Breaking Glass

by Amowitz, Lisa

Dad glares at me with such fierceness I fully expect fire to shoot from his nostrils. “Please be quiet now, Jeremy. I need to think.”

  “Okay. But first answer my question. Who was her doctor, the one who made the diagnosis?”

  Dad shoots me a puzzled glance. “Dr. Kopeck, of course. She has the best credentials in the area.”

  Out the window, the bare branches grope the air like skeletal hands. “If I find someone else, will you promise not to send me back to her?”

  Back in my room, my heart won’t slow. The walls have eyes and ears. On top of everything else, my dad I’m thinks I’m a paranoid schizophrenic. I can’t decide. Am I? Or have I actually begun to untangle the poisoned roots that twist beneath the underbelly of Riverton?

  The savage need for a drink ambushes me and coils itself around my throat like a boa constrictor. There’s no chance I’ll find even a drop in this house. To calm the pulsing ache in my throat, I throw myself into practicing the gait exercises Chaz prescribed and that Lyle Hoffmann has urged me to do. Chaz promised that I can park the wheelchair for good if I get my balance back. It will also help prepare me for walking with my new leg. It’s a goal. If I can run again, I can control the panic.

  I go at the exercise with grim determination, hoping to either exhaust or outpace the dark waters that lap at my ankle.

  But the reptile mind doesn’t understand logic. Whether my mother tried to kill herself and take me with her, or someone else drove her off the road, I’m still going to be forced to relive the day she died. Until I die, too.

  And I can’t get Trudy Durban’s voice out of my head. What was she getting at—that Susannah’s disappearance is somehow linked to my mother’s death?

  To a rational mind, it seems unlikely. And Trudy Durban is not rational.

  But I’m probably not either, which gives me the perfect excuse to see what other dirt I can dig up.

  I thrust the crutches forward and kick out my leg in the smoothest approximation of a walk I can manage. It feels weird. Unnatural. But, over and over, back and forth, I walk, trying to keep a heartbeat ahead of the water that has started to rush in. If I sweat it out, maybe the nightmare will recede.

  Finally, exhausted, I collapse in the wheelchair. I never knew walking could be such hard work, but at least I’ve chased the panic away.

  Post-traumatic stress disorder, that bitch Kopeck called it. The reason I drink. The reason I run. All to avoid the terrifying loop of our car plunging into the Gorge over and over again.

  But this is the same Dr. Kopeck who diagnosed my mother as a paranoid schizophrenic. I have no doubt my mother drank. Too much. But was she crazy? Was there more to it than that? Maybe she had her reasons, too.

  I have to wonder what mangled roots my mother might have unearthed. A brief internet search pulls up some interesting intersections. Both Dr. Kopeck and Patrick Morgan serve on the board of directors of the same pharmaceutical company. Over the years, Morgan Associates has helped her make huge land investments in upstate New York.

  Nothing damning. But enough to confirm my suspicions. She’s an affiliate of Patrick Morgan’s, and though I’m not precisely sure what that implies, it makes me trust her even less.

  Just as I’m about to click on another link, the screen goes black along with everything else. Darkness steals away my vision. Sensitive fingers work their way up my back, exquisite shivers rushing to my nerve endings. My mouth falls open. The taste of her lips floods my senses with longing.

  I shudder with desire and naked fear.

  Susannah visits whenever she wants these days.

  In the dark void, tiny sparks soar and cluster. An outline materializes in the form of a shimmery, girl-shaped constellation.

  I blink. It’s Susannah, or at least an outline of Susannah made of stars.

  I gasp as she leans over me, the soft curls I can’t see brushing my forehead. Barely visible lips kiss the tip of my nose and I moan, a riptide of urgent want dragging me out beyond the waves.

  I can’t stop kissing her long enough to ask her why she invades my senses without permission. By now, I don’t know. I ravage her, my searching mouth desperate to quench the fire she’s lit inside me.

  Susannah traces the entire length of my body with deadly slow kisses, burning me with her touch. By the time she presses her lips to the stump, I’m ablaze, close to a core meltdown. The sensation is indescribable, a witch’s brew of pain and ecstasy. I arch my back as the violent spasms of release sweep over me.

  I slump in the wheelchair, nerveless. The fever in me rises again. I’m ravenous. An animal. Consumed by a flash fire, I kiss the neck and hair I can’t see, the scent of vanilla and summer rain scorching my lungs.

  I exhale in a tremulous shudder. I have no breath. My words burn to cinders in the flames that lick at my skin.

  I’m ready to follow her. Ready to sink into oblivion with her so I can burn with her forever.

  Panting wildly, I pull away, an unstable compound, about to go nuclear at the slightest touch. Trembling on one leg, I want to scream—why did you have to leave me? And I find I’m filling with rage for the one who took her from me.

  The room echoes with whispers. Join me, Jeremy.

  She torments me with kisses until my heat explodes in volcanic eruptions of legendary proportions.

  “Yes,” I murmur, tears sliding down my cheeks. “I’ll do it. But first, I’ll make sure whoever took you from me will pay for it.”

  Her form brightens, then fades. Within the haze, I tell myself I see a smile. My surroundings solidify. She’s gone.

  I’m left standing naked, my arms empty, balanced tenuously on one leg like a stork in the middle of my room.

  I lunge for the bed in a few clumsy leaps before I fall. Feverish, I’m shaking violently, cold and hot all at the same time. I pull the covers over my head and try to think.

  I’ve somehow managed to find an even more toxic addiction than alcohol.

  C H A P T E R

  t w e n t y - t h r e e

  Then

  Somehow, as winter dragged on, our threesome held steady. I had started to believe that the triangle really was the strongest form in geometry.

  My sixteenth birthday was March 14 and Ryan’s March 30. We’d always made a habit of celebrating the weekend between. This year, Susannah suggested the three of us go bowling. I wasn’t a big fan of bowling. I might have been a champion runner, but I was not known for my stellar hand-eye coordination. Ryan was only marginally better. But Susannah was a natural, hitting strike after strike.

  After her triumphant fist-pumping victory, Susannah presented us each with oversized black envelopes, both elaborately printed in white with our names and decorated with glitter, sequins, and feathers. Very Susannah.

  I carefully opened mine and pulled out what looked to be a giant ticket.

  Trip to Pirate Island, it said. Passage for One. April 23.

  “April 23?” Ryan looked baffled. “What is this?”

  “A boarding ticket.” I said.

  Ryan still looked confused. Susannah laughed and roughed up his hair. “That’s my birthday, silly,” Susannah said. “We’re going on a little trip to Pirate Island. And neither of you are ever going to forget it.”

  Eventually, April 23 rolled along. It was a mild night for the season. Susannah insisted we all meet by the rocks that descended to the reservoir. “Bring flashlights and dress like a pirate,” she’d said. I’d brought her birthday gift in my knapsack, a pair of turquoise and silver earrings shaped like feathers. I very much wanted to see them mingling with her curls.

  Ryan and I rode together. We’d both wrapped our heads in bandannas and Ryan who had no problem with theatricality, had slipped on a black patch over one eye. He’d already gotten his driver’s license, though it was a junior license and he wasn’t supposed to be out after nine o’clock in the evening. Down by the water’s edge, Susannah waited.

  My heart nearly stopped. She wore a filmy black dress that flowed to m
id-calf, a silver shawl wrapped around her waist, spiky boots, and a necklace of pearls. From under a silver bandanna, her hair flowed loose. Her vamped-up version of a Pirate Queen. The rowboat floated beside the rocks, lit by about a dozen votive candles.

  The effect was mythical and dreamlike. I was so consumed with want, I thought I’d pass out from lack of oxygen to my brain.

  “Beautiful,” whispered Ryan. “You’re so beautiful, Suze. This is beautiful.”

  Mortified, yet insane with desire, I climbed in the boat, unable to croak out a single word.

  We rowed in silence across the moonlit reservoir to the tiny island almost clear on the other side.

  “Welcome to Pirate Island, the lair of the Pirate Queen,” Susannah said, getting out of the boat. She’d placed dozens of votive candles to create a path to the center of the small island.

  My insides churned, my heart pounded. What was I doing? I was terrified to be out on the water, certain my terrors would come back. Worse was the knowledge that my situation was unsustainable. I couldn’t go on this way. I couldn’t go on being old reliable Jeremy Glass, trusty triangle side and third wheel.

  It was killing me. Heartbeat by heartbeat.

  I don’t remember Ryan’s reaction. I don’t remember much from that night, except for the sculpture at the center of the island Susannah had surrounded with more votive candles. It was an abstract tree she’d made from plaster, embedded with a mosaic made from tiny bits of colored glass and ceramic tile. The tree had three trunks that twisted around each other and ended in branches made of grasping hands.

  “A shrine to us,” Susannah said dancing around her creation. “A tree with three trunks whose roots are so intertwined that, if one of us should wither, the whole tree will die.”

  She and Ryan kissed tenderly by the light of the votives. And inside, I withered just a bit more.

  Needless to say, I drank a lot when I got home that night.

  Now

  I spend sleepless hours staring at the ceiling, part of me hoping that she’ll return, the other part dreading the same thing. Finally, I slip into a fitful sleep.

  I’m flopped on the shady rock ledge that borders the reservoir, near the spot where Susannah disappeared, my legs fused into a massive iridescent fishtail. Susannah stands at the water’s edge, her bronze curls glinting in the sunlight. She laughs and motions for me to come down to the shoreline, but I balk, knowing the sharp rocks will gash the tender underside of my tail. She insists; not being able to refuse her, I slither down, my heavy tail sliding over the jagged rocks. Sharp points scrape against the scales and pierce the soft flesh. Blood stains the rock. The pain is terrible, but I don’t want to disappoint her.

  I finally reach the water’s edge and Susannah dives, slicing gracefully into the water without a splash. I heave my cumbersome body off the rocks and submerge myself in the cold water, the powerful fin propelling me after her. I follow Susannah to the darkest depths where the sunlight doesn’t reach.

  At the reservoir bottom, a woman sits at a vanity. My mother. Methodically, she brushes her hair, the ballerina on her jewelry box spinning in a continuous pirouette.

  Susannah frowns and gestures for me to keep swimming. But I halt beside my mother, who turns to me and nods. She picks up the jewelry box that sits on her vanity. Susannah has doubled back and is angrily pulling on my arm.

  But I remain where I am, riveted by what my mother is doing, as if she is about to reveal the secrets of the universe.

  She lifts the jewelry box, holding it like a book. And then, in the strange way of dreams—it is a book.

  It’s still dark when I wake. My sheets are tangled around me like vines, the dream tattooed on my eyelids. Buzzing with restless energy, I take to the crutches to begin my tedious gait practice until my leg and elbows are stiff with the effort.

  My body is limp with exhaustion, but my brain won’t shut off. I review the dream and try to puzzle out its meaning. There’s something I’m just not getting, so I haul myself up again and pace some more until my arms are about to fall off.

  The persistent tick of Dad’s old desk clock reminds me of what I need to do. Part of the dream’s meaning clicks into place. If I don’t solve Susannah’s murder, her eternal spirit is going to drag me down to join her.

  Apparently, the dream version of my mother doesn’t like that. Yet, she was the one who drove me into the Gorge strapped into the back of our car.

  Or did she? Has my mother been trying to get a message to me all these years?

  I’m just not sure what the symbolism means. A jewelry box turning into a book seems like the nonsensical language of dreams. But great scientific breakthroughs have often been sparked by dreams, like the scientist, Kekule, who solved the molecular structure of the chemical benzene after dreaming about the ouroboros symbol—a snake biting its own tail.

  I’m not sure I’m ready to face the attic and the secrets buried there just yet. But there’s a person who is ripe for the picking.

  I call Ryan at ten AM and he answers immediately, breathless. On edge.

  “Everything okay, Jer?”

  I tell him I want to meet him in our old elementary school playground. On the swings. There’s a silent pause.

  “You’re not serious, are you? There’s a foot of snow out there. How will you—”

  “You worry about you. I’ll worry about me. I want to clear my chest about some things. Stuff about me you don’t know.”

  I hear him swallow and hope that my somewhat lame strategy will work. If I confess my darkest secrets, maybe Ryan’s paper-thin veneer will tear, revealing the truth behind it.

  “I can pick you up and drive us there,” Ryan offers. I grit my teeth. Why does he have to be so fucking considerate? I want my own wheels. Dad thinks he’s hidden my car keys, but I know exactly where they are.

  “No. I can get there myself.”

  That is, of course, if I can make it to the car. It’s still parked at the bottom of our steep driveway under the carport. I peer out the window. More snow has fallen. There’s about a foot on the ground now, but at least Dad has had someone shovel and plow the driveway, so I have a fighting chance.

  Getting to the car is a little more of a challenge than I’d imagined, but my gait practice has paid off. I only fall twice.

  Fortunately, there’s enough gas in the car to get to the Riverton Elementary School. The playground is the one where I first met Susannah. It seems a fitting place to untangle the mystery of her death.

  But is Ryan a murderer? It’s clear he’s been falling apart lately, his actor’s bravado slipping off him like an oversized coat.

  I’ll be doing him a favor. Relieving him of his burden. It could have been an accident. Or he could have witnessed something. I have no idea. But I need to find out. And soon.

  It’s totally weird to be in my car. The last time I’d been in here, I had two legs. Susannah was alive.

  But you only need one foot to drive a car, so I’m golden.

  When I get to the school, I find that, while the parking lot has been plowed, the long path to the playground hasn’t.

  The wind cuts across the field, whipping ice particles into a face-scouring blast. It takes a fair amount of grunting and sweating to ford my way through the foot-deep snow, but at least Ryan hasn’t gotten there yet to witness my Discovery Channel adventure—one-legged boy braves the wilds of a suburban schoolyard in blizzard conditions.

  My hands are nearly frozen onto the grips of my crutches. I stab at the snow, then vault, stab, then vault. It’s brutally exhausting, but I finally reach the swing set, spear the crutches into a snow bank, and collapse onto a swing. But I can’t resist the urge for motion, so after a bit of single-leg pumping action, I’m airborne.

  Ryan plods through the snow and sits on the swing beside me. I slow and return to earth.

  “How the hell did you make it here, Jeremy? I could barely get through.”

  “Ski poles,” I say, nodding toward the cr
utches planted like a flag in the snow.

  He shakes his head, a small smile creasing the smooth lines of his face. “So what were you going to tell me?”

  I let myself sway on the swing. The motion feels good. I vow to come back here when I’m feeling sorry for myself, to hop on a swing.

  “I’m tired of hiding behind a mask,” I say, choosing my words specifically to unnerve him and peel away his facade. I see a slight shift in his posture, but Ryan being Ryan, he’s still in character: The Interested Listener. But his hands betray him. He clenches the fingers of one hand tightly with the other.

  “What mask? You’re always the same.”

  “That’s because my mask is so excellent.”

  Ryan rocks back and forth a bit. He shivers and snorts out a puff of mist. “Jeez. Get to the point, Jeremy. It’s cold out here.”

  “The point is, I’m an alcoholic.”

  Ryan squints at me, like he’s suddenly gone hard of hearing. “That’s a crock, Jeremy. Just because you drank one shot of vodka, then made an ass of yourself?”

  I arch an eyebrow. “You couldn’t have known about the flask I had in my jacket pocket. Or the silver water bottle I always kept in my car. When no one was looking, I drank. A lot.”

  Ryan’s brows furrow. He really is shocked, and I smile inwardly at how well I’ve kept the ruse going for so many years. And surprised his father hadn’t told him.

  “You never drank a sip at keg parties. You’ve helped us win two division championships, and maintained a 3.8 GPA. Why are you laying this bullshit on me?”

  I swing a little harder. “I was wasted the night I stepped out into the road to get to you and Susannah. It’s not your fault. I lost my leg because I’m a drunk.” My voice cracks on the last words. I am speaking the pure, honest truth.

  Ryan gapes at me as if giant tusks have sprouted from my face. “You’re serious.”

  I nod. “I’ve been a closet drunk since I was twelve. The running was never enough to—” My words fail to penetrate the lump in my throat. My eyes burn.