Bend Me, Break Me
Copyright © 2016 Chelsea M. Cameron
All rights reserved.
Editing by Jen Hendricks
Cover by Sarah Hansen at Okay Creations
Formatted by: Shore Thang Formatting
Publisher: Chelsea M. Cameron
License Notes:
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Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, resold (as a “used” e-book), stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental. All products mentioned are not an endorsement from the Corporations owned said product and are meant only to enhance novel realization. They are not an endorsement from the author either.
CONTENTS
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
NOVELS BY CHELSEA C. CAMERON
FIND CHELSEA M. CAMERON ONLINE
I’ve always loved bubbles. When I was young, my parents, my sister and I would go out in the backyard on steamy summer nights, each with a bottle in our hands. We’d blow them and pop them and watch them cluster together and try to blow the biggest one. They shimmered and for one bright moment, they were beautiful and they were real.
And then they would pop and it would be as if they never were. Little worlds that vanished in the blink of an eye with the touch of a finger.
I love bubble baths too. Feeling them slide all over my skin before they dissolved in the cooling water.
My life is like a bubble. Once it was shiny and perfect and then in one moment, with the bullets from a gun, my bubble popped.
I blinked and realized I’d checked out again. The professor was droning on about… something. I had to read a few lines on the chalkboard before I remembered which class I was in. Economics. No wonder I’d drifted off.
I blinked a few times and rubbed my eyes. Maybe I could get an hour nap this afternoon. Sleep came and went. For weeks, I wouldn’t sleep for more than a few hours at a time. Then I did nothing but sleep for days.
The class finally ended and I packed up my notebook and textbooks. I had barely taken one note. I didn’t even know what the point of me being here was anymore.
I trudged up the stairs and out of the lecture hall and onto the sidewalk.
“Hey!” someone said behind me. I didn’t turn around. They were probably saying it to one of the other dozens of students who streamed around me. Someone else who was smiling or laughing and wasn’t… me.
“Hey!” the voice said again, closer. A hand tapped me on the shoulder and I spun around, as if I were being attacked.
“Whoa there,” he said. My eyes lifted from the pavement to meet a pair of eyes as green as a fresh-mowed lawn. Brown curls hung down, almost blocking those eyes, like curtains. He had a nervous smile on his mouth and I noticed a white scar cut across one of his eyebrows.
I had no idea who he was, and I was pretty sure he didn’t know me either.
“What do you want?” I asked, my voice hostile. I was out of practice talking to people. It was a skill, like anything else, that must be practiced.
“Um, you dropped this,” he said, holding up a pen that wasn’t mine. I knew it wasn’t mine because I always used the same pens. Purple ballpoint. This was a fancier pen and looked like it had black ink in it.
“No, sorry,” I said, edging away from him. The pen was clearly a ruse to talk to me and I wasn’t falling for it. I didn’t want to talk to him. I didn’t want to talk to anyone.
He stared down at the pen, still held in his outstretched hand.
“Oh. Well, my mistake.” When he talked, you could see a very tiny chip in one of his front teeth.
He put the pen away and I expected him to go away, but he stood there with his hands in his jeans pockets. As if he was waiting for me to say something else.
“Okay. Bye,” I said, taking a step back from him.
“See you,” he said. I hoped I wouldn’t.
Most people decorated their dorm rooms. I’d always thought I’d be one of those people but then things changed and I hadn’t bothered. My room was bare, except for the covers on the bed, a few books, a television, a fridge and a microwave. No twinkle lights. No snapshots of me with my friends, our faces smashed together to get everyone in the shot. No movie posters.
I set my bag on the floor with a thunk and climbed into bed. Somehow, I’d been able to secure a single room, which was a miracle as a freshman. Although she wouldn’t admit it, I knew my mom had pulled some strings.
My eyes were dry and gritty and I rubbed them, but it didn’t help. Grabbing the remote, I flipped through all the cable channels and stopped on something at random. I only saw noise and color, but it made the quiet room more bearable.
I had plenty of homework, but it would get done later tonight. It was the best way to occupy my mind when I was supposed to be sleeping. Until then, there wasn’t a whole lot to do, so I grabbed my laptop and turned it on. The first thing I checked was my Instagram. My latest poem was up to 203 likes, which was pretty good. I allowed myself a smile before I tucked it away. I only allowed myself so many smiles a day and that was my second. I only had one left. One smile to spend on something.
After checking my other social media accounts, I pushed my computer aside and pulled out my notebook from under my pillow. Keeping it there was a habit I’d carried over from childhood. Keeping my most precious words safe while I slept.
Turning to a fresh page, I started with one word, as always.
Water.
Slipping through my fingers.
Impossible to hold.
Liquid.
Blood on the floor.
Flowing.
No beginnings.
Only endings.
I looked at the words after my pen had stopped. It was fine, but not good enough to post. Not yet. It would need some work. Some tweaking. Sighing, I closed the notebook again and turned to my bookshelf, which held a number of leather-bound volumes. Tolstoy, Austen, Dickens, Hemingway. Pulling War and Peace off the shelf, I let it fall open to a random page. Raising t
he book to my face, I inhaled the smell of the pages. So familiar. So safe.
I shook my head at myself and put the book back. I couldn’t dwell on things like books. I couldn’t dwell on things like memories. All I could do was breathe and exist. That was hard enough, especially since I rarely slept a full night.
I could get through it. I could. And then…
I had no idea.
Well. I fucked that up. She looked at me like I was crazy, which, to her, I probably appeared to be. Great. Now she was going to go out of her way to avoid me and then I would never be able to tell her.
I’d run over what I was going to say hundreds of times in my head. Thousands. I’d thought about sending emails. Phone calls. Hiring a fucking sky writer. I didn’t know. Just… I had to tell her. I had to tell her so many things and she had no idea.
I mentally kicked myself all the way back to my room. Marty was out, which was nice since our room was totally quiet. I dropped my bag and flopped onto my bed. The room was an absolute mess, but I couldn’t be bothered to pick up my dirty clothes or Pop Tart wrappers or empty soda cans. Neither could Marty.
Groaning, I rubbed my hands on my face and tried to figure out how to salvage the situation with Ingrid. Fuck, she had a great name. It suited her perfectly. She reminded me of a bird. She looked light and fragile, but was so strong underneath. The most astonishing feature of Ingrid was her eyes. They were a dark brown on the outside and shaded into a lighter brown with just a tiny hint of green near her pupils. Hazel, I guess you’d say. It didn’t really matter what color her eyes were. That wasn’t the point. She was the point.
The door slammed open and I sat up.
“Hey,” Marty said, dropping his bag and slumping over on his bed.
“Hey,” I said, not sitting up.
“Whoa, what’s your deal?” he asked, picking up a shirt from the foot of his bed, smelling it and then throwing it on the floor. Both of us had clothes hampers, but they were both currently empty. We might look nothing alike, being as he was black and I was white, he was nearly six-four and hit the gym every day and I was on the shorter side for a guy and only worked out sporadically. But somehow, our personalities matched well, even though we’d been randomly paired together. He joked that the school had only accepted him to fill their “diversity” quota, but I knew that wasn’t true. He was one of those people who could spend five minutes on homework and maintain a perfect GPA.
“Nothing,” I said, getting up and going to our mini fridge to grab a soda. We’d become fast friends during summer orientation and now it was like we’d known each other for years, instead of weeks.
“Toss me one,” he said, holding his hands up. I hucked him a can and he caught it with one hand.
“You sure?” he asked, popping the top of the can and sucking the bubbling soda so it didn’t spill all over the floor. Not that the floor wasn’t already covered in crap.
“Yeah.” Marty didn’t know about Ingrid. He didn’t know much about me, really, and I wanted to keep it that way.
“Fine. Bottle it up inside. See how well that works for you. But don’t come crying to me when you burst a blood vessel or have a breakdown.” He grinned at me and drained the rest of his soda can before chucking it at the trash bin. He made it easily.
I finished mine more slowly, still angry about earlier.
“Soooo, dinner?” he asked and I realized he’d been silent, letting me fume. Marty was good like that.
“Yeah, I guess,” I said, throwing my can and missing. I got up and tossed in in.
“Are you really okay? You don’t seem okay. You know you can talk to me,” he said. I gave him what I hoped was a convincing smile.
“Sure.” I didn’t elaborate. He shook his head at me and held the door open.
The next time I walked into economics, I told myself not to look for him. Not to see him. Not to search for his brown curls.
I failed on all accounts.
There he was, sitting in the second row near the middle, an empty seat on either side of him. Ducking into a seat in the back row, I tried to make myself as inconspicuous as possible. As if he’d heard me thinking about him, his head turned and his green eyes scanned the room. I looked away, but not fast enough. He spotted me and the next thing I knew, he was out of his chair and walking up the steps toward my row.
Don’t sit next to me, don’t sit next to me.
I repeated the mantra in my head and hoped it would throw him off, but he didn’t take the hint and sat down in the seat on my right. I shifted all the way to my left, nearly falling out of my seat.
He didn’t say a word. Just acted like this was something he did every day. I looked down at my bag and calculated my chances of getting up and moving before class started.
Luck was not on my side as the professor called us to order and started scrawling on the blackboard with chalk.
What was I dealing with? I didn’t even know his name. Maybe he was dangerous. The kind of person who got obsessed with a stranger and stalked them.
I started to panic, but I didn’t want to show him. I just kept my eyes locked on the front of the room and sort of perched on the edge of my chair in case I had to bolt. My pen was no longer an instrument used for writing, but a potential weapon. Why didn’t I carry pepper spray in my bag?
Keeping my breathing even was a battle, but I was determined.
“Hey,” he said in a quiet voice. I ignored him.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
No, I wasn’t okay. I would be when he left me alone. Or, even better, vanished from campus and I never saw him again.
Gritting my teeth, I flicked my eyes at the clock. I hadn’t even been sitting here for ten minutes.
“Would you relax if I moved?” Now that was something I could answer. I gave him one jerky nod in response.
“Okay then.” As quietly as he could, he got up and moved to the next empty seat, so there was one between us. It wasn’t ideal, but at least I had some breathing room.
My second attempt to get Ingrid to talk to me was just as terrible an idea as the first. She was flipping out. She sat in her chair on high alert, her purple pen held in her fist like a knife. Making her terrified of me wasn’t part of the plan, so I moved away from her.
Slowly, she relaxed her posture and let her brown choppy hair fall between us. It just brushed the tops of her shoulders. I kept my staring to a minimum, but every time she moved, I looked.
The class ended and neither of us had taken a single note. I’d tried, but my pen had remained dormant in my hand.
She had to walk by my seat to get to the stairs. I got up and moved aside to let her by. She flicked a glance at me that I couldn’t read.
“I’m sorry,” I said, but she just stepped past me and headed up the stairs.
Strike two.
It was complete coincidence that she ended up in my economics class. I couldn’t get her schedule ahead of time, obviously, or figure out which dorm she was living in, but she’d posted what college she’d chosen on her Facebook page. It was a natural choice, since both her parents had attended.
When I’d told my mother and stepfather I’d wanted to attend a relatively small college five states away, they sat and stared at me for at least ten minutes. I’d made a list ahead of time to have answers for any of their objections, including the fact that South Maine University had an excellent political science program, a perfect major for a pre-law student.
“But why Maine?” Mom had said. I’d reiterated my reasons, but I knew she didn’t buy it. She shared a look with Ted that I didn’t understand, but they had agreed.
“Okay. If that’s what you want, that’s what we’ll do.” The following September they were there, helping me load up my car and a small U-Haul trailer with everything I would need for my new life. They drove behind me and my little brother Ike rode shotgun with me.
“Oh my God, this is the middle of nowhere,” he said, peering out the windshield as I got off the highway a
nd headed into a residential area just off campus.
“Why are you doing this, again?” He was sixteen and thought I was on something when I told him where I was going to school.
“Because I am, Ike,” I said for the billionth time.
“Whatever. I’m definitely not coming to a place like this.” I snorted.
“You’ll be lucky if you get into community college, moron.” He punched me in the leg and I wanted to retaliate, but that might have caused an accident.
When I said goodbye to Mom and Todd, she cried and didn’t want to let me go.
“You call me every night at nine, you hear? If you don’t, I’m going to call in a missing person’s report and then you’ll be sorry.” She wiped her tears and clutched Todd’s hand.
He hugged me again and Ike grudgingly told me he’d miss me. Todd and Ike got in the car and I had a moment with Mom.
“You know I love you, right?” she said.
“I know,” I said.
“I love you so much and I always will. No matter what.” We hugged again and she finally let me go.
As I watched them drive away, I tried not to cry and failed. It took me a few minutes to get my emotions under control and go up to my room to unpack.
I nearly tripped and fell down the stairs when I saw Ingrid in my economics class that first day. I might not have if it weren’t for some guys who were being loud and had drawn my attention. She was sitting near them with a lost look on her face.
It was her. Right here.
Ducking into one of the back rows, I spent the next hour watching the back of her head and trying to figure out how to approach her. So far, I was 0 for 2.
“What is your deal this week?” Marty asked that night at dinner. I shrugged and poked at my rubbery lasagna.
He rolled his eyes and went to get another soda.
“Well. Something is up with you,” he said when he came back. He had a whole group of friends that he invited me to eat with most nights, but they all had something going tonight so it was just the two of us.
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