Shatter Point

by Jeff Altabef

  “‘There’s something wrong. Something from inside,’ I told him.

  “He frowned. ‘Everything’s fine. She’s just in active labor,’” Sicheii smirked. “The arrogant man thought he knew more about childbirth than me. My fingers dug into his thin arm, past muscle and tendon, until my nails pressed against bone. He had to pry them loose with considerable effort.”

  Sicheii’s eyes burned white hot. Often, he used funny voices to enliven his stories, but his tone was flat, as if he wanted to tell these events exactly as they happened instead of how he wished they had.

  My pulse quickened and butterflies swirled around the ice cream in my stomach.

  “My eyes narrowed when your heartbeats stretched to thirty seconds. I locked eyes with the doctor. She was a friend of mine.

  “She stared back at me, and at that moment, she suspected something was wrong also. Everyone looked at us.

  “‘Prepare the OR,’ she ordered. ‘We’re doing a cesarean.’ One nurse ran from the room. The nurse who had doubted me started to protest when a scream escaped your mom’s lips. It sounded like a hawk’s hunting call, loud and shrill. A chill raced up my spine.

  His voice quickened. “Blood appeared where it should never have been. Doctors and nurses whirled around the room. IVs were injected into your mom’s arm. The heart monitors were disconnected. New worried looking doctors appeared wearing operating gowns. An orderly wheeled your mom into the operating room. Stark white light burned my eyes, and I was left on the outside to pray.” He took a deep breath.

  “How come you didn’t go inside?”

  “That operating room was no place for me. What good could come of my presence? Praying was better. You know there are many spirits to call upon.”

  I nodded. Sometimes he made me recite all the spirits and what type of guidance I should seek from them.

  “I called upon all of them, but focused on my favorite two—your grandmother and great grandfather. Time slowed as if the world spun more slowly than it had ever done before. I drifted between worlds and spent time in the shadow lands with my wife and grandfather. They told me much about you. They said you would be okay and sent me back. When my eyes opened, your mom’s obstetrician stood before me, her face grim. Spider webs crept from her eyes and canyons burrowed into her forehead.

  “She told me that you and your mother were out of danger. I waited for the bad news written in her sad eyes and downturned lips.

  ‘‘‘But?’ I prodded her.

  “She sighed. ‘But your daughter’s uterus ruptured. The damage was extensive. We’ve repaired the organ, but she won’t be able to have any other children.’ She leaned against a chair, exhausted from the delivery and operation.

  “I nodded, and she retreated from the room.”

  I expected the story to end. Mom had told me most of this before, but Sicheii leaned closer to me. Only a few inches separated us. He smelled of incense—amber and cinnamon. His eyes were wide and sweat dotted his brow. My hands turned clammy. I’d never seen him worried before.

  “After the doctor left, I thanked the spirits and slipped from the room. The nursery was on the same floor as the birthing room, but that wasn’t my first stop.

  “The time was early and the floor deserted. Unseen, I glided through the staircase door and found a plain tan backpack waiting for me with a blue hospital gown and an identification card hidden inside. One of my friends had left it for me.”

  “Who?”

  He shook his head. To say he had many friends was the same as describing cotton candy as sweet. One of his friends always seemed nearby.

  “Disguised as a nurse, I strolled to the nursery and avoided the gaze of the few sleepy doctors and nurses who lingered on the floor. One nurse was on duty—another friend. We shared a look, and she left. Three newly born babies slept in bassinets. All three were quiet. You were easy to spot. Even then you looked like your mother. I lifted you in my arms, kissed you on top of your newly born squished head, and unwrapped the white cotton blanket that bound you.”

  He touched my knee, and I held my breath. “I took a leather pouch from my pocket, removed an ancient needle blessed by the Great Wind Spirit, and found the sole of your right foot. I asked the Wind Spirit for strength before blessing your foot with the needle. You screeched, but your scream quickly died away when you stopped breathing. Your face turned blue and my heart raced, worry bubbling up inside of me. Time ticked past. I counted fifty seconds before I breathed life back into you.

  “You began to breathe and cry again. Relief washed over me like a river over smooth stones. I wrapped you back in the blanket, returned you to the small basinet, turned, and left.” He squeezed my knee and lifted his hand back. “We are the only ones who know this story. You need to remember it.” Watery tears filled his eyes.

  “Why would you do something like that? Were you crazy? Who does that?”

  He stood without looking at me. The chair rolled away from the bed and bumped into the desk. He spun and strolled from the room, leaving me alone without answering any of my questions. I followed him downstairs, still peppering him with questions. What was in the needle? Where did you get it? He acted as if he didn’t hear me and walked out the front door without saying goodbye to Mom.

  When he left, I raced to the kitchen and asked Mom about his story. She bristled. Their relationship was best described as a seesaw, one end frosty and bitter, the other warm and loving. They argued often then, the seesaw tilting firmly in the frosty direction. She told me he had made up the story and for me not to worry about it. I wasn’t sure what to believe.

  That night, I took a flashlight and stared down at my right sole. I brushed fuzz from my sock away and found a small star-shaped scar.

  Everything about me is a lie.

  My entire life is a leaning tower of lies that threatens to collapse at any moment and bury me so deep I may never climb out from under the rubble.

  I slam the bathroom door and my hand trembles as the old-fashioned steel bolt slides into place.

  Click.

  The locked door offers no real safety. Locked doors can be broken, but it does give me a moment of privacy and a chance to breathe. So much has happened over the past few days. It’s like I’ve become a totally different person—a stranger, someone unrecognizable.

  The adrenaline that had been pumping through my veins has completely melted away now as I lean against the wooden door. My breath comes fast and ragged. My body feels heavy and weary and my legs weaken. Gravity pulls me down. Too tired to resist, I slide down the length of the door until the white marble floor rushes up to meet me.

  I work hard to steady my breath and focus on taking in fresh air, expelling the old. It’s a simple process, yet it takes all of my concentration. When air starts to flow, my eyes close. Time slows and drifts by erratically.

  Images flash through my mind—an eclectic group of memories: childhood birthdays, second place in a spelling bee, hanging out with Troy, rock climbing with Sicheii. Most are happy, but they’re all tainted now. The lies spoil them. They were never true. They were just part of a story, one that’s changed forever.

  My weary mind reaches for sleep, but I resist. Too much time would be wasted. There’s too much for me to do. Too many loose ends need to be tied, so I open moist eyes and wipe away tears I don’t recall crying.

  When my vision clears, crimson-streaked fingers flutter near my face as if directed by someone else. I thought blood looked like ketchup, but it’s darker and thicker than you would think. My hands spin in tight circles. Each finger is stained with thick, mud-colored smears.

  Whose blood is on them?

  A cold sweat coats my back and my chest tightens. This blood must be scrubbed away immediately. It starts to burn as if it’s alive, as if possessed by dark spirits, spirits that want to harm me. It freaks me out. I have got to wash them clean now, this second, immediately, before....

  I turn the faucet and hot water tumbles over my skin. I franticall
y rub my fingers together and hope friction and water alone will make the blood disappear. The water in the sink turns red and then pink, but traces of blood stubbornly stay behind. A bar of soap rests on the edge of the porcelain sink. Lather squishes between my fingers—twisting and turning, scrubbing and rinsing. My skin turns raw from the rubbing, and when the water has lost all its warmth, I turn the faucet off.

  Hard to find specks of blood cling to my flesh, but I still see them and feel them.

  Will they ever wipe clean? I don’t think so.

  A silent scream builds deep within me, which so desperately wants to be released it practically hurts, but no sound slips past my lips. I’m too tired to scream.

  A square mirror hangs over the sink, but it’s an enemy. I don’t want to see who I’ve become, so my gaze stays fixed down toward the sink. Unfortunately, the blood-smeared faucet is shiny, stainless, and reflects back an image of myself anyway. I glare deep into my eyes, leaning close to the faucet to study them. They look familiar, but as I pierce them more deeply, a hollowness appears that has never been there before. It scares me.

  People change. Sometimes they change over the course of a lifetime, and other times change happens swiftly because of a single momentous event. I’m not the same person I was just a few days ago. Too much has happened, too many lies revealed. Truths, solid and real, have crumbled away before me and left behind falsehoods, shadows, and a future as uncertain as a prisoner on death row waiting for a pardon.

  The pendant Sicheii gave me flops out from underneath my shirt. It was supposed to protect me. I grip it until my knuckles turn white.

  Knock! Knock! Knock!

  “Juliet, we’ve got to talk, Love. We need to come up with a story for the police.”

  Just a few days ago, I was an average girl who looked forward to her sixteenth birthday, hoping for a little freedom and a chance to get a driver’s license.

  Being average is a joke. I will never be average. I was never average....

  A few days earlier...

  Moms invented mornings to torture their daughters. It’s the only thing that makes sense. Nothing worth doing needs to start at seven in the morning. Weekends are awesome mostly because I can sleep late and linger in bed until eleven or later. Most days, I’d like to sleep until afternoon, but Mom never lets me stay in bed past twelve. She thinks I’m wasting my life away. Still, this is a school day and sleeping late is not an option.

  “Wake up, sweetheart.”

  The words drift toward me, alien at first until my sleepy brain puts them in the correct order and makes sense of them. Realization dawns on me. I stuff my head under my pillow and seek safety, hoping to shield myself from this awful affront.

  Mom’s voice turns stormy. “Wake up!” Sweetheart vanishes as she wraps razor-sharp barbed wire around her words.

  I moan, roll over, and peek at the alarm clock. The fuzzy orange numbers read 5:30. She has to be kidding. The sun’s not even up yet.

  Argh!

  I jam my head back under the pillow and wish I had something larger and soundproof to block her out.

  When can I go back to sleep?

  Light floods the room when Mom flips the switch. Suddenly, I remember why she’s waking me up. She needs to catch an early flight for business, so she woke me earlier than usual to make sure I would be ready to take the bus.

  “Don’t make me take extreme measures.” Her voice sounds serious and rich with tension. It’s her no-nonsense voice, the one she uses for work.

  I’ve missed more than my share of school busses over the years, so she’s quick to ratchet up her terrorist-like tactics to extreme measures. Usually she starts by ripping off my sheets and twice has escalated to putting ice cubes down my shirt. She’s serious, so I groan something unintelligible, push my pillow to one side and crack open my eyes, which is practically heroic under the circumstances.

  She’s already dressed and hovers beside the bed in a plain white silk blouse, gray slacks and hands clutched to her hips.

  I promise to get up, but the words get tangled up with sleep and sound practically unrecognizable. Still, it placates her enough that she stalks out of my room after tossing out a final warning about me falling back to sleep.

  For a second, sleep pulls at me. I start to doze off when I remember the last ice incident. Not pleasant, and Mom’s anxiety over her business trip will only make this one worse.

  I open my eyes with an impressive amount of willpower, stagger to my feet, bump into the bedpost, stub my toes hard against the doorframe, see stars, clutch my damaged foot, and hop into the bathroom. Luckily, I didn’t break my foot—nothing but a red bruise—so I turn the water on in the shower.

  Hair still wet, I search for my school uniform under a pile of clean clothes that never made it into the dresser. Despite my best intentions, they never do.

  A light buzzing sound hums in my head as I yank out a fresh Bartens shirt. I do my best to ignore the noise. It just started one day. At first, it sounded like static, but since then it has grown louder and has begun to sound like voices. I think the voices want to tell me things, possibly important messages, but they make no sense.

  It’s annoying. No one else knows about them. Mom would definitely overreact if she found out. My plan is to ignore them. It might not be the best plan, but it’s better than seeing Dr. Schmidt, our family physician, and being attacked by the Old Spice cloud that hovers around him, answering his stupid questions. Hopefully, the voices will either tell me something important or go away on their own, so I shake my head and busy myself with getting dressed.

  When I go downstairs, no one specific thing seems out of place, but the air feels heavy, as if tension is spinning away from Mom in precise circles. She’s headed out of town for two days to a convention in Scottsdale. She works as a lawyer who helps rich people avoid paying taxes. I’m sure there’s much more to her job than that, but the details are a blur. She’s great at what she does, but spends way too much time at work and should, in my opinion, have more fun and find a nice guy. I tried to set her up with a teacher from my old school two years ago, but that went nowhere.

  She rests one hand on the black granite island in the kitchen with a mug of hot coffee perched in front of her. Her day never starts without two cups, always black. A crossword puzzle rests next to her mug. She never has problems with them, but this time she’s only finished two thirds of it, and her letters look as if she carved them into the paper with a chisel.

  Her pretty oval face is tense with lines around the edges of her eyes and lips. She twirls her long black hair in tight circles, a sure sign she’s worried about something. My internal alarm goes to yellow alert. This is the first time she’s leaving me alone. I’m almost sixteen. What could happen in a few days?

  “What do you want for breakfast?” Her eyes flicker to the time on the kitchen wall clock.

  “I’ll have some peanut butter and apples.” I start to head for the refrigerator.

  “Sit. I’ll get it for you.” She swings the refrigerator door open and grabs an apple and a jar of peanut butter.

  She hasn’t made me breakfast in years. Yellow alert turns orange. I eye her suspiciously when she places the plate in front of me.

  More hair twirling and another glance at the clock. Orange turns a light shade of red! “Mom, relax. Everything is going to be fine while you’re away. Two days is not a long time. The house won’t be destroyed.”

  She smiles thinly. “About that, sweetheart.” She pauses.

  It might be early, but self-preservation kicks in. The return of sweetheart sounds ominous, and that pause means trouble. Something is wrong.

  I narrow my eyes. “What did you do? You didn’t hire a college kid like last time.” I cross my arms over my chest. “That was a disaster. She had friends over until two in the morning. They smoked and ate all the food.”

  “No, Juliet.” She averts her eyes and stares down at her coffee mug as if she’s found a miniature boat floating in her
morning drink, and it’s the most interesting thing in the world.

  My heart thumps, and my alert turns deep red.

  “Your grandfather is coming over to spend a few days while I’m gone. He’ll be here by the time you return from school.”

  My stomach lurches. The buzzing in my head turns into a loud screech that makes me wince. “Not Sicheii! The college student would be better.” I rise from my seat. I’m tall for my age, but she’s still an inch taller. She glares down at me, ready for the fight, her eyes hot and her face flushed with color.

  “I can’t believe you’re doing this to me!”

  “Juliet Wildfire Stone, there’s nothing wrong with your grandfather! You can spend a few days alone with him, and it won’t be the end of the world. He loves you and that’s final.”

  I cringe when she uses my full name. A story about an out of control wildfire played on all the news stations the day after my birth, so “Wildfire” became my middle name. I shudder to think what would have happened if there was a garbage strike. Only a few people even know about it.

  “Sicheii’s weird. He’s so....”

  “Native American.” She clutches her hands against her hips. “I don’t understand how this happened. You were such good friends when you were younger. He taught you how to rock climb and swim. You used to spend so much time together.”

  “That was years ago. Before we moved here and you made me switch to Bartens.”

  “What does Bartens have to do with your grandfather?” She scrunches up her nose and squints her eyes, the same look she gets when she tries to help me with my algebra homework. Usually I feel sorry for her when she looks like that, but not now.

  “Really, Mom?” I say through clenched teeth. Can she be this clueless? My trouble with Sicheii has everything to do with my new exclusive private school. I don’t care if his beliefs are old fashioned. Old doesn’t make them wrong. But they pull me in the opposite directions of Bartens. He doesn’t care about Ivy League colleges, or fancy vacations, or high paying jobs. Not like they do at my new school. Sometimes I feel like a rubber band, pulled in two different directions. At some point, the band snaps.