I was worn out after the exam. When I finally woke up, it was just after dinner, and it was dark outside. I had to jump through literal hoops on my good leg to get them to let me take the final in person.

I would be off the crutches and out of this room in less than a month. I was sick of crashing midday and waking up in the evening just in time for everyone else to go out and have a life. I shifted to find the remote. As finals ended, with nothing else to study, I was looking for any distraction to occupy my mind.

The truth was, only one thing had occupied it for the last twenty-four hours, and she was the only thing I was interested in outside of these four walls. Where was she?

Surely, Lynn gave her my notes, and Keagan told her about them. I set her up to get an "A." Well, she set herself up if she just takes the note and does what I said. I couldn't believe I hadn't heard from her.

Did Lynn give her the quiz? Did she go to tutorials? Or was she back at that damn pool already?! What was the matter with me?

This had to be the four walls talking. The solitude of my bedroom had finally gotten to me, and it would only get worse with summer. The girls were all starting work.

No more study nights.

My track buddies would be starting their famous train-by-day, party-by-night combo.

Meanwhile, I was facing some post-injury psychosis after losing everything I'd worked for on the track and fixating on the only girl who does it for me. A girl I forced myself to believe I didn't want...

Psychosis. I clearly had not gotten out in a while.

I wasn't upset. Not like I was the day the knee happened. I wasn't bored, I just...

Truthfully, anytime I felt trapped, I knew it was for good reason, or let's just say I had enough ambition to push through it. I never got stuck. That's the one thing I got from my grandfather besides the car: the ability to reassess and move forward.

I had no choice with the knee, but I did have an option with how I felt. Or so I thought at the time. These four walls weren't going to have me trapped forever. I could be back to normal in no time.

Still, the solitude of my bedroom, and July being the only outside disturbance that played on a loop in my mind, even my dreams haunted me. It must have been subliminal or something, but I kept dreaming about that time I saw the deer I nearly hit.

It was when I first got my car, and a week or two before I should have been officially driving it by myself regarding a permit vs. my license, but this was East Texas. We had more back roads than highway patrol.

Overzealous and with adolescent excitement, I had been taking my car out at night and pushing it to its limit down two-lane highways. In hindsight, one of the most dangerous activities a teenager can participate in minus alcohol or sex, or the combination of all three.

I look back now and wonder if I wasn't testing my own limits. I had never been reckless like Billy, Angel, or Reagan. My behavior with July is the most reckless I could cop to other than pressing the gas to its limit those nights on the highway alone.

It was stupid and asinine in terms of the car itself. If anything had gone wrong... if it had gone differently that one night...

I had pushed the gas through this area famous for winding curves and prided myself on how fast I could take them in the pitch-black night with no streetlights.

Thank God I was going up a hill and naturally slowing instead of having to hit the brakes on the way down. To this day, I still don't know how I knew to stop or what made me. I know I hadn't seen it coming until it walked right up to my windshield and stared me down.

It was a deer. I think a doe, actually.

It's incredibly common to hit one in East Texas, and it's idiotic I hadn't accounted for that. It ruins your car. A deer runs out of no where in front of your vehicle, you hit it, it kills it, and that kills your car. It's not good business on either end. Usually, it happens so fast that both parties are left not knowing what hit them until they see the aftermath of the vehicle, or the wild animal laid out across the street, or much worse, physically stuck in the dash.

Again, I don't know what made me stop or how I could stop that fast without destroying my new brakes or skidding into it, but I did stop. I heard my car at full speed, then my brakes, then silence, and suddenly, my headlights illuminated the creature. It was startling and magnificent how its eyes shone at me, and its coat glowed.

The large doe was not afraid or in a hurry to flee. It just walked across the highway and stopped when it got in my high beams... and looked. It looked up at the lights as if looking right through me. Funny, if you think about it... for the time it stayed there looking, we were both trapped.

It was spectacular and scary. I could have hit it. I never forgot how it looked at me so curiously and subjective to its own thoughts. They are typically very scared, spastic or appear caught. The whole, "deer in the head lights expression." I guess I was the one that felt caught in the situation. Caught, and lucky we all were spared... me, the unusual doe, and my car.

People often hit deer, but that had been my only encounter, and there I was dreaming about it. I guess I did feel trapped in that bedroom, only... was I the car or the deer?

When I did get out to take my exam, I was finally among the living the entire morning, and it changed nothing. I still looked for her down every hallway. My goal in calculus above my own final had been to speak to Keagan about July. My God, I guess I was trapped.

The following week, the results of our finals were available in the office. Reagan had offered to pick up everyone's and bring them to Lynn and me if she had time before work. She was never on time, so I admit I anticipated that July would knock on my door that day.

I was disappointed when Reagan and Lynn appeared.

As they compared our scores, it ran through my mind how she hadn't called. And, again, obviously knows where I live. I'm the one cooped up who can't go anywhere.

Maybe that's what this was... she was toying with me. Maybe she was just getting me back for the auditorium. Maybe this behavior was second nature to her, and she wasn't as innocent as I thought... STOP it!

I couldn't do that to her. I couldn't even entertain or think that of her. Never. Selfish as I was with her, I could never be so self-centered that I would let myself believe something false of her just to pacify my own bruised ego.

It was already selfish enough to know what we did together was in fact just for me...

How did I know?

It was electric. We learned from each other the same way it had been that day in the rain by her house, and again in the auditorium. She responded to how I wanted her, and we were both so receptive. No matter how skilled at each other we became in our mere minutes together, I saw it in her eyes and felt it when our bodies attached so naturally. This was new to her. The physical act was organic and an absolute first, as was the intensity and aching for her was for me.

It didn't feel dirty, as if an agenda was behind it. The act felt right as rain. It was insanely personal. Between us... and it was real. That's why it scared the living hell out of me.

Once I found out she aced her test... I never doubted her; I was left with only one concern. Did I scare her away? What we did... Was she upset or afraid of me? Is that why she hadn't come around again? Did she like it? Was it the last straw and she finally had to expose us as a dirty secret to Reagan and Lynn? No. Not the last one.

I looked up at Reagan and Lynn cackling over some end of year happenstance, and there was nothing on their faces to indicate she had shared our secret. I may not have known what July thought, but I knew she would never betray our personal moments. Deep down, it wasn't as much about the secret we kept as it was about what it meant to both of us to keep it. Trust. We may not have been able to communicate that to each other, much less our friends, but we had upheld each other's trust.

I don't know... I think that meant a lot to me somehow. Maybe more than it should have. It made us even more personal. My chest tightened just thinking about it, and I fought the twinge I felt below the belt. I focused and jumped back into Reagan and Lynn's end of year gossip.