The Truth About Fragile Things (3 page)

A
fter school
I dumped my books into my backpack while Alicia practiced her lines from our fifth hour drama class for our graded scenes on Friday. Friday is always performance day.

“Does my southern accent sound a little British?” Alicia asked as she leaned against the locker next to mine and checked her hair in my mirror. I was still thinking of my essay from my last class so I answered without registering the question.

“Yes.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes?” I said it more like a question because I didn’t know what she was talking about.

“What do I do? I’ll sound like Mary Poppins!” Her voice squeaked in a way that definitely did not sound like Mary Poppins.

“Frankly my dear, I don’t…” I teased.

“Shut up!” she commanded. “Fix it! Please, Megan, fix it. I have to get it right.”

“What do you want me to do?” I asked her as I hoisted my bag over my shoulder. I groaned under the weight.

“Damsel in distress?” Phillip asked. I never heard him coming up behind us.

“Yes,” I answered and gave him no warning before dropping my bag into his hands. He just managed to catch it.

“Not a Sherpa,” he informed me.

“Phillip, does my Southern accent sound British?” Alicia asked.

“Yes.”

“You haven’t heard it yet!” she screeched.

I laughed as he managed to keep a serious face. “Okay, let’s hear it.”

She looked at both of us, gave up, and slammed my locker shut. “I need to find new friends.”

Phil lowered his voice. “How about Freaky Freshman? I’m sure she has several friend vacancies. How weird was that?”

“Who?” Alicia looked around the thinly populated hall.

“Some freshman has a problem with Megan,” Phil said. “She was a total freak show.” He filled Alicia in on our lunchroom experience and I made sure to look as impassive as possible. It had taken two hours to lose the low vibration in the pit of my stomach and I was determined not to let it rattle me again.

“I really think she mistook me for someone else.” The reassuring words were more for me than them.

“Because you have so many doppelgangers.” Alicia nailed me with a sarcastic stare.

“Probably as many as the next person,” I reasoned.

“Probably not.” She let her eyes sweep over me. I think it was meant as a compliment, but in my opinion I am too strange to be pretty. Nothing like the blond models smiling from every magazine cover. I’m narrow and straight, not at all voluptuous. And then, in the middle of all my long, spare lines, I have black eyebrows that swoop in high arches and cheekbones that slide down and then swing back up, which has always made people speculate about my “ethnicity”, when in truth I am as plain, pale white as they come.

Phillip stopped walking and grabbed the back of my shirt. I stumbled a little on my arrested step and turned to him to see if he was playing a joke. Slapstick happens to be his thing.

“What? Do you want me to carry my own bag?” I held out my hand.

Instead of a twenty-pound canvas backpack he filled my hand with his fingers and pulled me closer. “She’s in front of the doors,” he murmured.

Alicia and I both looked up to the bank of glass doors that empty into the parking lot. Outside stood the girl. She was shorter and curvier than I remembered, but with beautiful posture. There was a line to her body that reminded me of a dancer.

She scanned the crowds, her eyes roaming over the stream of students, her nonchalant face unable to hide the anger that radiated from her. “Is she looking for me?” I asked, sliding closer to the brick wall.

“Is she going to pick a fight?” Phil’s voice was vibrant with anticipation. He turned his grin to me and shook his eyebrows up and down. “You name the mud pit and I’ll sell the tickets. You want to join them, Alicia? You’re looking enticing today.”

I couldn’t think of a biting retort and didn’t want to hear Alicia’s flattered reply. “Should I just go introduce myself and then she’ll see that I have no idea who she is?”

“Five bucks,” Alicia dared me. “Just walk up and tell her your name. We’ll make sure she doesn’t hit you twice.”

“
Twice
?” I asked.

“If she’s fast she might sneak in the first one, but Phil and I will definitely stop her before she punches you twice.”

I swallowed and squared my shoulders. “Your Southern accent sounds Australian,” I informed her.

“Don’t tick off your bodyguards,” she warned.

“I’m doing it. This is stupid. I’ve never even seen her before. If I just talk to her…” I waved them behind me and sped up. If you pretend you are confident it almost works.

The girl’s face was a dark olive and her hair the color of wet sand. Even from a distance her skin looked soft. She spotted me just as I got to the door, the glass standing between her surprised eyes and mine. I opened it, slipped between a few people and stepped up to her. I held back a few feet so my height wouldn’t intimidate her. She only came to my mouth.

“Hi. I don’t know your name, but I’m Megan Riddick,” I started. “It seemed—”

She interrupted me with two short words that sliced off her tongue. “I know.”

“You know me?”

Her lips cracked open, something decidedly unpleasant about to escape before she snapped them shut. “You’re clueless,” she said and darted away, taking the stairs two at a time.

“What did you do?” Phillip asked as he approached me from behind. “You scared the…”

“She wasn’t scared,” I told him. “She was mad. What am I clueless about?” I asked him, even though he hadn’t heard her comment. Although, giving credit where it’s due, her word did fit at the moment.

“Who is she?” Alicia asked.

“I have no idea.” The girl disappeared around the edge of the building and I considered following, but that required running and I don’t really do that. You can’t look dignified and run. Gym was the darkest year of my life.

“What did she say?” Phil asked.

“She said she knew who I was,” I answered.

“Lock your doors tonight, Megan,” Alicia said. “She might have escaped from somewhere.”

The girl’s face flashed in my mind: full, soft, beautiful, livid. There was no fear sitting deep in my bones. The only feeling I had, traveling between my joints, tightening every hinge, locking me in one frozen emotion, was guilt.

“I’m heading home,” I told them, taking my backpack from Phillip’s arm. “And you owe me five dollars.” They laughed behind me as I walked away, unaware I wasn’t smiling with them.

I don’t remember the sirens or the screams from that terrible morning. I can’t recall my mother’s panic or the pain of my skinned knees. Not even Bryon Exby’s strangely calm face when he looked up at the people who raced to him first. We found out his name that night when the hospital called us and told us he hadn’t made it. I learned all of that from other people, snatches of old news reports and witness accounts in the newspapers, and turned them into a memory that is mostly artificial. But I do remember the orange butterfly— bright as a drop of sun, brief as the gold light of a struck match. One flap of color that rippled and wrinkled all the fabric of fate and led me to the street where I would kill a man before I even knew my last name. And to this day the impossibly beautiful insect looks like nothing but death to me.

 There was a flurry of news spots in Kansas City, and then it showed up as a blip for two days on the national news: Man gives his life for a little girl he didn’t know. We met Bryon’s widow, Melissa, and his baby at the funeral.

Some people claimed my mother should be charged with neglect for letting me run into a busy street. My father turned off the television and computer and my mother cried herself to sleep for weeks. That’s when my father switched jobs, we sold the house, and moved an hour across town to new friends who didn’t know. My mother’s voice lost its strained accents. She grew plump and round and smiling with new life. My sister, Lauren, arrived full of light and need and distraction. And we started to live again because we let ourselves forget, at least on the surface.

V
owing not
to endure the lunchroom again, I packed my lunch and retreated to the library the next day. I was determined to get through a couple pages of Chaucer for extra credit, even though I have an A+ in AP English. Everyone I know hates reading Chaucer, but I am strangely pulled to his cryptic words. I like things that take up every corner of my brain and leave no room for anything else. I was only halfway through the first page when Phillip found me. He waved from the computer desks and joined me at the corner table.

He pushed his wavy hair off his forehead. “I knew you were hiding.”

“I’m not hiding. I’m working.”

“Well, stop working. Is that an assignment?” He grabbed my frayed paperback from the table, careful not to lose my place. “We’ve never done this.”

“You’re in a different class. And it’s not an official assignment.” I gently took it back.

“Show off,” he said with grin. “You should stop reading Chaucer,” he told me, but he pronounced it Chow-ser. “Quixote is better for the soul.” He rolled the word into the back of his throat before letting it slide off his tongue. He likes to pretend he is Latin at heart but I’m pretty sure asking for one more water at a restaurant is as far as his Spanish extends. “Can you seriously read that?”

I looked at him with steady eyes. My best defense is not talking and letting other people fill in the holes. Like always, he complied. “I have something way better than that granola bar you are not supposed to be eating in the library.” He paused and I could see the dark specks in his hazel eyes. “I know her name.”

“Whose name?”

“Freaky Freshman. I asked the girls in third hour drama and they knew her. She’s brand new. Just moved here.”

“I knew I didn’t know her.” I exhaled in relief.

“Her name is Charlotte. Does that ring any bells?”

I rolled the name over the quiet parts of my mind, letting it brush against old memories, forgotten acquaintances. The only Charlotte I knew was a black spider who befriended a pig. I finally shook my head. “I have no idea. I don’t know any Charlottes. That’s a pretty name, though.”