Defeated by my even stronger conscience, I accept the facts: It’ll never work with a girl like her, and I’d be more of a dick to pursue it.
There’s a far-off pounding muffled in my head, like the sound of a hammer drilling a stubborn nail into a wooden beam. I groan and roll over, covering my head with a pillow. My mouth is dry and I can taste my breath, hot and sour and fetid. BAM! BAM! BAM! The pounding is getting louder. And then a familiar voice follows: urgent, a little rough, though tinged with femininity.
“Luke, I need my green backpack!” I hear from the other side of my bedroom door. “Have you seen it?”
I wake up fully, grabbing the pillow and pressing it firmly against my face as a low, guttural groan of protest rumbles through my chest. With my eyes closed, I see a visual of where I last saw that green backpack and then want to kick myself for not taking it out of my bedroom yesterday when I thought about it.
“Luke?” Kendra calls out again. “Come on, I know I left it over here. We can’t find it anywhere in the house.”
A swath of cool air brushes my face as I pull the pillow to the side. My eyes crack open a slit at first, instinctively wary of the possibility of blinding sunlight beaming through the curtain on the window above the bed. But it’s still early, the sun just barely making its appearance in the sky, bathing my room in a soft gray hue. My eyes open the rest of the way, but my body is having a hard time catching up.
BAM! BAM! BAM!
“All right! Hold on a sec!”
I toss the sheet off and crawl out of the bed, scanning the floor in search of my boxers. When I find them, I stumble trying to put them on in a rush.
Kendra’s backpack is sitting on the floor beside the door, mocking me. I snatch it up by one of the straps and open the door, holding it out to her.
“How did it get in your room?” Kendra asks, standing in the doorway. She slides it off my fingers and hangs it on her arm at the elbow.
“You put it here,” I say, still trying to wake up. “When you came in to complain about your roommate.”
I keep my position blocking the doorway, hoping she doesn’t try to come in. I just want to go back to bed.
“You don’t want to come with us?” she asks, frowning.
“I can’t. I’ve got stuff to do today.”
I raise one arm, propping my hand above me on the doorframe. Kendra makes a face when my eyes reopen after a long, drawn-out yawn.
“Gah! You need a Tic Tac,” she says, wrinkling her freckle-sprinkled nose.
I reach out and fit my hand at the back of her blond head, pulling her toward me; the top of her ponytail pushes through my fingers. I press my lips to her forehead. She smiles, but pushes me away playfully.
“You stink,” she says, grinning. “Come on, get up and take a shower and come with us. You never hike with us anymore. I hate it.”
“That’s not true,” I say. “I’ve been three times in the past two months.”
“But still,” she argues, her plump lips pouting, “you don’t go often enough and that’s just like never to me.”
“Sorry.” I smile weakly because I’m still too tired and it’s all I can manage. “I’ll go next time. I promise.”
With the backpack dangling from the bend of her arm, she crosses her arms tight over her stomach and cocks her head to one side with a disapproving smirk.
Kendra is a cute girl, and a tomboy at heart. At first glance one would think she’s just another pretty face who might enjoy walking in the dominant shadow of a strong, attractive guy. But when one gets to know her, they realize quickly that she carries a dominant shadow of her own and few men in this world can keep up with it.
Only one could equal it—Landon—and he’s long gone, so she’s in the same kind of limbo as I am when it comes to relationships.
“Heading over to the resort today?” she asks.
Seth walks past, making his way to the bathroom. “Yeah, he’s got a date with disaster,” he chimes in with laughter, and then the bathroom door closes behind him.
Kendra looks at me curiously.
Not wanting to get into any conversations with her—because I’d rather be sleeping—I brush off Seth’s comment altogether.
“I’ve got a few appointments over at the school,” I tell her, “and then after that, I’m free. Too bad you two aren’t heading out later in the day.”
“It’s an all-day hike,” she says. “We have to leave early.”
I nod, yawn with a little less open-mouth, and go to close my door. “Well, I’m going back to bed,” I say. “Two more hours and I have to get up.”
The door stops at the halfway mark when the palm of Kendra’s hand presses against it.
“Luke, you’re starting to worry me.” All traces of a smile or a playful, nagging attitude are gone from her face. I witness it from time to time, and it always prompts a conversation with her that I don’t want to have—one she knows I don’t want to have.
“Kendra,” I say exasperatedly, running a hand through the top of my disheveled hair, “I just want to go back to bed, all right? There’s nothing wrong with me.” I can never seem to get that through Kendra’s thick skull.
“I miss him too,” she says, and it stings the hell out of me.
Inhaling a deep, aggravated breath, I tilt my head back and let my eyes slam shut. The last thing I want to do is talk about my brother—it’s the one thing I don’t like to talk about, even on a small scale. I’m constantly having to avoid it around my friends and my family: How are you doing? they ask. How are you holding up? they ask. And sometimes people I don’t even know—new friends of Seth or Braedon—ask, How did it happen? Knowing damn well how it happened because Seth or Braedon already told them, and they don’t know what else to say, but feel like they have to say something. How about nothing? How about leaving it the hell alone? How about not constantly reminding me to open my eyes to my brother’s fucked-up, horrific death that was my goddamn fault?! How about that?