Текст книги "Best Kind of Broken"

Автор книги: Chelsea Fine

Соавторы: Chelsea Fine
сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

41 Pixie

I don’t regret it.

I’ve been so afraid of Levi seeing my scar, so scared that the red reminder of Charity would destroy him, that I failed to realize how healing showing him might be for me. The sight of my scar might have cut into Levi, but it patched up a bleeding piece of my soul that I didn’t think I’d ever get stitched; the part of me that refused to see Charity’s death in Levi’s eyes; the part of me that denied his pain.

So I don’t regret it.

Even now, ten days later, when Levi still won’t look at me or speak to me, I don’t regret it. Charity is dead. I am scarred. Levi is haunted.

These are the real things, the true things.

And the truth is easier to breathe in than the lie. Uglier perhaps. But far less suffocating without the cloud of denial I’ve kept around me all this time. Denial is thick and sweet, and for the past year it filled up my lungs until they threatened to burst. But truth… truth is clean and pure. And yes, it hurts when I inhale it, it hurts to cleanse out the sweet smoke, but breathing out is like new life.

With black paint staining my fingers, I step back from the small canvas I’ve been working on all morning. It’s not perfect. It’s not even close. It’s a mess of gray, with shards of black and slits of white, but it’s what I want to see.

With careful hands, I hang the canvas up to dry beside the three other similar paintings I’ve been working on for the past few days.

Four paintings. One subject. A million unspoken things.

42 Levi

When she was nine, Pixie found a dog on the side of the road and brought him to my house out of pity. She was always finding stray, ugly animals and taking them in like she was some kind of angel of all living creatures.

Of course we fell in love with the mangy puppy immediately, and Maverick—Charity named the mutt Maverick—became a member of our family. But two years later, Maverick died, and everyone, including myself, was devastated.

The night we lost Maverick, Charity and Pixie crept into my room and crawled into my bed with tears streaming down their faces, convinced the heartbreak would hurt less if the three of us stuck together and slept beside one another. They were right.

And in junior high, when Charity and Pixie snuck into that horror movie and were terrified that an ax murderer would come for them in the night, they crawled into my bed again, sleeping soundly under the illusion of my protection. They came to me for bravery and strength.

I don’t feel brave or strong anymore.

It’s the crack of dawn and I’m in the garden fixing a planter wall that’s been lopsided for two months. Ellen didn’t put it on my list of things to do, but it’s been driving me crazy, so… yeah. The planter will be fixed today.

An elderly guest named Paul is sitting on the nearest garden bench, watching me re-lay the bricks for the planter.

“I used to garden,” Paul says, eyeing me carefully. “Still do, actually. But only during certain seasons. Do you like to plant things?”

I lay a new brick down. “Not really. I’m more of a ‘fixing things’ kind of guy.”

He laughs and the sound is hoarse and gritty, like he’s been smoking for fifty years. “That’s pretty much all planting is¸ fixing. You grow a flower or a vegetable—you spend months watering it and protecting it from the sun and critters—and then one day it starts to die and you have to fix it.”

My thoughts go to Charity. I banish them.

Then my thoughts go to Pixie, and I don’t banish them.

Paul leans forward on the cane in his hands. “It’s the damnedest thing, a dying plant, and it makes a man want to give up. But that’s the beauty of gardening, son. You can revive the things that wither.”

I lay another brick and shovel back some dirt from the flower bed. “It sounds like rewarding work.”

“Oh, it is. It is.” He’s silent for so long I think maybe he’s fallen asleep, but when I look over at him, he’s wide-awake and watching me lay the last brick down.

Finished, I stand and dust my hands off on my jeans and pick up my supplies.

“They’re stronger, you know.” Paul looks up at me.

I shield my eyes in the morning sun. “What’s stronger?”

“The plants that you revive,” he says. “When you bring something back from the brink of death, it fights harder to thrive.” Paul leans on his cane again and smiles. “So is the story of life, I guess.”

* * *

“Ellen says you still have the spare keys?” I say outside of Pixie’s open bedroom door. This is the first we’ve spoken since the Fourth of July Bash.

“Oh. Yeah,” she says. “I found my own set yesterday. Now, where… did I put… the spare keys…?” She glances around. “You can come in. This might take a minute.”

I step into Pixie’s room, not sure if I want to be here. It feels personal. And it smells like her, which makes my chest feel funny.

There’s a tension in the air I’ve been trying to ignore all day, but with every passing minute it growers thicker and tighter. Tomorrow is almost here.

I can’t think about it, so I concentrate on mundane objects as she searches for the keys.

Dirty clothes on the floor.

Paintbrushes in glass jars. Stained. Frayed. Chewed at the ends.

She’s always been such a mess. I like her messy.

My eyes wander and land on four paintings strung up against the wall, and my feet absently take me there. I blink as I take in the dark-haired girl with light in her eyes and mischief in her smile. She’s fearless and pensive. Laughing and free. She’s everything I remember and more.

Charity.

My stomach fills with longing, but not the sad kind. The meaningful kind. The kind of longing you feel when you think about your first roller coaster or your first perfect game. The longing that makes you wish you could experience it again, but so grateful you had it in the first place.

I touch a finger to the closest painting. “These are beautiful.”

Pixie hesitates. “Thanks. Sometimes I see her and I just want to remember.”

I nod because I get it. “I like that you remember.”

She finds my eyes, and all I see is a sad little girl who lost her friend. Everything inside me wants to cross the space between us and pull her into my arms. The last time I felt this way was at Charity’s funeral. There were people in dark clothes everywhere, saying things to me I couldn’t hear. There were tears and prayers filling up the cemetery. And then there was Pixie.

Seated in a wheelchair five people away with bruises on her face and a thick bandage peeking out from her purple dress. The girl wore purple. Charity’s favorite color. Tears fell down her cheeks, but her face was expressionless.

I wanted to hug her then. I wanted to pull her close and tuck us into each other, where there was no one else to mourn Charity. Just us. Because no one else understood. Just us.

“I found the keys.” Pixie looks up at me, and I’m suddenly looking at Charity.

I’m watching her play with dolls and dress up like a princess and ask for a kitty every Christmas. I’m hearing her tell on me for lighting firecrackers in the backyard and whine when I get to stay up later than she does. I’m watching her cry on her first day of junior high when some girls made fun of her outfit, and lock herself in her bedroom when Jason Hampton broke up with her. I’m seeing her grow up, I’m sharing my banana splits with her, I’m watching scary movies with her in the upstairs bedroom so Mom and Dad can’t hear us, I’m giving her a ride to the mall and yelling at her for taking my credit card. I see Charity and she’s beautiful and happy. And worth reliving every memory.

I blink, and it’s Pixie staring back at me.

“I miss her,” I blurt out.

It’s the first time I’ve felt safe enough to admit that to someone aloud. It’s the first time I’ve been able to say that without feeling guilty.

Pixie nods like she totally gets it. “I miss her too.”

She gets it.

43 Pixie

There is nothing extraordinary about today.

It is just a day. A Saturday, to be exact, at the end of July. The morning birds are chirping outside. The wind is blowing through the fields out back. And I am alive.

Lying in bed, I roll onto my side and stare at the four gray paintings hanging on the far wall. Sadness does not flood into me like I anticipate. Nor does anger or peace. The only thing I feel, as the waking sunbeams slide over my sheet-wrapped body, is longing. Deep, wailing longing.

Not for the girl in gray—that girl is at peace and unbroken—but for the boy next door, who is anything but. And yet the boy next door feels farther away than the girl in gray.

I let out a long, slow breath as I stare at Charity’s face. Today marks the one-year anniversary of her death. A year has gone by, but somehow no time has passed. I’m still here, at the precipice of my future, waiting for life to happen. I’m still the broken girl who woke up in a hospital bed without her best friend, without her hero.

I thought time stopped for me, but time is not something I ever had or ever will have. It simply is. It never begins. It never ends. So the sun rises and sets, and my scar heals and fades, and the morning birds chirp on.

There is nothing extraordinary about today, except that it has come and I have lived to see it.

But perhaps that is precisely what makes today more extraordinary than any day before.

With a deep breath, I get out of bed.

44 Levi

I’m sitting against a log right at the edge of the lavender field with my back to the trees beyond. The air smells like Pixie.

The inn lights are mostly off, giving darkness over to the night and showcasing the many stars in the clear sky. It’s quiet out here, no guests milling about the grounds or taking late-night walks, no storm.

I light the cigarette in my hand, take a drag, and tilt my head up to the stars as I exhale.

Everyone kept a wide berth around me today, no one brave enough to start any conversations with me or make direct eye contact. I’m not sure what they were afraid of. Me breaking into tears?

Angelo was the only person who even acknowledged the shittiness of today, and even he didn’t use words. He simply walked past me as he was leaving for the night and handed me a single cigarette and a lighter.

He’s a scary bastard, but he has a soul.

I’m not a smoker. Sure, I’ve smoked before. But I’ve always been an athlete, and a smoking athlete is a weak athlete. So I’m not big on cigarettes.

But today hurts.

So I’m smoking.

I hear crickets in the distance and the sound of wind sweeping through the purple fields.

I’m alone. I’m thinking. I wish I wasn’t thinking.

I hear the back door to the kitchen close and see a form step outside with a trash bag. I know that form. I’ve felt that form against my body.

Pixie starts to turn away, but freezes when she catches sight of me in the shadows. How she sees me I’m not sure, but she’s on her way over.

I stay seated and rub a hand down my face.

Her walk is slow and deliberate until she stops beside me, dressed in her work clothes. Even though we both had the day off, we still decided to work. Work keeps the demons out.

She watches me smoke for a moment. “Got one for me?”

I exhale a cloud of smoke. “No.”

She plucks the lit cigarette from my hand. At first I think she’s going to stomp it out and lecture me on the health ramifications of smoking. But she doesn’t. She takes her own slow drag and breathes the smoke in before handing it back to me.

I take it from her, both annoyed and turned on. “You shouldn’t smoke.”

She sits on a rock in front of me, just a foot or so away, and I can feel my body respond to how close she is.

“I shouldn’t do a lot of things.” She looks at the stars. “Charity hated cigarettes.”

I shift against the log.

“She would always try to smoke, but end up coughing and gagging.” She tucks a strand of loose hair behind her ear. “It was fun to watch her try, though.” A small smile plays at her lips.

I take another drag, watching her carefully. “I don’t remember that.”

“Yeah, well. I don’t think she ever wanted you to see her try. You were her hero, you know?” She plays with a lace on her shoe.

“I don’t remember that either.” My lungs are shrinking and I can’t quite get the air I need to keep my eyes from stinging.

“You were my hero too,” she says softly. “You still are.”

She drives her eyes into me, and all the memories I just ran away from, all the thinking I wasn’t doing, it all comes swooping back in, picking me up with razor-sharp claws.

It feels like Charity is right here, sitting between us. It’s tense and it’s heavy, but, somehow, it doesn’t feel wrong. Pix must feel it too because I see her shift on the rock.

I wish I could protect her from everything bad, always. I want to protect her from drunk driving and asshole guys, of course. But I also want to protect her from the sadness of losing Charity. The guilt.

“It’s not your fault,” I say.

Her eyes glide to mine in the darkness.

“What happened to Charity,” I continue, “wasn’t your fault. Not at all.”

The moment Charity’s name leaves my lips, a charge goes into the air, and at first I’m afraid of it. Like maybe I just unleashed an emotional hell that will take me another year to shove back inside my soul.

But then I take a breath and my chest rises freely, because saying Charity’s name feels good. No. It feels safe.

Safe with Pixie.

She leans forward on the rock so our faces are directly in front of each other, and she looks right at me, silent. It’s not sexual. It’s not playful. It’s Pixie asking for my full attention, and now she has it.

“It’s not your fault either,” she says.

I look down at her scar.

She follows my eyes and takes my face into her hands, tipping my chin up so I’m gazing at her soft face. “And what happened to me wasn’t your fault.”

I pull my head away and look at the dirt.

“It wasn’t your fault—”

“Stop, Pix,” I say quietly.

She’s quiet for a few minutes; then she slides down the rock until she’s right in front of me, knees in the dirt, apron on the ground.

“I forgive you.” Her steeled eyes wait for mine to meet them and hold me there under the stars. “You have nothing to be forgiven for,” she says, “but I still forgive you. Will you forgive me?”

I stare at her in horror. “For what?”

“For getting wasted with Charity at that party. For encouraging her to leave. For letting her drive drunk.”

She’s insane. None of that was her fault. None of that was—

“I forgive you,” she repeats. “Will you please forgive me?”

The look in her eyes tells me we’re not talking about blame. We’re talking about heartbreak and loss and all the things we don’t know how to deal with.

“I forgive you,” I say, meaning it even though there is nothing that needs to be forgiven, and I’m looking at little Pixie, six years old and stealing my Transformers. Six years old and wiggling her way into my heart. She’s still there, wrapped inside me like she’s mine. And maybe she is.

Suddenly it’s gone. The guilt, the heaviness. The fear of letting myself be happy, love fully. It’s all gone. Because Pixie just forgave me. And maybe I just forgave myself.

The air around us is free. It’s like a million tiny weights are floating up off my chest and into the sky, and I didn’t know I could feel so much relief.

She moves to sit beside me, and my body tenses as hers slides down my side until she’s leaning against the log. Reaching over, she takes the cigarette from my hand and brings it to her mouth. Tiny red embers glow in the darkness as she sucks smoke into her lungs and tips her head back, resting it against the log as she stares at the sky.

I shift down a bit, the side of my body rubbing against hers until our shoulders are level, and rest my head back as well, looking at the sky as Pixie slowly exhales beside me. A cloud of gray smoke feathers into the air above us, blocking the night sky until dissolving into the black and unveiling the heavens.

We gaze at the sky for a long, quiet minute, and the only sounds I hear are the crickets and Pixie’s steady breaths.

I feel like a kid again. Stars above me, Pixie beside me. There’s solace in the silence that floats between us, and I wonder if she feels it too. I could stay here all night, where the sky is bigger than anything in my life and lavender scents the air. I could stay here forever.

I hear the smile in Pixie’s voice. “Remember when Charity and I tried to jump off the porch roof and you got all mad?”

I scoff. “What were you, like six?”

“Yeah. We were being fairies, remember? We had our costumes on from Halloween and we were going to fly.” She says this in exaggerated wonderment and I laugh. I actually laugh.

Charity was a pain in the ass to keep alive. It wasn’t just the porch thing. The girl climbed ridiculously tall trees and went cliff jumping and stuff. But the fairy thing, that was the beginning of it all. Charity and Pix were dressed up with my mom’s makeup on and they were carrying these stupid wands. Ugh. They were so adorably annoying.

“I didn’t let you fly,” I say.

“No. You told on us.”

I smile. “I sure as hell did.”

And then we’re silent for a moment, but the air isn’t so smoky and I’m not so heavy.

“That was the first time you ever called me Pixie,” she says quietly.

I inhale, thinking about little Sarah dressed up like a fairy in my backyard, all pink and sassy. “Yes, it was.”

She pauses. “I like being Pixie.”

I don’t say anything, but I smile.

45 Pixie

Inhale.

I pull the sharp heat and bitter taste of the cigarette through my lips, feeling my insides burn and my eyes blur as the smoke expands in my lungs. I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to cry. I just want to sit here, beside my hero, and remember.

Exhale.

The smoke floats into the quiet summer sky, swirling above us and fogging up the stars.

I bring the cigarette back to my mouth, but Levi gently pulls it from my fingers before it reaches my lips. Keeping his eyes on the sky, he deftly smothers the burning tip into the dirt as the smoke above us thins out until it clears completely.

Inhale.

The stars are more beautiful without the smoke obscuring their brilliance.

Exhale.

Much more beautiful, actually. Real.

We stay like that, shoulder to shoulder, eyes fixed above, for countless minutes.

Inhale.

Lavender. Summer air. Spearmint.

Exhale.

There aren’t any monsters out here.

46 Levi

This morning, I feel like I’m whole again, like my lungs have expanded and made my chest a paradise for oxygen, as I finish showering and cross the hall to my room.

“Thirty-seven minutes!” Pixie shouts from next door. There’s a lightness in her tone I haven’t heard in a long time, and it makes me wish she would keep speaking, even if only to scold me.

“You need a new hobby!” I yell back.

“Jerk.”

I smile at the wall. “Nag.”

And the day begins.

I get dressed and retrieve my To Do list from Ellen. Scanning the items she’s scrawled out, I glare at her. “Another chandelier?”

She smiles. “The one in the west wing hallway.”

“You haven’t used that chandelier in ten years.”

“Right. Because it’s broken.”

“That hallway is already well lit. You don’t need it.”

“Yeah, but it’s pretty. So fix it.”

I shake my head and smile. “Fine.”

She grins. “Have fun.”

Fun is the exact opposite of what I have for the next two hours as I fix Ellen’s precious hanging piece of hell, but my mood doesn’t sour. I conquer all the items on my list earlier than usual and head back to the front desk to let Ellen know I’m calling it a day.

She cocks her head at me. “You seem chipper.”

“Chipper?”

“Yeah. Happy. Upbeat.” She looks at me suspiciously and then smiles.

“What?”

She just keeps smiling. “Nothing.”

I stare at her, but she says nothing more and now it’s awkward.

“So…” I say. “Anything else you need me to do before I wrap up for the day?”

“No. Oh wait—yes. Can you give this to Pixie?” She hands me a white envelope. “It came in the mail today, but I forgot to give it to her. And while you’re there, can you check the garbage disposal? Mable said it was gurgling.”

“Gurgling. Sure.” I take the letter and head to the kitchen.

When I enter, Pixie looks up from a mess of baking ingredients and smiles. I smile back. A piece of myself that I didn’t know was starving suddenly warms in satisfaction.

“Hey, handsome.” Mable smiles at me. “Haven’t seen you all day.”

“That’s because Ellen has an unhealthy obsession with chandeliers.”

Pixie scoffs. “She has an unhealthy obsession with everything old and impractical.”

“Tell me about it. Ellen wanted me to give this to you,” I say, handing over the letter.

“Thanks.” Pixie takes the envelope and nods at two plates—one red, one blue—of chocolate squares on the counter. “Want a brownie?”

“Sure.”

She pushes the red plate toward me and I grab a brownie and head to the sink. As I reach for the garbage disposal switch, I take a giant bite and—

“Holy mother of hell!” I gag and spit the disgusting treat into the sink. “What the—” I start coughing and stare at the vile brown piece of crap in my hand.

Mable keeps her eyes down with a smile.

Pixie crosses her arms and raises an amused eyebrow at me. “That’s what you get,” she says, looking much too satisfied by my continuing gags and coughs.

“For what?” God, this is the worst thing I’ve ever tasted. I gag again.

“For switching the sugar and salt on me all those years ago and adding vinegar to the vanilla so my brownies came out tasting like sour bars of salt. I finally figured it out this morning and decided to whip up a batch and give you a taste of your own medicine.”

I spit again and smile. “It took you this long to figure it out? Yikes, Pix. You might have to kiss that future in detective work good-bye.” I throw the remainder of the nasty brownie away and gag again. The real kind of gag where I think I might throw up.

“And you might have to kiss what you ate for lunch good-bye,” she says. “Please don’t vomit in my kitchen.”

This only makes me gag harder.

“God.” She rolls her eyes and grabs a brownie from the blue plate. “These are the good ones. I swear.”

“Get away from me, you wicked treat devil.”

She laughs. “Wicked treat devil? Wow. You can do better than that.”

“Evil dessert demon?”

“Still lame.”

“Chocolate temptress of salty death.”

“Now you’re just reaching. Here”—she grabs something—“spare your mouth any future embarrassment.” She shoves another salty-sour brownie against my mouth and I start hacking all over again.

She smiles as she tears open the envelope. She scans the thick piece of paper inside and her face goes slack.

I quit gagging and wipe my mouth. “What’s wrong?”

A bewildered expression crosses her face. “I was accepted into NYU. I can transfer there this fall. I’d have to leave in two weeks.”

“Wow,” I say.

Wow.

“That’s wonderful, dear,” Mable says, then frowns at the dumbfounded expression on Pixie’s face. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m just… I don’t know.” Pixie smiles and wrinkles her brow and bites her lip. In that order. “I’m surprised, that’s all.” She smiles again.

I smile at her, but for some reason my gut feels hollow.