Premature Evacuation (Underground Sorority #1) (17 page)

“But it’s
abstract
sculpture class,” I said, my voice rising like a question.

She slumped into the nearest seat. “I’m going to fail. I’m going to get kicked out of the school for being an impostor.”

“Why don’t you try to sculpt an emotion?” An image of Corey, sad and depressed, holding onto me like a life raft as tears streamed down his cheek. “What would sadness look like? Or love?”

“I know what frustration looks like.” Fallon slammed her fist on to the clay sculpture. I jumped from the surprising violence of her actions. Curved strips of clay oozed from beneath her hand and arched upwards, creating the appearance of a lopsided ocean wave.

I tilted my head at the sculpture. “Actually, I think that looks pretty cool.”

She perked up. “Cool? Or beautiful?”

“Definitely beautiful. Do a few more of these to make it a series and you’ve got yourself one kick ass final project.”

The calendar flipped through days like a Vegas car dealer. Finals filled our afternoons and the final nights before winter break loomed over us. Corey and I spent every minute together until there were no minutes left and we stood outside my dorm waiting for the car service to take me to the airport.

The gray December sky reminded me of the swirling color in his eye when he wore my contacts. Our cherry pink noses threatened to run. I hopped up and down to keep warm before he pulled off his giant orange North Face and draped it over my shoulders, leaving himself with nothing but a navy sweater. My heart tugged at such a simple fix, something neither of us had thought of the night of the accident.

“You’ll freeze.” I tried to shrug out of the jacket.

“Nah, I have you to keep me warm.” He wrapped himself around me, sliding his arms inside his own jacket.

“Not for long,” I teased, then clamped my mouth shut. The threat of winter break would rip me away from him for an entire month.

He nuzzled his chin on the top of my head. “Don’t say that, Mac. We’ll have Skype…sex. Phone…sex.”

“Sexting,” I added.

“Right. So we’ll be seeing plenty of each other—”

“—’s naked bodies.”

We both laughed.

A black town car pulled up and the driver popped the trunk. Corey lifted my suitcase and placed it inside as a tear slid down my cheek. In one swift move, he gathered the betraying drop with his thumb. Our lips entangled until the driver honked.

“I’ll expect a nipple shot when land.”

As soon as the plane touched down in New Jersey, I texted him a picture of Googled baby bottle top with the note:
You didn’t say they had to be MY nipple.

He wrote back:
weirdly enough, this makes me miss you even more.

And then he sent another text of a rooster and the caption:
here’s a picture of my cock.

T
HE JOKE GENITALIA TEXTS continued to keep me afloat for the next few weeks. I’d text him cow udders and he’d respond with a pic of Country Crock butter with the
r
crossed out. I spent most days catching up on my animations. Now that I was away from all my distractions—boys and booze, mainly—I could clearly see how I’d been slacking off all semester. Plus, I was determined to be a better version of Mackenzie, more like the girl from last year who squandered away her fun in the graphics lab and hadn’t been responsible for adding to anyone’s criminal record.

For Chanukah, my dad bought me seven nights worth of art supplies. It was a safe gift, especially because I gave him a list of supplies I’d need for next semester. In much the same way, I bought him more sweaters. Without me, he’d wear the same ones year after year, despite how the threads started to unravel after several washings.

Maybe I needed to give my dad more credit because on the eighth night, he surprised me. He carried a box over, balancing it in shaky palms like it contained a bomb he didn’t want to set off. When he handed it to me, he retreated across the room, ducking his head and watching from beneath his eyelashes. Why was he so nervous? I caught the feeling like a contagious disease, now a little wary to find out what the box contained.

I unwrapped the paper neatly, saving it for an art project. Then I shook the box open and pulled out the most gorgeous black cocktail dress imaginable. It had a plunging neckline and a skirt that was way too short. I looked at Dad quizzically.

He cleared his throat. “Your aunt helped pick it out.”

“I love it. It’s—” I was going to say
sexy
but…not to my dad. Besides, it wasn’t like I had any place to wear it to during Winter Break anyway.

Dad fiddled with the cuff of his sweater. “It’s for your next semi-formal with that boyfriend of yours. Who I hope to actually meet. One day.”

I gave Dad a big hug.

That night, Corey called me while I was getting ready for bed. “Hey, babe. Get anything good tonight?”

“Actually, yes. But I’m not going to tell you about it because when you see it, I don’t want you to think of my dad.”

He snorted. “Uh oh, that statement scares the crap out of me.”

I flopped onto my bed. “It’s a dress. A really sexy one. That my dad picked out.”

“Stop! Don’t say anymore! I’m officially terrified.”

“To make it even creepier, he bought it for me to wear to my next semi-formal with you.”

Corey let out an exaggerated scream. “You hear that? That was my blood curdling horror movie scream.” Then, a pause. A heavy breath. “You told your dad about me?”

“Of course. I think he’s more excited about me having a boyfriend than about spending time with me.” He’d never liked my ex, and it wasn’t until the jerk had dumped me that I agreed.

Silence for several moments. My stomach twisted. Wrong thing to say?

“Oh no,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. I injected a little pep. “That killed you, didn’t it?”

“Hold on a sec, my dad’s here…”

I gasped.
His dad got home
. Holy shit. He’d been traveling for business since Corey left Throckmorton. Muffled voices. The sound of shuffling. After a few moments, Corey said, “Hey,” again, this time in a whisper. “I only have a minute.”

I let out a breath. “Phew. You’re still alive.”

“But possibly not for long,” he added. His voice contained no humor.

I twirled my blanket around my finger. “What did he say?”

“That he’d deal with me after Christmas. Translation: he’s going to make me suffer before he doles out his punishment. Clearly he doesn’t want me to ruin
his
holiday.”

I sucked in a breath. “Define
deal with me
.” His dad sounded strict but I wasn’t sure how far the strictness extended. Allowance restrictions or something worse, something involving fists.

“I’m sure they’re going to cut me off for good. They’ll pay for my tuition and rent still, obviously, because a college degree is too important to them. But they won’t pay for anything else. Which means no more car, no more spring break trip, no more drinks on me.” He sighed.

My stomach squeezed, that old enemy guilt surging to full force. This was all my fault. “Ugh,” I said, more to myself than to him.

“Trust me, it’s worse than hell. It’s—”

A beep from another call drowned out the rest of his sentence. My eyes bugged out when I read the name of the caller. Ryan. My ex. The phone slipped from my hands and tumbled with a soft patter onto the blankets. “Hold on, hold on,” I yelled.

I’d meant to only tell Corey I’d dropped the phone, but instead I used the
hold on
literally. And switched to Ryan’s call. The guilt that had already invaded my body swelled again.

“Hello?” My voice came out breathless, amped by my racing heart.

“Kenzie, hey.” His own voice sent stabbing pains through my stomach, so much nostalgia contained in a few decibels of sound. And his old nick name for me seemed so foreign now, like trying to shape my mouth around lines from the school play I acted in freshman year of high school. “It’s Ryan.”

“I know who you are.” My words came out harsher than I’d meant. “I mean, you’re still in my phone contacts.”

“Well, that’s certainly good news.” He let out a strained life. “That you haven’t erased me from existence.”

I sat ramrod straight, phone squeezed into my palm. My brain couldn’t supply a single thing to respond with as though I had nothing left to say to Ryan at all. Silence crept in for a brief moment before I heard the tell tale beep announcing Corey had hung up the other line.

“Listen,” Ryan said. “I was wondering if you wanted to…hang out. I haven’t seen you in months and it would be nice to catch up.”

I have a boyfriend now
. The words hid in my throat. Instead, I found myself nodding. But Ryan couldn’t hear that. “When?” I ended up asking, not a yes or a no. Not a commitment. It was something Corey might say.

“Tomorrow? Say around five at our old stomping grounds? I have something for you.”

“Okay.” The word flew from my lips without consulting my brain. This wasn’t about seeing Ryan again, I told myself. It was to help me get a little refresher course on the old Mackenzie. So I could recreate her once again.

I hung up and called Corey and when he asked if my phone got cut off, I didn’t correct him.

I didn’t have any residual feelings for Ryan, I knew that. He’d taken my heart and stomped on it with heavy combat boots, spike marks etched into the veins. Still, steam spiraled from my ceramic iron as I curled the edges of my hair. I smoothed down my elegant blue sweater, the same one Bianca owned that I found on sale at the mall last week. A spritz of Ryan’s favorite perfume completed the ensemble.

When I arrived at the cafe—the main hang out for high school students in my town, a.k.a. people without fake IDs—he was already seated, a giant plate of apple pie a la mode for two melting in front of him. Our usual. This, I thought, was a good starter for New Mackenzie (a.k.a. Resurrected Old Mackenzie), not a Hot Apple Pie shot but an actual apple pie. His blond hair, which had been cropped short the entire time I knew him, fell into his eyes now and obscured his glasses. The same frames I’d picked out for him during his last appointment with my dad. I could draw him from memory, but not this him. Not this new stranger sitting across from me with designer jeans sculpting his legs instead of the standard Levis he’d always worn. His features changed too, nose a little longer, chin a little pointier, his cheeks puffed out with the beginning of his requisite college weight gain. Or possibly I just never noticed his flaws before, turning them into strengths as if he were always on a perpetual job interview with me.

I pulled out a chair and grabbed the second spoon. “I haven’t had this in so long.” I froze at my words. I’d meant the pie, not him.

Ryan blinked at me, still staring, mouth parted like he’d forgotten he had one. “Wait. Don’t eat that yet. I have something better.” He bent under the table and unzipped something from his backpack. On the way back up, he knocked his head on the underside of the table, making the pie jump. Memories rushed back: him tripping while the two of us held hands in the school hallway and taking me down with him. The black eye that ringed one entire side of his face from an unfortunate brawl with a door knob in the middle of the night. The always awkward, always fumbling sex that barely felt good.