Before You Break

by Kyla Stone

  I nod slowly. “I guess you’re right.”

  “Forgive me for speaking ill of the dead. I don’t mean to sound harsh. But you can’t just hold on to one version of your future, just one thing you think will make you happy. Because if you lose that, then what? If you keep holding on to what’s already gone, if you can’t let go—you become trapped. Bitter.”

  I stare at the brown sand beneath my toes. “It’s like the monkey and the marble.”

  “What?”

  “I learned about it in Intro to Psych. In the jungle, trappers put out glass jars with a single marble inside. The monkey comes by and wants the marble. He shoves his little hand in the jar and grabs it. But with his fingers clasped around the marble, he can’t pull his fist out. That’s how he’s trapped. He wants that marble so badly, he won’t let go. All he has to do is open his hand, leave that shiny round promise behind, and he’s free.”

  “If there’s anything I’ve learned in the last three years, it’s this. There’s more than one kind of happiness. And more than one way to get there. But you have to let go of that shiny marble of your future you wanted to have. You have to let it go.”

  “Have you?”

  He shields his face with his hand as he watches Hadley frolic by the edge of the water. “It’s a long, hard process. But yeah, I’m getting there.”

  “Neither of my parents could do that.”

  “A lot of people don’t.” He touches my arm again, sending an electric shock through my entire body.

  I pick up a handful of sand and rub the granules between my fingers. Seagulls wheel overhead, swooping and diving over the water.

  I think about my parents, my past, how our world always felt so precarious, like it could so easily slip away or come tumbling down on us. On my own small, brittle shoulders. How it always felt like it was up to me to keep it all up, keep the balls in the air, the plates spinning, the darkness at bay.

  “They’re both dead, but it still feels like I have these weights on me, dragging me down, anchoring me to all this darkness.”

  “You think your sister feels the same way?”

  I open my mouth, but I don’t know what to say. She’ll be discharged from the hospital in two days. The doctors recommended in-patient treatment. They spouted all these psychological terms I heard but didn’t understand, every word another rock in the pit of my stomach. “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe you should ask her.”

  “Getting close to her is like trying to hug a porcupine.”

  “Is it possible she thinks the same about you?”

  Anger jolts through me. “Just whose side are you on, anyway?”

  “Take it down a notch, would you? I’m simply asking questions.”

  I take a steadying breath. “She’s just so—I can’t understand her. She can be so thoughtless, irresponsible, so downright cruel. I don’t get it.”

  “People in pain can be hard to understand.”

  “She’s hurting, I know that. She tried to—” My words catch in my throat. I remember how she looked, her body crumpled in a heap on that pure white carpet.

  I thought she was dead. I thought I was too late. “I have another chance now. A chance I lost with my parents. I want to make things right. I have to.”

  “Good.”

  “It’s just—I don’t know how.”

  Eli raises his eyebrows and pops another Dorito into his mouth. The rims of his lips are orange. “Can you talk to her?”

  “When I try, she screams at me or runs away.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but how do you talk to her? You’ve got some sharp edges yourself, you know. Not that I don’t like that, I do. But if I were her, I’d feel all that anger coming off you in waves. It can’t be easy for her.”

  “There you go, taking sides again.”

  “I can still be on your side and empathize with her.”

  A shiver runs through me. “Are you? On my side?”

  He shifts his body. “You haven’t figured that out yet, college girl?”

  The blush travels up from my chest and neck and blooms a hot, furious red across my face. Instinctively, I turn my head away.

  His hand touches my chin. Gently, he turns my face toward him. “I’m on your side. Okay? And why do you keep turning away and hiding your face?”

  I shrug, blushing even harder. “It’s not much to look at. You know, all these freckles. My big nose.”

  “What are you even talking about? I love every single one of your freckles. You’re beautiful. Whoever said you weren’t?”

  I can barely force the words out. “Oh, I don’t know. Every guy in high school.”

  A slow smile spreads across his face. “Boys don’t appreciate the sophisticated or unique. And I know of which I speak, having recently been one.” This close, his amber eyes glisten in the sunlight like pools of gold. He smells so very male, like sweat and soap and grease.

  I must be one shade of boiled lobster red, from the tips of my hair to the freckles at the base of my throat. My heart jackhammers against my ribcage. My belly explodes in fluttering wings. “Eli—”

  Hadley runs up to us, kicking a spray of sand across the blanket. She’s got a round stone clutched in her fist. “Yook, Daddy!”

  “Awesome, Chipmunk.”

  She presses the stone into Eli’s hand. “Urse!”

  Hadley watches with a critical gaze as Eli opens the red polka dot purse and slips it inside. Satisfied, she scampers off to find more treasure. Two wet, sandy circles splotch the bottom of her pink sparkly sweatpants.

  “More ‘gifts’. My dresser is covered with rocks, pinecones, dried leaves, and sticks,” Eli says ruefully. He turns back to me, that wry grin still on his lips. “Now, where were we?”

  Before I can protest or think of all the ways this is a terrible idea, he leans in and kisses me. He tastes like Doritos, but his lips are soft and his fingers graze my cheek and his hands are warm and strong.

  I feel like I’ve been thrust beneath the surf, wave upon dizzy wave unfurling over me. My whole self is melting beneath his touch, beneath his kiss.

  The sand is gritty between my toes and the breeze whips my hair and the water is a soothing murmur. Every sense is sparkling and alive.

  I don’t think I breathe until he pulls away.

  “Now do you believe I’m on your side?”

  I take a ragged breath. My mouth is unable to formulate words.

  “Maybe you need more convincing?” I manage to nod.

  “Happy to help.” His lips are on mine, his eyes glowing flames. My stomach somersaults. Every nerve in my body sparks. Part of me can’t believe this is actually happening. I’m the frizzy-haired dork, the artsy girl no one notices. Now here he is, Eli Kusuma, noticing me. He’s kissing me.

  I don’t know what this is or what it means. All I know is my head is swimming, my blood buzzing. I just want to stay here, kissing him, feeling his presence, his fingers on my face sending electric charges through my whole body.

  Suddenly I’m hungry for his touch, his kiss, his everything. The numb parts of me are tingling, coming back to life, awakening a desire I didn’t even know I had. I scoot closer, tucking myself against him. I kiss him back, hard.

  We stay like that for what seems like hours, electricity surging in my blood, my bones singing. I’m warm and safe and happy. For now, at least here in this moment, with him.

  “Daddy?” Hadley’s voice breaks in. I pull away. Hadley stands inches away from my face, peering at me with confused, curious eyes. She puts her chubby, sandy hand on my mouth, like she’s trying to figure out what we’re doing.

  Laughter bubbles up inside me, and pretty soon we’re all giggling. Hadley’s face breaks into a radiant grin and she hurls herself into my arms. I hug her back, feeling the solidness of her, the softness.

  And the coldness of her skin. “Eli, she’s freezing.”

  Eli puts his hand on her cheek. “You’re right. I didn’t realize how cold it
was, seeing how we were sharing body heat. Time to go, Chipmunk.”

  Hadley’s whole body stiffens. “Noooooooo!” she shrieks. She jerks out of my arms and throws herself to the sand, rolling around and flailing her fists in despair.

  Eli and I stand up. “It’s time for supper, and bath, and stories. Remember those? You love stories.”

  But Hadley just screams, her shrieks picked up by the wind. A few couples further down the beach look our way. Eli’s brow furrows. “In the Everything A to Z Guide to Toddlers, it says not to take her anger personally. We shouldn’t reward her tantrum by holding her. She has to stop crying completely before I pick her up.”

  “What? I can’t hear you over the wailing.”

  Eli smiles tightly. “I knew you’d get it.”

  He collects all the sand toys while I stuff the snacks into the bag, roll up the blanket, and tuck it under my arm. I think about what Eli said, about not taking it personally. Hadley’s little body can’t handle her oversized, out-of-control emotions. It’s her fear and hurt and sadness coming out as a tantrum, as anger. I understand that.

  Most of us grow out of tantrums. But maybe some of us don’t. Maybe they just change, become darker, angrier, with steeper consequences. Maybe beneath all of Lux’s anger and resentment is fear, and loss. Two things I know plenty about.

  Hadley keeps shrieking and screaming. Her face is so red it’s almost purple. Tears streak her face. She beats at the air with her fists.

  Eli watches her, pain and indecision on his face.

  I touch his arm. “She needs you. Just pick her up. To hell with the experts.”

  He gives me a sideways glance. “Seriously?”

  “For the sake of our eardrums, please. Pick her up.”

  Eli scoops Hadley up and wraps her in his strong arms. She flails against his chest, screaming her fury at him. He pats her back and murmurs soothingly. After a minute, her little body collapses. She wraps her arms around his neck and presses herself against him, sniffling and hiccupping.

  “You don’t need the books, Eli. At least, you don’t need to follow every single thing you read. You’re good at this.”

  “Really? ’Cause it doesn’t seem like it,” he says grimly. “Most of the time, I feel like a spectacular failure.”

  “You’re not.”

  He shakes his head. “I’m not used to feeling like this, like I’m out of my element and I have no clue what I’m supposed to do. Anything else, I can study it and figure it out. Like a car’s engine or a playbook. I studied the plays, re-watched the game tapes, put in the hours at two-a-days and in the weight room. I knew what to do to improve, get better.

  “But here? This? It’s like I’m blindfolded, stumbling around in the dark, cracking my shin open on the freakin’ coffee table.”

  “No, you aren’t.”

  His expression is strained. Suddenly I see how tired he is, the creases below his beautiful eyes. “It shouldn’t be this hard, this exhausting. I must be doing something wrong.”

  “You aren’t doing anything wrong. Parenting is hard. It just is. Anyone who says it isn’t is either lying or they have a live-in nanny.”

  Eli snorts. “You think?”

  “I do. Seriously, you’re amazing. Do you not see the way Hadley looks at you?”

  He rubs her back. “I love her more than anything. More than my own life.”

  “It shows.”

  Hadley hiccups, burying her snot-covered face in his neck. “That’s my girl,” he murmurs. The love between them radiates with a light so bright, it almost hurts to look at.

  “See? Show me one book that can do that.”

  He turns to me. “Thank you, Lena. Truly. How do you know so much?”

  “Even when my mother was physically present, she wasn’t. I took care of things. I took care of Lux.” But even as I say the words, I know they aren’t completely true.

  I see Lux, her knobby knees squished against me beneath the table, her tiny hands squeezing mine, inventing one of her stories. I remember my heartbeat slowing, the choking fear receding as I focused on her intent little face, her eyes blazing as she spun a fantasy world around us, wrapping us up in visions of fairies and castles and Greek gods and mythological creatures.

  It wasn’t just me taking care of her. Sometimes, it was the other way around. We took turns, back then.

  Maybe we can again.

  “Ready to go?” Eli asks, hefting the bag of sand toys. Behind him, the sun is a yellow ball sinking over the horizon, barely skimming the surface of the water.

  “Ready,” I say.

  And I am.

  44

  Lux

  I feel like a piñata someone’s attacked with a baseball bat. I didn’t think short-term use would cause such nasty withdrawal, but I was wrong.

  I’ve survived four nights of tremors, insomnia, muscle cramps, and nausea. Lena is an amazing caretaker, as always. She barely leaves my side. She sits by my bed, bathing my sweating skin with cool washcloths. She brings me copies of US Weekly and downloads new games on my phone.

  But there’s nothing she can do about the fierce need burning through my veins like acid. The symptoms peaked yesterday, but it still feels like I’ve been dragged through a blender. I’m pale, dizzy, and shaky. My bones ache.

  Every day, the tangled memories in my mind clear more and more. I remember way more than I want to.

  The doctors poked and prodded and tested me. They gave me a psych eval. I don’t know if I passed. Do you want to hurt yourself? Yes. Do you have feelings of low self-worth? Yes. Do you ever feel like tearing your own skin off? Yes, yes, yes. Lena sat beside me when the doctor made her recommendations, throwing around terms like self-harm, addiction, personality disorders.

  The words float around in my brain like a toxic soup.

  The doctor recommended a three-month in-treatment program at Sunny Meadows Mental Health and Addiction Treatment Center. It sounds like some terrible psych ward horror movie, where the nurses tie patients to the bed and torture them. No one believes them because they’re crazy anyway, right? But I’m not crazy. I’m not foaming at the mouth or throwing myself into walls or obeying the voices in my head telling me to saw my arm off.

  I just sit and listen to them talk, let the words wash over me. Lena asks all the questions. She promises to take care of me, to get me treatment. I’ll be discharged tomorrow.

  “You need help,” Lena says after the doctor leaves.

  “I’m fine.” But that’s such a whopper of a lie even I can’t swallow it. “I’m not crazy.”

  “No one said you were.”

  I cross my arms over my chest and stare at the TV bolted to the wall, Jeopardy on mute. “I’m not going anywhere with padded rooms and restraints and pills that make you drool.”

  “You tried to kill yourself—”

  “It was an accident.”

  “We both know it wasn’t.” There’s tension in her voice. And pain. “Please, Lux. Let’s not do this. I’m sorry I was so pissy before. But this is important. When I read those texts you sent that night—I knew. We barely made it in time. You nearly died. If nothing changes, it will happen again.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Yes, I do.” Lena smooths her hair behind her ears. Her face is pale beneath the freckles sprinkled across her face like nutmeg. “This twelve-week program sounds good. The hospital is in Tampa, only a few miles from my university. This can seriously work.”

  “I can’t move away. What about school?”

  “You dropped out, remember? After the hospital, you can get your GED or take distance classes or even find a school there to finish up your senior year. We’ll figure it out after you’re better.”

  “We can’t afford it,” I say, throwing up every roadblock I can think of.

  “Dad had a life insurance policy. We’ll use the money to pay for your treatment.”

  “It’s gonna be thousands of dollars. That money should pay for your college or
a house or something.”

  Lena’s face tightens. “You getting better is the priority. That’s what matters. Don’t you understand?”

  “I can’t.” I don’t know how to explain the terror that explodes inside my chest at the thought of signing myself into a mental hospital. I’m not crazy.

  I’m not Mom. I’m not her. I’m not.

  I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine.

  The memory of that night seeps into my brain like poison. Taking the pills. Snorting the powder. Learning what Floyd had tried to do. The white-hot flame of shame incinerating my bones, muscles, tendons, skin.

  The whole thing is a black blot in my brain I’m desperate to forget. But I can’t. I can’t forget any of it.

  So much of my past is shifting shadows. But these things, the things I despise most about myself—these memories are always clear and sharp as shards of glass.

  “What if Mom got help? Real help? Everything could’ve been different. If she—”

  Her words cut off as the door opens. Simone and Eden clatter in, huge bouquets of orange roses and yellow lilies and bobbing Get Well Soon balloons in their arms.

  “We’re here!” Eden calls. I can barely see her head past the balloons as she and Simone drop their gifts at the foot of the bed.

  “How you feeling?” Simone asks, adjusting her square-framed glasses. She’s wearing green cargo pants with a black tank top, her mane of corkscrew curls as wild as ever. Eden’s got her usual hoodie on, her hair tucked back in a French braid. They look so out of place in this cold, ugly hospital room.

  “Look! We brought you a money origami book!” Eden thrusts a book entitled Extreme Origami into my hands. The picture on the cover is of a scorpion formed out of a single dollar bill. “I know you’re all advanced and stuff, but using dollars seemed like a fun new thing to try, right? Here’s five bucks to get you started.”

  “Don’t spend it all in one place,” Simone drops two Twix bars in my lap. “One of those has my name on it.”

  “I think you’re in good hands.” Lena stands up and straightening her clothes. “I’m gonna go home and take a shower. I’ll come back tonight.”