I honestly don’t know—I know that I should.
Care.
I want to.
So I slam the door, leaving nothing but the reverberations behind me.
4
TWO YEARS AGO
Adrienne was dark. She always had been. Not just her skin and hair and eyes. Not just her smooth voice, seducing everyone in her path. But her demeanor, the way she liked to set things aflame and watch them burn. And here’s the thing: A trash can full of paper could keep us entertained when we were in middle school, but by high school, there was something much more interesting to set fire to: people’s lives.
It was never personal, which I think was the worst of all of it. But I had fucked up. And I had fucked up bad.
It was a party at Coxie’s—Claire’s boyfriend. His parents were gone for the weekend, and his house on the outskirts of town ensured no adult would catch us. The music was too loud and the drinks too sweet, and what I remember more than anything else is feeling like I could destroy the world if I so chose. That power was a thrum of energy, a life force. It just so happened that Anna Talbert was too tall and too skinny and a JV cheerleader with very little promise. Which I had told her. Repeatedly.
Adrienne, Claire, and I were the only sophomores on the varsity cheer team that year, a fact that only bonded the three of us closer together as a trio. We were running with some of the senior girls, and things were looking up every day.
Never mind that my brother had gone over a week without answering a text from me. The obvious solution was to start shoving vodka down my throat, and the more I drank, the meaner I got. Anna had no idea why.
“God, Anna, I’d say you were a slut, but everyone knows a boy would never sleep with you.”
Shot.
“Christ, Anna, are you still here? Has no one clearly told you to fuck off yet?”
Shot.
“Jesus, Anna, is there a world where you don’t exist, because I’d like to live in it.”
All this while Anna told me how pretty I looked, how goddamn funny I was. She brought me drink after drink, shot after shot. Adrienne laughed until she cried.
I handed Anna a bottle and told her to stay out of my way, permanently, if possible.
They told me she drank until the designated driver had to put her in the back of the car and take her to the hospital.
It all ended the next morning with me locked in Adrienne’s bathroom, sobbing. A text from one of the senior girls had come through at six a.m. Anna Talbert in serious condition. Don’t say shit. A few more followed, the last from Anna’s cousin asking if we knew who’d given her so much vodka, if we’d keep her in our thoughts and prayers. I’d made it to the bathroom and thrown up, and now I was curled on the rug in front of the toilet, crying like I had never cried in my life. I did this.
I had fucked up so incredibly bad.
That’s where Adrienne found me. She sat down in front of me, crossing her legs. “O…”
“I almost killed her,” I managed to choke out.
“She almost killed herself,” Adrienne told me calmly. “And they pumped her stomach. She’s going to be fine.”
“I was like Ryan. I was drunk and mean and everyone else be damned. Why couldn’t I leave her alone?” I didn’t get up to look at Adrienne, but her eyes found mine. “It’s some kind of fucking gene that makes me a monster. And wait until she tells them I gave her the vodka. I don’t know what they’ll do to me.” I wiped my nose with the back of my hand. “I deserve it. All of it. I’m dangerous.”
“Get up,” Adrienne told me.
I lost some of my conviction then, tuning out her voice. I stopped crying quite as hard. The thought crystallized in my mind. I was dangerous, and I needed to be away from here. Really, it was an escape.
Maybe this is my way out of Buckley.
Adrienne realized I wasn’t getting up. She crawled down on the ground next to me, until our faces were right in front of each other, our noses inches apart. “She’s not going to tell,” she said to me.
I skipped a breath. “Why?”
She blew out a laugh that I felt on my cheeks. “Because I texted her first thing this morning and told her how concerned we both were about her. How we hadn’t slept since we heard. I don’t like it, but she’s in now, O.”
“In?”
“She’s our friend. We love her like she loves us, so no more of that shit from last night, all right?”
I hadn’t known up until that moment that we had an in or an out. But it seemed so obvious now. In. It should have felt better than it did.
It should’ve been more of a relief. I said, “Thank you,” anyway.
Adrienne pushed a hand into my hair, holding it there tenderly. “You’re not like him,” she whispered to me. “You’re my best friend and you’re beautiful and hilarious and perfect, okay?”
I nodded.
“I love you,” she said at last. She never said that. We weren’t like the best friends who were always hugging, saying love you. That wasn’t Adrienne. Coming from her, it was practically a confession.
“Love you, too, Ade,” I said, my voice still the hangover of a cry.
She smiled. “That’s why I’d never let anything bad happen to you.”
5
It is gray outside.
I’d gotten fairly used to sleepless nights, used to the moment after the night had retreated and before the sun was really up yet. A bottle of Jack Daniel’s stared at me sadly from my desk.
I’d found the bottles stacked away in my brother’s closet right after he died, presumably for when he was home in Buckley and would need at least eight or nine drinks to survive each day. I hadn’t wanted Mom to see them, which had to be the most futile part of Ryan’s personality to hide. But I’d stashed them away, out of sight, and last night, I’d pulled this one out and set it on the desk.
I couldn’t bring myself to take a drink.
Adrienne and Ethan had texted and called me until about two, when surely they had fallen asleep. With the pattern of the buzzes, I could only assume they were communicating with each other between texting me, while simultaneously laying the blame on each other.
I decided not to care.
One, though. One text—one small string of words—had caught my attention.
O, this is as bad as it gets. Tomorrow, we start trying to fix this again.
Adrienne doesn’t ask; she tells.
The sad thing is, I like the idea. I like to think we could fix this and be best friends. Be best friends differently than we were before.
But she has to pay first. I don’t want sorry.
I want blood.
I fall back into the thought like a safety blanket. The thought of revenge gives me life. Purpose.
That’s what I was missing.
So I get up, and I get on with it. Tight jeans. Loose top. Red lips.
Let’s do this.
* * *
She hasn’t looked at me yet.
We’re sitting there in fourth period, our first class of the day together. The first time we’ve been in the same room since yesterday and she’s not looking at me.
It’s the poetry section of the year. The one we all dread most.
The only concept worse than writing poems in English class is reading them out loud. I always see it in the teachers’ eyes. They think they tell you to write a poem and you spill pain and heartbreak and blood all over a piece of college-ruled notebook paper because it’s your only chance to get it out. Maybe they’ll cry and you’ll cry and it’ll make a really great TV movie. You’ll have conquered your emotional demons in the span of their fifty-minute class, all thanks to them. Written everything you’re thinking, everything that’s pulling you apart.
No one does that. Except me, I guess. Right now. My eyes boring into the back of Adrienne’s head, I write it all down.
I start scratching out words on the paper, hoping to make it less honest, less raw, less anything. Mrs. Morrison calls for volun
teers, then does that tut-tut thing teachers do when no one actually volunteers. “Don’t make me pick someone,” she singsongs.
Silence. The kind of silence that stretches into days. If she asks, I’ll tell her I didn’t write anything. She never said we’d have to read these out loud. I can’t. I won’t. But then Mrs. Morrison says, “Vera. Good.”
I look up, my heart caught in my throat, right between my jaw and my esophagus. Vera Drake is this incredibly awkward girl, shy and quiet, someone who disappears outside of a classroom. I focus solely on her when she starts to talk—her short, uneven blond bob and wide-set eyes. Small wrists and nonexistent fashion sense. She stares at the floor when she speaks.
“Sapphire eyes, golden hair,” she squawks, speaking slowly and taking deep breaths louder than is strictly necessary. “Your eyes look at me / but I’m not there. / Standing alone, locker-tall, / you’re right and wrong, / above it all.”
I die a million deaths for her with every word, squirming in my seat.
“Lovely, Vera,” Mrs. Morrison lies. Even she is embarrassed. Vera rocks from her left foot to her right. “Why did you write that?” Like she needs to ask.
“You know that feeling,” Vera explains, and oh my God, I wish she wouldn’t, “where you’re in the same room with somebody and you can’t even remember to breathe?”
“I feel that way about pizza,” comes a voice from the other side of the room, dark and confident; it fills up the empty space, turning the awkward silence into laughter.
“Miss Maynard,” Mrs. Morrison chides as Vera crawls back to her seat, her eyes on the floor to shield off the humiliation. “Thank you for your opinion.”
Adrienne smiles all bright and beautiful, flips her sheet of black hair over her shoulder. She has on her game face. I should’ve known: It’s what she does. She doesn’t let the guilt eat away at her like I do. I always do.
I scratch at my poem until the paper tears. It’s all sex and grief, and sex and grief are the last things I want anyone else to think about me.
When I glance up again, Adrienne catches my eyes for the briefest of seconds before burying her face in her hair again with a fake shy smile. That shy smile she employs only when she’s been caught humiliating someone who has no ammo to fight back with, like it was only an innocent joke among friends.
“I liked it,” I say without thinking. If she doesn’t think I’ll fight back, she’s dead wrong.
Everyone laughs again. Of course. They think I’m mocking Vera, too.
I glance back quickly, and Vera stares down at her desk, expertly avoiding eye contact with anyone. She stares so hard, I wonder if there is an alternate universe she can climb into somewhere down there. I wonder if she’ll take me with her.
I’m not going to let Adrienne have this one.
“But really,” I start to say, still looking at Vera. If I can convince her of my sincerity, I win today’s game. Olivia: 1. Adrienne: 0.
“That is quite enough, Olivia,” Mrs. Morrison cuts me off. “Unless you want me to talk to Dr. Rickards about your participation in homecoming week.”
“But I did,” I try to stress again. “Like it.”
“Give it a rest, O,” Adrienne says from across the room. Everyone’s staring at me with these horrified looks on their faces, as if Adrienne didn’t start it. Because it had been funny, until it wasn’t. I lean my face into my palm, smearing red lipstick on my hand in the process. Olivia: 0. Adrienne: 1.
When the bell rings, I rip my poem up into eighteen different pieces. I catch Vera out of the corner of my eye as she’s leaving. I can’t help it. I grab on to her green jacket. “I meant what I said,” I promise her.
She pulls away from me, a tear glistening in her eye. This is always the worst part. When they cry. I’ve always hated when they cry. I’d try telling myself it wasn’t my fault, it was just for fun, they were too fucking sensitive and it was Buckley High, not real life, but I never meant to make them cry.
“Shit.”
I throw the bits of my poem in the trash, watching them float down like paper rain. I think about how people are always saying how good guys finish last. I think about Adrienne tearing Vera down. Listening to it. Enjoying it.
I want to hurt her. I want to see her lose for once in her perfectly constructed life. I want her to come crawling back to me, to beg me for forgiveness. To beg me to stop.
I just want one moment to hold on to.
And I’ll get it if it’s the last thing I do.
6
Mr. Doolittle plops heavily into his wooden chair, letting a pile of papers topple onto the desk after him. He’s an overweight man who’s yet to admit it, shirt buttons straining where they stretch across his bulging stomach. He’s pretty jolly for a high school guidance counselor. Like Santa on Prozac.
“So what do you want to talk about today, Olivia?” he asks me with a wide smile, adjusting his reading glasses.
Oh, just my latest personal tragedy. My best friend sleeping with my boyfriend. Pulling the trigger one last time to remind me who runs the show.
I shrug.
Mr. Doolittle shuffles through his notes, probably to some page marked Clayton, comma Olivia, colon: head case. That’s how I’d label it anyway.
“I know it’s been two months,” he says. “It was a tragedy, but it’s allowed us to spend some time together. I think we’re really starting to make some progress, don’t you?”
“Yeah.” Mr. Doolittle sucks at this stuff. But I’ll take it. The last thing I need is for them to put me in real therapy. I sit quietly, let my eyes wander. There are several pictures on his desk turned toward him. Probably his kids. His wife got caught cheating with the chiropractor in town a couple years ago. Everyone knows.
“We’re talking now, Olivia. This is great! This is forward momentum. Do you feel like you can tell me what’s changed?” Mr. Doolittle says, watching me very seriously. I hate everything about the moment after those words fall to the ground. I can feel the walls closing in. What’s changed.
Picture a girl.
She’s sixteen, lean, long brown hair. Her clothes are affordable but cute because sometimes her best friend gives her hand-me-downs and every so often she scrounges up enough money to buy from the non-sales rack. Riding in a car, top down, wind picking up strands of her hair. She’s talking to her friends about the next big party or some high school scandal or whatever, it doesn’t matter, because she’s blissfully unaware that anything could ever change. Nothing can change when you’re sixteen and everyone loves to hate you because you have everything. You are everything.
Her brother dies and everything falls apart. She wonders whether any of it was ever real to begin with.
“Nothing’s different,” I say.
Mr. Doolittle leans forward, arranging his face into his idea of devastation. “Olivia.”
A clock is ticking. People are moving. Nothing is different for them.
It’s weird that time passes without Ryan here. I’m always trying to figure out how I can catch it, replay it. I have these pictures—these frozen moments of time—that I look through sometimes, and I keep thinking, He’s only gone for a minute, he’ll be back. When I flip through the pictures, everything’s the same. Everything is like before. Ryan smiling at what he sees faraway in the distance, me smiling at him. Back then, everything was magical to us, a discovery waiting to happen.
Adrienne’s there, too, and when she laughs, I laugh with her. If she thinks it’s funny, it is. If she thinks it’s a good idea, we’ll do it. Adrienne makes the stars twinkle with her laugh; she gives dull Buckley days color, shimmer. She’s unafraid.
And Ethan—when he looks at me, he sees me like no one else does. I am more than who I was before, at least to him. He loved who I was then.
“All the pieces are the same,” I hear myself say. “But nothing fits into the right place anymore.” I stare at the backs of the picture frames. Why can’t I see them? Why does Mr. Doolittle have to separate me from his
life and delve into mine? His wife cheated and I know, and my brother died and he knows. Both those secrets should belong to us, but don’t. We don’t know each other at all. He doesn’t know what I did and I don’t know if his wife wanted attention or fun or whatever. “I don’t think I’m cold,” I say, and I think of Claire.
He’s watching me. “No, not today,” he mutters, and I look up. He’s still looking very serious, even moved.
“Anyway.” I shake my head, try to pull myself out of it. Feeling sad is not the answer. I’ve tried it, but dwelling gets me nowhere. Thinking about Adrienne’s lips all over Ethan and my brother six feet under gets me nowhere. I don’t need grief. “I know it’s all very upsetting for you, but since this is my problem, I’d rather you not cry.”
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I thought I saw the real you for a second, Miss Clayton, and it was good. Being vulnerable is hard.”
Being vulnerable is bullshit.
“What do you do when it really hurts?” he asks me, still all sentimental and understanding. I crossed a line here. I crossed a line, and I have to get back on the other side where I can breathe.
And what kind of question is that anyway? It always really hurts. “Physical stuff,” I tell him, crossing my arms over my stomach.
He makes a note. “Such as?”
Sex. With Ethan. Guess I can’t do that anymore. “Running. Cheerleading.”
“You’re very good,” he tells me with a smile. “I was at the game last Friday. You’re extremely athletic.” If things were like before, I would tell Adrienne this later and she would call him a perv. I would laugh.
“It’s a hobby.” I roll my shoulders, try to loosen up. I don’t like the compliments. No one compliments me on anything except managing to exist in the Darwinist high school landscape.
“Have you considered any of the other activities I’ve suggested? Volunteer work? Chorus? Something for your college applications?”
“I cheer,” I say automatically. That’s always been enough.
Mr. Doolittle clears his throat, slides his glasses down his nose in dramatic fashion. “Miss Clayton, are you thinking about college at all right now?”
How to Break a Boy Page 2