Put Me Back Together

by Lola Rooney

  Most gorgeous girl in the room, my ass.

  “Oh, Katie,” he said breathlessly. “I want to introduce you to—” but before he could finish, there was a tap on his shoulder and another girl was waiting to talk to him.

  “Jennifer,” the blonde girl finished, holding out her hand for me to shake. “I’m so happy to meet you. Lucas talks about you all the time. You’re exactly like he described you, except maybe even prettier.” She smiled sweetly at me as I tried not to look like a deer in the headlights. Had she just called me pretty? And it didn’t even seem like she was being sarcastic. But why would one of Lucas’s girls be so happy to meet me and so eager to give me a compliment?

  “Oh, thanks,” I managed to get out before Jennifer barreled on.

  “What nationality are you? Italian? I wish I had your skin tone instead of my pasty pink cheeks. My friend Sandra is Italian and she tans so dark in the summer. I burn red as a lobster after, like, five seconds in the sun. Or are you Middle Eastern?”

  “I’m half-Danish, half-Indian,” I parroted.

  “Wow! That’s so diverse. And you’re an artist, aren’t you? Lucas says you have so much talent. I always wanted to take up the piano, but my mother always said, ‘Jenny, stick to what you’re good at,’ which is child rearing, of course. I’m majoring in education, but I was thinking of taking an art class next year. Do you think…”

  Her mouth never stopped moving. It was remarkable. As she continued to chatter I stared at her heart-shaped face, her barely-there blonde eyelashes, and innocent, wide-eyed gaze. She seemed like a genuinely friendly girl, if a little sheltered. I was trying to puzzle out how exactly she and Lucas knew each other and would have loved some help from Lucas himself, but he’d been completely waylaid by the other girl. Her head was blocked from my view by Jennifer’s. As I edged a little to the side, trying to get a better look at her, I heard Jennifer’s monologue dwindle to a stop.

  “Oh yeah, that girl’s trouble,” I heard Jennifer whisper in my ear, showing more animosity than I would have thought her capable of. She moved over to my side, giving me an open view of the girl who currently had Lucas’s attention.

  If before my stomach had sunk like a broken rowboat, now it fell like the Titanic.

  At first I thought it was Monica, the girl we’d met at the game, but a moment later I realized I was wrong. This girl was on another level altogether.

  She was a vixen if I’d ever seen one. She had on a red dress so skin-tight I could see the outline of her thong. Her chestnut hair was thick and fell over her shoulders in perfectly sculpted waves. She was stick-thin, with flawless skin and eyebrows arched high like a supermodel’s. She was currently pouting her ruby-red lips at Lucas, who stood facing her with his arms folded, probably trying to hold in the urge to throw his perfect body at hers. It would be like two Barbie dolls making love—they were both that perfect. Seeing them next to each other, I couldn’t help but think they should be together. Who would ever want to be a single piece of perfection when you could be a part of a matching set?

  “That’s Taylor,” Jennifer said into my ear. “She’s been after Lucas forever. She scared off his last girlfriend, the little witch with a ‘b.’”

  I couldn’t help but chuckle at Jennifer’s inability to swear, and the fact that if there were teams we were suddenly on the same side, when five minutes ago I’d thought she was the enemy. But my good humour was fleeting. Watching Taylor and Lucas together—now she was pawing at his chest, pressing her perfect body against him—was infinitely worse than watching him with Jennifer. This time I found myself turning away for fear of tearing up. Already I could feel the telltale prickle behind my eyes.

  “Not that I think she has any kind of a chance with him,” Jennifer said, looking at me worriedly. “She’s totally not his type.”

  “Well, it’s none of my business, anyway,” I said as I backed away, not really even looking where I was going. The back door escape plan was a no-go now. It would mean circling around them. I’d have to find another way.

  “Oh, but I thought—” Jennifer began.

  “I really have to go to the bathroom,” I announced, and, turning abruptly, edged my way through the crowd and out of sight.

  Finding an adequate hiding place in a strange house on short notice when you think you might be about to burst into tears is a high order. The first door I tried ended up being locked and the second led me into a small den. The room wasn’t empty, but it was dimly lit and I was able to stand in the corner leaning against a bookcase for a few minutes without being disturbed, which was exactly what I’d been looking for. During those few minutes I decided three things. One, coming to this party had been a stupid idea. Two, leaving the party as soon as possible would be the best way to counteract my original stupid idea. And three, it was about time I got it into my head that Lucas Matthews wasn’t for me, for real this time.

  I was moving back toward the door, wrapping my arms around my stomach as I always did when I felt sick, when the flickering TV caught my eye. There were a couple of armchairs pulled up around it and some guys were watching the screen. The sports segment on the local news was playing, but that wasn’t what they were talking about. I froze when I heard Tommy’s name.

  “…cut him to pieces,” one guy said. “I read an article about it once that went into all kinds of detail. And the kid was only, what, five? Shit was fucked up.”

  “I don’t get it,” another guy said. I recognized him as Tim, one of the friends Lucas had introduced me to earlier. “Why’s it on the news now?”

  The first guy finished swallowing a gulp of beer before replying. “Who the hell knows? The media’s gone ape shit over the case from the beginning. Probably some tiny little piece of evidence came to light, like a hair follicle or something. Who cares? What I want to know is the guy’s name. They never released it because he was a minor when he killed that kid. But I bet you anything the second he gets out somebody will leak it. Can you imagine being the one who has that information? The media would pay a pretty penny for his name.”

  I leaned back against the bookcase wanting dearly to leave the room and yet unable to move my feet.

  “Wasn’t there a chick, too? Some babysitter?” This voice came from the floor in front of the TV. I froze again, this time with my hand on the doorknob. Suddenly it felt as though my entire arm had turned to ice and I couldn’t move my wrist.

  “Oh yeah, I always had a theory about her.” This was the first guy talking again. His voice sounded vaguely familiar to me.

  “Oh, do tell, Sherlock,” somebody said.

  “Well, you know how women are,” first guy went on. “Always nagging, badgering, bitching. ‘Get me a soda. Hand me the remote. Come pick me up.’”

  The whole room laughed. I didn’t see how they could. There didn’t seem to be enough air in the room to breathe, let alone laugh.

  “Babysitter chick always claimed she was knocked out, didn’t know a thing, didn’t see nothing. Total dead-end investigation-wise, right? Or maybe perfect alibi?”

  “Wasn’t she, like, thirteen years old?” said the dude on the floor.

  “So what? So was he. The way I figure it, the whole thing was her idea. She was the mastermind behind the whole murder. You know how chicks never want to get their hands dirty, so, yeah, he did the actual cutting. But she was right there next to him, egging him on, whispering in his ear, ‘Do it, you loser. Don’t be a pussy! Do it and you can have me right here on his bloody little corp—’”

  “Shut your mouth!” I yelled.

  Somebody flicked on the overhead light. Though I didn’t remember deciding to do it, I had launched myself off the bookcase and taken the four steps across the room, shoving the guy who’d been talking back in his chair with both my hands planted on his shoulders. When I’d yelled out, I’d done it right into his face. Now I stepped back, panting, as the guy looked up at me with a mildly freaked expression on his face. I recognized him as his face was illuminated by
the muted television set. It was one of the guys from the night I’d first met Lucas. It was Two.

  “Whoa,” Tim said.

  Looking around the room at the other guys, I began to twist my fingers.

  “Easy, girl,” Two said, very slowly, as though I was a skittish horse who had just kicked him. “What the fuck was that about?”

  “Well,” I said, my self-righteousness fading quickly under the lights, “I guess I overreacted a little. But I just don’t think you should be making up stories—”

  “How do you know it was made up? Maybe it’s the truth. You don’t know,” said the guy still sitting on the floor

  I felt my anger rising again, and a steady whistle growing louder in my ears. “That girl is a real person who went through a terrible trauma—”

  “She isn’t the one who got cut up. All she did was stand by while that kid got murdered.” The guy on the ground was really starting to piss me off. He was eating a licorice whip, and as he spoke I could see little bits of red stuck between his teeth.

  Then Two spoke up. “I think we’re getting away from the matter at hand,” he said, “which is that you owe me an apology.”

  There was a hard look in his eye that I remembered from the night with the cat.

  “In your dreams,” I said as fiercely as I could while also backing toward the door. As I took another step I bumped into something. Only when I turned to find my route to the door blocked by the guy wearing a football jersey did I realize my real mistake in taking my eyes off of Two. In that second of diverted attention he’d clamped his hands on both of my wrists.

  Behind me I heard the door to the room open and close, but it hardly registered.

  “Let me go,” I said angrily, struggling against his hands as they pinched at my skin.

  “You don’t think I remember you, do you?” Two said, leaning in toward me. He wasn’t a bad looking guy. He had a boyish look about him and light eyes that I might have found attractive if we’d met at some other time when I didn’t want to scratch them out.

  He breathed in my face. His breath smelled sour, as though the beer he was drinking was rotting in his stomach. “I remember you,” he said.

  A shiver ran down my spine at his words. It took me a moment to realize he was talking about the night with the cat and not any events much further in the past.

  “Dude, just let her go already,” said the guy at my back, who seemed to be reconsidering his position. Two wasn’t quite so changeable.

  He yanked hard on my arms, pulling me even closer. My thighs pressed into the side of the armchair as he brought his ear closer to my lips. “What was that, honey?” he said. “Did you say, ‘I’m sorry, Buck?’”

  I swallowed hard as he tugged on my arms again and the whistling in my ears reached a fever pitch. All of a sudden I wasn’t at a party anymore. I was in the woods, with the cold seeping through my clothes and another boy was tugging on my hands and telling me to hurry it up.

  “You heard him, Katie Kat. You’d better hurry now. If I get there first who knows what might happen.”

  “Let me go!” I screamed directly into Buck’s ear, and to my surprise he did let go of my hands and I fell backwards, landing hard on my ass, my hair falling over my face.

  Only when I looked up again did I realize he hadn’t let go of me of his own volition.

  Behind the armchair, which must have fallen over during the scuffle, Lucas had Buck trapped on the ground, his forearm jammed under his chin, and his fist raised in the air, ready to smash his face in.

  I scrambled over to his side. The room was alive with noise as Buck’s friends yelled at Lucas to let him go—though I noticed nobody made a move to help him. Buck’s bulldog face was an angry shade of red as he strained against Lucas’s arm.

  “Let go of him, Lucas,” I said calmly.

  Breathing hard, his eyes glued to Buck’s, Lucas didn’t look like he had any intention of letting go. His face was screwed up in a look of intense revulsion I’d never seen on him before.

  “Not a chance,” he said gruffly.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Look at me. I’m totally fine. You can let go.”

  “See?” Buck choked. “She forgives me. She wants you to let me go.”

  “Shut up!” Lucas growled.

  Without loosening his grip, Lucas turned his head to look at me. When his eyes met mine they were blazing with fury, but they gradually cooled and I saw the tension in his arm begin to ease.

  “That’s right,” I said, nodding. “It’s okay. I’m fine. You can let him go.”

  Releasing Buck from his grasp, Lucas sat back on his haunches, massaging his hands. I saw the muscles in Lucas’s jaw flexing as Buck sat up and looked at us both. “Are you guys crazy, or what?” he said.

  That was when I punched him in the face.

  11

  I ran. I ran out of the room, past all the gaping faces, through the living room and right out the front door. I ran down the driveway and onto the sidewalk, and that was when I really picked up speed. The cold air pouring into my lungs felt amazing, like ingesting a gallon of ice cream in one go after spending a sweltering day in the sun. I gulped it down as I ran, my thighs burning, my whole body working in a way it wasn’t used to, though I was finding that I kind of liked it. Car horns honked behind me, but I ignored them. It was such a glorious thing just to run, and run and run and run, and never think of what I was running away from.

  “Katie!”

  I reached an intersection I didn’t recognize, but that didn’t slow me down. I turned right and kept on running. The honking was louder now and continual, like music to accompany the pounding of my feet on the frozen pavement. Wind blasted my skin, freezing my cheeks and making my eyes water. I tipped my head up and watched the streetlights as I passed under them. I started counting them. Seven lights to the next intersection, and then ten after that. I wondered if I could reach the end of the street. Could I run that far? Could I run all the way through town? I didn’t know. But I knew I wanted to try.

  “Katie!”

  I had run like this only once before in my life. I remembered now that it had been just like this, running without thought, a weightless, mindless moment. But different, too, because my head had been bleeding and I couldn’t stop crying, my mouth hanging open and a strange bawling sound coming out of it as I had run along the tracks. I’d fallen several times because I’d kept getting dizzy. And they wouldn’t let me run as far as I’d wanted to. They’d stopped me. But I could have kept running. If they’d let me I would have.

  I would have run forever.

  “Katie, stop!”

  Lucas pulled me out of the road, gripping my body with both his arms, holding me from behind. I wanted to keep running, but he was holding me too tightly. At first I struggled against him even as he held me back, murmuring into my hair, but within a few moments I went limp. My legs were burning anyway, and my eyesight was blurring. I stared at him blankly as he put my jacket on me, helping my arms through the holes and zipping it up the front. I was surprised. I’d thought I was already wearing it.

  When he was done Lucas bent over, placing his hands on his knees, panting hard. “Where did you think you were going?” he asked.

  Looking around at the unfamiliar houses on the road, I shrugged. “I was just running,” I said.

  “Down the middle of the street?” he asked.

  Not wanting to give away the fact that I had no idea I’d been running down the middle of the street, I shrugged again. “Which way is my apartment?” I asked.

  Pulling on his own coat, which he’d been holding under his arm, Lucas gave me an exhausted look before pointing back the way we’d come.

  I put my hood up against the bracing cold and walked past him without looking at him.

  I wondered when it had started snowing.

  “Are you okay?” Lucas said. Apparently he’d decided to follow me, even though I was walking squarely down the middle of the sidewalk—a sure sign t
hat a girl doesn’t want company. “Katie, are you okay?” My silence didn’t seem to be getting through to him, either.

  “Lucas, leave me alone,” I said. I would have picked up my pace, but I was beginning to realize that my run in my sister’s very un-sneaker-like boots had possible destroyed my feet. I felt at least four blisters. Going faster wasn’t an option.

  “Is your hand okay?” Lucas persisted, reaching for my arm, which I yanked away.

  “Why wouldn’t it be?” I snapped. The snow was really coming down now, making it harder to see, which only added to my mounting irritation. I also still didn’t quite know where I was going.

  “Because you just punched a guy in the face, that’s why,” Lucas said.

  We came to a side street and I paused, trying to get a look at the street sign, and Lucas took his opportunity to scoop up my right hand.

  “Hey!” I cried. I wanted to pull my arm away again, but he had it in a firm grip and I didn’t want to hurt my hand worse by yanking it free. Not that I minded the pain. I barely felt it. The throbbing was similar to the way my hands had felt after a full day of the trial, when I’d been twisting my fingers for hours on end. There was something sickeningly comforting about that kind of pain.

  We always welcome the hurt we think we deserve.

  “Doesn’t look like you broke anything,” Lucas said, after turning my hand over a bunch of times and bending all the fingers. Loosening his hold, he let me slip from his grasp, but his eyes lingered on my face, full of concern.

  I couldn’t stand that look.

  “Thanks a bunch, doc,” I said coldly, then turned away and crossed the street. I thought he might leave me then, but I sensed him jogging beside me. When I reached the curb he was already there.

  Damn his athlete’s body.

  He walked backwards ahead of me, so he could keep me in his line of sight. “Katie, what the hell happened back there?” he said. “How did you get into a fight with Buck Mullard?”