Before You Break

by Kyla Stone

  “I said I was sorry. What more do you want?”

  I don’t wait for her answer. There’s nothing she can say that I haven’t heard a hundred times before. I turn and stumble out of the kitchen, into the living room, into the whir and pulse of bodies, pushing through the tangle of sweaty arms and legs, the thrum of music hammering my skull.

  “Lux.” It’s Felix, slouching with his hands stuffed into his pockets, looking miserable. “Can I talk to you?”

  I shake my head, tears clogging my throat. “No. Stay away from me. I’m no good for you. Just—stay away.”

  “Lux—”

  But I’m gone, pushing through the crowd. I almost trip over someone’s foot. A hand grabs me. “Woah, there. Watch your step.”

  I look up at Reese Havestar. He’s long and lean, with stringy brown hair slicked to the side with too much hair gel, a thin, hawkish nose and red slash of a mouth. He leans against the wall next to a girl I recognize.

  Astrid Ackelsen graduated last year, but she still hangs around town, working at the auto shop her parents own. Her wheat-blond hair is shaved on both sides and long on top, tucked into a braid that falls to the middle of her back. She’s got a stud in her nose and two rings in her upper lip.

  Her pupils are huge in her ice-blue eyes. “Hey, Lux,” she drawls.

  “Hey.”

  Reese’s hand still encircles my wrist. “You’re missing some clothes.”

  “So are you.” He’s thin, dressed in a T-shirt and baggy shorts, even though we’re only three weeks into January, the coldest month of the year.

  I rub my arm over my face, scrape away the moisture. Flip the switch that pastes that glittering smile on my face. The one that says ‘I’m flying’ when really, I’m falling.

  Reese drops my wrist and shoves his hands into his pockets, leans back against the wall. “You like to party? You look like a girl who likes to party.”

  Yes. I want to. Whatever he has, I want it. The alcohol is a sour pit in my stomach. I need more. Everything’s hot and sharp inside me. Dangerous and ugly. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m pretty much up for anything.”

  Astrid raises one eyebrow. “Trust me. He’s noticed.”

  My tongue is thick and gunky, my mouth dry. The way his gaze drifts over my body sends spiders crawling underneath my skin. I tilt my head at the clothes I’m holding. “I’ve got to change.”

  “You need any help?”

  “Not this time.”

  His lip curls. “Next time, then.”

  “Ignore him,” Astrid says, grinning like there’s some sort of joke going on that I’m not a part of.

  “I guess I’ll see you,” I say, backing away.

  “See you,” he echoes back at me, still staring.

  I escape back up the stairs to Jayda’s room. I stumble in the dark, hands out-stretched, feeling for her dresser. I find it and fumble urgently until my fingers close on the little Ballerina lamp I teased her about during one of her sleepovers sophomore year.

  I switch on the lamp, let my eyes adjust, then yank on my clothes. I spread Dominic’s sweatshirt on top of Jayda’s bed. That’ll serve her right.

  I go back to her dresser, searching for what I need. I pick up her plum purple nail polish and put it in the pocket of my jean jacket. I examine the photos tacked to a display board above the dresser, a bunch of selfies and mall photo booth strips of Jayda and Dominic, Jayda and a bunch of her pouty friends.

  There’s a receipt from Delia’s Ice Cream Shoppe next to a photo of her and Dominic. Someone wrote “You + Me = 4 Ever” in blue pen on the bottom, next to the tip line. This will do.

  I unpin the receipt and start to fold. It’s not the best paper, not like the thick, parchment-like Wyndstone Marble Paper Dad buys me, but it’ll work. I’ve memorized the folds. My fingers are trembling, but they still know what to do. I pull the point between the outer layers of paper, creating the inside-reverse fold.

  Origami is like a beautiful puzzle. You have to tease out the shapes with your hands, from corners to edges to petal folds to crease lines. I make a bend, decreasing the radius of the curve. I check the positions of the edges with my fingers, then flatten the bend and adjust the roll of the flap, until the crease intersects the corner of the paper.

  For just a moment, while I focus intently on my task, the world fades. The throbbing inside my head ceases, the thunder of my heartbeat recedes, the loathsome thing slinking through my veins like black sludge slows to a crawl. The receipt gradually transforms from a simple rectangle of paper into the elegant shape of a swan.

  I do this because it calms me. I do it because I want to. I do it because you can turn anything—even trash—into something beautiful. I place it carefully on Jayda’s dresser, right where she left her purple nail polish.

  I sink down next to the kitten’s shoebox, leaning against the wall. I stroke Phoenix’s soft fur. My phone buzzes inside the shoebox, but I just stare at it, willing it to go away. It buzzes again, calling to me, pulling at me.

  Finally, I pick it up. I snort as I scroll through the messages, all from Lena. Six missed calls. Eleven missed texts. Perfect grammar, perfect spelling, perfect punctuation. That’s so Lena—perfect.

  Where are you? Monday, 3:31 p.m.

  We need to talk. Monday, 5:56 p.m.

  Are you okay? Tuesday, 9:24 a.m.

  I’m at the hospital. Where are you? Tuesday, 6:47 p.m.

  Stop ignoring my calls. Wednesday, 2:51 p.m.

  Just tell me you’re okay. Okay? Wednesday, 4:48 pm.

  What’s wrong with you? Pick up. Yesterday, 10:10 a.m.

  Please come home. Yesterday, 11:42 p.m.

  I have to talk to you. Today, 1:12 p.m.

  Are you even listening to your messages? Call me back. Today, 2:45 p.m.

  Why are you doing this? Today, 10:54 p.m.

  Dad is dying. For real. Please come home. Today, 11:11 p.m.

  It’s like an ice pick plunged into my gut. I thought Dad was discharged because he was okay, like last time. And the time before that. But I was wrong. So, so wrong.

  Shame is a smoldering coal in the center of my chest. I slam my head back against the wall, hard enough to make my ears ring. Then slam it again. Pain spikes up and down the back of my neck. No. No, no, no. I bang out my frenzied thoughts.

  The scream is coming, rising up from the depths deep down inside me. Lights spark behind my eyes and I need to move, do something, anything. Everything.

  I leap to my feet, grab the shoebox and hurtle down the stairs, through the dancing throngs, until I’m facing Reese. People are watching, their gazes like fire licking my skin.

  Reese stares back at me, unmoving, waiting for whatever I’m going to do. What am I going to do? What do I want to do? Need to do. Have to.

  There’s nothing like taking that step. Crossing the line. No more boring. No more normal. No more unoriginal world where nothing ever happens. You take that step, leap into the wild, perilous unknown. It’s an ice-cold rush. A thrill like flying, like falling.

  It’s crossing into the bad. It’s shameful and treacherous and dangerous. It’s exhilarating, my heart pumping pure adrenaline all the way down.

  I grab his shirt and pull him to me. I kiss him on the lips, hard. His mouth is dry and tastes like cigarettes and something else, something smoky and sickly sweet. “Whatever you have. I want it.”

  “You got it, Princess. Come with me.”

  “I’m out, bitches!” I yell, twisting around, seeking out Felix, Simone, Eden in the crowd behind me. Seeing no one. No friendly faces, no eyes lighting up in recognition. Screw them.

  “Have fun, you two,” Astrid calls after us, smirking.

  Reese takes me out to his car, a beat-up Thunderbird. I arch my neck, gazing up at the heavens. The clouds are thin and straggly now, like strips of faded rags. I find Orion’s glowing belt, then follow the constellations up the ladder of the inky sky.

  “Canis Major, Canis Minor, Gemini,” I say under
my breath.

  “You coming or what?” Reese says, throwing open the passenger door.

  The trees are looming shadowy shapes turned bleached bone in the beam of the headlights. I climb inside and nestle the box with the sleeping kitten safely between my feet.

  “What’s that?” he asks.

  “Do you really care?”

  He shrugs. He pulls a thumb bag with two white pills out of his jacket pocket.

  “What’re those?” I smoke plenty of dope and I’ve done my share of Molly and E. These pills look like Oxy, but I’m not sure.

  “Do you really care?” He raises his eyebrows. “Relax, it’s not like it’s

  Crank.”

  My stomach tightens in warning. I ignore it.

  I need this. I need my thoughts ripped right out of my skull. I don’t care how it happens, as long as it does. Thoughts of responsible, faultless Lena, back from her shiny, perfect life. Thoughts of my father, weak and dying and my fault. My fault. Thoughts of my mother, red hair swirling in red water. My fault. “Will it make everything go away?”

  He cups the back of my head with one hand and gently presses one of the pills between my lips. “I promise.”

  I crunch down on my back molars and chew the gunky, bitter-tasting pill. Reese hands me a can of Budweiser and I chug it down, almost gagging.

  Then he’s kissing me and I let him because this is who I am. This is what I do. Everything is bad and I’m bad and I just need it all to go away.

  What does it matter? What the hell does any of it matter?

  11

  Lena

  I spend the afternoon organizing the basement, laundry room, and sorting the disaster that is Lux’s bedroom. I straighten the origami animals cluttered on her dresser, pain like a razor slicing through me.

  Why won’t she come home? Why won’t she answer my texts and calls? What’s going on?

  I rub my palms against my sweatpants. I can’t think about that now. Other thoughts dart in my head, almost as dangerous. Eli Kusuma. I shouldn’t let myself think about him, his dimpled smile or his adorable little girl or how intelligent and competent he acted yesterday at the auto shop.

  I’m supposed to go back in later today. The thought starts an anxious fluttering in my stomach. I managed to avoid agreeing to a coffee date, but only by repeatedly reminding myself that Eli Kusuma is a knuckle-headed jock, a cocky, presumptuous jerk.

  Eli’s just a distraction, one I don’t need and can’t afford. Not now. I push thoughts of him out of my head and check in with Dr. Wells, who reminds me again of the looming competition deadline. I assure him I’ll have a portfolio ready, even as worry gnaws at the back of my mind.

  I finally make myself call the university, ignoring the knot of resentment tangling in my gut as I withdraw from classes. School is my life, my haven, my escape from the haunting memories of my past. The thought of not returning for another five months fills my veins with lead.

  I need to do something, distract myself. I need to work. So I clean. The act of taking chaos and putting it in order soothes something inside me. It’s putting something right in the world, however small.

  I dust the coffee table with the ceramic vase with the daisies Mom adored—until she threw it on the ground during one of her screaming matches with Dad. I spent most of a night trying to glue the shards together. It’s mangled and ugly, but Mom kept it.

  My mother is everywhere in this house, in the dent in the wall in the kitchen where she hurled a frying pan, scrambled eggs and all, in the general direction of my father. The permanent divot in the green plaid couch where I used to lay for hours, curled up with a photography book while my mother stretched her own canvases or set up her easel next to the window.

  “Lena,” Dad calls.

  I shove down the memories and head to his room. “I’m here.”

  He’s switched off the TV and propped himself into a sitting position, The Black and White Handbook: The Ultimate Guide to Monochrome Techniques opened in his lap.

  I take the plate and glass from the nightstand. “What do you need?”

  “Do you remember these?” He spreads his thick, swollen fingers over an image of a forest landscape. “We spent so many hours going through them, pointing out the ones we liked, then trying to replicate them ourselves.”

  I remember a few of those times, when we’d sprawl on the living room floor and study my black and white photographs and discuss focal plane and length, tonal ranges, image composition.

  But mostly I poured over the books myself and showed Dad my efforts when he returned from a long haul. He always seemed interested, but he was also distracted and restless, murmuring, “Top notch, Gingersnap,” though I knew he wasn’t really seeing it, not really even seeing me.

  “I remember, Dad.” I force a smile, my fingers tightening around the plate.

  “Those were some good times.”

  “Yes, they were.”

  “We still have all your pictures. I kept them.”

  I swallow a thickness in my throat. “I saw a box of them in the laundry room the other day.”

  Dad smiles, deep lines appearing in his face. “I’d like to see them again. Remember how you used to creep around, snapping pictures of everybody when they weren’t looking?”

  “Yeah. I thought I could capture their ‘true selves’. The part they didn’t let anyone else see.”

  Dad says, “Remember, you don’t take a photograph—”

  “—You make it,” I say, finishing his favorite quote by Ansel Adams.

  Dad’s smile slips from his face, like it’s taking too much effort. “You should bring them up.”

  Dad saved every picture I ever took, the negatives too. I haven’t opened that box in years. The thought sends a shiver of nervous energy up and down my spine. Pictures bring ghosts to life.

  I’ve been trying to bury my ghosts for eight years. I don’t want to go down there. I don’t want to take the lid off of memories so painful, they threaten to unravel me.

  I take a step backward, toward the door. “I will. I’ve got errands to run first. I’m gonna check on the bulldog. Will you be okay?”

  “I’ll be fine. I love you to the moon.”

  “I love you all the way back,” I say, my throat closing around the words we used to say every bedtime when Dad was home, and on the phone when he wasn’t. How many more times will I get to hear him say it?

  “Watch out for all the yahoos on the road.”

  “10-4, Dad.” The air in the room is stuffy. It’s starting to smell like sickness, like dying. I need to get out of here. I need to breathe.

  I bundle up in my coat, scarf, and gloves and drive the loaner car—a burgundy Nissan Altima—the five minutes back into town, to Ross’s Garage.

  The place is a low red brick building with several open single stall garage doors, the bays within servicing a half-dozen cars, some up on hydraulic lifts. I walk in through a side glass door with a little Welcome sign.

  The office area is clean, with a row of brown chairs, a water and coffee station against the far wall, and plastic end tables scattered with Automobile, Popular Mechanics, and Motor Trends magazines. It smells like coffee and those pine air-fresheners.

  I ding the bell on the counter. After a moment, an older Indian lady comes out of the back. She adjusts her glasses and smiles at me. “Eli’s girl, yes?”

  I stiffen. “Um, no, sorry. I’m not his—You must be confusing me with someone else.”

  Her smile widens. A fine net of wrinkles expands across her light brown skin, crinkling around her eyes. She would photograph beautifully. “I apologize, of course. He’s in the shop, working on your Honda Odyssey right now.”

  “Can I see him? He promised me an update.” I realize I should’ve just given him my number. He could have called with the information. Or even texted. He wanted me to come in. He wants to see me. Heat creeps up my neck.

  The woman just nods and gestures for me to come around the counter.
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  The shop is heady with the scent of gasoline, motor oil, and grease, the air bursting with the sounds of electric drills, idling engines, banging and clanking, and shouted conversations between the mechanics. Tools, spare parts, and stacks of tires clutter the workbenches against the walls.

  I step over several oil stains and make my way past two vehicles on lifts to get to the minivan.

  I recognize Eli’s dark locks under his dirty baseball cap as he bends beneath the Honda’s hood. Another mechanic balances on a rolling creeper, his upper half hidden beneath the car.

  Eli’s wearing a loose, faded blue jumpsuit. He moves gracefully, his hands sure and fluid, like he’s conducting heart surgery, not plowing around inside greasy engine parts. My pulse jumps.

  “Hey, Freckles.” Eli straightens when he sees me. He drops his wrench on a rolling tool cart next to him and wipes his hands on a rag sticking out of his pocket. “Meet Astrid Ackelsen.”

  The second mechanic rolls out from underneath the van and stands up. And it’s not a guy like I’d assumed, but a girl. She’s stunning, with light, ice blue eyes and golden hair shaved on the sides. The top chunk is tied back in a French braid that swings down her back. Her cheekbones are sharp in her wide, square face, her skin perfect, nearly poreless.

  I want to photograph her so badly, my fingers twitch.

  “Hey,” she says, stretching out her hand.

  “Nice to meet you, Astrid.”

  “Astrid’s worked here longer than I have. Her father, Fredrik, owns the shop. She also takes weekend shifts at Bill’s Bar and Grill and takes online classes in accounting in her spare time. I’m lazy in comparison.”

  She rolls her eyes. “I doubt that. Nice to officially meet you, Lena. I’ve heard so much about you.”

  “I doubt that,” I say, my cheeks reddening.

  “I just graduated last year. I see Lux around sometimes.”

  I try not to flinch at the sound of my sister’s name. “Have you seen her lately, by chance? I’m actually looking for her.”