Page 48 of Free Fall

“Get her out of here, please,” I asked, not glancing down at the furious man beneath me. Henry was waiting. He appeared relaxed, but I felt the tension rippling through him. I knew this man well enough. As soon as Zelda was gone, he was going to explode. Not stop until I was close to dead.

“Oh no,” the curly-haired one said, meeting my eye for a moment. He looked like he cared, his soft eyes were full of emotion, hatred for me. I was growing comfortable with that look in people’s expressions. “Come on, Zelly, let’s go. We can head to my room down the hall.”

Zelda let them scoop her up to stand, and her friend straightened her out, finger-combing her hair and patting at her wet cheeks. Zelda looked at me, then her dad, her face blotchy, her expression only shock and something impossible to place. She had no desire to leave. I could see that. But she did, the three of them slipped from the room, her female friend yelling and hollering at the nosy crowd, shoving them all out of the doorway while the guy directed Zelda with an arm over her shoulders.

She didn’t look back as they disappeared. I saw a glimpse of the back of her head, resting on her friend’s shoulder, then the door slammed shut.

“I’m going to fucking murder you,” Henry said, catching the look I’d given his daughter. How he hadn’t caught one of those looks before, I didn’t fucking know. But the combination of Zelda softening me and Henry getting a surge of rage, shifted our positions again. We tumbled, wrestling for the upper hand, grunting and swearing at each other as we fought.

We crashed into the bedframe, my head smacking against the wood as Henry grabbed a fistful of my hair and slammed it again, and again. I kicked out, twisted his fucking ear until he had to move his head to stop me from ripping it off.

“Shit!” he shouted, throwing himself from me for a minute, standing up, leaving me on the floor.

The room was empty, just us. The door was shut. There was still a commotion outside, calls of the police being on their way, campus security being imminent.

Henry glared at me when I stayed where he left me, letting him loom over me like he had the right to. I hoped we’d have more time than this, that I would figure out a way to make it sound okay that I was fucking his daughter, that I’d knocked her up. Laughable. He looked heartbroken.

“How could you?” he asked, wiping at his bloody lip. My body felt battered, too. “How could you… you use her like that? I know what you’re in to, if you’ve… coerced or…” He screwed his face up, took a deep breath. “I’m going to talk to my daughter. If I see you again, you won’t be able to force your fucking parasite to breed into anyone else.”

Henry turned and left, leaving me staring after him. I’d lost him to this, I knew it would happen. “Shit,” I said, running my hand through my hair, not bothering to get up. The police could take me, throw me in jail for fighting, for whatever. Fuck it.

He hadn’t beaten the shit out of me as much as I deserved. It was almost worse that he walked away, like he’d given up. There was nothing to fight for between us. I stared up at Zelda’s ceiling, not caring to catalog my injuries, trying to focus on what the next hellish step needed to be. How did he find out? It wasn’t clear why he showed up here. Was he coming to catch us? Maybe it was an unhappy accident.

I remained on the floor as Zelda’s friend marched into the room and drifted around the space, packing things into a canvas bag and talking to herself. She didn’t speak to me the entire time, only giving me furious side eyes whenever her gaze drifted over me. When she dug into the bedside cabinet my head was still smashed against, she looked like she was going to say something, but then she sighed and moved away. I ignored her right back.

It was only when she was at the door; the bag slung over her shoulder weighing her down, that she spoke, making me jolt at the break in the silence. Her voice was cold, so low I almost missed it. But the words haunted me the second they came out of her mouth.

“She’s gone, you know,” she said. “She’s not coming back.”

Part Two

Three years later

Twenty Six

Zelda

Thesummerchangingintofall always reminded me of the best and the worst time of my life. When the leaves began their change, when the world turned pretty with its burnt oranges and yellows, my heart squeezed up. And it remained that way until Christmas, when the bright lights and gaudy reds and greens replaced the black and orange. Getting caught up in the chaos of that season was all I needed to leave the funk that spooky shit and piles of candy left me in.

But, standing in the grocery store, staring down the aisle of Halloween decorations, frowning while Leo rocked back and forth in the cart, there was that dread. That pain. That old familiar friend that made my heart twitch and my stomach plummet.

Little Leo. My monster baby. Little alien. Halloween brought his birthday, brought back the agony of his birth and the figure missing from his life. He’d come into the world with Avery and Seren by my side, letting me squeeze their hands to purple until we heard that first shriek from the baby’s tiny lungs.

Since I’d run off, fleeing from Luca and Dad fighting on the floor of my dorm room, I hadn’t seen Leo’s father. Nor spoken a single word to him. I had to keep my distance from all the boiling emotions that threatened to break me down, so he was only Leo’s sperm donor. That was his only role in my life. And even then, it was non-existent. Leo knew nothing of his father, not yet, anyway, he was coming up three and couldn’t comprehend either way.

“Scary!” Leo shouted, then roared with his face all scrunched up, reaching his chubby fingers for the skeleton mask hanging to our left.

“Mm,” I agreed. “Very. Let’s get out of here. Avery can grab the candy.” I turned the cart and swerved to the next aisle, finding the much safer toiletry section. I already felt calmer, and grinned at my son as he continued pulling faces, making an old lady studying the bars of soap frown.

Avery found us sniffing the shampoos a few minutes later, grinning with a handful of cookie packets in his grasp. He dumped them in the cart while I made a disapproving face at him. He was the worst of all of us, always slipping Leo sugar or giving him sips of soda.

“What?” he asked, noting my tension. “You good?”

I nodded, ignoring his sugary transgression and smiling at my wonderful friend — I was fooling no one pretending I wouldn’t be diving right into the packets as soon as Leo was asleep.

“Halloween stuffs out,” I tilted my head toward the offending costumes and candy just around the corner.

Avery gave me a weak smile and a sympathetic nod. “Leo’s almost three. It was bound to happen.” He ran his hand up and down my arm in comfort. “You can’t let it happen every year, though. Leo will get a complex.”

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