Finding Fuchsia

3. Humble Abode

When I was in the third grade, my father gifted my mother a very special present for their wedding anniversary. He had given her a silver chain necklace, it was large and extravagant, but what had been special to my mother was the faceted stone. It was a large neon blue Apatite; my mother's favorite kind of precious stone, natural and rare.

I remembered how exuberantly happy she had been after receiving it, and when I saw the stone, I immediately understood why. It was the most beautiful color I had ever seen, blue-green with specks of yellow naturally ingrained in the stone.

I saw the same beautiful color now after I opened my eyes, but instead of the Apatite stone, a pair of animated eyes looked back at me.

"Cali?" The voice that spoke my name was familiar as my own and, for a moment, I thought I was still dreaming, but then I realized it had come from behind the person who stood above me.

"Logan?" I tried to sit up to look for him but a woozy gut-wrenching sensation pulled me back down.

"I'm here." The owner of the Apatite eyes moved aside as Logan's face came into view, expressing unmitigated concern. "How are you feeling?" he asked.

"Like I've been punched in the face," I grumbled.

"Calliope?"

An irritated expression crossed Logan's face and I looked behind him at the owner of the blue eyes, it was Nathan. He stood a few feet behind Logan, one hand stiffly pressed behind his neck.

"I'm really sorry for what happened," he said, looking down. "I honestly didn't think you were so close."

I could have mistaken his aversion to look at me as insincerity, or even rudeness, but there was something with the way he stood now, his shoulders stooped low, that told me he was forthright in his apology.

"It's okay." I smiled awkwardly.

Nathan's head snapped up at me, his eyes wide. It was clear that he hadn't been expecting anything close to my reaction.

Trying my best to avoid Logan's heated eyes, I continued, "It wasn't your fault, I should have known better than to interfere with your . . . temperament."

Before I could hear his reply, the door to the small infirmary creaked open and Mia's head peeped in. When she saw I was awake, she let out a sigh of relief and tiptoed inside, eyeing the nurse working on her computer on the other side of the room. There must have been a limit to the number of visitors.

A second later, her brother, Michael, walked in behind her. To no one's surprise, he avoided Nathan and walked right past him to my other side, where Mia now stood.

"Welcome to my humble abode," I joked to break the silence.

Mia cracked a smile, but no one else seemed to find humor in the situation.

"How are you feeling?" Mia asked, patting my arm on the bed.

"Honestly? I feel fine, besides a slight headache," I said, smiling reassuringly at Nathan, who still stood awkwardly away from everyone. "I just really want to go back to our room."

"Cal, you were knocked unconscious, one of your eyes is swollen shut. It's okay to cry," Mia said.

"No, really—I'm fine, it's nothing compared to my childhood injuries. Right, L?" I looked at Logan, my partner in crime who witnessed most of those injuries when I was growing up. He still looked unconvinced, which gave me the impression that I must have looked worst than I felt.

"Just maybe don't look in a mirror for, uhm, a week or so," Michael finally spoke, eyeing what was probably a forming bruise on the right side of my forehead, where I felt an intense throbbing.