Breakable Page 5

  Mortification started at my hairline and cut through every nerve ending on its way to my toes. “Mom–”

  “Bow wow. Go home dog.”

  I swallowed. But she wasn’t finished.

  “Hey, Fugly. If you really want some, you can have this.” Her eyes finally lifted to meet mine. “There’s a picture attached of a boy’s penis. At least, I think that’s what it is. He isn’t the best photographer. And frankly, in a year or two, he’ll realize what he’s got there isn’t really anything to be proud of.”

  I knew I should laugh. She was mocking whoever had sent it. But she didn’t smile and I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t find any thought except, tell me they’re wrong. She was my mother. She should look at stuff like that and reassure me. Right?

  “What is this, Stacy?” Her voice was cold. Any hope I’d had that she would make this easier curled up its toes and died.

  “I…uh…it’s just. It’s joking stuff. I tripped at the dance and a guy fell on top of me. They’re…they’re just teasing me about it.”

  One of her eyebrows slid higher. “Do teenagers routinely send photos of their genitals to each other? I thought that was just a Dateline special?”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t answer that. My cheeks flamed. I’d learned a long time ago to set my phone not to automatically download images, and not to open any attachments.

  Mom dropped the phone to the tabletop and sat back, chewing the inside of her lip. She sighed. “This is so…”

  Awful. Undeserved. Unfair. Wrong.

  “…disappointing. You have to learn to stand up for yourself, Stacy! I mean, life isn’t going to get easier out of high school. You know that right?”

  I swallowed new tears and nodded.

  “No one’s going to hand you respect. You have to earn it. Demand it! You can’t walk into a room of teenagers looking like last year’s leftovers and expect them to admire you.” She flipped a hand at my now bedraggled appearance. “It starts with how you look, then you tell them what to think of you, then you act like you own the world. That’s the only way to get through this life without being a loser. Do you want to be a loser? Like your father?”

  I closed my eyes. “No.” I couldn’t make it sound strong.

  Mom dropped her face into her hands. “It seems like everything I say goes in one ear and out the other. You think I just want to hear myself talk?”

  Sometimes. “No.”

  “So why do these kids feel like they can do this? Why aren’t you on that phone giving as good as you get? Why do they feel like it’s okay to do this to you? What did you do?” She indicated the phone and my jaw dropped.

  “Me?! What did I do?” She thought I wanted this?

  Her stubborn, questioning face didn’t change.

  I couldn’t handle any more. I stormed over to the table, grabbed the phone and made for my room.

  “Stacy, I’m not finished!”

  “Well, I am.”

  I slammed the door into the hallway over her frustrated growl and ran to my room. Throwing the door closed behind me with a satisfying bang, I threw the phone as hard as I could, so hard I grunted with the effort.

  It smacked against the wall and tumbled to the floor, the screen a starburst of cracks. But the stupid cover stopped it from falling apart. It just lay on the carpet, green light blinking to let me know yet more of my classmates had taken the time to get in touch.

  I needed a bumper like that for my heart.

  Doc’s face is blank. When I close my mouth, he doesn’t move immediately. And when he does, it’s a simple tilt of his head, as if he’s listening to something I can’t hear.

  Then he takes a breath. “Did she ever confront you about the phone again? Or mention the texts?”

  I shake my head. “A couple days later she left a new card for my phone with a note telling me to change the number and not give it to anyone except Mark.”

  “Did you do that?”

  “No. I cracked the screen really bad when I threw it. It never really worked right after that. And since it had just become another way for people to taunt me, I just stopped using it.”

  His eyebrows climbed almost to his hairline. “At seventeen years old you stopped using a cell phone?”

  “What choice did I have?”

  His inability to come up with a better answer is satisfying. But it also lowers my defenses. I find I’m suddenly desperate, again, for someone – him – to tell me those texts were wrong. To tell me I was strong.

  But I know what’s coming. I can’t need his approval. I have to be sufficient. Sane.

  His lips purse under the light fringe of his mustache. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”

  I tipped a shoulder. The fire in my scars made me wish I hadn’t.

  "Stacy," he says quietly. "I'm here to help you. You know that, right?"

  They are simple words, but the well of emotion that springs up in their wake surprises me. I am suddenly hopeful and afraid in the same breath.

  “I’m on your side, Stacy. No matter what else happens, I want help you.”

  No matter what. Does he mean it? No one’s ever said that to me before.

  I swallow and start talking so I won’t cry.

  Chapter Seven

  “Don’t let Mom rattle you.”

  The words came as a whisper, half an hour after I got home. I’d been in bed, drawing frantically, trying to put all my tension and feeling and fear onto paper. It wasn’t working. When I heard her voice I jerked, startled, and my pencil jagged across the sketch. I swore. But if Older Me was talking to me, that meant I wasn’t completely alone.

  Pushing my papers aside, I jumped off the bed and walked to the large mirror on my closet door.

  “You’re still talking to me,” I said sheepishly.

  She gave me a look that said I hadn’t been forgiven, but then she glanced over her shoulder and turned back wide-eyed. “I don’t have long,” she whispered. “Tom heard me earlier and he’s freaking out. But I had to see what happened. I was there when you got home.”

  I blinked. That meant she’d come to the mirror on the wall in the dining room. I’d never looked past Mom.

  She shook her head. “You can’t let Mom get under your skin that way. You can’t let anyone do that to you.”

  “Are you kidding me? I’ve got some jerk sending me sexts and she thinks I’m asking for it! I show up at the dance and Finn humiliates me in front of my entire class. And Mark’s dating Karyn.” My hands were in my hair because it had honestly started feeling like my head was going to explode.

  Older Me’s hands came up, soothing. She kept her voice to a whisper. “I know. I do. But you have to keep going. You just have to. If you push through this, it will work. You’ll show them. You’ll show them you didn’t deserve this!”

  Those words... I didn’t deserve it.

  I chewed them over. They felt right and wrong at the same time. They were true, but I didn’t believe them.

  I let my eyes wander over the room, my bag, my pictures. It felt like sitting in this room with the door closed was my only safe space.

  Older Me kept talking. “You think the way these people treat you is the end of the world. But I can tell you, it isn’t what happens to you in your life that destroys you. It’s what you do about it.”

  “Are you trying to say it’s my fault everyone–”

  “No. I’m saying that you’ve had crap thrown at you. You can either clean yourself up and keep going and prove everyone wrong – show them you didn’t deserve to get it in the first place. Or you can roll around in it and think you deserve it, and start acting like you do.”

  Oh. “Is that what you did?”

  She nodded. “Crappy things happened to me and I gave up. And believe me, when you give up, the crap just piles on thicker until pretty soon you don’t even realize it’s crap anymore.” She inched closer to me, her eyes piercing mine. “Stacy, if I had the chance to go back and live it again – to
be in your shoes – I’d do it in a heartbeat. Because you’re going to walk away from this and figure out it wasn’t your fault.

  “One day you’ll look back and realize that everyone you grew up with didn’t get it right. They didn’t actually know you. They didn’t really hear you. They were just so messed up, they threw all their own crap on you.

  “But the thing is, if you can understand that it’s their problem, you’ll brush it all off and walk away clean. While they’ll still be looking for other people to dump on. You’ll win. It’ll be worth it.”

  I couldn’t look away from her. “I don’t know…” Her words seemed so right. But I didn’t want to believe them because it meant I had to fight. And I was so tired of fighting.

  She ran a hand through her hair and looked as tired as I felt. “There’s nothing I can tell you that will make this easier,” she whispered, “But you have to keep going. Because… because it took me this long to see the truth of that. And Mom still doesn’t get it. That’s why she’s such a jerk. If you can believe that the problem is theirs – know it’s true – you won’t end up like me, or her. You’ll be better. Stronger.”

  “But everything else thinks it’s me! Even if I believed what you’re saying, it wouldn’t change what they thought.”

  “True, but you’ll feel better.” She sighed. “Look, the only thing I know is I’ve always had a big hole inside. And no matter how I tried to be who they wanted me to be, no one ever loved me enough to fill the hole up. In fact, the harder I tried, the less they had to offer. So… it’s got to be better to fight. It’s got to be better not to give yourself up for other people. But there’s got to be more than that too.” She gave a watery smile. “When you figure out the rest, let me know.”

  The sadness on her face scared me. And made me feel bad for her. I swallowed. Hard.

  “I’m sorry about what I said…”

  She looked down, shook her head. “Just… don’t turn into one of them, okay?”

  “I don’t think we need to worry about that,” I muttered.

  Older Me opened her mouth, but then she jerked around. “He’s back. I have to go.”

  I nodded.

  “Will you be okay?” she whispered.

  I nodded again. “I think so.” Not really.

  “I’ll try to see you tomorrow, but if I don’t show up, don’t freak out okay? I might have to give this some space to calm him down.”

  Then she was gone.

  I waited a minute, but she didn’t return and I had a bad feeling it was going to be a little while before we could have a normal conversation. Sighing, I turned back to my bed. There was no way I could sleep. But I couldn’t stand lying in bed staring at the wall. I needed to draw some more.

  Careful not to crinkle the papers all over it, I got back in bed and picked up my sketchbook. I couldn’t stop thinking about the events of the night.

  Shying away from the image of Mark in my head, I grabbed my acrylic crayons and rubbed Karyn into existence on a sheet of heavy cartridge paper. The bold colors and shiny effect suited her edges. I wasn’t happy with her hair, which came out more gray than the platinum I’d been aiming for. But her eyes were perfect – scraped out of the waxy crayon with a razorblade. They augured into you.

  Finn was there too, also in crayon. I discarded two false-starts before I got his rodent-like features right. I made his too-wide lips an acidic blend of red and purple. By the time I’d worked over his cheekbones and the narrow angles of his face, there was too much black on the paper, but the effect was perfect: He’d dirty anything that touched him. Just like in real life.

  As midnight passed into early morning, I relented and tried to draw Mark. But it was impossible to get him right. No matter what approach I took, his eyes always looked dead, his face just a flat copy of the real thing. No life.

  The only one that came close was a pencil sketch of Mark, sitting on his bed, head in his hands, as I’d seen him when I first walked in. Because his eyes were covered, I was able to focus on the shape of his shoulders, the way his fingers clawed into his scalp.

  But when it was done, it was so hard to look at, I crumpled it up and threw it on the floor.

  The rest of the papers were covered in splotchy, uninspired messes that would barely pass for worksheets for my folder.

  My folder.

  For the art competition.

  Mark…

  The clock said it was almost five in the morning. Pushing all the papers aside, I let myself sink into the blankets. Let consciousness drift. Prayed I wouldn’t dream about Karyn or Finn and their smug smiles…

  …and woke up three hours later feeling like I hadn’t slept at all.

  I groaned and dragged myself to the bathroom to clean up.

  By eight-thirty I was supposed to be standing outside the art room. Today was the first day we were supposed to spend our Saturday at school. Alone. Working on our portfolios.

  Seven hours alone with Mark.

  Yesterday it had sounded like heaven. Today it felt like walking to the gallows.

  I gathered up the pages I’d done overnight. They could go into my workbook – essentially a record of all the art I’d tried or envisioned over the course of the year. Workbooks made almost twenty percent of the final grade in the competition. I had a bad habit of not planning my pieces enough, so my workbook was a little thin. No point wasting my efforts. As long as I shoved them in the back and didn’t show Mark…

  My stomach clenched.

  Images of the night before flashed through my head, of Mark’s happiness when he looked at Karyn. When he touched her. Of her smug delight.

  It wasn’t just the fact that he had a girlfriend – I suffered through that particular indignity every couple months. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Mark, but he was a little bit of a man-whore.

  This was different, though. The fact that he hadn’t talked to me about it before…Was he more serious this time? About her?

  Usually I got warning when someone caught his eye. He’d ask about a girl. Find out if I knew anything that might help him attract her.

  He never believed me when I told him he just needed to smile.

  Usually I knew when he was working up the courage to ask someone out. I’d help him figure out his first date so he could impress her. I’d listen to him gush about her for a few weeks. Then something would change. He’d stop talking about her all the time. Hang out with me more. Start complaining about whatever she was doing that irritated him…

  It was a cycle we’d been repeating since freshman year. But now he’d broken it.

  So, what was different this time?

  I was too scared to ask. Too frightened of the answer.

  How I was I going to spend every Saturday alone with him, knowing he’d be leaving to go see her? Knowing he still only thought of me as his friend? That nothing I’d done really mattered in the long run because one day he’d get serious about someone. And if it wasn’t me, I’d lose him forever. And maybe that day had already happened? Maybe Karyn was his One?

  The thought stopped my breath.

  The glass in my chest popped under pressure, cracked behind my ribs.

  One of the pages in my hand slipped out from between the others, drifting slowly to the carpet. I stooped to gather it quickly. Filling my hands with something to do, trying to put all the hurt out of my mind. But my head spun with a loop of Mark’s betrayal, Finn’s curses, my own words to Older Me, Mom’s disgust – then back to Mark stepping out of the car to wrap his arms around Karyn.

  I took a deep breath to hold back a sob and shoved the pictures into my bag.

  I would go to the art room today, and I would act like Mark hadn’t pulled my heart out of my chest and sliced it into a million pieces.

  I would pretend I didn’t care about anything that had happened last night.

  I would work hard. Because if things continued as they were, there was no future for me in this town. I couldn’t watch Mark walk the tightrope with
his dad and pretend it wasn’t dangerous. I couldn’t watch him bury himself in Karyn to try and forget about it. I couldn’t handle fending off Mom’s constant disappointment.

  I had to get out. And right now, the competition was my best bet.

  The top twenty artists were displayed in New York over Christmas. The winner was awarded a full-ride scholarship to the College of Fine Arts, New York. But all the finalists had a shot; between the judges – who were usually tenured professors at top schools – and the gallery opening, most ended up with scholarships to other schools.

  If I could get into art school – any art school – I’d be free. It didn’t have to be the best school if it meant I could leave, start fresh. Get away from the madness here…

  For a moment I could see it. I could feel the freedom. Then reality crashed home.

  I could try. I had to try.

  Please, God, may it work.

  Get me out of this place.

  Chapter Eight

  Doc’s lips purse at me over the arm of his glasses he’s holding in one hand. His eyes narrow. “I’m curious…if you’d known where this whole situation was going to take you, would you still have gone through with all of it?”

  I’m startled by the question because it rides so close to the mirror and what happens there. Either he doesn’t care, or he’s trying to trip me up.

  I swallow, pretend to think about it. Then, “I wasn’t lying when I said it felt like my only option was to get out of town. Try to get into a good college. If I went back, that would still be true.”

  He tips his head. “But what if you’d known?”

  I sit, silent.

  What would I have done?

  I was only five minutes late getting into the art room. I stopped just inside the door and took a deep breath, letting the smell of turpentine and paint and dust fill me up. The art room was my favorite place in the world – and not just because Mark was usually there. This was the room where anything was possible.

  Mark looked up when the door clicked behind me. He smiled, but his eyes drifted to the storage room and he tipped his chin. I nodded.