Breakable Page 26

  It snapped me out of the clouds. My guts twisted to braids because he wouldn’t sound like that if was nothing to do with me.

  I looked up. There were students everywhere, pressing in on the noticeboard wall, peering over each other’s shoulders, laughing, pointing, gasping, whispering…

  “Is that her?”

  “Oh my–”

  “She’s such a freak!”

  The babble rose in waves, everyone turning, looking for me with a morbid fascination I’d learned to recognize years ago.

  I looked at Mark and he looked at me.

  “What is it?” My voice broke.

  He shook his head and tried to pull me away, but it only made me more determined to see. Had Finn posted my letter there?!

  I jumped and stretched and yanked my arm out of Mark’s grip, but I couldn’t see. There were too many tall guys at the front.

  I trembled. “Mark, please leave.”

  “What? Why?”

  Mrs. Callaghan’s voice rose above the babble of student voices. “Step back please and let me through. Go to your classes now, please. Step back.”

  A girl pushed out of the crowd, her eyes wide and a huge smile on her face. She whispered something in a friend’s ear and the friend gasped. They both looked at me, then ran down the hall.

  Oh no. Oh no, no, no, no, no. “Mark, please leave. Now.” It came out in a breath. I don’t think he heard. I had to get up there and get the letter off the noticeboard.

  “All of you! Leave! Now!” Mrs. Callaghan shrieked – and she wasn’t a shouter. This was bad. This was very bad.

  I pushed forward as everyone else pressed back. Mark called at me to leave, bodies pummeled me, then – just before the last two guys moved and I could see what was in front of them – my foot hit something slick. My leg slipped forward and I almost fell over. Mark caught my arm and steadied me. We both looked down.

  There was paint on the floor.

  A mixing cup lay on its side on the linoleum, crudely mixed white and red paint spilling from inside it. Slick, foot-width lines said more than one person had slipped in it already.

  Pink?

  For a second it felt impossible to lift my eyes from that mess. Maybe if I didn’t see it, it wouldn’t be real. But I had to know.

  Mark had stepped gingerly over the paint, easing himself between me and whatever was on that wall.

  My eyes snapped up and my heart stopped. His hands came up to stop me, but I pushed him aside. And there it was.

  Someone had tacked my painting to the wall.

  Except it wasn’t my painting anymore.

  When I left the easel room yesterday, the nearly square canvas showed a flat, accurate, painted representation of me. Nothing special. Nothing spectacularly bad.

  That painting was still there, but now there was a crudely drawn cock-and-balls pointing right at my mouth. Mark swore and reached for the painting over my shoulder, but I grabbed his arm. I had to see it all.

  Diagonally across the top, in jagged capital letters and obscuring most of the zero behind my painted head, CRAZY STACY LOVES DICK screamed out from the canvas.

  And on either side of it, the notices, posters and announcements had been cleared so the brown pinboard perfectly framed two copies of the letter.

  I couldn’t stop reading them. Couldn’t stop looking at the hate in those words on the painting. Couldn’t believe I hadn’t predicted Finn despising me like this.

  Then Mark squinted and leaned forward, his lips moving silently as he read the awful words on that page. He froze and turned to look at me, open-mouthed shock on every line of his gorgeous face.

  I couldn’t feel anything from the neck down. I watched my arms lift and tear the letters off the wall, watched my hand take hold of the canvas on the corner where it was dry. Watched my other hand take the other corner.

  Mrs. Callaghan’s lips moved, but I couldn’t hear her.

  Mark got in my face, but I couldn’t hear him anymore either.

  There was a short circuit somewhere and all I could do was hold on to the painting so no one else could put it anywhere. I needed to go home and be alone. Be safe.

  I’m not sure if I said that, or they just figured it out because Mark let go of my arm and Mrs. Callaghan – looking on the verge of tears – nodded and headed for the door ahead of me.

  I was three steps into the lobby before I realized there was still a crowd of people there. It almost ended me. I froze and felt Mark press into my back. But the warmth from his chest made the ache so strong it might flip my insides out. So I stumbled forward, carrying the painting awkwardly, away from my body so I wouldn’t get the paint on my clothes, crying because of what they’d done and crying because I loved him and he didn’t love me and if he had I wouldn’t have cared about the rest.

  I tried to ignore the smiles and the whispers, the too-bright eyes, and the shaking heads. Right then, right there, I wanted to be dead. Nothing. Untouchable.

  Someone said my name. It bubbled toward me like air through water. But I didn’t want to hear it. Pretty soon I could run and since I was crying, everything passed in a literal blur. I hit the bar on the double-doors and ran across the parking lot, wondering why my name kept bouncing off the air behind me. But I didn’t have any answers. I had to get home. I had to be alone. Maybe I needed to kill myself because, if it could get worse than this, I didn’t have it in me to survive anyway.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  I don’t remember the walk home, or how I got into the house with the painting in my hands. I don’t remember anything except seeing that it wasn’t even nine o’clock in the morning and already I felt like dying. I walked into my room and found Older Me in the mirror, her face shifting from surprise to horror.

  “What happened? What’s wrong?”

  For a second I considered ignoring her completely. But…no. Let her see what she’d done with her lies.

  I dragged the chair from my desk into the space in front of the mirror and placed the painting on it.

  When I stepped back, her eyes followed me first. But then she glanced down, and all color drained from her face. She couldn’t take her eyes off it. Didn’t speak. That suited me.

  I pulled the curtains, got in bed, pulled the quilt over my head.

  A minute later she cleared her throat. Spoke softly. “It’s okay, Stacy. You’re–”

  “Shut up!” I screamed at the cotton over my face. “I’m not listening to you. I can’t do this anymore! I’m done!”

  Her breath was audible. “Stacy…I didn’t–”

  “Shut up! Just. Shut. UP!”

  There was a massive bang and for a split second I thought Older Me had come through the mirror. Somehow she was alive and here with me, and maybe that would be awesome.

  But when I threw the blankets back and sat up it was Mom in the doorway, in her pajamas, panting, eyes so wide they were white all the way around. She had one of her long-necked vases in her hand, brandishing it like a club.

  What was she doing there?

  Oh, crud. It was Monday. Her sleep-in day. She’d been woken up by my screaming.

  Farkle.

  “Who are you yelling at?!” Mom panted, still frantically scanning the room. “Who’s here?!”

  “No one,” I breathed.

  “Stacy Watson, WHO IS IN THIS ROOM WITH YOU?” She ran to the closet and threw the door open. Older Me cursed as she swung out of sight. Mom buried her head inside, then backed out and checked behind the curtains even though they were only halfway down the wall. She even opened some drawers and got on the floor to look under my bed. The whole time she had that vase – dripping water – clasped so hard her knuckles turned white.

  I couldn’t do anything. I just watched. Then she got up from the floor and stood over me, face red and twisted with rage.

  “Who were you yelling at? Where are they, Stacy? Why aren’t you at school?”

  “There’s no one–”

  “You were yelling at som
eone!”

  “Leave me alone!”

  “You skip class to come home to sulk and yell at yourself in the mirror?”

  “It isn’t like that!”

  “Stacy, if any of the neighbors heard you, they’d think you were being murdered. For a second I thought you were being murdered! WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON IN YOUR HEAD?!”

  Struck speechless, I just huddled up in the blankets, hating her. Hating how worthless she made me feel. Well, I’d kept the worst from her before, but now I’d show her. Maybe I’d been going about this all wrong, trying to hide my social failure from her. Maybe if I embarrassed her enough she’d give up and leave me alone.

  Scooting out of bed, I skirted around her to the chair she’d shoved out of her way on her rampage across the room.

  “Don’t walk away when I’m talking to you!”

  I scoffed and grabbed the chair, swiveling it around so the painting faced her.

  She opened her mouth to chastise me again, then her eyes fell on the painting and she froze.

  She took one step closer. Then another. She clapped a hand over her mouth, but I could see her lips moving behind it, reading the words. Finally her eyes snapped to mine and she dropped her hand.

  “Did someone else do this?”

  My jaw dropped. “Do you think I’d do it?”

  She stared at the painting again, shaking her head. “Stacy… why do they hate you so much? What did you do?”

  Oh. My… She thought it was my fault.

  She thought it was my fault?!

  A fracture started behind my navel, the brittle pieces shivering, on the edge of letting go. I hunched forward because it hurt and I didn’t want her to make it worse. But Mom was talking again. And even through the haze, pieces of her tirade sifted in.

  “I can’t believe this. You’re a…a mess. A laughing stock. No wonder the other mothers act so awkwardly when they come in…”

  “…I do everything I can to help you, and you just screw everything up…”

  “…I don’t know what to do anymore. I don’t know how to fix you…”

  “…have you ever thought about how embarrassing it is for me to have a daughter who’s so…so…”

  She was so busy talking about herself, she never realized I was about to implode.

  How could she not see it?

  Behind the door, Older Me must have guessed. “Stacy, I told you, she’s screwed up. Just let her get it out. Ignore her. She’s wrong.”

  I shook my head, but even I couldn’t tell which of them I was denying. “I didn’t do anything, Mom,” I managed. “I’m not the crazy one.” Somehow I got my lips around the words. “These people are psychotic. They hate me. But I didn’t… I didn’t deserve this.”

  Mom’s eyes came back to me, disbelieving. And that was all it took.

  I gasped and hunched, wanted to throw up. The cracking inside was so sharp. So tangible. Mom kept talking, but I couldn’t take it in. I looked down, wondering if my stomach would suddenly punch in and suck through itself, suck me away into nothing.

  That might be nice.

  But no, my breasts still rose in front of my nose, my stomach still slid away from my ribcage. My feet were still planted on the carpet.

  It was just the Me threatening to split open.

  Then Mom put her hands to her face and shook her head. “We need help.”

  I sucked in a breath. Couldn’t she see? She was two minutes too late.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Doc is watching me again. His body too still. “You seem…moved,” he says softly.

  I huff a breath. “That’s one word for it.” I am trembling, shocked by the pain that still echoes in my chest when I remember this. “I guess… I guess I feel like I should be past this – past the surprise of it. Every time I think I’ve gotten used to the memories, something comes back fresh and it just…it hurts again.”

  Doc chews the inside of one cheek. I’m suddenly vulnerable. I thought this part would soften him. Open him up. But he’s closed the shutters on his face and I’m scrambling.

  It’s almost two and I have to get out of here!

  “Doc, I need to go. Please. I’m telling you the truth.” Most of it anyway.

  He doesn’t meet my eyes, flipping through his notes instead. “Given what you’ve just shared, I can understand your anger towards your mother. And even why you may have created an alternate self to cope with the pressures you were facing.”

  I nod, even though it kills me. I didn’t create her. I’m sure of that now. But if he needs to think that to feel like he can let me go, I’m okay with that.

  As long as he does it in the next 45 minutes.

  “What I don’t understand,” he says and his eyes finally come up to meet mine, “is why, if she’s gone, you’re still afraid of mirrors. Or at least, pretending to be.”

  His gaze bores into me. I can feel his suspicions squirming through my head, worms on the trail of a good meal.

  “Stacy?”

  “It’s because…because of what happened next,” I say, hoping he attributes my breathlessness to what I’m about to tell him.

  The thing I don’t understand is how he knows. Because this is the worst part, and he has to have seen it coming.

  Why doesn’t he believe me like everyone else?

  A few months ago, Mom hit a bump in the road and her windshield cracked. Nothing major, just a tiny little line that started at the bottom of the glass.

  She drove home, parked the car in the garage and made an appointment to take it to the shop the next day.

  Except, when we pulled the car out the next morning, that tiny line had turned into a jagged crack a foot long. And as we drove, it moved, sliding further, branching off, until a third of the glass was marred by the lines.

  When we got it to the mechanic, he whistled and said we were lucky to have made it. He said that crack was under so much pressure, that the tiniest bump from the wrong direction could have broken it into a million pieces and showered us with shards of glass.

  Well, half an hour after Mom stormed out of my room, slamming the door, I felt like that windshield.

  Crack, crack, crack.

  I sat on the carpet in front of my mirror, my entire body froze in place.

  If I tried to move, I’d shatter.

  I couldn’t even cry. My tears were gone, though my face looked like I’d gone two rounds with an allergic reaction. What was I going to do now?

  As if she heard the thought, Older Me sighed. “You know, we could sit here for a long time discussing just how crappy that was…Or…”

  Crappy didn’t cover it. Crappy didn’t even start to describe it. I was an embarrassment to my own mother. I was the laughing stock of my school.

  My best friend would cross the street to avoid me…

  Oh, my…

  Mark.

  That was the last straw. I remembered the letter, then I breathed too hard, then I broke. All the pieces inside snapped apart and fell away, tinkling to the floor of my life and leaving a yawning hole where my heart should have been.

  I sucked in a breath, but nothing came. It just seeped out through my holes and I panicked.

  “Stacy?”

  “Can’t…” Heave, “…breathe…”

  “Stacy! Stacy, listen to me–”

  “Can’t.” Black shimmered around my edges, turning my room into a tunnel. Tiny sparks flared and snapped across my vision.

  Wheeze.

  “Stacy, you have to relax. You have to breathe!”

  I shook my head. My fingers clawed into the carpet, twisting until the tiny fibers caught beneath my nails. But my balance wavered.

  “Look at me. Stacy, look at me!”

  I swung my head drunkenly, gasping like a fish, certain I was about to suffocate to death. My heart pounded against my ribs, reverberated through my skin, in the lights in my eyes, throbbed in my ears.

  I felt like I was going to die. And frankly, that had a plus side.
>
  Older Me knelt right at the mirror, her eyes wide. She had a hand on its surface. Her face earnest and desperate in a way I’d never seen before.

  “They aren’t going to beat you, do you hear me?” Then I realized she was crying.

  For me.

  “But…” And my own tears broke. My vision blurred, I coughed, and suddenly I could suck in air again – if only to shove it back out on a sob.

  “I’m not leaving,” she cried. “I am here to help you.” She sucked in a breath. “I love you. Do you hear me?”

  “But–”

  “They aren’t going to win. They won’t. In just a few minutes you’re going to wipe your face clean, stand up and do this. And you’ll prove them all wrong.”

  “D-do what?”

  “Win. You’re going to win, Stacy. Do you understand? You’re going to take the crap they’re throwing at you and turn it into something good. Something beautiful. And you’ll win.”

  “How? H-how?”

  She closed her eyes and dropped her head for a second. When she opened them again, they were full of tears. “Look at it, Stacy. Really look at it.” Her gaze slid over my shoulder then and I turned, wiping my eyes.

  It was the painting.

  The painting of me that was plain and empty and devoid of life. The one with hate scrawled all over my face.

  How apt.

  I blinked.

  It was still there – a forced, two-dimensional image of me covered by sabotage in bright pink.

  I saw it.

  My painting – with their words – had become more real, more representative of Me, than anything I’d managed on my own.

  It told the story – the Me that didn’t look special. That didn’t have depth. Nothing to appeal. And their words, their spite, their hate, scrawled across it.

  It was what I’d been looking for all along.

  How could that possibly be?

  Then I looked at Older Me’s face and realized why she wasn’t talking. She wasn’t worried, or afraid. She was…remembering.

  “Oh my–” I cut myself off.

  Older Me took a shuddering breath.

  When she met my gaze, I knew.