Beautifully Ruined (8 page)

Speeding down the hall, I burst through the back doors and into the chilled air, dropping my backpack on the cool cement before
peeling my black jacket from my arms and letting the cold surround and caress me.

Air.

The air feels so thick and comforting. I welcome it happily into my lungs—breathing as deep as I can, but it hurts, breathing hurts. I gasp for air, pain shooting through my chest with every inhalation, and I can’t do this. I can’t feel like this. Not right now, and certainly not today. I’m supposed to be fine. I’m supposed to walk down those halls, past all those students who think I’m a lost cause and prove them otherwise. I’m supposed to hold my head high and not let anything get to me.

But this—what I just saw, Zephyr with another girl—I can’t move past it, I can’t force my brain to forget or ignore it. I never thought I’d ever see it, I never thought he’d move on so quickly and so openly in front of me.

“Joey?” someone says from behind me, I assume the door. I ignore them and bend forward my hands clutching my knees, trying my hardest not to sob—I’m failing. “Joey? Hey.” An arm reaches out. An arm I bat away with a quick punch.

It’s Milo. He’s the only logical person. He’d see me running away and come chasing after me. That seems to be his typical MO.

“
Go—away
,” I choke out through deep breaths, feeling the sobs waiting to erupt, fighting to explode from my throat. My hand reaches to clasp the locket dangling from my neck, waiting for that familiar bite into my palm.

“No,” he objects. I don’t have time for this. I don’t have time for him trying to be my hero or trying to comfort me. Still, hands surround me but don’t touch me. They block me, preventing escape. So I turn around, facing Milo as he inches closer. “What’s wrong?” he asks, concern dripping from his words.

I shake my head, dragging my hand through my hair. “What the hell does it matter?” I ask weakly, my hand drops, tightly clutched at my side. His hands inch closer, cocooning me where I stand. “He’s—and
her
—I just… I can’t go in there,” I finally whisper, letting the tears fall. I don’t know this boy at all but there
is
something about him. He was right but I can’t place why.

But I understand what he means when he tells me there’s something about me that makes him wonder. Right now, I get it because briefly, I wonder about him.

“Then don’t go back in there,” Milo tells me quietly, looking around us for any witnesses. We’re hidden behind shrubs that haven’t seen a trim in a good ten years. “Let’s just go.”

I look up to him, the brightness of his blonde hair blinding in the sunlight breaking through the gray clouds. “But I can’t do that either,” I say, turning away, wiping at the tears.

He shrugs. “What’s stopping you?”

That’s a good question. What
is
stopping me? I’m already graduating a year earlier than expected. I don’t have anything important due today. Even if I did, the teachers would accept it tomorrow and be fine with it. There’s no need for me to be here any longer.

Other than attendance, but I can forge a note from Hilary.

When I don’t immediately protest, Milo grabs my backpack and jacket from the ground, and leads me around the building to the student parking lot. The thrill exhilarates me. I’ve never left school before. Okay, that’s false. There was that time early in January but that was different.
Or maybe not so much
. He opens the passenger door for me and shuts it when I’m buckled into the seat. He slides into the driver’s seat, inserting the key into the ignition, and turning it. The car rumbles to life. “Where to?” he asks, mischief in his eyes.

But I’m not feeling very adventurous right now.

“I don’t care,” I answer, dragging a finger beneath my eye. “Just drive.”

Milo nods and backs out of his assigned space. “Then I know the perfect place,” he says.

It’s not long before Milo pulls the car into the driveway of a decently sized house. It’s not too big, not too small—it’s the perfect thing for the Three Little Bears. I feel like Goldilocks.

“Welcome to my humble abode,” he says as he opens the door. “It’s not much but it’s home for right now.”

I step inside and look around. In front of me is a cute little living room filled with bright, plush furniture and white carpeting. Pictures cover the walls—large painted landscapes and neon abstracts that, when looked at individually, you wouldn’t think they’d pair together well, but they work. In the corner is a large fireplace. Above that is a mantle covered end to end in family photos. The room is warm and welcoming, a lovely place to bring up my mood.

“
Right now?
” I ask.

“We might go back to Texas after my mom gets this company up and running.” Milo drops our backpacks in the foyer and motions for me to step into the living room. “Take a seat anywhere, make yourself comfortable.” He gently pushes me toward the couch. “
Mi casa es su casa
.”

I do as he says, settling myself on the teal couch, sinking within the large, comfortable cushions. I’m still sniffling but I’m nowhere near sobbing, not anymore. I let my hair fall over my face, not bothering to move it from my eyes. Milo walks back in holding two glasses of water. One he hands to me, the other he sips as he sits next to me, leaving a good two feet of space between us like a gentleman.

“Start taking, kid.” He situates himself on the couch, laying his arm along the back. Milo looks to me, leaning over to move the hair from my eyes before he resumes his position.

“About what?” I ask, avoiding the obvious with a shrug of my shoulders.

“Why you sprinted from the cafeteria.” Milo narrows his eyes, flipping his hair from his eyes. “I’ve never run that fast in my life. I’m not a fan of athletic activity, really.”

I shake my head. “There’s nothing to talk about,” I lie. I take a small sip from the glass before setting it on a conveniently placed teal coaster that matches the couch. I lean into the cushions, feeling the softness. His couch is my current heaven. Seizing the opportunity, I lie back, letting my mind wander as I stare up at the ceiling doing my best to pretend this conversation isn’t happening.

His hand lightly taps my leg, repeatedly
tap, tap, tap
ing against my knee. He’s an inch above my ticklish spot. He better
tap, tap, tap
carefully. “I’ll admit I know nothing about you, Joey.”
Ain’t that the truth
. “But I
do
know that you can’t hide shit. No one hits Usain Bolt speeds for nothing. Start talking, kid.” He’s right. I’m a horrible actress.

Closing my eyes, I drift through everything I’ve tried to ignore. Zephyr, Zephyr with the blonde, the blonde smiling at him, his laughter, his happiness when being with her.

See a theme?

“Zephyr,” I say, leaving it simple. Just his name.

His hand stills against my knee before the weight disappears. “You mean, like,
wind
?” The confusion in his voice is laughable. Not many people know what zephyr means. He gets points for intellect.

I giggle. “No, not the wind. My neighbor,” I answer.

“Those neighbors you don’t get along with?” He asks, scrunching his brow with confusion. “Wait a minute, there’s a kid named after
wind
?” Milo laughs. “Wasn’t that girl he was with his sister? Isn’t her name Jamie?”

“Yeah,” I reply.

“How is her name so average while he’s named after
wind
?”

I lean up, looking to the boy on the other end of the couch. “He isn’t named after
wind
, weirdo. He’s named for a friend of his parents who passed a month before he was born,” I explain.

“Okay then.” He shrugs—Milo loves to shrug, it appears.

“Anyway, I lied. When I said we didn’t get along—I was lying,” I confess slowly, ready to release this story.

“I figured,” he replies smugly.

I reach out to smack him in the arm. “Shut up.” If he wants the story, he’ll stop talking. Milo’s expression makes me laugh, something I need right now. “But seriously, they were my best friends.”

“So what happened?” he asks with eager interest, leaning forward.

Let’s see, how can I answer that?
I hit eleven on the cray-cray meter and kicked my naked boyfriend from my room on New Year’s Eve just as we were about to… Not to mention I broke up with him in the middle of the school hallway after first period without a good explanation for both him or myself
. Yeah, I don’t really want to say any of that.

“We broke up,” I answer, flushing nervously from the lie. “Zephyr and me, we dated, we broke up.” It’s hard to say those words are like a knife in my heart, twisting until the pain is all I feel. But I can’t let him see that, not again. “It happens,” I whisper, failing to hide these feelings.

“Well, why?” I’ve been asking myself that question for the past month. I don’t have an answer. “Why break up with him? I can tell you miss him.”
So can a blind man
.

Why is Milo so observant? Can’t he just be an idiot like the rest of the school population? An idiot that doesn’t even notice if I bleach my hair then dye it neon pink? And what the hell is with all the questions? He should take what I have to say and move on.

He shouldn’t care. No one cares about me.

“We had issues.”

“Why did you freak out today?”

Milo already knows the answer to that. He only wants to hear me say it.

I turn away, looking for anything to distract me. “I don’t want to talk about this.” I sit up and scoot away from him, as far as the arm of the couch will let me, placing a decorative pillow between us—as if that can stop the questions.
Sheesh, Joey, you’re smarter than this, girl
.

Coming here was a bad idea. I should’ve made him take me home. I should’ve stayed in school like normal. I should’ve…

“Joey, you can,” Milo urges. “I’m not going to judge you, I promise.”

“You don’t even know me,” I argue with a roll of my eyes. He doesn’t know a thing about me. I’m just the girl who sits next to him in class, I’m the girl everyone wants to forget and ignore, I’m the girl to take pity on.

“That doesn’t mean anything and you know it,” Milo argues, inching closer to me.

I wish he wouldn’t.

Bolting from the couch, I start to pace around the spacious living room, making a groove in the white carpet with the repeated movement. I just need to move—I need to keep moving and think.

Pictures dot the mantle. I stare at them as I pass, slowing my pace to look more closely. Some are of Milo, young and smiling, some are of a girl younger than he, and some are of his family. Various get-togethers and family getaways, even some within which they all wear matching sweaters. That’s the most adorable of them all. I stop at a picture of a girl with a wide, toothy grin, long blindingly blonde hair, and something familiar. Staring at the photo, I lift it from its place and trace my finger along the face, the happy face smiling back at me.

“That’s Melanie,” Milo explains. He’s now standing behind me, close enough that I can feel every breath he makes against my ear. “She’s fourteen going on forty.” She looks so much like him, same blonde hair, same large, happy smile, but her eyes are different. They’re smaller and kinder, they look gentle where his look more alert, more observant.

“I always wanted someone,” I tell him quietly, my eyes still trained on the photo, my fingers smudging the glass. “But that wasn’t in the cards for me, I guess.” I force Ivy and Noah from my
mind after they creep in. That dream the other night didn’t help anything.

Milo takes the picture from my hands, smiling at the girl smiling to him. “I don’t know how I could live knowing my father could do something like that. That he could even be capable of doing something like that.”

I shrug—indifferent. It’s a horrible thing to say, but that—what he just said—has been my reality for the past nine years. I can’t leave it behind; I can’t pretend it never happened. It’s my past. That piece of me, no matter what I do, I can’t ignore it, I can’t hide it.

“Yeah, it’s not easy,” I whisper.

I’m thankful that he’s so happy. That his parents are lovable and alive, that his sister can smile so bright and beaming with glee. I’m happy for him, I really am, but sometimes I get jealous.
Why not me, why not them?
And jealousy’s a fickle bitch.

People have things I want. And it isn’t like I can go out and purchase a mother or find a sane, non-murderous father, I can’t just pick out a new sister and brother, ones impervious to death. I’m just here, just a girl going through this world wondering what it was like—having a family like everyone else.

Don’t get me wrong—I love my aunt. I will always love Hilary. But she’s my aunt. Even she wonders aloud what my mother would be like today or, how Noah and Ivy would be. I wonder all the same things, only internally, debating how I’d treat them if we were fighting, imagining how their rooms would look, how excited I would be when they graduated or how excited they’d be for me today.