[The Forever 01.0] Forever Innocent Read online

  Austin and I had walked through campus, gotten cheap noodles from a cart vendor, and hung out near the Sun God statue, staring up into its colorful protective face. I suspected he might have skipped a class for me, but I didn’t ask him about it. Fridays were my clear days, catch-up days, but this early in the quarter I could goof off still.

  When evening came, he asked if I wanted to walk over to his place. “Don’t worry that I’m trying to get you alone,” he said. “I have six roommates and nobody ever gets anybody alone.”

  “Six!” I appreciated, as I had throughout the day, how easy Austin had made everything, as if anticipating my every point of concern.

  “If you’re after me for my money, I might as well just give it all to you now.” He pulled a quarter from his pocket and pressed it into my palm.

  I swallowed at the contact. Austin had been super hands off, even though I had grabbed him when we hurried out of the building as Jenny stalled Gavin. There was nothing about this guy I hadn’t liked. The world seemed to understand that at this very moment, I needed something like him. I’d doubted fate for so long that it was a relief to actually believe in it again, if just for a day.

  He let go and I closed my fingers around the quarter. “So poverty means you live in barracks?”

  “It’s a townhouse with three bedrooms. So it’s not too bad.”

  We walked along a path through a forest of trees, past the towering library and away from the roof where I spent time with Gavin. I chided myself for thinking about him when the day had been so easy.

  “So tell me something,” Austin said, and his change of tone made my heart hammer. Don’t ruin it, I begged. Let it be.

  He stuck his hands in his pockets, as if trying to stall for time. My anxiety rose.

  “We’ve had a good day, right?” He looked out over the diagonal panels of the sidewalk instead of at me. A few other students were heading out toward the parking lots. We were almost back to the engineering hall, where we’d started.

  “Yeah, sure. It’s been good.”

  “So why do you seem so sad?”

  Back to that. I remembered when he gave me the note. He knocked on the counter, as if knowing he’d done something special by making me smile for a second. Everyone was right, he had been watching me all along.

  “Is that too personal?” He stopped walking, still not looking at me.

  I came up beside him. “Might be a story for another day.”

  “Okay.” He turned finally, gazing at my face. “I guess making you laugh will just have to become my new goal in life.”

  I forced a smile, for his sake, even if it wasn’t too convincing.

  “See, I’m halfway there.” He reached out and took my hand. “Is this okay?”

  I had to smile that he asked permission. “In some countries, I think it means we’re betrothed.”

  “A joke!” He slapped a palm against his forehead. “I’m better than I thought!”

  I punched him on the arm and he grasped my other hand, facing me like we were about to say wedding vows. His tone got all serious and I swallowed. What would he do now? Try to kiss me in the middle of the quad? I glanced around nervously. Gavin could be on campus somewhere.

  Austin let go of my hands. I’d messed up the moment. I’d probably do that a lot.

  “Let’s go see what trouble everyone’s into,” he said. “Someone’s bound to have ordered cheap pizza, and then I can feed you.”

  “Do you work?”

  “No time for a job,” he said. “Engineering kills me. I’m just trying to get done before my loans overrun my earning potential.”

  We resumed walking along the mall, past the engineering building. I could picture Gavin on his motorcycle, talking to Jenny. I hadn’t had a single free moment to call or text her and find out what they had discussed. Maybe she’d reneged on her deal and gone off with him. My belly burned.

  “Still with us?” Austin asked.

  Dang it. He deserved more than my scattered attention. “I am,” I said. “I may be more ditzy headed than you figured.”

  He bumped his shoulder against mine. We were almost the same height. “I’d go for deep over ditzy.”

  We left campus behind and wandered a few streets into the adjoining neighborhood, a mass of apartment complexes. “You live near campus?” he asked.

  “Oh, no. I’m way out.”

  “Did you bus in?”

  “I have a car.”

  “Hoity-toity, are we?” He turned us down a side street.

  “I have a job. It helps.” And, of course, three years of school paid by scholarship. My debt would be minimal as long as I was careful.

  We walked along a sidewalk to a row of townhouse condos that looked to be mostly rentals, judging by the scraggly lawns and ill-kept hedges, all signs of students who couldn’t care less about curb appeal.

  The buildings looked identical to me, but Austin turned us in at one near the middle of the street. “See, not too tiny. We can probably find some little corner to ourselves.”

  The wood steps were peeling and scarred. A tower of pizza boxes filled one side of the porch, awkwardly stacked in a way that couldn’t possibly stand on its own.

  “The leaning tower of pizza,” Austin explained. “Impaled on a center stake. Our little student engineering joke.” He opened the door and stepped aside to let me through.

  The smell of beer and stale bread accosted me as my eyes adjusted. We were approaching full dark now, and only a few small corner lamps lit the living room.

  A girl sprawled on a ratty recliner, her face glowing from the light of her laptop. She didn’t look up. “That’s Daryl’s girl,” Austin said in my ear. “I’d introduce you but I can’t remember her name.”

  To the left was another large room, wall to wall with sofas. In it, several guys sat around a television, playing a video game. “You want to meet them?” Austin asked. “Or save it for later?”

  I suddenly wasn’t up for being friendly to a roomful of strangers. “Show me around first.”

  We went straight back to the kitchen, cluttered with paper cups and more pizza boxes. “This is a good day,” he said. “Usually you can’t find the sink.” Off to one side was a dining room with a huge rough-hewn picnic table in it. “Seating for ten,” he said. “For all our grand occasions.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind for my next formal banquet.”

  He reached for my hand and squeezed. “You want to see my room? Ben might be there, so we’d have a chaperone.”

  I swallowed. What if he wasn’t? Being alone with Austin didn’t feel right, not yet. But I was being silly. I was twenty-two and not exactly a virgin.

  Austin sensed my hesitation. “Or we can sit here.” He pointed at the table.

  “No, it’s fine. Show me your space.”

  We crossed back into the kitchen and through a narrow hallway that led to a set of tightly turning stairs. “I’m on the second floor. All the bedrooms are upstairs.”

  I followed him up. On the walls were posters of scientists, cheaply framed. Einstein with his shock of crazy hair. Madame Curie looking serious and smart.

  “Door closed, no sock, looks like Ben’s there but not in any compromising positions.”

  “Seriously? You use the sock method?”

  He twisted the knob. “We do. Yes, we’re juvenile.” The door stuck a minute, then popped open. The smoke and smell hit me instantly.

  “Hey, guys!” Austin said. “I brought a girl!”

  “Bullshit!” someone said. “Did you lay a trap or something?”

  Austin tried to pull me inside but my feet were rooted to the floor. Weed. They were all smoking marijuana. I began to back away, yanking my hand from his.

  “Corabelle, you okay?” He looked inside. “Shit, guys, can you put those out?”

  I couldn’t believe it. I thought all this time that fate was putting me here. That Austin would help. That Gavin was just a coincidence. That I’d be better.

 
; I turned for the stairs. But no, it was worse. I could see it now. Things weren’t getting better. I was getting caught. Everything was catching up to me. The world wanted its punishment. I was going to pay again, all over again, and probably again and again and again throughout my whole life.

  I started running, crashing down the stairs, knocking Einstein sideways, and hurtled back through the house. Austin was close behind, but when I crashed through the door and out onto the lawn, he called out. “Corabelle, stop! Please! I’m sorry! I didn’t know it would upset you! I should have checked first!”

  My feet pounded the sidewalk in a full-on sprint. Hell was on my heels. I knew if I looked behind me, I would see it, a black cloud creeping up, like the way the ocean had bumped up against the lights of the city from the roof. My past was coming for me and this time there would be no way to escape it.

  Chapter 16: Corabelle

  I didn’t start to breathe again until my car pulled up to the apartment complex. There had been too many signs today. I always felt my life was like an intricate story, crafted so carefully that every moment had symbolism and every action carried the weight of a great and important truth. Today was foreshadowing. Disaster ahead. A tragic ending.

  I already had that. What more could happen?

  I unlocked my door, the blackness of the familiar room a comfort. Maybe I just needed a bath, a dark room, warm water, to float in silence until the world dissolved into nothingness.

  I felt my way across the tiny living room, leaving my backpack on the sofa and discarding clothes along the way. The tiles bit into my knees as I knelt in front of the bathtub, reaching blindly for the knobs.

  A car drove by outside and the muted headlights penetrated the block of bottled glass in the wall of the shower. The water spilled over my hands, cold and shocking. I pushed my hair back, a tangled mass after the crazy run.

  When the temperature turned warm, I flipped the drain stopper and waited for the tub to fill. The fiberglass felt good against my throbbing temple. Austin would write me, ask me what happened. I didn’t know what I’d tell him. He probably thought I was some sort of anti-drug nut, a weed prude. He had no idea. No one had any idea.

  I stood up and stepped into the water. My hair grew heavy as it soaked and I slid beneath the surface, getting good and drenched.

  Not true. One person knew. Katie, a friend back home who gave me my first joint in high school. I was strung out about my SAT score. I’d gotten to be a National Merit Scholar based on my PSAT, but my regular score hadn’t come back as high. Early in my senior year, I had one chance to retake it, do better, and the long nights were killing me.

  Gavin hadn’t cared about his score as long as he could get in. He knew he’d have to work through school, but I hoped to get scholarships and focus on studying.

  Katie and I had been prepping together, both going for as close to a perfect score as we could get. With my emphasis on literature, though, my math wasn’t topping out.

  I’d never done any sort of drug. My parents were straitlaced. Most of my friends were all serious students, not the sort to party on weekends with anything more than beer, if that. Gavin didn’t do it, although he knew guys who did. Our drug of choice had been sex.

  But a couple weeks before the retake, Katie had shown me her stash, spreading the little papers to roll and the baggie of weed out on her kitchen table. She got it from her brother, she said, who got it from someone at college.

  “I think you’re just too uptight about your score,” she said. “Take a practice set lit up and see if you do any better.” She handed me the fat roll and a lighter.

  “I don’t smoke cigarettes,” I told her. “I’ll have a coughing fit.”

  “It’s different. Smoother. Try it.”

  I looked at my last practice score. I wasn’t getting any better. I just couldn’t answer things fast enough. I felt the weight of the clock, the pressure to get every question right.

  I stared at the joint. “I don’t know what to do with it.”

  “Here, I’ll start it.” She lit the end of the roll at the twist and it blazed with light for a moment, then the burnt end went black. She sucked in, held it, then blew out a long clean line of smoke that dissipated elegantly into nothingness.

  The smell hit, the sickly sweet smoke. She passed the joint to me. “Just take a couple puffs, then stop until you see what it does.”

  “Do I breathe it in?”

  She laughed. “Of course.”

  Katie made it seem easy. I tentatively put it to my lips.

  “Just suck it in,” she said.

  I inhaled, and immediately felt the urge to cough, but it wasn’t too bad, and I could suppress it.

  “You’re doing all right,” she said. She took the joint from me and puffed. “Don’t forget to exhale!”

  I let it go and the smoke went everywhere in an ugly cloud. Katie laughed. “You’ll get it.” She passed it back. “One more and then we’ll wait. It takes a few minutes. You may not feel much the first time.”

  I briefly flashed to middle school and the anti-drug lectures. No one had paid the least bit of attention then. I hadn’t been around drugs, ever. Katie acted like it was no big deal.

  “How you doing?” she asked.

  My mouth tasted strange. I had a sense of being a little hot and my heart might have been beating faster, but then, I was nervous. “Nothing,” I said.

  “One more.” She passed it over again.

  I took another puff and gave it back. “I’m going to do one more timed section and call it a day,” I said.

  She examined the joint. “I have no idea if this is any good or not. Nothing to compare it to.”

  I shrugged. Figures it wouldn’t do anything to me. I probably did something wrong.

  But somewhere about question six, I felt a lightness come over me. My stomach turned, just a tiny tweak, and I felt buoyant, chilled out, like everything was good.

  I glanced up at Katie. She’d kicked her feet up on the table. I wondered if her parents knew about her habit. She was doing it right here in the kitchen. Either they approved or they weren’t coming back anytime soon.

  I moved through the questions. The extra work was paying off. I could almost predict the answers they would use for options and easily eliminated the wrong ones. I forgot about the clock entirely, feeling a rhythm with the equations, not completely caring if I got them right or not, moving from one to the next with ease. I ticked off the last one and noticed I still had time left. Crazy.

  I flipped through to the answer key, realizing the room was getting hazy. Katie was really going at it. The first few questions checked off fine. I ran my fingers down the line. Correct. Correct. Correct.

  Holy crap, I hadn’t missed a single question. It was just a set, twenty problems, but still.

  “That’s what I’m talking about,” Katie said. “You killed it, didn’t you?”

  “Might be a coincidence.” I packed up my books, feeling happy and loose. I’d walked over, thankfully. I wasn’t sure I was up for driving. Now that I was done concentrating, I could feel something off, like I noticed each step a second after my foot hit the ground.

  Katie followed me to the door. “Let’s try it again tomorrow. Do a longer bit. It’s an experiment.”

  I walked out into the night. “Maybe.”

  Katie laughed. “You’ll be back!”

  In the bath, I rose from the water with a gasp. I’d been holding my breath again, waiting for the black.

  Not in the tub. Shower sometimes, but a bath was dangerous. I never knew exactly how long it took me to come back around. Possibly long enough to drown. Another car drove by, illuminating the room for just a moment.

  The boys in Austin’s bedroom were a flash of memory, sitting around a table, a big glass bong in the center. Austin probably smoked. If I were around it again, if things progressed, the whole thing could start all over. Relationship. Sex. Pregnancy. Death. Secrets. Guilt.

  I wiped my ey
es. No more Austin. No more Gavin. I had to get back to where I’d been on Monday, before I saw him again, before everything caved in.

  My phone buzzed in my jeans, lying somewhere in the bathroom. I could make out a lump on the white rug and I reached for it, wiping my hands on the denim before I tugged the phone out.

  Sixteen texts from Jenny. Good grief. I scrolled through. Most were about Gavin, how he was persistent, desperate to see me. She listed his phone number and said she refused to give him mine.

  The next message almost made me drop the phone.

  He told me about your baby.

  I read it twice then flung the phone away, not caring if it cracked. What was he doing? Why had he done that?

  Water flew across the tub as my hand smacked the water over and over again. I came here to get away. I needed to escape.

  My face was wet, and I wasn’t sure if I was crying finally or just splashed. I rushed with hate for my high school friend Katie, for her idea, because it had worked too well. I smoked and smoked and smoked and learned exactly how much weed I needed to maximize my test taking. We went through her stash so quickly that we had to drive up to her brother’s college to get more.

  I sank below the water, looking up into the blackness. It was almost as good as holding my breath, but not quite. The water was cooling off, and my mind still whirred. I wanted to shut it off, stop thinking.

  If only I hadn’t smoked so much. If only I had trusted myself to take the test without it.

  I held my breath, bubbles flowing from my lips and rising to the surface.

  Spots filled my vision. My body wanted to come up for air, but I didn’t let it.

  I stayed away from everyone for a reason. Too many triggers. Too much history. Small things, like college boys with a bong, became huge, looming over me like the ocean swallowing the stars.

  Gavin couldn’t know. He could never know. If Austin talked. If Gavin heard. If he connected the dots.

  My lungs were bursting but then suddenly they weren’t. I exhaled everything in my body and sank farther against the hard curve of the tub. Would my body save itself in this black water?