Breathe

by Melanie McCullough

  Chapter Ten

  Abby

  The first time Tom hurt me he swore he didn’t mean it. That it was an accident. He swore even harder that it would never happen again. Of course, that, like everything else I’d wanted to believe, had turned out to be a lie.

  “I don’t know why me,” Tom had shouted at Maggie after she’d asked for the millionth time why the factory where he’d worked had decided to lay him off that morning and not one of their other three hundred employees. “I worked just as hard as everyone else there.”

  I’d walked into their argument following swim practice, tired and wet. Tom had his hand on the refrigerator door, which he kept opening and closing, and Maggie leaned against the breakfast bar, peppering him with questions he had no desire to answer. For once, she was sober. Her eyes focused, clear, and searching Tom’s face.

  “But there has to be a reason,” she argued. “Lucy Forrester said Brian got to keep his job and he wasn’t there half as long as you.”

  The pickle jar hit the wall by my head with enough force to rattle my teeth. Shards of glass scattered and a light green liquid cascaded down the wall to the tile floor. I went to wipe some brine from my arm and realized it was blood, red and gooey where a piece of broken glass had sliced through my skin. Tom helped me clean up. Took me to the emergency room for stitches. And on the car ride back home, he’d even cried. I’d reached over the center console to stroke his hair and comfort him even though I was the one who was wounded. He’d asked if I could ever forgive him and I’d told him there was nothing to forgive. That it had been an accident. I think a part of me almost believed it.

  When we got home their argument continued through the night. I shoved my iPod earbuds in my ear and tried to drown them out but the sound of the occasional raised voice or an object breaking would bleed through and wake me up.

  When I awoke the next morning, the door to the liquor cabinet hung open. Sighing, I started a pot of coffee and mopped up the kitchen floor. I had already settled down on the sofa with a bowl of cereal and some early morning cartoons by the time Tom emerged from Maggie’s bedroom. Maggie, I knew, left for work earlier that morning.

  “I made coffee,” I told Tom as he passed by the sofa on his way to the kitchen.

  “Thanks,” he mumbled in reply.

  On normal mornings Tom would grab his coffee and join me. Together we’d watch SpongeBob or some other mind-numbing program before Tom left for work and I left for practice. But this was not an ordinary morning. And Tom wouldn’t leave the house for work again. He’d be dead less than three months later.

  Things got progressively worse as the summer went on. Tom drank more and more and left the apartment less and less. Every time he had a bad interview or just a bad day, he’d find a reason to hit me. Sometimes with a belt. Sometimes he liked to use his fists. But always went for my stomach, my back. Areas he knew no one would ever see.

  One day, later that summer, he drove me to a meet in Scranton. I made the mistake of mentioning a help wanted sign I’d seen in the window of Howell’s grocery store. Tom had been going on about how badly he wanted to work but how no one was hiring. I’d foolishly thought I was being helpful.

  But when he jerked the wheel and the car jolted to a stop on the side of a deserted county road, I knew that I’d made a grave miscalculation. He sat without looking at me, gripping the steering wheel and staring through the windshield. The vein in his next enlarged, throbbed with anger.

  I attempted to apologize but the back of his hand landed across my mouth before I could get the words. I felt my lip split and he shouted at me to shut up. “I have to listen to this shit all day long from your mother. Now you?” He reached out and pressed down the knob on the cigarette lighter in the dashboard. It should have struck me as odd since Tom wasn’t a smoker, but this Tom—the one who hit me and screamed at me—wasn’t the Tom I knew. For all I knew this Tom could’ve smoked a pack a day.

  His hand clamped down on my knee, squeezing until I swore I could feel bone grinding. I bit my shattered lip to keep from crying and the warm, metallic taste of blood filled my mouth. “You’ll keep your mouth shut, you hear me?” he threatened. “You won’t say anything about it again, now will you?”

  “No,” I moaned, praying that he would release the vice grip he had on my leg. It felt like he was breaking my kneecap and I needed to be able to swim that day.

  Tom slammed my knee against the leather seat, spreading my legs until the inside of my thigh was exposed. I fought the urge to cry as his hand slid up toward the edge of my jean shorts. My heart pounded in my ears. I wanted to hit him. To run. But I sat there too terrified of what he’d do if I ran and he caught me. I’d have to go home at some point and Tom would surely be there. Maggie would never make him leave.

  He reached out with his free hand and grabbed the lighter from the dash. “No, that’s right. You won’t,” he agreed as he pressed the heated side of the lighter into the soft flesh on the inside of my thigh. I howled in pain but I didn’t cry. I would never cry. “There,” he said when he’d finished branding me. “Just a little something to help you remember.

  At the pool I treated my leg up while Garrett questioned what happened. I lied. Told him I fell and he believed me. It was one of many lies I would tell Garrett that summer. One of many lies I would tell myself.

  Chapter Eleven

  Abby

  The next day at school, Garrett and Zoe sat together at lunch, her tongue taking permanent residence in his throat. It made me sick to my stomach to watch. Garrett had kissed me just a little over a week ago. And then again on Friday. He should’ve been sitting with me. His hands on my waist. His lips on my lips. There were times—brief glances, a stolen moment—when the way Garrett looked at me made my heart hurt. I wanted to rush to him. To hold him. To beg him to pick me, but the better part of me, the part that knew he deserved more, wouldn’t allow it.

  All day long, I had trouble concentrating in class and when Mr. Lewis handed out a surprise quiz in World History I stared at the paper for 30 minutes before turning it in blank when the bell rang. I knew failing history wouldn’t look great on my transcripts for college, but my mind was in a different place. A different time. Back before Tom Ford turned sour. Back before Garrett kissed me. Back to a time when everything made sense. When I knew what I wanted. When I didn’t have to choose between swimming and my best friend.

  After school, on the way to practice, Jeff caught up to me and stopped me outside the pool building. “Look, Rhoades, about the other night,” he started but I cut him off.

  “You were drunk. I was drunk. Can we just pretend it never happened?”

  “Like start over? Clean slate?” he asked.

  I gave a slight shrug. “I don’t see why not.”

  I started walking again and Jeff followed. “So listen,” he was saying. “Homecoming’s on Friday.”

  My mind flashed to images of Garrett and Zoe making out on the dance floor. Him, dashing in a suit and tie, her in a slutty red dress, like the one she wore to junior prom.

  “What of it?” I replied.

  “Well, I was thinking, you know, since we’re starting over and everything,” he rambled on. “And, well, Garrett and Zoe are back together so, I thought maybe you and I could go to homecoming together.”

  “You want to go to the dance with me?”

  “If you want to. I mean we could do something else instead. A movie or something. I just thought—,”

  “No, the dance is great. I mean, it sounds like it’ll be fun.”

  When I told Becca about it later, she practically vaulted over the bar to hug me. “Oh, we have to go buy you a new dress,” she squealed. I waved the rag I’d been using to wipe down tables in her face. “I’m working, remember?” I reminded her.

  “Tomorrow then.” She said it matter-of-factly and I knew I had no choice. She would dress me in taffeta and heels and I’d have to pretend to like it.

  When my shift was over, I walked
to the river thinking about Garrett. Three more messages and still not a single return call. I wondered if he was done with me, if, finally, he’d had grown tired of my bullshit. I couldn’t blame him. I’d chosen swimming over his friendship. I knew without a doubt he’d have never done the same thing to me. He’d broken up with Zoe for me when she’d issued a similar ultimatum to the one I received from Coach Scott.

  I sat down along the edge of a public dock and removed my shoes. It was far enough away from the spot where they’d found Tom’s body to pretend I wasn’t haunted by that night. To pretend I didn’t wake up in the middle of the night drenched in my own sweat and gasping for air.

  Chapter Twelve

  Garrett

  Around midnight Abby knocked on my bedroom window, rousing me from sleep. I got up from bed, wearing only my boxers and smashed the heel of my palms into my eyes to rub away the sleep. “What are you doing, Ab?” I asked her through the screen that separated us. I looked out at the rooftop. “How did you get up here?”

  “I climbed.”

  In the glow of the moon, I could see that she was soaking wet and shivering. Must have come straight from the river. “You must be freezing,” I said as I lifted the screen and helped her inside.

  “You didn’t give me time to explain,” she blurted out.

  I locked my bedroom door, moved to the closet to get her some dry clothes and thought of the way she’d looked in my sweater in the truck. The sweater had never made it back to me so I grabbed another and handed it to her, wondering if she still had the one from that night. If she ever looked at it or wore it. If she remembered its significance. Or if meant nothing to her. Just another piece of cloth. “Explain what?” I asked.

  “Why I didn’t get in the truck with you,” she replied. “You just ran back to Zoe like…like…”

  “Like what happened between us didn’t matter? Like the way you’ve been treating me since it that night?”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “With everything that’s going on, what did you expect? That one kiss would change everything? Fix everything? Tom is dead and it’s my fault. Sheriff Wilson is breathing down my neck. And the biggest event of my life is happening this Saturday and my swimming partner’s quit on me. That’s what’s not fair.”

  “I’ve quit on you? That’s how you think this played out? I think your perspective’s a little skewed, Abby. Not everything’s about you.”

  “I didn’t come here to fight with you.”

  I sat down on the bed with a defeated sigh. “Then what did you come here for?”

  She walked over to me and dropped the sweater to the floor before wrapping her arms around my neck. Her hair was wet and it danced across my shoulders. She bent her head down and kissed me. I tried to resist at first. I didn’t want to give into her mood swings. I wanted her to realize that she couldn’t keep jerking me around. Either she wanted me or she didn’t. I didn’t need this shit.

  But after a few seconds, my hands betrayed me and moved to the small of her back. Pulled her to me. The traitorous, stupid bastards. She leaned into me, straddling me on the bed, and pushed me down against the comforter. I moved my palms up her back, pulled her wet shirt off over her head, then lost my hands in her hair. I felt her hand slide from my neck, down my chest, to the front of my boxers. She rubbed and I grew hard against her palm. I groaned and clasped her by the wrist, halting her. “Abby, no,” I said.

  She moved to kiss me on the mouth but I turned my head. “Why not?” she asked.

  “Not like this.”

  “But I love you.”

  “I know,” I replied and I was sure she did. “But sleeping with me isn’t going to change the way I feel. It isn’t going to make everything okay.” She rolled off and lay beside me, both of us staring at the ceiling, afraid to look the other in the eye. “Because tomorrow morning,” I continued. “You’re still going to choose swimming over me. You’ll do it every time. And next fall you’ll choose Penn State over me. You’ll always choose something else—something you think is better—over me.”

  “What if I told you I’d choose you?”

  “I’d know you were lying. That you were only trying to make me happy.” I rolled onto my side to look down at her. “I’m always going to be Little Bend, Abby. Or some small town just like it. You’re not. I’m the guy girls like you leave behind so you can go off and marry your doctors and your lawyers. I think deep down we both always knew that. And I’m not going to be the guy who holds you back. I can’t be that guy, Abby. I won’t have you hate me.”

  She was silent for a long time and I wondered what she was thinking. “Do you want me to go?” she finally asked.

  “You probably should.”

  “But do you want me to?”

  “No,” I admitted and she got off the bed. The lamp on my desk was still on and I could see her body in the light. All the various shades of bruising. Everything Tom had done to her inking her body, like fucked-up tattoos. She slipped my sweater on over her head and dropped her shorts to the floor before crawling back into bed to lie next to me, fitting herself into the crook of my arm and laying her head on my chest.

  I lifted her shirt and bent to kiss the bruises on her stomach, her side. “I’m sorry,” I whispered to her skin.

  “For what?” she asked, running her fingers through my hair.

  “For letting him hurt you.”

  She kissed my forehead. “You didn’t know.” We fell asleep like that—my head on her abdomen. Glued together, warm and content, and I prayed that she was right. That I hadn’t simply ignored the signs. That I hadn’t seen the bruises. But a swimsuit only covers so much and Abby’s skin was so very white. How could I not have seen? I should have known. I should have put an end to Tom Ford before he had the chance to hurt her. Before he had the chance to break her.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Abby

  After practice on Wednesday I waited for Becca outside the bar. “You should watch yourself. That thing looks rabid,” a voice from behind me warned.

  I turned my head slowly while keeping my hand still until Charlie finished licking up the last of the crumbs. Didn’t want to lose a thumb. “He’s harmless,” I replied, deciding to leave out the part about his wariness of strangers. As far as I was concerned, Paul Ford could figure that out all on his own. Maybe even lose a finger or two in the process.

  Though their uniforms were nearly identical, Paul was far less intimidating than the sheriff. He was shorter and stockier, with shoulders that were rounded and hunched instead of square and strong. His uniform hung incorrectly from his frame. It wrinkled and bunched in areas where it should lay flat and straight. He was also far less attractive than his brother had been. Paul Ford seemed more suited to Maggie than Tom had at first.

  Brushing my hands off on my jeans, I got to my feet and turned to face Paul. “I’ve already told the sheriff everything I know,” I informed him.

  “You see, Abby,” he replied, removing his hat and wiping his brow before placing it upon his head once more. “No one’s really buying that. Least of all, me.”

  At that moment with Paul Ford staring me down in the dark, empty alleyway behind my uncle’s bar I felt as cold and alone as I had that night when Maggie wanted to make snow angels. I’d never been alone with Paul Ford before but I’d been around him enough to notice the way he looked at me. As if the mere fact that I was female somehow made me less than. I waited for him to speak, terrified of what might come out if I opened my mouth first. Nothing about the situation was right. I shouldn’t have been there. Not alone with Tom the night he died. Not alone in that alley with his brother.

  I heard her footsteps approaching long before Paul did. Some kind of cop that made him. “Paul,” she said as she removed a pack of cigarettes from her purse. “Customers are supposed to use the front entrance.” It was one of the few times in my life that I was truly grateful to have Maggie show up somewhere.

&nb
sp; “I’m not here for a drink Maggie,” he replied. “Abby and I were just having a chat.”

  Maggie slipped a cigarette from the pack and into her mouth before going for the matchbook she’d shoved between the cigarette box and the plastic liner. She lit the cigarette and the light colored her face as she cupped the match. “I’m pretty sure Cody’s already heard everything she has to say,” she told him through a cloud of smoke.

  “The way I hear it she told him nothing before your bear of a brother came barreling through the station.”

  Maggie leaned against the wall, puffed on her cigarette, and exhaled in Paul’s face. She almost looked beautiful. Her blonde hair clean and pulled off her face in a loose ponytail. “Maybe nothing’s all she’s got to say,” she replied.

  “You and I both know that’s not true,” he snapped and I wondered to what he was referring. What exactly was it that they both knew? Did it have to do with them finding Tom’s car? Did Sheriff Wilson know something he wasn’t telling me?

  Behind me, Charlie snarled as Paul pressed one hand against the fence and wrapped his fingers around a chain link. Paul didn’t seem to notice. “You and I both know she was the last person to see my brother alive.”

  “And how exactly would it be that you and I would have any idea who the last person to see Tom was? For all I know, it could’ve been you. Hell, it could’ve been me.”

  “No,” Paul replied and looked me dead in the eye. “It’s this little girl right here. She’s hiding something and I plan on finding out what.”

  Charlie barked and snapped, and when Paul wrenched his hand free, blood trickled to the ground. “Son of a bitch,” he swore at the dog and drew his hand to his mouth. “I’ll have you put down.”

  “Serves you right,” Maggie laughed. “Trying to intimidate a child the way you were. I’d have done it myself, I’d have had the teeth for it.” She dropped her cigarette to the blacktop and ground it out with the toe of her heel. “You wanna come inside,” she asked. “I’ll clean it up for you.”