Pretty Things Don't Break

by Lauren Jayne

  Then Mrs. Mroz chimed in, “OK, my children, go ahead and switch partners.”

  Suddenly, I felt something I had never felt before. A wave of heat washed over my body, and my stomach was twirling around like clothes tumbling in a dryer.

  When Ben scooted over to me, his stool caught my long skirt, exposing my knee. Before I could push it down, his bare knee touched mine, sending a current of electricity through my body. I scooted my chair back, but just a little. Every word out of Ben’s mouth dripped with flirtation, but I knew it wasn’t just with me; it was with every female he came in contact with. So when he lifted my hair up and whispered slowly into my ear, “You smell amazing,” I just laughed and pushed him away. Noah’s class had graduated last year and the standing rule to stay far away from his sister was no longer in effect. Sometimes, if a guy was talking to me at school, Noah would scoot between us and say, “Don’t even look at her.” I loved it. Not only because I felt protected, but also because the last thing I wanted was a boy ever thinking he could touch me. The thought of it actually made me sick. Until now.

  In the weeks that followed our meeting, Art became my favorite class. One day, Kurt invited Talia and me to come over to his house after school.

  Talia and I jumped into her two-seater, red Porsche and followed the directions Kurt had scratched down on a piece of notepaper. With the top off, our hair blew in the wind as we cranked KUBE 93 and headed down the hill to Kurt’s house. Turn after turn we followed our little map until we heard, “Girls, to do the dishes, girls to do the laundry, girls, girls, girls,” blaring through huge rectangular speakers standing end to end in the open garage as we drove into the cul-de-sac. It was home to a huge wood ramp surrounded by cars. Boys were skating off the jump and up off the curbs, sending their skateboards flying as they launched off the steps, landing in perfectly cool form as their hair flopped down over their faces. Kurt saw us and ran up to Talia’s car where we were talking and acting like we had just ended up there by accident. As we got out, the boys looked to see what girls were invading their boys club, looked us up and down, and started skating again, the Beastie Boys still blaring. Talia and I watched and talked with Kurt in his driveway as one by one they came up and chatted with us, each one taken by Talia’s bouncy charm.

  If we were the sorority, the boys soon became our fraternity, and we started having family dinner (that’s what we called it) at my house on a regular basis. One night, Kurt came with me, and Mandi and Jen followed. As soon as we’d driven through town, Mandi signaled to us that she needed to go home; we had hand signals for everything. We’d put our hands out the windows pointing to turn this way or that, and if we needed the car behind us to stop, we’d put on our flashers. We followed them down the lake road and pulled up to Mandi’s house. The door seemed to be made from the same wood Dad and Noah used to make their flying planes, so flimsy you could kick it in with a simple kick of your foot. It was chilly inside, and dark, smelling like must and stale smoke. Kurt and I headed back to the kitchen while Mandi got her things together upstairs. Since my parents had just headed out for a week, she wanted to get enough clothes to last so she wouldn’t have to come back. Kurt was ripping through the cupboards; each of them was pretty empty, with the exception of a few boxes of cereal and some breakfast bars. The fridge held condiments and a gross-looking block of cheese in the drawer.

  Kurt said, “I’m starving, and there’s no food in this house; no wonder Mandi’s so tiny.”

  He was kidding, like he always was, but just as the words left his mouth, we heard Mandi walking into the kitchen. I looked up at her and could see embarrassment wash over her reddened cheeks. We all walked up the greenish-brown stairs; when I grabbed the railing it swayed back and forth a few inches in either direction, so I let it go. Mandi plopped down on her bed, which she had positioned in the middle of her room at an angle. Rearranging our furniture was something we all did, sometimes weekly. One by one we lay next to her, our heads in the middle of her bed, our feet on the floor. Staring up at the ceiling, Jen started to talk.

  “After too many nights waiting by the window for my dad to come home, I stopped waiting. I realized that he had a room here, but he must have moved in with his girlfriend. So in junior high I got emancipated and made sure I always had a checkbook. My dad listened when I told him to let me pay the bills and buy food before he spent his ferry checks. Thankfully, my next-door neighbor, who was ten years older than me, was like a big sister. She took me to the store whenever she went, and I got used to living alone.”

  Then Mandi said, “Waiting in my room as a little girl for my mom to come home, I was happy to hear one voice, scared when I heard two. I hid under these covers.” She grabbed her comforter. “I waited to hear the sloppy laughs, and sometimes screams, stop before I’d let myself fall at least halfway asleep.”

  Lying there, I could feel that it was my turn. Up until this moment, the girls had always told me I was the together one, the one who didn’t need boys or drinks or drugs. Mandi said I was like Super Girl. I wasn’t Super Girl, not even close. Most of the time I still felt like the shy, scared, fish out of water I felt like growing up. Mom had always said she needed to be ‘on’ for people. I never wanted to have to be on for anyone; I just wanted to be me, nothing more and nothing less.

  At that moment, when I could have jumped up or said something superficial and meaningless, I said, “My dad bashes me into things whenever he can, sending me down the stairs, into walls. Never in front of my mom or brother, either. When I’ve tried to tell them, they call me crazy and say I exaggerate, so I stopped telling them. The weird look in his eyes when he watches me bleed makes me go blank. I need him to know that he can’t break me. I don’t ask for it, but if he has a moment and something snaps, I know there isn’t anything I can do to stop it, so I just turn off. The blank stare on my face makes his blood boil; the veins on his face look like they’ll pop and he gets so angry he doesn’t seem human. If I cry, it’s after, never during. Letting him see me hurt means he’s won, and I’d rather die.”

  I had never told anyone in my life about Dad’s violence. Mrs. Miller had seen me more than a few times, when I’d run to her house after a fight or if I’d been chased out of the house and fled to hers with a bump or a bloody nose. Mr. Miller would just cite how during his time as a cop, domestics were the worst and that typically if it happens once it will happen again until one day someone dies. The only way to stop it is to get out, he’d say. That was his way of talking to me without embarrassing me. It seemed like it wasn’t just my family who had a “don’t talk about anything” rule that was in effect at all times.

  During that moment of sheer terror on Mandi’s bed, my heart beat so fast and hard I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to speak, but I pushed through the pain and the fear. I needed them to know all of me or none of me. If I’d kept it inside, those horrible experiences would have stayed a part of me and then maybe had become me. I felt a weight lifted from my body and a lightness I’d never felt before.

  Just before the silence got uncomfortable Kurt said, “After two boys, my mom wanted a girl so bad that, when I was born, she’d put me in pink dresses and call me Kurtarina.”

  We all started to laugh and got up from Mandi’s bed. Finding out that my perfect and beautiful girlfriends were almost as broken as I somehow made me feel less alone in the world; our bonds grew stronger from then on.

  I sent the girls home with my key so that the door would be unlocked when everyone showed up, and Kurt and I went to the market with Mom’s check in my back pocket. When we got in his car, he sat for a minute and turned off the radio.

  We sat there in silence until I said, “What’s wrong, are we out of gas? Did your stereo kill your battery again?”

  “No, I want to tell you something.” Kurt grabbed my hand. “I would die before I ever let anyone touch one hair on your head. The thought of anyone ever hurting you makes me sick. I’ll always be there for you, OK?”

  When we pul
led up to the house in Kurt’s lavender Karmann Ghia, we saw a small ramp the guys had created from the firewood that was always stacked along my mom’s side of the garage and a piece of scrap wood from Dad’s scary shed in the back. With their car doors open so they could hear music through their stereos, they skateboarded in the driveway. Kurt and I walked past them with groceries in hand and started to unload. The girls were in the back lying in the hammock and came in to see what we got. I started the grill with charcoal briquettes.

  With a platter of burgers, another for the toppings, a huge salad, a bag of crunchy Cheetos that Kurt had grabbed off the counter, and a case of beer, dinner was ready.

  Ten of us piled around our kitchen table, and with the music playing from the stereo downstairs, I took a moment to thank God in my head for my family that surrounded me. I looked around the table and thought, from kindergarten to high school my parents never had a social gathering at our house. Not one. Not a friend for a barbecue or a neighbor for a drink. Our house was cold, quiet and empty. This was the life I’d always dreamt about, and I was filled with so much gratitude I felt like I would burst.

  After dinner, Josh, Joel, Kurt, Talia and I headed downstairs. Sitting Indian style in front of our coffee table, Joel suggested we play Truth or Dare.

  With the lights low and the candle burning, Joel said, “Talia, truth or dare?”

  “Dare,” she said, her glimmering blue eyes sparkling in the candlelight.

  “I dare you to take your shirt off and walk out the front door and yell, ‘I love Joel.’”

  In one second Talia ripped off her shirt (to the guys’ disappointment she was wearing a little white camisole over her bra) and happily obliged.

  After a few more turns, Josh said, “Lauren, truth or dare?”

  “Dare,” I said cautiously.

  He thought long and hard and then said, “I dare you to kiss one of us.”

  I looked at them like somehow someone new might have shown up. Talia was out, and I would have felt more comfortable kissing my dog Fred than Joel or Josh. I knew I could give Kurt a peck and move on.

  When I looked over at Kurt, he was staring at me. I looked around our carpet circle and all eyes were on me: heads down, staring, looking like they were thinking “she’ll never do it.” As Jane Says played on the mixed tape that Ben had made for me, I twisted around, so I was looking at Kurt, my hair over my left eye.

  I was a breath away from Kurt’s face, our lips brushing, when he said, “Are you OK? Are you sure?”

  At that moment, I leaned in just enough and our lips connected. Kurt was still sitting Indian style, but he propped up on his knees so he could get closer to me, his stomach muscles holding him steady. He gently moved my hair back from my eyes, then put both of his big, warm hands on my face and our mouths parted. Our tongues touching in perfect, soft unison, I felt myself floating away. It was just Kurt and me; there was a current running through our bodies that was magnetic, and in that moment I never wanted to stop kissing him.

  I heard Talia start to giggle and pulled away. Kurt dropped back down into Indian style, his knee touching mine. The shock on everyone’s faces looked like Kurt and I had just had sex in front of them. It was a magical kiss; it was the best kiss, the most perfect kiss of my life. And then I realized that was my very first kiss, and sharing it with one of my best friends and the sweetest guy I’d ever met made me smile.

  A few days later Kurt pulled me aside; he said he had to talk to me. He had been so quiet since our kiss. I was glad he was going to tell me what was going on. I stood on the curb, and he stood on the street in front of our school, so we were almost eye-to-eye. Kurt’s eyes were amazing: deep brown, his sun-kissed hair always partly covering them. His shirt collar was flipped in, so I reached down by his neck to fix it; my hand grazed his face, and he leaned into me.

  Standing up straighter I said, “What’s up, you OK?”

  Looking at me with his kind, beautiful brown eyes, and a half smile he said, “I want you to go to the dance with me. Will you go to the dance with me?”

  “Kurt, I can’t, I’m going with Ben. He asked me earlier, but just as friends, with the group. Didn’t he tell you? A bunch of us are going together. Talia’s going with Joel, and Mandi’s going with Dave.”

  He reached around me like he was going to hug me, lifted me off the curb and put me down next to him. “Let’s go to class,” he said.

  Ben would pass me notes between classes with poems about my hair and my laugh and my body, and I’d pass them back and ask if he’d made copies in the office to hand out to the twenty other girls that were always surrounding him. One day after school we all ended up at Jen’s house; Ben needed a ride home, and I was the only one who offered. I felt immediately nervous and uncomfortable and self-conscious. Whenever I saw him, my heart raced, no matter how hard I tried to blow it off. I couldn’t control my body and I hated it. Driving with Ben next to me in the passenger seat, I rested my hand on the gearshift and he touched it; I pulled it back in my lap. I could feel him looking at me as I drove so I shook my hair over that side of my face, a perfect wall. Then he reached up and put my hair behind my ear. With everyone else I was chatty, and people always said I was hysterically funny. But with Ben, I was silent; this was the first time we had ever been alone. Embarrassed because I knew my face was bright red, I shook my hair back down.

  When we got to Ben’s house on the hill, he asked if I wanted to come in.

  Knowing my parents were home, I was in no rush to go anywhere and said, “I guess, but just for a few minutes.”

  Following Ben up the front steps to his house, my heart was pounding, but on the outside, I hoped I looked as cool as a cucumber. He opened the door and I smelled homemade something – maybe cake. And clean, it smelled so clean. He flipped on the lights, and I followed him up the stairs; the formal sitting room had fresh vacuum tracks, there wasn’t a thing out of place. There was a loaf of banana cranberry bread sitting on the kitchen counter. Ben cut himself a piece and asked if I wanted one.

  Inside I was shaking, and as slowly and calmly as I could, I said, “I’m OK.”

  He grabbed a beer from the fridge and asked, “Do you want anything?”

  “Maybe water,” I said in my best nonchalant voice.

  Then he headed downstairs, and I followed him. He flipped on the lights and illuminated a room that could have only belonged to him. Huge posters of his favorite underground bands hung artistically crooked, but precisely, from the clean white walls. He flipped on his music, which was eclectic and mostly things I’d never heard before, with the exception of the Beastie Boys, who we played daily and were quickly becoming our anthem for the year. When I heard a woman’s voice cut through the speakers like melting butter, I was mesmerized and instantly in love.

  “Who is this? I love her.”

  “Ten Thousand Maniacs. It’s Natalie Merchant. I knew you’d love her. I love her too,” he said.

  Then Ben sat down on his couch and patted the seat next to him. I walked toward him, but sat on the couch next to him; I just couldn’t be on the same couch with him. He took out a little pouch and started to roll himself a cigarette.

  “Your parents let you smoke in here?”

  “Mom. My mom lets me smoke in here. Haven’t seen my dad in years.”

  Those words were like music to my ears. My shoulders unconsciously dropped two inches.

  Ben and I sat in his room, which was really the entire finished basement, and talked. He was sweet and calm; the boy sitting across from me didn’t resemble the cocky, flirty, almost arrogant guy that Ben was at school. I looked around, and on a note next to his phone I saw a message in mom writing that read, “Call Elle.” I’d only heard that name once before, so I said her last name and asked if that was her.

  “Yea, her sister’s friends with my brother. She came over a few nights ago with her sister. I was watching Mr. Ed right there,” and he pointed to the floor, “and she crawled up next to me and we had sex.
”

  “Why are you telling me this? That’s private; you shouldn’t be telling me this, Ben. She’s your girlfriend, and that’s not nice. I didn’t know you were dating anyway.”

  “She’s not my girlfriend. I met her like once before that, and I was telling you because it was funny and I feel like I can tell you anything.”

  Sitting on the couch next to Ben, I thought back to my first encounter with Elle. She was in my gym class at Jr. High; she started school mid-year, and she stood with her hips pushed forward; it almost looked like it hurt. A girl with a spicy attitude asked her when we were changing our clothes in the locker room why she stood like that, and she said, “So people like you won’t stare at my ass.” Then she laughed a deep, I’ve-smoked-for-ten-years laugh, that was surprising since she was petite, and looked in the mirror at her hair, which was shaved really close on one side with the other side falling over her eyes.

  The next time I saw her we were at lunch, but she wasn’t eating. I asked her why and she said she forgot her lunch, so I pushed over half of my PB &J sandwich. Later, when our science teacher paired us up, she told me that one night she woke up and her dad was in bed with her doing really bad things. She ran out and told her mom, and that’s why they moved here from California. With the sudden move, her mom didn’t have quite enough money to feed them. That day, I went home and waited for my mom to show up after a meeting. I told her about Elle and her family and right then we went to QFC and bought three bags of groceries and took them to her house.

  As I was setting them down, Elle opened her apartment door and said, “I don’t know why I told you that stuff; I don’t know why I told you anything. Nobody knows that, and I hope it will stay that way.”

  “I promise.”

  Then I headed down the stairs back to my mom’s car.

  Through the wooden slat apartment stairs, she yelled down to me, “Thank you.”

  I smiled up at her.

  I shook out of my daydream and told Ben he shouldn’t talk about Elle anymore.