The Elements Series Complete Box Set

by Brittainy Cherry

  His lips parted, but Mrs. Riley cut in. “I think everyone should call it a night.” She ran her fingers through her hair, and Mr. Riley shut his mouth.

  I started to argue, but Mrs. Riley gave me a tired expression, so I nodded my head. “Well, if you could just give it to her, Mr. R, just in case it can help her? I don’t need it right now.” I handed my iPod to him, and he gave me a forced smile.

  Everyone headed into their own rooms, and I was forced to leave. I hated the feeling in my gut, I hated not know how she was doing. How was I supposed to walk away without knowing if she was okay?

  “Brooks, can I speak with you for a second?” Mrs. Riley asked as I walked toward the front door. Her arms were crossed and her eyes heavy.

  “Yeah, what’s going on?”

  She glanced around the room, making sure everyone had departed, then stepped closer to me. “I want you to know…Maggie’s sick. She might not look it, but her mind…” She frowned. “Whatever happened to her all those years ago, it affected her. Even on the days she seems okay, there’s a big part of her that’s missing. I know you like her, but being in a relationship with her… I don’t think that’s smart. She’s broken.”

  I would’ve been lying if I’d said I wasn’t taken aback by her words. She spoke about her daughter as if she were a freak, an outcast. Yeah, Maggie had a few bad days, but who didn’t? Glancing around the corner, I saw Maggie peeking out of her parents’ bedroom, listening in. I gave her a smile, and she gave me a frown. Before that moment I hadn’t known a frown could be more beautiful than a smile. “Not all broken things need to be fixed. Sometimes they just need to be loved. It would be a shame if only people who were whole were deserving of love.”

  “Brooks.” She sighed, as if my words were pointless. “You’re young, and you have your whole life ahead of you. I can’t help but think you’ll hold yourself back trying to have Maggie feel included. You’re going off to Los Angeles next week for your music career, where you’re going to have all these new experiences—”

  “Maggie and I have new experiences every day.”

  “Yeah, but you’re going to have new opportunities, bigger opportunities.”

  “So will she.”

  Mrs. Riley sighed, rubbing the back of her neck. “You’re not getting it, Brooks. Maggie’s not leaving this house. Ever. I know you’re trying to be hopeful, but now’s the time to be logical. You should break things off with her before you do more damage.”

  “She’ll leave. I know she will. We’ve spoken about it, you know. She has dreams, too, just like you and me. She has dreams.”

  “Look. Brooks…I get that she’s your friend, and I get that you like to share your music with her, but that’s not going to help her. A relationship needs more than music to exist. It needs meat, not just bones. Maggie can’t give you what you’ll need for a real relationship.”

  “You don’t know what I need.”

  “With all due respect, I know what you don’t need. You’re young and in love, I get it, but Maggie’s not the best fit for you.”

  My chest was tight, and I knew if I stayed a second longer, I’d say something I’d regret. I glanced up at where Maggie was standing, but she was gone, so I opened the front door and stepped onto the porch, turning my back to Mrs. Riley.

  “I’m sorry, Brooks, but this is for the best.”

  Turning to face her one more time, I snapped. “With all due respect, Mrs. Riley, I think you’re wrong about her. Maggie’s smart. She’s so smart, kind, and expressive, even without words. She says so much when you can’t hear her. Yeah, her mind is busy, but it’s deeper than any ocean. She sees things in different ways than most, but why is that a bad thing? And you’re wrong about music, too. If you think for a second music can’t heal people, then you’re not listening closely enough.”

  I started on my way, my heart racing.

  “She tried to kill herself,” Mrs. Riley shouted, making me pause my steps.

  I turned back, denial running through my mind. “No.”

  “Yes, she did. I know I probably seem like the big bad wolf, but she’s not okay. You were right, her mind is deeper than any ocean, but one day the tides are going to rise so high, she’ll have no choice but to drown.”

  She tried to kill herself.

  I couldn’t breathe.

  She tried to kill herself.

  She wouldn’t.

  I couldn’t fucking breathe.

  I walked around the neighborhood, lap after lap after lap. I kept thinking maybe I’d done something wrong. Maybe the way I had held her or touched her had sparked a flashback. Maybe I’d said something wrong.

  “It’s hard, isn’t it?” Mrs. Boone asked me from her porch as I did another lap around the neighborhood, trying to clear my head. I stopped in front of her house as Muffins rolled back and forth in the grass. “When she has her meltdowns.”

  “How did you know?”

  She smiled and glided back and forth in her wicker rocking chair. “I know Maggie, and I know the look on people’s faces when she falls apart. I’ve seen it on her parents’ faces more than I’d like to admit. Now come on up here. Take a break. Come inside and I’ll make you some tea.”

  I arched an eyebrow. Inside? I hadn’t ever seen Mrs. Boone invite someone into her house. Half of me thought if I walked in she might kill me, but the other half was way too curious about what it’d be like inside her home.

  Her screen door squeaked as she opened it. She held it wide for me to walk inside, following closely behind me. “You can wait here in the living room. I’ll go heat up some water,” she said, walking toward her kitchen.

  I paced around the living room, looking at her home. Her house was a museum; every piece of artwork looked like it was from the 1800s, and every statue sat behind a glass casing. Everything was polished and clean, and seemed to be in its rightful place.

  “Are you sure you don’t need help?” I asked.

  “I’ve been making tea for years and never needed help.”

  I wiped my hand across her fireplace mantel, my fingers collecting dust, and I frowned. I wiped my hand against my jeans. Her fireplace was the only place in the room with dust. It was almost as if she collected every inch of filth and dropped it on the mantel. Strange. I lifted up one of the dust-covered frames and stared at Mrs. Boone with a man I assumed was her husband. She sat in his lap, smiling up at him as he smiled at her. I’d never seen Mrs. Boone smile the way she smiled in the photograph.

  I picked up another photo, one where the couple stood on a boating dock with a child in front of them, who was laughing in the picture. The transition of the girl growing in the photos was hard to watch. She went from a smiling kid to someone who frowned, to someone who displayed no emotion at all. Her eyes looked so empty. There had to be over thirty frames packed on the fireplace, each picture showing different moments from Mrs. Boone’s past.

  “Who’s the girl? In the photos?” I asked.

  She peeked into the room before stepping back into the kitchen. “Jessica. My daughter.”

  “I didn’t know you had a daughter.”

  “Did you ever ask?”

  “No.”

  “That’s why you didn’t know. You stupid kids never ask questions. All you do is talk, talk, talk, and no one ever listens.” She walked back into the living room, fidgeting with her fingers before sitting on her couch. “The water is heating.”

  I picked up a dust-covered record and blew off some of the grime. “Sittin’ On The Dock Of The Bay, by Otis Redding?” I asked.

  She nodded. “My husband and I had a cabin up north on the lake. I still own it…I should sell it, but I can’t bring myself to do it. It’s the last place my family was at our happiest,” she said, remembering. “Each evening Stanley and I would sit at the end of the dock, looking out at the sunset while that record played and Jessica ran around in the grass, trying to catch dragonflies.”

  I sat down in the chair across from her and smiled her way.<
br />
  She didn’t smile back, but I didn’t mind. Mrs. Boone was known for not smiling.

  “So…” I cleared my throat, feeling awkward in the silence. “Does your daughter ever come by to visit?”

  Her eyebrows lowered, and her hands fidgeted against her legs. “It’s my fault, you know,” she said, her voice somber.

  “What’s your fault?”

  “The night of the accident… What happened to Maggie, it was my fault.”

  I sat up straighter in my chair. “How so?”

  Her eyes grew gloomy. “She stopped by my yard that night. She asked if she could pick flowers from my yard for her wedding. I yelled at her and sent her off, telling her to not come back.” Mrs. Boone studied her shaky hands, still tapping her fingers against her legs. “If I hadn’t been so mean—so harsh—she could’ve spent more time in my yard. She wouldn’t have wandered off to the woods. She could’ve been safe from whatever it was that took away part of her mind that night.”

  Tears started falling from her eyes, and I could feel her hurt. I understood her guilt, because I had felt it too all those years ago. “I thought the same thing, Mrs. Boone. I was supposed to meet her that night in the woods, and I was late. If I hadn’t taken all that time picking out a tie, I could’ve been there to protect Maggie. I could’ve saved her.”

  She looked up and wiped her eyes, shaking her head. “It wasn’t your fault.” She said it so quickly, obviously afraid of me placing that kind of blame on myself. It was sad, how quick she was to take the blame, and how quick she was to make sure I wouldn’t.

  I shrugged. “It wasn’t your fault, either.”

  She stood up and walked to her mantel, staring at the photographs. “She was just like Maggie as a child, my daughter. Talkative—a bit too talkative. Wild, free. She wasn’t afraid of anyone, either. She saw the best in the most damaged kind of people. Her smile…” Mrs. Boone chuckled, picking up one of the frames that showed Jessica grinning wide. “Her smile healed. She could walk into a room, tell the worst of jokes, and make the grumpiest person in the room laugh so hard their stomach danced.”

  “What happened to her?”

  She placed the photo down and picked up another, where Jessica’s smile was gone. “My brother came to visit. He was going through a divorce and needed to get away, so he came and stayed with us. One night, we were having a cookout, and Henry was drinking too much, growing angrier and angrier. He started an argument with my husband, Stanley, and they were seconds away from fighting. Then came sweet, silly Jessica with her bad jokes, which made everyone laugh, even drunken Henry. Later that night, Stanley went to check on Jessica. He found Henry in her room with an empty bottle of alcohol in his hand. Henry was passed out, naked and drunk on top of my daughter, who was frozen in her fear.”

  “Oh my God. I’m so sorry.” I said the words, and when they left my mouth, I knew they weren’t enough. No words could express the feeling in my gut. I’d lived on the same block as Mrs. Boone all my life and never knew of the storms she’d sailed through.

  “Jessica didn’t speak after that. I quit my teaching job and stayed with Jessica to homeschool her, but her light was stolen away. She wasn’t the same after what Henry did. She stopped speaking and never smiled again. I didn’t blame her, though. How could you speak when a person you were meant to trust stole your voice away? Jessica always walked around as if there were voices in her head, demons trying to make her crack. When she turned twenty, she finally did. She left a note saying she loved Stanley and me, and that it wasn’t our fault.”

  My eyes shut, remembering Mrs. Riley’s words.

  She tried to kill herself.

  She turned my way and frowned when she saw my look of despair. “Oh, dear. I was supposed to have you over to take your mind off your own issues, and I just made you feel worse.”

  “No, no. I’m just so unbelievably sorry. I don’t know what to even say to any of this.”

  “No worries. I wouldn’t know either.” Her teapot started whistling in the kitchen, and she shouted, “Stanley, can you get that?”

  I narrowed my eyes at Mrs. Boone, and she paused. Moments later, she realized her mistake and hurried into the kitchen, then came back with the tea. We sat there and sipped the disgusting tea in silence. When it was time for me to leave, I stood and thanked Mrs. Boone for inviting me in, not only into her home, but into her history.

  As she held the front door open, I asked her one last question.

  “Is that why you offered to visit Maggie? Because she reminded you of your daughter?”

  “Yes and no. Maggie has a lot in common with my Jessica, but there are big differences.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Jessica gave up on life. Maggie every so often has these flashes of hope. I see it more and more often with her. She’s going to be okay. I know she is. I have to believe she is going to be okay. You know the biggest difference between the two?”

  “What?”

  “Jessica had no one. She shut us all out. But Maggie? She has friends. Maggie has you.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Boone.”

  “You’re welcome. Now stop blaming yourself, all right?”

  I smiled. “Same to you.”

  She nodded. “Yes, yes, I know. Deep inside of me I know it wasn’t my fault, but sometimes when sitting by your lonesome, your thoughts wander to places they shouldn’t. Sometimes we are our own worst enemies. One must learn to be discerning with one’s own thoughts. We must be able to decipher the truth versus the lies of our minds. Otherwise, we become enslaved to the shackles of struggle we place on our own ankles.”

  20

  Maggie

  I hadn’t spoken to him in five days, and it had felt like the longest five days of my life.

  “What are you reading now?” Mrs. Boone asked me, sitting across from me at the dining room table. When I’d asked Daddy to pass on the word to Mrs. Boone that I wasn’t feeling well, she’d called me a ridiculous child who needed some tea. She also blamed my fake illness on me always leaving my hair wet after a shower.

  I held my book to my chest and shrugged my shoulders, then I flipped it over for her to see the title.

  “Hmm. Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver. What is it about?”

  I narrowed my eyes at her. She always did that. She always asked me questions she knew I couldn’t answer. Seeing as how she never allowed me to write on paper, it felt like nothing less than pressure, and pressure was the last thing I needed.

  I placed the book down on the table and sipped at my disgusting tea, grimacing.

  “So today is a day where you hate tea again, huh?” she stated.

  I shrugged again.

  “Where’s your boyfriend?”

  I shrugged once more.

  She rolled her eyes. “One more shrug and your shoulders are going to get stuck midair. So childish. He’s worried about you, you know. Pushing him away isn’t going to help anyone. It’s actually pretty rude. He’s a nice boy.”

  A nice boy? Never in my life had I heard Mrs. Boone say anything kind about anyone.

  “Brooks, you can come in now,” Mrs. Boone called toward the kitchen.

  Brooks stepped out from behind the kitchen door, held his hand up, and waved shyly.

  What is he doing here?

  “I invited him,” Mrs. Boone said, once again reading my thoughts. “Sit, Brooks.”

  He did as he was told.

  “Now, this is the point where I talk and you both listen. You’re both idiots.” That sounded more like the Mrs. Boone I loved to hate. “You two like each other, right? So allow that to be enough. Stop overthinking everything all the time. Just be happy. Maggie, stop acting like you’re not worthy of happiness. If only people with perfect pasts were supposed to be happy, then no love would ever exist. Now, kiss and make up, you idiots.”

  “What’s going on here?” Mama asked, entering the dining room. She looked tired, as if she hadn’t slept in days, her hair wild and untamed. Her ey
es shot to Brooks, and a smudge of disappointment and shock flew across her face. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

  Mrs. Boone sat up straight. “Now, Katie, before you yell at the kids, I want you to know this was my doing.”

  “You? You told him to come over here?”

  “Yes. The kids were sad, so I thought—”

  “I need you to leave,” Mama said.

  “Oh, come on, that’s ridiculous. Let the boy—”

  “No, I mean you, Mrs. Boone. I need you to leave. You crossed the line today, and you’re not welcome back into my house.”

  I shot up from my chair, stunned by my mother, who seemed more like a stranger with each passing day. No! I pounded my hands against the table. I pounded over and over again until my hands started turning red, and then I kept pounding.

  “Brooks, you leave, too. You and I already spoke, and I think I made my message pretty clear. Maggie, go to your room.”

  No! No!

  Brooks lowered his head and left. Mrs. Boone stood up and shook her head. “This isn’t right, Katie. Those kids…they are helping each other.”

  “No offense, Mrs. Boone, but Maggie is not your child, and I’d prefer if you’d stop treating her as if she is your responsibility. She’s not Jessica and you do not get to make these choices for her. I refuse to let my daughter end up like—”

  “Like what?” Mrs. Boone barked back, obviously deeply offended. She grabbed her purse and gripped it tightly in her hold. “Like my daughter?”

  A glimpse of guilt appeared in Mama’s eyes before she blinked. “From this point on, there will be no more afternoon teas. I appreciate you spending time with Maggie, Mrs. Boone, I really do, but that will be all.”

  As Mrs. Boone walked to the front door, Mama followed her, and I stayed right on their heels. “I get what you’re trying to do, Katie. I really do. I tried to do it with my daughter, too. You think you’re helping her by keeping her away from the world, from the place that hurt her, but you’re not. You’re suffocating her. You’re drowning out the little voice she has—her freedom of choice. Her choice to love, to open herself up. You’re stealing that from her.”