Love Left Behind (56 page)

It
was a frigid day as I ran down the steps of Downing Hall, careful to avoid the
slick icy spots that coated them. Frigid days were the norm at Maxwell University,
a small private college in Rochester, New York, so I maneuvered down the steps
with practiced ease, eager to return to my apartment after my last class of the
day.

My
breath came out in misty puffs in the cold air as I slung my backpack higher
over my shoulder. My last class had been Economics, something I hated but was
forced to take as part of my Business major. I considered myself fairly
intelligent, but an hour and a half of Economics was enough for me to question
my IQ.

Putting
monetary theory and economic models behind me, I quickly crossed the quad that
was the center of campus and made my way to Martin Street, where I shared an
apartment with my best friend, Sarah Townsend. We had met our freshman year in
the office of our RA to complain about our respective roommates. My roommate
had insisted on having loud passionate sex with her boyfriend every night,
although the term boyfriend was pretty loose since there seemed to be a new one
every other week. Sarah’s roommate had been of the more peculiar persuasion,
hoarding trash in her room until Sarah could no longer stand the stench of week
old chili sitting out, a staple her roommate ate right out of the can.

The
natural solution was for Sarah and I to move in together, and we had been
inseparable ever since. Now in the beginning of our senior year, we were living
in an actual apartment on Martin Street. Martin Street had the advantage of
being right off campus and lined with apartments filled with other students.
The apartment was the same one we had lived in our junior year and felt like a
real home. More of a home than any other place I had lived in.

The
reason I was rushing home was because we were having friends over for dinner,
and I knew Sarah would be panicking in the kitchen. Her culinary talents were
limited to microwaving popcorn and making scrambled eggs.

I
ran up the steps of our two-story building, our apartment being on the second
level. Grant Matthews and Marcus Stolby lived in the apartment on the first
floor and we had befriended them the instant we had moved in a year ago. They
were also seniors and both were easygoing, as well as easy on the eyes. It
didn’t hurt that they were also in a popular band. Sarah had an enormous crush
on Grant, a stocky blonde with blue eyes and a ready smile. His on-again,
off-again girlfriend Cara from his hometown got in the way of any romance
between the two of them, but that didn’t stop Sarah from flirting like crazy.

Marcus
was the shyer of the two, although I could never understand how someone who
looked like Marcus could be shy. At six two, with dark brown hair and dark
brown eyes, I knew tons of girls at school that were swooning over him but
Marcus always ducked his head and lowered his eyes when they draped themselves
over him.

I
knew the real reason Marcus rebuffed their advances was because of Jenny
McAllister, one of our friends coming over for dinner tonight. Jenny was a ball
of energy with her bouncy personality and quick laugh. Even though she was only
five one, she seemed larger than life because of her vivaciousness and
startling beauty, her translucent skin offsetting the deepness of her green
eyes and curly red hair. Very few guys were immune to her, including Marcus.
Unfortunately, Marcus was one in a long line of admirers and, because of his
shyness, he never seemed to be able to break through to the front of the pack.

I
unlocked our front door and was immediately greeted with smoke.

“Sarah?”
I called out. “What the heck is going on?”

Sarah
stuck her head out from the kitchen, her brown bangs plastered to her forehead
with sweat.

“Caitlin!
Help!” she yelped. “I just burned the garlic bread and I dropped the cheese on
the floor!”

I
laughed as I slipped off my coat, dropping my backpack onto the couch. I made
my way to the kitchen, stopping to open the living room window along the way.

“You
should’ve waited until I got home,” I admonished as I shook my head at the
black log on the baking sheet sitting on the stove. I could only imagine that
had been the garlic bread. “You being alone in the kitchen never turns out
well.”

Sarah
blew a puff of air up to her forehead to cool off her sweaty bangs and held up
her hands in surrender. “I was nervous you wouldn’t get home in time and I
wanted everything to be ready before everyone got here.

I
smirked because I knew “everyone” meant Grant. The guys from downstairs were
joining us for dinner, in addition to Jenny. This must mean that Grant was
off-again with Cara, since Sarah only got in a tizzy over Grant when she knew
there was a possibility. But I didn’t say anything. I didn’t think it was wise
to start a discussion about the merits of pursuing a guy in love with someone
else. I simply grabbed a potholder and picked up the baking sheet, sliding the
cinder block into the trashcan.

“Well,
don’t worry,” I reassured Sarah. “We have plenty of time. It’s only five-thirty
and we told them seven o'clock. Why don’t you make the salad and I’ll handle
everything else.”

Sarah
sighed. “Okay, I guess I can handle chopping vegetables.”

“Oh,
and I guess I should pick this up,” I said wryly as I bent over to pick up the
ball of mozzarella cheese that was on the floor.

“Yeah,
yeah, I know,” Sarah replied, smiling sheepishly. “Salad duty, it is.”

Sarah
and I spent the next hour and a half in easy company, chatting about our day
and classes. Sarah was the first person in my life that I felt completely at
ease with. I had spent most of my life with my guard up, uneasy with letting
people in. A lifetime of my father telling me I wasn’t good enough had made me
wary of trusting people. I didn't believe he constantly criticized me because
he didn't love me. Sometimes I thought that would have hurt less. Then I could
just shrug my father off as an asshole and not care what he thought. It hurt
too much that he minimized me because he really thought less of me. I believed
that my father loved me on some level and was disappointed I wasn’t more. More
driven. More ambitious. More like him.

My
father had started from nothing and built Kile Realty, an impressive real
estate company, from the ground up. George Kile had become a name to be
reckoned with in the realty industry. We had lived with the trappings of luxury
until I was twelve. Then his business had shattered with the recession and now
he was back to working for someone else and counting on commissions that hadn’t
happened yet to make ends meet. Sometimes I thought he resented the fact that I
was just starting out in life and had opportunities like college, which he had
never been given. My mother had passed away when I was five by the hands of a
drunk driver and I was an only child, so I had been the only family member to
witness his fall from grace. Sometimes I think he resented that too.

It’s
not that I wasn’t driven. I was at Maxwell University mostly on a scholarship
and I kept a high GPA close to a 4.0. But making money wasn’t my burning desire
in life. Life could be so hard to endure sometimes and often you just had to
hunker down and try to get through it. Especially with the visions.

Ever
since I could remember, I had visions that often woke me up in the middle of
the night, panicked and terrified by what I had seen. I used to believe they
were simply nightmares until I entered high school. Because then I started to
see the people in my dreams in real life.

First,
it had been the janitor my first day of high school. I had seen him the night
before thrashing in a river, some force dragging him below until he was
floating facedown in the water. Then it had been the new girl my second
month of high school, who I had seen falling from a building, her screams
reverberating in my ears long after I had woken up. It started a long chain of
strangers' faces I would see in my visions that I would eventually meet in real
life.

I
tried to convince myself that I had somehow seen these people before without
realizing it and was subliminally entering them into my dreams. But I knew I
was fooling myself. And I didn’t understand the images of death. I wasn’t
foreseeing their future. The janitor worked at my school until my sophomore year
when he moved and started working in another district. The new girl in school
was no longer the new girl by the time she moved away to Florida her junior
year.

I
didn’t know why I was cursed with these visions and my father had no patience
for my screams in the middle of the night, the tired eyes and lack of attention
in the morning. I could never share with him what was bothering me, so he just
took it as another sign that I wasn’t concentrating on life and trying to
become a success.

Because
of my father and these visions, I burrowed myself behind a wall where people
couldn’t be disappointed by me. I could never shake the feeling that I was
living on borrowed time before everything blew up in my face. As a result, I
could never let anyone get too close. I was too scared to tell anyone what I
was seeing because if I couldn’t tell my own father, who could I tell?

But
during our freshman year in college, the visions got to the point where I was
terrified to close my eyes at night, not wanting to see the grisly deaths in my
sleep. It had been easy to hide it from my first sex-crazed roommate, whose
attentions were elsewhere directed at night. But I couldn’t hide it from Sarah.

When
my whimpers began to wake her in the middle of the night, I figured she would just
think I was a freak. But the first night, when I had woken up in terror and
trembling, Sarah had simply laid down on my bed next to me. She hadn't asked me
what the dream had been about. She had just started talking about a diner in
her hometown that made the best grilled cheese. As she had chattered on about
the perfect ratio of bread to cheese, I had slowly calmed down and started
focusing on her words. About how it was imperative to butter both sides of the
bread to make sure it griddled properly. Soothed by her words, I had slowly
fallen back asleep.

She
never mentioned it the next day. And the nights when I would wake up,
shuddering and whimpering, she would lay down next to me and talk about
something inane and unimportant, soothing me back to sleep. Finally, when I
started to feel more comfortable around her, I asked her why she did what she
did. It turned out her younger sister used to have night terrors and this was
how she helped her go back to sleep. Sarah assumed I was having night terrors.
Until one day during our writing class which we shared second semester.

It
was the first day of class and I froze when the professor walked in. I had seen
him the night before, screaming in pain as a fire enveloped him. I had gasped
and ran out of the classroom, tears streaming down my face. I was usually able
to better control my reactions when seeing the people in my visions in real
life, but his death had been particularly gruesome.

Sarah
had followed me out of the classroom and everything I was holding in burst out.
She had stayed quiet as the words rushed out of me, the visions of death,
meeting my visions in real life. As I finished and looked up at her, expecting
to find disbelief or revulsion, she had given me a small smile.

“I
don’t really understand it. And it sounds a little scary.” Sarah paused and
took a deep breath. “Actually, it sounds a lot scary. But there’s a lot we
don’t know about this world. About how our minds work. I’m so sorry that you
have to go through this. But that doesn’t change you - the Caitlin I know.
You’re still the funny girl who watches infomercials and cooks a mean pot of
spaghetti sauce.”

With
those words, I understood that I had finally found someone who I could trust.
And slowly my trust in Sarah grew as she kept her word and didn’t look at me
like a freak when I would shudder when I met someone new, knowing what I was
experiencing. And miraculously, the visions grew less and less frequent until
they were a rare occurrence by the end of my sophomore year. And junior year had
been a brilliant respite, with no visions at all. I hadn't questioned why they
stopped, I was just grateful they had.

I
hadn’t told Sarah that I had started experiencing visions again this past
summer while I was interning for a financial firm back in my hometown of
Philadelphia. She had been so relieved and happy for me when the weight of the
visions had been lifted off my shoulders. I didn’t want to disappoint her by
telling her they had come back. Besides, there had only been a few visions, and
I had only had one since school started. I was hoping it would stay that way.

My
almost complete honesty and Sarah's acceptance was why I could be so
comfortable with her. She was the one person who really knew me. And so we
finished making dinner in comfortable ease, Sarah putting the salad together
while I simmered my Bolognese sauce, along with baking a new batch of garlic
bread.

“Oh,
crap!” Sarah exclaimed, glancing down at her watch. “It’s almost seven o'clock!
I need to change!”

I
glanced over at her and smiled. Sarah was wearing jeans and a red sweater that
complemented her athletic figure and pixie haircut.