Breaking Beautiful (3 page)

“The freaky one,” Trip said, and James and Randall laughed. My left eye is normal—dark brown, but the right one has a streak of gold in it. A little bit of extra pigment. Something that made me feel special when I was a kid. Now it just makes me feel like a freak. And now that my “freaky” eye is framed by a lumpy scar it looks freakier than ever.

Trip didn’t buy the tigereye the woman was trying to sell him. That one was bigger and strung on a silver chain. He told her it was cheap junk. The woman gave me this smaller stone when I came back to her table looking for my lost purse.

“Tigereye is powerful,” she said. “It gives the bearer the attributes of a tiger—empowerment, strength, courage.”

I press the stone into my palm until it hurts. I look up at Blake. “Thank you.”

He backs away. “I’d better go.”

I nod and push the door closed. Before it clicks shut he adds, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Chapter
3

I can get away with staying in my room for most of the day, but I’m still required to eat dinner with the family. As soon as I get to the table, I know something’s up. It’s the way my parents are sitting—their chairs a little closer together, a little farther from me. Mom twists her napkin. Dad has his hand on her back.

I’ve seen this too many times before not to know what’s going on. They’re presenting a “united front.”

Mom and Dad and their united front always meant something in our lives was about to change or that I was in trouble—another move, Dad being deployed, problems with my grades.

Usually when they do this, Andrew and I sit opposite them, close together, my hand touching his under the table—our own united front. In seven moves, six different schools, four states, and two foreign countries, our only constant was each other. Dad
got deployed, Mom cleaned and purged and organized. Andrew and I stuck together.

Only this time there’s a subtle difference. Andrew’s chair is parked closer to them than to me—too far away for me to reach his hand. And he won’t look at me.

Dad clears his throat. “Allie, we need to talk.” Mom nods to show their unity. “We know the accident was hard on you. And losing Trip, but you have to get on with things. You need to go back to school. You can’t stop living because—”

I look up at him. Meet his gaze hard. Dare him to finish that sentence.
Because Trip is dead.

He looks away—a first. I’ve never been able to stare down the sergeant major before. He stands up, breaks ranks, and walks all the way around the table. He looks down at me. This time I look away. I’m used to Dad being strict and unfeeling, but the tenderness in his eyes I can’t take. “Trip is gone, honey.” He touches my arm. I study the brown-gold patterns in the scarred wood floor. They remind me of my tigereye. “He isn’t coming back. And it’s time for you to start living again.”

They keep saying that. “Trip is gone.” Like I’m holding out some hope that he’ll come back, pull up to the driveway, bound up the front steps with flowers or a present for me, to apologize for being gone so long.

“We think maybe you need to see someone.” Mom’s voice cracks. “Ms. Holt from the school said she knows a woman down in Aberdeen. A grief counselor—”

“No.” The sharpness of my voice surprises me. I tear away from Dad’s hand and face them from the other side of the room. “No!”

“Allie, you need to—” Mom starts.

“—calm down,” Dad finishes. He moves toward me.

I glare at him again. “No shrink. No counselor. No way.”

“Hon, it will make it easier, if …” Mom slides her knife closer to her plate. “If”—she adjusts her spoon—“if …”

“If the new investigator wants to question you,” Dad finishes for her.

I stop and blink once, and then again as that thought settles on me. That’s what this is all about. Everyone wants to get into my head and find out what’s buried there. What I don’t remember. What I do.

Andrew is watching me—concern and fear in his eyes. His body shakes. It’s harder for him to control his movements when he’s upset. “A-A-l—”

His tremor snaps me back to the table. I glare at him, too. I can’t believe he’s on their side. “No.” I turn on my heels and flee. Run to my room and slam the door.

I expect someone to come after me. I’ve only slammed the door a few times before when Dad was around. It was always followed by him stomping down the hall, flinging open the door, and yelling, “That kind of behavior isn’t tolerated in this house!”

But no one comes. Not Dad with his heavy footsteps, not Mom with her clicking heels, not Andrew in his chair.

I stride to my dresser. The sudden urge to throw something, break something, is overwhelming. I clench my fists to keep from sweeping the dresser and knocking everything on it into a broken heap on the floor.

I won’t go to a counselor.

I’m not crazy.

I throw myself on the bed and stuff my pillow into my mouth so I can scream without them hearing.

No.

I can’t have anyone prying into my head, pulling out the secrets I don’t want to share. Things I can’t remember. Things I have to keep hidden. Since the accident my mind is so full of fuzz that I can’t trust the lock on my brain.

I press the pillow against my eyes and try to shut everything out, take in a few breaths, to get control. Blood pounds in my ears. My head throbs between the scar on the back of my head and the one over my eye. My hands are shaking with anger that I don’t understand.

What gives them the right to care now?

Now that it’s too late?

The stone that Blake brought me is still on my nightstand. I set it there before I left my room for dinner. I didn’t know I would need it.

My hands shake as I reach for it now. My brain wants to explode. I could throw it hard enough to break the mirror. Hard enough that the pictures of me and Trip would shatter into a million pieces. I slide my fingers over the smooth surface and take in another breath.

Courage.

I wonder what the woman knew about courage. About the kind of courage I would need. Or about the courage I lack.

I hold the stone to the light. The stripes dance. I find the rough spot in the middle and rub it, concentrating on making it smooth.

I’m eighteen. An adult. Short of having me committed, putting me in a straitjacket, and hauling me off in a little white ambulance, they can’t make me go anywhere. They can’t make me talk to anyone.

I breathe in and try to count the stripes on the stone, but they swirl and move too fast. Breathe again. Count. Breathe. Close my eyes to shut out the dancing stripes and my throbbing head.

The hall floor clicks with Mom’s footsteps. I should have known it would be her. Dad doesn’t deal with emotions and Andrew won’t even come all the way into my room anymore.

She knocks, but I don’t answer. I slide the stone into the pocket of my sweatpants and sit up on the bed. I don’t look at her when she comes in. She sits beside me, sighs, and glances around my room—taking it all in. Clothes on the floor, the pile of schoolbooks in the corner, and my “clutter”—posters, stuffed animals, shells, snow globes, knickknacks. Stuff I’ve collected from all of our moves. I’m the family pack rat. Mom is a neat freak and ultraorganized. My room is a constant irritation to her. I wonder what she’d have done if I had swept everything off my dresser and onto the floor. Everything is such a mess she might not have even noticed.

She reaches over to run her fingers through my hair, forgets and brushes against the scar, then recoils before she can stop herself. She touches my back lightly, but settles for her hands in her lap. “I don’t know why you’re so angry with us. We’re only trying to do what’s best for you.” She sighs. “I’m not equipped to deal with this. I need some help. You need some help.”

“No.” I study the handmade rag rug on the floor, something I saved from Grandma’s house.

“You can’t live in this room forever.”

I touch the stone in my pocket. “No.”

Mom starts picking at her perfect nails. “I know you’re hurting, but you have your whole life in front of you. It’s your senior year. You have to move on. Having someone to talk to about things, someone trained in this sort of thing, might be the best thing.”

I run my fingernail along the bumpy side of the stone, three “things” in a row. And not one mention of the word “death.”

“You can’t go on like this.”

I press the stone hard into my palm.

She breathes in and then speaks deliberately. “I want you to be able to move past this.”

I grit my teeth and close my eyes. What she wants is to have her orderly life back. To pretend nothing happened. To pretend there’s nothing wrong with me. Just like before. I open my eyes and look into hers. Now that my whole family is after me about the counselor thing I won’t have any peace.

What are my options? Let some grief counselor sift through the pieces of my mind that are left, or go back to school and pretend everything is normal? Not like I haven’t done that before. “I’ll go back to school tomorrow.” The words come out so quiet that for a minute I hope she didn’t hear them.

But she grabs on to them immediately. “If that’s what you want.” She adjusts the band on her watch. “And only if you’re ready.” She looks at the piles of clothes on the floor. “I could throw something in the wash so you would have something clean to wear. And I have some cute scarves, or maybe a hat, you could use to cover your hair.” Her eyes trace the wound
on the side of my face. I lean forward and cup my hand over my eye scar.

Unbelievable. She made the leap from “Are you sure you’re up to going?” to “What will you wear?” and “How will we cover your scar?” in less than a heartbeat.

She pats my knee. “I’m sure it will start to fade soon anyway.” She stands up. “It might be hard for you at first, but I know this is the right decision. It’ll be good for you to be back at school, back with your friends. I’m sure they’re worried about you.”

Friends? I press the stone hard against my thigh. After eighteen years it still amazes me how little Mom knows about my life. She sees what she wants to, even now.

She stands up. “I’ll bring you in some food, okay? And I’ll get these”—she scoots my dirty clothes into a pile with her foot—“into the wash for you.” She tucks the pile of T-shirts, sweats, and underwear under her arm. She pauses at the door. “I think going back to school is probably the best thing. It will give you a chance to share your feelings with other people who loved Trip. People who understand what you’re going through.” She walks out and closes the door with her foot.

Share your feelings? Did she get that out of some “Helping Your Child Deal with Grief” pamphlet?

People who understand?

I cross the room to the shelf above my desk. I set down the stone and pick up one of about a hundred pictures of me and Trip. My long blond hair, his clear blue eyes and dark good looks, set against the background of a mountain stream and pine trees—we look like an ad for Abercrombie & Fitch—the perfect couple.

“Watch your head.” He reaches up and holds the branches away from my face. I stumble over a vine and slip in the mud, but he catches me. “Careful. Maybe I’m going to have to carry you.”

I laugh. “No, just don’t let go of my hand
.”

“
Don’t worry.” He presses my fingers to his lips. “I won’t.”

No one understands.

“Here it is. My special place. I found it when I was four-wheeling. No one in Pacific Cliffs knows about it but me.”

“It’s beautiful.” I turn a full circle and look up; a canopy of green-filtered sunlight falls over a meadow of wildflowers, moss-covered boulders, and a bubbling stream.

He steps forward and cups the side of my face. “Not as beautiful as you.” I blush and look away. He slips his hand in mine. “And now for my surprise.” He leads me around the back of the tree. Carved in the trunk are the words TRIP LOVES ALLIE.

“Oh.” I cover my mouth, barely able to believe that he wrote that for me.

He wraps his arms around me. “Now it’s our special place.”

I trace the letters on the tree behind us in the picture.

No one knows what’s churning inside of me.

Crushing guilt.

“We have to hurry. Dad wants us at his dinner meeting tonight.” He opens the door for me and then stops, staring at my boots and the bottom of my jeans. “What the hell did you step in? Mud? It’s all over your pants.”

I look down. “I guess that happened when I slipped. It’ll wash out.” I start to get in the truck, but stop when I see the expression on his face.

“I plan this great surprise and you have to screw it up.” His eyes blaze fire. He slams the passenger door shut, almost catching me in it. “Now we’re going to be late.”

Pain.

“It’s just a little mud. Maybe we can go by my house and I can change. Your dad won’t mind if we’re a little late—”

His fist crashes into my stomach. I gasp as all the air leaves my chest. Stars fly in front of my eyes as I fall backward into the mud. I can’t breathe. I can’t move. I’m not even sure what just happened.

“I guess I’ll have to go by myself.” He walks around to the front of his truck and opens the door. “If you’re going to get muddy, at least you should do it right.” He climbs in, slams the door, and peels out. His tires spray me with mud, bits of pine needles, and little rocks as he drives away.

Relief.

All mixed with knowledge that Trip is never coming back.

Chapter
4

The doors to the Pacific Cliffs combined middle and high school look ominous. My head is throbbing and all morning I fought the urge to throw up.

I ignored the pile of clean clothes Mom left outside my door—my button-down red shirt and white tank sitting on the top, ready for me to put on. Instead I grabbed a ratty pair of jeans and a wrinkled T-shirt that was scrunched in the corner of my drawer. The T-shirt says “The Fighting Falcons”—from the high school I went to in Texas. I needed something that didn’t remind me of last year. Just before I left I pulled on the knit cap that Mom had set with my clothes. Something to cover the mess that used to be my hair.