Broken

by A. E. Rought

  Autumn is over. Novembers are fickle, but the constant chill in the air tells me the dying is done. Now comes the frigid death of a Michigan winter, bitter winds, suffocating snow.

  My cell phone display screen lights up like the Fourth of July when the battery finally gets enough juice to take calls. The notification tones set the pink bit of electronics staggering like a mugging victim across my desk. One look confirms my suspicions:

  Bree Ransom.

  Bree Ransom.

  Bree Ransom.

  And then one I secretly hope for:

  Alex Franks.

  I click through the texts from Bree: Hey. Call me. Next is, Hellooo? Did you forget to charge your phone again?? And then finally, Word on the street is Alex Franks walked you home. You two going out yet? I know there isn’t sugar in Diet Coke, but there is caffeine. I wonder just how many cans she had between text one and text three? I hit Reply and type: He did walk me home. Stayed for dinner too. Mom hates him, of course. No, we aren’t going out. Then, I click Send.

  Next, I click on Alex’s text: Why can’t I get you out of my head? You’re my dream, Emma, and I don’t ever want to wake up.

  How on earth do I respond to that? I can’t tell him he has the starring role in the worst nightmares I’ve ever had. Do I tell him he isn’t a dream for me, but a memory I’ve almost forgotten? Emotions tumble around loose inside me, rattling against my bones, bruising my heart. There’s definitely a wrong way to respond, but is there a right?

  I press Reply, then type: I’ve wondered the same thing. I’ll hold back the dawn as long as I can. Thinking maybe I shouldn’t, I click Send.

  Like the last time I made some silly, poetic promise, I agonize over what I just did. Will he roll his eyes and think I’m just some lovestruck girl? God help me, I feel like one.

  My cell’s standard notification tone chirps in my hand.

  Alex Franks.

  I click through to the message.

  I’ll hold you to that. I don’t want to do this alone.

  Do what? Regardless, my fingers act on their own agenda, and type: You are not alone. See you after school tomorrow?

  The wait is short.

  I’ll be waiting.

  A dreamless sleep leads me to weak gray dawn bleeding through my curtains. After my nightmares, blank sleep is a blessing. However, I wake to Alex’s face behind my eyes, and his voice whispering in my mind. “It doesn’t beat for me,” he’d said. Then last night he’d texted, You’re my dream, Emma, and I don’t ever want to wake up.

  School is my new nightmare, the rabble and push devoid of Alex. I sleepwalk through the day to get to the afternoon and sweeter dreams.

  Glancing at the pristine inside of my new locker, I wonder for a minute if I should etch something on the inside in honor of Alex. The metal stretches unspoiled from top to bottom, the locking mechanism in perfect working order. I think I like the image the blank slate gives—limitless potential.

  Bree, well-aware I won’t be at her house for homework, waves and makes rude kissy faces at me from the Performing Arts hall. Alex is going to help me. He’s out there waiting, and the knowledge fills me with an aching kind of longing. I can’t get out of the building fast enough.

  Alex lounges on the Bree Bench, reminding me of how he seems to shun and attract attention. Hands stuffed in his pockets, normal thin hoodie traded for a heavier weight, ivory knit one. Face framed in the pale ivory, shadowed beneath by the rich cocoa color of his leather jacket makes his hazels really pop—like that color combo always did for Daniel.

  The familiar feeling swells and ripples through me, like going home after a long, stressful trip. My heart flutters in a way I’ve never felt, and I’m not sure I will again. The same look of wonder crosses his face, then his scarred visage softens into that tender expression. His shadow drapes me when he stands.

  “Hey.”

  Questions crowd my mind and force my mouth into automatic response mode.

  “Hi.”

  He holds out his hand, empty with his palm up, offering not asking. I lift mine to his, hovering it there, feeling the muted tickle of electricity dancing in the air between our skin. His smile grows, tugging at his scars, and I think, Alex knows what I feel. He’s trying to tell me something, show me, without saying anything.

  Warmth builds, energy pulses when I settle my hand on his, palm to palm. How can he steal my breath just by knitting our fingers together and turning our hands?

  “Aw. How cute!” comes nasty and hateful from the street, issuing from the approaching crappy, rust-bucket Camaro Z-28. Crimson glows from the traffic light at the intersection, trapping Josh. Stationary, he’s a still life painting of the losing guy in a fight: a black eye discoloring his face, and white, white tape over his lumpy nose. “Asshole!” he shouts and shakes a fist out the window.

  Sometimes, the best responses are silent. Alex pulls me close and then gives Josh a middle finger salute—a move I loosely translate as, “She’s mine, so screw you!”

  Livid, ugly red flushes what isn’t black-and-blue on Josh’s face. The light above him turns green, and sour blats peal from the car horn behind him. A stream of cussing louder than the exhaust system pours from the windows when the car backfires and then lurches sluggishly ahead.

  Then it hits me. Josh looks like someone beat the crap out of him. I shift my gaze to Alex’s face, coursing the planes of his cheeks, the curve of his lips, the structure of his eyes. Nothing but the surgical scars. No black eye. No scab on his bottom lip. It’s as if he never got into that fight at the dance.

  My long stare becomes obvious. Alex’s expression hardens slightly, he fidgets and nearly lets go of my hand. I tighten my fingers around his.

  “What?” he asks, eyebrows and lips tilted down.

  I can’t ply him with questions here. Instead, I lift a shoulder in a half-shrug, and try for nonchalant.

  “I thought I wouldn’t see Josh this week,” I huff.

  “Suspensions are supposed to work that way,” Alex intones with a heavy note of sarcasm. “Not allowed on school property, or within a hundred feet of it, or something like that.”

  “Look how well that works for you.” I squeeze his hand.

  “I’m a ghost,” he says, and rubs his thumb along my finger in reply. “No one sees me.”

  “Oh, yes, they do.” Oh, yes, I do.

  He’s there every time I close my eyes, haunting my thoughts. And from his text last night, I must frequent his, too.

  People retreating from November’s chill fill Mugz-n-Chugz, the Ins, the Outs, the Sports, heck, even the Thespian Millers. Normal chatter stutters, then dies. All eyes are on our clasped hands. This, I think, is how the rumors really start. And they do. Words whisk up, breezing from cluster to cluster, division between the Crowds momentarily forgotten.

  “Heartless.”

  “Tramp.”

  “I knew she was easy.”

  Vicious, nasty words, taking lives of their own.

  Let them gossip. The gentle pressure of Alex’s hand, and the hum coming through his touch are worth it.

  “Hiya.” Lydia’s behind the counter and mercifully doesn’t bring Tiny’s attention our way. “Breve with caramel for Emma…”

  “Make that two, please.” Then he looks at me. “Biscotti? Cookies?”

  “Just the coffees, Lydia.”

  “Coming right up.” Her long black brain swings like a whip when she turns to fill our order.

  “You’re going to spoil me, y’know.”

  He smiles, manipulating our hands till he pins my arm behind me, and my curves to his hard lines. Tingles race up and down my body. The smell of Alex and leather coat my throat. Alex’s words are warm on my lips when he locks eyes with me and says, “That’s not the worst thing I can do…”

  A blush ravages my face. His slow smile radiates a palpable heat. “Your freckles are so cute when you blush.”

  “Ahem.” Lydia clears her throat.

  Alex step
s back, leaving me feeling weak and noodley, and oddly wanting to smack him for making me that way. He pays the bill, then stuffs our cups into insulated cup collars and a carrier before weaving through the growing crowd to the door. Suddenly, all playfulness drops, his spine stiffens and he ducks further into his hood.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  He scans the street through the fingerprinted window sporting the Mugz-n-Chugz logo.

  “I thought I saw something.”

  “We’re in a coffee shop across from a high school. I’m sure you saw a lot of somethings.”

  Chill whisks in, claws prickling my skin as he pushes the door open. Instead of walking in the normal direction of home, he cuts through the parking lot, past the line of feet-shuffling, arm-whacking coffee freaks at the Walk-Up window.

  “Not just anything,” he says over his shoulder in the back alley. “Something I don’t want to see, or be seen by.”

  Wait a minute. What? The old Converse rubber soles of my tennis shoes squeak when I dig in my heels, something he seems bent to ignore. Tension pulls in my left hand and arm when he tugs. “Mind telling me what’s going on?”

  “Can we get out of here first?” Alex shoots a glance past me, at the driveway feeding into the main street. “Please?”

  The ‘please’ does it. He’s the raw, gouged-out guy in the culvert again, calling my name like I’m the only one who can help him. Resisting Alex when he’s like this goes against everything in me. I might as well tell my own cutting ache no.

  “Fine,” I mutter.

  Surprise zips through me, set alight by Alex. He reaches behind my head, and frees my hair from the messy bun I’d twisted it into this morning. Brusquely he stuffs the elastic band into the front pocket of my jeans. Damn my hopes for piquing an interest in the proximity of his hand to my body. Then, he grabs my hand again and hikes down the back alley in a vaguely homeward direction. Alex sends long looks down each direction at every cross street, weaving a bumble bee path to my house like he’s running to it and away from something.

  Once inside, Mom casts a half-hearted glare at us and he blanches. He stares blankly, hand on mine loosening while the hand around the coffee cups tightens.

  A swift elbow to the ribs where Mom can’t see breaks him out of it.

  “Hello, Mrs. Gentry.” A slight strain tugs at his velvet tenor.

  “Mom, do you mind if Alex helps me with homework again?”

  I can’t send him out there to face whatever he’s fleeing.

  “Your homework needs to be done, and he seems as good as any friend.” She stresses the ‘friend’ like that’s all she’ll allow him to be by the sheer force of her will. “I suppose you’ll you be staying for dinner again?”

  Pleading bleeds from every line of his face despite his neutral expression. “I would love to, if you’re offering.”

  “It’s the least I can do to pay you back for helping Emma.”

  “I’m happy to do it.”

  A heavy sigh drags her shoulders down. “So I’ve noticed.”

  She strides over the basement door, shouts down to Dad that “Emma and that boy” are in the dining room and she’s going to pick up pizzas. Grabbing her battered purse, she eyes me from the back door.

  “I’ll be back in a while,” never sounded like more “behave or you’re grounded.”

  The door swings shut and I turn on Alex.

  “Look. I don’t mind taking the scenic route home, but either you tell me what that,” I jab a finger at the living room window and direction we’d just come, “was all about or we won’t be walking together again.”

  A puppet with cut strings, Alex sinks to the chair he sat in last night while I did homework. His gaze falls, as if the dark carpet holds the world’s secrets, and shakes his head. “Sorry about putting you through that, Em. I just didn’t want him ruining things.”

  “Him who?” Was he talking about Josh? I would’ve heard his loud engine inside the coffee shop.

  “My dad.”

  His father? That horrid man who squeezed my hand hard enough to break bones? The will to stand leaves my legs, and I droop to the seat next to him. Memory throbs in my hand, sharp and hot. Unconsciously, I lift my left hand to rub the brace on my right and Alex doesn’t miss it.

  “Exactly,” he says. His tone, his face... Alex’s ceding defeat.

  “Why would he be following you?” My voice sounds far away, muffled by the waves of shock and fear.

  “Your mom and him have a lot in common.” I watch while he opens my backpack, and pulls out the homework for me. The jittery motion in his hands says he needs an activity to focus on. “Overprotective.”

  “So what?” A defensive, cornered feeling rises in me. “He doesn’t like you making friends?”

  Maybe it’s the last word, or the vehemence I pack into it. Alex hits me with a wounded look, asking “That’s all we are?” without saying a thing.

  “Since the accident…” he slides his hood off and shoves a hand through his longish brown hair. “Since I woke up, Dad hasn’t liked anything, or anyone, that takes me away.”

  “I’m taking you away?”

  “According to him, I’m throwing myself away on any girl in high school.”

  Why does that statement sting?

  “Am I just ‘any girl?’”

  “No!” Anger sharpens his word. “You’re…” he pauses, casts glances around, then looks at me. The grind and scream of power tools cuts off in the basement, and the door to my Dad’s workshop creaks open. Alex says, voice barely above a whisper, “You’re everything, and he knows it.”

  Once Dad reaches the top of the stairs, any personal talk dries up to a shriveled husk of “So what else happened at school?” My heart and head chatter back and forth debating his words, You’re everything, and he knows it, and what he meant. We do my homework like the night before, with him brushing his sock toes on my feet. When Mom comes in, arms laden with carry-out boxes, Alex beats my Dad to the kitchen to help her. Her thank-you is only mildly disgruntled—progress. After dinner, Mom doesn’t dismiss Alex, and Dad invites him into the living room to watch some game.

  Alex and I start side by side on the sofa. The polite Mom-is-watching one-full-cushion distance and quiet between us is maddening. There’s so much to talk about. Eventually, I realize Mom isn’t moving and Alex is trying his best to fit in. Stuffing away the questions plaguing my mind, I slide to the floor and lean back against his shins.

  Mom peeks up occasionally, not missing a thing happening across the carpeting from her chair. Her eyebrows go up when I wriggle between Alex’s legs and rest my head on his lap. A tickle of energy zips along my scalp as he strokes my hair. I close my eyes and float in the odd new/old connection we have. By the end of whatever game they’re watching, I’m more than half asleep, with one arm looped around Alex’s calf, and my head resting on his inner thigh.

  “Wake up, sleepyhead,” he says, nudging me. “Game’s over.”

  “Yes,” Mom agrees, using her finger for a book mark in some paperback with lusty cover models on the front. “And you have school tomorrow, Emma Jane.”

  Warm and heavy with drowsiness, I drift to the door with Alex’s fingers twined in mine. Then, hand on the doorknob, and chilly air rushing through the cracked-open gap he says, “See you tomorrow, Em.”

  He compounds the heat and comfy feeling, wrapping me in a hug. His heart beats a steady rhythm, one I feel an echo of in my chest when he presses my head to him. “Sweet dreams, Alex.”

  “I’m holding mine,” he whispers, then places a light kiss on my forehead.

  Tingles dance across the skin beneath his lips.

  After the door closes, and I lean my back against the wooden panel, I sort through hazy thoughts to the one too bright and impossible to ignore. I know what he meant when he said his heart didn’t beat for him. I don’t think my heart belongs to me, either.

  #

  Clouds smother Wednesday’s sky, leeching the sunligh
t and heat. The world outside my house has drifted into an alternate, horror movie state. Chilly haze muffles, mutilates or devours sounds. The color of trees and cars and houses—everything—has bled off into the faint black smudges of shadow beneath them. I watch for Alex all the way to school, and flinch whenever fancy cars roll past.

  Anticipation threatens to suffocate my heart when I open the side door after school. The empty Bree Bench all but kills the emotion. I scan the quad, people tucking tighter into their winter jackets, leaves scraping and whispering over the pavement. No Alex. No hybrid in the Student Parking Lot, either. One block past the gym complex, though, a black SUV drives across the intersection and away from my neighborhood, followed directly by Josh Mason.

  As if today didn’t suck enough already…

  He pulls to a stop at the curb, throws his Camaro into park in a posted No Parking Zone, and then climbs out. Maybe I’m used to staring at Alex now. Josh looks awful, stringy thin, his hair seems even redder, his skin paler. And a haunted look fills the creases made by the swelling from his fight with Alex. I can’t muster enough snark to play our old insult game.

  “Hell bent on annoying me?” I ask.

  “Not fair, Em. Not fair.” Josh casts looks up and down the street, fidgets with his jacket cuff. When he shifts his gaze back to me I know he’s not playing games, either. “You need to stay away from Alex Franks. You have no idea the trouble you’re walking into.”

  “What? And you do?” I tip my weight back on one hip and away from him. “Wait,” I peer closely at the tape over his broken nose. “I guess you do know.”

  “You have no idea.” Another glance down the way he came. “You can’t date him.”

  “Excuse me? Who died and made you judge of who I can date?”

  “Daniel did.”

  My response is immediate. I whip a hand out and slap his face, the purpled, bruised side. The tape pops off the side of his nose, and Josh covers his cheek with his hand. He doesn’t have the decency to look remorseful, just resigned and angry.

  “How dare you?” I growl. “You were best friends! You were right there on the balcony when Daniel fell. How the hell can you make a mockery of his death?”