Jessica Sorensen - Saving Quinton

“Okay then.” I hook pinkies with her. “I promise, but are you sure you can come with me? What about Wyoming?” I lower my voice, leaning in, worried I’m going to cause a fight between her and Jaxon. “Or Illinois .”

She sighs, then unhooks her pinkie from mine and turns to Jaxon. “How about we make a compromise and go to Vegas for the summer?”

He frowns, his eyes filling with hurt and annoyance. “Why would we go to Vegas when we couldn’t even agree to stay here together?” He lets out a frustrated breath, then gets to his feet. “I can’t believe this.” He pauses, growing angrier. “You know what, I actually can. This is so like you, when it comes to making any sort of commitment with me.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Lea asks, sounding slightly irritated.

“It means that you’d rather do anything else than commit to me.” He storms across the living room. “You’ve been making excuse after excuse not to be with me this summer, so I’m going to make it really easy for you. I’m done.” He holds up his hands as he backs out the front door, then spins around and slams the door behind him. A stack of boxes tips over in the foyer and I hear the sound of breaking glass.

“He doesn’t mean that.” Lea tells me as she backs up toward the front door, but she looks a little worried.

“Maybe I should go to Vegas myself,” I say. “I don’t want to cause problems between you two.”

“No, I’m going…just keep packing while I go talk to him.” She spins around and hurries around the tipped-over boxes and after Jaxon, leaving me alone in the apartment.

Reality sinks in and it’s heavy and packed with pressure. I grow nervous. About myself, about Quinton, what he’ll look like, what he’ll act like. I worry about the world I’m walking back into and if I’ll do everything right. Will I mess this up?

“No, I can do this,” I say with determination, hoping with every single part of me that I’m right. That this time I can do things right.

May 16, day one of summer break

Quinton

My ceiling has a drip in it. Well, several to be exact. And I’m not even sure where the hell the water is coming from. I live in the desert and it rarely rains. Yet the ceiling is dripping like a fucking leaky shower head. Maybe it’s coming from the apartment above. It could have a leak in the pipes or maybe the neighbors left the bathtub on and water is flowing out all over the floor and seeping into my bedroom ceiling. I could go upstairs and see, but there’s no point. The whole reason for moving to this shithole apartment in the first place was that no one would bother us and in return we wouldn’t bother them. Silence. That’s the name of the game among the people who live in my apartment complex, because almost everyone is doing something illegal.

There’s music playing from an old stereo I found on the sidewalk, because ever since the concert, for some reason, the sound of music calms me just a little. I’ve been lying flat on my back on the mattress for God knows how long, analyzing the drops of water as they fall from above and land around me, on me, everywhere, and I can almost picture myself falling with them, never to go upward again.

My arms are tucked under my head and I’m motionless on the outside, but on the inside my mind is running a million miles a minute, all thoughts focused on the water, the way it drips, moves, how I want to drink it because I’m thirsty, yet I’m not drinking and I don’t want to get up to get a drink. And it’s sort of become a project for me—not to think of anything else. Because if I do, I know where my mind is going to go and it can’t go there, because then my feelings will go there and I’ll be breaking my promise.

But no matter how hard I try, I can’t not think about her. Beautiful Nova Reed who shouldn’t even know me, yet she does…or did. I thought she’d outgrown her time with me and my loser ass, but then she called. After nine months, to chat about that video I made back when there was a ray of light left in my life. Nova was the light and I was stuck in the shadows all the time except for a few moments when she touched me, kissed me, let me touch her, and I couldn’t avoid her light, if that makes any sense. Actually, it probably doesn’t. My head is in this really weird place, where I’m high but the drips of crystal in the back of my throat are becoming few and far between. I’m fading, crashing toward a rocky bottom, and the sharp rocks are going to hurt if I don’t get wings and fly again. I’m going to shatter. Break into a thousand shards of glass and metal. Like a car wreck. Like the fucking wreck that I caused, twisted and broken—unfixable. Like Lexi and Ryder. Unfixable because of me. Shit. I need to stop thinking.

“Dude, you’re fucking spacing.” Tristan cracks through my thoughts as he enters my room, rapping on the doorway. He has a T-shirt on and a pair of baggy jeans and his blond hair looks wet for some reason, but I doubt it’s from a shower, since ours has been broken for days.

“Why’s your hair wet?” I ask over the music, slanting my head to the side, and a drop of water falls into my eye, rehydrating it.

His fingers move for his hair, which gives me a view of his forearm and the small holes and scabs covering his skin, some outlined with shades of blue and purple. “Oh, I washed my hair in the sink. It reeked like vodka for some reason…I think someone might have poured it in my hair last night when I passed out on the living room floor.”

“Yeah, I can see that happening.” I redirect my concentration back to the drip in the ceiling. “You have a knack for crazy things happening when you pass out, which is a sign that you might want to stop.”

“I’ll stop when you stop,” he says, because he knows I’m not going to, and it makes me feel like a terrible person, even though I’m not certain he means it. Still, I should at least challenge him, but at the same time I can’t give up the one thing that brings me a drop of peace in the murky lake that’s become my home.

“So are you going out tonight with me after we make a pickup?” He changes the subject, glancing around at the nothingness that pretty much fills my room, except for my sketchbook that’s on the floor. His gaze briefly lingers on it before he looks up at me. “Dylan said he had some shit for us to do over at Johnny’s…well, he said stuff for you to do, since he’s still pissed off at me for screwing over Trace and there’s a good chance he could be there.”

Johnny is the guy who supplies Dylan with large quantities of drugs for him to deal and sometimes we get drugs from Johnny ourselves. Trace is one of the guys we deal to regularly. Trace actually has a lot of money, at least in comparison to us. He also has a lot of connections, which means pissing him off is a very bad thing. About a week ago Tristan “accidentally” shorted him a couple of ounces, one of which he sold and the other of which I have no idea what happened to—we probably used it and I didn’t even know. When Trace asked him for his thousand hundred bucks back for being shorted the ounces, Tristan replied that he didn’t have it—that he’d spent it. Tristan’s dumb ass managed to get away without getting his ass kicked. He did come home with a huge bruise on his face and I think all of us have been expecting Trace and his guys to break down the door and beat us up until Tristan pays him back.

“As much as Dylan is an asshole, I’m with him on this one,” I tell him. “You’re lucky Trace and his guys haven’t broken down the door and beat your ass. Remember what they did to Roy and his girlfriend after they stole from him?”