Pretty When She Cries - Black Mountain Academy

Sweat prickles my skin as I wrap my fingers around the knob. It’s just a room, and this room can’t have any power over me. Nothing happened in here. At least, not what I thought. But what did happen?

I fling it open quickly so I can’t chicken out. At first glance, it looks just the way I remembered. The bed is made with a soft gray duvet. The carpet is a neutral, unassuming beige. The walls are white. There’s nothing special about this place.

When I take a few steps inside, I pause where Landon and I first kissed. I remember that kiss. It felt like I was zapped by lightning, and I wanted it to go on forever. But then I got sick.

My eyes dart to the bathroom, and I hold my breath as I duck my head inside. Everything in here looks the same too. I can still recall how cold the tile was on my face when I collapsed against it. I thought it felt so good. And then… everything went blank.

I’m trying to connect the dots. But no matter how I examine it, I can’t figure out how I went from lying on the floor to that bed. Did I wake up and drink more without realizing it? Did I get so drunk, I just can’t remember the game we played? And why was Landon so surprised tonight? Shouldn’t he have already known I was still a virgin? What does he think happened that night we never speak of?

The answers don’t come flooding back to me as I’d hoped. I still feel strange in this place. My skin is too hot, and the hair on the back of my neck is standing on end. My therapist once told me our bodies remember what our minds can’t. I know it must be true because my body is screaming at me now. And as much as I want to believe nothing bad happened here, I can’t. In my gut, I still feel that humiliation and sickness. It’s been poisoning me for so long. It can’t have been for nothing.

In a daze, I leave the room behind me and venture down the hall like a ghost. I don’t even feel like I’m part of my body anymore. It’s just my spirit, floating through the halls of his mansion until he returns.

I check each room I pass. They are all empty squatting boxes of nothingness. And then, I reach the biggest room. Landon’s suite. During the summer we met, I watched him come in here a couple of times, but I never had a reason to follow. Now, the only reason I need is that I want to see his space the way he’s seen mine.

When I open the door, his scent envelops me. It’s a mixture of his cologne, deodorant, and maybe a little laundry soap. I wish I could capture this scent and carry it with me always. If I don’t get to smell him again, I’ll be forever homesick.

I tiptoe around the room like a creep and touch all his things. His backpack. His bed. His closet full of clothes. When I find the hoodie he was wearing after practice today, I slip it on, and it nearly swallows me whole. I keep it on anyway and start opening all the drawers in his dresser. Most of them are full of tee shirts and his briefs, but there’s one that’s just full of stuff. It takes me a minute to realize what it is.

A pencil. A notebook. Folded pieces of scratch paper with my handwriting on them. The dog-eared books we read together when I was tutoring him. A bottle of my perfume. My leopard scrunchie. A sweatshirt I thought I lost a long time ago. An address scribbled onto a sticky note. My grandmother’s address. And beneath it, one unused plane ticket to Hawaii.

Was he going to come to me?

My heart flutters, and I can’t decide if this is the strangest or sweetest thing I’ve ever seen. Landon Blackwood has kept everything that’s ever reminded him of me.

A door slams downstairs, and I nearly jump out of my skin. I slide the drawer shut as quietly as I can and listen. There’s a soft, feminine giggle, and multiple pairs of footsteps on the marble floor. Someone turns on low background music, and a couple of guys start talking about the tits on a stripper at the Eager Beaver.

Within a minute, the familiar stench of marijuana smoke is creeping up the stairs, and Landon’s grunting at his friends to take that shit outside. He sounds drunk.

More doors open and shut, and then the noise spills out onto the lawn below the windows. I’m wondering if I’m in the clear to run down the stairs when I hear another familiar voice.