He stops just before he reaches the front door, on the porch. He sighs and stares at the door for three heartbeats’ time. And then he’s heading back toward the car, opening the door, and climbing in. Once inside, he stares at the house. A man torn.
I keep waiting for him to notice me standing on the roof. Keep waiting for him to wave. But he doesn’t. So I creep across the roof and climb through the tangle of tree limbs, touching down in the garden.
But before I can walk out from beneath the shadows of the tree, I hear the engine rev. I start running, but it’s too late—the Lexus is already streaking up the street at a dangerous speed. Dad has always driven too fast.
Except for when he was driving me to basketball practice. Then he was the world’s most responsible driver. I remember how he always insisted on playing the worst music on the way there, and how to make up for it he’d always take me for Mexican on the way back.
I wander to the middle of the yard. Bite my lip.
I never thought I would feel anything if my parents were out of my life. After all, it’s not like they’ve paid much attention to me since I hit my teens. But seeing Dad drive away like that, something knifes through my chest.
I look down at my feet. Dead, moonlit leaves curl around them. I watch the leaves until an icy wind blows them away, and then I climb back up to the roof, where I sit, waiting for god knows what. At two o’clock in the morning I unpeel my dry lips and scream at the sky.
Chapter Twenty-One
ON MONDAY, BLOODY Monday, when I get to the child care center after school, Peter is there, standing behind the front desk. Peter. Peter, who somehow got up the courage to ask Amy out that one time, and she threw back her head and laughed her scorn for all the world to hear. I laughed along with her.
Peter. Is. Fucking. Here.
Just when you think you can forget about the old you. Just when you think you can try to be someone better, along comes fucking Peter Paton to remind you of just how bad you were. Are.
He’s got his back turned. He hasn’t seen me yet. I want to keep it that way.
But I have to go over there and sign in for my shift.
Step. Step. Step.
I’m dragging this out unnecessarily because he’s already turned around and locked eyes with me. He doesn’t react, doesn’t smile or grin or nod or shout a greeting, and that kills me. It kills me inside, because the Peter I knew, the one who arrived at our school not so long ago, that boy had a smile for everyone.
I reach the desk. Force a smile at him.
He doesn’t acknowledge it. Doesn’t even acknowledge that he knows me. But he stares at me. Stares at me and stares at me and stares at me as I write my name on the piece of white paper.
When I’m done, just about to turn away, he opens his mouth. “I heard about Amy,” he says.
I freeze, unable to respond.
“I read the article in the Gazette,” he says. A smirk tugs at the corners of his lips.
And I am sick. I am so sick at this new, sadistic Peter. At the way that he’s fucking gloating over Amy’s death.
How can he have forgotten how beautiful she was?
My hands curl into fists. I want to hit him, even though, shit, what was I expecting from this boy?
“I heard,” he says, tone mild, as if he’s talking about the weather or something, “that she jumped off your roof. Does it suck knowing that maybe, just maybe, if you didn’t have a three-story house, she wouldn’t be dead?”
And it’s at this exact moment that Tristan shows up. It is these words that he catches, and he looks at me with all this sympathy. And even though I don’t want to see that look on his face, that look of pity, I can’t do anything. Can’t say anything. Because I’m afraid I’m going to fucking explode. So I just stand there trembling. Trembling, and wondering how the fuck Peter Paton can say this to me.
Wondering when he started his love affair with cruelty.
“Man,” Tristan says when it becomes clear that I’m not going to speak. “What is your problem? That’s just not cool.”
Breathing, it’s a fucking battle right now. So I do the only thing I can think of to center myself: I smash my fist into the desk. Pain shoots through my wrist, hot and cold. Pins and needles. Thorns and briars. Pain burns away my fragility, stops me from trembling.
“What are you doing?” Peter stumbles back.
He’s looking at me like I’m a psychopath. And I don’t have an answer to his question that won’t confirm that I am one. So I stay silent. We both stay silent and keep staring at each other. Neither of us wants to seem too afraid to meet the other’s eyes. But the truth is, I’m scared shitless.
I’m scared shitless, because I fucking did this. Or at least I partially did this. Me and Amy, and everyone else who stood by and watched us say the things we said to this boy. Mark and Petal. The entire student body of Sherwood High.
“It’s sad,” I say eventually.
The silence splinters all around us.
“What’s sad?” Peter says. And his voice is so sharp that it cuts into me.
It’s sad that Amy’s parents haunted her out of her skin. And then Amy haunted Peter out of his skin.
“You are so much like her now.” I’m close to tears. “You don’t know it,” I say, “but you’re just like Amy.”
“Don’t compare me—”
But I head outside before he can put up a meaningless defense.
Casey sits alone as usual, a piece of red chalk jammed between her fingers. She’s scribbling blood-colored dust over the dull gray concrete.
When she sees me, she smiles.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hi.”
I sit down next to her, ignoring all the other children racing around the play equipment, buzzing with energy. Tristan will be with them soon, and I’m pretty sure that Heather doesn’t want me dealing with any of these kids.
Except for Casey, apparently.
I look at her. Her head’s bowed, with curtains of mousy brown hair blocking her face from view. But words are trickling from her mouth, and I can hear them. “What do you think my life’s really going to be like?” she says without looking up at me.
I want to sing to her. Want to sing, “Que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be.”
But I’m not cruel enough to do it.
“Why do you want to know?” I ask.
She shrugs. Her shoulders are tiny. God. She’s tiny.
Ten years old.
“Just do.”
Ten years old and wrapped in weariness from head to toe. I don’t know what’s wrong with Casey. But I know something’s wrong.
“Okay,” I say. I’m not sure how to answer, though. I don’t know how to unravel her life’s story for her. I don’t even feel in control of my own life’s story most of the time. I feel as if I’ve been telling it all wrong.
“Okay,” I repeat. I’m not sure where to begin.
“My story is just okay?” Her words are biting, each of them a tiny piece of disappointment. “What does that mean?”
I clear my throat, willing an answer to float into my brain. “It means that you’re going to be okay. In the end, we’re all okay.”
My finger dances through dusty gravel. I draw swirls, swirls, swirls.
I’m not even sure if I believe what I just said.
Because Amy was my best friend, and in the end she wasn’t okay. She had her moments where she floated up high—breaking into supermarkets, dancing in fountains, mooning the local pastor—but in the end she hit the ground. In the end she wasn’t okay. She was all wrong, crossed out, a stain of a body sprawled among the weeds in my garden.
“Are you sure?” Casey says.
“Yes,” I say. “I’m sure.”
Because I want to believe this.
I want to believe that I’m going to be okay. That we’re all going to be okay.
But I don’t and we won’t and I just can’t do this. Can’t lie to this poor kid so badly, because she
was right the other day when she said that, in stories, the ending is always too happy. I open my mouth. “Casey,” I begin, but then someone else speaks. Cuts me off.
“What have you done?”
Heather’s got her hands on her hips, pressing today’s floral blouse into the curves of her body. Her face is red, red, red; and her lips are pursed. Bloodless.
I shrug and get to my feet, ready for a showdown. Or a meltdown. “I don’t have a clue. Why don’t you tell me?”
Doubtless this has something to do with Peter.
“How dare you,” she breathes. “How dare you waltz in here and tell my son that he’s like that girl?”
I close my eyes.
That girl.
Amy. My best friend.
My bitch of a best friend who is dead.
I’m too tired to play nice or to keep up my wholesome act. “Because,” I say. “Because it’s the truth.”
She leans in, way too close. “No,” she says. “It isn’t. My son is nothing like your friend. Like you.”
She spits out you. As if being compared to me is worse than being compared to a fucking ax-murderer. As if I’m a serial killer-arsonist-whore.
I can’t speak, can’t say anything to show her that she’s wrong.
But then Casey wraps her chubby, warm fingers around my knee.
It’s as if Casey’s grounding me, telling me that I’m not that bad. I’ve been stupid, and I’ve made mistakes; but I’m not that bad. I have love and hate and anger and sorrow and pain in this body, just like anybody and everybody else. Just like Heather and her son.
I keep my head high, hold my ground. Because I may not be the best person, but I’m not the worst, either. I tell Heather the truth. “He’s becoming exactly like us,” I say, “whether you like it or not.”
She steps back because she can hear in my voice that I’m telling the truth. Because she really doesn’t want me to be telling the truth.
“How could—”
“We broke him,” I say. “He’s becoming like us because we broke him.”
Her nostrils flare. “Get out! I don’t need you here. I don’t want you here. Just get out. Get the fuck out.”
I want to argue with her. I want to stand there and tell her that I’m not poison, that I’m a worthy human being. But the words would taste false. Because to her, I’m always going to be the girl who killed her son’s spirit. To her, I really will always be poison, even though I’m trying to change. Even though I think I have changed since what happened with Peter.
So instead of pulling out defensive words, I step around her and walk toward the playroom. Toward the exit. Light streams through the glass doors, the glass windows.
We’re all just people in glass houses.
Peter’s still standing behind the registration desk when I come inside. I pause, stare at him. He can feel my gaze—I know because of the way he starts coughing. He shuffles and reshuffles the papers in front of him way too many times.
And then I’m heading back over to him. I’m heading back over to him because I have something to say. Because I don’t want the ghost of the girl I used to be to haunt me anymore.
I prop my elbows up on the blue counter. “Hey,” I say.
He edges back, away from me. “Shouldn’t you be gone?”
“Probably. Your mom’s going to kill me if she sees me still here.”
“But she can’t see you from outside,” he says, biting his lip. He looks so freaked-out.
I resist the temptation to roll my eyes. “Relax,” I say. “I’m not going to bite you.”
He stares at the table. Shuffles the papers. Again and again. Cough. Eventually, he looks up at me, his face all hard lines. Cut glass. “What the fuck do you want from me?”
“I just wanted to say...” Pause. I suck in a deep breath. Once I say this there’s no going back, no finding that old Ella with all the careless words and apathy. Once I say this I’ll no longer have any fucking clue about who I am.
I say it, anyway.
“I’m sorry.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
I HAVE NOWHERE to go. So I’m sitting right outside the center. Sitting beneath an oak tree on a carpet of smashed autumn leaves. Wind whips up and down the street. I bow my head against it, wondering what the fuck I’m still doing here.
But I know.
I’m waiting for Tristan in some ways. Waiting and waiting and waiting because he’s promised to show me what Amy felt like, and no one else has been able to make me that promise.
I’m also waiting for the end of time. Infinity. Forever. Because I can’t leave this place, can’t leave Sherwood, even though I want to more than anything.
People think that only small towns are stifling, only small-town life slings nooses around people’s necks and leaves them to hang. Sherwood isn’t a small town—Sherwood is big and sprawling and packed with stately houses. And still, I’ve always wanted to escape.
I’m convinced I’ve been singing the Big Town Blues since the day I was born. And I’m convinced that Amy was, too.
But she’s dead and gone now and I’m here, squished against rotting autumn leaves on a deserted road. Still. Life is as still as death today.
I bury my head in my hands. Don’tthinkdon’tthinkdon’t think—
Three days before Amy jumped, we went back to the park. To the jungle park where we used to get so tangled up when we were young. We played hide-and-seek again. And we raised a bottle of vodka. We drank to each other’s health. We laughed. We danced. We pretended to be fairies just like when we were five.
And after the energy fizzled from us—escaped our bodies through our toes and our heads, gusted out of our open, laughing mouths—we lay down on the ground and stared up at the sky. That day, that day when we were dreaming, I was so sure I could snatch a cloud out of the sky, pop it into my mouth, and taste cotton candy. Taste hope.
There were branches above us with leaves dripping down, glowing golden in the light. The earth was soft beneath us.
We smiled at the world that day. The world was infectious that day.
“Ella,” Amy said. “You’ve got to help me find the horizon before we go to college together.”
“The horizon? Are you serious?”
“Yeah! We’ll steal Cherry Bomb—grand theft auto, you know you want to—and we’ll just drive until we slam into it. Or until everything feels like sun around us.”
“You’re so weird right now. Been messing with your boyfriend’s stash?”
“Nah. I just want his car and his body, not his drugs.”
She was lying.
That was two days before she died, two days before my party. Two. Fucking. Days. She couldn’t have had such a radical change of mind in two days, could she?
I don’t get it.
I just don’t.
Why did she tell me all that if she was going to die? Why did she tell me that we’d be going on some crazy road trip to the horizon together, that we’d be going to college together, if she was going to leave me alone in Sherwood?
Part of me can’t help but wonder whether, maybe, she wanted to reach the horizon so she could see if there was anything on the other side.
I feel like an unnecessary piece of garbage dumped at the airport.
It doesn’t help that the center’s about to close and the parents are showing up in their SUVs and sports cars and Hondas. They look down at me. And then the kids start to come out of the center, and they look down at me, too. Down, down, down their noses.
They can see her. The ghost of the girl I used to be, who will haunt me forever. And Amy. Sometimes I think Amy’s death is as visible on us—me and Mark and Pet—as our clothes, our hair, our fuck-off stares.
Today, I don’t, can’t shoot anyone with my glare. Instead, I stare through strands of brittle black hair at the concrete, at the bruised autumn leaves.
The kids—Nike, Reebok, Nike, Converse, Converse—get swallowed up inside the cars, which cruise away down t
he street. The engines drone off into the distance.
And then the sound dies and I’m alone again.
Waiting for Tristan.
Where is he?
I turn my head looking for him. Searching him out. But all I can see are sapling trees and the twigs of the oak crisscrossing overhead, brown bars preventing me from leaping into the gray sky. It takes me a moment to realize that there’s actually another person out here, too.
Casey.
She’s sitting right in front of the entrance to the center, leaning against the base of a streetlight. Her legs kick across the now-smudged lines of a hopscotch game, the edge of an electric blue 3 curling out from beneath her feet.
I wave when I catch her eye. Because this is what friendly, nonbitchy people do. They wave at ten-year-olds who seem as if the world has washed over them, washed into them, washed them out.
She waves back. Tugs at her hair. Even at this distance I can see that something’s making her uncomfortable. And that’s when I notice the car crawling toward the center. Battered. A blue version of Cherry Bomb. Blueberry Bomb. The driver’s got the window rolled down, and rock music and cigarette smoke float out the window.
There’s a voice crawling out the window, too. “Casey, get in the car.”
And I’m on my feet, not sure why, not sure what I’m going to do. There’s a part of me that’s dying inside for Casey, because the woman in the car—her mom I’m guessing—doesn’t care enough about her to put out the fucking cigarette. But it’s more than that. It’s the tone of her mother’s voice.
Shrapnel to my ears.
Casey stands, drags her feet to the car.
The woman blows out a huge plume of smoke. “Hurry up.”
Casey doesn’t respond. She opens the car door, gets inside. Her face is blank. Slack jaw, empty eyes.
Blueberry Bomb begins to move. I look up as it goes past me, and Casey’s staring straight at me. “Fuck,” she mouths, grinning. Like this is her secret rebellion or something.
Kid’s got premature teen spirit.
Wheels turning, burning by, and then they’re gone, speeding up the street way too fast.
Fall to Pieces Page 13