Fracture

by Megan Miranda

  I wasn’t breathing. The edges of my vision started to go fuzzy from lack of oxygen. I remember Decker’s hands on the sides of my arms and his voice to Janna, saying, “Okay, okay,” and him pulling me out into the air. And I remember everyone staring. I remember Decker getting my bright red coat and hanging it over my shoulders and everyone staring some more as I slid my way down the steps, fresh blood on old snow.

  Decker opened the passenger door and pushed me inside. “Is this why you didn’t want me to come?” I said once I found my voice. “You knew?” They had all saved my life, and I hadn’t saved his. Like Decker thought, it was a trade. It was a trade that no one else would’ve agreed to.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. He leaned across me to turn on the car and crank up the heat, and I resisted the urge to reach out and touch him. To ask him to stay with me. He stood at my open door, one hand on the hood of the car, and looked back and forth between me and the funeral home. He sighed and shut the door.

  While everyone grieved together inside, I thought of all the things I should’ve done but didn’t do. I should’ve told Carson flat out. I should’ve called for help before we got in the car. I should’ve continued on to Kevin’s house, where everyone could’ve tried to help. Where everyone could’ve shared the blame. Would any of it have made a difference?

  This was why my parents hadn’t come. They weren’t busy. They weren’t selfish. They knew. It should’ve been them grieving. It should’ve been them accepting condolences. It should’ve been them with the dead child in the casket.

  I opened Decker’s emergency cooler because it was an emergency. I tossed bags of food and bars of chocolate onto the empty seats, and I hurled a can of soda at the back window. Something in the trunk punctured the aluminum, and a long, steady hiss of air escaped. I tossed the roadside flares aside and found my nearly forgotten vial of pain medication. I popped the top and swallowed a pill dry, feeling the slow path it took down my esophagus.

  I waited for it to work, which it didn’t. Which it wouldn’t. This wasn’t a cracked rib or a massive headache or a burn on my palm.

  Troy was right. I couldn’t save them. The best I could hope for was to ease their suffering.

  So I slid across the emergency cooler, readjusted Decker’s seat, and tore out of the parking lot.

  I drove out of town and into the valley again, where I’d felt that pull, where I’d seen that old woman. I drove down the narrow street to the yellow house with the white curtains. I pulled to a stop and stepped outside. I was going to ease her suffering.

  I crossed the street and smelled fresh asphalt. I walked up the rotting wooden steps to the wraparound porch, hearing my steps echo in the hollow space underneath. The rocking chairs were still, even though there was a breeze. Like the ghosts were leaning forward in their chairs, watching me.

  The white curtains were pulled shut. There was no hollow face at the window, watching me. Something was wrong. I didn’t feel anything coming from the house. I stood in front of the brown door, my hands pressed flat against it. Then I pressed my finger to the doorbell and listened to its electrical buzz resonate through the house, knowing there’d be no answer.

  Then I squeezed my eyes shut because someone was walking up the steps behind me, and I knew exactly who it was.

  “They came for her a half hour ago,” Troy said.

  I spun around and clenched my fists at my sides. “What did you do?” I said through my teeth.

  Troy hunched his shoulders forward as a stiff breeze blew across the porch. “Does it matter?” Then he cocked his head to the side and said, “What are you doing here, Delaney? What were you planning to do?” His eyes looked even bluer, like he was seeing something. Hope, maybe. But then I realized that all he was hoping for was that I was becoming exactly like him. And I didn’t know how to explain what I was going to do—what I had hoped to do.

  So I said, “I was planning to stop you,” and pushed past him, ran down the rickety steps, and took off. But instead of going home, I circled the block, parked behind the house, and watched. Something still called to me. So I sat and I watched, but nothing happened. And eventually I only felt the emptiness. Everything about it was dead.

  The sun was setting when I made it back to Decker’s house. I pulled his car back into his driveway and tried to adjust the seat for his height. Then I crawled into the backseat and began to clean the mess. Soda had leaked all along the floor of the trunk and dribbled down the back window. I was collecting the trash from the floor when Decker slid open the side door.

  I froze, candy bar in one hand, dented soda can in the other.

  “You stole my car.”

  I shoved the candy and empty can into my coat pockets. I didn’t want to talk about the funeral. “Stop calling it a car. It’s a minivan. You’re in denial.”

  He tried not to smile, but he did, I saw it. “And you trashed it.”

  “How can you even tell? When’s the last time you cleaned this piece of crap?”

  We waited, not sure what to say or whether to say it. “So,” I said, “get some paper towels and Windex and give me a hand already.” And Decker, whether relieved or disappointed by our lack of conversation, listened.

  He sprayed, I rubbed. He even laughed when I chucked the dirty paper towel in his face.

  “So listen,” I said. “What I said yesterday?”

  “You don’t have to do this.”

  Except I did. I just couldn’t figure out how to undo it. How to cancel it out. How to tell him how I felt. And as I was thinking, Decker said, “I’m fine, Delaney.”

  And there it was. He was fine being with Tara. Fine with us the way we were. He was going to be fine without me.

  So I slid open the passenger door, said, “I’m glad,” and left.

  I stood on my dark doorstep and watched Decker finish cleaning his car under the overhead light. I strained my eyes across the street, into the darkness. I knew Troy was out there. I knew he was waiting for me.

  I went inside and locked the door securely behind me. I even locked my bedroom door, just in case. And I watched out my bedroom window until Decker made it back inside. Just in case.

  Chapter 18

  I slept in like a typical teenager, except I wasn’t a typical teenager, and I never slept this late. The smell of Mom cooking breakfast usually woke me up way earlier than this. When I got downstairs, Dad was fidgeting around the kitchen, scrounging for food, and it was obvious that Mom hadn’t made it downstairs yet.

  “I’m kind of pathetic on my own,” Dad said. “I had cereal for breakfast. Now I’m thinking about toast for lunch.”

  I turned for the pantry. “I can do it, Dad. What do you want?”

  He looked at me carefully, and I tried to bury my face in the pantry—hiding my bloodshot eyes, my face swollen from tears. “Delaney,” he said. “How was the funeral?”

  “Horrible,” I sputtered. “Isn’t that how funerals are supposed to be?” Then my breath started coming too rapidly and he put down the loaf of bread.

  “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “Let’s go out for lunch.”

  “Where’s Mom?”

  “Still sleeping,” he said, casting a glance toward the counter. I followed his gaze and noticed my vial of medicine on the counter, not hidden away above the fridge. I opened my mouth, but before I could talk, Dad cut me off. “Subs. I could go for a sub. You up for it?”

  “I’m up for it.”

  We drove to the next town over, to the street where Dad worked, where the sandwich makers all knew him.

  “I remember you, sweetie,” one of them said. “’Course, you were just about this high last I saw you.” She raised her hand to her waist. I smiled, trying to be polite, and followed Dad to our booth. But I felt her watching me while I ate my turkey sub. I didn’t know whether she was staring at me because I used to look a lot different or whether she was staring at me because I used to be dead. Either way, it messed with my appetite.

  So I shot my
head up and stared at the woman behind the counter. But I was wrong. She wasn’t looking at me, she was looking at Dad. I didn’t notice anything different about him, any reason for him to be stared at. His hair was still gelled enough to withstand a tornado. He still went to work every morning, dressed in his usual attire. He still got way too enthusiastic when he talked about money. And I didn’t think he needed to be medicated for sleep. He picked at his sandwich, and for the first time, I noticed the faintest black circles under his eyes.

  He cleared his throat. “Go order something for your mother.”

  I shook my head. “Tell me what to get . . . I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?” He brushed his hands over his tray, leaned back, and said, “No, I guess you don’t know, do you?”

  Everything began to close—first my stomach, then my chest, then my throat. Dad was speaking to me like I was someone else.

  “Well, you should know,” he continued. “One day, when she was younger, your mother left home and never went back. Just . . . walked out the front door and never returned. And I think maybe she thinks—she thought—the same thing was happening to her as a parent. Some sort of karma. Obviously, not the same situation at all, but it’s her deepest fear.”

  “She just left?”

  “I guess I shouldn’t say ‘just.’ There are many different types of abuse. Some are more obvious than others. Her father—your grandfather—was obsessive about the home, and everything inside it, including your mother. And his punishments were mental. He’d throw out her clothes if she didn’t do her laundry. Forbid dinner if there were crumbs on the carpet. And one day, the last day, when she was about your age, she missed curfew. When she got home, he locked her in the basement with no way out. Locked her in for that night and the entire next day. When he unlocked the door the next night, she didn’t come out at first. She just waited. I guess she decided that that was enough. So she walked through the living room, walked right past him sitting on the couch, and left. Hopped around from friend’s house to friend’s house, moving farther and farther away. And she never went back.

  “So maybe that will help you understand her,” he said. I stared at the menu over the counter because I didn’t know where else to look. “You didn’t know that,” he said, “but you do know her.” He patted my hand, so I could feel his logic. If he believed that I still knew my mother, he believed I was the same Delaney. “You know her,” he repeated.

  I got up to order, and I realized I knew something else—something Mom didn’t tell him. She didn’t leave because of her father. She’d told me as much. She left because of her mother. Her mother who did nothing while she was locked in the basement.

  Who else was sitting on that couch when she walked out of her house for the last time? Her mother, doing nothing? Like me, Mom understood that nothing could be worse than anything real. Like the dark. Nothing can be the most terrifying thing of all.

  When we pulled into the driveway, I saw a figure on our porch. Mom was leaning forward on the porch swing, one hand clasping the metal chain, hair flying wildly with the wind. Dad sighed and went through the garage door entrance.

  “Tell your mother we brought her lunch.”

  I walked slowly down the driveway and across the front lawn, crunching the snow under my heavy steps, her grip on the chain lessening with every step I took. I sat next to her, jerking the swing to the side. “Where were you?” she asked, not bothering to mask her concern.

  “We brought you lunch.” I held up the white paper bag, leaking mayonnaise out the bottom.

  She took it from my hand, not bothering to look, and put it down beside her. I wished she would eat something. I wished she would say something. I wished she would see that I was still right here.

  “Mom,” I said.

  She jerked her head a little, answered with a noise in the back of her throat.

  And I asked her the thing I’d been planning to ask that old woman before Troy showed up. “If you had one day left to live, what would you do?”

  She shrunk away from me, shook her head to clear the words from her mind. “Don’t say that,” she hissed.

  I put my hand on her arm, so she knew I wasn’t going anywhere. And I said, “What would you do?”

  Her eyes skittered frantically, searching for answers, and she mumbled, “Lots of things. Like not letting you play on that lake.”

  I squeezed her arm. “You can’t change that. I mean now. If this was it. What would you do today?” I wondered what that old woman would’ve done if I’d given her the chance. I wondered what I would’ve done differently before I fell through the ice. What I would’ve said.

  I watched Mom’s eyes scan the sky, and when they settled on something, I strained to see what it was, but it was just a wisp of cloud. Nothing unusual about it. But her mouth opened and a breath escaped and she didn’t take her eyes off the cloud. And she said, “This.”

  The cloud floated with the wind, but Mom’s eyes stayed fixed. I tilted my head and looked harder. Clear blue sky, nothing more. I didn’t understand, so I said, “Mom?”

  But she didn’t answer. She kept rocking, propelling herself back and forth with her toes, like she hadn’t even heard me. I turned to face her. Her head was back against the wood, and her eyes were closed. But she wasn’t sad or angry or frustrated. She was something else entirely. Something here and not here. Her face was turned toward the sun, soaking it in, like it was the hottest day of summer.

  And when she moved her hand to cover mine, I gripped her tight. Because I realized what she meant by this.

  Me. She meant me.

  We rocked. Mom kept her eyes closed, and I kept watching the sky, wondering if it would tell me something, too. Then I cleared my throat and said, “After you eat, I was wondering. Can we go buy supplies for next semester?”

  “Yes, Delaney. Yes, we can.”

  Ordinary teenager. That’s what I was today. Sleeping in. Lunch with Dad. School shopping with Mom. I could be salutatorian if I pulled up the math grade next semester. If not, I’d still probably finish in the top 5 percent of my class. No valedictorian, but I had great college essay material. I could still get into a good college, have a solid future.

  Except when we left the office-supply store that feeling started, that pull at my body, the one that reminded me that I wasn’t an ordinary teenager. We were on the road, getting closer and closer. And while we were at a stoplight I looked over to my right, where the pull was leading me, and saw Troy’s car parked at the far end of the gas station lot. I bent over and pretended to look through my bags.

  “We forgot batteries,” I said. “For my calculator.”

  “We probably have some lying around at home.” And then she smiled at me, like she was glad I was worried about school, like she thought I was the old Delaney Maxwell. She didn’t know I was faking it.

  “Let’s pick some up here, just in case.”

  The pull was strong, tugging me toward the convenience store attached to the garage. It was strong, but there was no itch yet, no shaking fingers, no imminent death. To be fair, I didn’t know how imminent death was. It was faster than expected with Carson. Slower with the old woman in the assisted-living facility, who still wasn’t dead last I checked. My death took eleven minutes. Troy’s took three days. It was supposed to, anyway.

  But someone here was sick. Definitely sick. Definitely dying.

  Mom eased the car into the spot directly in front of the entrance. We entered the store and I headed toward the counter. The batteries were stacked behind the register, where the cigarettes should’ve been. I guess they were more valuable. I drummed my fingers on the countertop and left a clean handprint on the dirty surface.

  Nobody was behind the counter. The clerk was probably in the single bathroom in the back corner of the store. Because that’s where I felt the pull. Someone sat on the single folding chair outside the restroom, coffee cup at his feet, newspaper in front of his face. “Hi, Troy,” I called from the fron
t of the store.

  Troy lowered the paper. He didn’t seem surprised to see me. He seemed curious. But then Mom walked up behind me and his eyes grew wide.

  “Troy! I didn’t see you sitting there. What are you doing here?”

  I smiled a smug smile at him, asking, Yes, what exactly are you doing here?

  He shook the pages in front of him. “Reading the paper. Escaping the cold. My car doesn’t have heat.” Which caused Mom’s face to fold. Mine would’ve folded, too, except I’d been in his car, and it most assuredly had heat.

  The bathroom door swung open and a heavyset man lumbered out. He had a plaid button-down shirt tucked into baggy jeans. His receding brown hair was tinged with gray. And his lower jaw was missing. I mean, his mouth wasn’t hanging open or anything, but the bone that used to be there was gone. He limped toward the front of the store, one hand on the thigh of the leg dragging behind. His lagging foot scraped against the floor, whining in objection with each step.

  And as he walked toward the front, the pull of death spread out from him, like his dragging foot was leaving pieces of it behind. So that the whole store felt a little like death. It was suffocating. And disorienting. And I wanted to go, go, go, but I couldn’t leave Troy alone with him.

  And on top of that, I knew him. Well, I didn’t actually, but I knew of him. One of the ice fishermen. Related to James McGovern, whose house was broken into to save me. Maybe his brother. Maybe his cousin. I wasn’t sure. Me to Carson to James McGovern to the man who was dying. Three degrees of separation.

  “Leroy,” said Mom, who apparently knew him better than I did. “How’re you feeling?”

  “Hanging in there,” he said, but it came out all garbled, tongue and palate, nothing else.

  I looked at a spot right behind him, pretending to be braver than I was. “Leroy,” I said, like we knew each other. “Do you know Troy?” I gestured to where Troy sat in the back of the store. “This is Troy Varga. Troy, Leroy.”