This Is Falling (39 page)

Kelly stayed with me after the accident,
through high school and the summer before we both left for college.
We were going to go to the same school—that was always the plan.
But I could tell by the look on her face, the one that she wore
more and more every day, that she was forcing herself to go through
with it all. She wanted out. But she loved me too much to hurt me.
So I pushed her away instead.

My phone buzzes back with a response, and I
hover over the screen for a few seconds, afraid to open it. I just
asked her how things were going at home with Jax, the baby. We’ve
managed to remain friends for four years.
Friends
—even
though every conversation with her is like driving a stake through
my heart. Last year, she got married, and a few months later, she
told me she was pregnant. And I died a little more.

Swiping the screen, the first thing I see is
a picture of tiny feet nestled inside Kelly’s hands, the diamond
ring on her left hand like a banner waving in my face. Her husband,
Jared, tolerates me, but I don’t think he’d mind at all if Kelly
and I just stopped communicating completely. I have a feeling he’ll
get his wish one day—distance and time, they do funny things to the
heart, they make you…forget. Or at least want to forget.

He’s beautiful.
That’s all I can
say.

Thanks.
That’s all she writes back.
And I know we’re near the end, and I feel sick. I’m getting drunk
tonight, with our without Nate as my wingman. Hell, I might just
pull up a stool at Sally’s and join the regulars who plant
themselves there all day.

Cass

“Oh my god, you literally brought your entire
life from Burbank to Oklahoma, didn’t you,” I huff, dragging two
extra bags on top of my own trunk along the walkway toward our
dorm.

“That was the deal. I would come
here
,
but I still get to be me—and I like to have my things,” she says,
prancing ahead of me with the lighter bags. Paige is a full minute
older, but you’d think years separated us with the authority she
holds over my head.

When it came time to decide on a college,
Paige’s choices narrowed down to Berkley and McConnell, and Berkley
was definitely her preference. But for me, it was always McConnell
and only McConnell. They had the best sports and rehab medicine
program in the country, and that’s what I wanted to do—what I was
destined to do. But my parents wouldn’t support me moving thousands
of miles away without someone around to keep an eye on me.
Supervision—the word made my skin crawl I had heard it so often.
Supervision
and
monitoring,
words bandied about so
often in conversations about me, but never in conversations with
me. God how I wished just once someone threw in the word
normal.

So, as much of a pain in the ass as my sister
is, she’s also a saint, because she picked McConnell, and I’m the
only reason for that. And I owe her—I owe her my life.

“Okay, so here’s the deal,” Paige starts as
soon as we get our bags, mostly hers, loaded into our dorm room. “I
want this bed. And I’m still going to rush a sorority. Mom and dad
don’t need to know that I won’t technically be living
with
you.”

“Works for me,” I say, already unzipping my
bag and flipping open the lid on my trunk. I feel Paige’s purse
slam into my back suddenly. “Ouch! What the hell?” I say, rubbing
the spot where the leather strap smacked my bare skin.

“The least you could do is pretend to miss
living with me,” she says, her eyes squinting, her smirk showing
she’s a little hurt.

“Oh, Paigey, I’ll miss you. I just hate that
you have to be my babysitter—
still
!” And I do hate it. I
think that’s the worst part about being a teenager with MS;
everyone’s always waiting for something to go wrong.

It started in the middle of my freshman
year—I would get this pain in my eye. It would come and go, weeks
between each occurrence. When I couldn’t ignore it any longer, I
told my parents—and we went to the eye doctor. My vision was fine,
and he told them it was probably stress from school and the running
in soccer leaving me dehydrated. What a simple and succinct
diagnosis. It was also complete crap.

The fatigue hit next. Again, easily summed up
with too much soccer practice, which of course led to truly
uncomfortable fights between my parents—my mom wanting me to quit
completely and my father saying I just “need more conditioning.” It
was because of these fights that I hid the tingling from them. That
went on for months, until it was summer. And then one day, I
couldn’t walk.

I could stand from my bed, get to my feet,
but that was it. The second I attempted to move toward my door or
drag my feet toward my closet to get dressed I wobbled and fell. I
felt like the town drunk without the benefit of the booze and a
paper bag. I screamed for Paige and my parents, and I knew by the
look on their faces that my life as I knew it was done.

The fights continued, and my parents
separated for a while. After the MS diagnosis, my mom insisted I
quit soccer. And I got depressed. My dad supported my wishes to
play again, of course under strict circumstances and with limited
workouts. And everything pretty much sucked for the next year.

It was a series of med trials, seeing how
certain combinations affected me and finding out what side effects
I could handle. I also got really good at giving myself a
shot—three times a week for three years, until they came out with
the pill version last year. I didn’t mind the shots, though. What I
minded were the constant questions and lectures from my parents.
“How are you feeling?” “Are you fatigued?” “You should rest, stop
working so hard.”

Paige never lectured. Through it all, she
just stayed the same. True, she’s terribly self-absorbed, and there
were moments that she resented the attention I got because of my
disease. But it was more about the attention, and the fact that it
wasn’t on her. And I liked that.

We made a deal with my parents, coming here
as a package deal. We fought for it for months; my mom really
wanted to keep me at home. But that’s the thing about MS. It never
goes away; it’s always with me. And the shots, drug trials,
therapies—they don’t fight the disease. They only slow it down.
Like the front line of the Pittsburgh Steelers, except nowhere near
as effective. Maybe more like the front line of the Miami Dolphins.
So in the end, I got my way. Now that I’m here, I’m not going to
let MS be a part of any conversation. I’m just Cass Owens, and my
story ends there.

“Hungry. Now,” Paige says, snapping her
fingers at me. I smile out the window, not offended in the least.
I’m free.

“Let’s go eat greasy, fried crap,” I say,
grabbing my purse and blowing right past her, ignoring her eye roll
and protest and impending whine about needing a salad with low-cal
dressing. Freedom!

Ty

I’m two beers ahead of Nate by the time he
walks into Sally’s, and I can already see the lecture building with
every step closer he comes. He’s doing that thing, where he cracks
his neck on one side and looks down, shaking his head at me in
shame.

“Save it, bro,” I say, picking up my glass
and finishing off the last of my second beer while he sits down and
admires both empty mugs.

“You called Kelly, didn’t you?” It’s not
really a question, so I don’t answer. “I don’t know why you torture
yourself. It’s not like you can’t meet other women. Damn, Ty—that’s
like your best skill. You meet women every five minutes, and
they’re in love with you after six minutes.”

“Yeah, but I don’t love them. No one is
Kelly,” I say, feeling every bit of my self-loathing settle over my
body.

“No, but maybe…just maybe, someone could be
better, you know, like
different
better. If you’d just give
it a damned chance,” Nate says, stretching his legs out from the
booth and pulling a menu out from the rack on the wall. I can’t
help but watch his muscles stretch and hate him, just for the
smallest second, for being whole. I don’t really hate him, but
sometimes it’s hard to be so damned positive all of the time.
“Order me a cheeseburger and chili fries. I’m hitting the head,” he
says, pushing out from the booth and walking to the restrooms in
the back.

Our mom always says that Nate’s the romantic
one. Me, I’m all numbers and practicality and logic. But I don’t
know, I think my romantic side is alive and breathing—it’s just
tortured. It’s this sliver of my soul that feels certain that
there’s only one girl out there who could ever love me, and her
love wasn’t meant to last forever.

“Hahahaha! You are sooooo not the sexy one,”
a chick’s voice squeals from behind me so loudly that I’m compelled
to turn around. That, and she said the word
sex
, pretty much
an automatic for me. I glance over my shoulder, and at first all I
can see are two blondes. I can’t quite make out their features
though, but if pushed, I’d say they were both probably pretty
damned sexy. When they pass me, I breathe in and the air smells
like the ocean. One of them is taller than the other, lean but
built, clearly a runner. The other one is curvy, and she’s wearing
a sundress that, if I had to guess, was hiding no bra and probably
a pretty sexy pair of panties.

“You’re, like, predictable sexy,” the tall
one says, and I hear a bubble snap from her gum. “I’m like ninja
sexy.”

I can’t help but smirk at what she says. This
chick’s funny. And I’d have to say, that might just give her the
edge on sexy. I keep my gaze forward, pretending to look at
something on my phone screen on the table, but I notice the pair of
them slide into a booth across the room.

“What’ll you have today, Ty?” Cal says,
pulling the pencil from behind his ear to write down our order. I
don’t know why he bothers asking. Four weeks we’ve been coming
here, and I’m pretty sure we’ve ordered the same thing every
time.

“Cheeseburgers,” I say, nodding to Nate,
who’s now standing behind Cal and waiting to slide back to his
seat.

“Oh, hey Nate,” Cal says, writing down our
order and putting the pen back in its spot somewhere within his
mess of hair and the mesh Budweiser hat he wears every single
day.

“I’m starved, man. Today’s practice was
brutal. It’s just…so damned hot,” Nate says, pulling his own phone
out and looking at the screen. I’m glad he’s only half paying
attention to me, because my focus is dedicated to the booth about
twenty feet away.

“Do you have any low-fat dressings? Like, at
all?” the curvy blonde says, a strand of her hair wrapped around
her finger when she asks.

“We have Italian,” says the older woman
taking their order.

“Yeah, but is it just oil? That doesn’t mean
low fat. Is it fat-free or low-fat?” This chick is high
maintenance.

“It’s…Italian,” the waitress says. A small
chuckle escapes my lips and the other girl, the
ninja
, looks
my way briefly. I don’t know why, but my heart kicks a little at
getting caught.

“She’ll have the Italian. Just put it on the
side,” the ninja princess says, and the waitress walks away.

“Good thinking. It’s low-fat if you put it on
the side,” the diva says, and my ninja princess just stares at her,
watching her pull out a mirror and check her lipstick, and then
flips her gaze to me. This time I don’t panic, instead just lifting
the right side of my lip in a tiny grin to let her know I’m with
her—hell, I’m
so with her.
She shakes her head at me in
disbelief and then returns her gaze back to her friend.

“Putting the dressing in a different bowl
doesn’t change its chemistry, Paige,” she says, and I smirk
again.

“What’s so funny, dude?” Nate interrupts, but
I shake my head and hold up my hand against the table.

“Hang on, I have to hear this out,” I
whisper, and he bunches his brow before turning to look at the two
girls behind him who have me completely rapt.

“Then why the hell did you make me get it on
the side, Cass?” she asks, and I commit that name to memory the
second it leaves her lips.

“So you could use less,” Cass huffs back.

“That’s stupid,” Paige says.

“Yes, I see that now,” Cass says, stepping
out from their booth to head to the restroom area. She gives me one
last smile before she leaves, and I hold up my empty beer glass to
toast her—the sexy ninja princess with the patience of gold, and
the next girl I want to get to know in Oklahoma.

Acknowledgements

This book was just begging to come out of me.
I dreamt pieces of it, and scribbled other parts down on notebooks,
receipts and napkins that I stuffed into the depths of my purse
while in the strangest places. I think I jotted down Nate and
Rowe’s names on the back of an ASU baseball ticket. And when I
pulled everything together and sat down to write, it just poured
from my fingers. Thank you—seriously…thank you, for reading it.

This Is Falling
is in many ways about
those
other
stories that I never got to tell as a
journalist. I covered the tragedies, and sometimes, as a reporter,
would go back to revisit things on anniversaries. When enough time
has gone by, things become newsworthy once again. Looking back at
it now, I’m not sure why that is.
This Is Falling
is about
the people those tragedies touch but whose stories don’t make the
paper. The dominoes of aftereffects from a school shooting don’t
all fall down in a straight line. They scatter and touch everyone.
And Rowe Stanton embodies this.

I must thank my amazing editors, Tina Scott
and Billi Joy Carson, for their work on this final product. And I
would be lost in a world of doubt and second-guessing if it were
not for my beta readers—Shelley, Bianca, Jen, Debbie and Brigitte.
You ladies rock!