How I Fly (3 page)

*Thinks: Did he just imply that if we become friends, he will be lying on top of me a lot?*

I blink at him and finally answer, “Did you say
you
fall down a lot?
You?
”

“You can’t hear me?” His brow wrinkles. He quickly places the palm of his hand on my forehead and startles me more by moving my long bangs to the side. He’s now staring deeply and very awkwardly into my eyes. Before I can think, his hand’s roaming over my entire head and temples, making me blush all over again. “Did you hit your head while we were rolling? Or did my camera clock you? Never mind. Look. Don’t forgive me. The way I fall…it’s unforgivable. Do you feel like you’re going to black out? Dizzy?”

“I…am a little,” I say, deciding that the only reason I feel dizzy is because this guy’s making my heart beat fast in ways I thought had died forever—which is good, yet feels kind of sad all at the same time.

*Slaps face. This is good, not sad. You’re done with being sad.*

He examines my face way up close. “Damn. I suck. Can I see if you’ve got a concussion?” He leans in even closer, still keeping his gaze intently on my eyes. “Hold up.” He fishes a pair of black-framed glasses from his front shirt pocket and shoves them in place against the bridge of his nose. They’re so hipster cute I have the urge to photograph them. Him! Us!

“Your pupils look good. Tell me if you feel nauseous. I know all about head injuries.”

“What? You do?”

“Yeah.” His brown eyes cloud with what looks like regret. “Last month I gave my aunt a concussion when I tripped into her at our family reunion. It just happens. I’m up, and then I’m down. No excuse for it, except I’m always spacing out. Looking for the next best camera shot is what usually causes the accidents. Falling off my porch while trying to capture the underside of a wasp nest without getting stung is how I got my current Velcro cast. I tripped today because I was checking you out. I’m so sorry. Well, not sorry that I checked you out. And I guess not sorry how we landed.”

I laugh, blushing all over again.

“Look at this thing. We’re twins!” He sits back and balances on his arms so he can show off the foot that’s encased in the same kind of immobilizing brace I’ve got. Only, his move shows off that he’s very—and I mean very—well built from forearms to shoulders. All that is under his white T-shirt and blue and white flannel over-shirt seems to be flexing all at once. If he didn’t have me swooning at the camera, the glasses, and the flannel shirt, he’s also wearing very cute, tattered cargo shorts. Like a cherry on a pie, the foot that’s not in the brace is sporting one faded navy canvas sneaker. He’s literally, perfectly my-type adorable.

Even his computer bag is rugged and worn and somehow sexy. Add in his longish, waving, and perfectly floppy hair, that smile that catches my breath every time he’s used it on me—which is a lot—plus the great tan and some careless chin stubble, and I could swear someone created this guy out of a dream I didn’t know I had. He looks like he fell out of one of those catalogs where there are snow-capped mountains in the background, and the people are all laughing and roasting marshmallows next to giant backpacks and fancy tents because they’re so cool they’re off on a
National Geographic
photo shoot or something.

“So…you got stung by those wasps?” I ask, ignoring his compliment, and trying to give proper attention to his story of how he got his boot.

He nods, sitting back down. “Twenty-six times on my face, which is why I toppled over the rail. I was hospitalized. The EMTs who showed up even shoved an EpiPen in my leg because I’d swollen up so badly I could hardly breathe.”

“Wow. Epic. I’m happy you survived.” A small giggle escapes the back of my throat. His story’s so ridiculous that I can’t help myself.

“Are you laughing at me?” One brow shoots up. He’s biting his lip, obviously trying not to laugh along with me.

“Yes.” I giggle louder at his expression. “You got any selfies of how your face looked after that?”

He holds up the camera. “I’m a photographer. Of course I do. I was planning to sue those bastard wasps, but they all died when my uncle sprayed them.”

More laughter escapes me.

He interrupts, that cute arched brow going up again. “Enough about my past humiliating moments. Let’s stick with this one I’ve just caused, shall we? Still dizzy? Should I call
you
an ambulance, get you a shot in the leg? Anywhere hurting?”

I don’t tell him the truth, because saying, how half of my body hurts pretty much all the time, is quite the conversation killer. Instead, I smile as wide as he’s smiling. “I’m good now.” I wiggle my legs, especially the bad one to make sure it’s responding properly. “Zero damage done. And…” I meet his gaze with a very serious expression. “If you must know, I also fall down a lot. Probably way more than you.”

He stands in one fluid move to balance on one leg while bending to grab my crutches and his before helping me up. “If this is
you
announcing that you’re trying to take away my status as the clumsiest person in the Ontario province, you’ve got no chance. Your stories of falling can never beat mine. Don’t even try.” This wider grin reveals two impish and adorable dimples. “I’m also not going down without a fight. Get it? Going down…
ha-haa…ha
?”

I laugh at his dumb joke. “Yeah? Well
me
falling…is why I’ve got my own crutches for the entire summer. Your tumble off the porch is nothing if you’re out of your boot in two weeks. My last tumble broke both of my legs and actually put me into a wheelchair! So…yeah. Wasp stings are child’s play. I’m not afraid of your brand of clumsy. Say goodbye to your title, dude. There’s a new kid in town!”

“Well.” He grins even wider. “Considering you saved my camera and it’s possible there will never be a girl more perfect for me…I’ll just ask you now.”

“Ask me what?” I say, leaning all my weight onto my crutches.

“Will you marry me? Have a whole pack of falling-down kids, live with me in a bubble-wrapped cottage behind a white picket fence?”

I shake my head, laughing again. “Why do I get the feeling I’m not the first girl you’ve proposed to like this?”

“What are you saying?” He puts a wide, tanned hand to his chest, acting all wounded and innocent. By the flash in his eyes, I know I’m right.

“I’m saying that I’m on to you,
player.
”

He pulls off his glasses and peers at me as though he’s trying to get a better look. Then he tucks them into his front pocket. I admire how his wide-set brown eyes fit perfectly within the planes of his face. His angled cheekbones are softened with a few freckles scattered here and there. I suddenly want to examine photos of what he looked like when he was a kid, because I think he probably looked and acted very much like Calvin from the Calvin and Hobbes comics. I’m wondering briefly if he’s cuter with the glasses on or without, when I lock gazes with his warm brown eyes all over again. That’s when I realize he’s been staring at my face as long as I’ve been staring at his. I feel heat seep back into my cheeks.

As though we’re sharing a secret, he leans all of his weight onto his crutches and whispers into my ear, “It’s an unfair judgment to call me a player. Everyone
plays
until the game turns serious. Otherwise, how would anyone ever know what they wanted? Maybe playing is the only way to…find out.”

*Decides he’s right. Decides to play the game, too.*

“Good point.” I shoot him a wink. “And…it’s
possible
I’ll marry you,” I say, nodding at the camera dangling from his neck. “If you know how to use that gorgeous thing properly, that is.”

“Oh, I know how to use a lot of things properly.”

His wink back to me is shameless, and his grin is suddenly layered with promises that make my already hot cheeks go twice as hot. I shake my head again and try to bluff with an eye-rolling laugh, hoping he can’t tell how my heart’s just gone
pitter-pat-panic-and-oh-my
. “Oh, you’re good. You’re very good,” I say in my most sarcastic tone.

“I know.” His expression doesn’t change one bit. If anything it simply turns more shameless as his eyes drop to my lips.

Choking back a laugh, I hold out my good hand to break his gaze. “I’m Ellen. Ellen Foster. And…would you mind handing me my hoodie…whatever
your
name is?”

“Harrison.” Thankfully he tones down the smolder-flirt factor, reaches my long-forgotten hoodie with one of his crutches, and gingerly places it over my shoulders while I move my braid out of the way.

“Harrison?” I ask, because of course his old-school name is adorable and I want to try saying it out loud.

“Harrison Shaw. Your devoted fiancé. At your service. And might I add…you smell
amazing
. Is that shampoo? Perfume? Or do you simply hide flowers in your pockets all the time?”

Even though I’ve only just met this kid, I laugh again and punch him in his shoulder while telling him to
shut up
as if I’ve known him a long time. He grins back at me as if he also feels like he and I are already pretty good friends.

Despite all the disappointment from Cam not being here, I soak up this guy’s gorgeous, Harry Styles-wide smile all over again and I suddenly get that…I’m going to be okay here. Heck, maybe I’ll be okay everywhere. Okay with myself and…okay without Cam.

I’m going to be happy.

Harrison and I crutch to stand in the housing assignments line together. I look at the smiling faces around the room and feel my chest expanding from butterflies and so much excitement about what is going to happen this summer.

And there it is again.

I
am
happy.

Cam

The sun is just cracking the sky from black to dark gray. I breathe in, enjoying the morning 5k run they make us do here every day as much as I’m enjoying first colors that always slowly light the skies. It’s the last day of official classes that will end the spring semester at the Vancouver Boys Preparatory Academy. VBP, otherwise known to its more cynical residents as Very Bad Prison.

I’ve learned from the other guys—some who’ve been here for years—that the last day, after our finals are completed, we’ll be working all afternoon and possibly into the night to clean up the classrooms and desks. Then we’ll get to scrub anything and everything else our teachers think might need cleaning before the official summer session starts.

Which would be tomorrow, June 19, at 9 a.m.

So much for getting any sort of summer holiday break—unless you call me leaving the campus in a locked van to attend my monthly court appearance with good old Judge Chambers a vacation, because that’s what me and a
lucky
few will get to do later today.

VBP is near Vancouver. In this part of lower British Columbia, the seasons are milder than back home in Ontario. If it weren’t for the slowly changing trees and the part where the grass has finally started to need mowing, I wouldn’t have even noticed that a whole month has already passed by. This will be my sixth, almost seventh month away from home, and there’s no end in sight. I don’t even want to think about it. From the looks of things, it seems I’ll be stuck completing my senior year here as well.

Although it’s marketed to the public as an exclusive prep school to people who can afford to pay to send their “defiant teens” here for “help,” this place is also partnered with the government of the Province of British Columbia. This means it serves double duty as a foster care home as well as a juvenile detention group home for teens who arrived here from other centers thanks to their good behavior. Thanks to my temper, my dad’s temper, and my parents’ crap joke of a marriage—and even my mom’s temper—I now know everything there is to know about the foster care system and the juvenile detention system, and every court visit I have with the good old judge, I get to unwillingly learn even more.

Of course, it all started when I broke Ellen’s legs. But then it got worse when I stole Dad’s rental car from that hotel last November. It was a car valued at forty-five thousand dollars and belonged to a rental car company based in Vancouver. When I took that car, I did not understand the consequences I’d have to face—or that I’d have to face those consequences here in the courts of British Columbia as part of committing a crime within the province. At that time, I wasn’t thinking about consequences—I was only really thinking about going home.

About getting to Ellen as quickly as possible.

As we do another lap, I glance at the sky again, taking in the way the light shines on the dew dripping from the seven-foot-tall boundary fence we circle each day on our run. I wish I’d brought along my camera this morning. It’s a pain to run with, but on the cool-down walk, I’ve managed to get some cool shots of this fence. My memory card is almost full. They’ll let me
take
photos, but so far I haven’t been able to download or edit any of them. I’m hoping that after today’s check-in with the judge I’ll have passed the probationary period that will finally allow me computer usage. I might even be allowed some internet access.

Finally.

I’ve heard if that happens I will also be able to get on Facebook. Which means I can try to contact Ellen.

My thoughts spin on that thought.
Will I? Will I really try to go on her page? Email her? Message her on Facebook…creep on her Instagram to see what she’s been doing all year, or will I just leave it, the past, and her alone? Will she still be listed as “in a relationship” with Camden Campbell? Worse, will she now be with someone else? She should be. That’s what I told her to do…

Our 5k run leader, the guy who finished first yesterday, thankfully lets us all stop for a water break just as I feel like my throat is closing and I can’t breathe.

I’m thinking too much about the possibilities this long-awaited day could bring.

Is it even worth contacting Ellen after what I did and what I texted her? What can she possibly think of me after hearing nothing in all this time? What does Laura think, and Patrick? They must all simply hate me.

As I aimlessly poke the dewdrops off the fence, I go from almost crying to almost laughing out loud. I have this phobia now that if I even look at her Facebook that I would reactivate my obvious bad-luck streak.

It’s a streak that seems to appear every single time I try to get to, or speak to, or even text Ellen Foster. The universe spoke against us more than once. I need to listen to it. If today I get the computer permission I’m hoping for, I need to consider my consequences.

The last time I tried to get to Ellen with that rental car, I was waylaid before I ever got across the British Columbia border. I’d hoped that drive was going to be a simple, two-day road trip back home to Brights Grove. A trip that I’d envisioned would end with my arms wrapped around Ellen while my parents as well as Ellen’s mom could all simply face each other and talk things out. We’d apologize, forgive each other, and hopefully work things out for the better. But instead, I found myself locked up while my parents’ marriage blew up and while the car company decided to press full auto-theft charges against me.

To make things worse, my own father had also simultaneously pressed charges because he was pissed that I’d stolen his car and his wallet while leaving him high and dry at a hotel. When he couldn’t find me on his own, the jerk had actually filed this report to the Vancouver Police stating I was an at-risk youth. They’d caught up to me by the end of the day using the Find My iPhone app. It was obvious I was only using Dad’s money for gas and food.

I was so mad and frustrated that they wouldn’t let me go, nor would they let me call Ellen, that I filed a bunch of reports to the police of my own. Reports where I told them everything—that my dad was a horrible parent, that he’d practically kidnapped me and forced me to come to Vancouver against my will in the first place. Then I’d begged and begged not to be released into my dad’s custody because I feared mental and possible physical abuse. Those were harsh accusations, but at the time they were true.

I begged over and over to be placed with my mom, which would have been fine with the police, but my dad wasn’t in the mood to let me near my mom. So when she finally arrived in town, he’d filed even more reports against me being allowed to be with her—at all—ever.

Those reports stated that Mom was the abusive one, that he’d brought me all the way to Vancouver to protect me from her, and that she was also dangerous because she was enabling and supporting my bad behavior—like allowing me to get in fights and break an innocent handicapped girl’s legs.

As much as I’d dreamed of the day my parents would start divorce proceedings, I could never have imagined the catalyst being the simple fact that I’d fallen in love with sweet, kind, amazing Ellen Foster.

All of us being so angry and upset—plus me being in love and unable to see the girlfriend who was in the hospital and horribly hurt—created a perfect and terrible storm that I started then got caught in the middle of—and I’m still caught.

The Province of British Columbia suddenly wouldn’t release me from my holding cell to see either of my parents. I could only speak with their attorneys under supervision of my own court-assigned attorney.

So that’s how I got assigned to Mary, a newly hired, just-out-of-college social worker who really liked me. And I liked her. We were sort of friends, even. After I’d spent three days inside the juvenile lockup, Mary formally recommended to the courts that I be treated as a special case. One that needed protection from the media—including hiding my name and even my face from the press. She also convinced the judge that though I was listed as a felon for stealing a car, I shouldn’t be with the teens who’d committed violent crimes.

The judge, who simply wanted me out of his hair and did not want my ongoing saga to be picked up by the national news stations, quickly agreed to admit me into the boys’ home. It was a safe place to hide where I could do the punishment time I deserved for stealing the car, while he and the courts tried to figure out the truth behind my parent situation.

I was all for the plan, at first.

Mom and Dad were the last people I wanted to be living with while they were in the middle of a World War III-style divorce. Besides, there was always the chance my dad would win and somehow convince Mom not to leave him, which would leave me back at square one, and I knew enough to know I was never going back to Dad’s version of what my life needed to be. Being near them was a risk I wasn’t willing to take, and I made that very clear to the judge. But then it didn’t take long for me to realize that by keeping me away from the news media and my parents, they were keeping me away from everyone.

Including Ellen. Which was never my goal.

That’s when, in front of an assigned psychologist and Mary, and running on over two weeks of sleepless nights and extreme stress, I broke down.

Big time broke down.

I told them everything. Explained about my dad and the years of football I didn’t want to play. I even told that lady everything about Ellen, and about the photography project and how we were supposed to be photographers together, and how I was making plans to attend arts-based university programs with her. I told her how Tanner Gold and I accidentally broke her legs during a fight, and I seriously even told her about how I loved Ellen Foster.

I did everything I could to make Mary and that shrink see that, despite the reports about me on the news coming from Ontario and the fact that I’d stolen a car and a wallet, I wasn’t this horrible bully. I was actually Ellen’s friend—her boyfriend—and that I’d never hurt her.

And then I begged and begged them to let me see her. Call her…anything. They refused, of course. And the judge didn’t believe any of my story that I wasn’t some sort of jock asshole.

Not one bit.

I think Mary believed me. I also think the psychologist believed me a little. But that didn’t help when the guy in charge was not on board. At my first court date, I was blindsided. My now extremely pissed-off Dad switched his tune on me. His ego wasn’t going to take his only child calling him abusive to a judge. He stood in that courtroom and accused me of a childhood chock-full of me being
oppositional
and
defiant
. He said I had a disorder. That I attacked Ellen Foster just as sort of a fun tackle game, as the news had reported it. Worse, he said my mom was incompetent and just as incapable of handling me as he was, and that she was enabling me and my bad behavior.

I tried to explain in the court that my dad was acting out of revenge against me, because I wanted to stop playing football, and against my mom for being on my side for the first time in my life. Sadly, I did it all wrong. I shouted. Lost my temper. Called my dad a bunch of names in front of the judge.

The whole time Dad had been smiling because I fell right into his trap.

That’s how Dad and his creeper attorney had wanted me to act.

After a while, Mary didn’t know whose side to take. I think she felt really sorry for me because I totally shut down after that. Days later, she stopped looking me in the eye, stopped promising to help me, and instead followed the judge’s decisions about my fate to the letter.

The day after my courtroom temper tantrum, Mary told me that my parents got into some sort of huge fight in front of the same judge. It was a fight that involved a ton more yelling and drama. Word is that Dad shoved a chair really hard at my mom in the courtroom. That’s when my mom went bat-shit crazy and ended up screaming and trying to throw the same chair at my dad. Though it did not fly very far, it shocked the whole courtroom when her purse was vaulted at the judge’s head before they could calm her down, subdue her, and finally
arrest
her.

Hell, they also arrested my dad, because by that time he’d launched into one of his demeaning tirades all over my mom, which ended with some huge profanity-filled names thrown at the judge as well.

The judge pressed charges on both of them for contempt of court, which meant I couldn’t be released to either of them. Suddenly, the unexpected happened. I was made a ward of the province.

Of course, in addition to being beyond depressed, I was in complete shock when I understood the Vancouver Boys Preparatory Academy was not going to be a temporary stay.

I never thought they would keep me locked in for more than a few days. On my formal long-term check-in interview, I was also informed I’d have zero technology access for six whole months until my behavior improved. That’s when I started flipping out and having this panic attack thing. When I imagined six months of not contacting Ellen, I couldn’t breathe at all. While Mary was giving me a hug and saying how it was all going to be okay, I pushed her as hard as I could, grabbed her cell phone from out of her purse, and ran behind the intake desk.

I took some keys that were hanging from a janitor’s closet door and locked myself into it from the other side, with the idea that I just needed to text Ellen once.

Only once!

The school actually had to call the fire department so they could chop down the door to get me out.