Broken Glass

by Tabitha Freeman

  “AVA!” Jake said loudly, pinning me against the wall firmly. “Stop this! You’re not making it any easier by causing a scene!”

  “He wouldn’t leave me like this, Jake,” I whimpered, everything going blurry from the massive flood in my eyes. “He wouldn’t…” Jake pulled me to him as I began to sob uncontrollably.

  No matter how much hope I had that Pete was wrong, it wasn’t enough. An hour after my outburst, the doctor confirmed that Tyson was the one who’d been the instant fatality. He’d died as soon as his body had hit the tree. I wanted to see him, regardless, but I wasn’t allowed. There wasn’t much left of Tyson’s body, apparently, by the time they’d gotten him off the tree. When Pete had told me that he’d seen Tyson still in the tree limbs, he’d meant it literally. I’d asked for the goriest details and I’d gotten them. The limbs had gone through the love of my life, and after the paramedics had finally pulled him down, he’d been in pieces.

  We all stayed at the hospital until the next afternoon, waiting for Dean to come out of his unconsciousness. When he did wake up, I wanted to leave, so Jake drove me to my apartment. I didn’t say a word the whole way. I was stone.

  Cassie was waiting for me inside. I didn’t even look at her. I went to my room and locked the door.

  I lay in my bed for two days, until Jake and Trevor managed to unhinge my bedroom door and tell me that Tyson’s funeral would be the next day. I called my mom and told her, breaking down in a sob fit again. She knew what it was like to lose your soulmate to death. She was the only one I could be with who would understand what I was going through.

  She came and picked me up for the funeral the next day. Tyson’s mom had also called me and asked me to briefly speak at the funeral. I’d agreed, but I hadn’t planned what to say. How could I ‘briefly’ speak about the one person in the world that I would’ve spent infinity plus one with?

  There were a few of us chosen to speak in the church before going to the cemetery. First, Tyson’s little sister, Laura, spoke a few words. She lost control of her composure, but was determined to finish what she had to say about her brother, even if it was in tears. I went up to the front of the church next.

  “I was engaged to the most wonderful guy in the world,” I said, and my bottom lip began to quiver when I saw all the faces watching me. “There isn’t much I can say that you don’t already know, except that…he was so wonderful that I wanted to spend every second of every day of the rest of my life with him—” I broke down then and left the podium. I sat back down in the front pew next to Tyson’s dad. He patted me on the shoulder and took his turn to talk about Tyson.

  We went to the cemetery after the service and I watched with more tears as Tyson’s casket was lowered into that hole in the ground. It was a beautiful day outside…not a cloud in the sky. I couldn’t help but think to myself bitterly that it wasn’t my Tyson that was in that box. No, the love of my life would be buried in jumbled pieces like a puzzle left unsolved.

  I talked to one person after the funeral, and that was Laura Andrews.

  “I’m sorry,” was all I could say, hugging her. She wasn’t crying, which surprised me.

  “I don’t think any of this is real,” she said, grimly, and there was a glimmer of hope in her eyes, which were dulled over from lack of sleep…or feeling…or…lack of anything. “He’ll be back before week’s end. It’s just a nightmare. A long nightmare that you can’t seem to escape, and it doesn’t end until things are at their absolute worst.”

  I told her I loved her and left. She would be living in that nightmare for a long time.

  I stayed with my mom that night. In my wallet, there was a picture of Tyson and me. I gazed at it for hours, looking at his eyes. I’d never look into those eyes again. I’d never kiss him, hold him, tell him that I loved him, hear him say he loved me…

  I took off my engagement ring and studied it. It gleamed in the light of my bedroom. I’d never walk down the aisle with him.

  And I remembered something as I lay in bed that night, in the dark, all alone. When he’d said that he had a feeling that he might just not be there one day…he’d known it all along. And for a split second, I was angry with Tyson for leaving me.

  Three days I stayed in my room, an utter insomniac. I picked up my phone a couple of times and dialed Tyson’s number. I was hoping it would be as Laura had said, just a nightmare that took a while to wake up from. But he was gone.

  Mom wanted to talk about it with me, I could tell, but I refused. Talk about it? Would that make it better? Would that make everything okay? Would that bring Tyson back to me? No.

  On that third day, I went back to the apartment and Cassie was gone. There were two envelopes on the table addressed to me. One I could see was from Emily, by the California return address. The other just had my name on the front. I opened it first. Inside were the keys to Tyson’s El Camino and a note from Jake.

  Ava,

  It’s yours. He paid it off. The insurance papers are included. I already signed you, just call them with the necessary info. The car is at Pete’s when you’re ready to pick it up. There were only two things he ever treasured more than anything else his entire life: you and the Camino.

  Love, Jake

  I examined the keys in my hand, turning them over slowly, touching every inch of the key and the key chains. There were three key chains on it. One he’d gotten at a Sting concert, one was a shovel that had the inscription: Life’s a garden, dig it, and the last was a picture of he and I at the beach our freshman year of college.

  With the keys and Jake’s letter clutched tightly in my hand, I picked up the other envelope from Emily and went to my room. I opened Emily’s letter and sat down on my bed to read it. She didn’t know about Tyson and what had happened. She wrote that she was sorry she hadn’t responded to my last letter sooner. She congratulated me on my engagement to Tyson and went into this big long spill about how lucky I was to have found true love. I let the letter fall from my hand to the floor after I’d finished reading it and curled up in a ball on my bed. I began to cry, those keys still within the tight grasp of my fist. All I had left of him was a damn car.

  I tried to kill myself that night. Somehow, I’d managed to cry myself to sleep, and when I’d woken up, I went to the bathroom and slit my right wrist with a razor. Before I could slit my other wrist to insure that I would, in fact, succeed in what I’d set out to do, the bathroom door was flung open and Cassie rushed in. She yanked the razor away from me and dragged me out of the bathroom. She wrapped my wrist in a towel, crying and screaming through the entire ordeal. Trevor was there, too, talking on the phone to someone about me—telling whomever it was that I was out of control and needed help. The feeling of hopelessness was gone now. I was numb.

  Jake came and picked me up at around eleven-thirty that night. He said to get my stuff together, that I’d be staying with him for a while. He didn’t want to tell my mom what was going on because he didn’t want her to have to deal with that. Part of me wanted to yell at him—at all of them—for expecting me to be okay when the other half of me was dead. How did they know? How could they even imagine what it was like for me? How could they think they were doing something good in stopping me from taking my own life? What did I have to live for?

  But I did as Jake said. I didn’t have much stuff that really mattered to me. I crammed all my clothes and the stuff Tyson had given to me and all the pictures of us into a duffel bag. I also took the keys to the El Camino.

  Jake tried to get me to register for my last semester of classes in the fall. I refused. He tried to get me to go to work. I refused. He tried to get me to do anything, but every time, I just refused. I spent most of my time in the El Camino, which was parked in Pete’s garage. I just sat in it, thinking, crying, remembering all that I’d had. There was a cross and rosary beads hanging from the rearview mirror. Some old Irish woman had given them to Tyson at one of his shows for good luck. I looked at that cross for so long and I tried to pray to
God. But there was only silence ringing in my ears. Forever unanswered prayers. I ended up tearing the rosary beads and cross down from the rearview mirror and breaking them into pieces against the dash. Faith was useless without love. I had nothing, least of all love. I knew nothing of faith anymore.

  I’d carved the words infinity +1 into the metal piece on the passenger side door when riding with Tyson once. I let my fingers run over it many times while sitting in the El Camino. Ah, but now I knew that infinity was a myth. Nothing lasted forever.

  I went out to the El Camino one night, after staying at Pete’s under Jake’s supervision for about three weeks. Everyone was asleep. I stuck a sock in the exhaust pipe of the car and cranked it. As the now toxic air slowly crept around my face and engulfed my senses, I held a picture of Tyson and me in my hand. I lay my head back against the headrest of the car seat and closed my eyes. I felt myself drifting away and for the first time in over a month since I’d lost Tyson. I could really see him. I saw every detail of his face; his full lips, his bright blue eyes, the dimples in his cheeks. I could hear his laugh, I could hear him sing, I could hear the scribbling of his pencil as he wrote a song. I could smell his cologne, the shampoo he used for his hair. I felt his skin against my skin, the perfect way his hand fit in mine, his arm around my waist. I tasted his lips, the chicken and macaroni he’d used to make me when I’d had a bad day. Oh, there he was, right in front of me, smiling, holding out his hand, waiting. I reached out to him. I’m coming, Tyson, I said in my mind, mouthing the words, even. I’m coming…

  But something happened before I could get to him. Something hard hit me, knocking me away from Tyson and into a black oblivion.

  I emerged from a deep sleep momentarily, just to say his name and then my darkness was replaced with a nightmare. I was in the car with Tyson and the guys. They were laughing. Tyson unbuckled his seatbelt to take his coat off.

  “NO!!” I screamed. “TYSON!” But he couldn’t hear me. None of them heard me. There was a squealing of tires and they all screamed. Tyson’s face twisted into fear and surprise and there was a sudden jolt.

  The tree.

  I watched, and it was as if it were in slow motion. Tyson was lifted from his seat and went through the glass of the front windshield easily.

  “TYSON!” I screamed, reaching out. Suddenly, I was out of the car and in the grassy field below the road. I saw the car, turned over, with Pete struggling to get out. I looked up at the road, saw a limp figure in the tree. I ran up the hill, screaming, sobbing.

  “TYSON! TYSON! NO!”

  I stopped below the tree to look at him. His body was mangled, the limbs of the tree protruding through his back. He was like a rag doll, tattered, torn, and lifeless. I began to climb up the tree. If only I could get to him. If only I could get to him, he wouldn’t die. I could save him, I could…

  I saw his face. Unlike the rest of him, it wasn’t bloody or broken. His eyes were open, unblinking, gray. They’d lost the bright blue. They were gray and dull. The defined jaw was set forever in his last breath. He was gone.

  He was gone.

  I reached out to close his eyes with my hand, but as soon as I’d touched him, I was lurched back into total darkness again.

  7.

  I woke up two days later in a hospital bed. When I tried to open my eyes, I did so very slowly, as the brightness of it the solid white room washed over me…like I was being born again.

  There was a chair beside my bed, and in that chair sat a blonde girl in a pink blouse that seemed to match the pink puffiness of her eyes.

  “Ava!” she whispered, when she saw me looking at her. “Finally! Oh, honey, how are you feeling?”

  And then I remembered.

  “Tyson,” was the first thing uttered from my lips. And then Cassie began to cry.

  “Oh, Ava, I can’t believe all this is happening!” she sobbed, clutching my hand. I just stared at her.

  “Was I in a wreck?” I asked her, in an oddly calm voice. Cassie gave me a blank look.

  “No,” she replied, obviously surprised by my question. “Tyson was in a wreck, Ava…not you.”

  “Where is he?” I asked. I was deranged. Who’d have ever thought that it was possible to forget the untimely death of the love of your life?

  Cassie looked down and didn’t answer me. The door to the room opened then and a tall, redheaded boy stepped in.

  “Ava, you’re awake,” he said, smiling slightly. “How are you feeling?”

  “Tell me he’s not dead, Jake,” I whispered.

  “Jesus Christ,” Jake muttered, putting his head in his hand. “Ava…”

  “TELL ME HE’S NOT DEAD!!” I screeched, sitting up in the bed suddenly. A wave of dizziness hit me and I vomited unexpectedly all over myself.

  “Ava!” Cassie exclaimed, getting to her feet. “Oh, I’ll go get the nurse!” She ran out of the room and Jake got a towel from the table beside the door.

  “Let’s clean this up,” he said, wiping the puke off of me with the towel. “It’s no big deal, Ava. Just a little throw-up.”

  I grabbed hold of his wrist then.

  “He’s gone, isn’t he?” I whispered, my eyes filling with tears. Jake looked at me for a moment.

  “Yes, Ava, he is,” Jake told me quietly. “And you’ve tried to kill yourself twice because of it.”

  “Oh,” was my reply.

  “Ava, listen,” Jake said, leaning in closer to me. “You’re very sick. Do you understand that?”

  “Well, what do you expect me to be, Jake?” I asked him coldly, my eyes meeting his. “The love of my life is dead. Did you expect me to be baking cookies with the girls?”

  Jake just shook his head and walked away. The nurse rushed in with Cassie then.

  “Oooo, we’re a mess, aren’t we?” The nurse said, coming over to me. I gave her a look.

  “Why don’t you talk to me like I’m four years old?” I said dryly. The nurse looked at me as if I’d slapped her hard in the face.

  “Uh, she sat up too quickly,” Jake said. “And she threw up.”

  “We’ll get you cleaned up,” the nurse said stiffly and came over to the bed. “Can you stand up?”

  “Yeah,” I replied. I threw my legs over the side of the bed and stood up slowly. Another wave of nausea hit me, but I managed to suppress it.

  “Now, I need you to take off that gown so I can put a clean one on you,” she said.

  “Now?” I asked her.

  “Yes, honey,” she replied.

  “Would you like us to leave?” Jake asked me.

  “No, it’s fine,” I said quietly. I looked back at the nurse then. “It’s just that there’s only one person that’s seen me with my clothes off and that’s my fiancé. He was killed in a car crash.”

  The nurse stared at me and I could tell she hadn’t been informed as to why I had tried to kill myself.

  I took off my gown shamelessly and handed it to her. She handed me a clean gown and I put it on without any trouble.

  “So, tell me,” I said then. “What hospital is this?”

  “Craneville,” the nurse replied. I looked at Jake and Cassie.

  “You put me in the nuthouse?” I asked them angrily.

  “Ava, it was for the best,” Cassie argued. “Your mom—”

  “I’d rather be dead, Cassie!” I screamed. “And what about my mom, huh? Where in the hell is she now? Is she here? Is she?”

  “Yes, she is,” someone said from the doorway. I turned around.

  “Mom,” I said, slightly ashamed of my previous comments.

  “I went downstairs for a minute to get some coffee,” she told me, coming into the room. “But I see you’re up and running now.”

  “When can I leave?” I asked, going back to the bed and sitting down.

  “Oh, you’re coming home with me tonight,” Mom replied. “As soon as the doctor runs another check-up on you. But you’ll be back here every other day for therapy for a while.”

 
; “You’ve got to be kidding me,’ I said, staring dumbly at her.

  “I’m definitely not,” she said firmly. “You’re not going to pull this crap, Ava Dawn. I swear to God, I won’t let you take away all I’ve got left.”

  I didn’t reply. She came over to me.

  “Ava, look at me,” she said softly, putting her hand under my chin and tilting my head up so I would look at her.

  “I love you,” she said. “And maybe that’s not enough for you right now, but that’s what you’ve got to work with. Don’t leave me, child. You’re all I’ve got.”

  I burst into quiet sobs then and she held me to her, an unbreakable rock in the midst of a hurricane.

  I went home with mom that night at around eight-thirty. All my stuff from Pete’s house and from the apartment I’d shared with Cassie was already there. My mom had also taken the liberty of signing me up for classes in the fall. I had no intentions of going back and I told her so right away.

  “What’s the use?” I asked. “My life’s a waste.”

  She didn’t argue. She knew it was my choice, but she didn’t agree with it. Maybe she thought it was just a stage I would go through until I got over losing Tyson. Didn’t she understand? I’d never get over it. And what was the point in breathing if I couldn’t really be alive?

  I went back to Craneville two days later for my first therapy session. Now, let me take a moment to explain to you what Craneville is. It’s a psychiatric hospital in Constantine a.k.a. an asylum for wackos. I’d heard all kinds of crazy things about that place. Everything from psycho serial killers to drunks were supposedly in that hospital, and now here I was, getting therapy there.