Keep Me Still (10 page)

For Landen

You have such a bright future ahead of you. You’ve already proven your strength at just a few days old. I’m so glad you came into our lives. I’m in love with you already.

Because this is what I believe - that second chances are stronger than secrets. You can let secrets go. But a second chance? You don’t let that pass you by.

- Daisy Whitney
, When You Were Here

I
t’s
cold out. My mom pulls my red pea coat around my shoulders and makes sure it’s buttoned. “I’m not a baby,” I tell her, jerking out of her grasp. At thirteen, I can button my own coat for Pete’s sakes. I’m still a little pissy that my friend Tara couldn’t come. My dad walks around our silver SUV and glares at us for a second before smiling.

“Can’t even let me be a gentleman for one night,” he huffs. I roll my eyes because he knows my mom isn’t the type to sit around and wait for anyone to open her door.

“Sorry, hon,” my mom says. I don’t know if she’s speaking to me or to him. Snowflakes whirl a random dance around us, and my parents walk briskly down the deserted street, flanking me. When I was younger, we held hands and they would swing me. I used to think I was flying. The sidewalk is cracked and uneven and a chain-link fence borders the side away from the street. For the first time I notice that downtown Atlanta is kind of ghetto.

“We should’ve parked in the garage,” my mom mumbles under her breath. Our heads are down to keep the wind from blowing in our faces so I don’t hear my dad’s response. Every year we go see The Nutcracker at the Atlanta Civic Center, and every year my dad refuses to pay the twelve-dollar fee to park in the garage by the arena. This year it’s colder than usual, and my mom is annoyed but I think she’s just grumbling because she likes to get a rise out of my dad.

“Where’s the fun in that?” my dad asks, grabbing my hand and nodding at my mom over my head.

“Oh no,” I say, attempting to pull my hands out of theirs. “I’m not a baby anymore.” I’m small for my age, but geez. I’m not a little kid. Why do I have to keep reminding them of this? They’ve been present for all thirteen of my birthdays.

They both squeeze tighter, and I give in and giggle as they pull me into the air.

Tires squeal to a stop on the road beside us, and I’m put down roughly mid-swing. “Give me your wallet,” a stocky man coming towards us in a black hooded jacket sneers at my father. My mom pulls me in hard behind her so I can’t see his face. Her fingers dig deep into my arms, and I’m not sure if I’m the one trembling or she is. My heart pounds so hard it’s making me sick, and my vision is blurring.

The gunshots wake me and I’m sitting upright in bed. For a second, I think I’m in a hospital room. There’s another bed next to mine but it’s empty. Shit, where am I?

Sweat beads down my back and I breathe deep, in through my nose and out through my mouth like Dr. McCalla taught me. College—I’m in college. I reach up with my left hand and touch the raised skin above my ear. I’m not in Georgia, but in California. In my dorm room. And thank God my roommate isn’t here to see my early morning freak out.

Maybe I can still pass as normal. For now at least.

~
PAST TENSE
: Used to place an action or situation in the past. Or in my case, tense shit from the past that just won’t go away. ~

T
he
sprawling campus of Southern California State University, or SoCal as the locals call it, is crowded as my roommate, Corin Connelly, and I make our way to Freshmen Orientation. Several people move in random directions ahead of us wheeling large luggage carts.

“Wow, how glad are you that we moved in early right now?” Corin asks, her red curls blowing in her face as she turns towards me.

“Extremely.” Though I’m managing. A year ago I couldn’t have stood this—the chaos, the crowd, the noise.

Corin is from New York, and even after a week of living together, she still hasn’t told me exactly why she picked a college so far from home. Not that I really disclosed much either.

I did mention that if I hadn’t gotten out of my tiny hometown of Hope Springs, Georgia, my head would have exploded. I just didn’t explain that it was literally a possibility. And I left out the gory details involving Landen O’Brien and the brutal beating he’d given my heart. I’d been planning to go to UGA until…well, until he left.

Now, I’m all alone on the other side of the country. Starting over. Finally.

I’m trying my best to live each day to the fullest. The word they keep using after every EKG and test they’ve run the past six months follows me around, orbiting my every thought.
Inoperable
.

I’ve said it so many times to myself that it’s lost all meaning.

What Corin doesn’t know—what no one in California knows, thank goodness—is that I barely got through high school due to a seizure disorder. Because I’m especially defective, my particular disorder was one no doctor could explain until recently, when they discovered that my seizures aren’t strictly from my Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, the result of seeing my parents murdered in front of me five years ago, like we originally thought. Apparently God wanted to cover His bets when it came to making my life as difficult as possible. So I also have a decent-sized subdural hematoma pressing on my brain as well. Possibly from the fall I took when my mother fell on me after being shot. A souvenir of sorts of the worst day of my entire existence.

No matter how you look at it, I should be not be alive. And yet…here I am. My Aunt Kate raised me after my parents’ death. She’s also the only other person on Earth who knows about the late-breaking brain injury news. I have every intention of keeping it that way.

Inoperable.

“We’ve got some time,” Corin says, interrupting my thoughts. “Want to run in here and grab a coffee and chill for a few? Maybe let the crowd thin out a bit?”

“Sure,” I answer, amazed and grateful that she’s already noticed my discomfort in large crowds. I can’t even imagine how she would’ve handled the way I used to be. I’m so much better now that it’s as if I’m a different person. And it’s mostly because of him.
Landen
. Thinking his name causes me to flinch internally—I don’t even want to know what saying it out loud would be like. But it’s been over eight months since I’ve had to. Maybe I’ll never have to again. The thought sends an odd sensation of relief tinged with sadness coursing through me.

As we browse through the bookstore, a girl sitting alone in a plush armchair and staring out the front window catches my attention. Her clothes are black, her hair dark and ran through with purple streaks. With my blond hair and pink oxford button-up over a jean skirt, we look nothing alike. But there’s something about her, about the way she’s sitting and staring—like a casual observer in her own life—that has me fighting off memories of my senior year of high school. A year I’ve tried so hard to forget.

Corin’s voice pulls my attention from the girl—but not my eyes. I can’t look away. “So according to Elyse, it’s like totally obvious when freshmen sit in front of the lecture hall.”

Elyse is our RA and she’s been filling Corin’s head with this type of vital knowledge since we moved in. Not a day goes by that my roommate doesn’t dump some Elyse-infused wisdom on me.

“And don’t be early to class or write down everything the professors say.” She points a finger at me. “Oh, and don’t dress up or wear a lot of makeup either.” Corin goes on, and I’m craning my neck but I’ve lost sight of the girl in the window. “Layla, are even you listening to me?”

“Mmhm. Show up late, sit in the back, dress like a slob, don’t take notes. Got it.”

She blows out a frustrated breath. “I’m serious. If it’s obvious we’re freshman, we won’t get invited to any of the good parties. And if we do, it’ll just be by guys who think we’re stupid and going to give it up.”

“I solemnly swear that I will dress for comfort and sit in the back with you. Happily.” I’ll have no trouble blending in like she wants because I’ve done it before. Sat in the back and tried to disappear. I was good at it, too. Or so I thought.

Soon we’ve made it to the front of the line, and I’ve forced myself to stop scanning the place for the girl who I think might be my kindred spirit, if there is such a thing. I order an iced mocha and pay while Corin orders her ginormous caramel macchiato next to me. I make a mental note to remember what she likes for when we’re cramming like maniacs and it’s my turn for a caffeine run.

I smile at her profile, so proud of myself for finally getting here. For clawing my way out of the darkness that shadowed my past and making it to where I always wanted to be. On my own—not a burden on Aunt Kate or Landen or anyone. My life is finally some semblance of normal. Again, the familiar guilty tug pulls because I couldn’t have gotten here without him. Without the one person who hurt me almost as much as the man who murdered my parents.

As we turn to leave, I glance at the now empty chair by the window and wish I’d said something to her. Let her know that someone saw her, noticed that she existed. Mattered. Because that’s what he did for me.

But I don’t have time to regret not speaking for long, because when Corin and I step out of the store, a black truck full of guys drives past. One of them whistles, probably at my supermodel of a roommate, and my world pitches hard right.

“Hey, you okay?” Corin asks, coming closer to me.

I take a deep breath and the panic subsides.
Don’t do this. Not now, not here
.

“Yeah, I’m good. I probably should’ve eaten more this morning.” Smiling as wide as I can get my face to manage, I force the memory of a boy with a very similar truck out of my head.

“Okay. Holy shit, those guys were hot,” Corin announces, changing the subject as she practically skips ahead of me on our way to the stadium. “I love college already.”

“Maybe you should have gotten decaf,” I answer, willing my mouth to keep grinning as I try to shake off my memories of that truck. Maybe I should just tell her everything so I don’t have to exhaust myself forcing smiles and reminding my lungs to breathe every time something like this happens. Or maybe I should grow up already and stop letting every single thing on Earth remind me of the boy who broke my heart.

Part of me just wants to tell her everything, get it all out. My condition, what my last test results indicated, and even about
him
. But another part of me still can’t trust another person with my heart for fear they’ll shatter it all over hell like he did.