Page 15 of Campus Crush
“Gram? Mason?” I called out as I entered Gram’s house. Her car was in the driveway, so I knew she was home.
I’d already been living on campus when my mom passed away in the car accident, but my brother was still a minor, so Gram became his legal guardian and we sold my childhood home when he moved in with her. Gram put the funds from the sale in a trust for Mase and me to be disbursed in increments. I started getting small amounts monthly and used the money to help pay some of my rent.
As much as I loved Gram, it was hard to come home sometimes. It was weird for a house to be both a sanctuary and a hard memory to face.
This wasn’t the house I was raised in, and it was difficult to see memories of my mom and her childhood when I missed her so desperately.
My mom had been my first best friend. She’d been my cheerleader, always on the sidelines rooting for me. When I felt awkward and clumsy, she made me feel strong and brave. She made me believe that it didn’t matter how meankids were at school because I was the nerdy girl who preferred math and science over doing girly things. She always taught me to embrace what made me unique. She used to tell me that the most important thing we could do as human beings was to embrace our brand of special—the thing that made us different from everyone else—and that society focused so much on “sameness” because people were afraid of standing out.
I’d felt lost without her.
Gram did her best, but it wasn’t the same.
Nothing felt the same without Mom here.
But as hard as it was to come here and see memories of Mom, I couldn’t avoid it because I loved Gram and my brother needed me. Mason had become a shell of himself since our mom died. I hadn’t seen him smile since before her accident, which was crushing because he had one of the best smiles of anyone I’d ever met.
We were a close-knit family, and we felt her loss with every aching breath, no matter how much time passed.
I’d thrown myself into my studies and work and trying to leave a legacy at CFU that I knew my mom would be proud of, whereas my brother had stopped all of his activities, except for one. Football.
I was pretty sure he still played because the coach refused to accept him quitting. When Mason had tried to turn his pads back in, Coach Clyde told him that he could turn them in at the end of the season with everyone else, but he expected him to show up to practice. For nearly two years, he’d kept Mason engaged with football. He’d even gone so far as to pick him up for practice until he was sure Mason would show up on his own.
I owed Coach a huge thank you.
Mason was still quieter and more withdrawn than he’d ever been. He still refused to get his license—something I suspected was in part because our mom was killed in a car accident—and had only started hanging out with his friends more often in the last few months. But at least I knew he had some kind of outlet, especially since Coach Clyde did summer football sessions to keep the players engaged. It gave me a bit of comfort to know he had a community around him and wasn’t here drowning in his grief.
Mason had left a voicemail for me that he was worried about Gram, and so instead of coming home for a visit tomorrow like I had originally planned, I decided to come a day early.
Gram didn’t live far from the university—only about a thirty-minute drive if traffic was good. Campus was quieter in the summer, which sometimes made it easier to slip away for a visit. But with my work schedule and internship, it still felt like there were never enough hours in the day.
“Mase,” I called again.
Instead of calling back, he walked around the corner. He’d grown taller since the last time I was home. He’d already been taller than my five feet six before our mom passed away, but he’d shot up in the last year and a half and was apparently still growing. His dark brown hair that was the same shade as our dad’s was shaggy, and I had to fight back the revulsion at the mullet cut.
How the hell had that trend made a comeback? I didn’t understand it. His dark brown eyes met mine, and my heart ached at the way they didn’t light up like they used to. He’d been such a happy, carefree little kid. Part of me felt like I’d lost the brother I’d known my whole life when our mom died.
“Hey, what’s going on?” I asked.
“Something is up with Gram, but she won’t tell me.” His voice was deep and scratchier than I remembered.
I placed the back of my hand on his forehead to check if he was getting sick, and he instantly pushed it away.
I furrowed my brow but let it slide. I knew from experience that pestering him with questions about his well-being would get me nowhere.
“What do you mean something’s up with her?” I asked.
He shrugged, and God did I hate that teenage boy shrug he’d adopted. It never told me a damn thing even though he always acted like it should explain everything. I arched a brow, and he rolled his eyes before continuing. “She’s been weird lately—quiet—and she started going through her stuff in the attic.”
Thatwasconcerning.
For one thing, Gram had the biggest personality of anyone I’d ever met. She could walk into a room with complete strangers and walk out with dozens of new friends.
But even more concerning was that she was hanging out in the attic. Gram had once told me she stored all the memories that were too hard to see up there so that she still had them, but didn’t have to look at them every day. I knew all of Grandpa’s stuff was stored up there, and most of the things from my mom that we’d kept. I hadn’t seen her go up there in years.
“Is she up there now?”
It was the only logical reason why she hadn’t greeted me at the door like she always did.
