Home > Legendborn(2)

Legendborn(2)
Author: Tracy Deonn

I roll my eyes. “You’ve best-friend fired me fifty times since we were kids and yet you keep rehiring me. This job sucks. HR is a nightmare.”

“And yet you keep coming back. Evidence, if circumstantial, that you enjoy the work.”

I shrug. “Pay is good.”

“You know why I don’t like this.”

I do. It’s not like I’d planned to break the law our first night on campus, but after dinner an opportunity had presented itself in the shape of Charlotte Simpson, a girl we knew from Bentonville High. Charlotte popped her head into our dorm room before we’d even finished unpacking and demanded we join her for a night out. After two years of EC, Charlotte had officially enrolled as a Carolina undergraduate this year and, apparently, she’d turned party girl somewhere in the interim.

During the day, the Eno River State Park is open for hiking, camping, and kayaking, but if you sneak in after the gates close like all the kids here have, it’s probably-to-definitely trespassing. Not something I’d normally go for, but Charlotte explained that the night before the first day of classes is special. It’s tradition for some juniors and seniors to host a party at the Quarry. Also tradition? First-year students jumping off the edge of the cliffs into the mineral-rich lake at its center. The park straddles Orange and Durham Counties and sits north of I-85, about twenty-five minutes away from Carolina’s campus. Charlotte drove us here in her old silver Jeep, and the entire ride over I felt Alice beside me in the back seat, shrinking against the illegality of it all.

The jumper’s unfettered laughter crests the cliff before his head does. I can’t remember the last time my laugh sounded like that.

“You don’t like this because it’s”—I drop my voice into a dramatic whisper—“against the rules?”

Alice’s dark eyes burn behind her glasses. “Gettin’ caught off campus at night is an automatic expulsion from EC.”

“Hold up, Hermione. Charlotte said a bunch of students do it every year.”

Another jumper sprints through the woods. A deeper splash. Cheers. Alice juts her chin toward the other students. “That’s them. Tell me why you want to be here?”

Because I can’t just sit in our room right now. Because ever since my mother died, there’s a version of me inside that wants to break things and scream.

I lift a shoulder. “Because what better way to begin our adventure than with a pinch of rebellion?”

She does not look amused.

“Did someone say rebellion?” Charlotte’s boots crunch through the leaves and pine needles. The sharp sound stands out from the droning background of crickets and the low bass thump pulsing our way from the party’s speakers. She comes to a stop next to me and brushes her auburn ponytail away from her shoulder. “Y’all jumpin’? It is tradition.” She smirks. “And it’s fun.”

“No,” damn near leaps out of Alice’s mouth. Something must have shown on my face, because Charlotte grins and Alice says, “Bree…”

“Aren’t you pre-med or something, Charlotte?” I ask. “How are you this smart and this bad an influence?”

“It’s college,” Charlotte says with a shrug. “ ‘Smart but a bad influence’ describes like half the student body.”

“Char?” A male voice calls out from behind a raggedy holly. Charlotte’s face breaks into a wide smile even before she turns around to see the tall red-haired boy walking toward us. He holds a red Solo cup in one hand and a flashlight in the other.

“Hey, babe,” Charlotte purrs, and greets him with a giggling kiss.

“Char?” I mouth to a grimacing Alice.

When they separate, Charlotte waves us over. “Babe, these are new EC kids from back home. Bree and Alice.” She curls around the boy’s arm like a koala. “This is my boyfriend, y’all. Evan Cooper.”

Evan’s perusal takes long enough that I wonder what he’s thinking about us.

Alice is Taiwanese-American, short, and wiry, with observant eyes and a semipermanent smirk. Her whole MO is dressing to make a good impression “just in case,” and tonight she chose dark jeans and a polka-dotted blouse with a Peter Pan collar. Under Evan’s scrutiny, she pushes her round glasses up her nose and gives a shy wave.

I’m five-eight—tall enough that I might pass for a college student—and Black. Blessed with my mother’s cheekbones and curves and my father’s full mouth. I’d pulled on old jeans and a tee. Shy isn’t really my thing.

Evan’s eyes widen when they take me in. “You’re the girl whose mom died, right? Bree Matthews?”

A trickle of pain inside, and my wall snaps into place. Death creates an alternate universe, but after three months, I have the tools to live in it.

Charlotte jabs Evan in the ribs with her elbow, sending him daggers with her eyes. “What?” He puts his hands up. “That’s what you sai—”

“Sorry.” She cuts him off, her gaze apologetic.

My wall works two ways: it hides the things I need to hide and helps me show the things I need to show. Particularly useful with the Sorry for Your Loss crowd. In my mind’s eye, the wall’s reinforced now. Stronger than wood, iron, steel. It has to be, because I know what comes next: Charlotte and Evan will unleash the predictable stream of words everyone says when they realize they’re talking to the Girl Whose Mom Died.

It’s like Comforting Grieving People Bingo, except when all the squares get covered, everyone loses.

Charlotte perks up. Here we go…

“How are you holding up? Is there anything I can do for you?”

Double whammy.

The real answers to those two questions? The really real answers? Not well and No. Instead I say, “I’m fine.”

No one wants to hear the real answers. What the Sorry for Your Loss Crowd wants is to feel good about asking the questions. This game is awful.

“I can’t imagine,” Charlotte murmurs, and that’s another square covered on the bingo board. They can imagine it; they just wouldn’t want to.

Some truths only tragedy can teach. The first one I learned is that when people acknowledge your pain, they want your pain to acknowledge them back. They need to witness it in real time, or else you’re not doing your part. Charlotte’s hungry blue eyes search for my tears, my quivering lower lip, but my wall is up, so she won’t get either. Evan’s eager gaze hunts for my grief and suffering, but when I jut my chin out in defiance, he averts his eyes.

Good.

“Sorry for your loss.”

Damn.

And with the words I most despise, Evan hits bingo.

People lose things when they have a mental lapse. Then they find that thing again from the lost place. But my mother isn’t lost. She’s gone.

Before-Bree is gone, too, even though I pretend that she’s not.

After-Bree came into being the day after my mom died. I went to sleep that night and when I woke up, she was there. After-Bree was there during the funeral. After-Bree was there when our neighbors knocked on our door to offer sorrow and broccoli casserole. After-Bree was with me when the visiting mourners finally went home. Even though I can only recall hazy snippets from the hospital—trauma-related memory loss, according to my father’s weird, preachy grief book—I have After-Bree. She’s the unwanted souvenir that death gave me.

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