Kamber

Chapter 1

When you have an unusual name, it can do one of several things for you. If you’re super hot, you go nowhere but up. I mean, what’s more desirable than a pretty girl named Brynne or a cute guy named Demetri? On the other hand, if you’re super not, then your weird name does nothing but drag you down. At that point you might as well be the proverbial hideous girl named Ulga and walk yourself to the corner with it. Though with me, and maybe this makes me sound vain, I didn’t know which side it hit me hardest from.

“Hey!”

I quit my hurried pace I’d been jogging at and, turning toward the noise, find a tall brunette boy jogging toward me to close the gap between us.

As I stand panting, waiting, I can’t help but think of how I recognize the boy. I’d been jogging in the park every day for around two weeks now since I’d moved into an apartment down the street, and almost every day I’d seen this boy playing with his dog, which trods obediently after him now.

“Hey,” he says again once he’s closer.

“Hi.” I nod at him with my arms on my hips as I struggle to catch my breath.

“Um, this might seem kind of awkward, but I’ve seen you running through here- ah,” he stops himself, shaking his head. “That sounded creepy. What I meant was I’ve noticed-”

“-It’s cool,” I exhale a short breathy laugh. “I know what you mean.”

“Oh, cool, great- so, the point is I think you’re pretty cute and, if you’re interested, I’d love to buy you a coffee or something sometime.”

Saying I was flattered was an understatement; I was flabbergasted. An, admittedly, cute boy noticing you under normal conditions is one thing, but a cute boy making a point of pulling you away from whatever you were doing, no matter how sweaty or relatively unattractive you were at the moment, is another thing all together, and it left me speechless.

“You’re uncomfortable,” the guy says of my silence. “I’m sorry, maybe I was too forward. Uh, can we start over? I’m-”

“-No, no it’s fine! Trust me; I’m so honored. I would love that. Really.”

“Oh,” the boy smiled, obviously relieved. “Sweet. Well, I’m Braeden, for the record.”

I hesitated.

Even though I’d had the name my whole life, I still had a moment of temporary confliction when it came to introducing myself. More often than not I’ve considered introducing myself as merely Amber, but I always knew deep down that if I really hit it off with whoever I gave the shortened name to there’d come a time when I’d have to tell them the extended version, which would defeat the entire purpose.

“Kamber,” I tell him.

“Sorry, what’s that?”

I roll my eyes slightly, not so much annoyed with him as with the name itself that could work as a perfectly normal name without the random bonus consonant tagged onto the front that serves only to confuse people.

“Kamber,” I clarify. “Like, ‘Amber’ with a ‘K’.”

“Oh,” he nods. “Cool. Kamber.”

Maybe Braeden didn’t actually say it in a way that sounded deflated and already unamused. In fact, he probably didn’t say it that way at all. However, in my head, it sounded that way. Probably just my brain telling me it sounded that way because that was the way I was used to hearing it.

My eyes flitted to the ground as my head and my heart fought against each other; my head recalling all of the times I’d heard kids at school saying things to me like “What? Did your mom have a seizure in the middle of trying to name you Amber?” while my heart tried instead to reassure me that the name actually meant something to my mom, and to my dad for that matter, which is all that should’ve mattered to me, not the knee-jerk reaction it extracted from people.

As Braeden scratched his head, looking at his dog while asking me what times I’d be free for lunch or something, I swear I could hear my mom’s voice in my head clear as a bell.

Kate and I were inseparable.

We sat next to each other in only one class during the eighth grade, we didn’t even have lunch together, but somehow that was enough. From that first week forward we were, like I said, in-freaking-separable.

It was one of those friendships like the ones you get in elementary school where that one friend becomes your only friend. However, unlike in elementary school, it didn’t end two weeks later after which we’d both find new best friends; it lasted for years, even as we found ourselves going into our junior year at East County high school.

During the school week we were study buddies, dedicating free periods to my helping Kate write english essays that didn’t sound totally last minute and her helping me gain a painfully basic understanding of chemistry and calculus. The weekends though were a completely different story. We would stay up all night long watching movies and daring each other to go the longest without drinking water while eating Fiery Hot Cheetos and an assortment of other crazy stupid things. In fact, one time we were trying and failing to pull an all nighter, so we’d burn one another’s arm with ice cubes and salt whenever we started dozing off. We returned to school on Monday sporting tons of red spots.

One of my favorite memories of all time was the first time after years of coaxing that Kate finally agreed to sing in one of those Teen Idol things at the fair. She had an incredible voice. She could sing something slow and meaningful with enough passion to move a room to tears one moment then belt out a loud throaty country song the next, both of which would’ve been spot-on perfect in pitch.

When she walked on stage to take her turn at the mic, I went nuts. My throat was raw for days after how loud I yelled. I got a few strange looks, but I couldn’t care less. Not with my best friend taking the biggest leap of faith I’d seen her take yet.

She sang beautifully, one of those sappy songs I told you could bring even the fiercest of bad-asses to sobs with, but the part that really got me to break down was the dedication she gave at the beginning.

Not all of the singers dedicated their performances, but a good handful of them did, and I didn’t expect Kate to at all.

“I’m going to be singing You’re the Best Thing today, and I want to send it out to my best friend, Leslie. I love you, baby!” She winked at me in the crowd as she said it and I laughed. At that point neither of us had had boyfriends for several months, so we’d occasionally tease each other by calling the other “baby”.

Then she sang. And I almost drowned in my tears each time she sang the line “don’t go, don’t go away.”

Each time mom’s phone rang our house became filled with the words of The Style Council. She always told me it was because she forever wanted to remember that moment when Kate asked her not to go, but I know, deep down, it’s my mom’s plea to Kate to not have gone first.