Of Breakable Things

by A. Lynden Rolland

  “Good question. I’ve never seen him before.” Tess rubbed her head and moved away from Calla. “I need to go find my brothers. Just take that center staircase to the second floor. Hang a left, and it’s the first door. Your doctor will be waiting.”

  Alex was confused. “What doctor?”

  “For psychology. You have a meeting, right? What were you expecting?” Tess huffed impatiently.

  She’d been expecting a class, not therapy! She’d had enough of that when she was alive. Dread crept in and set up camp.

  When Alex reached the room labeled psychology, she waited for the door to open, but it didn’t. She wondered if this room wanted her to make the decision for herself.

  The circle of white chairs was empty, but she still felt she was disturbing something. The dimly lit space had a life of its own and the lingering aura of something that tasted like stale grief.

  She tiptoed past a desk that supported stacks of tattered accordion folders stuffed with yellowed papers. Each folder had the name Crete Reynes stenciled elegantly at the bottom, and they were all labeled the same: Paradise. She lowered herself to a seat and set down her new belongings, feeling haunted. She couldn’t accept the atmosphere of the room. The emotions that lived here were not her own. Someone else had left them behind.

  She pulled her feet up onto the chair and hugged her knees tightly, and then she felt him. She closed her eyes and breathed in the same air she’d sensed in Miss Petra’s classroom, like a storm had blown through with Chase saddled on the breeze. Was it his sorrow she could taste?

  Sadness or not, she reveled in his presence, so minutes later when someone else overshadowed it, disappointment tapped her on the shoulder. “Hello there.”

  The voice belonged to a skinny little boy with limbs that had never quite filled out and an outdated haircut. Her heart lifted when she recognized the adorable face of Ellington Reynes. The walls seemed to sigh and relax, perhaps happy to see him, too.

  “Why are you here?”

  Ellington beamed. “Some people call me Dr. Reynes, but I would prefer if you continued to call me Ellington.”

  “You’re the shrink?”

  “There are several of us, but yes, I am one of them. All part of my job description. Who better to analyze the newburies than someone who has already seen their past?”

  She liked Ellington, but Alex had never had a positive experience with therapy. She nodded toward the circle of chairs. “You enjoy all this?”

  “It’s in my genes,” he explained. “For the most part, I do enjoy it. I like helping the newburies adjust to this world, to find peace with it. I do believe that peace is my purpose.”

  Alex rested her chin on her knees, condensing into a tighter ball of vulnerability. “Is this where you met my mother?”

  Ellington pulled his mouth tight as though this would keep too many words from escaping. “Yes.”

  Alex scooted closer and waited for him to share more.

  “We had to spend a great deal of time together. Those who have gifted minds usually need a bit more help.”

  “She was gifted?”

  “No. But it was expected she would be.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t need to understand at this time. We have plenty to discuss, and your mother is a topic for later.”

  Alex relented, but the ache didn’t subside. “How is it possible to still feel my heart?”

  “Your mind makes it so. Old habits die hard. I still bite my nails.” He held out his little hand to show her and then patted her knee. “You can relax. No need to be afraid here. It’s a safe zone.”

  “It doesn’t feel safe at all.”

  “Don’t be afraid of the things that have been left here. You can leave things too. Things you don’t want or need anymore.”

  Alex surmised he was not talking about tangible things. “I don’t think I belong here, Ellington.”

  “Everyone says that at some point. I’ll confess I didn’t expect it from you.”

  “No, I don’t mean here, like afterlife here. I don’t belong here in this room.” Alex said in exasperation. “I don’t need therapy. I hate therapy.”

  “Everyone needs to talk about their death.”

  “That’s just it. I’ve spent an entire lifetime talking about death. You should know that if you saw some ‘movie trailer’ of my life.”

  He thumbed through his papers. “Alexandra Ash. Seventeen. Ehlers-Danlos. Resident of Parrish and then the Eskers Rehabilitation Center. When were you diagnosed?”

  “With insanity?” Alex was only half kidding.

  “No, with Ehlers-Danlos.”

  “Birth.”

  “Hereditary … obviously.” He made a note on his legal pad.

  “We’ve already discussed this, Ellington.”

  “I know, but it is protocol. My reports must be documented and submitted to the powers that be. Okay,” he said, clapping his hands together. “Where shall we start?”

  Alex shrugged. “Life. Death. Whatever.”

  “You forget they are one and the same. Remember that spirits are more alive than any of the bodied.”

  “The bodied?”

  “Those with a body. It sounds silly to say ‘humans’ because are we not humane as well? We are nowhere near dead, though we say it so frequently. After all, the life we have left can still be taken from us. The human body was glass, yes, but glass doesn’t slip through your fingers. Being a spirit is like trying to hold water in your hands. Don’t get me wrong. Fear is healthy for the mind. And your mind is the most powerful thing you have now.”

  Alex’s doctors in life had caused her to build a wall, bricks of obstinacy, but Ellington’s soft, melodic tone was enough to chip away at that wall. She was aware of it, and it alarmed her. Alex counted the empty chairs. “Am I really early?” she asked. “Or is everyone else just really late?”

  “Oh, the first few sessions are one-on-one.” Ellington continued on. “Let’s chat about your time at the institution. We haven’t explored that topic yet.”

  Alex groaned. “I was committed. Rotting away in an asylum. What’s to discuss?”

  “You were grieving, yes?”

  Alex nodded. “And losing my mind in the process.”

  Ellington loosened his bowtie. “Grief would not have existed if your mind had truly broken. You were plainly sane. Look at you now.”

  Alex shook her head adamantly. “I wasn’t in my right mind when I was there.”

  “Why?”

  Chase. That was the plain and simple truth. But no doctor would ever accept that answer. A doctor couldn’t bring a dead boy back to life to solve Alex’s problems. Psychoanalyzing her didn’t work, so they drugged her instead.

  “You know the answer, Ellington.”

  “I know the one-word answer, but we’ve only begun to scrape the surface. Simply blaming Chase doesn’t help me to understand.”

  Alex cringed. Blaming Chase.

  “Did I say something wrong?”

  “I don’t blame him. There was nothing either of us could do. We never seemed to have a choice in the matter.”

  “What matter?”

  “Us.”

  “Let’s talk about that.”

  “If I explain it, it will just sound cheesy.”

  Ellington stretched out his short legs, crossing his ankles. “I get to talk about death all day. I could do with a little cheese.”

  She made a face. She really despised talking about emotions.

  “Go on,” Ellington urged.

  “All right, it’s just that most people spend their whole lives waiting to meet a person who puts all others to shame, who makes nothing and no one else in the world matter.”

  “Ah. I think I understand,” Ellington said.

  “I was born with that person.”

  “There was no life that preceded him.”

  Alex nodded. She had no memory of how to function without him because she’d never had to. And that
had ruined her.

  “It wasn’t about choosing to continue on with my life. I just”—she frowned—“couldn’t. There was nothing left.”

  “And how did that make you feel?”

  “Infuriated.”

  Upon saying this, her feelings of helplessness left her body and filled the air around her. The rest of the sentiments inhabiting the room joined in, consuming her. There was something comforting here. Solidarity. Understanding. Just because her sorrow was different from theirs didn’t mean she didn’t belong.

  Ellington waited patiently. “May I ask what you did for the involuntary commitment?”

  She merely needed to show him her left wrist. She had never gotten the chance to ask Liv Frank how she knew what Alex had planned to do that night, but any idiot could probably have foreseen it after the hell she’d been through. Alex had been sprawled on the tile floor, her fingers toying with a razor blade, waiting for the right moment to show death that she wasn’t playing its sick game anymore. She wasn’t going to wait around until it finally decided to stop tormenting her. Game over. On her call. She just had to wait for the courage to slice in the right place, to make the decision. She’d taken a few preliminary swipes at her arms like playing a bloody tic-tac-toe. She was punishing herself for her cowardice, but it wasn’t until she closed her eyes and pictured Chase’s face that the blade hit the mark. It was then that Liv had burst into the bathroom to save her.

  Alex held out her arm to show Ellington what almost took away her chances of being here. She wondered why this one vertical scar on her wrist remained while the dozens of others hadn’t made the cut. No pun intended.

  “Ah,” he sighed. “Only one side?”

  Alex nodded. “My father came home early that day.”

  Like a shark, he’d smelled the blood and entered into the bathroom to find Liv bandaging Alex’s mutilated arm. He’d sensed the opportunity to finally have an excuse to be rid of her. By that time, her body was finished anyway. She could blame the wear and tear of her disease and the lack of nutrition, but something told her that this was her proper destination no matter the path she took. Simply because the world had a tendency to pull her toward Chase.

  “Why did you do it?”

  “I was never whole,” she admitted. “But then again, I never had to be. I was half of a whole, and I lost him. And I’d never known anything different. After he was gone, I was gone. There was no beauty left in the world. It wasn’t hatred or anger. It was worse. It was nothing. I was nothing. I wasn’t meant to be there anymore. Not without him.”

  “But he is here.”

  Alex nodded.

  “You are whole again. So perhaps the new question is, what do you yearn for now? You’ve been given an incredible gift. You’ve been given life. What will you use it for?”

  Alex thought for a moment. “I guess I haven’t figured that out yet. Am I supposed to know the answer now?”

  “Of course not,” Ellington said gently. “But it will be your job, yours and mine, to figure it out.” He tapped Alex’s head with his pen. “But I have a feeling the trajectory of your path is a road less traveled.”

  In the ninth grade, Chase’s first English assignment was to create a poem following the template of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Well, he thought iambic pentameter was a pain the ass. He hated counting syllables and using the alphabet to find a way to rhyme his words. Shakespeare must have been on drugs to write entire plays in such gibberish, but Chase could at least appreciate the attention to detail. Their English teacher said the poem could be about anything, but she winked and added that usually they were about love. Honestly, it seemed to Chase that Shakespeare ridiculed love, but this teacher seemed like a bit of a sap, so he didn’t share his cynicism with the class. Besides, if he read into it too much, his teacher might bump him up to honors English, and he wanted to stay in the same classes with Alex.

  “What’s wrong?” Alex said.

  “Why do you think something is wrong?”

  “Your face is doing that thing again.” She touched his clenched jaw.

  His anxiety spiked, and he wiped a sweaty palm against his jeans and recited the first two stanzas of his sonnet in his head:

  Oh may I fine’ly ask you to be mine?

  It’s been so long I’ve waited to say it

  I’ve thought these words to you time after time

  I’m scared to think them ev’n as here I sit

  May I hold you close and whisper your name?

  Will my heart be truly safe in your hand?

  Deep down I believe you do feel the same

  But here I am, in complete fear I stand.

  Was he seriously about to do this? He’d spent hours creating it, making sure it was perfect, ten syllables per line, four lines per stanza. Before he could talk himself out of it, he slipped his masterpiece into Alex’s copy of Romeo and Juliet. He’d signed it with his name, a heart, and a question mark. Dramatic? Sure, but if he was going to put the time into creating one of these absurd poems, he should use it to his advantage. This was going to be special. Alex deserved that. She deserved the best of everything.

  “Well, this is me,” Alex said with a smile, stopping outside the English classroom. Chase didn’t have Ms. Holden’s class until tomorrow. It was the first time in their lives they didn’t have the same schedule.

  “See ya in a bit,” he said, trying to ignore the crack in his voice.

  This felt like the defining moment of his life. All their time together, his racing heartbeat, the butterflies in his stomach, the warmth he felt when she smiled at him—he was about to find out if she felt it, too. If she always had. It seemed like destiny, just like Shakespeare said. It seemed to be written in the stars somewhere that he and Alex were fated to be together. Hopefully their story was not meant to be a tragedy. But this was real life, not some old play written by a rhyming lunatic, so their ending had to be happy.

  Maybe he shouldn’t have tried to be so clever. But Shakespeare didn’t title his sonnets, and so neither did Chase. Maybe if he had entitled it “Alex” there wouldn’t have been the confusion. Maybe then Alex would have received the note instead of the girl who picked it up by accident. So when he made his way frantically down the hallway after class, it was certainly not Alex who came sprinting down the hallway in his direction.

  Clutched tightly in Becca Blackman’s fist was his poem, entitled “Sonnet 14” for the fourteen years he’d been in love with Alex. It was Becca who jumped into his arms and pressed her overly glossed lips against his while her friends giggled and clapped.

  Where was Alex? What would she think of this? Oh, God.

  Finally, he found Alex’s face in the crowd. Her expression wasn’t one of hurt or anger or jealousy. She smiled. Like she was proud of him or something. He couldn’t admit the truth. He wouldn’t, because the moment was ruined. It wouldn’t be perfect. It was a mess.

  And so he snatched the note from Becca and shoved it in his pocket. And with it, he tucked away his feelings. He stuffed it deep in his pocket, somewhere down there with his pride.

  ***

  Pride. Professor Van Hanlin worried it would be his demise.

  He was not a teacher by choice. He’d spent the better part of a century highly ranked in the office of the Legem Patrol, a corps of spirits who dedicated their afterlives to maintaining order, justice, and peace. The Patrol was his life, his purpose, and because of one mishap, he’d been demoted to a measly law professor. Granted, it had been a rather costly mishap. That meant he was doomed to spend his time preaching to generations of arrogant teenagers who considered themselves to be above the law simply because their souls were strong enough to exist in the afterworld. What’s worse, the professors rotated the obligation to debrief the latest newburies in a workshop so cleverly named “Intro.” The most recent batch of dead kids had been assigned to him, and although it was safe to say he didn’t look forward to the workshop, the children were less horrid than some newburies he’d encoun
tered in the past.

  The only part of his job that he loved was his classroom. Secluded at the far end of the third floor, it was monstrous and impressive, and it made the mere four newburies in attendance seem that much smaller. Chocolate-brown stadium tiers stood proudly on the lovely navy carpet of the circular hall. The layers of seating overlooked the generous podium for the teacher. When he entered the room that morning, he didn’t even bother to greet the students. He set down his briefcase and promptly wrote floccinaucinihilipilification in large letters on the chalkboard. They’d know what to do.

  He dusted off his hands, looked up at his newburies and nearly choked noticing a girl in the middle row. His first instinct was to laugh. Someone must have gone to great lengths to pull off such a joke. He swiveled back to the board for a moment. No, if this was a joke, it was a cruel one. Anguish took over. Maybe he’d imagined her sitting there. Maybe he was losing his mind. Was it possible for a ghost to see a ghost? When he faced the class again, there she was, frowning at the word with a face identical to that of the girl who had cost him his previous job.

  It wasn’t until Madison Constance started explaining the directions to the girl that Van Hanlin accepted her as real. He’d been just as baffled when Erin Ash arrived nearly two decades ago. This new girl was the spitting image. Anything short of witchcraft would make her appearance impossible. He knew all too well how valuable she was. The entire city had been hysterical after Erin Ash’s arrival, but it was nothing compared to how they’d reacted to her disappearance. They must be keeping quiet about this girl, because he’d heard nothing about her. Or perhaps, considering the circumstances, they only decided to keep him in the dark.

  “We have a new student,” he said, trying desperately to stop his hands from shaking. “I’m Professor Van Hanlin.”

  He realized his tone wasn’t welcoming at all. It was suspicious. The imp of a girl tried to smile, but likely found it difficult to do so under his surveillance.

  “Welcome … ?”

  “Alex,” she replied. “Alex Ash.”

  Another Ash.

  “As your peers are aware, I am the law professor here on campus. In this introductory workshop, we will cover the basics. General questions and such, enough to get you accustomed to life here.” He circled the word on the chalkboard. “Do your best to brainstorm the given term.”