Until I Break

by Bietz, Kara M.

  “I will not be a disappointment,” I write on a corner of the paper. Ripping it from the notebook, I shove it in the mailbox and head out the gym doors to my truck. I know what I have to do.

  19

  MAY

  Thirteen Hours Before

  The gun lives in a safe in the linen closet in the laundry room. I tiptoe down the stairs, concocting a story in my head in case Mom or Grandpa wakes up. I need a towel. I have to change the sheets on my bed. I thought I heard a noise. With a flashlight trained on the back wall of the closet, I spin the combination lock on the safe.

  24 right.

  11 left.

  47 right

  Click.

  Picking the gun up, I feel its weight in my hand. The rubber grip on the handle is slightly sticky against my palm. I pop open the chamber and pull the box of bullets from under a towel on the top shelf of the linen closet. I slide six bullets into the chamber, touching the golden ends with my index finger.

  The first time Grandpa Carl took me to the rifle range, he showed me how to load the bullets into the cylinder of the .38 special.

  “Look, Sammy, pointy edge toward the front. The flat side will sit nice and snug in the opening, there. See?” He handed me two bullets and let me drop them into the last two open slots in the cylinder.

  Chink. Chink. I still remember the distinct sound of the bullets sliding in. Grandpa snapped the revolver shut then and put the giant green earmuffs over my ears. He aimed at the man-shaped target at the end of the range and shot all six bullets straight through the chest area of the man.

  “Whoa, Gramps! If that was a real man…” I said, in awe.

  “If that was a real man, he wouldn’t be walking out of here,” Grandpa said, laughing. “But listen…you should never need more than one bullet, Sammy. You should be able to do everything you need to do with just one bullet. When you know how to use it correctly, the gun will keep you safe, Sam.”

  I snap the revolver closed again and turn the gun over in my hand a few times.

  Put it in your pocket. Just put it in your pocket.

  I close the safe, spin the lock, and silently leave the laundry room with the gun in my front pocket.

  I climb the stairs to my room and close the door behind me. My backpack lies at the foot of the bed. I pull out the dirty PE clothes, a few crumpled class notes, and a half-eaten granola bar from the bottom of the bag. I unzip and re-zip every pocket on the bag before pulling the gun out of my pocket and laying it on the bed.

  I grab the dirty Broadmeadow PE shirt and wrap the gun inside it before sliding it back into the front pouch of the backpack.

  I undress and put on pajama pants and slide under the covers in my bed, my backpack within reach right next to me on the bed. I reach over to the window and slide the blinds up just enough to see his garage.

  The door is open, and the lights are on. I can see Mr. Quinn standing near the weight bench with his arms folded across his chest, and Ace doing crunches nearby. I watch for a few minutes. Tomorrow.

  I lie down and can only see his driveway now. The shiny black Jeep sits at an angle, the streetlight gleaming right down on the hood. I keep the blinds up.

  Close my eyes. I can see it. It might still be dark in the morning before school, but with that streetlight shining right onto the Jeep, I’ll have no problem.

  Pop. Between the eyes.

  Pop. In the throat.

  PopPopPopPop. Right through the chest of the man-shaped target.

  20

  TODAY

  8:19 p.m.

  I don’t want to open my eyes. The light burns and makes me forget who I am. In the dark behind my eyelids, I think I can remember that boy.

  I hear Michael’s pen scratching across his paper, so I know he’s still in the room with me. “Is it easier for you to keep your eyes closed?” he asks quietly.

  I nod.

  “Can you tell me about this morning? Did you drive yourself to school? Did you talk to anyone?” Michael’s voice speaks directly to that boy that I remember.

  This morning.

  This morning I thought about Marnie.

  Every morning I think about Marnie.

  Before I open my eyes and the light makes me forget, I think about her.

  21

  TODAY

  Seven Hours Before

  I’m swimming at East Beach with Marnie. We’re reaching for the buoy at the same time and she’s smiling at me, her eyelashes dripping with ocean water. Her lips taste like salt and watermelon and air and life and everything good in the world. She kicks and swims away and I’m reaching for her, reaching for her reaching for her reaching for her but I can’t touch her anymore. I can’t get to her.

  There was that one last kiss that held everything and nothing all at the same time, and now my arms are not long enough to get to her. My legs aren’t strong enough to help me. I’m falling behind. She’s pulling away and getting smaller and smaller as she swims out into the ocean without me. The sun is setting and she’s disappearing…

  Disappearing…

  Gone.

  I kick and kick and kick, but only one leg moves. I look down. I’m pulling an anchor behind me. I look ahead. Marnie is gone. The sun is gone. All that’s left at the buoy are me and the anchor around my ankle, and it’s pulling me under. Under the cool ocean where it’s quiet.

  So quiet.

  Bzz. Bzz. Bzz.

  The alarm sounds, and I immediately reach for my backpack before I slap the snooze button. I feel the gun still tucked into the front pocket. I pull on my jeans and grab a clean T-shirt from the closet. Grab my hoodie and pat the right pocket. The cell phone is still stashed in there. I pull it out and scroll through the pictures again. Marnie with a one-dimpled smile. Marnie and Ace, kissing. Marnie petting Ace’s cat. I close the camera roll and touch the icon for the video folder. I know what I’m going to see. I don’t need to watch it again. I touch the trash can icon and delete the video from the phone.

  I scratch a note on a Post-It and press it onto the phone: I know what you did. I will keep her safe.

  I don’t say good-bye to my mom before I leave.

  I walk right by my truck and right up the driveway and into Ace’s driveway. I crouch behind his Jeep and pull the gun from my backpack. I hold it in my hand, still wrapped in the green T-shirt.

  Three long, slow breaths from the bottoms of my feet.

  I peek around the bumper of the Jeep at Ace’s front door. I creep to the driver’s side door and put Ace’s cell phone with the note on the driver’s seat where he can’t miss it. I crawl back behind the Jeep and wait. From here, I’ll be able to see him come outside. He’ll only be twenty-five feet away. I hold the wrapped gun in my lap and breathe.

  A few minutes later, I hear a car coming down our street. I creep to the end of Ace’s driveway and peek up the road. A silver Honda is coming toward the cul-de-sac.

  Marnie’s mom. She must be dropping Marnie off at Ace’s this morning so they can go to school together.

  I fumble with the wrapped gun in my lap and shove it back into the front pocket of my backpack. I can’t do it in front of Marnie.

  I can’t do it in front of anyone else. What if someone else gets in the way?

  Everyone else will be safe. Marnie will be safe.

  I throw my backpack over my shoulder and run through the sandy yard to my own driveway. I hop in my truck and drive away as quickly as I can.

  I look in the rearview mirror just as Marnie gets out of her mom’s car and greets Ace with a big hug at the end of his driveway.

  22

  TODAY

  9:35 p.m.

  “The plan was to get Ace alone?” Michael asks softly.

  I nod, but don’t open my eyes.

  “You didn’t ever plan on going to school this morning, did you?”

  I shake my head, still not opening my eyes.

  “But when Marnie showed up at Ace’s house this morning, you didn’t know what else to do
with yourself, did you? So you took the gun to school with you,” Michael says.

  “I want to keep her safe,” I say to Michael. I don’t recognize my own voice.

  “And the only way you can keep Marnie safe is…” Michael begins a sentence and doesn’t finish.

  “I want to keep her safe,” I say again. Michael is just another person who will never understand. There are so many more words in my head than I can’t say out loud.

  Michael watches me.

  “Safe” is the only word I can say. “She needed to be safe.”

  Michael says nothing. The clock ticks away the seconds, and the pounding in my forehead beats in time with it.

  23

  TODAY

  One Hour Before

  Dr. Gunther has left the windows open in the chemistry lab today. He’s writing something on the whiteboard, the dry-erase marker squeaking across the surface.

  “Can anyone tell me which organs in your body have the highest concentrations of catalase? Anyone?” he asks, not turning around from the whiteboard.

  A breeze drifts through, and he’s losing us to the hum of bees and the smell of fresh cut grass. I glance at the back of Marnie’s head. It keeps dipping slightly, and I know she’s struggling to stay awake. I keep my backpack in my lap and my hand over the front pocket. I touch the edges of the lumpy shape in the pocket. The dirty T-shirt hiding my secret.

  I glance out the window and remember my father.

  * * *

  It was June. JC and I had been playing basketball at Independence Park all morning, and I was walking home alone in the heat of the early afternoon.

  “Where are you going, Samantha?” At twelve, Ace was at least three inches taller than me. His father had him lifting weights in the garage that summer, and his biceps were tightly packed into his T-shirt.

  I’m frozen to the sidewalk, my basketball tucked under my arm. My feet are cemented to the ground, and I don’t feel like I can breathe. My entire body is encased in ice.

  “I said, ‘Where are you going, Samantha?’” Ace repeats, circling around me. He pulls a Swiss Army knife from his pocket. He flips out the short blade and grabs my basketball from under my arm.

  “Give that back,” I say, reaching for it but unable to move my feet.

  “Give that back,” he repeats in a baby voice.

  Ace stands directly in front of me, just inches from my face. He brings the knife down hard onto my brand-new basketball. The air escapes from the hole with a whistling sound. He drops the ball at my feet.

  “Imagine what this could do to your lungs, Samantha,” he says, holding the blade up against my cheek.

  The rage starts at my toes, warm and tingling. As it creeps up my legs and into my chest, the ice melts and I am able to move my feet. By the time the heat reaches my fingers, they are already around Ace’s neck, squeezing and shaking as hard as I can. I pull back my right fist and connect it with the wide bone right underneath Ace’s left eye as hard as I can. Ace stumbles backward, but comes back at me full force.

  We fall on the ground, Ace on top of me, his fists connecting with my face a lot more than once. A warm, wet feeling spreads across my cheek, and Ace’s punch connects with it one last time with a squelching sound. Who knows why he stops hitting me. I just remember feeling relieved that it was finally over.

  “You will never win. Remember that, Samantha. You will never win,” Ace says, kicking my hip and walking away.

  I pull myself off the sidewalk. The only thing that hurts is my face. I touch my eye and already feel it puffing up. I grab my deflated basketball and walk home.

  My dad is in the front yard with the Weedwacker. He drops it when he sees me coming down the driveway.

  “What the hell happened?” he says, running up the driveway to meet me. He puts his arm around me, and we go into the house, past my mother in the sunroom. She’s hunched over her computer. Books are stacked high next to her, and she has two pencils holding together a loose bun on her head. We head straight into the bathroom.

  “Everything okay, Andy?” she calls to my dad.

  “It’s good, Jenny,” my dad says.

  He runs the water in the sink and pats at my bloody cheek with a wet towel. “What happened? Did this happen at the park?”

  I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Blood is dripping from a small cut under my left eye onto my cheek. My eye is swollen shut and already turning purple above and below my cheekbone.

  “Ace popped my basketball,” I say before the words get caught in my throat and tears sting my eyes.

  “Why did you let him do that?” my dad asks.

  I stand up straighter, and the tears stop before they even start. My throat closes, and I stare at my dad in the mirror. His lips turn down and his eyebrows pull in, creasing his forehead.

  “I didn’t…I didn’t let him…” I start to say, but my dad frowns.

  “You can’t seem weak like that, Sam. That’s why he picks at you. He knows you’re smaller than he is. I’ve told you this before,” he says, patting at my cheek some more and pulling a Band-Aid from the medicine cabinet.

  “But I didn’t…”

  Dad shakes his head again. “You can’t be weak,” he repeats.

  “Can you do something? Make him stop? Tell his dad?” I say.

  Dad shakes his head again. “You’ve got to stop this yourself, Sam. I can’t solve your problems for you anymore. It’s not going to help you if your dad steps in every time there’s a problem,” he says, throwing the towel into the sink.

  He walks into the kitchen and stands in front of the freezer, putting ice cubes into a plastic bag. His sigh is loud enough to shake the kitchen walls.

  I sink into a chair at the kitchen table, feeling two inches tall. “Are you mad at me?” I ask him.

  “Just disappointed,” he says, handing me the baggie and going back outside.

  Two weeks later, Dad was gone.

  I was the one that found him. Lying on the kitchen floor in front of the open refrigerator, a half-gallon of milk spilled around him. An aneurysm, the doctor called it. An artery in his brain just popped, while he stood getting milk for his morning cereal. Poof and he was gone. Poof.

  * * *

  The buzzer sounds, and everyone closes their books and reaches for their backpacks.

  “Final is just two weeks away, seniors. Keep that in mind,” Dr. Gunther says, reaching for the eraser. The class files out the door looking sleepy.

  I carry my backpack in front of me, my hand firmly over the front pouch. I feel it there. The pulse of it right beneath the dirty, rolled-up T-shirt. The copper-ended bullets loaded into it so carefully.

  Chink. Chink. Chink. Chink. Chink. Chink.

  I have six chances to make it right. Six chances to stop being a disappointment.

  Six chances to keep Marnie safe. To keep me safe.

  But I know I’ll only need one. Poof.

  24

  TODAY

  9:49 p.m.

  I don’t feel like I’m breathing anymore. There is a deep pain in my chest and in my gut. My mouth hurts, and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to open my eyes again.

  “Sam? Are you still with me?” Michael says softly.

  A sob bubbles up from my throat.

  Michaels scoots his chair closer to the bed and puts his hand around my ankle. “I’m right here with you, Sam. You’re not doing this alone. Do you think you can keep going?” he asks, his voice barely above a whisper now.

  Three deep breaths from the bottoms of my feet. “I can keep going,” I say, my voice tight.

  “I know this is really hard for you, but can you tell me what happened right before? Anything you can remember, Sam. People, sounds, anything. Can you see it in your head?”

  A deep, black chasm opens in my gut. There’s a rope around my middle pulling me down down down. Into the dark. Into the quiet.

  Into the peace.

  “Sam? Tell me what you see in your head,” Michael s
ays.

  “I…It’s dark,” I say, my throat constricting around my words.

  “Are you there in the dark, Sam? Who else is there with you?”

  “JC almost got in,” I say, my voice cracking.

  “Almost?”

  I hear Michael’s pen scratch again.

  25

  TODAY

  Forty-One Minutes Before

  I watch Marnie’s curls bounce in front of me as she heads toward the cafeteria. The between-class crush in the hallway threatens to push her too far ahead for me to see her, but I’m determined not to lose her. I keep the back of her head in sight all the way there. She sits down at a table with the other cheerleaders, and I know she’s safe. For now.

  Only then do I find a seat for myself. I’m at JC’s table again, and he and Kaplan and the pimple-faced guy ignore me completely. I listen to their conversations with half an ear.

  I watch Ace approach Marnie’s table from across the cafeteria, my backpack clutched in my lap. I run my index finger over the lump in the front pouch. I’m not going to do it here, in front of everyone. I’ll probably have to wait until after school when he’s by himself again. No one else in this cafeteria deserves the end I intend to give Ace.

  He throws his head back and laughs so loud that it fills the whole cafeteria. Marnie smiles, but the shine in her cheeks never reaches her eyes. Two dimples. She is surrounded by the other cheerleaders and football players, but she has never looked so alone. I want to go to her and tell her that everything’s going to be okay. That I’m going to make it right. That I’m going to fix it and she won’t have to pretend anymore.

  “Earth to Sam?” JC says.

  I turn to him.

  “Lunch is over,” he says.

  The cafeteria is clearing out. JC looks at me, and his eyebrows pinch together. He looks like he wants to say something to me. I clutch my backpack tighter and look up at him.