Broken (19 page)

By the time class ended, I'd almost
completely shut down. I registered the whispers as I made my way to
English. I knew I normally would've been mad, or possibly
embarrassed, but it was like my feelings were wrapped in layers of
cotton candy. If I really pushed, I could faintly feel the hard
edges, but there were so many layers shrouding them. I just
couldn't seem to muster up enough concentration to care. I was
almost completely on autopilot now.

I answered Britney's whispered questions,
without ever actually registering them and never once worried about
whether or not I'd made sense. I parried Mrs. Campbell's concerned
inquiries in much the same manner, probably not convincing her that
I was ok, but at least persuading her to leave me alone, and then
sleep-walked into the cafeteria. I hated the fact that I wanted
Brandon to come sit down with me. If he did a convincing enough job
pretending to like me and I tried really hard, maybe I'd believe
it'd all just been my imagination. It'd be one less piece of my
world crumbling out from under me.

Britney slammed her tray down, but my
listless gaze didn't move from the vacant corner where Brandon
usually sat. A few minutes later a group of girls came to join us.
I recognized them, but didn't bother putting names to the
faces.

It was like I got hit with another panic
attack. Somehow I lost an hour, but nobody was running around
calling for an ambulance so I must have at least responded to
direct questions.

Alec was sitting in his normal seat as I
wandered into physics. I tried to remember whether or not I'd
already heard the second bell ring. It wasn't important though. Not
compared to the first thing I'd faced in hours that had the
potential to hurt me.

I could feel the edge, razor sharp, cleanly
parting some of the layers of gauze that'd been wrapped around my
emotions. It didn't make sense. Alec was barely even civil. He most
definitely wasn't part of the support structure that'd been holding
my world in its normal orbit, but suddenly my defenses were in
danger of being breeched.

He looked up disinterestedly as I sat in my
desk, and even that was enough to send little shivers of near pain
coursing through my system. It wasn't real pain; I was still too
cushioned from the world for that, but my body shied away from it
just the same.

I wanted to run screaming from the room, to
jump through a window, to do anything to avoid coming into further
contact with someone who so obviously hated me. The urges were all
very real, but it was like I'd been drugged to the gills. I
couldn't seem to gather the energy to do anything about them.
Instead my mind reached down and pulled extra layers of gauze over
itself.

I looked down at my Spanish test and wondered
how I'd gotten here. There were answers on the page. They were
unmistakably done in my awkward scrawl, but didn't seem to make
sense. I flipped the page over and found more of the same. My eyes
idly traced down the page, finding blanks and almost of its own
accord my pencil reached out and filled them in with words that
seemed familiar, but whose meaning I couldn't seem to be bothered
to pin down.

I resurfaced as I walked into the tutor lab,
unsure if I'd passed anyone I should have greeted.

I sat down at my usual spot and pulled out a
book at random as Britney stomped into the room and threw her books
down. She was obviously mad, but once again I couldn't muster
enough concern to figure out what'd ticked her off.

I blinked several times as I realized Mrs.
Campbell had been speaking to me for several seconds. She was
important, one of the few teachers that actually liked me. It was
incredibly hard, but I focused on what she was saying, voluntarily
pulling myself partway out of the wonderful cushion and exposed
myself to some of the pain.

"Are you sure you're ok?"

My nod and smile must not have been very
convincing.

"Listen, there isn't any real reason to keep
the lab open so late today, and you've made incredible progress
catching up. Why don't you take the night off, and go straight
home?"

The idea didn't make sense. I knew all the
words, but they wouldn't string themselves together in a way that
had any meaning. I nodded anyway, and then put my book in my bag,
which had somehow made it into her hands. She was holding it open
as if expecting me to fill it.

I found myself outside the school, sitting on
the edge of the parking lot without a clear idea how I'd ended up
there. There was a vaguely irritating noise behind me that didn't
seem to fit with what I expected from school.

I thought about turning to see what it was,
but was thankfully too far back into the gauze to act on the
thought. I went back to contemplating the pair of ants that were
currently trekking across my right foot.

"Adriana. Are you ok?"

My insides were too raw. Just coming out long
enough to listen to Mrs. Campbell had opened everything back up. My
mind tried to shy away, to sink away from the certainty of more
jagged shards being shoved into me, but this voice was an important
one.

Rachel looked down at me, her arms wrapped
around her waist as if trying to hold herself together. "What are
you doing?"

The words stubbornly tried to avoid making
sense, but I reached out with my trembling mind and forced them
each into their proper place.

"Waiting." The answer seemed to fall out of
my mouth of its own accord. It took me several seconds to realize
it was the truth. I didn't have a ride home until Britney finished
up her regular studying stint.

"For Britney? Do you want us to give you a
ride home?"

A slight movement, barely seen out of the
corner of my eye, gave meaning to the last part of the sentence. A
familiar looking guy was standing a few feet from Rachel. I
couldn't seem to place him. I slowly shook my head, trying to jar
something loose enough to figure out who he was.

"Please, Adriana. It really isn't any
trouble. James, can you get your car please?"

He looked angry. Like maybe he was going to
argue, but as he opened his mouth Rachel turned and glared at him.
It somehow seemed odd to see someone only a little smaller than
Alec back away from someone even smaller than me.

The image stuck with me so strongly that I
considered it until Rachel came over and took my hand. "What's
wrong? It's just the two of us now, you don't have to worry about
James, and I won't tell anyone else. I swear."

Rachel's promise somehow seemed like it
belonged from another time. The sincerity pulled me further out of
my safe, numb shelter. Something in me wanted to confide in her,
was willing to risk the pain of facing reality, but I was too far
gone to be able to put what I was feeling into words.

I shook my head again, not sure if it was a
refusal or something else entirely. Rachel took it as the former
and sat down next to me, pulling her knees up tight against her
chest. A few seconds later I heard the howl of an after-market
exhaust fed by a turbo-charged engine.

The green Honda that came screaming through
the parking lot was hardly recognizable as an Accord. It seemed to
be approaching too quickly, but I couldn't bring myself to care.
Besides, Rachel seemed unconcerned.

Rachel helped me up as the car came to a
screeching halt; all four tires locking up to slide it around so
that the passenger side was facing us. The over-tinted windows
smoothly slid down to reveal that James was indeed the driver, and
he wasn't any happier than he'd been a few seconds earlier.

I started towards the back seat, only to feel
Rachel's surprisingly-firm grasp guide me towards the front seat.
She got me settled and then slipped in behind me.

James pulled out of the parking lot with a
rush of acceleration that pinned me to my seat. Normally I'd have
gripped the door hard enough to make my fingers creak, but I was
still strangely unconcerned with the possibility of dying. For the
first time in months I simply slouched down in my seat and enjoyed
the ride.

The little Accord zipped around corners
faster than I would've believed possible, its tiny engine howling
as the turbos wound up in between shifts. My bemused state was
interrupted by Rachel leaning forward and tapping me on the
shoulder as she gestured for James to turn his music down.

"I almost forgot. Guess what, Les Misérables
is coming to Las Vegas. Not just a local cast, an actual touring
cast out of London. It's gotten excellent reviews all over the
U.S."

I stared at her blankly, unsure where she was
going. Some of her enthusiasm wilted in the face of my
incomprehension.

"I just thought maybe you'd want to go. You
know. You said you loved the music, that it was what made you want
to read the book. It's playing for more than a month, so there's
plenty of time to make arrangements. I can set everything up if you
want."

It seemed impossible that she'd be so
insensitive to my situation. I opened my mouth to tell her off, and
then realized she wasn't privy to everything happening in my head.
My world felt like it was disintegrating around me, and hers
continued on as normal. It should have been depressing, but somehow
I found it so ludicrous I giggled. The laugh had a definite edge of
hysteria to it, but it still somehow felt good.

"Rachel, my life doesn't work like that. Even
if I could afford a trip like that, my mom would never let me go.
She's only an absentee parent when I need her."

Rachel's soft blue eyes got really wide as
she recoiled slightly. Whatever she was about to say was preempted
as we were both thrown forward in our seats. James slid the car
through a one-eighty turn that left us facing the direction we'd
just come from, only a couple of feet from the start of our
lane.

"You're not making her walk!"

It was obvious that whatever magical ability
had allowed Rachel to face down the larger boy wasn't working
anymore. He looked like he was set for a monster fight.

"I'm not washing my car again."

I expected Rachel to back down as soon as she
realized he was spoiling for a fight, but if anything she looked
more determined. It was hard to believe this was the same person
I'd had to rescue from Cassie so recently.

I stopped Rachel just before she could put
the impressive lungful of air she'd just taken in, to whatever use
she'd planned. "It's ok. I'm better. The lane's dusty and exercise
would do me good."

She hesitated, obviously torn, but my
fumbling fingers finally found the unfamiliar door release and I
made the decision for her. I swung the door open and slipped out of
the car before she could respond.

I waved goodbye with a cheery casualness I
thought did a pretty good job of hiding my desire to break into
tears. It was amazing how I'd let the numbness slip away for
nothing. Rachel wasn't any more my friend than she'd been a few
minutes before. Instead she was probably freaked out. I'd have been
so much better off if I'd just stayed oblivious to everything, and
ignored her like I'd done everyone else today.

The hot Utah sun seemed to be trying to knock
me to my knees as I slowly made my way down our lane. For a moment
I thought about what would happen if I fell and hurt myself.

By the time mom realized I was missing, I'd
be a perfectly preserved mummy, sucked completely dry by the harsh
climate, exactly as ordered for a pyramid burial.

I hadn't realized some part of me was hoping
mom would be there waiting when I got home. I felt it shrink as I
came around the corner and saw the empty cement pad.

I walked through the door and dropped my
things on the couch. I could feel myself sinking back into
oblivion, but instead of welcoming it, I was suddenly terrified.
I'd spent weeks numb to the entire world. I'd even missed dad's
favorite season, the one that'd become mine as well. It'd be all
too easy to slip into the same kind of numbness now as a refuge
against everything.

What would happen if I failed to surface?
It'd been easier to lapse into catatonia this time than last. Would
I reach a point where I couldn't come back? There'd been a time
right after the accident where mom had thought I was already
there.

I was just numb enough still to think about
such things without immediately collapsing. Even so, I felt a pang
of dizziness as my mind warned me I'd pushed it too far today.

I found myself in the kitchen, nearly
finished making enchiladas with only vague ideas of why I'd started
pulling ingredients out of the fridge. I wasn't hungry. I knew I
should eat something, but that hardly merited putting together
anything more complicated than a sandwich. What was I trying to
accomplish?

I slowly put the pan in the oven as I
admitted to myself that even after more than two days, the odds
were better than even that I'd be eating alone, that most of the
food would go into the fridge untouched.

My class work, completely neglected as it had
been all day, really deserved my attention; but I didn't have the
heart to pull it out. I knew I wouldn't find any kind of refuge
there. Instead, I pulled out a pencil and a sheet of paper from my
notebook, and started sketching. The process seemed to slowly be
pulling me back out of the numbness.

I wasn't actually any good as an artist. Mom
had exposed me to enough art for me to realize that early on. I
lacked some kind of creative spark necessary to achieve any kind of
real beauty. Still, I occasionally enjoyed trying to recreate
something I'd seen.

This time I didn't try to guide my hand, I
just let it create lines and curves at random, until something
tugged at my subconscious, and a half-formed memory began to
materialize on the page before me.

I knew that the wavy vertical line off the
side was destined to become a waterfall. The scene was starting to
take shape, but for the first time in ages I still couldn't place
it. A mossy boulder filled itself in with feathery detail, and then
I realized the center of the piece was still blank. It was like my
subconscious hadn't ever seen that part of the landscape.