Missing Pieces

by Meredith Tate

  “Your hands are like ice,” he said, squeezing my frozen fingers in his hands.

  My eyes drifted to the television, glowing softly in the background. “I love this show.”

  “With the cartoon snowmen?” He grinned. “You would.”

  Teeth chattering with residual cold, I wrapped the blanket tighter around my body.

  “Here.” He ripped off his sweatshirt. “Put this on.”

  We sat for hours, my hands in his, talking about everything and nothing all at once. It was like no time at all had passed. When my eyelids grew heavy, he tucked me in, under layers of blankets.

  “After midnight.” He brushed hair off my forehead with his hand. “Merry Christmas.”

  “Merry—” I let out a roaring yawn “—Christmas.”

  As I succumbed to sleep, one single thought settled in my brain: Safe. I feel safe.

  I committed a crime when I kissed him; he committed a crime when he kept me. If anyone learned what he did for me, he’d have been Banished within hours. He risked everything, just to protect me. He shouldn’t have been kind to me. He shouldn’t have cared if I froze to death. Hell, he shouldn’t have cared for me at all that night. But he did.

  Reliving the memory in my head simultaneously churns my stomach and puts me at ease.

  I can’t talk to him again. Can’t be his friend again. Can’t hurt him again.

  It’s my turn to protect him. If I’m in his life, I’ll only hurt him.

  And he deserves so much better than that.

  Piren Allston

  Work sucks. I applied for a Placement transfer seven times, but no one takes me seriously. Lara insists she can get me a job at the printing plant, and I tell her I can’t stand the smell of rubber stamps, but really I can’t stand being around her. Whenever I see her I feel angry.

  I come home from work, and she’s there, sitting on the damn couch, not saying anything, not doing anything, just sitting. Staring. Useless. Boring. Nothing. It sickens me. We have nothing together. Nothing.

  Tracy Bailey

  Toni grabs my arm. “Please come!”

  “I don’t know.” I pry her vicelike grip off me. “Bachelorette parties aren’t really my thing.”

  “Come on; it’ll be fun,” she pleads. “I’ll be trashed the whole time.”

  “Well, that doesn’t surprise me.”

  She puckers her lips. “How can you say no to this face?”

  “Easily.”

  “Pleeeeease?”

  I know her tricks. The real question is not “will you attend my bachelorette party?” but rather “will you be my designated driver?”

  “I don’t know…”

  My phone vibrates in my back pocket, and I startle. One new text message: Sam.

  Ryan coming over 4 multi-player tonight.

  I release a winded groan. Last time Sam and his stupid friend Ryan joined video game forces, I fell asleep to the sounds of digital gunshots and screaming curse words. It took me two weeks to remove a beer stain from our white couch.

  Great.

  I shove my phone back in my pocket. “Fine. I’ll come.”

  Toni squeals and throws her arms around me.

  “It’ll be so much fun,” she says. “You’ll see!”

  “Sure.”

  Four hours later, we arrive at a dive bar called Chevy’s. It smells exactly as dank as I expected when I laid eyes on the water-logged awning outside.

  Eight girls attend, several of whom I haven’t seen in years. It’s a big, unwanted, high school reunion. The girls I don’t know are from the deli where Toni has her Placement.

  Within forty minutes, everyone’s tipsy and blathering about how their wedding plans are better than everyone else’s. I’m perched on a bar stool in the corner, swirling my bendy straw around in my Sprite. I prop my head up with my hand.

  One of Toni’s work friends shrieks at the other end of the bar. I jerk my head up. Several girls giggle around a table, taking turns modeling a baseball cap they stole off a drunk guy’s head.

  Ew! I crinkle my nose. Apparently hygiene goes out the window when you’re trashed.

  “Hey!” I lunge toward them. “Don’t touch that!”

  I rip the hat from the girl’s hands and plop it back down on the man’s head. He nibbles a plate of buffalo wings, orange sauce dripping off his fingers.

  “Aw, this bitch is a killjoy,” he says, taking a long sip from his beer.

  I point at him. “Shut up.” I turn my finger toward Toni’s friend. “That’s nasty, don’t do that.”

  She flips me her middle finger. I sneer at her and return the gesture. The others howl and jeer, slurring something incoherent about sobriety being “for bitches.”

  “Yeah? Keep talking, you can drive your own drunk asses home.” I stride back to my corner of the bar.

  Story of my life, I’m babysitting drunks. If one of them pukes, I’m not cleaning it up.

  An hour passes, and the overall sobriety of the room steadily declines. Some of the girls disappear outside, while others prop each other up and engage in semi-coherent conversations.

  “Tracy! Shots!” Toni slides one down the bar to me.

  I fling out my hand, stopping the glass mid-slide before it shatters into the wall.

  “No thanks. I don’t drink.”

  “Sure you do. Everybody drinks.” She wobbles in place, beer bottle in one hand, shot glass in the other.

  “No, they don’t. If it’s all the same, I’ll just watch.”

  “Whee!” She knocks her shot back in a single swoop.

  “How many was that? New personal record?”

  “I dunno. I’m trashed,” she slurs, dropping her empty glass onto the bar with a clank. I’m guessing she’s about one shot away from a head injury.

  “No kidding. I noticed you were double fisting. Take a seat.”

  I pull her butt down onto the nearest stool. She snatches my undrunk shot and shoots it back herself, spilling her beer all over the counter in the process.

  Typical. I go home, I get drunks. I come out, I get drunks. I’m surrounded.

  “I’m marrying Alan,” she says, a smile spreading across her flushed face.

  I steady her tipping beer glass. “Yes, next week. First one in our class. I can’t wait.”

  “Meee too!” Her squeaky voice reaches a new decibel.

  “Yes…Why don’t I get you some water…”

  “And then is yooouuur wedding!” She steadies herself against the counter. “And then…Amanda’s…and then…Lara’s!”

  I swallow hard. “Yep.”

  “Lara’s a big bitch, though,” she says. “Going to her cousin’s wedding over mine.”

  “The nerve,” I mumble.

  “I looove weddings, Tracy. Don’t you?” She links my arm, her stool rocking onto two legs.

  “Sure.” I grab her elbow to stabilize her.

  “We’re getting married,” she says through a hiccup.

  Yeah, thanks, I heard you the first twelve times.

  Her “Bride-To-Be” tiara tilts over her forehead, obscuring her eyes. She reaches out to push it back onto her head but completely misses and snorts out drunken laughter. “Your wedding’s soon too. Gotta get you one of these crowns.”

  A gust of rage shoots through me.

  I’m sick of doing this. It’s insanity. My whole life is insane.

  Lara and Piren’s stupid little wedding is in a few stupid months. I’m going to have to sit there and watch and be just so utterly thrilled for them.

  “But they’re such a lovely couple!” I say, mimicking Mrs. Riley.

  Toni’s forehead creases. “Who?”

  My mind goes blank. Ummm…

  “You and Alan.”

  “Ohhh, wheee!” She downs another shot. “Barkeep, hit me up! Vodka, stat!” Her voice grows simultaneously raspier and louder with each beverage. “Last night out for this girl!”

  I highly doubt that.

  The bartender slides
two shot glasses down the bar to us. One stops inches from my hand, sloshing clear liquid over the side.

  It’s right in front of me. Right there in my miserable existence. It cures everyone else’s misery, why not mine?

  Fuck it.

  I tighten my hand around the glass and slurp down the shot.

  And then a second.

  And then a third.

  “Go Tracy, go!” Toni hollers. “Yeah!”

  The liquid burns flowing down my throat, but I don’t care. I love it all.

  One hour and eight shots later, the edges of the room blur together into a dizzying glob. Warmth floods my body straight down to my toes. I can’t stop giggling.

  “I’m gonna drink you under the table, bitch.” Toni shoots back tequila.

  Only semi-cogent, I lean on the trashed bride-to-be and break into a string of hiccups. “Your tits are…falling…out of your top.” I squint my eyes to steady the spinning bar. “You whore.”

  “Tequila, good sir!” Toni pounds her fist on the counter. She doesn’t bother to adjust her shirt.

  The bartender slides two more shots to us. We knock them back.

  “Tell me a secret,” Toni says, gripping my elbows.

  “I hate purple,” I say a little louder than intended.

  “Shhh!” the barkeep hisses.

  We cover our mouths and snicker.

  “You tell me one.”

  She giggles, pulling my ear to her lips. “I fucked Alan. Twice. And we aren’t married.”

  “What! No!”

  Maybe a good, illegal, pre-wedding fuck is common these days. Plus, it’s Toni and Alan. I suppose it’s shocking they waited this long.

  “I know, shhh.” Her pink cheeks redden at her confession.

  We down another shot. It singes my throat and burns all the way into my belly, and I savor it. I want to drown in the wonderful amber liquid. I could fly home.

  “I could fly home!” I announce, flapping my arms.

  Toni roars with laughter, nearly toppling to the floor. “So much for being my DD, you drunk slut.”

  The barkeep shakes his head and strides to the other end of the bar, leaving us alone.

  “I’ve got a secret,” I whisper. “I hate my family.”

  “What!” She giggles into her hands. “I’m gonna Banish your crazy ass.”

  “They’re crazy cuckoo.” I dance around on my stool.

  “You can’t hate your family, Tracy. No no no. That shit’s bad.”

  “I love my sister. That’s. It.”

  It’s illegal, and I don’t care. Toni committed an equally offensive crime. We’re both sinners.

  “Veronica and I…How’d we end up in this fucked up family? How?” I wrap my arm around Toni’s shoulders. “They all suck. This world sucks.”

  “I’m tired.”

  “Stop moving. You have five heads.”

  Vision crossed, the room glides by as I veer into my friend’s side.

  My drunk homecoming will shock Sam. For some sick reason, I can see him enjoying it.

  “Sleepy time, Tracy…” Toni leans closer to me, then collapses face-down in my lap. Her legs dangle off the stool. Dozens of empty seats and tables surround us.

  Where the hell did everyone go?

  I stroke my friend’s hair, fighting to force open my heavy eyelids. Liquor seeps through my bloodstream, submerging my body in a peaceful haze.

  I shift in my seat, and nausea swirls in my stomach. I press my fingers to my lips until the wave passes.

  “Ten minutes, ladies,” the bartender says wiping a rag down the counter. I ask him to call us a taxi and hand him my credit card to settle the tab. He disappears into the back room to make the call, leaving my drunk friend and me alone at the bar. My buzz unleashes a thought that torments my sober brain.

  “Secrets…? You want secrets, Toni? I’ve got one for you…” My words slur in a drunken jumble. Unconscious in my lap, Toni’s dead to the world.

  “I love Piren Allston,” I whisper to nobody. Then I puke all over the clean bar.

  Piren Allston

  Red Xs on the kitchen calendar greet me when I open the fridge. My eyes catch the date, and a stone drops in the hollow pit of my stomach.

  Trace’s wedding is in two weeks.

  The date snuck up on me. I haven’t bought them a gift. What do you buy your estranged best friend to celebrate the happiest day of her life? Cash? A toaster? I don’t know what they want or need, because I don’t know her anymore.

  I lie corpselike on the couch, my face buried behind a book I’m not reading. My eyelids hang low, blurring the words on the page.

  Lara twists her fingers through her hair, compulsively dusting the same spot on the coffee table. Every few seconds, her eyes dart toward me, then immediately back to the table. We haven’t spoken in hours.

  She tried her usual slew of “what’s wrong?” and “let’s talk!” but I can’t do anything except stare silently at the pages that might as well be blank. I have no energy to speak.

  Lara puts down her duster and cuddles up to me on the couch. She nestles into my arm, but I can’t bring myself to drape it over her. My weak limbs lie still at my sides.

  She clears her throat. “I talked to my mom; she knows this woman Kasey who could play violin for our processional. I asked if we could hear a sample, ’cause I heard she’s good, and…”

  Lara chatters on and on and blah blah blah. I don’t give a shit.

  I press the book to my nose. Lara slides closer.

  “…And she’s got a good résumé, and I think…”

  I clench my teeth, letting her words float straight through my body.

  She’s insufferable. All she does is complain and fixate over stupid details of our stupid wedding. I swear, she hasn’t said one damn thing this whole month not involving some mundane detail of the occasion. I don’t even hear her anymore. When she talks in that whiny voice, I want to blow my brains out.

  “…And I know she’s young, but Mom says she’s been taking classes since she was four, and she’ll give us a discount of—”

  “I’m going out.”

  I spring to my feet. I have no idea why I said that. I have nowhere to go, but the words fell out of my mouth before I could stop them.

  “What?” Lara leaps off the couch and puts her hands on her hips. “Piren, this is our night in. We’ve got wedding stuff to do. You know that. Honestly, if you just—”

  I blaze past her and out the door. No coat, barely got my shoes on, but I’m out.

  I expect her to rush after me, screaming, but she doesn’t. A dull ache splinters through my brain as I climb into my car. I press my throbbing forehead to the steering wheel.

  What the hell is wrong with me?

  I straighten up and glimpse my reflection in the rearview. Bags the size of walnuts droop underneath my bloodshot eyes.

  I look like shit.

  I drive with no destination in mind and wind up at the entrance to my parents’ neighborhood. The place rips me open like an old wound. I tap the gas and press forward, because why not twist the damn knife a little deeper?

  Lights glimmer from my parents’ house. Maybe I should stop in, but I don’t want to explain why I’m alone tonight.

  Ghosts of my childhood linger here, in the form of Trace’s and my tiny bodies, scribbling across my parents’ driveway in a carefree world. The images fade, replaced by visions of the morose, adult version of myself, alone.

  Life was so uncomplicated back then.

  I park by the forest and hike through Harker’s Woods. Stiff grass and pointy twigs scrape up against my jeans as I traipse down the overgrown path. The familiar scent of sap and bark drifts through my nostrils, pouring calmness into my body.

  I can breathe here.

  As the crisp evening air darkens, sunlight fades into the horizon. The growing gibbous moon lights my path, as if beckoning me to hide away amongst the trees. Pushing through a mound of mangled underbrush, I step into th
e familiar clearing.

  Frozen in time, my sanctuary waits. Each board exactly as I remember, the treehouse balances on the same thick branches. It’s as if an image plucked straight from my childhood memories traveled through time and materialized in my adult world.

  I was a king here once. An explorer. A pirate. Anything I wanted to be.

  With her.

  I run my fingers across the rough bark, in and out of every crevice, until I find the ladder. Rushed with adrenaline, I climb the familiar rungs, reaching the top in record time. I hoist myself onto the empty platform, and my heart swells. The last time I was here, the joy of finding Trace alive, shivering at the top, almost reduced me to tears. This time, I’m alone.

  Stars twinkle above, offering their comfort as I stare into the abyss.

  I wish I could sprawl out under a blanket and fall asleep to the sound of crickets.

  I sink to the floor and lie back against the boards, inhaling the oaky aroma. Neglected for years, pine needles overrun the treehouse floor, crusted with sap and leaves. I grab a handful of invading twigs and toss them over the side of the fortress.

  “Protect the west wall! Psshhh.” My inner child cackles with delight.

  Trace and I carved our initials here once. King and Queen of the castle, we needed to mark it as our own. As if drawn by an invisible magnet, my eyes instantly find the spot.

  A jagged heart encircles our initials.

  I jolt back. A shallow breath catches in my throat.

  Trace is the only person who knows about this place. She’s the only one who could have done this.

  My fingers graze the carved message, and a feeling I can’t describe washes over me like a tidal wave.

  Trace.

  Tracy Bailey

  Sam left for his bachelor party hours ago, boasting his elaborate plans for inebriation. He thinks I’m at my bachelorette party, but I lied. I planned a better party for myself tonight, the kind where I’m the only guest. Plus, after Toni and Alan’s overcrowded wedding last night, I need a break from people.