Fall With Me

Chapter 1: Griffin



I went with Imogen to the Full Moon Party. Koh Phangan at its best. That was the last thing I clearly remember; everything else filters back hazy, like it’s been covered in a layer of gauze. I had a few drinks, a few pills, danced my ass off, and then woke up here, in some cramped little room on the lower level of a boat. I can tell it’s a boat even though there are no windows and the door is locked. The rocking motion. The sea salt air. Footsteps above me, muffled voices, and no one responds when I bang on the door. There’s only the thin shaft of pale light that trickles in from under the door. There’s no one in this room but myself, and I don’t need a mirror to know my face has been battered. My left eye is swollen shut and my jaw is tender to the touch. Still have all the teeth, though my lip is split, but that could just be because I’m dehydrated.



I stand up, sway on my feet. The room lurches and I nearly fall, but I don’t. Even in this condition, I’ve got good sea legs. Dad always said so. That’s the only time Dad and I ever seemed able to stand each other—when we were out on his yacht. Still, he’d have to make sure he took his meclozine an hour before getting onto the boat or he’d be puking over the side and wailing that he wanted to get back to the harbor.



I make it to the door and try it again, as though it might have somehow unlocked itself. I pound on it. “Let me out of here, assholes!” I shout.



There’s a pause above me, then laughter. I don’t recognize the voices.



I sit down. My head feels funny. It feels funny in such a way that I know someone must’ve slipped something into one of my drinks, or given me a pill that wasn’t what they claimed it to be. Was Imogen in on this, too? No. She was just some silly girl on vacation from Dublin or Wicklow or one of those dumpy Irish cities.



I don’t know exactly how long I sit for, my back against the wall. The fuzziness in my head has started to clear, although there’s still a bitter taste in my mouth, like I licked a battery or something. Heavy footsteps approach, pause outside. The door inches open.



“Stay right where you are,” a low voice growls.



Two men step in. I recognize neither, though if I were expecting pirates, these two aren’t far off the mark. The taller one’s grizzled and looks like he hits the bottle a little too often. His face is riddled with pockmarks and his teeth are terribly crooked. The younger, shorter one actually has a red bandana wrapped around his head.



“Where’s the eyepatch?” I ask him.



He shoots me a look. “Did we say you could talk?”



He throws something down at my feet. It’s a plastic bottle, half-filled with water. While I’m grateful for the drink, I’m a little disappointed that the receptacle is not a bota bag or something a little more authentic. “Is this bottle BPA free?” I ask after I take a sip.



Bandana continues to glare at me but the older one chuckles. “A pretty boy and a wise ass,” he says. “Aren’t you a catch.”



I take another sip. The water stings the cut on my lower lip, but I welcome the pain because it’s sharp and it helps clear the cloudiness from my head. “I didn’t know we were fishing. You should’ve told me—I would’ve brought my gear. Where are we, anyway?”



“That’s not really any of your concern.”



“So what exactly is going on?”



“We know who you are.”



“Excellent. And who might you be?”



“You don’t need to concern yourself with that,” Snaggletooth says. “For the time being, you stay here. We’ll let you go, pretty boy, when your daddy-o pays up.”



I laugh. “Is this a joke?”



“No.”



We stare at each other. “How much?” I finally say.



He smirks. “7.2 million.”



“That’s kind of a random number, isn’t it?”



“Don’t see how that’s any of your damn business.”



“And if he doesn’t?”



Snaggletooth rubs the lower part of his face. “Well then I suppose we’ll have to follow through with what we said we’d do to you. And honestly, I’d be just as happy watching the sharks rip you to pieces as I would gutting you myself. It’s an exquisite pleasure to play a hand in watching lazy, self-entitled pieces of shit like you meet their ends. So your daddy-o either pays or doesn’t. Don’t matter much to me—either way, I’ll be a happy man.”



His eyes shine in such a way that tells me he is speaking the honest to god truth. He winks, then the two leave the room, locking the door behind them. There’s no way my father would pay that much money. Not for me, anyway. Maybe for my brother, Cameron, but there’s no sign of him here, and anyway, he would never let himself get in a situation where abduction would be possible. He’s just not that kind of guy. I, on the other hand, apparently am.



“Shit,” I say, to no one in particular.



I’m going to have to get myself out of this one.



Chapter 2: Jill



It’s bittersweet, this graduation. I attend because most of my friends are up there on stage, while I’m sitting in the audience. I can’t help but wonder how things might have worked out differently if the accident hadn’t happened. Dad would be alive. Mom would not be in a wheelchair. I would be up there graduating, too.



Of course, I shouldn’t be thinking like this, and I know it. I’ll graduate next year—hopefully—and then I can still do everything I imagined I would. Get a job, my own place, try to carve out a life of my own. Except I won’t be traveling to any far off city; I can’t leave Mom, even though she’s told me more than once that I shouldn’t let any of this get in the way of what I want to do.



I get home that evening after celebrating out on the town with my friend, Jessica, and her family, who flew in from the Midwest. Mom’s nurse, Sharon, is on her way out, but she stops at the door and asks me how my day was.



“It was good,” I tell her. “The graduation was really nice.”



“It’ll be your time soon,” she tells me. Sharon is slightly heavyset with short, curled blond hair, exactly the way you’d picture a nurse, minus the white uniform and nurse’s cap. “Your mom’s still awake; I think she wouldn’t mind if you stopped in there for a few minutes.”



I drop my purse on the kitchen table next to a pile of mail. I walk down the hallway and into the living room, which, since the accident, has been converted into Mom’s bedroom. The blinds aren’t closed all the way on the bay windows and the moonlight filters in, casting the room in a milky glow. Mom’s wheelchair sits near the bed like a faithful steed.



“Hi, Mom,” I say.



She’s lying in bed but turns her head to look at me. Even though the room is dimly lit, I can see that her eyes have that cloudy look they sometimes get when she’s on her pain medication.



“Hi, honey,” she says. “How was graduation? I’m sorry I couldn’t make it to the ceremony—I really would’ve liked to see you get your diploma. I know how hard you’ve worked for it.”



I sit in the wingback chair beside her bed. Underneath the sheet and lightweight cotton blanket, her body is little more than skin wrapped around bones. We looked a lot like, my mother and I; before the accident, people used to ask if we were sisters. She always got a big kick out of that, but it was true: she looked great. She did yoga regularly and was training to do her first half marathon. Her vibrant blond hair showed no signs of going gray, and she had bright blue eyes, like sapphires with the sun shining through them. I’d overheard my father say that to her admiringly on more than one occasion.



“It wasn’t my graduation, Mom,” I gently remind her. “You’ll get to see me graduate next year.”



“Somehow, I doubt that.” She smiles thinly and sighs. “You should go to bed, sweetheart. It’s late. You’ve got to be up early tomorrow.” She reaches over and squeezes my hand. “I’ll miss you.”



“I’ll be back to visit on Sunday,” I tell her. “I’ll email you pictures, too.”



“No, I’m glad you’re going down there. It would do you some good to get away. Lorrie and Bill need you. I just wish I could go with you.”



I’ve been working at Sea Horse Ranch, down in Half Moon Bay, since I was thirteen. My mom’s childhood friend, Lorrie, and her husband, Bill, own it, and they’d hired me one summer to muck out stalls and help take care of the horses. As I’d gotten older, my duties expanded to include teaching lessons, training horses, finally culminating in supervising the teenagers who attended the ranch’s summer camp program. Working there was, in a way, like a rite of passage in my circle of friends, yet they had all moved on; they’re living in places like New York City and Boston as newly minted college graduates, on their way to fulfilling careers. I try not to think of myself as the one who got left behind, but the truth of it is, I’m the only one who’s still here. I’m the one who’s going to spend my summer shoveling horse shit and supervising unruly teenagers.



At some point, the ranch got a reputation for being a good place to send teens whose parents felt they were headed down the wrong path. Bill and Lorrie didn’t mind; they’ve always been do-gooder types who would welcome anyone into their home, and they truly believe that nothing can’t be cured by a day outside spent on horseback.



It’s when I’m about to leave that I notice the orchid. It’s sitting on a small side table by the window, half a dozen large white blossoms dangling from a curved stem. The flowers look so luscious they might be edible.



“Isn’t it gorgeous?” Mom says, when she sees where my gaze has gone.



“Yes,” I say, though I’m already certain I know who sent them, which makes them a lot less beautiful.



“Sean sent them.”



“I figured. But, that’s better than him stopping by in person.” I fight the urge to not go over there and swat the plant off the table, how the shattering ceramic would be music to my ears.



“Jill Freyss-Charon,” Mom says. “There is no need to speak that way, especially after someone just did something so thoughtful.”



“You’re right,” I say, though she’s not—there is nothing thoughtful about Sean Wentworth whatsoever. Calculating, sure. Manipulating, absolutely. But thoughtful? No.



“He just adores you, honey. I don’t know why you won’t give him another chance.” She looks at the orchid again and smiles. “It made me happy to get it. It’s been awhile since I last felt happy.”



Since the accident, Mom’s memory has been a touchy thing. Her short-term memory is shot; I don’t know how many times I’d told her I would not be graduating, but I would be going to the ceremony anyway to watch my friends get their diplomas. When her memory is working, all she seems able to recall is how depressed she is, which, considering she used to be the most optimistic person I knew, is pretty depressing in and of itself. She also seems only to remember the very best things about Sean; she’s somehow convinced herself that the accident was the reason Sean and I broke up, and therefore, was inadvertently her fault. All untrue, of course, but she refuses or is incapable of remembering it as anything else.



“I’ve got to get going, Mom,” I say. I go over and kiss her forehead. “I’ve got to pack and then get down to the ranch. I’ll give you a call tomorrow, okay?”



I go to my room and throw some clothes into my old gym bag. I’d broken up with Sean not long after my parents’ car accident, though it’s something I should’ve done a lot sooner. He was originally from Belvedere but was living in Palo Alto and attending Stanford when we met. Dad and I had gotten ice cream at his favorite ice cream shop and were sitting in Dolores Park, watching jubilant dogs chase Frisbees. It had been one of those unseasonably warm days in early April and the park was packed; people lay out under the hot sun, bare-chested or in bathing suits. They lounged in groups on spread-out blankets, drinking Anchor Steam or PBR. Sean and his group of friends were on a blanket maybe twenty feet away, and I could see him watching me out of the corner of my eye.



“There’s a young man over there that seems particularly intent on staring at you,” Dad said.



“I think he just wants some ice cream.”



“I’m going to throw my trash away and then go buy a pint of the salted caramel to bring home to your mother. I’ll meet you back here in fifteen.” He smiled as he got up, and I tried not to feel annoyed. I’d gotten used to men staring at me and had pretty much perfected the art of ignoring it. For the first fifteen years of my life I’d been made fun of because of my height—was called giraffe, beanstalk, twig, could never find pants that were long enough. And then something happened my junior year of high school and suddenly the boys at school and random men out in public began to notice me. If it was supposed to make me feel good, it didn’t, because as far as I knew, nothing had changed. What had changed? It just made them seem like assholes who were more interested in the way someone looked than who they actually were as a person.