head again, trying to insert this new information. With Cam sitting here, I can’t even remember why I kissed Harrison Shaw last night. And now, why don’t I just kiss Camden Campbell and beg him to…what?
What?

I feel like I’m shrinking in front of him, and worse, I feel him shrinking away from me. He’s changed, and I’ve changed, and half a year’s simply passed us by and spit us out here as completely different people.

I copy his move and put my hands up to my head, shaking it back and forth. “God. I’m so confused and drained. I have no clue who or even what I am to you right now.”

“I know. If it helps…I’m right there with you. I actually feel…hollow.”

“Cam, now that we’ve cried it all out, what do you want me to do…who are we going to
be
…what do you want from me?”

“First, what I need to hear is for you to tell me you’re okay. Really and truly well, despite my past involvement in your life and despite me just showing up here like this.” His voice has gone all scratchy again. He turns back to look at me, but his eyes are heavily guarded. “I can go. I don’t have to stay here for the rest of the summer if you don’t want me near you. I can be gone by tonight.”

“You belong here. You earned this, and you want to be a photographer,” I whisper.

“Yeah. But what about us? Doesn’t this hurt?”

“We used to be friends. Just because we’ve had this really strange fast forward, does it mean we’re no longer friends?”

“I—I want to be, but first say you are going to be okay with suddenly seeing me every single day.”

I raise one brow, calling his bluff. “Are you going to be okay with the same?” He nods, but I can tell he’s lying as much as I am. I continue, “More specifically, will you be okay with me dating Harrison Shaw in front of you every day? Because…like you said, he’s your roommate and I honestly like him, and he’s made me really happy this summer.” My voice drops, and I can’t meet his gaze. “I think that situation might get really awkward.”

“Don’t worry about me. It’s not about that, is it? It’s about you.”

“No. Not about me. It’s about
us
…moving on. And growing up, I guess.”