“Time shouldn’t be wasted,” she says. “I don’t believe in being late.”
“Neither do I, unless I don’t want to go, which is most of the time.”
She laughs. “So it’s true, you have a tree house?”
I point toward the east side of the yard where my tree is. “It’s true.”
She nods in quiet appreciation. “Well, I think it’s kind of cool.”
I think it’s kind of cool that she thinks it’s kind of cool, but I don’t say that. Instead, I open the latch on the gate and swing my arm across it so she can get by. She moves past me, but only far enough to turn and wait, to allow me to lead the way. I stop at the ladder and motion for her to climb.
“Ladies first. Here, let me take your notebook.”
“I got it,” she says. “Thanks, though.” She shoves her pens in her pocket and places the notebook in her waistband. Straightening, her hands make quick work of resecuring her mass of blond hair into that high bun that Emmett would die to have. She hauls herself up each rung with no problem, and I’m quick to follow behind. Her body is folded at the waist so she’s half in the tree house, half still on the ladder when she says, “Holy crap. This is an apartment, Kyler, not a tree house.”
“It’s sweet,” I agree. “Go on in. You’re holding up traffic.”
Her shoes clear the last two rungs as she hoists herself through the door.
I climb in myself and rise to my feet as she’s looking around in wonder. Reminds me of when Macy was a toddler and saw the ocean for the first time. “This place is yours?”
“Since I was six. Make yourself at home.” Feels weird to say that, because I can count on one hand the number of people who have been permitted to enter the sacred ground of the inside of the tree house. Lennon doesn’t realize this is a big deal for me.
She sets her notebook down on a small end table that sits in the back corner before I spot one of my own notebooks. The thing is practically held together by stickers at this point. I’d been searching through it for one of the random thoughts of a random mind I’d remembered writing. Thought it would make for good song lyrics. But I’ve searched three full notebooks so far and keep coming up short. I eye the book, trying to figure out a way to get it without being obvious, but I don’t get the chance—she’s already reaching for it. I move fast enough to snatch it out from right beneath her fingertips.
Her eyes widen with surprise. I get it. It was an innocent gesture on her part, and I’ve startled her. “Sorry,” she blurts. Her hand pulls back, and she intertwines her fingers. As if by lacing them together, she’ll be able to keep them in check.
“It’s okay.” I hold the book up. “Song lyrics. It’s like showing someone my diary, Lennon.”
She nods. “Fair enough.”
There’s a long, awkward silence between us. “Let’s get started, yeah?”
“Sure.”
“Sure? I mean, I know the subject is boring, but don’t sound so excited.”
“I’m fine with the project,” she says curtly. She sits down on one side of the mattress, cross-legged, before opening her notebook and uncapping her pen, flipping it, and placing the cap on the other end. Oh God, she’s pissed.
I try to redeem myself. “Listen, I’m sorry I snatched the notebook away like that—”
She cuts me off. “It’s not that. It’s your hoodie.”
I arch a brow. “My hoodie offends you?”
“It’s not offensive,” she says, “it’s distracting.”
“How is my choice of clothing distracting? That doesn’t even make sense.”
“Sure it does. I’ve seen your face precisely once: the first night I moved here. Fifty-five percent of communication is nonverbal. It’s hard to read people who stay hidden.”
“I’ll ignore the fact that you’re a Peeping Tom and I’ll tell you this: You don’t want to read me, anyway. Flat character arc.”
She laughs. “Somehow I doubt that.”
“It’s true.”
“No one is perfect,” she says.
Now it’s me who laughs. “Says the perfect-looking girl.”
“Looks are deceiving.” Her hands shake and her eyes close. She breathes deeply. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. The edge of her pen is making a series of inky dots as it hits the paper again and again. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. It’s as if calling me out is physically paining her.
I gesture to her hand. “You all right?”
She nods.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
“Five has to be your lucky number,” I tell her.
She freezes for a moment before resuming. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Pause. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. “What?”
“You tap everything in intervals of five. Or did you think I didn’t notice?” I consider this for a second. “Wait. Do you even notice?”
She stops tapping and captures her bottom lip between her teeth. I don’t know if she’s nervous or just plain irritated. “You’re changing the subject.”
She’s right. I am.
“Please,” she says. “I’d like to look at you while I’m talking to you. It feels weird, otherwise.”
She’s probably right. And if I’m being honest, it’s hot as hell up here. A virtual inferno. All of that aside, I can’t say I’m looking forward to it, because this always ends up being awkward. Every. Single. Time. Historically, when people get a look at my face, one of four things happen:
1. Women, mostly mothers or older women, will let out the smallest gasp and look away before their eyes flood with tears. As if seeing my face, something that could be decent if not for the burn, is the most heart-wrenching thing they’ve ever been forced to endure.
2. Men, like my dad’s friends, look at me with the worst kind of pity. The pity that seeps through all your pores and weighs you down. Poor bastard, they say without words, hopeless. Odds stacked against me like a Tetris game.
3. The guys. Ninety percent of the time they’re too self-involved to care what I look like. The other 10 percent live in some polar-opposite parallel universe where my face gives them permission to tell me where I stand in the land of jerks and jocks. My fists usually speak first in those cases and I end up suspended or in trouble. Don’t worry, though, my dad’s a lawyer. He’s got it covered.
4. The girls, the ones my age, the ones like Lennon, they’re the worst. Studying their facial expressions when they first see me is like registering symbols on a slot machine. Shock. Horror. Sadness. Fascination. Sympathy. Friend zone. Over.
I sigh. She’s sitting too far away, so I lean forward and place my hands on the sides of her thighs. There’s a sharp intake of breath, but she’s not scared of me. She should be. I tug her closer until her knees are touching mine and place my fingers underneath the hem of my hoodie. Get ready to see what’s behind door number four, Lennon. I pull the hoodie up and over my head. Her eyes are wide, and her gaze narrows as it flutters across my face.
“Just breathe,” I say, and I can’t be sure if I’m talking to her or myself.
Her mouth forms the words, but they don’t come out.
Just breathe.
FACT (DEFINITELY): KYLER BENTON IS A BREATH STEALER.
HE’S THAT BEAUTIFUL. I KNOW BECAUSE I SAW HIM.
KYLER’S LEGS TOUCH MINE. Body heat radiates from them. That’s the first thing I notice. Second, I observe his hoodie, discarded on the mattress beside us. It looks warm, cozy, and worn. Last, I see his face. Unhidden by darkened car windows or shadowed in fabric. He’s exposed. It’s all I can do to take his advice and just breathe.
Just. Breathe.
His hair is the color of sand, thick and wavy, hanging cropped to a clean, square jawline. His eyes are deep, different shades of blue, like the ocean in Maine and the one in Los Angeles collided. They’re fringed with a set of midnight lashes and hooded slightly. His cheeks are strong and defined, his skin practically flawless. Practically. The right side of his face has clear, smooth skin, a perfect painting of porcelain. But
the left…
My eyes dart to his, seeking permission.
He doesn’t speak.
He doesn’t move.
He doesn’t blink.
Kyler’s scar begins somewhere underneath the neckline of his T-shirt and brushes the edge of his mouth with a hardly visible crescent-moon-shaped line of discolored, slightly marred skin. From there, it extends upward, straight across his jaw, and flares to spread over his cheekbone before it finally settles on the temple directly beside his eye.
The damaged skin pulls taut, pink and waxy in texture. It looks painful, even though I’m sure after all this time, it’s not. It’d be a shame for someone so beautiful to hurt at all.
And his knees are touching mine.
I inhale, slow and deep.
Physically, he is strong. A force to reckon with. He’s sitting up straight, his stare, unflinching, projecting an air of confidence I can’t be sure he feels.
My hands shake as I reach for his face. He looks surprised, but he doesn’t stop me. Using the tip of my finger, I trace the scar. His eyes don’t leave mine for a moment. This is so damned intense. Like he sees through my armor into my soul and all its dark corners. Something in every single cell, each molecule, tells me this is a one-in-a-million event. I can guarantee Kyler rarely lets random girls next door touch him. I owe him a token of myself in return. Something real.
“So, Lennon from Maine, do I scare you?” he whispers.
I pull my hand away, pausing at his cheek to show that he doesn’t. “Not even a little.”
It’s true.
Those eyes. They mirror my own.
He’s been judged before. He’s different.
So have I. So am I.
“I’m broken, too,” I tell him.
“I know.” His voice is hoarse.
“You don’t,” I say, shaking my head. “Not really.”
“Tell me.”
I suck in a breath, holding it a little too long before I utter some of the bravest words to ever leave my mouth. “I have OCD.”
He doesn’t bat an eyelash.
“As in obsessive-compulsive disorder,” I continue.
His eyebrows knit together. Surprise registers on his face, but he says nothing.
“That’s why I tap things. Five. It’s my favored compulsion.”
“Your what?”
It’s easy to forget that not everyone knows about OCD. Not everyone is cursed enough to have to learn the lingo. “I get anxious. I think about terrible things. Awful things. Things that no person should ever think about, or at least admit to thinking about. And once I think them…” I pause nervously. “Once I think about them, it consumes my brain and eats at it like some kind of cancer. The thought dominates every single waking moment, over and over and over again. Like being forced to watch a gruesome movie in your head with your eyes wide open. The only way to make it stop, to get relief, to silence the goddamned thought, is to do things in patterns of five or whatever stupid, irrational, illogical idea my mind has in store.”
He considers what I’ve told him before he leans forward, breaking even farther into my personal space. He smells of mint and dryer sheets. Ocean breeze.
“What kind of things do you think about?”
“Dying, or someone dying because of me. My dad dying because of me.” I look down at my hands and pick at my fingernails. “Or what if someone I know gets kidnapped, raped, murdered, maimed, tortured? I’m certain that something I said or something I did was stupid or offensive. Like right now. I’m going to obsess later over what I should have said and should not have said in this conversation. Guaranteed.” I pause, short of breath.
Kyler’s ice-blue stare remains glued on mine.
“I have thoughts like that, and the only way to make them stop is to give into whatever compulsion,” I say. “Sometimes I tap things, mess with switches or door handles, whatever it is, it has to be in five. Everything has to be in five.”
My heart surges with such force, I’m positive it may break straight through my chest. I’d read once that hearts are wild animals, that’s why they’re kept in cages, but mine is determined to free itself in this moment. In the tree house of a boy who was burned in a house fire, whom I barely know, yet somehow he feels like everything I never knew I was missing.
“Lennon?” His voice is low, quiet.
“What?”
“Normal is boring.”
“What?”
“So what, you have a thing. Doesn’t everybody?”
“I’m not sure I’d classify OCD as a thing,” I say. “It’s a mental illness. A poison.”
“It’s a label,” he says.
“Right, a label that exists for a reason.”
“Your shrink tell you that or what?”
“Excuse me?”
“I mean, they wanna convince you something is wrong with you, right?”
“Kyler, there is something wrong with me.”
“You’re a little weird, Davis, I wouldn’t say something is wrong with you. I mean, yeah, you may have some horror-movie-level thoughts. And yeah, I can see how that’s some scary shit to deal with on the daily, but it’s not like you’ve ever killed anyone.” He looks up at me, a satisfied grin on his face.
But that’s where he’s wrong.
Tears rim my eyes. My throat burns with a massive, solid knot. I can’t cry in front of him. I open my mouth to speak, to say No, I’ve never killed anyone, but I can’t. It’s a lie.
“I killed my mother.”
His smile evaporates. I begin to tap my toes on the floorboards.
“It was my birthday. And I needed ice cream cake. My mom offered to bake an angel food cake, but I needed ice cream. I insisted. They got the wrong color of icing. Red. I hate red. As if that weren’t bad enough, they epically failed at the decor and put just four flowers when she specifically asked for five.” I take a deep breath and continue. “A normal kid could have laughed it off, but not me. All that wrongness, the even-numbered crimson flowers—it would have felt like pinpricks on my skin. She knew this, so instead of leaving it, she went to have it replaced. Blue icing. Five flowers.”
The tears spring from my eyes and begin to fall down my face. His hands reach for me, and I didn’t think it was possible, but he pulls me even closer, envelops me in his space. He moves his hands up and pauses for a moment midair before bringing them to my face, which he frames with his fingertips. His eyes fill with unspoken comprehension of what it’s like to feel this sad and still be alive.
My feet tap harder. I don’t even have to count anymore. I know the pattern, I know how it feels, and I know every single time I mess it up and have to start over. “I mean, who the hell cares about a bunch of stupid icing and flowers? But I do. The last time I saw her, I was irritated with her. On my birthday, every year, she’d measure me, ticking off my growth on a door frame. I’d been on the phone with my friend Ashley, we were talking about this guy who asked her out, and my mom interrupted my phone call and I was pissed. She measured me anyway, kissed my head, and told me she loved me and she’d see me later.”
His thumbs move and swipe the tears from my cheeks, which sting with heat.
“They said the guy was drunk. That his car came reeling across the median and killed her. I never saw her later, I never told her I loved her back, and now I’m scared she didn’t know. I can’t close my eyes at night without seeing her face, I’m terrified I’ll forget what her voice sounded like or that she smelled like oranges, and I’m so weak, so broken inside I can’t even ride in a car anymore without being certain someone I love will die because of me. Just like she did.”
The words leave my lips and I fall apart.
The silent tears become dry, racking sobs that consume my whole body.
There isn’t enough medication, money, or therapy to fill the empty space inside me. The gaping mass of hollowness that chews at my soul is permanent.
I want to die and pretend this conversation didn’t just happen.
Because every time I have it I remember that this is permanent. This is real.
I cry harder.
My mother is dead. I never said I loved her back.
Kyler’s eyes soften.
I squirm from his grasp and move, determined to flee. I’m embarrassed and ashamed. I can never look him in the face again. But before I can go anywhere, he’s got me caged between his knees on the mattress and he stands, towering over me. He grips my hands and pulls me to stand in front of him, and his arms wrap around me with the force of a boa constrictor. He pulls me into him, and I bury my face in his chest and let the tears continue to fall. I can’t remember the last time someone held me this way, this close, this tight. I don’t think anyone ever has, and for one tiny second it feels like everything might be okay again.
He frees a hand and rubs circles on my back.
“No,” he says softly. “No. It’s not your fault, Lennon. This is not on you. I’m sure she knew you loved her. I’d bet my life on it.”
I shake my head in disagreement. Up close, the smell of mint-and-ocean-breeze Bounce sheets is overpowering. “It’s all my fault,” I say. “If it weren’t for me, she wouldn’t have been driving, all because of a stupid cake.”
“Listen. It’s horrible and awful and shitty and I’m so sorry that happened to you, but it isn’t your fault. Not one bit.”
“She’s dead because of me.”
“She’s dead because of some dick who drove drunk, Lennon. Not because of you.”
UNITED INSOMNIACS
Random Thoughts of a Random Mind
SHE’S JUST A GIRL, BRO.
I came up here to do a school project, and now we’re in the midst of an emotional hurricane filled with all the issues Lennon from Maine with Serious Issues Who Sews has. The storm of feelings I’m immersed in is maximum-force, category-five brand of bullshit.
Bullshit because we’re sharing.
Not my strongest point.
I showed her my scars.
She showed me hers.
And now we’re connected on some weird level that part of me wanted to avoid while another part of me wanted to see bloom. She’s shaking in my arms like crazy, sobbing, falling apart at the seams, and I’m just trying to hold on tight, to keep all the broken pieces of her together. She smells like rain. I love when it rains.
All Our Broken Pieces Page 9