Until I Break

by Bietz, Kara M.

  “What up, Sammy? Long time, no see,” JC says, putting his hand up for a high five when I approach his table of friends.

  “Hey.” I don’t return the high five.

  I sit sideways in the chair, my back against the wall, and pull my hoodie over my head again. I smother the fries in ketchup and eat them with my fingers. Ketchup goes everywhere.

  JC and the other guys at the table continue to talk about some concert they’re all going to this weekend at the university. The biggest debate seems to be whether to try and score a case of beer before they leave or wait until they get to the campus.

  “If we get stopped for speeding and there’s a case in my trunk, we’re screwed,” one guy with a nose piercing says.

  “They don’t look in your trunk if they pull you over for speeding, douche canoe,” the zittiest guy says.

  “Kaplan’s right, Adam. We’re not going to get pulled over either. Plus we know we can score a case at Kaplan’s uncle’s place before we leave. If we wait, we might have a hard time…procuring the provisions.” JC says that last part under his breath.

  The zitty guy, Kaplan, nods.

  I snort.

  JC shoots me a look. “Problem?” he asks.

  “Nope. Just listening. Don’t mind me. Pretend I’m not even here,” I say, dragging a floppy fry through the ketchup soup in the basket.

  Kaplan and Adam get up to throw their trash away. It’s just JC and me at the table now. “Since when do you drink, JC?” I ask.

  “Since when do you care, Sam?” he shoots back.

  “Touché. I was just sayin’.”

  “Well, I’m just sayin’ too. Why are you sitting here? You don’t even talk to me anymore. What do you care what I do on the weekends? You’re acting like an ass,” JC says.

  I just shrug.

  Old me would have apologized. Correction. Old me never would have stopped hanging out with JC in the first place. And now old me is punching and kicking. Apologize. Apologize. Apologize. JC would understand. Tell him. Tell him. Tell him you’re drowning.

  “Whatever. I’m not going to waste my time anymore. You talk to me or don’t talk to me. I don’t give a shit,” JC says, taking a sip of milk all defiant-like. Old me can feel the hurt radiating off JC’s skin. Stop him. Tell him. He will help you. He will see.

  I pull my hoodie strings tighter and put my feet up in the chair next to me. Shrug.

  Kaplan and Adam come back, each with an ice cream sandwich. “Bitch alert, twelve o’clock,” Kaplan says, motioning behind him with his head.

  Marnie is marching toward this table. And truly, marching is the only way I can describe it. Her shoulders are back, and her mouth is set in a defiant sneer. She’s staring right at me.

  I sit up and put my feet flat on the floor.

  She’s coming this way.

  Take your hood off your head.

  She’s coming right for you.

  Wipe the ketchup off your lip.

  She’s coming. Right for you.

  “Hey,” she says when she reaches the table.

  It’s not a “Hey, how are you” kind of hey. It’s more like a “You’re a damn jerk, and I’m about to tell you just how jerky you are” kind of hey.

  “Hey,” I say back.

  Don’t look at her eyes. Just don’t look at her eyes. You’ll stop listening if you look at her eyes. Don’t do it, Sam.

  “Look at me,” she says.

  Damn it all.

  My eyes slide up and meet her icy stare.

  “Why were you at the gas station this morning?” she asks.

  JC jerks his head toward me, his eyes wide.

  “I wasn’t…” I start to lie.

  “Oh, come on, Sam. I saw your truck. I know that truck. Why are you doing this? Why are you following me?” she asks, folding her arms across her chest and jutting out her hip.

  “I’m not. I’m allowed to get gas, aren’t I?”

  “You’re a stalker, Sam North. A stalker! Stay away from me! And stay away from Ace!” She is shouting now, and the whole cafeteria has their eyes on me.

  Old me would have cared.

  Old me would have been mortified.

  Run after Marnie and apologized.

  I walk to the trash can, my hoodie pulled over my eyes and dump my still-full tray of fries. I shove the Swiss Rolls into my pocket and walk outside to the courtyard.

  Through the window, I see her talking to JC. His eyebrows have crawled all the way up to his hairline. Her curls are flying as she bobs her head all around. No dimples anymore. She keeps pointing through the window and throwing her hips all over the place. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen her that pissed.

  Stalker.

  That’s what she called me.

  I want her to be safe. I’m just watching to make sure she’s safe.

  I wish I could say that her opinion of me doesn’t matter.

  17

  TODAY

  7:57 p.m.

  The clock on the wall is loud. When Michael isn’t talking, I can hear the tick, tick, tick, tick, tick like it’s a brass band right in my head. I put my hands up to my ears and squeeze. Everything is noise.

  “You okay, Sam?” Michael asks. Purple smudges are beginning to appear under his eyes. He has unbuttoned the top few buttons of his dress shirt and untucked it.

  “I’m tired. I just want to close my eyes for a little bit,” I say, my head lolling to the side. My voice sounds froggy, and my throat burns from the effort of forming a sentence.

  “You can sleep soon, Sam. I promise. There are a few more things I need to ask you, okay?” Michael says.

  I run my forearm across my eyes, and pain shoots through my forehead. I touch the sore spot with two fingers and feel stitches right above my nose.

  “What happened to my head?” I croak to Michael.

  He looks at me, not blinking. He cocks his head to the side a little bit, and his left eye twitches ever so slightly. “You don’t remember?”

  I shake my head and touch the stitches again. The skin underneath tingles.

  Michael lowers his head and writes on his yellow pad for a long time.

  “What do you remember about this afternoon, Sam? Can you tell me what you know?” he asks, sitting up in his chair again.

  What I know.

  I know JC was there. And Marnie. And—

  “Ace,” I say.

  “What about him?” Michael says. “What do you remember about Ace?”

  “He was…there,” I swallow.

  “Yes, he was,” Michael says. “Can you remember anything else?”

  I shrug. Pain zings through the stitches in my forehead.

  “What about before this afternoon? What can you tell me about you and Ace, Sam?”

  Ace Quinn.

  My insides seize up, and my fingers curl into tight fists. I am breathing through my nose, too quickly. The room starts to spin.

  I am twelve years old.

  I hit him first.

  My eyes start to burn, and I feel a pit opening up beneath me and swallowing me whole. I pull my legs up to my chest and try to crawl inside myself. It’s dark. That’s where I want to be. Where I can’t hear anything anymore and I can’t feel anything either.

  “Sam?” Michael touches my wrist

  I jump and pick my head up. My eyes are swollen and my cheeks are wet. Under my nose is wet too, and I wipe at it with the back of my hand and sniff.

  “He hurt her,” I say through the lump in my throat.

  “Who?”

  “Ace,” I say.

  “Who did he hurt, Sam?”

  “He hurt her, and I was supposed to keep her safe. Keep me safe. It’s not ever going to be safe. It never will.”

  “Tell me who, Sam. Who were you supposed to keep safe?”

  I look at Michael. He’s been sitting here with me for more than six hours. He hasn’t left. He hasn’t picked up a newspaper or played with his phone or closed the door and left me alone.

>   He hasn’t left me.

  He’s been listening.

  “I tried to tell someone, Michael,” I say quietly.

  Michael says nothing, only pulls his chair closer to me. My throat closes up as he puts his hand on my shoulder.

  “I tried to tell them…” I say, the lump in my throat dissolving. Tears drip onto my cheeks, and I don’t wipe them away.

  “I know you did, Sam,” he says. He puts his notebook and pen on the floor and takes my right hand in both of his. “I know.”

  I let Michael hold my hand, and I close my eyes. The tears come through, and I don’t try to stop them.

  “I wanted someone to hear me.”

  18

  MAY

  One Day Before

  I pull my black hoodie on even though it’s going to be close to eighty degrees today. I reach into the right pocket and squeeze my hand around Ace’s cell phone. It’s with me every day. As long as I have it, she will be safe.

  I glance at my alarm clock. Fifteen minutes before I have to leave for school. I head downstairs, knowing I’ll find Mom on the sunporch, meditating. Since she came home from Morningside, she wakes up before the sun rises and spends the early part of the morning in deep meditation. I don’t know what she’s thinking about for that long, but she seems at peace.

  I find Mom, but she’s shoving papers into her laptop bag. Her sunglasses are on her head, and her car keys are in her hand.

  “Where are you going?” I say, my stomach full of butterflies.

  She turns and gives me a big smile. “Work!”

  “You’re going to work? Are you—”

  “I’m fine,” she says, her eyebrows raised and her voice stern.

  “Yeah, but maybe you should give it another—”

  Her lips purse and she blinks slowly. “You should probably leave for school, Sam. You don’t want to be late.”

  I watch her check and recheck her bag. I want to tell her. I’m sinking, Mom. I’m in so deep and I can’t move.

  Mom, help.

  I squeeze the cell phone in my hoodie pocket. Help.

  “Get going, pokey!” She laughs, pushing me out the door and getting into her Volkswagen. “I’ll see you tonight, sweetheart,” she says, backing out of the driveway.

  “But are you sure—”

  She just waves her hand at me dismissively. I stand in the driveway and watch her drive all the way down the street to the curve. Her taillights disappear, but still I watch.

  I sit down in my truck, but I don’t know what to do next. My fingers clutch the steering wheel, and all I feel is empty. Forgotten. Used up. I don’t even know if I have the strength to turn the key in the ignition. I close my eyes.

  A fist bangs on my window.

  Ace.

  I roll down the window.

  “Hi,” he says, not smiling.

  I nod my head, but say nothing. I grip the steering wheel tighter, my knuckles turning pink, then white, then purple.

  “Are they warming up your rubber room upstate, Samantha?” he asks.

  I don’t even have the energy to reply.

  He glances toward his house and then crouches down and puts his face through my window.

  “I’m watching you. You’re slipping, Samantha. You’re not the Golden Boy everyone thinks you are, are you? You know what that means? No more second best for Ace Quinn. I win. I. Win.”

  I am outside my truck, and my hands are around Ace’s thick neck before I even realize what I’m doing. Ace grabs my wrists and twists them away from his neck.

  “Are you sure you want to do that again, Sam? Remember what happened when we were twelve. You hit me first. That was your first mistake,” he says, his voice quiet and even.

  “You came at me with a knife, asshole.”

  “I popped your basketball, you pussy. I didn’t come at you with a knife.” He laughs again.

  “Stay away from me, you stupid fuck.” I say, not moving away from him.

  “That’s rich, Samantha. Stay away from you? I’m going to be right here, right over your shoulder every time you turn around. Every time you think you’re alone, I’ll be there. Every time you think you’re rid of me, I’ll be right there. Waiting. You need to be kept in your place,” he says.

  He backs away from me toward his house. His eyes never leave my face.

  I am frozen to my driveway.

  “I will always be bigger. I will always be faster and better than you, North. If you hit me first, I will hit back stronger and harder than you ever could. You should have figured that out when we were twelve. I will always win,” he says, opening the door to his Jeep and climbing in.

  He peels out of the driveway and heads down the street.

  I don’t move from my spot in the driveway until his taillights disappear.

  * * *

  Mr. Patton’s office is painted a shade of green that can only be described as baby food peas, as are all the guidance counselors’ offices.

  “Sam, have a seat, kiddo,” he says when I arrive at his door.

  I hate that he calls me “kiddo.”

  He has a file folder opened in front of him. “So where are we?” he asks.

  “Where are we?” WE are nowhere, asshole.

  “College applications. Have you received your acceptance letters yet? Let’s see where we’ve applied…” He flips through the papers inside the folders. “Just Oceanside, kiddo?” Mr. Patton asks, lowering his glasses and letting them hang around his neck like a grandma.

  “It’s the only place I want to go,” I say, leaning back in my chair.

  “Have you heard from them yet?”

  I pull on my hoodie string and feel it creep tighter around my neck. “They offered me a scholarship to play basketball,” I answer quietly.

  “That’s wonderful! I trust you accepted?” Mr. Patton sits forward in his chair, a genuine smile on his face.

  I bite my lip to keep the old me from bubbling through. I haven’t even picked up a basketball since February. I nod and look down at a stain on the leg of my jeans.

  “That’s really good news, Sam. Something to be proud of,” Mr. Patton says. “So tell me, kiddo, how are things? Everything going well at home?”

  I stare at the stain a little longer. Not quite round, more of an oval shape. Tell him. Tell him you’re drowning.

  “Your mom doing well?” he asks, lowering his glasses again.

  I nod. My lips won’t part. I can’t look him in the eye.

  “That’s wonderful news, wonderful news. Well, sounds like you’re all in order. It’s good talking with you,” Mr. Patton says, shuffling a few papers on his desk and looking up at the clock on the wall.

  You’re not twelve years old anymore, Sam.

  “There’s something I kind of want to talk to someone about,” I say, picking at the stain on my jeans.

  Mr. Patton looks at his watch out of the corner of his eye and pushes his chair back a bit. “Do you want to make another appointment?” he asks, pulling a pen from the cup on the desk and swiftly turning pages in his appointment book.

  “No…I-I thought we could just talk about it now,” I say, sitting up in the chair a little straighter. I’m drowning. I’m drowning. I’m going to hurt him, or he’s going to hurt me. The cycle is never going to end, and I can’t I can’t I can’t…

  A face appears in the rectangular glass window in Mr. Patton’s door. Mr. Patton stands up and puts his finger up to the glass. “One minute,” he mouths through the window to Ace.

  Ace doesn’t leave. He continues to stand with his face in the window.

  Mr. Patton doesn’t sit back down, only stands with his back to the door. “I only have another minute or two until my next appointment, Sam. Are you sure you don’t want to come back tomorrow? I can schedule as much time as you need,” he says, glancing at his watch again.

  “I’m…I’m just…” drowning. Help me. Make it stop. Throw me a rope. Get me out of this.

  Mr. Patton rocks back and
forth on his heels and folds his hands across his chest. His jaw flexes, and he looks at his watch again.

  “I’m really happy about my scholarship to Oceanside,” I say, throwing my backpack over my shoulder and grabbing for the door handle all in one motion. I walk as fast as I can past Ace and into the hallway before I take a full breath.

  I lean against the wall, and my legs melt underneath me. I slide down until I’m sitting on the floor, my backpack scrunched up behind me like a pillow. When I do take a long breath, it’s ragged and thick. My throat feels like it’s closing, and my ears fill with the sound of rushing blood. I cover them with my palms, but nothing makes it stop.

  Grandpa.

  I stand up and run through the hallways, past the gym to Grandpa’s office. He’ll help me. He’ll stop the drowning. He’ll pull me out of this.

  He’ll know how to make it stop.

  I reach for the door handle. Locked. The sign on the door says “Administrative meeting. Be back at 2.” I eye the mailbox attached to the wall outside Grandpa’s office. Grandpa put it up so that students would stop trying to shove papers and forms under the door. I sit down on the floor again and pull a notebook from my backpack.

  Dear Grandpa,

  No. No, I can’t start like that.

  There is something I need to talk to you about.

  No, that’s not right either.

  How do I tell him? Men are supposed to stand on their own two feet. Men don’t ask for help. Men take care of things on their own. That’s what he always says.

  How do I tell him that the pain in my chest is too much and I can’t get away? I’m never going to be able to get away from it. Ace will follow me to college, and he’ll always be there. Behind me. Waiting for me. And when I’m alone…when Grandpa isn’t there anymore…The gloves are off. I’m on my own. There’s no one left. Marnie doesn’t care and JC doesn’t understand and Dad is gone and Mom can barely take care of herself. I’m not safe. I’m not safe not safe not safe.

  I can end this. I can make it all go away with just one squeeze of my index finger. Gone. Gone. Gone. I won’t be a disappointment.