Bend Me, Break Me
Authors: Chelsea M. Cameron
Bend Me, Break Me
Copyright © 2016 Chelsea M. Cameron
All rights reserved.
Editing by
Jen Hendricks
Cover by Sarah Hansen at
Okay Creations
Formatted by: Shore Thang Formatting
Publisher: Chelsea M. Cameron
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This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental. All products mentioned are not an endorsement from the Corporations owned said product and are meant only to enhance novel realization. They are not an endorsement from the author either.
I’ve always loved bubbles. When I was young, my parents, my sister and I would go out in the backyard on steamy summer nights, each with a bottle in our hands. We’d blow them and pop them and watch them cluster together and try to blow the biggest one. They shimmered and for one bright moment, they were beautiful and they were real.
And then they would pop and it would be as if they never were. Little worlds that vanished in the blink of an eye with the touch of a finger.
I love bubble baths too. Feeling them slide all over my skin before they dissolved in the cooling water.
My life is like a bubble. Once it was shiny and perfect and then in one moment, with the bullets from a gun, my bubble popped.
I blinked and realized I’d checked out again. The professor was droning on about… something. I had to read a few lines on the chalkboard before I remembered which class I was in. Economics. No wonder I’d drifted off.
I blinked a few times and rubbed my eyes. Maybe I could get an hour nap this afternoon. Sleep came and went. For weeks, I wouldn’t sleep for more than a few hours at a time. Then I did nothing but sleep for days.
The class finally ended and I packed up my notebook and textbooks. I had barely taken one note. I didn’t even know what the point of me being here was anymore.
I trudged up the stairs and out of the lecture hall and onto the sidewalk.
“Hey!” someone said behind me. I didn’t turn around. They were probably saying it to one of the other dozens of students who streamed around me. Someone else who was smiling or laughing and wasn’t… me.
“Hey!” the voice said again, closer. A hand tapped me on the shoulder and I spun around, as if I were being attacked.
“Whoa there,” he said. My eyes lifted from the pavement to meet a pair of eyes as green as a fresh-mowed lawn. Brown curls hung down, almost blocking those eyes, like curtains. He had a nervous smile on his mouth and I noticed a white scar cut across one of his eyebrows.
I had no idea who he was, and I was pretty sure he didn’t know me either.
“What do you want?” I asked, my voice hostile. I was out of practice talking to people. It was a skill, like anything else, that must be practiced.
“Um, you dropped this,” he said, holding up a pen that wasn’t mine. I knew it wasn’t mine because I always used the same pens. Purple ballpoint. This was a fancier pen and looked like it had black ink in it.
“No, sorry,” I said, edging away from him. The pen was clearly a ruse to talk to me and I wasn’t falling for it. I didn’t want to talk to him. I didn’t want to talk to anyone.
He stared down at the pen, still held in his outstretched hand.
“Oh. Well, my mistake.” When he talked, you could see a very tiny chip in one of his front teeth.
He put the pen away and I expected him to go away, but he stood there with his hands in his jeans pockets. As if he was waiting for me to say something else.
“Okay. Bye,” I said, taking a step back from him.
“See you,” he said. I hoped I wouldn’t.
Most people decorated their dorm rooms. I’d always thought I’d be one of those people but then things changed and I hadn’t bothered. My room was bare, except for the covers on the bed, a few books, a television, a fridge and a microwave. No twinkle lights. No snapshots of me with my friends, our faces smashed together to get everyone in the shot. No movie posters.
I set my bag on the floor with a
thunk
and climbed into bed. Somehow, I’d been able to secure a single room, which was a miracle as a freshman. Although she wouldn’t admit it, I knew my mom had pulled some strings.
My eyes were dry and gritty and I rubbed them, but it didn’t help. Grabbing the remote, I flipped through all the cable channels and stopped on something at random. I only saw noise and color, but it made the quiet room more bearable.
I had plenty of homework, but it would get done later tonight. It was the best way to occupy my mind when I was supposed to be sleeping. Until then, there wasn’t a whole lot to do, so I grabbed my laptop and turned it on. The first thing I checked was my Instagram. My latest poem was up to 203 likes, which was pretty good. I allowed myself a smile before I tucked it away. I only allowed myself so many smiles a day and that was my second. I only had one left. One smile to spend on something.
After checking my other social media accounts, I pushed my computer aside and pulled out my notebook from under my pillow. Keeping it there was a habit I’d carried over from childhood. Keeping my most precious words safe while I slept.
Turning to a fresh page, I started with one word, as always.
Water.
Slipping through my fingers.
Impossible to hold.
Liquid.
Blood on the floor.
Flowing.
No beginnings.
Only endings.
I looked at the words after my pen had stopped. It was fine, but not good enough to post. Not yet. It would need some work. Some tweaking. Sighing, I closed the notebook again and turned to my bookshelf, which held a number of leather-bound volumes. Tolstoy, Austen, Dickens, Hemingway. Pulling
War and Peace
off the shelf, I let it fall open to a random page. Raising the book to my face, I inhaled the smell of the pages. So familiar. So safe.
I shook my head at myself and put the book back. I couldn’t dwell on things like books. I couldn’t dwell on things like memories. All I could do was breathe and exist. That was hard enough, especially since I rarely slept a full night.
I could get through it. I could. And then…
I had no idea.
Well. I fucked that up. She looked at me like I was crazy, which, to her, I probably appeared to be. Great. Now she was going to go out of her way to avoid me and then I would never be able to tell her.
I’d run over what I was going to say hundreds of times in my head. Thousands. I’d thought about sending emails. Phone calls. Hiring a fucking sky writer. I didn’t know. Just… I had to tell her. I had to tell her so many things and she had no idea.
I mentally kicked myself all the way back to my room. Marty was out, which was nice since our room was totally quiet. I dropped my bag and flopped onto my bed. The room was an absolute mess, but I couldn’t be bothered to pick up my dirty clothes or Pop Tart wrappers or empty soda cans. Neither could Marty.
Groaning, I rubbed my hands on my face and tried to figure out how to salvage the situation with Ingrid. Fuck, she had a great name. It suited her perfectly. She reminded me of a bird. She looked light and fragile, but was so strong underneath. The most astonishing feature of Ingrid was her eyes. They were a dark brown on the outside and shaded into a lighter brown with just a tiny hint of green near her pupils. Hazel, I guess you’d say. It didn’t really matter what color her eyes were. That wasn’t the point.
She
was the point.
The door slammed open and I sat up.
“Hey,” Marty said, dropping his bag and slumping over on his bed.
“Hey,” I said, not sitting up.
“Whoa, what’s your deal?” he asked, picking up a shirt from the foot of his bed, smelling it and then throwing it on the floor. Both of us had clothes hampers, but they were both currently empty. We might look nothing alike, being as he was black and I was white, he was nearly six-four and hit the gym every day and I was on the shorter side for a guy and only worked out sporadically. But somehow, our personalities matched well, even though we’d been randomly paired together. He joked that the school had only accepted him to fill their “diversity” quota, but I knew that wasn’t true. He was one of those people who could spend five minutes on homework and maintain a perfect GPA.
“Nothing,” I said, getting up and going to our mini fridge to grab a soda. We’d become fast friends during summer orientation and now it was like we’d known each other for years, instead of weeks.
“Toss me one,” he said, holding his hands up. I hucked him a can and he caught it with one hand.
“You sure?” he asked, popping the top of the can and sucking the bubbling soda so it didn’t spill all over the floor. Not that the floor wasn’t already covered in crap.
“Yeah.” Marty didn’t know about Ingrid. He didn’t know much about me, really, and I wanted to keep it that way.
“Fine. Bottle it up inside. See how well that works for you. But don’t come crying to me when you burst a blood vessel or have a breakdown.” He grinned at me and drained the rest of his soda can before chucking it at the trash bin. He made it easily.