Before You Break

by Kyla Stone

  40

  Lena

  I hunch in my seat and peer at the mailbox numbers slipping by in the light emanating from our headlights. We’re about fifteen miles outside of town on a rutted dirt road that makes the car groan and sputter.

  The houses are spaced far apart, tucked in between dense trees and scabby cornfields. We pass a house with cars crammed in the driveway and lined along the street. It’s a pretty yellow colonial, well taken care of.

  “You think that’s it?”

  “Yeah. That truck’s blocking my view of the address, but I’m pretty damn sure.” Eli circles the block and parks on the side of the road just behind the last of the cars.

  I take deep breaths, trying to keep myself from trembling. What if we don’t even get through the front door? What if she’s already … but I can’t let myself think these things.

  Only an hour ago, I planned to jump on that plane and jet out of here like a coward, but that was with Lux still here, still doing whatever the heck she does. Still okay, still alive. The thought of my sister dying or dead wraps my heart in iron chains.

  I have to do something.

  I have to find her.

  I unbuckle my seatbelt and glance down at myself. What would Lux do? I pull off my jacket and my long-sleeved top. My last layer is a white tank top edged with lace. I tug it down until I’m showing some cleavage, my chest veiled with freckles.

  Eli clears his throat. “What are you doing?”

  “You want to get past the front door, don’t you?”

  “I’m officially impressed. What about me? Do I pass?”

  I take in his worn leather jacket, the tousled black hair falling to his neck. “Barely. It’ll have to do.”

  We walk up the large white porch. A seam of yellow light splits the dark front window where the curtains meet. I ring the bell. A few moments later, the door opens.

  “How can I help you?” a man says pleasantly.

  Eli steps forward, puffing out his chest, starting in on his strong, “I’ve got this” act. Only he doesn’t have this. He’ll ruin it. Instinctively, I know that’s not the right play.

  Eli says, “We’re looking—”

  I grab his arm, tug him back. “We’re here for the party.”

  The man is dressed in pressed khakis and a white button-down shirt. He leans against the door jamb, his arms folded across his chest. He looks like a high school math teacher: thinning acorn-brown hair ringing his bald head, heavy jowls, a poochy gut. “What party would that be?”

  I shrug, trying to look nonchalant. “We’re friends of Reese. He invited us.”

  His lips curl in what looks like a smile, but nothing reaches his eyes. “Reese did, did he? What’re your names?”

  “I’m Lauren, this is Matt.”

  The man’s gaze falls on me, traveling slowly up and down my body. “Lauren, huh?”

  “Yes,” I force out, praying my voice sounds natural. He must be Floyd. Beyond him, I can just barely see the living room. A pair of feet stick out from the end of a leather couch, several prone bodies scatter in front of a huge TV.

  “Shut the door!” someone yells.

  “It’s freezing out here,” I say, shivering for effect.

  The man steps back. “Well, if you’re friends of Reese. Take off your shoes please, this is high-grade carpet. The house is yours. But no loud music. We wouldn’t want to attract any undue attention, now would we?” He actually winks.

  “Nope,” I say brightly, leaning down to slip off my boots. I feel him staring. The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. “Thanks.”

  “No problem.” The man turns away from us and settles into the love seat in front of the TV. A skinny girl wearing a deep scoop neck top and a leather miniskirt scoots into his lap. Even with her clumpy mascara and purple lipstick, she doesn’t look older than sixteen.

  Eli takes my arm. “Let’s go.”

  The air is heavy with cigarette smoke, the sickly-sweet stench of weed, and another thicker, burned plastic smell. The music is low and thumping.

  No one’s dancing, no one’s really moving around at all. They sit and slouch and slump on chairs, couches, and beanbags.

  We pick our way over several people collapsed in the hallway. I open a door to a bedroom with a bunch of people slouched around a coffee table littered with empty baggies, a couple of joints, and a bong. No Lux.

  A trio of stoned faces turns toward us. “What’s goin’ on?” someone mumbles.

  “Where’s Lux?”

  One of them blinks stupidly at us. “I dunno.”

  “She’s here, isn’t she?” I can’t bear the thought of having to go through this all over again at some other doper’s house.

  “Yeah, yeah. She was in the kitchen jus’ awhile ago.” The guy shrugs, takes a wet swig from a dark glass bottle.

  I turn and leave the room.

  “Bye, bye now,” someone says behind us.

  We find the kitchen, all fancy marble and shiny steel. A half-dozen people sit around the table playing strip poker. Two girls lean against the counter by the sink, guzzling beer and giggling uncontrollably.

  “Have any of you seen Lux?” I ask.

  “Who?” A straggly-haired guy with a joint in one hand and a splay of cards in the other looks up at me.

  “Lux McKenna. She’s short, with a nose ring and long red hair.”

  “Reese’s girlfriend,” Eli says.

  The guy nods. “Reese’s girl. I know her.”

  “Is she here?” I repeat, trying to keep from screaming, from grabbing them all by their throats and shaking them as hard as I can.

  “I saw her earlier,” one of the girls at the sink says. “She was blitzed out of her mind.”

  “Great. Thank you so much.”

  “I think there’s a room we missed,” Eli says in a low voice. He’s standing so close, I can smell the scent of cinnamon gum on his breath. I fight down the urge to grab his hand, to hold on and not let go.

  We walk back through the hallway, checking each door. I reach for the handle of the last door on the right. It catches, like it’s locked. I jiggle it hard. It unlatches and swings open.

  The room is dim, draped in shadows. I take in four walls covered in display cabinets, with some kind of animal bones or—are those skulls?

  My gaze jerks to the form lying prone in the middle of the white expanse of carpet, her ruby red hair spread like a halo around her head.

  We found her. My breath catches in my throat. I lean down and pull on her arm. “Lux, get up.”

  She’s lying on her side, her legs curled, one arm tucked beneath her torso, her hair almost completely covering her face. I pull back her hair to reveal a circle of yellow puke. There are chunks of vomit around her mouth. She’s not moving.

  Adrenaline floods through me. “Help me turn her,” I say in a voice I don’t recognize as my own. Eli squats down on the other side of Lux and helps me flip her onto her back.

  Lux’s eyes are glassy and gaze unseeing at the ceiling. Her pupils are pinpricks. I slap her across the face. “Lux!”

  She doesn’t respond. Her skin is gray, her lips and fingertips tinged blue. Vomit crusts the corners of her mouth. Her breathing is so shallow, I can barely see the rise and fall of her chest.

  Terror grips me. “Lux, wake up!”

  My yelling draws a crowd.

  “Hold up,” one of the poker players says. He’s stripped to the waist, his chest so skinny it’s almost concave. “She’s just sleeping it off.”

  “What was she on?”

  No one answers. I twist around to look up at them. “What did she take!”

  They just shrug, stare at us like they’re waiting for a show.

  “What the hell is wrong with you people?” “Lena,” Eli says.

  “Call 911!” My voice cracks, half shouting, half crying.

  Someone says, “I don’t know—” “Call!” I scream.

  Eli has his phone out, already dialing the numbers.<
br />
  The rest of the room scatters. I hear shouting and the jumble of footsteps as the news spreads, not that someone’s dying, but the cops are on their way. Car doors slam and engines rumble to life as everyone escapes the house.

  I gather Lux into my arms and rock her. Her skin is too damn cold. “What should we do? Do we make her puke it up?”

  Eli presses the phone to his ear. He shakes his head. “No. The operator says to keep her on her side, in case she vomits again. Keep her mouth and airway open. Make sure she’s still breathing. The ambulance is coming.”

  I cradle Lux’s head in my arms. Her body is soft, floppy as a doll’s. I smooth her bangs back from her face. It’s been years since I’ve been this close to her. Even with her heavy makeup, she looks young, so very young.

  I count the faint spray of freckles across her nose, each strand of her glorious red hair. My heart constricts. How could I have been so ready to abandon her? “You’ll be okay. Just hold on. Please, please. Don’t do this to me. Just hold on.”

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Floyd looms in the doorway. His arms hang loose at his sides, his face bland and nearly expressionless. Only his eyes seem different. Hooded. Blank.

  “What do you think?” I snap. “We called 911. The paramedics are on their way.”

  “Get out of my house.” His voice is low and dangerous.

  Eli pulls himself to his full height, squaring his shoulders. “No.”

  “Did you not hear me? Get the hell out of my house.”

  Eli steps in front of me and Lux, blocking Floyd from entering the room. “We’re not leaving her.”

  Floyd takes a step closer to Eli, until they’re only inches apart. “You’re trespassing on my property. I have a gun and I have no qualms about using it.”

  Fear shoots through me. “Eli—”

  Eli doesn’t flinch. “We aren’t leaving.”

  Floyd seems to notice me kneeling next to Lux for the first time. His expression flattens, his eyes going hard and shiny. “You little bitch.”

  Eli puts his hands against Floyd’s chest and pushes him back. “You need to leave. Now.”

  We all hear the sirens in the distance. Floyd lets out a string of curses. Without another word, he turns and leaves, probably to dump or bury his stash or whatever it is drug dealers do when they’re about to get caught.

  Someone brushes past him, a skinny guy with a thin, hawkish face.

  “You called the cops.”

  “We called an ambulance,” Eli says. “You must be Reese.”

  “What happened to her?” He sways on his feet. His pupils are huge.

  “She overdosed,” Eli says, more calmly than I ever could’ve.

  Reese’s face tightens. “Will she be okay?”

  “No, you idiot!” I yell as the sirens grow louder. “Does she look okay to you?”

  Lux groans, her eyelids fluttering. I pinch her cheek. “Lux! Can you hear me?”

  The sirens wail louder. I look up at Eli. “Can you go stand by the street, so they know where to go?”

  Eli takes off. Reese still stands there, staring down at us with a shocked, desperate look on his face. “I didn’t think—She was upset. I was trying to help her feel better, that’s all. Will she be okay?”

  “What do you think?” I stroke Lux’s hair. Her eyes roll toward the back of her head as she sinks back into unconsciousness.

  After Mom’s suicide, I thought I’d prepared myself for anything. For years, I thought Dad’s death would be the other most awful thing, the unavoidable tragedy, the inevitable drop of the other shoe. I didn’t think it could get worse.

  I’m unprepared, totally defenseless. I can barely form thoughts over the terror pulsing through my brain. My chest is going to explode.

  The paramedics arrive. They brush me aside in a flurry of activity and noise. Eli shoves his way back into the room.

  He grips my hand and we watch the paramedics bend over Lux’s body, checking her airway, her vital signs. They inject her with something in a syringe, then snap an oxygen mask with a bag attached over her mouth and lift her onto a stretcher.

  Their movements are efficient, their words clipped. A woman with glasses and brunette hair scraped into a ponytail gives Lux oxygen while the second paramedic wheels the stretcher out of the room.

  I follow them on trembling legs. “Please. Can I come, too?”

  “What’s your relation?” the woman asks as we step outside.

  My breath puffs out in foggy jets. Lacy clouds scrim the wide white moon. Above me, the stars are strands of diamonds scattered across the velvet sky. So many stars. Millions and millions of them.

  The thoughts skittering around in my head coalesce into a single gleaming realization. It’s not that the truth isn’t important. It is. But it isn’t truth that sets you free.

  It’s what you do after the truth burns your world to the ground.

  What do you do with those smoldering coals in your hands, the ones melting the skin of your palms? Do you hold on? Or do you let go?

  I wanted the truth and I got it. My father betrayed us with his affair, with his weakness, even with his death. My mother betrayed us when she refused to get help for her illness, when she chose to abandon us.

  These are my truths, my own set of burning coals.

  The girl lying unconscious on that stretcher holds her own secrets, maybe ones even worse than I know. But it’s not her truth that will set me free.

  It’s mine.

  “Please,” I say. “She’s my sister.”

  41

  Lena

  We’ve been waiting for hours. A nurse led us from the ER waiting room to a waiting area on the second floor. There are several couches and two coffee tables stacked with back issues of Better Homes and Gardens and Golf Digest.

  Eli sits beside me. He’s trying to interest me in various dessert and appetizer recipes, since we got bored with our phones an hour ago. The clock on the wall above a fake potted plant reads 1:36 a.m.

  “This blueberry crumble cake looks gangbusters,” Eli says, thrusting the magazine at me. “What do you think?”

  I barely glance at it. My brain keeps spinning like I’m trapped in a deep-sea whirlpool. “I hate blueberries.”

  “What? No blueberry muffins? Blueberry pancakes? Who hates blueberries?”

  “I do. I can’t even eat blueberry Pop Tarts. What’s taking them so long?”

  “It’s a hospital. Slow is what they do. Lux is okay, I know it. They just haven’t gotten around to telling us yet.”

  “I hope so.”

  “I know so. What about coconut? Here’s this three-layer coconut concoction that looks like a frothy wedding dress.”

  “I hate coconut.”

  “Do you like anything?”

  “Spinach.”

  “I know that’s not true. Come on. Three favorite foods. Go.”

  “Okay fine. My mom’s baked mac and cheese. Strawberry shortcake with fresh strawberries. And my dad’s homemade hot chocolate.”

  “I’m totally sold on that hot chocolate. It was like fuzzy pajamas and a warm fire and Christmas morning all rolled into one.”

  I manage a half-smile. My gaze strays back to the clock. Only five minutes have passed. My skin feels stretched out. My eyes are gritty. “Is Hadley all right without you at night?”

  Eli waves his hand. “She’s fine. When I called my mom around eleven, she was screaming up a storm in the background. She’s two. It’s what she does.”

  “You don’t have to stay, you know.”

  “I’m staying.”

  “You’ve already done so much.”

  “No worries. You can buy me brunch. Or make me one of these pie things.”

  “Deal,” I say. “But seriously, you aren’t obligated or anything.”

  Eli closes the magazine and looks at me. “Come on, college girl. Haven’t you figured out by now I want to be here with you?”

  My heart sputters in my chest. I look
down at my hands, study my cuticles like they’re the most fascinating thing in the world. “Well, you know. Thanks.”

  “Well, you know. You’re welcome.”

  “Lena McKenna?” The nurse calls from her seat behind the counter of the nurses’ station. She hangs up the phone she’ s been holding to her ear.

  I stand up. “That’s me.”

  “I’ll shoot up a prayer to the Guy Upstairs for you,” Eli says.

  “I doubt it’ll do much good.”

  “You might be surprised.”

  “Maybe so. I’ll take anything right now.” I take a deep breath, steel myself, and make my way to the counter. “I’m Lena McKenna.”

  The nurse smiles in my direction but doesn’t make eye contact. She has a weary, withered face, like she’s lost the will to care anymore. “Please wait in the glassed-in room behind me. The doctor will be in to see you shortly.”

  “Why do we need to be in a separate room? Is it bad news?”

  The nurse shakes her head, still not looking at me. “Not necessarily. It’s for privacy purposes.”

  I walk into the small room and sit down in an upholstered chair. I look out at Eli through the glass. He raises one hand. I can’t bring myself to do the same.

  The wait is only ten minutes this time. I stand up as a short Indian woman in a white lab coat enters the room. Her large eyes are a rich, deep brown in her round face. She looks far too young to be a doctor, to be in charge of keeping my sister alive.

  She grips my hand in a firm handshake, introducing herself as Dr. Sandeep. “Your sister has stabilized.”

  I lock my knees to keep from sagging in relief. “Thank God. She’ll be all right?”

  “She came close to slipping into a coma a few times. Your sister experienced respiratory depression, bradycardia, and hypotension. If you hadn’t found her when you did … But yes, her odds for recovery are excellent. She was administered naxalone at the scene. We pumped her stomach and stabilized her fluids. We’ll monitor her for a few days for withdrawal, then she can go home.”

  “What happened?”

  Dr. Sandeep clasps her hands in front of her stomach. “Alcohol is a central nervous system depressant. Mixing it with another depressant such as opioids greatly increases the risk of an overdose. Mixing multiple substances is like playing Russian Roulette. When taken in excessive amounts or in combination, they depress normal function such as breathing and heart rate, sometimes to the point of death.”