Under Zenith

Under Zenith

By

Shannen Crane Camp

Published by

Crushing Hearts and Black Butterfly Publishing, LLC.

Novi, Michigan 48374

The right of Shannen Crane Camp to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him/her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it was published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Cover Design by Rue Volley

Edited by
Elizabeth A. Lance

Copyright© 2014

All rights reserved

Published by
Crushing Hearts and Black Butterfly Publishing, LLC.

This one is for all of those amazingly imaginative people out there who’ve made movies, games, books, and everything else that inspired me to write crazy dreamscapes that could only exist in my odd little imagination. And for my mother-in-law who gave me much needed breaks from writing with fudge sundaes, ‘Once’, and drives through the orchards just because we wanted to.
And, as always, for The Husband.

Also by
Shannen Crane Camp

The Breakup Artist

Pwned

Finding June (The June Series #1)

Chasing June (The June Series #2)

Sugar Coated (The Sugar Coated Trilogy #1)

Prologue

It was a hard dry pill to swallow that all of those sappy love songs had been right all along. You never knew what you had until it was gone. Just like you never really knew how to feel alive until you were already dead.

At least,
I
didn’t really know what living was until I had died.

Okay
fine, if I’m being fair here I still might not quite know what that felt like since I still hadn’t figured out if I was really truly dead or not. You wouldn’t think it would be so difficult to know, but apparently it was completely impossible to figure out.

Go figure huh?

But I’m getting ahead of myself a little. Or maybe a lot since I decided to start off this whole thing with the I-think-I-might-be-dead, bomb. But standing on the side of the road looking at my own, possibly dead, body could shake a girl up a bit.

On the bright side, the night leading up to my sort of death had been a really good one
. So I had that going for me.

In the end, I think I could chalk it up to one
sad fact: I had been killed by
Mumford and Sons
and a dog.

Chapter 1

“Is-la,” the hostess called out, completely mispronouncing my name and causing my family to exchange secretive smiles.

“It’s Isla,” I said, hoping my thick southern accent wasn’t preventing me from getting my message across. “Eye-lah,” I said again, this time slowly. “You know, like an Island? You don’t pronounce the ‘s’.”

“Ok
ay, well your table is ready,” the girl continued, just as perky and clueless as ever.

I guess sometimes it just wasn’t worth trying to correct people. It wasn’t their fault my name was impossible to pronounce correctl
y when you saw it written down.

It was my mom’s fault.

“Thank you, Mama,” I called over my shoulder as my family and friends followed the hostess to our booth in the restaurant.

“Any time
, sugar,” she said with a laugh. “Though I really am sorry they said your name wrong today when you got your diploma. Kind of ruined an important moment didn’t it?”

“They even had me write it out phonetically,” I exclaimed, feeling very ‘woe is me’ all of a sudden.

My big moment had been thwarted by my impossible name.

“Phonetically? Watch out everyone, college graduate over here is throwing out big words,” my brother Tucker said, draping his arm over my shoulders and ruffling my hair the way only a big brother could.

“
Hate to break it to you, but it’s not that big of a word, Tuck,” I shot back playfully.

“She’s got you there
, son,” my dad put in from the back of the group as we all slid into the large corner booth. “And make sure you actually eat something tonight, Isla. You’re looking like a little stick bug.”

“Whose side are you on anyway
, Dad?”

“I’m on the side of your sister who worked very hard for four years so that she could end up as a waitress,” my dad replied, garnering a dirty look from our hostess.

“Ouch, that was kind of brutal,” I said, opening my menu and scanning the plastic page.

“Don’t worry
, sweetie, there’s no pressure on you. We know there’s only so much you can do with a vocal studies degree,” he said, giving me a fatherly smile that would have been sweet, had he not been making fun of my education.

They didn’t really have room to talk since I was the only one in our family to ever go to college.
Sure I’d probably still end up making less money than them, but at least I could say I had a bachelor’s degree from East Carolina University, right?

“Don’t listen to them
, Isla,” my roommate Monica said. “You can just move to New York, and suddenly your degree will be like gold.”

“Oh don’t
take advice from the Yank,” my dad said. “New York is for people who wear more black than my little girl.”

He had a point, I had to admit.

My friends always said I looked like a ghost since I was the only Southerner they knew who was pale. Of course the fact that I had waist length platinum blonde hair and light blue eyes did nothing to help this comparison. I looked like a T-shirt that had been left in the sun too long and had the color bleached out of it.

“Don’t worry
, Hank, I can make her throw out all those white clothes and buy her some black ones,” Monica retorted, smiling in my direction and tossing her short dark hair over her shoulder.

“Yeah
, that’s not gonna happen,” I answered with a laugh.

I had a thing for white. With the exception of the ‘little black dress’ every woman was required to have in her closet, and an old pair of blue jeans
, most of my clothes were white. I just loved the way a white sundress looked against my pale skin. What could I do?

“I’ll bring you to the dark side yet,” Monica promised, raising her eyebrows at me
knowingly.

“I look forward to it,” I responded, raising
my glass of water to her and laughing.

By the time we finished dinner, it was pouring rain outside.

I shouldn’t have been too surprised really
, since North Carolina seemed to have a bad habit of suddenly opening up the heavens at any given moment and drowning everyone in Greenville.

The only thing that
was
unfortunate was my insistence on wearing white. My lacey white sundress was instantly soaked through and I was just grateful that lace didn’t exactly become see-through when wet.

That would have been an embarrassing end to the night’s festivities.

“Well, baby, we sure are proud of you,” my dad said after I said goodbye to Monica. My family and I walked through the parking lot, ignoring the rain. “And we got you a little something to show you just how much we respect all your hard work.”

“Oh Daddy
, you didn’t have to get me anything,” I said with a smile, secretly hoping they’d gotten me that really expensive leather-bound vocal technique book I’d wanted for so long.

“Your present actually comes in two parts,” Tucker said over the din of the downpour.

We all stood in the rain like we didn’t even notice that we were soaking wet. We were way too used to the spastic weather here to be bothered by a little flood inducing downpour.

“Here’s the first part,” Tucker said, handing over a little flat square wrapped in newspaper.

We definitely weren’t fancy when it came to wrapping presents.

I tore the paper off quickly and let out a happy little squeal. It wasn’t exactly the expensive
vocal book, but I was always grateful for a chance to listen to
Mumford and Sons
. I just loved accents, and I was secretly hoping they’d let me be in their band one day. It never hurt to dream, right?

“Thank you guys,” I said honestly, hugging my mom, dad, and brother in turn.

“We haven’t even given you the good part yet, sugar,” my mom said with a laugh. “You need something to play that CD in, right?”

“I can just put it on my computer,” I said distractedly, turning the CD over to read the titles of the songs.

“Well, just in case you don’t feel like listening at home we got you this as well,” my dad said, dropping a set of keys into my wet hand.

“Daddy
, what is this?” I asked suspiciously.

It was no secret, my family wasn’t exactly wealthy. We got along just fine
, but I’d had to save up my whole life to go to college, and the little bit of  help my parents had given me had come from Mama working two jobs and Daddy saving all he could after house payments and car payments and everything else real life bogged you down with.

So it was pretty much the understatement of the year when I said I was surprised by the brand new red truck my parents were now leading me to.

“You have to be kidding me,” I practically shouted. “You guys can’t afford this!”

“Oh shut your mouth
, we can afford whatever we want if we save for it,” my mom said with a little wave of her hand, as if this amazing gift was no big deal.

“Go
ing to college to become a know-it-all doesn’t sound so bad now,” Tucker teased, poking me in the ribs and grinning.

“Yeah maybe you should try it
sometime, Tuck,” I said back before turning to my parents. “Thank you so, so much! I can’t believe you bought me my own truck.”

I didn’t really know what else to say to them to show how grateful I was
, but we weren’t really a family of many words anyway so I left it at that. If I tried to expound on my gratitude I’d just end up embarrassing my parents.

“What are you standing around talking to us for? Go test it out!” my dad practically shouted.

He’d never bought a
new car for himself. I wasn’t sure I could really accept something he didn’t even have the luxury of owning so I hesitated, wondering what I should do. There had to be a good way to say you appreciated something without actually accepting the gift, right?

“Baby
, if you don’t get in that truck right now, I’m gonna give the keys to your good-for-nothing brother,” he finally threatened, seeing my reluctance.

I bounced on my heels a few times in excitement before running over and hopping into the beautiful red truck.

It smelled new, the seats felt soft, and the keys in my hand felt like my ticket to an exciting start.

Rolling down the windows before I drove away I blew my parents a kiss, wavy white b
londe hair stuck to my wet cheeks.

“I love you guys!” I yelled out the window, excited to start a new life with my bachelor’s degree and brand
spankin’ new red truck.

Things from the driver’s seat were looking pretty good.

“A truck?” Monica practically shouted over the phone.

I was driving on the snakelike back roads of town in the pouring rain, feeling like I never wanted to go home again. This was just too much fun.

“I can’t believe they got you a truck.”

“I know,” I said back, grinning from ear to ear.