Breaking Beautiful (2 page)

Dad’s heavy footsteps cross the floor. “This guy was brought in from Seattle, some kind of special investigator or detective or something.”

“A detective? Here?” Mom laughs, but it’s a nervous laugh.

“My guess is Mr. Phillips has been putting pressure on Chief Milton to reopen the investigation.” Dad sounds casual, but the weight of what he’s saying presses against the scar on the back of my head. I open the door an inch more and take a half step into the hall.

“Why would he … ?” But Mom works for Mr. Phillips. She knows that answer almost as well as I do.

Dad sets his coffee mug down on the countertop. “My guess is he thinks Chief Milton didn’t take the accident investigation seriously. That maybe there was something he missed.”

I grip the door handle. I want to shut the door and shut out what he’s saying. Instead I slide between the door and the frame and listen closely.

“He wouldn’t want to talk to Allie, would he?” Mom’s trying to match his casual tone, not quite pulling it off.

“If he’s reopening the investigation, she’s the first person he’ll talk to.”

More questions? Things I can’t answer. Things I don’t remember. Things I don’t want to remember. I was too sick, too hurt before. Everyone felt sorry for me. But now …

“Hasn’t she been through enough?” Mom sounds sincere. I wish I could believe that she could protect me, but I know better.

“Honestly, Lu.” Dad sets the coffee mug down again. “I think he might be right. If I were Roger Phillips, if it were my kid who got killed, I’d want it all looked into, too.”

“I don’t know what good a ‘special investigator’ will do.” Mom says the title with disdain. The sink turns on and Mom raises her voice. Does she know I’m listening? “Everyone knows Trip was reckless in that truck, and that there was probably alcohol involved—”

“No way to prove that one way or another. Not with the little bit they got from the accident scene. Seems like they should have spent more time looking for—”

“—small town, remember?” Mom sounds offended, like Dad made a personal attack on Pacific Cliffs. “We don’t have the resources—”

“—exactly why Mr. Phillips brought in this guy. It will help everyone if—”

I take another step forward and my foot comes down on something soft and fuzzy. My scream mingles with the cat’s yowl as she streaks away toward Andrew’s room. I stumble forward and reach for the door handle, but my hand slips and I end up on the floor.

“Allie.” Mom’s voice wavers. “Is that you?”

I want to crawl back to my room, but Dad’s already coming down the hall. Caught by my clumsiness. Again.

He reaches a hand to help me up. “Are you okay?”

I don’t answer. It’s too hard to lie to Dad.

“Hungry?”

“No, sir.” That’s the truth. There’s no room for food around the hole in my stomach.

“No school today?” His voice is gentle, but I can feel his eyes boring into my forehead.

“No, sir.” I roll a piece of lint caught in the pocket of my sweats between my fingers. Mom stays hidden in the kitchen. I can hear the dishes clink as she loads the dishwasher.

Dad puts a hand on my shoulder. I flinch, but control it enough that I don’t think he notices. “You need to get back into life. This staying in your room all the time—”

“Is someone else going to come talk to me?” The question slips between my cracked lips before I can stop it.

“Were you … did you hear?” Dad’s voice is sharp. I lower my head. He’s been gone long enough that I’m not sure what the penalty is for eavesdropping.

“The door was open.” My voice comes out hoarse from lack of use.

He nods. “I guess it’s better if you know. Yes, somebody will probably want to talk to you.”

“About the accident?” Stupid question.

“About the accident.”

“But I can’t … I don’t remember anything.” I plead with my eyes. Maybe he can protect me.

“Are you sure, Allie? It might give the Phillipses some peace if they knew exactly what happened that night.” He squeezes my shoulder. I think he means it to be gentle, but it makes me feel trapped. “I think it would give you some peace, too.”

“I don’t remember anything.” I pull away and back toward my bedroom. “I’m sorry. I’m going back to bed. I … I … don’t feel good.”

He half reaches for me again, but I keep moving.

“My head hurts.” That’s the truth, too. I close the door tight behind me while he watches from the other side.

Instead of going back to bed I’m drawn to the closet. The doors are closed so I can’t see it, but in the back there’s a black garment bag, so long and full that it could be a body bag with an actual body stuffed inside. Sometimes I imagine that it is a body bag and if I open it up I’ll see Trip. It really holds the dress—long and bloodred, strapless, with little pearls and white lace across the front. It isn’t really a color I would have chosen, but I didn’t pick the dress out for myself.

The scar on the back of my head throbs.

“Do you like it? It’s to wear to cotillion.”

Cotillion is a big deal in Pacific Cliffs. It goes along with the Beachcomber’s Festival, the biggest event in town. There’s a fair with vendors and tourists, a pageant, and then the dance. Last summer, the last summer I had planned to
ever
spend in Pacific Cliffs, the cotillion fell on my eighteenth birthday.

“But it’s not a birthday present.”

Trip was such a little boy whenever he had something to give me. His crystal-blue eyes would sparkle and his expression would vary from excitement to fear and doubt, and back to excitement. I can still see his face, the way he tilted his head. How excited he was for me to see the dress. The pain spreads from the back of my head, cuts across my right temple, and curls around the smaller scar above my eye.

“I’m saving something special to give you on your birthday.”

My whole head throbs.

It hurts too much to remember.

Chapter
2

Blake shifts his weight from one foot to the other. He’s standing at the door to my bedroom like he’s held back by the same invisible wall that keeps Andrew out. “I brought your homework.” He holds the paper out for me to take but doesn’t move to come inside. All of my schoolbooks are already in the corner so we’re down to assignment sheets.

I cross the room to him and run my hand through what’s left of my hair, knowing how bad I must look.

He won’t look me in the eye. Funny how we’ve gotten to this point again—him at my door, coming to see me every day. Like we’ve erased two years of hurt feelings and not speaking to each other. But not entirely erased. There’s still a barrier between us, like scar tissue left behind from a wound that’s been forgiven but will never be forgotten.

Pre-Trip, Blake was my best—make that my
only
—friend in
Pacific Cliffs. Our grandmas were next-door neighbors and best friends. Since he lives with his grandma and I visited mine for a couple of weeks every summer, we saw each other a lot. During our summer visits he was my coconspirator in adventure, my partner in crime, and the only kid who wasn’t weirded out by Andrew’s wheelchair.

Blake was also my first kiss.

Trip was jealous of my friendship with Blake. For those two years, it was better for Blake and me to pretend that we didn’t know each other. I guess I don’t have to worry about that anymore.

“Do you have anything for me to take back?” Blake shifts his weight again as I take the paper from him. “Anything you’ve finished?”

I shake my head no and step back into my room.

This is the point when he should leave, when he always leaves, but today he leans against the door frame. “The assignment for art is kind of weird. I could explain it to you. What’s written on the paper probably won’t make much sense.”

“I’ll figure it out.” Not that I have any intention of actually doing the assignment. Last year I killed myself to get good grades. Studied until my eyes crossed and my brain hurt. It went along with my plan for getting out of Pacific Cliffs permanently. But it doesn’t matter anymore.

Blake rubs the front of his neck, clears his throat, and then rubs it again—a nervous tick he’s had as long as I can remember. Even Trip noticed. He used to do that when he made fun of Blake. He clears his throat one more time before he finally speaks. “When are you coming back, Allie?”

I touch the back of my head. “I don’t know.” The truth is, I’d be happy to never leave this room. No, happy isn’t the right word, maybe comfortable. Except comfortable doesn’t fit my self-imposed prison either. The only word that fits is terrified. Terrified to leave this room and face …

What? I’m not sure. It’s not like anyone is going to be mean to me. They’ll all be nice. Dripping with niceness. And that will be worse.

Even Hannah George will be nice to me now, keeping up her “Beachcomber’s Queen” appearance. Hannah was never nice to me before. Not that I could blame her. She was Trip’s girlfriend before me. They’d been together since seventh grade. But the summer I turned fifteen she spent a couple of weeks at a basketball camp in California—the same couple of weeks I was in Pacific Cliffs. The summer Blake was gone.

I had watched Trip skim boarding along the edge of the surf for a long time before he acknowledged me. It was July, but the beach here is pretty much always cold. I was wearing a bikini top and board shorts—hoping he would notice.

“Hey. Cat girl, right?” Trip had called. The summer before he had helped me rescue Sasha, a little tiger-striped kitten, from a crab cage, a cage Blake was convinced Trip had put her in.

“Allie,” I yelled back.

“Right, Allie. You still got that cat?” He tucked his skim board under his arm and started walking toward me.

“Yeah.” I shrugged, but my heart was pounding under the narrow string that held the two halves of my swimsuit top together. “She lives with my grandma.”

In his wet suit, the blue one that brought out his eyes, Trip
looked like a surfer Ken doll. The suit hugged his chest, and his hair fell in wet waves over his ears. He stepped closer. “So, you around for a while?”

I tried to stay casual and barely glanced up from my magazine. “A little while.”

He stopped so his shadow fell on the page I pretended to read. A drop of water slid off his hair and onto my arm. “Long enough for me to teach you how to skim?” He nodded to the board under his arm.

I remember looking up, seeing his grin, and wondering how anyone could get tan on this beach and how anyone could have teeth that white.

I never figured out how to skim, another in a long line of coordination-required, failed sporting attempts. It was really just an excuse to hang out with Trip. I didn’t know about Hannah then, or if I did, I’d forgotten. It didn’t make much difference. When Trip kissed me good-bye at the end of my visit, I didn’t expect to see him for at least a year. I didn’t know I would be back six months later, this time as a resident of Pacific Cliffs. Dad was being deployed again—the last time before he retired from the Army. Grandma’s health wasn’t good so we moved here before he left. Pacific Cliffs was my mom’s hometown and where Dad promised her we would live once he was out of the Army, so we stayed even after Grandma died.

Trip dumped Hannah for me as soon as I moved in. That was enough to make every girl at Pacific Cliffs High School despise me. They were all loyal to Hannah because they’d known each other since they were in diapers. I was the outsider who stole the hottest guy at school. They’ve all hated me since
I moved in, one of about a million reasons for me to avoid going back there.

Blake is still at the door—waiting for something. Sasha, the kitten Trip rescued—now a fat cat—weaves herself between his feet. He bends down to pet her and she raises her head and rubs against his hand. She used to arch her back and hiss at Trip whenever he tried to touch her. “A lot of thanks I get for rescuing that beast,” he would say, and laugh. It made me wonder if Blake was right about Trip locking her in the cage.

“Why don’t we go for a walk? We could go to the beach. It’s actually a nice day, and you need to get out of the house.” He nods toward my window.

“I can’t.” It hurts when I shake my head. Even if I wanted to go, there are two major problems with me and Blake going for a walk. One, the cliff road that Trip drove off that night is visible from any point on the beach, and I don’t know if I can stand to see that place again. And two, the second I go anywhere with Blake the rumor mill will be unleashed. Some girls have to worry about a story getting around school. In a place the size of Pacific Cliffs, the whole town knows your business almost before you do. Like my house, Pacific Cliffs isn’t a good place for keeping secrets.

“Oh, yeah, well.” He looks down at the floor and digs into his pocket. One lock of sandy hair slips over his eyes when he looks up at me. I resist the urge to brush it back. He clears his throat—“Um”—and brushes his hand across his neck. “I have something for”—he clears his throat again—“something that’s yours.” He holds out his hand.

I gasp and take a step back.

He’s holding a palm-sized stone, round and polished smooth, dark brown with gold stripes that dance in the light like they were alive.

Guilt flashes across his face. “It’s yours, isn’t it?”

“Where did you find it?” I barely breathe. My heart thumps, and my scar pricks for attention, but my fingers ache for the familiar smoothness of the stone’s surface, for the bumps along one side, and for the rough spot in the middle.

He swallows. “Up the cliff. By the road.” He breathes in. “Where they found you that night.”

The side of the road by the cliff is covered in loose rocks, sand, and scrubby beach grass. Blake finding the tigereye by accident is improbable. Finding it even if he searched for a long time would probably be impossible. But I don’t question him. I reach for his hand, dig the rock out of his palm, and slide my thumb across it.

It feels warm from Blake’s touch.

“Tigereye stone,” the old woman at the fair had said, “beautiful and rare, like your eye.”