Fracture

by Megan Miranda

  I covered my mouth with my hand, like I needed a reminder to stay quiet. “Don’t you think you’re being a little silly? A little childish? You can’t very well hang out in the back of a funeral home all night.”

  The funeral home. I shivered. I slid my new phone out of my jacket pocket and put it on silent. Then I pressed and held number one and turned the volume as low as it would go. Pick up, pick up, pick up.

  “Can I call you back?” Decker mumbled into the phone. I didn’t answer. There were voices in the background, and low music, and I bet if I listened hard enough, I could pick out Tara’s voice. I bet I wouldn’t even have to listen that hard.

  “Delaney?” he said. “You there?” Then I heard a muffled, “Be right back,” and the music faded.

  “I can hear you breathing. So speak already.” The door jerked back again and I sucked in air. “Delaney, answer me. Are you okay?”

  As quietly as I could, in a voice that wasn’t even a voice, just a breath with letters, I exhaled the word, “No.”

  Decker got louder, like he was pressing the phone to his face. “Where are you?”

  “Funeral home in town,” I whispered.

  “What the hell are you doing there?” I didn’t answer. “Never mind, I’m coming.”

  But before he could hang up I said, “Around the back.”

  And he said, “Don’t hang up,” and I didn’t, so I think he heard the knob jiggle and the door frame protest and the dead bolt bang, metal on metal, and I think he heard the voice calling, “Delaney, I know you’re there,” but he didn’t say a word. He didn’t speak but I heard him breathing, a frantic breathing, and I heard him lay on the horn and the noise was too loud so I slammed the phone shut.

  And then I heard Troy laugh. “I can hear you, Delaney. Who’d you call? Is your boyfriend coming for you?” And then a few minutes later I heard snow crunch and tires squeal and a car door slam. And I flipped the lock and threw the door open and couldn’t see anything from the light for a second, couldn’t see if Troy was there and if he was going for Decker or if Decker was going for Troy. But when my eyes adjusted, the only one there was Decker and I let out a pathetic whimper and ran for the car, even faster than he could get there.

  Then I pressed the lock to the car door extra hard with my shaking hand and Decker got the hell out of there without saying a word.

  I slouched in the front seat with my eyes fixed on the rear-view mirror, expecting a worn black car to follow us. Decker drove fast, and he was doing the same, casting furtive glances in the mirror. He slowed at our street.

  “Keep going,” I said, my voice still wavering, my hands still trembling.

  So he did. He drove to the other end of Falcon Lake and parked on the land between abandoned summer lake homes. He unbuckled his seat belt, but he left the car running. Then he spun in his seat. “What happened?”

  I shut my eyes and lowered my head. I could feel tears forming under my eyelids. If I opened them, they’d come spilling out.

  “Please, Delaney. You called me. Please tell me.”

  I pressed my thumbs to my closed eyes, willing the tears back inside. “Just . . . stay away from Troy, okay? He’s not who he seems.” Funny how someone can change in an instant. From compassionate to vicious in a heartbeat. Except he didn’t change. He had always been that person. I just hadn’t seen it. Like Justin proved at the party. People are who they are.

  I opened my eyes, and though my vision was kind of blurry, the tears stayed put. Decker’s balled-up fists came into focus first. Then his face, which was looking at me very carefully. “Did he,” and then he lowered his voice and couldn’t really look at me, “hurt you?”

  I thought of the mark on my arm. But then I thought of Decker and his inclination toward heroism—stupid heroism—and pictured him, half the width, not nearly the muscle of Troy. And Troy, with half the morals, not nearly the restraint of Decker. And I said, “No. He just scared me is all.”

  “You were hiding in the back of a funeral home. You were terrified.” Then he looked at my hands. “You still are.” He reached across the emergency cooler, took my hand, and leaned back in his own seat. And for a moment, we were the old Delaney and Decker, where holding hands didn’t mean any more or any less than just that. I stared ahead, through the scattering of trees, to the lake beyond. The solid, snow-covered lake. No hole in the surface.

  The sun was creeping lower. Decker flicked on the headlights with his free hand. “I think you should call the police.”

  “No.” I pulled my hand back and Decker looked over at me. “Nothing happened. I think maybe I overreacted. Please don’t tell. Promise, Decker.”

  He sighed. “I wish you would talk to me.”

  “I’m sorry I made you leave wherever you were.”

  “I’m not. I’m glad I’m the one you called. Are you going to be okay?”

  “I’m going to be fine.” Which was the biggest lie of all.

  He reversed the car back onto the road and drove toward home, and I saw us slipping away again. When I opened the car door, the old us would escape and dissolve into the evening air. So before it could, I unbuckled my seat belt in his driveway, slid across the emergency cooler, wrapped my arms around him, and buried my face in his neck.

  Decker tensed in surprise, then smoothed his hands down my hair to my back. He breathed in deeply. I knew what he was doing. He was trying to remember everything about this moment. I knew he was doing it because I was doing the same thing. Then I opened the door without looking back at him. The cold air sliced in. I walked across the yard. Alone.

  Mom was cooking, which was a good sign. Except she didn’t really look at me. And Dad was talking over the silence, like he didn’t notice anything was wrong. Except he obviously did, because he never stopped filling the silence.

  After dinner I told my parents I was going to bed early, so Mom stood on a kitchen chair to retrieve my vials of medicine from the cabinet over the fridge. Because along with not being trusted to touch the stove or stay home alone or wander the streets, I was not to be trusted with medicine. And nothing says successful deterrent like storing something a foot out of my reach.

  She handed me my pills, and I sipped my water and ran for the steps to dispose of my medicine.

  “Wait, Delaney.”

  I half-turned but kept one hand on the railing. “Hmm?” My heart beat quicker as I imagined the pills slowly disintegrating under my tongue, medicine absorbing into my bloodstream.

  “Open your mouth.”

  “Excuse me?” Mom walked closer and Dad shook the pages of the newspaper in front of his face, ignoring the scene.

  “I said, open your mouth.”

  “Why?” I tried not to move my tongue too much, but I also didn’t want to sound like I was trying not to move my tongue. So I stuck with minimal words.

  “Because I want to see.” She stood close enough to see directly into my mouth.

  “You don’t trust me,” I said, hoping to deter her. But on the last word, she grabbed my face with one hand, squeezing her fingers into my cheeks. She narrowed her eyes and dragged me across the kitchen to the faucet. “I knew it,” she said. “I knew you weren’t right.”

  She looked at me like she could see the old Delaney hiding just under the surface, timid and obedient. All that was needed was a dose or two of medicine. I’d be fixed. “I’m not taking it,” I said, and I spit the pills into the sink.

  For a second I thought I could see the thoughts run through her head. I could see her holding me down, pinching my nose, forcing the pills down my throat. But she had a better, more effective plan. “You will not leave that room of yours until you take them. Not even for school. I will pull you out on medical leave.”

  I sucked in a breath and stared at her. Then I held out my hand, took a new dose, threw the pills back into my mouth, and swallowed dry, feeling the route they took down my esophagus. First, like I was choking. Then, like there was a knot right over my heart.

&nbs
p; “You hate me right now,” Mom said. “And that’s okay. I’m okay with you hating me as long as you’re safe. One day you’ll understand that.”

  The only thing I understood was that I had never felt so violated. Not when Decker kissed me on a dare, not when Troy grabbed my arm and left a bruise, not even when I sat cowering in the back of a funeral home. Now. With my mother, who I used to trust implicitly. This was the worst.

  I threw up in the bathroom. Sad thing is, I didn’t even try. I just stood there under scalding water letting the entire day sink in, from seeing Troy take the woman’s pills to watching that old lady’s house to fighting at the movie theater to hiding in the back of the funeral home to escaping in the car with Decker to Mom forcing pills down my throat—and suddenly I couldn’t keep anything inside.

  So I never did take that medicine. But I think some of it stuck, because I got really sleepy. My eyelids were heavy, and I stumbled dizzily around my room. I didn’t want to sleep. I didn’t want to sleep because of Troy. I could feel him lingering outside. I just knew he was watching me. From down the block or behind the bushes across the street or in plain sight in the middle of our road. So I checked the lock on my window. I pulled the shades down tight and stuck scissors underneath my pillow. Every car rumbling down the street sounded like his. Every rattle of the window was him trying to get in.

  I fell asleep with one hand on the scissors and woke up the next morning in the same position. It was a miracle I hadn’t hurt myself. Mom threw open the door without knocking, smiling like she hadn’t turned on me the night before. “Phone call,” she said.

  “Tell him I’ll call him back,” I said. Because it was either Troy, whom I wouldn’t call back, or Decker, whom I would once I figured out what to say.

  “It’s not a him.”

  I scrambled for the phone. “Where’ve you been, Delaney?”

  “Hey, Janna.” I rubbed the grogginess from my eyes. “What’s up?”

  “Just calling to see how you did in precalc.”

  “You got your grades?”

  “Yesterday. Didn’t you?”

  “I’ll call you back.”

  I ran down the hall, flew down the steps, and plastered a fake smile on my face just like Mom’s. “Did my grades come?”

  Mom was ironing in front of the news. “Yes, honey, they came yesterday.” She still hadn’t looked at me. Not a good sign.

  “Well?”

  “All As, one B.”

  “What? A B? Let me see.” She walked briskly in and out of the office like everything was fine. Maybe Mom’s vision was going. Maybe she was making a joke. But there it was, the curve of the B, a blemish in the uniform column of straight-lined letters.

  “I don’t believe it.” I sat on the edge of the couch, my eyes boring into the paper. “I don’t fucking believe it.” She didn’t correct my language.

  I walked back to my room, still carrying my report card. I dreaded returning Janna’s call, but if I didn’t, she’d know something was wrong anyway. “I got a B in precalc,” I told her.

  “That’s good!” she said after a pause.

  I let out a low laugh. “For you.”

  “No, Delaney, for you. You almost died. You were in a coma. You still got a B.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Are you mad at me?”

  “No, no, I’m sorry. I’m not mad at you. I just thought I aced the exam. Thanks for helping me study, by the way. I guess it could’ve been worse.” What had happened? Did my brain now lack the ability to even know when it didn’t know something? Was that the part that got damaged? Where was self-awareness on the brain scan?

  “Listen,” she said. “Me and Carson are heading to Johnny’s for lunch. Why don’t you come? I haven’t seen you in a while. Okay?”

  “I’ll see you there,” I said. I had to get out of this house. And I could really use a friend.

  Barring an academic implosion by Janna, I now wouldn’t be valedictorian. I picked the phone up again to call Decker, to vent, to listen while he made a joke or told me it didn’t matter or said something to make me feel better—but I didn’t. That part of us was gone. The casualness, the ease, the simple friendship. Suddenly, I was keeping things from him. And I knew he was doing the same thing.

  I borrowed Mom’s car with permission. I parked in the same lot I had run through the afternoon before and stared out my windshield at the pizzeria. I felt a very faint tugging toward the assisted living facility, as was expected. But over that, there was something stronger. Something much stronger coming from the strip of stores in front of me. Like death was waiting for me. Like it was still circling around me but couldn’t quite find me because, like Troy had said, I wasn’t really alive anymore.

  In a small town, chances were I’d know who the dying person was. Not personally, probably, since I kept my distance from the elderly, but it’d be someone’s grandparent or someone’s neighbor or someone’s uncle’s cousin. Two degrees of separation at the most. And then I’d have to know that one of our teachers was terminally ill or Janna was going to lose a grandparent or Tara was going to lose her neighbor. And even though I didn’t like Tara, I didn’t want her to lose anyone either.

  So I was paralyzed in my car. Couldn’t go home. Couldn’t go to Decker’s. Couldn’t go anywhere. Too much of a coward to go in the pizzeria. Grow a spine. Okay, I’d go in, I just wouldn’t look. I plodded through the snowy parking lot and pushed my way into the crowded restaurant. The smell of grease and pepperoni should’ve been able to distract me. I kept my head mostly down and listened instead. Carson was easy to pick out. He was loud and energetic and laughed spontaneously in the middle of his own sentences. I headed in that direction, to the booth along the right wall.

  I felt like crap. Judging from the way Janna and Carson looked at me and then at each other, I looked like I felt. And then I froze in the middle of the store. People hurried around me, carrying pizzas to their tables, dumping plates into the garbage, pulling spare chairs over to already full tables. I couldn’t take another step. Because the pull was coming from them. From Janna and Carson Levine. From a seventeen-year-old girl and her eighteen-year-old brother. From the girl who held my hand in the hospital and the boy who gave me my first real kiss. My friends.

  One of them was going to die.

  Chapter 14

  “Hey, Delaney,” Janna called, tilting her head to the side. “You all right?”

  I couldn’t move. By now, other people were looking at me. Carson mumbled something to his sister. Janna stood and pulled at a few of her curls, straightening them and letting them recoil again. “Um . . .” She walked over to me and put her arm around my waist. “Earth to Delaney,” she whispered in my ear. “People are looking at you kinda funny.”

  I sunk into her with relief, because it wasn’t her. It wasn’t the girl who declared her friendship to me. But then my stomach clenched and my knees buckled. Because if it wasn’t her, it was Carson. Carson who kissed me on the couch. Carson who broke a window and stole a rope to rescue me. Carson who was smiling at me like we shared a private joke. “You look like you can use some food,” Janna said. I walked with her to the table and slid onto the bench beside her.

  I picked up a slice and bit, barely tasting, and chewed methodically. I registered the crunch and the heat and the grease sliding down my throat, which was not at all as delightful as usual but kind of nauseating instead. And all the while I looked at Carson, who didn’t look sick in the least. He inhaled three slices of garlic-drenched pizza.

  “What do you think, Delaney. Too much garlic? Is it bad for my image?” He threw his head back and laughed.

  “Always his image,” Janna said, pressing a folded napkin on top of her slice, soaking up the puddled grease.

  “Don’t act like you don’t care, Janna.” He turned to me and talked with his mouth full. “She’s going to the salon after this. Trying to tame the ’fro.”

  Janna held her hands protectively over her head. “It’s
not ‘taming.’ It’s ‘relaxing.’”

  “What do you think, Delaney?” Carson said. “Should I cut mine? Too boyish, right? I need to man up for college.” He ran his hand through the curls that fell almost to his chin.

  I tried to smile, thinking of Carson in college. Thinking he would live that long. Thinking I could save him. If only I knew what was wrong.

  “Are you sick?” I said without prelude.

  “Huh?”

  “Sick. You know, ill. Under the weather. You don’t really look like yourself.” Which was a lie.

  Carson picked up the napkin dispenser and stared at his distorted image. “No, I’m not sick. Janna, do I look pale to you or something? Freaking Maine winter. I’m going south for college. Florida. Hawaii, maybe. Yeah, Hawaii. You guys could visit me. Learn to surf or something.”

  Janna laughed with her mouth closed. “Might want to work on your grades, moron.”

  Grades. College. Hair. Like any of it mattered. I couldn’t stop looking at him. I put down the pizza, afraid I might lose yet another meal.

  “Delaney, you really don’t look so good.”

  “Bad day,” I said.

  “It’s just a B, sweetie.” Janna rubbed my back. “Carson over there would kill for a B.”

  “It’s more than the B.”

  Janna looked at me again, mentally debating something. “Look, I have an idea. I’m gonna take the car to the salon. Why don’t you drive Carson home? Stay there with him, and I’ll come hang out when I’m done. Sound good?”

  Actually, it sounded perfect. I couldn’t have planned it better myself. She looked at her brother. “And don’t touch her,” she added.

  “Who, me?” Carson said, grin stretching ear to ear.

  She scowled. “You’re such a prick. Delaney, hands off the brother, get me?”

  “Got you.”

  “Whatever,” Carson said. “She looks contagious anyway.”

  “Why can’t everyone else see this? My brother is an asshole.” She piled the paper plates on our pizza tray and carried it all to the trash. I started to follow them both outside but felt a quick head rush, a pinprick in my brain, like there was something I was missing. I spun around and saw Troy sitting against the back wall. My subconscious must’ve already noticed him.