The Opposite of Falling Apart [Formerly Three and a Half Good Legs]

8 (free sample)

B R E N N A N

Sometimes, it was just as hard being off work as it was actually going to work.

Especially when your impending freshman year of college was taking up the majority of your thoughts, every time you had a non-busy moment to fill with anxiety. Brennan tried to concentrate on writing. Ing was standing on front of the pristine (too pristine; blindingly white) House of Games in Santos, preparing to put her name in for the Game that could decide the rest of her life. If she didn't think too hard about it, Ing could almost imagine that this was just any other September First...Not thinking too hard. That was the key. That was what Brennan was missing—what she couldn't do.

She squinted at her laptop screen. She couldn't get the words right, much like her in real life. Ing had gone inside, where she was to write her name on a slip of paper, drop it into a bowl, and...and. She should say something, probably, in response to the 'good luck' proffered to her by the attendant at the entry table. Brennan sighed. Maybe if she were better at talking, her characters would be better at talking.

She closed her laptop, pulling her phone out. She opened the allfixx app and pulled up the draft of her story. She thought about publishing a summary—just a taste, to judge interest. Then again, she didn't even have a title yet. She closed allfixx and opened messenger to sent a message to Emma.

Hey, can I bounce some novel ideas off of you?

Nothing back. Emma was probably at work.

Brennan sighed again and swung her legs over the side of the bed.

What to do, what to do.

She thought about her few encounters with the boy who rear-ended her. Jonas. It was kind of nice, knowing his name, instead of just thinking of him as 'the guy who ran into her car'. It had been weird, because she had actually managed to talk to him—like somehow he'd made her actually want to speak, which was an entirely new level of weird that she wasn't ready to deal with yet.

Anyways, something was off about Jonas. She didn't quite know what, but whatever it was, it didn't seem like something bad. Anyhow, it was almost easier to talk to him since he seemed like he was irritated 100% of the time. If he was already irritated, Brennan couldn't be the one to make him grumpy.

She sighed, and checked her email again, for the hundredth time (not an exaggeration; she'd likely checked it at least that many times since it came last week). There it was. The dreaded 'roommate' email from SIUe. For the hundredth time, Brennan read over it. Important information about your Fall 2014-Spring 2015 Housing Assignment.

She read on, the words blurring into one another in black and white lines. Prairie Hall, room 165, PRS. And then the abbreviation key: PRS=shared bedroom. Shared. Shared.

Your roommate is Ambreen Saluja.

Ambreen. She liked the name.

Brennan wondered how she'd be. Was she social? Extroverted? Would she have people in the room at all hours of the night? Did she have a boyfriend she'd constantly be having over? Would she play loud music? And most importantly, would she even like Brennan?

She pulled her phone out again, opening Facebook. She searched for Ambreen.

She held her breath, and hit 'add friend'. Friend request sent, it now said. Brennan sighed and hit the 'message' button.

She stared at the screen for a moment. What was she supposed to say? Hi, I'm Brennan! I'm your totally wigged out roommate who is really afraid you'll hate her. Will you hate me?

Instead, she wrote. Hi Ambreen! I got an email saying that you are going to be my roommate for the upcoming school year! I just wanted to say hi, and maybe get to know one another before the school year starts. I hope your summer is going well!

She hit enter, and the message sent. There, it was done. Whatever happened, she'd at least made the effort.

Still bored, she frowned. A sudden curiosity twitched through her. She stared at the screen a second more before going back to the Facebook search bar.

She wondered if she could find Jonas. Did that make her creepy? For some insane reason, she wanted to keep talking to him, even though he clearly didn't seem to like her very much.

Jonas Avery, Brennan typed. She wasn't a stalker (or maybe she was, since she was looking him up on Facebook); she just knew his mom's last name, since she was a frequent customer at the Kroger deli.

She found him. Right hometown, a high school name she recognized. She couldn't match his face with the one from his profile picture, but it hadn't been changed in a while, and it was taken from a far enough distance away that she couldn't study it anyhow.

She hesitated before her twitchy fingers hit 'add friend'. At the time, it seemed like a good idea. Now that it was out there, her request winging its way through the internet super-highways, Brennan felt incredibly stupid. Her brain kept asking her—illogically—what if he doesn't know it's you?

So she sent him a message too.

J O N A S

Ever since the library debacle, Jonas had decided on two things:

1. He wouldn't be leaving the house unless he absolutely had to.

2. By default, because of number one, he wouldn't be going to any of the myriad graduation parties and college sendoffs his high school classmates had sent him Facebook invites to.

All his old friends were busy going to, apparently, whatever parties they could find. And it didn't take much for them to declare that they needed to have a party to celebrate (case in point, one of the girls in his class had set up a pet party, simply because she got a new dog; Jonas wasn't sure why he was invited, as he didn't have a pet).

Jonas's phone was constantly dinging with the notifications. You've been invited to an event: Chris Stewart's Graduation Party. Or, You've been invited to Courtney Lewis's College Sendoff Celebration and Pool Party (seriously, how would it even make sense for Jonas to go swimming? The fake leg wasn't waterproof (though you could buy those; his mom had offered) and Jonas wasn't about to rock the swimming trunks and amputated leg look at a party for the girl he'd had a crush on back in middle school).

So he hit decline on every single one of them, because that was simpler. He didn't need the notifications, the invitations from people who had never really gotten to know him anyways, for the most part, and the reminders that everyone else was out being able to do all the things he could no longer do. Eventually, he just turned off notifications on the Facebook app and let his phone fall silent.

Which was why he didn't see her friend request until it had been nearly a week since she sent it.

Brennan Davis, two mutual friends.

The mutual friends were two people from his high school who he sort-of knew. Small world.

He debated over whether or not to accept her request. He wasn't really looking to form any attachments to people in his hometown, outside of his family. It just got awkward once you went off to college and then, eventually, you'd fall out of touch. He'd seen it happen with Rhys, although it was a bit messier for his brother because there were, not only best friends (several) and sports buddies (many), but there was also a girlfriend (Madison, who Jonas didn't even like, especially since she seemed to think that an amputation meant that your lifespan had been shortened dramatically, and basically hinted so to Jonas—you should get out and have as much fun as you can, while you still can—the first time she'd seen him after the accident).

No, attachments weren't for Jonas. For him, friends he'd had in his hometown were a 'before' and the friends he'd (hopefully) make at college would be 'after'.

So he later found himself questioning why he actually accepted her friend request.