The Redemption of Callie & Kayden

leather chair I always had to sit in.
    He wrote down something else and then shut the manila folder and shoved it aside with a stack on the corner of his desk. “How about this?” He overlapped his hands on top of his desk. “How about we just try to look for your brother? It doesn’t hurt to try, right?”
    I rolled my wrist until it popped and gave a burning aftershock, something that’s been happening ever since I cut them open. “And what if we find him?”
    He opened the tin of Altoids on his desk and popped one into his mouth, leaning back in the chair. “Well, that’s really up to you.”
    After sitting in silence for about fifteen minutes, listening to the wall clock tick and the traffic rush outside, I’d agreed. When I went out to dinner that night with Callie, Seth, and Luke, they decided to take it upon themselves to look for him.
    I just didn’t expect Seth to find him so quickly.
    “He kind of looks the same,” I note, taking in his green eyes, which resemble mine in an eerie, uncomfortable kind of way.
    “He’s married,” Seth says, tapping his finger on the top of the paper. “And he’s a teacher.”
    I gape at him. “A teacher? Fuck, really?”
    Seth’s eyebrows knit. “Why are you so surprised?”
    I shrug and then head for the exit, winding around the book cart blocking the path. “I don’t know… It just seems so fucking normal.” I slam my palm against the door and push it open. The area around and underneath my scars aches a little and I massage my thumb across it as I walk out into the sunlight with the paper in my hand. The sun is gleaming and melting the snow off the grass and the sidewalks. It’s nice to see, but it makes everything a watery, muddy mess. The gutters near the streets are flooding the sidewalks and the grass looks like a pond.
    “So what are you going to do?” he asks, hopping over a puddle and then he kicks a rock off the sidewalk.
    I shake my head and sidestep a large hole in the sidewalk filled with murky water. “I don’t know.”
    “You don’t know?”
    “I don’t.”
    He doesn’t get it and I don’t expect him to. But there is one person who will. “Is Callie at her dorm?” I ask.
    Seth nods as we veer around the side of the humanities building and hike diagonally across the lawn toward the sidewalk that borders the street. The trees are raining down droplets of water and they land on my shirt and the paper. There’s a light spring breeze blowing against my back. “She’s working on some paper that needs to be turned in by the end of the year, but she’s hit a”—he makes air quotes as he walks backward—“writer’s zone.”
    I smile at the thought of her locked in her bedroom, scribbling away in her journal, naked. Although I’m pretty sure the last part isn’t true. But if I really wanted it to be, I could probably strip her down and have her write naked for me. She’s trusted me a lot lately and our relationship has been heating up immensely. But I never push her—I don’t ever want to.
    “I’m going to head over and talk to her.” I swing around a jogger stretching near a tree. “Are you coming?”
    He shakes his head, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his tan pants. “Nah, I got a date.” He hurries off, with a spring in his step, toward the parking lot on the opposite side of the main office, the puddles splashing up beneath him. When he reaches his car, there’s a guy waiting for him with a big teddy bear in his hand. It makes me smile, thinking of Callie and the teddy bear at the carnival.
    I pick up the pace, taking as long a stride as possible, allowing the wind to take me where I need to go.
    * * *
    I knock on the door several times before her roommate, Violet, answers. She’s kind of a scary chick, with studs on her clothes and one in her nose. Her black hair is streaked red and she has a dragon tattoo on her neck. She wears a lot of black and she always has this look on her face like she’s about to start a fight.
    Violet walked in on us one time when we were having sex. Callie was absolutely mortified, although I thought it was kind of funny. Violet didn’t think so though, and she chewed us out, saying we needed to hang a scarf on the doorknob next time. I was a little surprised by her reaction. Violet has a reputation around the campus and it seemed a little unfitting for her to get so worked up over sex.
    “You’re not Jesse,” she says, with her hand on the doorknob, frowning. She