Fracture

by Megan Miranda

  Something clicked. “You think this—Carson—is your fault?”

  He lifted his shoulders in an exaggerated shrug. “I don’t know. But it’s a trade. And I know it makes me all sorts of horrible, but I’d make it again.”

  I tried to figure out what he was saying, and I shifted uncomfortably. “That’s probably a thought you should keep in your head.”

  He grinned, but it wasn’t a happy one. “I know, I told you I’m horrible, but I want to be honest with you. And that’s the way I feel.” He felt guilty, but he shouldn’t have. I was the only one there with Carson. I was right there, and even I couldn’t save him.

  Or maybe Decker was trying to explain how he felt about me. Except I was fairly certain I hadn’t hallucinated the red car in his driveway.

  “How do you feel about Tara?” I asked.

  “Yeah, that.”

  Something twisted in the pit of my stomach, and my instinct was telling me to run. Leave. Cover my ears. Maybe recite the Declaration of Independence in my head. Because I didn’t really want to hear it. Decker sighed. “My parents couldn’t get me to come home from the hospital. I just sat there for six days. I missed that week of school, too, you know. Even your parents tried to send me away. I think I was upsetting them. Truth is, I kept crying. Really embarrassing. So Tara shows up one day . . .”

  My mouth must’ve dropped open because he smirked. “She’s not such a terrible person, see?” I raised an eyebrow at him. He stopped smiling.

  “Anyway, she shows up to see you, and there can only be a few people in the room at a time, so the nurses kick me out. Then Tara comes back out and takes one look at me and says she’s getting me out of there. And I said no, I didn’t want to go. But the nurses said they had to bathe you and the doctors were coming on rounds, so I left.

  “But we didn’t even make it out of the parking lot. I just sat there, crying, because I felt like if I left you, you’d die. And she’s Tara, so, you know, she climbs across the seat and hugs me and I kissed her. I thought of you and I kissed her. I have no idea why. That’s where I was when you woke up. Can you believe it? The one time I left. . . . I should’ve been there when you woke up. I should’ve been there. I shouldn’t have left.”

  He left me for her. He left me for her at the hospital. He left me for her at the party. And last night, instead of coming to me, he left me for her again.

  “You’re still with her.”

  “I’m not with her, with her. She’s just . . . there.”

  “Is that your explanation? Really?”

  “Well, there was Carson—”

  “There wasn’t, not really.”

  “And then that guy Troy.”

  “There . . .” I wasn’t about to start lying to him.

  “Truth is, I don’t know. I don’t know . . . what I’m doing. Or why I’m doing it,” he said. Which was the worst excuse in the history of excuses. “I don’t know what’s up or down anymore. I feel like I’m . . .” He stopped speaking and winced.

  “Drowning,” I said. “You were going to say you feel like you’re drowning.”

  He nodded. I wondered how many people I took with me when I fell into the lake. How many sunk with me. I thought I had been alone under the water, but maybe I wasn’t.

  “This is all my fault.” He held his arms out, indicating that I was the error. That I was somehow scarred and damaged and he could see every mark on my body. “I’m in love with you, and I did this to you.”

  I wanted to tell him that he saved me, but I wasn’t so sure anymore.

  And in case I didn’t hear him the first time, he said, “I love you.” Like that should just cancel out everything that came before.

  He reached an arm out for me, but I stepped away, toward the door. I walked away from him. “Delaney?” he called after me. His eyes were pleading with me, so I looked away.

  I held my hand out before he could say anything more. There was just too much. Carson was dead. Mom was disappearing. Troy was killing people. I was useless. And Decker was trying to tell me that he loved me, like it actually mattered now. “I heard you,” I said. “But it’s too late.” Didn’t he see? I wasn’t really alive anymore. He opened his mouth to speak again, but I cut him off. “What’s the point, Decker? Really, what’s the goddamn point of anything anymore?”

  I left.

  I walked straight for Falcon Lake, like I had something to say to it. But I stopped at the ledge on the side of the road, completely unsure of why I was there. The lake looked bigger than it used to—like the far shore was some impossible distance away.

  I took a step backward and squeezed my eyes shut. I wanted to rewind. Go back. Tell Decker to take the long way around. Go back even farther. Ask Decker to stay inside with me, in the warmth of my house, just me and him. I would’ve told him something important, and it would’ve mattered. Before all this, it would’ve mattered.

  I took another step back and heard the blare of a horn and the skid of tires. My eyelids shot open and I saw the brake lights of a car fishtailing past me.

  I walked back home with my heart in my throat and an ache in my chest.

  Mom was missing again. But her car was in the garage and her coat was hanging in the closet. So she was somewhere in the house, probably barricaded in her room, trying to resurrect the old Delaney. Without Mom, the house was turning stale. It wasn’t my absence that made the house turn sour, it was Mom’s. She was the life of it and she was disappearing.

  I pulled out some prepackaged frozen cookies that Mom kept on hand in case of last-minute visitors, broke them onto a cookie tray, and put them in the oven. Even though I wasn’t supposed to touch the oven because it wasn’t safe. I figured an oven emergency was the least damaging thing I could accomplish this week.

  I sat in a stiff wooden kitchen chair and breathed in the scent of melting chocolate. I’d read that scent is the most powerful sense for triggering memories. So I tried. I breathed deeply, trying to transport myself back to the kitchen when Mom baked cookies and I studied at the table and Decker hovered around the oven, grabbing cookies off the cooling rack when they were still hot.

  For a moment, I was there again. The oven timer went off, and I threw on Mom’s red oven mitts and pulled the cookies out to cool. And then the doorbell rang. I pressed my oven-mitted hands flat on the door and peered through the peephole. Troy was on the other side, his hands pressed against the door in the mirror image of me.

  “What do you want?” I called through the door between us.

  “I want to see you. I want to make sure you’re okay.”

  I cracked the door open but stayed inside. “Peachy,” I said.

  His fists were clenched at his sides. “Can I come in?”

  As an answer, I slid through the opening and pulled the door shut behind me. Then I folded my arms across my chest, protecting myself from the cold.

  “Where’s your mom?” he asked.

  “Inside,” I said in a way that indicated she might be out any second, though she wouldn’t.

  He looked down at my hands and said, “What are you doing?”

  I smoothed my hands down my pant legs like Mom would do and plastered a smile on my face and said, “Baking cookies.”

  Troy frowned at me. “What’s wrong with you?”

  I laughed. “What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with me? You’re kidding. What’s right about me?” I felt lightheaded, like I was watching the scene unfold from far away. But all I could see was Troy. Nothing else mattered.

  Troy dropped his forehead into his hands and rubbed his temples. He spoke to the ground. “You need to pull yourself together, Delaney.” He looked up at me, and his eyes took on a new look, not his usual one of confidence and self-righteousness, but one of panic and confusion. “I’m worried about you.”

  I put my hands on my hips and rocked back on my heels. “Well, that’s sweet, Troy. Really sweet. Kind of like how you were worried when I was in the hospital? Or how you were worried when yo
u set that man’s house on fire?” Troy whipped his head from side to side, making sure nobody was nearby. “Or how you were so worried about Carson that you just stood there and watched him die? If you cared about anyone, me included, you would’ve done something. You would’ve tried to help me.”

  He paced back and forth across my front porch and mumbled, “I do want to help you.” Then he changed course and walked toward me. I backed up, until I was pressed against the door. Troy leaned into me, hands against the house, one on either side of me.

  His face was an inch from mine, and I could feel his breath. He seemed to be waiting for something to happen. When nothing did, he pushed his lips onto mine—and when nothing happened still, he brought a hand behind my head and pressed harder. He moved his lips, eyes closed, as I just stood there, unmoving, eyes open. Until he was done and dropped his hand, pulled his head back, and winced.

  “You’re dying,” he whispered.

  “What?” I gripped the doorknob. Was I sick? Could he sense it?

  “On the inside,” he said. I wanted to feel relief, but I didn’t. Because he was right. He saw what Decker couldn’t see. I released my grip and pushed him in the chest with my oven-mitted hands. He staggered backward and walked down the steps.

  “Troy.” He paused, one foot on the sidewalk, one still on my porch steps. “Guess I should stay away from you then.”

  I waited for an argument, but I didn’t get any. And he didn’t look ashamed or hurt or angry. He looked thoughtful. So I spun around and ran inside, slamming the door in his face. I tried to flip the lock, but the oven mitts got in the way. So I threw them on the floor, successfully turned the lock, and leaned into the door again, peering out through the peephole. Troy was still standing there, thinking pretty hard about my front door. He thought about it for a solid three minutes—which, coincidentally, was the amount of time it took to lose all feeling in my fingers.

  I went back to the kitchen and punched at the power button over the oven, making sure it was off. Then I scraped the cookies into the garbage. I tied up the trash bag and threw it into the garage. Because Troy ruined the memory. Now, anytime I’d smell melting chocolate, I’d think of him.

  Then I scrubbed and disinfected and mopped until my joints ached. I took down a mug—#1 ACCOUNTANT—and dragged a kitchen chair over to the refrigerator. Because along with not being trusted with medicine, I also wasn’t trusted with alcohol, which was one cabinet over. I reached up, pulled down the vodka, and filled my mug. Then I shook out a little blue pill and a long white tablet from the vials in the medicine cabinet and gulped it all down.

  Everything burned. It still felt better than what was underneath. Before retreating to my bedroom, I topped off my mug one last time. My room felt much too bright, so I pulled the curtains tight, huddled on the floor in a corner, and sipped my drink.

  I went to sleep in the middle of the afternoon in the house that had become a mausoleum.

  I woke to pitch-blackness. Voices carried through the walls. Dad yelling, which he never did. Mom shrieking in return. My head ached and the floor tilted back and forth. I stumbled across the hallway and flung their door wide open without knocking.

  Mom was standing in her flannel pajamas, her face gaunt and teeth clenched. Dad’s hair was ungelled and wild, and he was also in flannel. Nothing seemed as serious in flannel, so I giggled.

  They both whipped their heads in my direction. Then Dad grabbed Mom’s hand. I looked down at their interlocked fingers. They weren’t angry with each other. They were yelling about me.

  Dad said, “I’ll take care of this,” and walked toward me. “Come on, honey, let’s get you back in bed.”

  This. I was an unrecognizable “this.”

  He tucked me into bed and eyed the mug on the floor. Then he picked it up and frowned at me, but didn’t say anything. He should’ve. If he was Dad and I was Delaney, he would’ve. Instead, he kissed my forehead and tucked the blanket up to my chin and shut the door behind him.

  I lay flat on my back, my arms straight down at my sides. Just like in the hospital when I was trapped in my body, staring out. I imagined the boy with the gray skin from Dr. Logan’s office stuck in this position indefinitely. Stuck because of me. Until infection or illness or another stroke put him out of his misery. And I realized that maybe death was not the worst thing that could happen. And I wondered what I was trying to do. What was I trying to save him from?

  I didn’t sleep. The planets spun wildly, partly from the air spurting out of the heating vents, partly from the alcohol and pills disorienting my damaged brain. I heard tires crunching through the snow. I heard footsteps. I knew it was Troy. I just knew, like I could sense him. Like I could hear his voice whispering, “Delaney,” into my ear, like a mythological Siren, luring me.

  Chapter 17

  I couldn’t find a pair of black pants, so I wore dark gray. Mom swished through the kitchen door dressed in a pastel shirt, like December 30 was just some normal, carefree day during winter break and not the day of Carson Levine’s funeral. I did a double take, and she paused for a moment before moving again. She sat at the other end of the dining-room table and flattened the newspaper in front of her.

  “I didn’t know you were planning on going to the funeral,” she said, not meeting my gaze. “I can’t go today. And your father had to go in to work. He had an important meeting.”

  “Why can’t you go?”

  She stared blankly at the center of the newspaper, but her eyes didn’t move. “I have plans,” she said.

  “Maybe you should consider changing them.” It’s not like kids die in our town every day. Actually, this was the first one I’d ever known. Second, if you count me.

  “I’m sorry, I’m meeting your father and some clients at his office. It’s okay if you don’t go. Nobody will be mad at you.”

  “Unbelievable,” I said, but she still didn’t look up.

  I went upstairs and prepared myself for an awkward conversation. “Decker,” I said as soon as he picked up the phone, “I need a ride.”

  He paused. “A ride where?”

  “To the funeral.”

  Another pause. “I didn’t know you were going.”

  “Why wouldn’t I go?” I knew things would be strained, but I still thought he’d take me.

  “Why isn’t your mom taking you?”

  I sighed loudly into the phone. “She’s going to my dad’s work. Apparently she has more important things to do.”

  “Mine are insisting on going, even though they’re supposed to leave for Boston today. Yearly New Year’s Eve party at my aunt’s.”

  I grunted in solidarity. “At least yours aren’t being selfish.”

  “It’s not selfish if you don’t go, Delaney. Everyone knows you’ve been through a lot. And, I mean, you saw him . . .”

  Die. Dead. Did they all think I couldn’t handle the funeral? “I’m going.”

  “Okay,” he said after a pause. “We’re—I’m supposed to go to Kevin’s after. You can come back home with my parents. If you want.”

  But he wasn’t really asking what I wanted to do. He was telling me.

  * * *

  Even though we were early, the parking lot was full. Kids from school huddled around the front steps in groups of three and four. Teachers who’d known Carson most of his life stood talking quietly to each other. Pairs of parents stood off to the side, holding hands, never taking their eyes off their own kids.

  Decker’s parents pulled into the spot beside us. When they got out, his mother took Decker in her arms, which obviously made him uncomfortable. His arms were wrapped around his mother’s waist, but his fists were clenched. She stood back, smoothed his hair, and looked at me, tears in her eyes. “You sure you want to go in, sweetie? I can take you back.”

  “I’m sure,” I said. Then she and Decker exchanged a long look. We walked into the warmth of the lobby with them, and they continued on into the funeral home. I shrugged out of my red jacket, inappropri
ate for the occasion, and saw an empty closet to the side.

  “Be right back,” I said. Decker strode across the room toward our friends. Kevin and Justin sat on a bench, bent forward, scanning the foyer in disbelief. Even from across the room, it looked like none of them had slept since Carson’s death. I hung my jacket on a stray hanger and headed toward Decker. Justin’s forearms rested on his legs and his head hung down. He raised his head when Decker sat next to him and patted him on the back. Then his eyes caught sight of me, and he tensed.

  Then Kevin looked up. They both stared at me, mouths pressed tight, eyes narrowed, jaws clenched. Decker looked from them to me and ran his hand through his messy hair. He stood and opened his mouth to speak, but then Janna walked out from the interior of the funeral home, into the lobby.

  She wore a long, billowy black dress, and her hair was pulled and pinned into a tight bun. Nothing escaped. Tara was the first to greet her. She used that move she had pulled on me—gripping her tight, rocking her side to side. Only Janna didn’t puke. She put her arms around Tara and hugged her back. Then Janna moved on and gripped Justin’s sleeve. And while Justin held Janna, Tara let out a choked sob, and Decker hung an arm over her shoulder.

  Now that Janna was there, surely the guys would stop shooting daggers in my direction. I failed at CPR. I didn’t bring him back. But I tried. I was the only one who tried. I touched Janna’s sleeve, and she raised her teary eyes to meet mine.

  And then she tensed, like Justin had done on the bench. I stepped back, confused. She raised one finger and shoved it in my face. “You,” she said, seething. “You don’t get to come in here looking all sad.” Justin held her other arm but didn’t pull her back. “You don’t get to breathe goddamn water for eleven fucking minutes and stand here all fine at my brother’s funeral.” She sobbed and wiped her face with the back of her hand. “You don’t get to stand there all perfect like nothing happened when you were—” She groaned. “Where the fuck were you two going? I told you not to touch him. I told you.”