All Our Broken Pieces

by L. D. Crichton

  Kyler stands with his hands jammed into his pockets, his hair worn in a low ponytail at the nape of his neck with stubborn pieces spilling from the sides. He’s wearing a white T-shirt and shorts with sandals. It’s the least amount of clothing I’ve ever seen on Kyler and the first time, aside from the tree house, that he seems unbothered by exposing his face.

  Jacob’s wide eyes start at Kyler’s feet, which are huge, and his gaze does a slow sweep upward to his face. And his scar. Jacob blinks.

  “What happened to your face?”

  “Jake,” I say. His name is accompanied by an uneasy laugh because I’m mortified.

  “Freak accident. I got burned.”

  “Did it hurt?”

  “Like you couldn’t imagine,” Kyler says.

  “Does it hurt now?”

  “Nah,” he says. “Not at all.”

  Jacob squints. “Do you like superheroes?”

  “Who doesn’t?”

  Jacob steps aside, pleased with Kyler’s answers to his interrogation.

  Kyler smiles warmly. “That’s a wicked cape there, little man.”

  “I know. Lennon made it.”

  “That’s cool. My sister, Macy, doesn’t make anything like that.”

  “Have you asked her?” Jacob inquires.

  The sides of Kyler’s mouth pull into a smirk. “Now that you mention it, I haven’t. I should, huh?”

  “You never know unless you ask. Besides, if your sister can’t do it, I’m sure Lennon will make you one.”

  The smirk intensifies as he fixes me with his burning gaze. “Lennon’s making me a mask.”

  Jacob’s eyes grow wide in fascination. “What?” He turns. “You can make masks? Is he a superhero, too? Is that why Andi doesn’t like him?” He faces Kyler again, expecting an answer.

  Kyler shrugs, as if he’s telling Jacob, Who knows? I could be.

  The door swings open and Claire steps in, a large square leather bag dangling from her wrist. “Mommy!” Jacob runs to her, forgetting about his inquisition as he throws his arms around her waist. “Are you ready?”

  “I’m ready, sugar,” Claire says. “I need a minute to change my clothes.” She looks at Kyler, then at me. “You didn’t tell me you were having a friend over.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “We’re working on a project.”

  “Okay. Well, your daddy is workin’ late.” She pulls her wallet out and whips out a credit card. “You, Andi, and your friend here can order takeout. Jacob and I are takin’ Oscar up the street to Mel’s place.”

  “Okay, thank you.”

  “Let’s go!” Jacob pleads.

  “All right, all right.” She smiles once more and stalks down the hallway toward her bedroom, Jacob at her heels.

  I look at Kyler. “Sorry about that. I mean, Jacob, he’s—”

  “—five,” Kyler offers. “Don’t sweat it. He’s a curious kid.”

  “My room is this way.” Duh. He knows which way my room is.

  When we enter, his eyes do a quick sweep of the space. “A minimalist, huh?”

  “My stuff is in storage while the interior designer is working,” I explain.

  He walks over to the bookshelves and sees the twenty-five or so books detailing random facts. “A trivia junkie? No wonder you’re so smart,” he says, casually walking around the room, scanning, observing. “It’s so clean,” he says, “like no one lives in it.”

  “I live in it,” I tell him.

  “You could never see my room,” he says decisively. “It would freak you out.”

  “You’re messy?” I guess.

  “I like to think of it more as an environment of creative chaos. It’s a mess, kind of like my head.”

  “Preaching to the choir,” I tell him. “I hold the undisputed title for messes in heads.”

  He nods. “I’m not even sure I could hold a decent argument to that point, Lennon. But like I keep telling you, normal is boring.”

  I’d precut the sheets of bandage plaster into small, moldable strips. I set down the strips on the table beside the bed and slip into the bathroom to grab petroleum jelly, towels, and a basin of warm water and a cloth to wash his face clean afterward. I spread the towels across the pillow and point to the bed. “Lie down.”

  He issues a deadly grin. “I realize I bought you dinner the other night, but we should get to know each other more.”

  “Lie down or the only thing you’ll know is the effect of gravity when I’m trying to capture the shape of your face. The plaster will pull, and the mask will look like something from a horror movie.”

  “Not the worst idea,” he says.

  I cross my arms over my chest and arch my eyebrow.

  He shakes his head and lies down in the middle of the bed, leaving me enough room to sit beside him. Heat radiates from his skin, like the burn of his eyes is just as intense all over his body. I dip my fingers in the jelly and bring the tips to his face, lingering a moment longer than I should because he’s looking at me.

  No, he’s looking inside me.

  I swallow down the lump in my throat and make small, slow circles on his face with my fingers. His eyelashes flutter closed when skin touches skin, and his breath hitches. I keep moving until I’ve got the scarred portion of his face covered and wipe my hands on the towel beside the table.

  I place a few of the plaster strips into the water and lay two on the spot beside him, then bring one to his face. I press it down, tracing my fingers gingerly down the length of it, until I get to the biggest part of his scar. I leave my finger there.

  “Jada told me, but I didn’t know if it was true.” I worry I’m overstepping my boundaries, until he responds.

  “Yeah, when I was six.”

  I get more plaster ribbons and continue to stroke his face, along the ridge of his jaw, his cheekbone. “You were probably so scared.”

  “I was terrified,” he says.

  I try to picture a tiny Kyler, Jacob-sized, engulfed by the flames of a fire. His sandy hair, those bright blue eyes. Stinging tears prickle, and I refuse to blink for fear they’ll fall. I work faster, setting one strip over the others, smoothing and building them until they lie flush with the planes of his face, encased in plaster.

  “I’m sorry you went through that,” I say. My voice is on the verge of breaking, though, so I go silent. I turn a fan to face the side of him with the mask, but sit down and touch his arm.

  His eyes are still closed, his hands clasped together over his stomach.

  “My mom went to France for two weeks. She was training with some superstar chef or something, so it was me, Macy, and my dad. I remember my mom’s face when she left. She was excited, hopeful, like she felt she’d experience something magical.”

  He continues: “Mae was tiny, so she’d gone to bed, but I was always kind of a little shit and I’d stayed up long after my dad had put me to sleep for the night. For weeks before that, I’d been obsessed with secret spies and collecting information. I even dressed the part, like a robber in the night. Black sweatpants, a black sweater, a beanie, the whole badass getup. My imagination was wild, and I was pretending I was on this top secret mission to gather enemy files. I was going to go into his office, grab papers with his law office logo, and pretend they were documents containing classified information.”

  My heart tightens, and I trace my hand along the length of his arm. “You sound like you were such a sweet little kid.”

  “I wouldn’t call me that.” He smiles, but it disappears. “Anyway, to get to my dad’s office, I had to cut through the living room and when I came down the hallway, there he was, with a black-haired woman who I promise you was most definitely not my mother. They were surrounded by candles and slow-dancing to some crappy jazz song. Like his wife leaves town, so now he’s a real Casanova. I stood there for a second, not quite believing what I was seeing, and then he kissed her and I screamed.

  “He turned and came after me so fast, I thought the vein was going to pop clear out of
his forehead. He dragged me down the hallway and back to my room, shoved me down on the bed. He pointed his finger at me and said—”

  He stops speaking and I freeze. I bring my fingertips to touch the tackiness of the plaster and remove the mask, setting it on the towel beside the bed to dry. I grab the washcloth and follow the same pattern, stroking away remnants of plaster and Vaseline. He opens his eyes. “I’ll never forget what he said. He told me not to move a muscle. Told me that bad things happened when kids didn’t listen. Kids like me. Then he warned me one more time that I better not move, and he left.”

  The knot in my throat becomes harder to swallow back down. His eyes flutter closed again.

  “Next thing I woke up and my fucking room was on fire. My dad was across the hall, with Macy in his arms, and he’s screaming at me again, and he’s telling me to move. And I’m confused because I was asleep, and he’d told me not to move. Not a muscle. And now he’s hysterical. Screaming at me to move. When I came to, became aware, there was a two-foot-high wall of flames between us. Flames were everywhere, spreading faster than it seems possible.” He pauses. “I’ve always wondered if when you’re about to die, time just morphs into overdrive, because that fire consumed everything. It devoured everything in its path in seconds, milliseconds, even. So I snap up and Dad’s yelling at me to get to the window. To get out the window and jump. I stand, but my knees barely hold me and I think I fall, I stumble on the way there. I don’t remember tripping, but I could have, or maybe the curtains were on fire, but then boom, like an object left in its path, it consumes me and suddenly I’m on fire. I’m on fire and I’m elbowing the window because it’s stuck, and I pry it open and crawl out onto the roof and my face is on fire, my side is on fire. I don’t jump. I fall.”

  His eyes open. “Wanna hear the worst part?”

  How could it be any worse? “If you want to tell me,” I say.

  “For the longest time afterward, I thought it happened because I didn’t listen to my dad. It was one of his candles lit to impress the woman he was cheating on my mother with that started the fire, but I blamed myself. Thought it was my fault because he said bad things happen to kids who don’t listen and he’d told me to go to bed and I didn’t. He never told me any different. Never told me it wasn’t my fault. And my mom, when she came home from that trip, her eyes had gone from hopeful to anguished, and they’ve been that way ever since. How messed up is that?”

  His words are not without a cost. Silent tears pour down my face, hot and steady. A charge, a penance to pay for the story of a boy named Kyler who was burned in a house fire.

  His arms uncross, and he grabs my wrist without sitting up, to pull me on top of him so we are stomach to stomach, face-to-face. I’m sure he is aware of my heart hammering against his chest. I can hear it racing.

  His hands slide across the underside of my jaw. “Don’t cry for me.”

  “I’m crying for the little boy who was you,” I say. My arms are shaking like mad, trying to keep myself upright.

  Kyler closes his eyes and pulls me forward. He doesn’t hesitate.

  He kisses me.

  And the minute his mouth touches mine, I’m a supernova.

  I’VE NEVER BEEN A BIG believer in God. It’s kind of like supporting the idea of a mythological creature. Never been confident some entity that controls every aspect of my life exists. She could change my mind. Lennon could be my religion, because there was something in that kiss that was ethereal. Divine. My personal nirvana. As though years of suffering have earned me a single blissful moment with this beautiful blond girl I’ve just kissed. She tasted like the human equivalent of rapture, and damn if I don’t want to devour that taste, again and again.

  Her forehead is pressed to mine, my hands are still framing her face, and wetness runs down her cheeks, her tears rolling over my fingers. It’s an odd thing to have someone cry for me. She has enough problems of her own, and she’s tormented over mine. I move my lips and press a kiss to her forehead. “Stop crying,” I whisper. “I’m fine. I’m okay.”

  Her voice is laced with sadness that loves to bloom through quiet tears. “Are any of us ever okay, really?”

  I stroke her hair with my fingers. “No. No one is okay in a literal sense. Everyone is screwed up, and they’re either screwed up enough to admit it, or too blinded by ego to see it. But I think we can be okay for moments, Lennon. Sometimes for hours, days, even weeks. And I don’t know about you, but in this moment, I’m pretty okay.”

  Her arms wrap around my neck.

  It’s the best feeling in the entire world. In the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies combined.

  “Yeah,” she says, “I’m pretty okay, too.”

  I move my hand to the small of her back and she squeezes me. We stay that way in comfortable silence for a moment before she scoots off the bed and slowly stands, a smile stretched across her face. I feel decent about being the one who put it there.

  I stand, too, and walk over to her and pull her back. Instinct. As if my body wasn’t ready to let her go.

  “This is crazy,” she says.

  “So are you. So am I.”

  “What happened just now?”

  “I told you a terrible tale and then I kissed you.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you like it?”

  She smiles. “The terrible tale, no, but the kiss, very much.”

  I smirk. “So I can kiss you again, so long as I don’t pair it with a nightmare?”

  She blushes. “Yes. I think I’d like that.”

  I take a moment to acknowledge how much I want to kiss this girl. I want to kiss her and hold her and tell her everything will be fine. That days can be hard and life can be shitty, but there’s something to be said for little things that are big things and big things that are little things and things like whatever it is we are.

  She’s staring up at me, her golden eyes filled with questions but also a certain hope. I’ve been searching for a glimpse of that hope since I was six. It’s the kind that believes in magic. This time, I use my thumb to hold her chin in place and I move slowly. I brush my lips against hers before I urge her to open her mouth for me. Her lips are soft like rose petals, her hair smells of something sweet, tropical. Her body melts into my arms while I explore her mouth.

  When we separate, she looks at me, shades of pink flaring across her face. “You’re really good at that.”

  “I’m a tortured musician, Davis, what do you expect?”

  “I can’t believe I forgot to tell you.” She moves and sits on the edge of the bed, looking up at me. Her hair’s messy, her mouth swollen.

  I’m in so much trouble.

  Religious Affiliation: Lennonism

  “Do you understand how amazing those song lyrics are?”

  Oh. That.

  “Glad one of us thinks so.”

  “Kyler, it’s true. They’re unbelievably good. You have a gift and—”

  I hold my hand out to stop her and narrow my eyes. “Don’t be clichéd enough to tell me I have a gift. Besides, I just kissed you, Davis. There’s a million endorphins running though both of us. You’re not thinking straight.”

  “I thought they were good before the kiss.”

  “Now you’re fluffing my ego.”

  She shrugs. “Or just speaking the truth.”

  I move to the bed and give her shoulder a small squeeze. “You’re sweet. I’ve gotta go to band practice, but I’d way rather stay here with you. I’ll see myself out.”

  “Text me later?”

  “What kind of guy would I be if I let you miss out on your favorite part of the day? Of course I’ll text you later.”

  “Kyler?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You don’t need the mask.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” I say. “I do.”

  “Okay,” she whispers. She looks a little sad.

  “You okay?”

  She nods.

  “Don’t look so glum. We had
a weird moment. A perfectly weird moment—and remember, weird is beautiful.” I pause at the door and look over my shoulder. “Lennon?”

  She smiles. “Yeah?”

  “You’re the weirdest person I’ve ever met.”

  With that, I walk out the door, leaving Lennon from Maine with Serious Issues Who Sews and Is Broken and Beautiful behind.

  * * *

  As I come down the hallway, I spot the sharp lines of Andrea’s haircut. Her back is to me, but she’s hovering over the island in the kitchen. Her arms are stretched out in front of her as though she’s taking a picture. I clear my throat and watch as she jumps, slamming her hand over a file folder on the counter and trying to slide it inconspicuously underneath a small pile of paperwork.

  “Must be interesting,” I say.

  She turns. “Ew. Gross. What are you doing in my house?”

  “Witnessing a crime,” I say. “What’s the paperwork? Your parents’ bank account information? School records? A script from your mom’s TV show?”

  She glares at me. “Get. Out. Now I have to disinfect everything.”

  “Start with your soul. I’ll leave you to it.”

  “Thank God for small blessings,” she mutters.

  If anyone should cry for anyone else, I should sob for Lennon. Positively mourning the fact that she’s forced to live with such a vile human.

  As I walk across the yard, I open my phone and go to the notes app to copy the lyrics I’d typed on there. I’d been saving it for later, but I don’t want to spend the rest of the night remembering the melancholy look on her face. I pull up Lennon’s contact and type:

  I’m certain you’re a fairy or something because you taste like unicorn tears. Thus, I’m inspired to share the rest of the song with you. Talk later.

  Let me take your breath away,

  Make your body shake,

  Hold on to me forevermore,

  My heart is yours to take.

  See the world just like me,

  You’ll never be the same,

  The planet and its mysteries,

  Its pleasure, and its pain.