Before You Break

by Kyla Stone

  The knot in my gut turned into a ball of snarled steel. It was like a giant hand twisting up my insides, turning them inside out. My fury wasn’t aimed at Dad.

  It was aimed at Mom. She was the one always apologizing, always begging for our forgiveness. She must’ve done something to make Dad so desperate to leave us. She did this. It was her fault.

  I walked down the hallway with the unfolded letter clutched in my fist. I entered the kitchen and went straight to Mom. She was bent over the newspaper, her hair dull and snarled around her bony shoulders.

  I thrust the paper in front of her.

  Looking back, it doesn’t make sense. I hoarded the bent paper clips and used gum wrappers I’d stolen from Dad like precious treasures, hiding them away so no one would find them. The letter, my most dangerous secret—I simply gave it to her.

  The ‘why’ is a black ink spot staining my mind. An oily darkness swirling beneath my consciousness. Did I seriously want to hurt her that badly? Was my heart that bent, that cruel? My greatest sin, and I didn’t even think twice about it.

  “What did Mom do?” Lena asks. Her expression is unreadable, hard as stone.

  I close my eyes. “It wasn’t as bad as you think. Not then.”

  Mom read the letter several times, her gaze jerking over the words, her fingers white, the blue vein in her forehead pulsing. I stood in front of her, hands limp at my sides. I looked out the kitchen window at the trees losing their leaves, the golden stalks of corn bending in the wind.

  Mom asked, “Where did you get this?”

  I told her.

  “Just now?”

  “Yes, Momma.”

  She smoothed the letter in one hand and tapped the newspaper with her finger. “How apt,” she said in a strange voice. “My horoscope for today says, ‘You must widen your horizons and change your perspective to see where you need to go. You must open yourself up to do what is needed to move on.’ Do you see? The stars always know.”

  “What’s mine say, Momma?”

  “Go to your room now.” Her smile was too wide and too bright, almost grotesque in its falseness.

  I obeyed. I brushed the manes of my Breyer horses, lining them up side by side on my dresser. I folded a crane out of buttery yellow paper and set it on my nightstand. The house descended into an eerie silence.

  I don’t know what thoughts winged inside my mother’s head. Something shifted inside her, a critical tipping point. In its insidious silence, its invisibility, it was the most dangerous thing of all.

  When Lena got home, Mom was already sequestered in her bedroom. Lena opened two cans of Spaghettios, and we ate it cold, the way we liked it. After supper, we watched TV, the volume turned down low.

  I didn’t warn my sister. I didn’t say anything at all.

  The next morning, Lena packed our lunches and we met the bus like we usually did on days Mom didn’t get up. After school, I had flute practice and took the late bus home alone. Lena was already there.

  There was a fire truck and two police cars parked in my driveway. All the kids leaped from their seats and pressed their noses to the bus windows.

  I remember the sky was a harsh, cloudless blue. I remember my breath steaming against the glass.

  My body went cold, a coldness that penetrated my bones. I stayed in my seat. I wished the bus driver would pull away and keep going down the road. Instead, he put the bus in park and walked with me across the driveway up the steps to my house.

  He left me with a police lady in a blue uniform. She squatted in front of me and kept patting my shoulder.

  “Where’s my mom?” I asked.

  “Your mom was hurt. She—”

  “Where’s my sister?”

  “Your sister and your father followed the ambulance to the hospital. I’m going to take you to the hospital to be with them.” She looked at me with a bleak pity in her eyes that told me everything.

  I knew in that instant exactly what I’d done.

  “Honey, are you okay?”

  I was drowning in a black, seething sea, my body dragged under and pummeled by the waves. My lungs were exploding, desperate for air.

  It was grief, but it was also something worse.

  The police lady shook me gently. “Honey, can you hear me?”

  The girl who was finally able to nod was not the same girl who’d stepped off the bus three minutes earlier.

  That girl was sucked down beneath the black waves.

  That girl did not come back.

  She was lost. Lost for good. For forever.

  48

  Lux

  I blink back the dark swell of memory, keeping my gaze on the table. I’m afraid to look at my sister, afraid of the horror and revulsion I’ll see etched across her face.

  “Oh, Lux.”

  I can’t speak. I don’t know how.

  “Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

  The tears dry on my cheeks in salty streaks, tightening my skin. I work my jaw, running my tongue over my lips. Finally the words come, slow and halting. “What was I supposed to say? ‘Oh by the way, I’m the reason Mom offed herself?’”

  “You can’t seriously think that. You were ten years old.”

  “Old enough to know what something like that would do to a person like Mom. I knew. I knew it would hurt her. I wanted—I wanted to hurt her.”

  “You were a kid.”

  I make the final fold in the eight-pointed star, untuck the edges and fill out the center. I set it on the table, gently, between us. “Still.”

  “All this time you’ve believed it was your fault.” Lena talks fast, almost eager. She takes a swallow of her hot chocolate and wipes her mouth. “You hid yourself so deep. I couldn’t find you. But now I get it. I see you.”

  “That’s a good thing because . . . ?”

  “You were so young when Mom died. No one was there for you. I was caught up in my own grief, Dad in his guilt. There wasn’t any air left for you to breathe.”

  Emotions I can’t define plunge over me. My heart tugs loose inside my chest. I expected rage, scorn, rejection. I’ve been preparing myself for it for years. Now here’s Lena, finally seeing all the dark inside me. And she’s not gone. She’s still here.

  I grip my mug, my fingers shaking. “It was my fault.”

  “No, Shortcake. It wasn’t. I used to believe the same thing. I thought if I was good enough, she’d be happy. But that’s impossible. She was sad, and sick. I’ve learned so much being back here, thinking about everything that happened. Maybe the letter sent her over the edge that day. But, Lux, she was going over anyway. It was only a matter of time.”

  I shake my head. “No. I don’t believe that. If not for that letter—she never would have left us. She had her moments when she was so happy, like she could float right off the ground if she wanted to.”

  “And when she came back down?”

  “You mean her ‘vacations,’ when she was sad?” I remember her smile, so bright, her eyes like emeralds. The way she’d scoop me up into her arms and whisper a secret fortune in my ear: You will find your dreams among the stars and You will be an explorer and find great fortune in this life and the next.

  Lena stares at me in silence for a long moment. Then she leans forward and rolls up the right sleeve of my shirt.

  “What are you doing?”

  She pushes it up past my bicep. “Look.”

  I glance down, see the same pale skin, the same white, raised half-moon scars I’ve always had. “What?”

  She shoves up the sleeve of her plaid shirt, revealing her own faint scars. “That’s how she grabbed us, when she lost it.”

  I shove back from the table. “No.”

  “Maybe you were too young, or maybe you just chose to forget,” Lena says softly.

  “How can you say that? Mom was a good mother. Yeah, she was depressed, but she never—” I stop. Because she did. A memory pierces me: the sudden, sharp sting of nails digging deep, her beautiful face contorted, mask-lik
e.

  Lena reaches for my hand. “Mom loved us, but there was something wrong with her. She was sad. She was angry. Sometimes so much that she screamed at us, grabbed us. Hurt us.”

  “No! That can’t—”

  “It’s the truth whether you want to see it or not, whether she’s dead or not.”

  Grief strangles my throat. “You’re lying.”

  Lena looks at me, sorrow welling in her eyes. She looks so much like our mother, like how I remember her. Her skin is a white sky studded with fiery stars. “You know I’m not.”

  I fold my arms on the table and drop my head, my shoulders heaving. Lena scoots her chair closer. She rubs my back, tentatively at first, then harder. “Mom was broken. She had doctors and medication, and she refused both. She had a family. Instead of fighting, she chose to abandon us.”

  “No,” I whisper.

  “Yes. She tried to kill herself three times.”

  “No.”

  “Her illness had nothing to do with us. It had nothing to do with Dad’s affair, or you giving her the letter. Do you understand?”

  It all seems too much, too overwhelming to take in. “Maybe,” I whisper.

  I think of that last time I saw my mother smile, before she sent me off to my room. At the time, it seemed real. I could feel its light, its warmth.

  Now I realize the warmth was just the final, fading light of an already dead star.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Lena says, that old familiar conviction back in her voice like she believes it enough for the both of us. Like that’s enough.

  And maybe, for now, it is.

  Neither of us speak. The house creaks and pops. The refrigerator hums. Every sound seems amplified in the emptiness. It doesn’t seem like our house. I can’t shake the feeling that we’re strangers wandering the rooms of a place long abandoned. We don’t belong here anymore.

  Lena clears her throat. “I’m sorry I’ve been such a terrible sister.”

  “Was that an actual apology I just heard?”

  A grim smile tugs at the corners of her mouth. “I want to be better. I want to do better.”

  My heart balloons in my chest, pressing against my rib cage. For the first time in forever, I see a glimmer of hope. Maybe there is a path out of all this darkness. Maybe Lena can help me find it. “Me too.”

  “I love you to the moon,” she says.

  My fingers tighten around my empty mug. I can still smell the rich scent of hot chocolate reminding me so much of Dad. I miss him so much, now that he’s gone. It’s up to Lena and me to make sure we don’t forget the good things, too. “I love you all the way back.”

  Something changes in Lena’s face. “When I thought you’d—” She takes a shuddering breath. “You can’t do that to me. You have to get better.”

  I stare at my hands, at the chips in my turquoise nail polish. A dark thread of fear winds through me.

  The thing about change is that it’s hard as hell. There’s no easy out. No escaping. I’ll feel it all. There’s no relief, no popping a pill to make it all go away. It’s always there, a monster chained to my leg.

  I don’t get to leave. I don’t get to run away. It’s myself I can’t escape from. The fear, the anger, the pain and the guilt, that deep oppressive loneliness like a mountain of bricks on my chest.

  I’ll feel every single thing.

  “I’m scared.”

  She reaches across the table, grabs my hand. Entwines her fingers with mine. “You’re not alone.”

  49

  Lena

  “This is it,” I say, dread curdling my stomach.

  Lux and I head to Florida in three days. Eli is leaving tonight for Chicago to be a groomsman for the wedding of one of his former teammates. We have only this afternoon to say goodbye.

  Eli’s mom is watching Hadley. All morning, he helped me load the last of the furniture into a rental truck, which we delivered to the Goodwill in Dowagiac.

  It’s the middle of May. The afternoon warmed up into the 80s, Michigan’s humidity sticking my hair to my neck with sweat. My arms burned as we carried our couch down the ramp and set it down in front of the donations drop-off bay.

  I stared down at the worn, plaid fibers, remembering my parents shouldering it through the front door and down the hallway, brand new and sheathed in plastic, when I was ten. Ten years ago. A whole decade, a generation, a dozen lifetimes past.

  Now, the muscles in my back and arms ache, reminding me afresh of all that is lost.

  “Hey, you with me?” Eli says, squeezing my knee.

  We’re in line for the automatic carwash at Suds’N’More in Dowagiac. “Sorry,” I say. The Honda clicks onto the motorized track, and I shift into neutral and release the brakes. I cleaned and vacuumed the interior yesterday afternoon, decluttering what felt like years’ worth of Lux’s junk.

  I ordered the Deluxe Gold package, with extras like an undercarriage flush with rust inhibitor and foam polish and sealant wax. I want it pristine for our road trip back to Tampa.

  I want a fresh start, for both of us.

  The inside of the van darkens as the conveyer belt pulls us into the tunnel. We pass beneath an arch with nozzles spraying liquid chemicals over the hood, the windshield, the roof.

  Eli squeezes my knee again. His hand on my bare skin sends electric sparks sizzling up and down my leg. “I’m going to miss having you around, Freckles.”

  “Really? You’re going to start calling me that again? And I thought we’d made so much progress.” I try to be light and funny, but it comes out flat.

  “Sorry.” He unclicks his seatbelt, turns toward me, and leans over the center console. He buries his hands in my hair on either side of my face. Instinctively, I try to duck my chin, but he gently forces my head up. “Lena.”

  My stomach flutters. I’m feeling so much more than I want to be. I feel everything. And it’s scary as hell. “You’re not under any obligation to text or call or anything. I had a good time. I think you did, too. Let’s leave it at that.”

  “Leave what at what? You think this was just a spring fling?”

  Liquid drips down the windshield. High pressure nozzles spray the tires, and a soapy chemical smell fills the car. I nod.

  “Sometimes you don’t seem that smart, college girl.”

  “Wasn’t it?”

  “Not to me.”

  I feel his fingers in my hair, on my scalp. I swallow hard. “But I’m not—I’m not good enough.”

  “Good enough for what?”

  I don’t answer. I can’t. Huge brushes descend over the van on all sides. The colorful cloth strips slap against every surface, making soft, wet sucking sounds.

  “Good enough to love?” he asks.

  I can’t answer that either. It hurts too much.

  “Love isn’t something you have to earn,” he says quietly. “Love is something you give away.”

  “You don’t love me.”

  Eli’s face softens. “Not as much as I’d like to. Not as much as I will.”

  I want to believe every word he says, butt he doesn’t want me, not really. “You don’t understand. I’m not—”

  “When you love someone, you can’t pick and choose what parts of them to love. You can’t pick and choose what parts of your life to live. You’re either all in, or you’re not. And Lena, I need you to know this before you leave. I’m all in.”

  I stare at him, stunned.

  The van slides beneath another arch of high-pressure nozzles. The sprayers blast against the side windows. It feels like the whole world is crying. “But I’m leaving. Florida is a long way away and—”

  “We have this new technology? It’s called a smart phone. We can IM, Skype, Facetime, whatever. It doesn’t cost that much to hop on a plane.

  You only have a year left, Lena. After that, who knows? Chicago, New York, wherever your art takes you. Hadley and I can follow. Most universities offer engineering degrees.”

  The entire English language escap
es me. “But what—I don’t . . . I can’t—” I sputter.

  Eli tips my chin up. “All you have to say is yes.”

  All the hard, brittle things inside me are weakening, breaking apart, shattering into shards of light.

  “And Lux?” I whisper.

  “We’ll figure it out as we go.”

  “But she comes with us?”

  “She comes with us, if that’s what she wants.” He traces my nose, my chin, my cheeks with his fingers. “I know it’s probably not what you planned, a ready-made family with a whiny, stinky-butt toddler in tow. It’s totally okay if you don’t want—”

  I lean against my seatbelt and kiss him. His lips stretch into a grin beneath my own. I breathe in the smell of him, the clean, warm scent of cinnamon and soap, a hint of engine grease.

  I don’t believe in soulmates. I don’t believe in “the one.” I’m not even sure how much I believe in love. Love is not infinite. It’s not all-powerful or all-consuming. Love is like everything else, like beauty and memory and flowers and even stars—it fades. It dies.

  But maybe it doesn’t have to. Maybe love can be different. Love can change things. Love can change everything.

  After what seems like an eternity, Eli pulls away. He traces his finger down my neck, across my collarbone, leaving a trail of fire. “I could stare at your face forever. I adore every single one of your freckles.”

  “My mom used to say they were like tiny red stars. She said I had galaxies etched in my skin.”

  “Your mom was right.”

  I face the front, trying to hide the goofy grin spreading across my face. Automatic blowers move over the van on a mechanical arm. Water droplets streak upward across the windshield, then disappear.

  I think about my mother, about what she would say if she could meet Eli. My boyfriend. I think she would like him. She would approve. She would be happy with the choices I’ve made.

  I touch my own cheek, the memory of her so close, the sweet smell of her jasmine shampoo, her river of hair falling around me. The stars reveal your past and whisper your future, she told me that chilly night when the moon was so bright everything was bathed in silver.