Read Breaking Beautiful Online
Authors: Jennifer Shaw Wolf
After two stiff, painful dances I tell Blake that I need to go to the bathroom. As I walk out I see him cross the room toward Kasey. It hurts, but how can I blame him for wanting a girl with less drama in her life?
In the plush red bathroom of the inn I lean over the sink and splash water on my cheeks to make the blotches go away. I rub my eye and smear the makeup that Mel used to cover my scar. My scar, my freaky eye, and James’s voice in my head all accuse me from the mirror.
Murderer.
I close my eyes and lean against the sink, defeated.
“Good job, Allie. You managed to screw up the dance for everyone.”
I look up. Hannah is standing behind me. Her eyes are as red as mine and her expression is deadly, but she still looks like
the beauty queen that she is. The light catches the emerald brooch that holds together her blue velvet nineteenth-century ball gown. “Why do you have to go after everything that’s mine?”
I grip the edge of the sink.
“James told me you sold everything Trip ever gave you. That you were after him for his money.”
I look at her while what she’s saying registers. James told Hannah about me selling Trip’s things. Panic pulses through my veins. Now that she knows, everyone else will know.
“I bet you killed him for his money. You and Juvie. You had this planned all along so you could be together.” She laughs, but her laughter is filled with pain, and her eyes swim with tears. “What’s so special about you? I don’t know what any guy sees in you. You didn’t deserve a guy like Trip. You don’t even deserve Juvie.”
Her words feel like fists to my stomach. Fists to my face. Like having Trip back again.
Her voice wavers. “Trip was the best thing that ever happened to me and you—”
I turn around and face her. “You didn’t even know him.” It comes through clenched teeth. I’m done with this, done with all of this. If I’m going to be damned, at least it should be for the truth.
“What?” She backs away from me.
“I said, you didn’t know him. You think he was perfect. You all think that the great Trip Phillips could do no wrong. But you didn’t know the other side of him. You don’t know how lucky you are that I came here.”
Hannah’s eyes widen, like what I’m saying is sacrilege. “Don’t you dare—”
I thrust my arm in her face so she can see my scar. “He did this to me. Cut me. Branded me. So I wouldn’t forget who I belonged to.”
She backs away. “That’s not … not true. You’re lying.” Her voice falters, but she doesn’t take her eyes off my scar. She doesn’t want to believe me, but I think she does.
“Now he’s gone. And you guys still won’t let me forget. You still won’t let me forget that I belong to him.” I push past her and she cowers in the corner. I fling the bathroom door open and run down the hall and outside.
My shoes slide on the wet sidewalk and I almost fall. I pull them off and keep running.
You killed him, you killed him
pulses in my ears with every heartbeat. I should go to the police station and turn myself in, but I run past it. My fishnet nylons rip and icy spikes tear at my feet with every step I take. Eventually my run slows to a walk. I clutch my arms around my shoulders, freezing. It’s raining, slow and drizzly. I don’t even have the fuzzy wrap or a hat for protection. I don’t even know where I’m going, home or to the cliff.
Headlights slow beside me, but I ignore them. Blake gets out of the car. “Allie!”
I don’t stop.
He walks beside me. “Allie, stop.”
I keep moving.
“Please stop.” He puts his arm over my shoulder.
I push him away.
“I’m so sorry, Allie, I know I was a jerk tonight. I just … The fire and my paintings and Mr. Phillips—”
I turn on him. “What do you want from me? Didn’t you
hear James? I’m a murderer. Guys I love end up dead. You need to stay away from me.”
He stops, stunned, like I slapped him. I am a murderer. Now he believes it, too.
I start walking again, but in a few more steps he’s beside me again. He reaches for me, his eyes pleading. “Just stop, okay. Listen to me. There are some things I need to tell you about the night Trip died, please just—”
“No!” Dread floods my body like the icy waters of the Pacific filling our cave. I don’t want to hear what he’s going to say.
Lights flash behind him. Chief Milton gets out. He’s coming to arrest me. I’m sure of it. He shines his flashlight on me and then on Blake. “What’s going on here?”
“Nothing.” Blake steps away from me and tries to shove his hands in his pockets, but his costume doesn’t have any pockets. “We just had a fight.”
Chief Milton puts the light on my face so it blinds me. “Did this boy do anything to you? Did he try to hurt you at all?”
The whole situation is bitterly ironic, Chief Milton coming to rescue me from Blake, now, after everything. “No.” I shake my head. “Like he said. We just had a fight.”
The flashlight goes back to Blake’s eyes. Chief Milton studies him for a long time while we stand shivering. “You’d better go. I’ll make sure Miss Davis makes it home okay.” I follow him back to the police car. He opens the passenger side door and lets me in. Before he shuts it behind me, I hear him say to Blake, “I’d advise you to stay away from her.”
Blake stands there alone, rain dripping off his bangs, like a wet dog. Watching us drive away.
Blake sends me fifty texts on Sunday. I don’t read any of them.
Mom tries to talk to me, actually defends Blake. “I don’t know what you two fought about, but you might want to cut Blake a little slack. There were some complaints about his grandmother’s products at the inn, so Mr. Phillips had to cancel the contract he had with her. She can’t support both of them with that little shop. I heard they might lose their house.”
My fault, all my fault. If Mr. Phillips canceled Grandma Joyce’s contract, it was because of me.
Andrew can’t talk to me; he’s sick, coughing, probably got pneumonia when he and Caitlyn and Mel were driving around in the limo looking for me.
My fault. I ruined the dance for everyone.
On Monday, Mom takes the van to work so I can drive myself to school. I’m late so I skip going to my locker and go
straight to first period. I look around for Hannah, wondering what she’ll say to me now that she knows my secret. She’s probably in Ms. Holt’s office now, blubbering to her everything I told her at the dance. Any minute I’ll be called out of class to explain myself. Maybe it will be a relief. Finally having to tell everything Trip did to me. Maybe it will help my case when I’m tried for murder.
But Hannah doesn’t show up for class. The bell rings and nobody calls me down to the office. I follow the sea of whispering students to my locker, like everything is normal.
“What is that smell?” Angie wrinkles her nose and looks at Blake, oblivious to the idea that she might be hurting his feelings. He doesn’t respond. He gives me a sad, silent look, then he turns away.
Hannah comes down the hall. She manages a cold glare for Blake and Randall, even Angie. Nothing for me. I’m standing right in front of her, but she stares through me like I’m not here. I guess if I don’t exist then what I said about Trip can’t be true.
Randall makes a face. “Did someone leave a tuna fish sandwich in their locker?” I smell it, too, something oceany, fishy, rotten. He starts sniffing the lockers like a bloodhound. He holds his nose. “Whew! I think it’s in here.” He points to my locker.
Everyone gathers around while I work the lock with numb fingers. I’m afraid of what I might find. The smell is so bad it almost gags me. I don’t want to see what’s inside, but I open the door. A cascade of faded notes, ruined pictures, and bits of cardboard and rotting seaweed cover me. Everything that was in the box I threw into the ocean is spread out across the floor for everyone to see.
I collapse to the ground, frantic, trying to gather the notes and pictures up before anyone sees what’s written on them. Blake is on the floor beside me. “No!” I push him away. “Don’t look at them!” He can’t see what’s written on the notes.
But it’s too late. Everyone has already seen. I can feel their eyes boring into the scar on the back of my head, condemning me. I melt onto the floor and a wave of black crashes over my head and sweeps me away.
Dad’s sitting on my desk chair beside the bed. I can’t quite remember how I got in bed. I can’t even remember how I got home. The only thing clearly burned into my brain is the image of my whole relationship with Trip, spread out over the school hallway for everyone to see. “How do you feel?” His voice is gentle.
My head is pounding, I feel weak, and my mouth tastes like bile. I wonder if I threw up at school. Mom is here, too. She lays something cold and wet across my forehead. I curl up tighter in a ball, like I could shut everything out. Like I could be a little girl again, home with the flu, two concerned parents standing watch over me.
“Detective Weeks would like to—” Dad starts.
Mom shakes her head at him. She leans over the side of my bed. “The doctor prescribed these”—she holds out two little blue pills. “For anxiety, and to help you sleep.”
I take the pills from her and swallow them without answering.
She sits back and brushes my hair off my face. “These are just temporary fixes. I’ve spoken to Ms. Vincent. She thinks you should spend some time at a mental-health clinic for teens in Seattle.” She draws in a breath, probably at the thought of her perfect world interrupted by a daughter in a mental institution. “Grandma Joyce and Blake told me that these incidents of near-collapse have happened before—”
Traitors.
“We”—she looks at Dad, but he’s studying his hands—“we think it would be best if …”
I close my eyes against her words and let the blue pills carry me away to an ocean of red dresses, black pickups, and dead boyfriends.
.........
The clock says 1:20, but the sun is out so it must be afternoon.
I wrap my fingers around the stone and curl up in a fetal position. The days have started to run together, but I think it’s Wednesday. Four days since the dance. Two days since I found the mess in my locker. I haven’t been back to school. Blake comes by faithfully every day to check on me, but I pretend that I’m asleep so I don’t have to see him.
I can’t wait anymore so I drag myself to the bathroom so I can pee. It’s about the only thing that gets me out of bed. I don’t look myself in the eye when I bend over to wash my hands.
I turn off the water. Then I hear it. A whimper, like someone crying, but trying to hide it. I slide the door to Andrew’s
room open slowly, but he must be at school. I shut the door and listen again. It’s Mom.
Why isn’t she at work? My chest fills with guilt. She must be worried about me, but I can’t make myself play “normal” anymore.
Dad is home, too. I can hear him moving around the kitchen. He starts down the hall. He’s almost past my door before I force myself to open it. “Dad.” My voice is croaky from lack of use. “Dad.”
He walks back to my room. “Hey, how are you feeling?” He says it softly, like he’s afraid I’ll lose it again.
“Better.” I grip the stone and try to sound better.
“Would you like something to eat?”
I take in a breath. “What’s wrong with Mom?”
“Oh.” He won’t look in my eyes. “You don’t need to worry about that.”
The tone of his voice makes my heart clench with fear. Like it’s about more than just me. “Tell me.”
He pushes past me and shuts the door behind him. He sits down on my bed and motions for me to do the same. “She lost her job.”
Your fault, your fault.
“There was some problem with the books at the resort. An outside accountant came in and did an audit. I don’t know what he found, but I guess there was a bunch of money missing. Mr. Phillips blamed your mom. He fired her yesterday.”
“Mom would never—” I cover my mouth. “Mr. Phillips knows that.” I stop. He
does
know that. If he fired Mom, it wasn’t because he thought she had stolen money from the resort. It was
because of me. I’m suddenly mad. Furious. Mr. Phillips is a bully. He thinks he can intimidate me into—what? Breaking up with Blake? Leaving Pacific Cliffs?
A confession?
“Yeah, he does know that, but it doesn’t look good.” Dad runs his hand through his hair and his shoulders slump. “I have some loans coming due on the shop, and with Mom losing her job …” He stands up. “But you don’t need to worry about that. We’ll work it out, okay? I’m heading back to work. There’s food in the fridge. I made spaghetti last night.”
He starts for the door, but halfway there he stops, turns around, and comes back. He sits down on the edge of my bed. The corners of his mouth twitch and he keeps rubbing a grease stain on the palm of his hand. He doesn’t say anything for a long time. When he finally talks, his voice is quiet. “There are some things I wanted to clear up, just between the two of us.” He traces the lines in his fingers where the black grease stains never really wash out. “Detective Weeks asked me to come in and look at some of the things that were in your locker. Some of the notes that Trip had written to you.”
I try to swallow, but my throat has closed off.
“A lot of apologies. A lot of ‘It will never happen again.’” The sides of his jaws are working. “I’ve heard those kinds of excuses before.”
I close my eyes and will him to stop talking. Will the blackness to overtake me again.
“Allie, when I read those notes it made me wonder …” He breathes in. “Did Trip ever do anything … did he ever hurt you?”
I squeeze my eyes tighter to keep the tears from escaping. Crying right now would be a confession, but I don’t have any words to answer his question.
“For all those years I was gone … when I was doing what I thought I should be doing to keep you all safe, to protect my family.” His voice wavers. I can’t open my eyes now. I can’t face the pain I hear in his voice. “If somehow I missed something, if somehow I failed to protect you, I’m sorry.”