Hell in a Handbasket

chapter one.

Two years back my dad admitted to having a posh British girlfriend across the pond, packed a messy suitcase, and hopped a plane. I decided then that one parent could leave. It was fair if one parent was in possession of a long-hidden affair, fallen victim to a fatal disease, or got in a tragic accident. One parent was allowed to die, allowed to move astronomical distances, or allowed to say “Sorry Quinn, I’m just not really digging this family sitch anymore”. Two parents couldn’t leave. Two parents dropping their lives and replacing it with a bag of clothes and a plane ticket to Aruba was life being unfair.

I was nineteen when my mom hauled a sack of her most prized possessions over her shoulder and took off into the night.

It was unfair.

At the time, I had been hovering on the edge of independence between my freshman and sophomore year in college, and living with my two closest friends in an apartment on the skirt of the Minneapolis skyline. Liam needed a roommate, Colleen needed a room without siblings, and I needed to get out of dodge. The three of us decided that our friendship, having been built up through the ranks of grade school and the first year of college, would result in sharing a commuting residence a few blocks from our college campus.

To kick off the most trying summer of my life, I kissed my beloved dog Levi goodbye, attempted to get it through to my frequently inebriated mother that this was necessary, and sent a text to dad over in London telling him what was up with his one and only daughter (considering the time zone differences, it’s very probable I woke him up).

I would like more than anything to say I threw my most important belongings into a pillowcase, parkoured my way down from the second story of my house, and ran off into the night with no trace, save for a passive-aggressive note chilling out on the kitchen counter. But, if I were to be completely honest (and I really have been trying to), I wouldn’t have the athletic ability, decisive ability, or spontaneity to do any of the above. At least, not without making an ass of myself. Instead, I waited on the curb outside my house with an Everest of belongings and a glowering mother in the doorway behind me one sunny afternoon, waiting for Liam’s junky Ford to putt down the street. I had expected him to be late. He was.

Mom would probably say she only ditched because I ditched her first. It was a valid argument.

There were no tears in my eyes when I left, not even for poor, pudgy Levi. Instead, Collie poked her head out from the back seat and commented on a small scowl pulling at my features. I’m sure I was wondering how long it would be before my phone was plagued with a series of drunken texts from my mother. As suspected, it wasn’t long. But with a twenty-four hour pizza place down the street from our building, this much was ignored and we lived like royalty anyways.

Liam, Collie and I had been moved in for about a month and a half when the aforementioned life soured into unfairness. By that time we had familiarized ourselves with a group of five young fellows that had taken to a suite on the floor below and a trio of princesses to the one a floor above. And Phil, too. He lived and smoked in a studio apartment on the top floor. I found him fascinating, like you do when you know something important will happen, and that truly interesting person will be there for it…

By default, rather than by fate or the magic of chemistry and the bond of friendship, the lot of us became a group. We partied together, we finished each other’s milk, and by the end of the first week we put our guns back in their holsters and it was communally understood there would be no doors locked, and drunken building-mates could burst into our rooms at ungodly hours each morning to worship the porcelain god in someone else's bathroom.

It was a warm July night, but that didn’t stop the hyperactive air conditioners in the building, and thus it didn’t stop the drunken cuddling taking place in room 329. Liam, Collie and I were hosting the sleepover, and while he was drooping with the effects of alcohol I was still proudly and diligently team sober. Collie had already stuck her nose in the crook of her beloved new boy-toy’s neck and passed out there. I was the only one both coherent and awake, and falling into the aching end-of-the-night loneliness when, conveniently, I heard the familiar hum of my phone vibrating on the kitchen counter. I remember some sort of divine inspiration, as if god and all his holy angels were forgiving me for not going to church and losing our coffee-table bible by delivering a sole desire to rampage across the room, over the huddled masses on the floor, and to my incoming text message.

But I was young, and I was stupid, and I stayed where I was.

And besides, joining me on the futon (or, as Liam insisted on calling it, the “flip-and-fuck”, even though I knew for a fact he wasn’t getting any) was one Cameron Sutton. He was about six foot two, but he still managed to curl up and rest his head against my lap. At the time I was so smitten with the lanky Mr. Sutton I would’ve only gently shaken his shoulder and said “Cameron? Rise and shine!” if there were flashing lights and fire lapping at the door. This devotion to a boy or man alike was strange enough even to catch the socially dense attention of Liam, who had recently knit his brows together and ever so kindly asked me “Since when did you start feeling emotion?” It’s true that there has been an ongoing debate between ex-boyfriends and ex-interests as to the legitimacy of my spectrum of emotions, but independent of Ethan from five months ago sincerely declaring me a robot or Liam jokingly saying such was the fact that only the morning or a particularly crucial emergency would coax Cameron’s head from its (hopefully) comfortable position in my lap. That is, if I could help it. Ergo, my phone stayed where it was, even after five minutes, when a second buzz interrupted the chorus of baby-horse breathing coming from the sleeping carpet.

Unfortunately, Cameron stirred from the noise and lifted from my legs. Across the room and against the wall, Liam glanced up and waggled his eyebrows. He had one of the princesses from upstairs draped on his arm, whose name I admittedly and uncaringly didn’t really know. The two of us had gotten used to calling her “lopsided-face girl” in secret until a matter of days previously, when she and Liam started whispering into each other’s ears. I had heard him call her Angel, but I refused to believe that was really her name, and just a product of his incessant horniness.

“What was that…?” mumbled Cameron, making an attempt to sit up but hovering at the halfway point. It was my heart, beating for you, Cameron. I just smiled and, because he was just too damn cute, smoothed his hair with my fingers.

After copious, shameful amounts of stalking his Facebook, I had managed to piece together plenty on Cameron Sutton. I could make an educated guess and say he was first recognized as a human of the Y chromosome sort when he turned fifteen and shot up a foot. It was about two and a half years later, when he filled out, that text messages from pretty girls started arriving to his inbox. This hardly distracted from the excitable hand gestures and animated expressions he sported when speaking of something he enjoyed. He had a fairly cultured family that gifted him with an extensive knowledge of movies and music, but because he came from a modest suburb he was simple enough for the list of things he enjoyed to be plentiful. I adored it, but this was something I couldn’t bring myself to tell him.

“I think the raccoons are back,” I told him. He blinked and nodded, about as comprehensive and concerned as a doorbell. I grinned. “Go back to sleep.” He lowered his high cheekbone against my thigh again, and because I had to bend to the will of the friction in my chest, I kept my fingers tangled in his hair.

“What time is it?” his slurred speech was barely coherent as he nestled back into position. “I want you to de-virginize me” I think, is what you meant to say.

“Go back to sleep.”

I spent a good ten minutes exchanging odd faces with Liam, the grand majority of which I assumed were about how pathetic I was, before talking myself into placing a chaste kiss against a now sleeping Cameron’s temple.

I checked the messages in the morning.