this mangled, nervous mess of wanting and not-having. I’m the shattered glass and the crushed metal. I’m the long expanse of asphalt and the pungent spatter of gasoline. I should have had time to become something more than the meager sum of that night’s parts. Because that’s the kind of person who could have seen Reynolds and not felt like a broken thirteen-year-old all over again. That person could have been brave. Fearless.
That’s obviously never going to be in the cards for me.
My blaze of glory would probably be a lot more effective if I could run, kick, or stomp my feet. Instead, I drag my defective leg behind me and do the best I can. I do manage a wall-rattling, vengeful door slam when I get to the room.
It doesn’t help the way my lungs feel like they’re being crushed. I just can’t breathe. I keep gulping in air, but it’s like everything is constricting me—my shirt, my skin, my bones. I frantically unbutton my shirt, no longer pressed and fresh like it’d been this morning, but eventually just grab the two sides and rip it open, flinging it away. I kick off my loafers and peel off the stupid knee-high socks that are required as part of the school uniform, despite the fact it’s still in the eighties outside. Then I shimmy out of the uncomfortable wool skirt, stepping out of it bunched on the floor.
Crossing the room, I walk over to the bedside table, illuminated brightly from a ray of sunshine coming through the arched window beside it, and open the drawer. Inside is a tiny ring box. It’s only one of many boxes hidden around this room that are filled with pills. I know I don’t even need them anymore. Well, no more than the rationed allotment in the bathroom, just to get me by on a physical dependence level. But I like to know they’re there, especially on a day like today. It’s comforting just knowing. If things get bad enough—if I just can’t take it anymore—then relief is only forty minutes away.
It helps.
I look at them and that overwhelming feeling of being crushed slowly starts to abate. I gasp in a short breath and release it slowly, counting them out in my head, palm pressed to my chest, feeling the choppy rise and fall.
This is life, I tell myself. This breath, this heartbeat, this is me being alive. I chant it like an affirmation inside my head, each exhale taking with it that debilitating panic until I finally stand there, drained and aching.
I trail my fingers over the uneven skin that slashes from just below my belly button around to my lower back. It’s thick and gnarled, and the skin surrounding it is strangely numb. I turn my face to the ray of sunshine, eyes closed as I soak it in, exhausted and worn. Instantly, the guilt sets in. I should apologize to my mom and dad, to Emory. They don’t know. They don’t understand what it’s like for me, weaning myself from the medication. That’s all.
I open my eyes and Reynolds McAllister stands opposite of me.
He’s still sweaty from his run, staring across the empty space between our houses from his own bedroom window—the one that’s been dark for three years. His green eyes hold mine, and he’s just as still and rigid as he was before, out in the street. It’s different this time, nothing of significance passing between us, just a flat, cold stare.
It’s not until his eyes drop that it comes to me in a rush that I’m half-dressed and staring at the boy responsible for all of this.
It should feel like a violation—like one more thing he’s taking from me. Instead, it feels weirdly necessary.
Yes, look.
Look what you did.
He raises his gaze back to mine and I want to feel satisfied. I want to spread my face with a malicious grin. I want to break him as much as he’d broken me.
I reach for my curtain and let it fall, his haunted eyes disappearing with the light.
Reyn is the one who rolls down the windows. “It’s better when you can feel the wind whipping around, you know?”
His face is bright, lit with the rush of stealing the car, illuminated in the soft light of the dashboard. My long hair whips across my eyes and my heart pounds like a jackhammer. For the first time, I get why they do this.