Out of Order (19 page)

Authors: Casey Lawrence

BOOK: Out of Order

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I opened the bathroom window wide and then stepped into the bathtub, wrapping my comforter around myself like a cocoon. Then, warmly nestled in the tight space, I called Brandon. He picked up on the first ring.

“Corey?” he asked. “What happened?” His voice had a desperate edge to it.

“I told my parents about me and Kate,” I said, knowing that he meant the arrest and not caring. Lightning flashed outside the window, and then, moments later, the thunder rumbled dangerously. “It was our fault Dustin did it.”

“It wasn’t your fault.” Brandon sounded so sure about it when he said it, but I knew he would hate me when I told him the truth.

“It
was
my fault,” I said, and the tears started then. I pressed my face into my blanket, wiping my eyes with it furiously. “He was running cocaine for a gang, and Kate and I stole some. He killed her over
drugs
, Brandon. And he’s going to get a deal if he’ll be a witness against his dealer.”

The line was dead for a while. The fireworks had finally gone silent, but the thunder continued in regular bursts. I felt sure it would rain soon. Everyone had gone inside for fear of a good soaking.

When Brandon spoke again, he didn’t sound angry. He sounded calm.

“They were shot by a criminal,” he said. “And now we all have to live knowing that we could have stopped it by doing any number of little things differently. That’s enough guilt for one person, Corinna. You don’t need any more than that.”

I closed my eyes. The lump in my throat that had been there since my mother said the word “cocaine” fell away, and I swallowed desperately past the raw point where it had been.

“The first time I kissed her, we were high. We were sitting on my bathroom floor talking about boys, I kissed her, and it was wonderful. We were right here.”

“The first time I kissed Jessa we were in my backyard. I asked if I could kiss her, and she said yes. Then she kissed me because I was too nervous to lean in. We were fifteen.”

Thunder clapped again, a cosmic round of applause for the sweetest story ever. I sighed.

“I miss them,” I said.

“Me too.”

One of us hung up the phone after a while of sitting there silently. I knew he was crying. I was crying too. My phone ended up on the floor where Kate had sprawled, high as a kite, looking like a doll dropped after playtime.

I slept in the tub.

In the morning, my dad knocked on the door and told me the storm had passed us over. I knew that it hadn’t. Not really. I reached up over my head and turned the tap. The shower spluttered to life and I was soaked from head to toe, comforter, clothes and all, in a matter of seconds. Outside the earth was dry and hot.

I closed my eyes.

It had finally started to rain.

About the Author

C
ASEY
L
AWRENCE
is an undergraduate English Language and Literature student at Brock University minoring in French and German. The vice president of the Gay-Straight Alliance and editor of the yearbook in high school, she now volunteers with the Brock English Students’ Association, Brock Faith & Life, Brock Pride, and, most notably, the Brock Leaders Citizenship Society. She lives at home with her mother, grandmother, and her adorable seven-pound Yorkie, Bindi, in Ontario, Canada, where her bedroom is packed wall-to-wall with books. She reads everything from classics to comic books, and is an insatiable consumer of all kinds of stories. From a small city in southern Ontario, she makes frequent trips to Toronto to go to ComicCon, the Pride parade, and to see her friends spin HHC. Casey enjoys dropping some sick rhymes at Poetry Slam, picking through used bookstores, marathoning her favorite shows on Netflix, and speaking out against discrimination at her school and in the broader community.

Twitter: @MyExplodingPen

tumblr: http://spacey-casey.tumblr.com/

Instagram: https://instagram.com/kcntv/

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