Without Scars (3 page)

“My
options
…” Betrayal marked Camryn’s expression. She glared and tapped the laptop screen with her finger. “
This
one is the easiest. It worked the first time. It should work now.”

Mrs. A cleared her throat. “Right, but in life…we have to find an alternative way to our goal—”

“It’s a
maze
with a
fucking rat!
” Camryn slammed her hands on the desk and stood.
“It doesn’t have any fucking thing to do with my life!”
The specialist shot up, too. The assistant lifted her shoulders as she inhaled. They stayed that way. We were both holding our breaths.

“Camryn, do
not
yell at me and don’t use that language.” Mrs. A was seething but she knew that no matter how mad Camryn made her, she had to focus on her daughter’s emotions. “We find other ways to communicate. You know that.” She rubbed the dark crescents under her eyes, looking emotionally exhausted, too. I thought she was on the brink of tears.

“Camryn, what are you feeling right now?” the specialist asked.

“Um, what does it look like? I’m pissed off.”

“Why?”

“Because… because you won’t just…let me—it’s hard, okay?”

“Yes, but think back to last week.” She was triggering frontal lobe functions in the brain: giving her something to focus on, a problem to solve, and calling up memories. I’d researched all of this to know exactly what kind of damage I’d done. “You worked through it, right? And you did great. Tell me what you did when you were here.”

Camryn took her time and explained what she could remember from last Saturday. Finally, she smiled. “I totally beat my record. Yes! You said I did.” She used to play field hockey and lacrosse for her school. She couldn’t play sports anymore because her brain was now a bomb with a permanently lit fuse; a second hard hit to the head would kill her. But she’d never stopped being a competitor. “I
fucking rocked
it that day. I could beat it again.” She put her hands on her hips and laughed, her eyes brightening with pride. Sometimes when she was like this, I imagined her as the girl I’d never know: who she was before the accident. Happy. Full of teenage coolness. Free.

“Camryn. Language,” Mrs. A warned. “Now, try a few more times? Please?” She forced a smile.

“Okay,” Camryn said with a sigh. I finally breathed normally again when she sat. “I can still have my phone back, right? All weekend?”

When the session ended, she and I walked to the Dairy Queen a few blocks away. Her mom didn’t like for Camryn to be too far out of reach, especially around people who didn’t know about her condition. And a few minutes after I paid for our ice cream and we sat at a table, I saw Mrs. A’s car idling at the curb.

Camryn did most of the talking, telling me about school and the guy she was dating. She was always able to put her incidents away easily. I was still on edge. I listened but the squeezing in my chest was distracting. “Oh
gawd.
Mom’s waving at me to come every time I look up. I have to go.”

“Yeah. All right. Enjoy the rest of your day.” I grabbed her arm when she stood. “I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry.”

“Ugh,
Ni-cole
,” she said, dragging out my first name, “I know.” She hugged me. “Bye. And get a life, so you have something to talk about, too. You just sit there and then…you’re kinda fucking boring. And take a shower. You stink.” When she reached the exit, she waved before hopping into her mom’s car.

My chest weighed a ton by the time I got back to the rehab center. Disgust poured over me and I cried as I sat outside. I ignored the people who asked if I was okay. I didn’t want to be consoled. I deserved to feel like this. No one liked a story where the bad guy got away.

Not even the villain herself.

Chapter Three

Charlie

I really didn’t know why I went to the auto shop. It wasn’t like I had to. When I called Ghost he said Nikki was keeping him company until she went to work.

Okay, Nikki was still there, so that was why I went.

When I pulled up she was laughing at something Ghost was saying as she poured coffee into a Styrofoam cup. I could see him leaning over the service counter, eyes on her ass. He was the pretty boy of our group—brown hair, crew cut, no tattoos, and hazel eyes. He’d done an underwear runway show during Miami Fashion Week a few years ago, and since then you couldn’t tell him every woman didn’t want him.

“Here he is! Perfect timing!” Ghost announced, raising his arms in the air when I walked in. I did the same. We’d been doing it for years and I wasn’t sure how or when it started. “You picked a place yet?” he asked me.

“No, but everyone wants tapas, right? That should be easy. Why?” I walked over to the couch in the waiting area. There were no other customers in there at the moment, so I took full advantage of the opportunity to recline.

“I invited Nikki,” he said, and I twitched, instantly resentful.

“Oh…” I said. “You invited her.” I was pissed that I hadn’t even thought about inviting her.

“Uh, yeah. Fiona gave me a shitload of tickets to her comedy troupe’s performance,” he explained. Fiona was his boss’s daughter. “Nikki took six off my hands.
She
helped
me
out. Figured the least I could do was invite her.”

“‘Oh’?” She raised her eyebrows; my disappointment was
that
noticeable. “‘Oh’ sounds like my invitation getting rescinded.”

“No!” I said quickly. “You should come…once I figure out where we’re going.”

“You want tapas? Coco’s
is good for that,” she suggested.

“Um…
Coco’s
is where you go when you want to bang eighteen-year-olds,” Ghost explained.

Her snicker trailed off into a burst of laughter. Comfortable laughter. I guess they’d had some time to chat and feel each other out. “Are you speaking from experience?” she asked.

We weren’t but Ghost and I still looked at each other guiltily to mess with her. “Is that why you go?” I asked.

She took a slow sip of coffee then bit her lip as she pulled the cup away from her mouth. “Oh, yeah, nothing turns me on quite like hearing about how Mrs. Perry, the science teacher, is fuckable, even with the cankles.” I grinned. She was really fucking cute. “What
is
tonight, exactly?”

“We get our group of friends together every Saturday night for food and drinks, and just to catch up. Good conversation. Good people.” Right in the moment, though, my body immediately rejected the idea of going out, as a wave of heaviness swept in. I think I literally sank farther down into the couch. I was still at a level of exhaustion that only a coma would fix. Fuck. Maybe if I took another nap and popped half a pill, I could power through tonight and not be a zombie in the morning.

“You guys just bring people off the street?”

“You’re hardly off the street,” I said.

“Oh, right, we swapped robbery war stories...” She dumped packet after packet of sugar into her coffee. Then she shrugged. “Okay, I’m in.” Ghost mouthed
Good God
to me when she turned her back to toss the empty sugar packets.

I clenched my jaw, didn’t smile. We never competed for women, and I wasn’t even sure she was interested in either of us, but I did want to know more about her…without violating the ironclad bro code. There was something about the fire I saw in her eyes when she was talking about dance, a mingling of loss and hope. I wanted to hear that story.

Nikki picked up her purse and dug through it. “I should call a cab now…” She froze when she found her cell, and then looked at me. “Wait, it’s probably going to be expensive with traffic. Can you just give me a ride? I can give you gas money. Is that okay?”

“Yeah, I can take you. Don’t worry about gas money.”

“Awesome. We should go now, though.”

“Think you can get it done today?” I asked Ghost as I got up.

He nodded. “Pretty sure. I have a buddy who can get a replacement here in a few hours. A few people dropped off already. But I told her I’d squeeze her in.”

“Thank you so much, Ghost,” Nikki said.

Then we both waved goodbye to him and walked out. “You can still call a cab, if you’re not comfortable,” I said, as I held the car door open for her. It was probably registering right now that we didn’t know a goddamn thing about each other. “That’s an iPhone, right? Take a picture of me. It’ll sync to your photo stream, and you’ll always have it.” Killers probably didn’t offer ways to be identified so easily. “Or just send it to someone in your phone. Like a fri…” She took a picture. “Wow. I was definitely talking when you did that. I don’t even want to know what that looks like.”

She slid into the passenger seat. “If you turn out to be crazy,” she said, tapping away on her cell, “you’ll be the first person with a wanted poster that looks like you’re sneezing. It’s pretty funny. Anyway, I just sent it to my best friend with your license plate number, name, physical description, the name of this place, and our anticipated arrival time.”

“I get it. I know what kind of world we live in,” I said as I cranked the ignition, and we cruised into traffic. She leaned over the center console and snapped a selfie with both of us in it.

“What? There’s always more than one picture on the wanted poster.” She burst out laughing, glancing between her phone and me. “If it helps, you actually…didn’t look bad that time.”

“Umm…thanks? So where are we headed exactly?”

“Castles and Cupcakes,” she said, telling me the street address so I could enter it into my phone’s maps app. “The Medieval Times knockoff for kids’ parties. It’s not far at all.”

“
Castles and Cupcakes?
My sisters used to love that place. Whoa. Am I in the presence of royalty? If I had known, I would’ve worn a collared shirt.” I rubbed my chin and shrugged. “Maybe shaved or something...”

She laughed. “Oh God. I’m not part of the show. I work behind the scenes. I manage the schedule. Someone has to make sure Lil’ Susie gets her Princess Rescue party at four on Saturday, and not Lil’ Johnny’s Wednesday two o’clock sword fight. It’s important work, but mostly I do it for the free buttercream frosting.”

I chuckled. “Hey, speaking of, have you actually eaten? I mean, real food. After all that dancing you have to be hungry. I know a really good place on the way. Do you like Cuban food?” I asked. “Stupid question.”

She nodded, smiling. “I
am
Cuban, on my mom’s side. Definitely love the food. Thank you but I’ll get something at work.” She was watching me closely, studying every driving maneuver I made and monitoring my mirrors. “So, what do you do? Ghost and I were talking about you right before you walked in. He said you’re always up at odd hours. He wasn’t surprised you got robbed. He said that guy could’ve stripped all your clothes off because you were probably passed out.”

“Ghost finds any excuse to think about me naked. Actually, I work in a tiny cubicle for a tech company that connects overseas students with American tutors. But I’m in the process of quitting to work on my YouTube channel full-time. My web series. It got picked up by a company that produces Internet shows.”

“Whoa. Congrats. So, you act?”

“And write and produce and edit and get licenses to film in places and hold castings, and pretty much everything…me and my best friend, Samira. With the company, Hillington Media - Digital, stepping in, it gives us a huge break to just focus on the writing and producing and acting part. I do all the writing, but Samira gives a lot of input on the female character she plays.”

“That’s really cool. What’s it about?”

“Well, Samira and I have known each other since we were fourteen, and we both went to Leeward University. We were part of the first group of co-ed roommates when the school changed its roommate gender policy after our freshman year. It made the news. We were always getting media requests for interviews, and I got an idea about doing a Q&A on YouTube. It got five thousand hits in a day or two. So we started doing it weekly, focusing on different topics, like how to handle it when we wanted to have dates over. Or have people sleep over…”

“I’ve never lived with a guy. Was it weird? Did it change your relationship to something more than platonic?”

“She got herself a boyfriend early on—Patrick, the guy she’s married to now—and I dated a few girls over the four years. I don’t think we ever got a chance to even think of each other that way, which is cool. But then I wrote a short story about two childhood best friends, Chuck and Sami, whose relationship starts to change when they room together in college. My creative writing professor loved it and helped me turn it into a full-length manuscript. Two years ago, Samira and I were hanging out and talking about college and she brought it up. She said a lot of people were making their own web shows about all kinds of shit, and we could do it. Our parents gave us a loan, I eventually wrote the pilot, and we turned my channel into a fictional series,
How to Fuck up a Friendship
.
”

“
Oh,
so
that’s
why stories are your favorite part.” Snail pace traffic finally gave me a chance to
really
look over at her, and she was holding a smile. Maybe it was just something she did a lot. But I liked that she was talking to me while she was doing it.