Before You Break

by Kyla Stone

  Eden, on the other hand, is nearly as guy-crazy as I am. While I’m currently attached, Eden is free to play the wide-open field. But she’s too embarrassed to even talk to most of them.

  “You think Dominic will be there?” Eden asks.

  “You know he will be.” Dominic Harris is the high school quarterback for our lousy football team, the Wildcats. He’s your typical jock through and through. Eden’s been half in love with him since freshman year.

  “You actually going to talk to him this time, Skittles?” Eden shrugs. Of course she won’t.

  “Rumor has it he just broke up with Jayda,” Simone says, snapping her gum. “He’s a free agent.”

  “This is your chance. Talk to him.”

  Eden blushes. “Well, maybe. He’s just so … hot.” “I’ve seen better,” Simone says.

  “Seriously?” I say. “And who would that be?”

  “His chin looks kind of like a butt. Which: meh.”

  My phone rattles in the console’s plastic cup holder. A text.

  “Want me to get that?” Eden asks, already reaching.

  “No!” I know exactly who it is. I have zero desire to get reamed out by Lena right now. Or ever. I take a hard curve in the road. The wheels of the Honda Accord drift across the icy road.

  “Lux, can you slow down please?” Eden grips the side door handle.

  “You’re going twenty over the speed limit.”

  “So?” Jayda lives ten miles outside of Brokewater on a long-ass country road surrounded by deep forest and the occasional farmhouse. There are no streetlights, no stoplights. There are no other cars even on the road.

  “But it’s snowing.”

  I grin at Simone through the rearview mirror. Eden’s always so serious about everything. She needs to lighten up. Just a bit. This is southwest Michigan. Every year, we get pummeled with lake effect storms curtesy of Lake Michigan. We know how to deal with a little snow.

  I jerk the wheel and veer the car into the oncoming lane, then turn the wheel again and swerve back.

  “Stop it!” Eden shrieks.

  I step on the gas pedal and do it again.

  A car appears over the curve of the hill ahead of us. I slide into his lane. The car honks and flashes his lights.

  “Lux!” Eden pounds on my arm.

  My pulse hammers against my neck. Adrenaline flushes through me and I’m alive, so alive. A hundred times better than last week, when I could barely drag myself off the floor for four damn days. But that’s over. Done and gone.

  Tonight, I’m free. Free to party. Free to chill the hell out. Free to be wholly, 150% alive. And what better way to feel alive than a good old-fashioned game of chicken?

  The other car—a boring, beige Toyota—lays on the horn. He heads into the right lane, trying to avoid me.

  “Kiss my sweet ass!” I yell, sliding back over to match him.

  He swings to the left. Only thirty yards away now.

  “That’s enough!” Simone says in her throaty voice, leaning so far forward she must not be in her seatbelt.

  But I’m in complete control. I have perfect depth perception. I can tick off the seconds until impact, grid the distance between the two cars, measure the space like a straight crease on an unfolded piece of paper.

  “Wuss!” I crow, cranking the wheel to block him again.

  Simone grabs the wheel from me, jerking the car back into our lane. Only she overcorrects, and the Honda skids.

  A roaring fills my ears. Eden screams. My heart jackhammers against my ribs.

  We slide across the icy road, almost weightless. I slam on the brakes, but it’s too late.

  The wheels can’t catch enough traction to stop. The backend of our car swivels, our headlights flashing across the oncoming car, the looming trees.

  We slip slide across the ice, plowing straight into a snowbank.

  My body snaps forward, jerking against the seat belt. A burning pain slashes across my neck. Simone lets out an “oomph” sound as her body bangs into the back of my seat. Eden’s opened pop bottle splashes liquid all over her thighs.

  The other car roars past us in a blare of horn and a spray of sleety snow.

  For a second, we all just sit there, breathing hard.

  “What the heck?” Eden yelps.

  “Not cool, Lux.” Simone rubs her shoulder.

  I whip around and glare at her. “We were winning. I was fine. Then you had to go and twist the wheel on me. That was not cool!” “You could have killed us.” Eden’s face crumples.

  “Sorry about your pants. But that was Simone. Not me.”

  “You’re too much sometimes, Lux,” Simone says. Her eyes are watery, her breath wheezing in her chest.

  “You guys are the wettest blankets I’ve ever seen. The epitome of party poopers. It’s called fun.”

  “If you call being stuck all night in a snowdrift while we miss an epic party fun.” Eden reaches into the glovebox for a handful of old Taco Bell napkins and dabs at her wet jeans.

  “We are not stuck. In fact, we can—”

  Simone starts coughing, one hand fluttering at her throat, the other shoved in her purse, searching.

  “You okay, Jellybean?” I ask, twisting around in my seat.

  She nods breathlessly, grabs the inhaler and brings it to her mouth. We watch her suck in her asthma medication. After a minute, her breathing sounds normal again. Simone’s allergic to practically everything. She carries her inhaler around like an accessory.

  “Code red averted,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Can we please get out of here?”

  I turn back to the front and check out the snowdrift our front wheels are currently buried in. The snow is mounded three feet high. Just beyond it, a line of thick, bristling pine trees. “We might have to do a bit of digging first.”

  “Are you freakin’ kidding me?”

  “It won’t take long, I’ve got the shovel in the back and—what’s that?”

  Something dark moves just to the right of the snowbank. Just outside the glow of the headlights, stark trees stoop, huddled against the onslaught. I shove open the car door, a blast of frigid air striking my bare skin.

  Thick clouds block the light of every star, the snow swarming down like confetti. Even the moon is only a dim shadow of itself. It feels like being cut off from the whole world, the entire universe.

  “It’s just a trash bag,” Simone says. “Get in here and shut the door.”

  She’s right. The trash bag is half buried in the gray, slushy snow at the edge of the road, black plastic flapping in the wind. But there’s something else.

  I clomp through the snow in my three-inch heels, sucking in my breath as I sink ankle-deep. Snowflakes flutter against my face, landing on my eyelashes, my cheeks, my nose.

  “Lux!” Eden yells.

  “I saw something move.”

  “Whoop-de-freaking-do,” Simone says. “I’m freezing my ass off!”

  “Hold on a sec.” It’s twilight now, making it hard to see the details of the bag. I bend down, balancing precariously, and reach inside.

  I feel something small, furry, and stiff. I pull it out. My stomach drops. “What is that?” Eden’s voice goes high, hysterical. “Is that what I think it is?”

  I hold the little body in my hands. The yellow glow of the headlights reveals the spiky black and white fur, crusty with ice. Its eyes are closed. A kitten. Dead.

  Tears collect at the corners of my eyes, hardening into crystals in my eyelashes. Who could do this? Who could stuff a litter of tiny, innocent creatures into a bag and leave them by the side of the road to freeze to death, like nothing, like trash?

  I imagine them alone, abandoned, waiting for their mother to come back to them, waiting for the rescue that will never come.

  I can see them, confused and hungry, making sad little mewling sounds. Crawling together for warmth as the freezing temperature sucks the life out of them. Each one going slowly cold and stiff without warmth, without life.
>
  Suddenly I’m weeping, sobbing, gasping for breath. It hurts. It hurts so much, holding this tiny lifeless kitten in my hands.

  Simone climbs out of the car. “This sucks, Lux. I get it. But we’ve got to go. Your lips are blue. Literally.”

  “No. We can’t just—we can’t leave them. We have to bury them.”

  Simone throws up her hands. “Where? How? The ground is frozen, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  I slip the dead kitten carefully back into the trash bag. I wipe my cheeks with the sleeve of my jacket. “Pop the trunk of the car.”

  “What? We can’t—”

  “Pop the trunk! We’ll put them there for now and figure something out later.”

  Simone’s thick eyebrows lower into a straight line. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “Do I look like I’m kidding?” I nearly scream at her. “Eden, open the damn trunk.”

  “This is a terrible idea. You cannot put dead, decaying corpses in your

  car! That’s disgusting!”

  Eden looks back and forth between me and Simone. I glare at her. “It’s my frickin’ car. I decide.”

  Eden shrugs, leans over, and pushes the button beneath the steering wheel. “Sorry, Simone.”

  “Don’t apologize to her!” I say, my teeth chattering. I lift the trash bag gingerly and hold it in my arms, trying not to think about how many dead kittens are in here. Six? Eight? More? Acid rises in my throat as I carry the bag to the trunk. Simone follows me and takes out a flashlight and the shovel we’ll need to get out of the snow drift.

  I’m lowering the bag when I feel it. The slightest push against my forearm.

  I drop the bag with a thud. “What in the—!”

  “What’s your deal?” Simone asks, glowering at me.

  I wish I had better gloves than these flimsy fingerless things, but I don’t. I steel myself with a deep breath and plunge both hands in the bag.

  More stiff bodies, more frozen, ragged fur. And then something moving. “Turn on the flashlight.”

  Simone points the flashlight at my hands. I pull out a tiny, smoke-gray kitten. It’s alive.

  The little thing wraps its tiny paws around my wrist. I hold the kitten easily in one hand and unwind my fuchsia knit scarf with the other. Carefully, I wrap it up in the scarf.

  I knock on Eden’s passenger window. “Here. Warm her up.”

  She caps her diet pop, rolls down the window, and takes the kitten. “Poor baby!”

  “How old is she?”

  Eden cradles the tiny creature in her lap. “Her tail isn’t curled around her body, and her eyes are open and bright. Maybe seven, eight weeks?”

  I pat her shoulder. “Beautiful and brilliant.”

  “It might not be a girl.”

  “It’s a girl.”

  “Girls have a dot and slit under the tail and males have two dots. You want me to check?”

  I’ve already decided she’s a girl, and I don’t want to be told differently.

  “No! No checking. It’s a girl, okay? No further discussion needed.”

  Eden wrinkles her nose. “Did you know oysters can change their gender multiple times over the course of their lifetime?”

  “Whoop-de-freaking-do!” Simone hollers. “Come on! Help me dig out of this mess.”

  Simone and I duck our heads against the onslaught of snow. We shovel ourselves out of the snow bank and jump back in the car.

  “What’s the plan here?” Simone asks, shivering and blowing into her hands.

  I back the car up and turn around. “The pharmacy’s only a few minutes back. We need milk and a syringe.” “What about the party?” Simone asks.

  “We’ll be late. So what?”

  “Look, Lux,” Simone says. “I know you want to save that thing, but it’s practically frozen. You’re getting your hopes up. It’s just gonna be that much worse when it dies.”

  “Don’t you dare say that.”

  Simone rolls her eyes, but I don’t care. Eden’s crooning softly to the kitten, stroking her head.

  “Me, Skittles, and the kitten disagree,” I say. “You’re outvoted and you know it.”

  We head to the pharmacy, snow swirling in the twin circles of our headlights, crunching beneath the tires.

  Whatever happens tonight, I’m going to save that kitten. It’s a fighter.

  Like me.

  8

  Lux

  The party whirls and churns around me. The music thrums in my chest, in my bones. People swirl in and out of the massive kitchen, where all the beer and wine and chips, brownies, and bowls of M&Ms are stacked nice and neat on the marble island. There’s a massive pool table and big screen TV in the basement.

  Out in the living room, the couches, chaises, and coffee and end tables are all pushed back against the walls, making a dance floor for dozens of gyrating couples. The sliding glass doors to the deck keep opening and closing. Girls strip down to their bikinis and climb into the steaming, ten-person Jacuzzi.

  Usually, I’m one of the first ones to jump in. Usually I’m dancing and grinding and drinking and laughing the whole night away, spinning and whirling, bright and dazzling as a sparkler on the Fourth of July.

  But not tonight. Tonight, I’m all business. I’m saving a life.

  I sit at the farmhouse-style kitchen table, hunched over the tiny kitten.

  She’s nested inside one of Jayda’s sage green towels I warmed in her dryer.

  I hold the kitten carefully in one hand, trying to get her to drink heated milk from a syringe. Her whole body is trembling. She laps tiredly as I give her the milk, one drop at a time.

  “To what nefarious purposes are we up to tonight?” A shadow looms over me as Felix gives me a hug from behind. The chair next to me scrapes against the floor as he flops into it.

  He’s wearing a vintage T-shirt that says, “My Weekend is All Booked Up,” with a printed stack of books beneath the words. His nerdy clothes are always slightly rumpled, like he’s too busy solving quadratic equations to spend time on personal hygiene. “You look—amazing. Like Black Widow in the original comics.”

  I try not to blush, but with my porcelain skin, I pretty much blush at anything. I love how effusive Felix is with his compliments, how he always compares me to some epically gorgeous comic book character. He’s so adorably geeky. “Hey, hot stuff. What’s up?”

  “Sweet mother of—is that a cat?”

  “Great deductive skills you have there, Sherlock.” I tell him everything that happened on the way here. Well, not everything. I leave out the insane game of chicken with the Toyota. He’s like Eden. He doesn’t appreciate certain versions of fun.

  He pets the kitten’s ear. “He’s handsome.”

  “It’s a ‘she.’”

  “How do you know?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “Should we check?”

  “What is with you people and your obsession with gender identity? She is who she is. What she really needs is a name. And not Fluffy or Cuddles or anything lame.”

  Felix gives me his wide, dopey grin. “That white streak between her eyes looks like a lightning bolt. How about Harry Potter?”

  “Just, no. She’s much too refined for that. Plus, hello? She’s a girl.”

  “That’s undetermined.”

  I glare at him. “Whatever. Are you gonna help me or not? Her fur is the color of ash.”

  “Well, that’s a depressing comparison. How about something more conventional? And, you know, not about death. Like Stormy.”

  I roll my eyes. “Too cliché.”

  “How about Jean Gray?”

  “That’s an X-men character, right? What’s her other name?”

  “You mean Phoenix?”

  “That’s it! She died and then she was reborn out of the ashes. It’s perfect!” I lean in and kiss him on his perfect lips. “I love it.”

  Felix scrapes his hand through his scruffy curls. “Happy to be of service.” He rubs the ki
tten’s tiny head. “You need a break? I can take over if you wanna dance or chill for awhile.”

  My heart melts. “I’m good for now.”

  “Cool. You want a Mountain Dew?”

  “How about some schnapps?”

  Felix brings me a sweating bottle of schnapps and a bag of Doritos. He kisses me on top of my head. My stomach does little cartwheels. He’s too perfect for words.

  “Thanks, babe.”

  He smiles at me, but the smile doesn’t reach all the way to his eyes.

  I don’t want him to be sad. I want him to be as happy—no, euphoric—as I am. “What’s wrong?”

  Just as he opens his mouth, Jayda Washington-Clarke saunters up. She’s wearing a silky maroon strap dress that flatters her light brown skin and the mahogany stripes streaking her shoulder-length hair. She points at us. “No food outside this kitchen, comprende?”

  Jayda’s a cheerleader, wildly popular and super smart, and the host of the best parties. Her parents are never home. But she’s tough as nails when she wants to be. If you so much as drop a Dorito on her parents’ white carpet, you’re out. And if you don’t want to go, one of her linebacker boyfriends will firmly escort you.

  “We got it,” I say.

  She glares at the kitten.

  “Is that thing going to pee in my house?”

  “No way. She’s potty-trained. She can even use the toilet.”

  “Mmmkay …” She twists up her face, as if deciding. Then she smiles her trademark brilliant white smile and turns to Felix. “How ’bout that

  Physics test? It was totally brutal.”

  “Yeah,” he says, but he sounds distant, like he’s thinking about something else.

  Jayda wrinkles her nose. “Wait. Is that weed I smell? Is some scum-sucking idiot actually stupid enough to smoke in my house? I’m gonna kill them!” She barrels out of the kitchen.

  “Someone’s about to be booted out on their ass,” I say. Felix doesn’t even crack a smile. “Okay, now you really have to tell me what’s going on.”