Flirting With Disaster (Camelot 3)

“That’s wacked.”

“I don’t think she could handle that I wasn’t p-perfect,” Sean said. “It t-took too much away from her. So she ignored it. She d-d-denied it. And by the time I was in m-middle school, I understood that when I sstuttered, it made her muh-mad, and I t-t-tried not to.”

His face in profile was both beautiful and frightening. Rugged and rigid, so mercilessly controlled. She imagined him with a knot inside his chest, at the core of him. His past, his deepest feelings, bound in layer after layer of rope, with guy lines stretching out to the surface of him, stringing him tight.

“That really sucks,” she offered.

“The thing is …” He paused. “The thing is, sstuttering is t-t-tricky. If you stutter on one sound, you can say a d-different word. If you have a hard t-time with the first word in every sentence, you can try ssslow starts, like, ‘Aaaaand here’s Sean,’ or you can add a ssound, like, ‘Ah, where’s the bathroom?’ But the stutter will c-catch up with you. You’ll start blocking on the new word, and your t-tricks will quit working. As a k-k-kid, I ran through all the tricks I could think up, and by the time I sstarted high school I’d turned a mild stutter into a c-c-catastrophe. So you know what my mother d-did when we moved to C-camelot?”

She’d made it worse, somehow. God, she must have made it worse, because Katie could hear it in Sean’s voice. Something awful, some painful thing that had created the tightness in him. Something that had made him afraid and ashamed, so he’d reacted by balling it up and hiding it away, out of reach.

“Before my freshman year in high ssschool, she t-told all my teachers I was sh-shy and convinced them not to call on me in c-class. Ssaid it was a ssocial anxiety d-disorder, and she could get them a d-doctor’s excuse if they needed to see it, though that was bullshit. She was their new c-colleague, so they went along. And I sat through two years at Mount Pleasant High c-c-completely fucking m-m-m-mute.”

She saw him on the bus. Sean Owens, alone in his seat, reading his book, shutting out everyone else. Silent.

She’d thought he was shy, but he’d been miserably alone.

“She gagged you.”

“She d-didn’t m-mean to.”

Katie leaned across the couch to place a hand on his forearm. “Sean, she gagged you.”

She’d expected to see anger in his eyes, or maybe nothing, if that tight control had its way. What she found was something else. Something like loathing.

“She wanted me to b-be p-p-perfect, and wuh-when I wuh-wasn’t, she t-t-took it as an attack on her. I t-t-told her I wanted to g-go to ssspeech therapy. She sssaid no. Ssomeone would find out I was in therapy, sh-she said. They’d think less of m-me, but of c-c-course she meant they’d think less of her. Then I ffigured, maybe if I juh-just g-got away from her, I c-could get ssome help, so I applied for a scholarship to the academy in C-columbus. I thought if I b-boarded there, I’d have to t-t-talk, right? And somebody wuh-would hear me and help me. I got a ffull scholarship. Room and b-board and tuition.”

“That’s amazing.”

“Sh-she wouldn’t let me take it.”

“Why not?”

“She was sso pissed that I’d applied behind her back. I d-don’t think I’d ever seen her that angry, and she got angry a lot. She said when I guh-got my ‘social anxiety’ under c-c-control, she’d c-consider it, but until then, it wuh-wouldn’t be ‘appropriate’ ffor me t-to go.”

“So what did you do?”

“

My b-buddy Mike Anderson, you remember him?”

She shook her head, though she thought maybe she did. She could picture a guy Sean had hung around with, dark-haired, really into computer games and laser tag and that kind of stuff. More outgoing than Sean.

“Yeah, well, he was my b-best friend. A c-couple years ahead of us in sschool. When he went to c-college, I went with him. M-mom told p-people I’d transferred to the academy, but I actually dropped out. Moved to C-california with Mikey and sstarted working whatever juh-jobs I c-could get to support myself. I got a juh-judge to legally emancipate me. The ultimate ‘ffuck you’ to my mother.”

The wind picked up outside, sending a fusillade of icy snow tapping against the windows. Katie’s thoughts whirled around with it, patternless.

She’d heard that he transferred to the academy. She’d thought she knew his story, but she hadn’t known anything about Sean. Not one thing.

What must it have been like, at sixteen or seventeen years old, to be thrust into adulthood on the other side of the country?

No wonder he was so hard. He must have needed all that stony self-control just to function. A teenager, alone and broke, and every word that came out of his mouth chaos.

“You did all right in California, though?”

“I never came home.”

“When you say ‘never,’ you mean …”