Missing Pieces

by Meredith Tate

  Is this a game?

  “W-What the hell happened to your arm? What’s going on?”

  She balances a shopping bag of schoolbooks in the crook of her slung elbow. That’s Trace, never taking care of herself. I reach for her bag, but she pulls away.

  Why won’t she just talk to me, damn it?

  She adjusts her sling, and her plastic water bottle thumps to the ground. I bend to grab it, but when I look up, silent tears stream from her bloodshot eyes, down her wet cheeks.

  My leg quivers beneath me.

  Is she upset with me? Did I do something wrong?

  I rest my hand on her shoulder as she cries. Her body shakes, but she doesn’t make a sound. Her silence scares the hell out of me; Trace is never silent, not around me.

  “Trace, I—”

  “I can’t walk to the bus with you anymore.” Her voice cracks. “I’m so sorry.”

  She stretches for her water bottle, but I yank it away. “Why?”

  “You’re not my Partner. Sam is.”

  I furrow my brows. “Is that what this is about?”

  She bites her lip.

  “That’s stupid. You don’t even like Sam, and I mean, we have, like, three years before you have to live with him, why do you care?”

  Something burns in my chest. It’s the same burning I got last week when we danced.

  “Oh, come on, Piren, you know why. We’re not supposed to be friends, not even supposed to talk, but we do, and we’re just hurting everyone.”

  “Your arm…Did Sam do that? ’Cause I’ll beat the hell outta him, Trace, Partner or not—”

  “No! I tripped down the stairs. Veronica left her shit there, and I fell.”

  My mouth opens, then closes again.

  “Piren. Please. I can’t be the friend you want me to be.”

  “What does that even mean?” A knot clumps in my throat. “You’re…my best friend.”

  Trace blinks, wiping her wet cheek on her sleeve.

  “No, I’m not. Lara’s your best friend, your only best friend. Weren’t you listening to Mr. Wintle back in third grade? I’m your neighbor.” She straightens. “You want to borrow a vacuum, come to me. You want friendship, go to her. It’s simple.” She shrugs my hand off her shoulder. “I gotta go.”

  She snatches her water bottle and speeds off toward the bus. I can’t do anything but watch her leave.

  Tracy Bailey

  Piren never goes to the tree house anymore. At least, not when I’m there. I don’t blame him. I hurt him pretty bad. I still go sometimes. My parents think I’m out with friends. I don’t know what friends they think I have. They took away my only real friend.

  I visit the treehouse when I need to be alone, to think and catch my breath. It never lets me down. It’s secluded, where no one can bother me.

  Sometimes I’ll bring a book and curl up for hours till the light fades. Other times, I’ll lie against the thick bark, with only birds and my headphones for company. Even when the biting wind whistles through my hair, leaning against the fortress wall calms my racing mind.

  After all these years, one stubborn plastic bag remains entangled in a mass of branches; a lone parachute we never retrieved. On blustery days, harsh gusts rattle the plastic, shooting my brain to déjà vu. It tangles me up inside, flooding me with childhood memories. Sometimes I wish I could repress those memories into oblivion.

  “Intruders on the west wall! Shoot them down! Pew, pew!”

  I make a finger gun with my hand and shoot the parachute. It waves in the breeze, firmly latched to the thick branch.

  Sometimes memories feel hard and prickly in your stomach. The treehouse elicits those memories.

  I point the finger gun toward my head and pull the trigger. Pow.

  If only it were real.

  Piren Allston

  Trace hasn’t talked to me in three weeks.

  School sucks. Toni and Trace pass me in the hall. Toni waves, but Trace presses on without a word. I slam my locker shut, knots festering in my chest.

  The bus is worse. Every day, I claim a seat near the front, scooting over toward the window. I leave an extra space beside me, just in case. Trace clambers on board, buried beneath her headphones. She strides straight past me and slides into a seat in the back. The moment the bus screeches to a halt at the mouth of our neighborhood, she bolts off alone. I slog home, watching her in the distance as she zips away from me.

  For the first week, I tried. Two days after we stopped talking, I glimpsed her from the corner of my eye in the library.

  “Hey, Trace!”

  She blushed and walked past me like I was a ghost.

  Two days later, I plopped my tray down at her cafeteria table. I mustered every fiber of self-control to keep my knee from bouncing as Alan and Toni struck up conversation. Within seconds, Trace excused herself and moved to another table. She could have shot me in the gut, and it would have hurt less.

  Now when I see her, I walk the other way. I keep my eyes on the ground and force my legs to move forward. I feel robotic, talking and acting without comprehending.

  I’m guessing her family is somehow involved, but I can’t know for sure because she won’t talk to me. Mr. Bailey threatens Trace with beatings and Banishment all the time, but his threats never broke us in the past. Why is now any different?

  For the past three weeks, I’ve avoided Under Five—to avoid her.

  But I awoke this morning with a surge of adrenaline. I’m sick of being snubbed and fed up skirting around her. Why the hell does she get to dictate where I go? At the very least, I deserve a damn explanation for her sudden disinterest in our eight-year friendship. Where does she get the nerve to treat people this way?

  Rage boils inside me as I clomp to Under Five after school, ruminating a million unkind things to tell her.

  I’m going to ream her out for this. What the hell is her damn problem anyway?

  I reach the café doors, and my body freezes. My hand quivers over the door handle.

  Maybe this isn’t the best idea.

  I shuffle my feet.

  Just go in!

  I take a deep breath and tiptoe through the entrance. I flinch as the dangling bell chimes, announcing my presence to the whole damn restaurant.

  Sure enough, Trace and some others huddle around our usual booth in the back. Roars from my boisterous friends echo through the room. My heart threatens to explode in my chest. I close my eyes.

  I can do this. Breathe.

  Pulse racing, I approach the table, masking my anxiety behind a forced smile.

  That’s when I see him.

  Arm sprawled around Trace’s shoulders, Sam slumps back in my old seat. Trace leans into him, nestling her head against his chest. My stomach lurches.

  “Hey, guys!” I slide into the booth next to Alan.

  Everyone beams and greets me. Everyone except the one who matters.

  Trace’s laughter dies. She fidgets her hands in her lap, avoiding my gaze.

  I clamp my sweaty hand over my bouncing knee.

  Stop moving!

  Trace’s stories aren’t causing the commotion today. The table’s laughter spawns from Alan, rehashing tales of God knows what. I force a hollow laugh. My eyes drift to my motionless best friend. She laughs along with the crowd. It’s unlike her.

  I’m there barely five minutes when she gets up to leave, Sam towing faithfully behind.

  Tracy Bailey

  I broke down at school today.

  Mrs. Pendleton rambled on, but my mind wasn’t on Physics. Sam sat beside me, diligently scratching notes.

  “As students of scientific research, you have learned that most questions of the universe can be answered with a solid yes or no,” our teacher said. “For example, gravity gives weight to physical objects. That statement is irrefutable.” She held out her red whiteboard marker pinched between her thumb and forefinger, then released it. It fell to the floor. “There is no subjectivity of what just happened. Gravity pulled
the marker down.”

  I fidgeted my hands in my lap.

  “Yet, while science thrives on solid fact, there will always be paradoxes, and paradoxes themselves are contradictory. For example, look at the Irresistible Force Paradox. This paradox poses a question with no simple scientific answer: what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?” She retrieved the marker and jotted notes on the board. “Will the object crumble under the sheer magnitude of the unstoppable force? Or must the force succumb to the object that refuses to move?”

  Resting my cheek on my hand, I tapped my pencil against the desk.

  “Stop it,” Sam whispered.

  “I can’t focus.”

  “Well, don’t tap like that. It’s annoying.”

  “I’m just having a bad day.”

  “Well, now you’re making mine bad too.”

  “Tracy and Sam. First warning.” Mrs. Pendleton narrowed her eyes at us. She turned back to the board. “In the end, when we examine the force at work…”

  “You happy now?” Sam squeezed his pencil so tight, it snapped in half.

  I slunk further down in my chair. “Sorry.”

  At the other end of the room, Piren ran his thick charcoal pencil across his paper. Most people would think he was studying, but I knew he was doodling in his sketchpad. My lip trembled. He glanced up, and his eyes crinkled at the sides when they met mine.

  I looked away, a dry lump knotting in my throat.

  I pushed out from my chair and sprinted to the bathroom. I clicked the lock and didn’t leave the stall until the period was over.

  Piren Allston

  The brakes screech, thrusting me forward in my seat.

  “Geez, watch it.” I fling my arm out to keep from smashing into Stephanie’s headrest in front of me. “Forget seatbelts; I need a straitjacket to stay alive in here.”

  My brother’s Partner flicks her sheet of dark hair behind her shoulders but doesn’t acknowledge Mason’s crappy driving.

  “Sorry, Steph.” He puts his hand on her knee in the front seat. “That guy came out of nowhere.”

  “It’s fine.” She whips her leg out from under his hand, flashing him a smile.

  Mason lays on the gas, then slams the brakes again.

  I grab the bottom of my seat as the belt yanks me back. “Seriously?”

  “Hey!” He waves his hand back, swatting at my leg. “No backseat driving. This is the last time I drive you home from school.”

  I rub my temple at the twinge of headache prickling in my brain. “Well, at this rate, you won’t have to anyway, because we’ll all be dead before we get home.”

  “Why’d you even want me to drive you, anyway? You like the bus.”

  “Ew, why?” Stephanie says. “The bus smells like piss.”

  I rest my cheek against the cold window. “I just needed a break, I guess.”

  We turn into our neighborhood just as the bus pulls away, depositing Trace on the street. She lumbers ahead in her pink coat, headphones on, arms wrapped around her torso.

  Mason rolls down the window. “Hey, neighbor!”

  Trace gives him a weak wave. I slink down in my seat.

  “It’s chilly today,” he shouts. “You want a ride?”

  I shield my face with my hand. Just drive.

  “Oh, no thanks,” she says. “I’m good.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  The car lurches forward.

  Stephanie wrinkles her nose. “What a weird girl.”

  You have no idea.

  “Didn’t you used to be friends with Tracy?” Mason asks as we pull into our driveway.

  I sigh. “Something like that.”

  Tracy Bailey

  Reliving great memories in your head is a brief vacation from a shitty reality. When I think about my favorite memories, a particularly potent one comes to mind.

  We later referred to it as “Fat Head and Fangs’ Grand Adventure.” It happened last winter, in eighth grade.

  When I found Piren after school that day, Lara was screaming at him in the parking lot. He threw his head back as she motioned angrily with her hands. I don’t remember the cause of their fight, but it was probably something stupid. I think she was pissed he picked Alan over her to work on a chemistry project or something. Like I said, stupid.

  She propped her hands on her hips as he crossed the parking lot toward me. Grumbling, he kicked a stone under a car.

  I nudged his arm. “You okay?”

  “I don’t wanna talk about it.”

  Piren and I are the only two neighborhood kids in our grade, so we navigate the 157 bus home every day by ourselves. The route begins uptown, stops by the middle school, continues to the high school, rolls downtown, then winds up the hill to our street. Veronica takes the earlier bus with Oliver most days, and Mason drives himself home. The four of us are the only teens in the area, isolating Piren and me alone on a bus with a bunch of adults.

  Piren was so flustered that day, he didn’t even suggest a milkshake at Under Five. Given his grumpiness, I didn’t think twice before following him onto the first bus we saw. He plopped into a seat, smacking his head against the window. I slid in beside him and offered him some Milk Duds. He groaned but extended his hand.

  The bus zipped away. Attempting to cheer him up, I spun one of my notorious tales. My goal was to make Piren smile, and within five minutes, his face flushed crimson from laughing too hard. We giggled until our sides ached, oblivious to the world.

  It took a solid twenty minutes to realize our blunder. We were on the 297 bus, not the 157. The 297 beelines straight to the edge of town, where it parks until morning. We were prisoners on a one-way trip to the boonies.

  I pulled up a map on my phone, and we plotted our course home. The route would take forty-five minutes to reach a place we could transfer to the correct bus.

  “Can you believe we did that? Idiots!”

  “We? I followed you, genius.” I shoved his arm.

  “Well, I blame Lara. So there.”

  “Okay, agreed. It’s Lara’s fault.”

  An older woman hobbled aboard and took the seat adjacent to us.

  “Hey.” I poked Piren’s arm. “We have an audience.” I nodded toward the lady, who stared intently in our direction.

  He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Why is she watching us?”

  “I don’t know. Should we stare back?”

  We flashed our eyes toward the woman, and she instantly looked away. We giggled toward the window.

  After several minutes, the woman tapped me on the shoulder.

  I rotated to face her, tightening my mouth to rein in my laughter. “Hello.”

  The woman smiled. “You two make a lovely Partnership.”

  My jaw dropped.

  What the fuck?

  How does one even respond to that? Maybe it was something we should have anticipated, sitting and joking together on a bus. My heart raced. Luckily, my best friend has an answer for everything.

  He slid his arm around me. “Thank you. I think so too!”

  “What?” I mouthed, craning my neck toward him.

  He raised a brow. “Play along?”

  I smiled coyly in reply.

  “Yes, we’re very happy together,” I said, snuggling into Piren’s shoulder. “In fact, we’ve already begun planning our humongous wedding. I know it’s years away, but we’re just so excited.”

  “Oh, that’s lovely.” The woman inched closer to listen. “Tell me about it?”

  “Well,” Piren said, “Michaela here just loves the color purple, so that’ll be our theme color. Purple dresses, purple decorations, purple cake, everything purple.”

  Our new friend clapped her hands together with joy.

  I snorted. Purple always has been, and always will be, the ugliest, most vomit-inducing color in the world.

  I squeezed Piren’s arm. “And Donovan here just adores shrimp scampi, so that’ll be our dinner dish. Extra shrimp, of course, beca
use he says it just wouldn’t be a wedding without seafood.”

  Piren stifled back a phony gag. He likes seafood as much as I like purple.

  We carried on the charade for about twenty minutes. Every detail of our imaginary wedding grew more ridiculous than the last. The old woman ate it up, beaming and clapping as we talked. She was actually pretty adorable.

  Right as we were describing our glass elephant chocolate fountain, we reached the woman’s destination and bid our good-byes. She said it was lovely to meet us, and she thinks we’ll produce beautiful children.

  The moment she was out of range, we doubled over ourselves laughing.

  Before long, we arrived at the rural neighborhood where we could catch a bus home. We staggered off the bus, and a snowy gust of wind slapped our faces. January’s not ideal for standing outside. Street lamps illuminated the dark road with domes of light.

  “Bus’ll be here in fifteen,” Piren said, shivering as he studied the schedule.

  Hands in my pockets, I hopped up and down to conserve warmth. “It’s so damn cold.”

  “Hey.” He pointed to a coffee shop across the street. “Hot chocolate?”

  We pooled together our change, but only had enough for one hot beverage. We got our drink and returned to the arctic outside. Temperatures dropping, we stood amidst a dusting snowfall. Flurries swirled through the air, whooshing to the ground. We sat down on the bus-stop bench, facing each other. Our four hands enveloped the steaming cup.

  Teeth chattering, we huddled together, absorbing every possible drop of heat from the cup and each other’s frozen fingers. His hands felt nice wrapped over mine. We took turns sipping our scalding cocoa, impersonating our new elderly friend. Piren and I have a habit of creating dozens of inside-jokes, no matter where we go.

  Snow fell thicker by the minute, the sticky flakes clinging to our hair. Piren brushed the white powder off my head. I blew a handful of snow in his face.

  “How’s your hot chocolate, Partner?”

  “Great actually. How’s yours, Partner?”

  We knew the joke couldn’t follow us home, but it amused us until our bus arrived.

  We eventually made it back to town, bodies stiff, soaked to the bone, but delighted with ourselves. Our wrong-bus debacle was a grand adventure worthy of becoming our best story yet. Although we omitted the Partner joke, the drink sharing, and the hand-touching, “Fat Head and Fangs’ Grand Adventure” was a huge hit the next afternoon at Under Five.