“Marn,” I say.
She turns around with a two-dimpled smile, but it fades when she sees that it’s me that called her.
“Hey,” I say.
“What is it, Sam?” she asks, examining her pinkie nail.
“Can we talk later? Just talk. I just…uh…I just need your help with something,” I say.
Marnie pinches her lips together and glances at her watch.
“Can you just meet me in the library at lunch today? Please? I promise it won’t take long,” I say.
She takes a deep breath in through her nose. “Yeah. Sure,” she says and turns on her heel and walks away quickly.
I let out a long breath.
A few hours later, I drop my pass in the librarian’s bucket and make my way to the back corner of the room. A big couch sits in front of a bank of windows, overlooking Broad Creek. The couch might be my favorite place in the whole school. Luckily, it is largely unused because Mrs. Otwell, the school librarian, isn’t too keen on letting more than one student use it at a time. She says that sitting on couches makes everyone think they’re at a party—and this is a library. Sometimes I think she’d drop the couch in the Dumpster if she could lift it on her own. Since I am alone, she says nothing as I make my way back there and pull out my chemistry notebook.
A few minutes later, Marnie appears at the couch.
“You came,” I say.
“Of course I did. I don’t hate you, Sam,” she says, rolling her eyes.
I push my notebook into my backpack and move over on the couch and pat the cushion for Marnie to sit down. She glances toward Mrs. Otwell’s desk at the front of the room. She’s not there, so Marnie settles herself on the very edge of the cushion.
“What did you want to talk to me about?”
“How have you been?”
“Fiiiiiine…” she says.
“Good. That’s good.”
“Look, Sam. JC told me what happened at his house the other night. He’s really worried about you,” she says, pulling a nail file out of her purse. “Why aren’t you talking to him?”
I watch her and see the old Marnie. The Marnie that loved me. Twelve-year-old Marnie that brought me peanut butter and jelly sandwiches when my dad died. The Marnie that lay on my bed eating Cheez-Its and drinking grape soda and laughing at YouTube videos with me. The Marnie that liked to ride in my truck with both windows open and the bass on my radio pounding. The Marnie that tucked notes into my locker and threw pebbles at my window at night. I miss her so much it hurts.
I pull my backpack onto my lap and shrug. “I don’t really want to talk about that,” I say.
“Whatever. JC’s been your best friend forever, though, Sam. He’s really hurt,” she says.
I shrug again. This isn’t how I pictured this conversation.
“Listen, I need to ask you something,” I say. I dig my hand into my hoodie pocket and squeeze my hand around Ace’s cell phone.
“Go for it,” she says, blowing on her fingernails.
“Are you…Ace and you…Have you…”
“Spit it out, Sam.”
I hesitate. I have to know. I have to know if he was… “Are you sleeping with Ace?”
She drops the nail file on the couch, and her jaw drops along with it. “Are you kidding me? That’s none of your business,” she says, throwing her backpack over her shoulder and standing up from the couch. “Seriously? That’s why you called me here? I swear to God, Sam—”
“No! It’s not like that! I just…I’m so worried about you, Marn,” I say.
“Quit it! Quit acting like this, Sam! This jealousy…It’s ridiculous,” she says, her voice getting louder.
“It’s not jealousy. Ever since the party after state, I just… Are you safe?”
“Safe? What are you even talking about?” she says. “JC was right. You have totally lost your mind. We’re not together anymore, Sam,” she says, wagging her index finger back and forth between the two of us. “What am I saying? We never really were together, and what I do with my boyfriend is none of your business.”
With that, she stomps out of the library and leaves me alone on the couch.
I put my head back and cover my eyes with my forearm.
“What are you doing, North?” I hear. I feel someone sit down on the couch next to me.
I uncover my eyes, and Ace is sitting next to me. Close. Too close. His face is just a few inches from mine. I pull my shoulders back into the couch as far as I can.
“Talking to my girlfriend in the library?” he says.
“It’s not like that,” I say, swallowing hard.
“Do I make you nervous, Sam?”
I don’t answer. My fingers are squeezed around the seam on the arm of the couch. I can feel my pulse pounding on the side of my throat.
“I hope I make you nervous,” he says. “Maybe I’ll make you so nervous that you’ll have to go live with your mommy upstate. Is that what you’d like? I’m sure that loony bin has some nice padded walls for you and your crazy mommy to bang your heads on.”
“Shut up,” I say, my voice cracking.
Ace laughs. “You scared, little buddy? Aww…Did I scare you the other night? Is that why you needed to talk to Marnie? Think she’s going to protect you?”
I’m only inhaling as Ace inches closer and closer to my face. His voice is getting quieter.
“I will always be right here, Sam. Marnie’s not going to protect your sorry ass.” He is so close that his breath tickles my nose.
My back presses into the corner of the couch, and all the muscles in my thighs are tight, ready to jump and run.
Ace puts the tip of his nose right on my nose.
“Boo, motherfucker,” he whispers. He hops up from the couch and is gone.
* * *
It’s three a.m., and my eyes are wide open. The moon is so bright it lights up my entire bedroom. I pull on my hoodie and shove my hand into the pocket. The phone is still safely tucked inside. I turn it on and flip through a couple of pictures. Marnie making a duck face in Ace’s Jeep. A profile shot of Marnie reading, her hair piled on top of her head, a few stray curls sweeping across her cheek. Marnie smiling: one dimple. I scroll back to the picture of Marnie reading and trace the curl on her cheek.
I quietly open my bedroom door.
Sneaking out of my house is ridiculously easy now that Mom is gone. Grandpa sleeps like a rock. I don’t even have to go out the window and shimmy down the tree anymore. I can just open the front door and walk out. I trudge along the sandy driveway and into the cul-de-sac. There are no lights on at Ace’s house, and his Jeep is parked crookedly in the driveway.
I walk quickly through the neighborhood, the street lamps glowing. I don’t even have to think to get where I’m going. Left turn, left turn, right turn. Third house on the left.
Marnie’s bedroom is in the back of the house. I walk slower as I approach. None of the houses on her street have their porch lights on, and I only have to avoid the pools of streetlight. I walk quietly through the dewy grass, my shoes sinking slightly into the wet ground. I crouch down and approach Marnie’s window slowly.
My breath fogs her window slightly, and I use my hoodie sleeve to wipe away the mist. The light from her alarm clock casts a blue glow across her face and chest. I watch her breathe. Count the number of times her chest rises and falls. Her curls fall across her forehead and onto her pillowcase.
She’s safe. My hand curls around the phone in my pocket. She’s safe for now.
* * *
“I’m leaving at noon to pick up your mom, Sam,” Grandpa tells me ten days later at breakfast.
“So you won’t be at school?” I ask.
Grandpa shakes his head. I want to ask him more, but he puts the morning paper up between us and sips his coffee slowly.
“Grandpa?” I say quietly.
“What is it?” he says without moving the paper.
“Do you think she’s ready? To come home?”
; He folds the paper, exhaling slowly through his nose the whole time. He looks right at me and folds his hands in front of him.
“I think we’ll make the best of it, Sammy,” he says. “You know I’ve visited a time or two. She’s definitely better than she was in February. We’ll be strong for her. Summer is coming. I’ll be home. You’ll be around more. We’ll be okay,” he says, offering me a very small smile.
“Do you want me to come with you this afternoon?” I offer. Three hours in the car on the way to the hospital. That’s a lot of space for talking. Please say yes, Grandpa. Please say you want my company. Please ask me to come with you.
“Nah,” he says, picking up the newspaper again. “You get yourself to school. I got this.”
I grit my teeth. Grandpa doesn’t lower the paper. If he lowers the paper, I’ll tell him. I’ll tell him what this feels like. I’ll tell him I need him. If he lowers the paper again, I’ll say it. I’m slipping into a hole, Grandpa. I’m drowning.
“You’d better skedaddle, Sammy. Don’t you have a test today?” he says, turning the page of the newspaper, but not looking at me.
The tension in my jaw travels down my neck and into my chest where it rests like a concrete block. I grab my backpack from the living room and head out to my truck. I pull the zipper on my black hoodie all the way up to my chin and yank the hood over my head. I put my hands in my pocket and feel Ace’s cell phone. I leave it in there and climb into the truck. The April sun beats through my window, but I barely feel it at all.
I sit in my truck in the back corner of the senior parking lot until the warning bell rings. Ace and Marnie arrive together. Marnie looks right at me when she hops out of the passenger seat of Ace’s Jeep. She doesn’t smile with one dimple or two.
* * *
Last period of the day is chemistry lab with Dr. Gunther. And Marnie. We used to be lab partners, but Marnie asked to switch last semester after the Great Breakup. Now my lab partner is a girl who wears black every day and smells like cookies. That probably sounds like a dream to some guys: a girl who smells like cookies. But this girl smells like the cookies your grandma offers you from the blue tin after Christmas. Not like fresh-baked chocolate-chip goodness or anything. There’s a huge difference.
I drag my feet getting to class, knowing we’re doing some experiment today. Which means I’ll actually have to work. I can’t just sit there and pretend to take notes, my closed eyes hidden behind my hoodie.
The first thing I notice when I enter the room is that the smelly cookie girl is absent today. So is Marnie’s lab partner.
“North and Keaton, you’re together today,” Dr. Gunther says when the bell rings.
“Oh, come on, Dr. Gunther,” Marnie starts to protest.
Dr. Gunther adjusts his glasses with his left thumb knuckle like he always does. “I don’t want to hear it, Ms. Keaton. You and North are both without lab partners today, and you absolutely need a partner for today’s lab. You’re together. Now move your things to Mr. North’s table, please,” he says, turning toward the whiteboard and uncapping a dry-erase marker.
Marnie makes as much noise as she can pulling out her lab stool and grabbing the bucket of supplies from underneath the table. She steps heavily across the room and sits down with a loud sigh at the empty stool at my lab table.
The whole room watches her, including Dr. Gunther. “Are you quite finished?” he says when she finally settles in and lets out an aggravated hissing noise.
“Yes, sir,” she mumbles.
“Sorry,” I say to her as Dr. Gunther turns to write the lab steps on the whiteboard.
“Sorry I’m stuck with you? Or sorry you’re stuck with me?” she says.
I don’t answer.
Dr. Gunther writes “Catalase Kinetics” and starts talking in chemistry terms I barely understand. I used to have an A in chemistry.
“…measure the effects of changes in temperature…”
“Are you going to stop following me, Sam?”
I don’t answer.
“Seriously. It’s getting creepy.”
I don’t answer, but write down the lab steps in my notebook. I lean my chin on my hand and keep my eyes down. Old me bubbles to the surface, and the only thing keeping him inside is my hand on my cheek. I flex my fingers and squeeze the skin on my face to keep him in.
He touched you. I watched. He would have put that shit on the Internet if I hadn’t stolen his phone. You should be thanking me, and you don’t even know it.
“Are you going to talk to me, or are you just going to sit there and pretend you can’t hear me?”
I love you. I love you I love you I love you and I can’t stop thinking about you and why did you leave me and why are you with Ace now and how come it’s okay for him to treat you like that and why do you hate me why why why.
I say nothing. Squeeze my fingers against my cheek so tightly that my wrist starts to shake. I’m sweating in my hoodie, but I don’t take it off. It swallows the old me whole. It keeps him inside. It keeps the words in.
That Fourth of July at the beach, the first night she kissed me, is so close to the surface. I know that if I don’t keep my hoodie wrapped tight around me, if I don’t keep my fingers against my cheek, it will all spill out, all over this lab table. All the things I see when I look at her. Kindergarten Marnie scoring a basket, long braids bouncing down her back. Middle school Marnie at my father’s wake, making a heart with her hands. Marnie and me, watching the sunset from the lifeguard chair. Marnie and me, sneaking out and going down to the beach at three in the morning. Marnie, pressed against my chest behind the field house. Marnie, in the front seat of my truck before school every morning. Marnie, with me.
Marnie sighs that big dramatic sigh again, air rushing from her mouth and across the desk hard enough to rustle the pages in my notebook. “I don’t know what happened to you, Sam,” she says, getting up from the table to gather the needed chemicals from the supply closet.
She stands in line at the closet, hand on her hip.
“You happened,” I say to my notebook.
* * *
There are glimpses of the old me that cared. Sometimes I can see the deep-blue flame of his thoughts licking at the corners of my eyes. When I look at her, he’s there. Or when I’m just waking up and that heavy blanket of shit hasn’t quite settled around me yet. He’s there. His bright eyes and quick smile haunt me from inside my own head. Sometimes he pounds inside my brain. It hurts and it burns and it sucks. I want him to go away.
And yet.
Sometimes he’s close. So close that I wonder if he’ll fight his way to the surface. If his will be the voice I hear if I try to talk. If his clothes will be what I put on in the morning. If everyone will see him.
And other days, it’s like he never existed at all.
Today is not one of those days.
I wake up with his thoughts in my head.
Marnie. Today is her birthday. Did I buy her a card? Should I stop to get a bunch of flowers from the gas station before I pick her up? Did I call ahead and make reservations at her favorite place for dinner?
When I swing my legs onto the floor, he’s gone. For now.
He’ll be back, shining his light around in my head, looking for a way out. I won’t be able to stop it, as much as I wish I could. When that old me is in there, I can feel him scratching.
I drive by her house when I leave the neighborhood. Left turn, left turn, right turn, third house on the left. There are two shiny helium balloons on the mailbox: one in the shape of the number one, and one in the shape of the number eight. Ace’s car is in her driveway. I wonder if he is the one who put the balloons there. I drive slowly by, glancing down the driveway and wondering if I’ll see her if I drive slowly enough. I know that’s the old me, pushing on my forehead from the inside.
I drive away when I see the front door open. It may not even have been them. It might have been Marnie’s mom, ready for work with her black briefcase and clicky-clacky sh
oes. I know it wasn’t her dad. His SUV wasn’t in the driveway. I glance at my watch. Mr. Keaton probably left at least two hours ago. That was something old me knew.
I end up at the gas station, pulled into a parking space in the corner near the vacuum that doesn’t work and the air pump that takes two dollars in quarters to operate. I know they will come here next. I’ve been watching. Ace will buy a can of Red Bull and sometimes a bag of Doritos. Marnie, a pack of sugarless gum. Spearmint. Always spearmint. From my parking spot, I will see them.
I think about going in and buying the flowers anyway. Maybe putting them in her locker. Maybe walking up to her in this gas-station parking lot, right in front of Ace, and giving them to her. That old me just won’t go away, no matter how many times I’ve tried to get rid of him.
Ace comes out of the store first, holding the door open for Marnie. Neither one of them even looks toward me.
I feel invisible.
Powerful.
Marnie thanks him for holding the door with a kiss on his cheek. He smiles and she laughs and they look like a commercial for mouthwash. Or soap. Something wholesome.
I shut my eyes tight, squeezing the lids together until I see colored spots. When I open them again, Ace’s Jeep is leaving the parking lot, turning right and heading toward Broadmeadow. When the swimming dots clear from my eyes, I leave the gas station too.
* * *
If I could skip lunch all together, I would. If there were somewhere to hide, somewhere to go where I could be invisible, I’d do it. Old me loved having lunch in the cafeteria. The place to see and be seen. Old me was all about being seen.
Right now I just want to blend into the wall.
I stand in the line and grab a basket of soggy fries and a package of Swiss Rolls. Scanning the room for an empty chair near the wall, I see Marnie at a spot right in the middle of the cafeteria. Four or five other girls surround her, but she’s definitely the one holding court. Her eyes dance and her curls bounce while she tells a story. Only one dimple. A real smile. Old me pushes on my forehead again. Desperate to join her table. Listen to her stories. Laugh along with her.
I find an empty blue plastic chair at JC’s table. I know he won’t mind if I sit with him. I also know he won’t mind if I don’t talk. He won’t ask any questions. He might pretend that I’m not even there.
Until I Break Page 12
