“Oh, my God! Lily, are you okay?” Abby rushes around the table to help Lily stay on her feet. Her shoes seem to have fallen off amid our collision, and tissues poke out from the insides. I bet she borrowed those.
“Are you okay?”
Todd is squatting and holding her shoulders, staring into her eyes while she nods and makes this god-awful sound like a vacuum with a sock stuck in the hose.
“I nailed her in the ribs, not the head,” I say, not really thinking my words through before blurting them out. I can read the asshole-meter on high in the faces suddenly staring back at me.
I wince and shake my head.
“I only meant we need to get her arms up, open her lungs. She lost her wind. Not gonna get much out of her pupils to help with that.” My hard stare catches Todd’s and I realize my big opportunity may have gotten smaller just now thanks to my inability to not correct my future boss.
“I’m good,” Lily chokes out. She scrambles to her feet and folds her hands behind her neck, drawing in air as her eyes pass over me.
Sorry. I really didn’t mean that.
My thoughts never make it to my mouth, and we instead exchange what amounts mostly to sneers.
“I hope your sales skills don’t include physical altercations,” Abby tosses over her shoulder as she moves back to the interview table. She’s trying to lighten the mood, so I play along.
“Only if we need to close the deal and the client is being stubborn.” I glance Todd’s way. He only squints one eye and purses his lips.
“And I also bring humor to my skillset, ha haha . . .”
My self-deprecation does more to melt the ice forming around my chances for a future withTheAffiliate, and when everyone—even Lily—lets out an easy laugh, I relax my spine from the Boy Scout knot it was twisting into.
“Oh, my shoes—”
Lily’s eyes dart around, searching for them, and beforeTheAffiliatepeople see the scrunched-up tissues about to blow toward their feet, I snatch them and tuck them in my pocket.
“Seems I knocked you out of them. Here,” I say, scooping them up and setting them on the ground by her bare feet. Her big toenails are sky blue, and the others are painted white. Nice that she seems able to ease her mind enough for trivial things like that.
“Thank you,” she says, reaching toward me but letting her hand fall back to her side.
“Least I can do,” I say through a tight grin. Our gazes tangle for a long pause but I break the hold before anyone else catches on that Lily and I have a painful, messy history.
I manage to shake Todd’s hand one more time to make sure we part on good terms, and I run my finger along the sharp edge of his card in my pocket all the way back to my dorm. Cameron has started to make himself comfortable, his bed pushed under the window, which is cracked as he smokes a blunt and fills our room with a stench so obvious I wonder how he hasn’t been expelled this morning. Then I think about the facts—he’s willing to room with the guy whose sister died months ago, the guy who’s probably going to get straight A’s without even trying because who’s going to fail the guy with the dead sister? Nobody’s going to say shit to us. I’m our free pass. For everything.
“Give me a drag,” I snap in his direction, and he hands over the blunt. I suck in one draw, holding it long enough to feel the smoke scratch at my throat and beg to be coughed out. I hand it back without giving him the satisfaction of showing off his smug grin. I don’t get high often. Rather, I didn’t—before. But after the day I’ve had, and the semester ahead of me, being high seems a lot more reasonable.
I head toward the door, not high yet but buzzed on the anticipation.
“You just got back. Where are you going? We’ve got practice in an hour.” He coughs through his words, and I wonder if he’s going to feel the hits he’s about to take out on that field. Full pads only dull so much.
“I’ve got something I need to do. I’ll meet you there.”
I let the door slam closed behind me, then continue down the hall and stairs before crossing the lawn on my way to Hayden Hall to get Cinderella a real pair of fucking shoes.
Chapter5
Lily
I’m officially the last student in the auditorium. I wasted the first twenty minutes of my interview—well the first twenty after getting my lungs punched out by Theo’s elbow—gushing over Abby Quinlanin frontof Abby Quinlan.
Then, once she put together my name with my obsession with swimming, it didn’t take long for my own story to come to the surface. I’m less able to talk endlessly about that, but ever-the-reporter, Abby kept digging. I said more than I wanted to, but I still managed to hold my memories close to the vest.
There are some things I don’t know that I will ever be able to talk about with anyone other than the therapist my mom put me in touch with the first week I was home after the accident. And even with Dr. Tom Brown—whose name I’m deeply skeptical of since our sessions are always online and via text—I tend to gloss over details. I say I’m feeling better even when I’m not. And my text-bot therapist asks me to rate my depression on a scale of one to ten. I’ve found that saying I’m a three is like magic. Messed up enough to not be lying, but not dire enough to need any true intervention. And thanks to my mom’s epic apathy toward me in general, I don’t have to talk about adjusting my meds. Nothing on my menu of emotional tools meets my needs, but none of it works against me, so I simply maintain at whatever fucked up place I’m in.
“I really hope you get a lot out of your time with us this semester, Lily.” Abby reaches across the table for my hand, and I give her my shaking one.