Broken

by A. E. Rought

  “God. Don’t look at me!” He throws a hand over his eyes and rams his back into the brace between panes of glass. “I’m falling and all I see is your face!”

  “You are not.” Memories run in a loop behind my eyes, twisting my heart until I think it’s going to break. Still, I run to his side and peel the fingers from his eyes. “Listen to me. You’re on the catwalk, having a panic attack or delusion or something.”

  “It’s real!” he shouts. “It’s REAL! I’m falling and dying and I see your face.”

  His words are a pure echo of the hell I’m feeling inside. My heart cracks, ache shooting through me when he curls into a fetal position. His entire body jerks, a grunt escapes him like it was driven from his lungs in a collision. The door at the far side opens. I don’t look away from Alex. Even a glance to the side rips at my heart, and there’s so little left. When voices bounce our way, I scream for help.

  “Falling and dying and I see your face.”

  “You are not, Alex.” My voice breaks. But Daniel did. And his eyes stayed riveted on me until he struck the cement below.

  “Red in my eyes when the lights went out.” He scrubs his face with his jacket, like he’s trying to wipe something from his eyes, and the zipper scratches his forehead.

  The moment cuts like a double-edged knife; hurts to see him reduced this way, hurts hearing what I hear and knowing what I saw once already. I shake my head, my cast pushing back against the ache in my chest. This can’t be happening.

  Carpet tugs at my knees when I kneel in front of him. I’m struggling to hold on—he pitched over the edge and fell, too far gone to reach now. Touch is reassuring, I’ve heard, and I need it as much as he does. I rest a hand on his arm. His fingers search for mine, clench around them.

  “You were wearing your favorite white tank top.” He shakes his head. “And my red hoodie.”

  He might as well rip my heart out and throw it on the carpet. Only three people knew what I wore that night. One is dead, the other isn’t here.

  “I’m wearing your blue hoodie.”

  “I know,” he moans.

  He’s calming down, totally confused still, but I think the worst is over. I wish it was for me. The full force of what he went through slams into me. My throat hurts enough to have screamed Daniel’s name again, my heart hurts enough to have lost him again. Because, in a horrid, impossible way, I think I just did.

  Footsteps pound and bounce around us when the paramedic and school nurse rush up. They crouch to either side of us, hands hovering, not knowing what to do.

  “You have to let him go, hon,” the medic says, her voice calm and so out of place.

  Alex’s fingers convulse around mine, and I wince. He isn’t letting go.

  “Son, you’ve got to loosen up.” She pries his fingers from mine and a piteous wail comes out of him. “Emergizer!” he whimpers when they force him to stretch out on the floor. “Emergizer, don’t leave!”

  The words are a sledgehammer to my chest. How does he know that name? Only one person ever called me that. Only one. My throat cinches tight on a wail of my own. Mind reeling, I scoot out of his reach.

  Questions rocket around from the emergency responders and bounce off Alex and me. Neither of us can muster a response.

  “What happened?”

  “What caused this?”

  “Did he fall?”

  I cover my mouth and ease back, afraid of the answers. They don’t need to know he’s delusional. He’d have to be to see Daniel’s death through Daniel’s eyes. And those words…that nickname…

  They were Daniel’s last words to me before he fell and died.

  I slump to the glass window and watch in a numb state of shock as the medic runs the normal list of trauma questions on a confused Alex. He casts glances at me, tears glistening in his Daniel eye, and a cut on his forehead exactly where Daniel’s skull had split. Time bleeds into nothing, movements blurring in the catwalk and in my head. The paramedic coaxes Alex to his feet, and the nurse pulls me to mine.

  When the medic and Alex pass the doors, my heart fractures, and the tears come.

  “What happened back there?” the nurse asks.

  “I’m not sure,” I mutter. “I think he has a fear of falling…”

  A lie is so much better than the truth.

  Alex Franks relived Daniel’s death.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “No, I’m not fine,” I grumble at the nurse. “And, no I do not want you calling my mom. I just want see if Alex is okay.”

  “You can’t right now.” Her dark ponytail swishes when she packs away some gauze in the white cabinet on the wall.

  “Can’t as in not capable?” So I’m cranky. I’m emotionally fried potato-chip crisp and don’t want someone crushing what’s left of me. “Because I can walk just fine.”

  “No. Can’t,” she stresses, “because his father is with him and insisted on no visitors.”

  Oh God. “His father?” I echo. My stomach knots into a nauseous tangle. He broke bones in my hand just at the mention of Alex being my friend. If he knows I was with Alex, that we’ve been together the past week... what will he do? “Please tell me my name is being kept out of it.”

  “Well,” she fidgets at her desk. “I’m not sure.”

  “Can you check? Please?” She casts a concerned look at me. I don’t say anything, don’t move, but I let my focus fall to my cast. Her eyes widen, then she picks up the school phone and dials a number. She paces to the far side of her office, behind a privacy screen. The conversation is hushed and short. “Yes, Emma,” she confirms when she comes back. “Your name has been kept out. Now, what’s this all about?”

  “Two weeks ago, I punched my locker and hurt my hand. Alex told me to go to the doctor. His father was the attending physician at the clinic, only I didn’t know who he was. When I mentioned Alex was my friend, he crushed my hand, breaking the hairline fractures.” She sucks in a little gasp. “My mom filed a complaint, threatened a lawsuit.”

  “Are you afraid he’ll hurt you again because of this?”

  “I don’t ever have to see him again. I’m worried what he might do to Alex if he thinks I’m involved.”

  Her curls slide when she nods brusquely. She strides out of the office completely, dialing the phone as she goes. Left alone, I worry the paper on the examining table to confetti, and agonize about Alex. What happened to him up on the catwalk? Why is he channeling Daniel’s behaviors, his words, and his death? My heart clenches in my chest, and hurt sucks the air from my lungs. My brain is running on a treadmill of razorblades, every thought and question as cutting and painful as the next.

  Will I ever be free of this pain?

  The nurse returns, an all-business expression on her square face.

  “Alex will be going home,” she says. “And seeing as you are refusing treatment, and me calling your parents, I’m sending you back to class.”

  The bell for the end of fourth hour rings. After stopping at my locker for my afternoon books, I head up to the Sciences wing and Mr. LaRue’s Dune Ecology class.

  Josh Mason sits in his normal seat when I walk in. He stiffens, and gazes snap from him to me and back. Seems the gossip chain has been working just fine, and in my favor for once. Everyone knows I broke my hand on Josh’s puffy, black-and-blue face. The flickering light of the storm outside splashes on the dune grass blades in the pot at the end of Mr. LaRue’s big lab table. I stand there, even after the bell rings, then deliberately run the pad of my thumb down the blade.

  Heat flares across my skin, red appears in the cut. I pinch my finger over it, trapping the blood. Rather than sit in my usual seat, I walk to the far side of the room, and take the seat behind Asia Folley. There, beneath the privacy of my desk, I guide the fat drops to my pink cast, and draw a heart in blood, over where the broken heart lives in the skin of my wrist.

  I blow out a short sigh, and organize my books and papers. Asia turns around during roll call, and says in a consp
iratorial whisper, “Next time you punch that jerk, take a video.”

  “Not a bad idea,” I say. Actually it’s an awful idea, but she’s being nice.

  “I heard about the catwalk,” she says. “Alex going to be okay?”

  Her pretty brown face softens in lines of concern, long curly eyelashes sweeping over light brown eyes when she blinks.

  “I hope so.”

  Mr. LaRue closes the attendance book, and digs around in his desk. I take the opportunity to ask Asia if she has any clear nail polish. She nods, rummages around in her bag, and then slides a bottle of polish over my Dune Eco book.

  Only half-watching Mr. LaRue, I shake the bottle and paint over the tacky bloody heart on my cast. When he passes out paperwork on dune erosion, the bottle makes a return trip to it’s owner.

  After our teacher calls the class to order, I zone out, batting around pieces of the Daniel-Alex puzzle until my head hurts. The puzzle pieces don’t fit together, or make anything pretty. None of it makes sense. Not in the real world. It’s almost like Daniel’s haunting me through Alex. Or he’s attacking me for liking Alex, and using Alex as the weapon of my heart’s destruction.

  #

  Mrs. Ransom offers me a ride home, rather than let me walk alone in the late fall storm. I droop against the backseat, left hand on my head, pushing back against the ache pounding there. Bree’s not sitting safety-belt safe in her seat. She’s turned sideways looking at me with sad eyes, and down-turned lips.

  “I heard about the catwalk,” she says.

  “You and the rest of Shelley High.” I rub one temple.

  “He’ll be okay, Em.” She reaches into the backseat and pats my leg. “Who knows what kind of accident he had. Maybe this is just a residual affect…”

  I think she’s grasping at straws. Her mother seems to think it’s a fun game.

  “What accident?” Her mom asks. She’s dressed in a smart business suit, and is as well put-together as Bree. “What boy?”

  “Alex Franks,” Bree answers.

  “The boy from your kindergarten class?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Word at church is he was nearly crushed to death in an accident in his father’s lab. Lots of internal damage. If it weren’t for his father, he would’ve died.”

  He did die, I think, for a few minutes.

  “See,” Bree says, “He’s survived worse.”

  “And I suppose,” her mom continues, “head trauma, or lack of oxygen might cause lingering affects.”

  Somehow, it’s not as comforting as the Ransom women think. I “mm-hm,” politely, try for a smile and fall short. I let the false expression bleed off and return to mulling over what happened on the catwalk until Mrs. Ransom pulls into our driveway.

  “Thank you for the ride, Mrs. Ransom.”

  “Anytime, Em.”

  “See ya tomorrow, B.” I pull my jacket up over Alex’s hood, pray for my backpack to stay dry and then hurtle for the porch door. The house already smells like beef roast when I burst in.

  “Wipe your shoes,” Mom calls from the kitchen, then adds, “Hi, Alex.”

  “He’s not here, Mom.”

  Silence. I struggle out of my backpack, and shake the water from it like I wish I could shake today from me. Drops of water hit Renfield, and he growls and stabs me with one of his cat glares. Mom peeks from the kitchen doorway. “He’s not here?”

  “No. He’s…not feeling well.”

  “Well,” she says, “That’s a shame. Need help with homework?”

  “No. The teachers made check-the-box work sheets for me this time.”

  Doesn’t matter. I can’t focus. I try, but I can’t wipe the images of my two boyfriends out of my mind. Daniel fell out of life. Alex fell in his mind. He’d gone past the raw, hollowed out guy to someplace I couldn’t understand or begin to follow. Chills run up my spine, tighten my scalp. How can someone living experience the death of someone else? There’s no doubt in my mind Alex lived Daniel’s death. He called me by Daniel’s nickname, the exact way Daniel had moments before he died. He mentioned me wearing my favorite white tank top under Daniel’s red hoodie.

  And possibly the worst thing—red trails in his eyes when the light died. Like the doe two weeks ago, Daniel died with his eyes open and fixed on me. Only Daniel’s blood coursed over his eyes, one red streak over his left iris.

  Mom breaks through my musing with dinner after hours of me pushing a pencil attached to my cast with a rubber band.

  My appetite died on the catwalk with Alex’s break down. Still, I scoop the roast, beans, and potatoes and gravy onto my plate. Dad pokes at his slab of beef, grabs the salt and pepper, and then decides for hot sauce instead.

  “So, where’d you say Alex is?” he asks. I know by the slight elevation in his eyebrows he’s prodding. But nicely. Mom would’ve used her filet knife, or maybe her meat cleaver.

  “I didn’t.”

  “Oh. Well… He was becoming a fixture a round here.”

  “Maybe tomorrow, Dad.” I stab my roast, twisting the fork to watch the tines shred the muscle fibers. My left hand isn’t as skilled at random roast destruction, though, and my fork skids and screams across my plate. “Alex wasn’t feeling well this afternoon.”

  I’m not feeling well, either. The few forkfuls I manage to chew and swallow slop and stew in my stomach. My head still pounds. And, God help me, there’s a weight on my chest I can’t get off. I can’t breathe with it and I want to cry.

  Mom eyes me, a long careful glance. “You aren’t catching what he has, are you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” Is crazy catching? I can’t think he’s completely sane if he’s channeling someone else’s habits and death.

  “And you’ve hardly eaten your dinner,” Mom points out. I nod, and feel the weight of the motion dragging on my face, rocking my head. “Maybe you should have one of your pain pills and go to bed early.”

  Hopefully painkillers stop heartache. “Maybe you’re right.”

  Mom hops up, and hurries into the kitchen. Beneath Dad’s normal layer of silt-fine sawdust, he looks concerned. It’s the same expression he had shortly after Daniel died, when they realized I wasn’t going to “just get over it.” I give him a weak smile, which he returns. When Mom comes back, she has a fat pill on one palm, and a warm cup of milk with vanilla and cinnamon to wash it down.

  The pill catches in my throat, not surprising with all the tears I’ve been fighting today. The sweet creamy milk chases it down and soothes the tightness.

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  “Just get some good rest.”

  “I’ll try.”

  Renfield races in front of me, a white moving obstacle all the way up the stairs. The crazy cat nearly knitted himself to me, now he looks like he’s contemplating it again. Is it that bad? I wonder. I refuse to look in a mirror for proof, though. Instead, I indulge in a long, hot shower, then pull on some flannel pajama pants, and a warm hoodie. I don’t need to worry about plugging in my cell phone—Mom has it. Watery moonlight trickles between the crack in my curtains, and I open them wide before crawling under my fairy quilt.

  I’m not sure of the hour when I close my eyes.

  I am sure I won’t sleep well.

  #

  Constant plink-plink, plink-plinks sift me little by little out of a heavy sleep. Thoughts are fractured bits of fuzz. I blink as I try to drag the fragments together and become coherent.

  Plink-plink, plink-plink!

  With the sounds came shadows cutting incisions in the moonlight on my carpet.

  Plink-plink and shadows.

  I turn toward the moonlight, wondering foggily if bugs are committing suicide on the glass panes. Plink-plink! Where I sit now, it’s clear the little noises issue from pebbles hitting my windows. What the heck? My muscles feel like sand bags when I stand and shuffle to the windowsill. Who is throwing rocks at this hour? Then another thought comes. What time is it? Are my parents awake?

  2:00 AM acco
rding to my clock radio.

  The snoring across the hall says my parents are both sleeping.

  Washed in moonlight one story down is Alex Franks. My heart leaps into a sprint, and tears tighten my throat. He’s really here, and he’s fine. Pebbles from Mom’s well-tended flower beds fill one hand. The other hand is raised, wrist cocked back to launch more stones. When he sees me, the wonder lights his face and pulls his full lips into a smile. The hand with the stones waves me to come down.

  The horror of earlier today undermines my joy of seeing Alex. I grab a sweatshirt from my closet, then creep down the stairs with Renfield on my heels. Silent dark fills the first floor, eerie in the moonlight coming through the windows. Suppressing a shudder, I slip on a pair of Dad’s slippers and step onto the porch.

  Alex climbs the stairs, my heart pounding harder with each step. I want to launch into his arms and trust him to never let me fall. His breakdown in the catwalk roots me to the porch floorboards.

  “Emma,” he says my name with all the reverence of a prayer. “I’m so sorry about today.”

  “You really freaked me out.”

  “I freaked myself out.”

  The distance between us must be too much for him. Energy tickles over my skin when Alex slides his arms around me and lifts me into a hug. For a moment, I hang stiff, but my heart needs him like I need air. I soften, and droop against him burying my face in the collar of his jacket. He smells like warmth and Alex, and lightning. Tingles spill across my face when he kisses my cheek.

  I nuzzle deeper into his collar and whisper, “What happened to you today?”

  Muscles stiffen beneath my hands. His embrace tightens like he’s afraid he’s going to lose me.

  “Red hoodie,” he says, an almost absentminded tone weakening his tenor. “You were wearing this sweatshirt in my…vision.”

  “But that’s not possible.” I was there when it happened. How could he know anything of that moment?

  “I know what I saw, Em.” He’s arms loosen and he places me back on my feet. “And I know what I felt.” He runs his fingers over my hair where it pours in a blonde fall over my shoulder. “What I still feel.”