Breaking Glass (11 page)

“Um,” I whispered, “Your knight in shining armor wanted me to give you something.”

She didn’t look up from her drawing. “And why doesn’t said
knight
give it to me himself?”

“He figured you were less likely to sock me in the jaw.”

Susannah looked up, her expressions shifting from sorrow to amusement—as changeable as mountain weather and just as beautiful.

“I would never sock you in the jaw, Jeremy Glass,” she whispered, “because you’d shatter.” She broke into a tinkling laugh and stopped abruptly when Mr. Wallace gave us the evil iguana-eye. “So what is this miraculous token of forgiveness you bear?” she asked, her face theatrically serious. The pain of wanting to kiss her, wanting to tell her that she was too good for Ryan, even though he’d shelled out seventy-five bucks to win her forgiveness, burned in my throat.

When she opened the box, her eyes lit up like sun through spring leaves.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh, this is so…oh.” She put it on, and I knew that this time, with my help, Ryan had won her back.

After school that day, I saw them together, kissing. My gut was stone. I couldn’t tell if it was guilt for helping Ryan lie, or just plain old jealousy.

I concluded it was both.

When they’d finally pulled apart, Susannah came over to where I was hanging with some of my track and field buddies. Ryan drifted off to join a cluster of his theater friends.

“Thanks,” she said. “He explained everything.”

“And that was enough for you?”

“Yeah. I love him.”

We’d started walking, though I had no idea where we were headed, and I nodded like a bobblehead, because the words were all clumped up in my chest. “Happy to be of service,” I finally choked out.
Happy to stab myself directly through the heart
.

She stopped and looked up at me, arms folded. “Of service? Jeremy, you are one of my best friends, did you know that?”

“Um, I guess?”

“Sometimes you can be as dense as a block of wood. You’re always there for me. Steady. Reliable. I never have to wonder if I can count on you.”

“Yep. That’s me, Old Steady and Reliable Jeremy. Much less breakable, and sturdier than my name would imply.”

I must have let a small quaver into my voice, because instead of laughing at my lame quip, Susannah silently studied me. “Is there something wrong, Jeremy?”

“With me? What would be wrong?” Liar. Liar. Liar. But I wore my mask like a pro.

“Never mind,” she said. We kept walking.

“Why’d you run away, Suze?” I finally blurted. “Was it because of Ryan?”

She stopped, and didn’t look up at me, but spoke in a soft whisper. “Let’s go to the park near the library. I’ll explain everything.”

We sat on a bench nestled in a cluster of trees. Susannah fingered the Kabbalah pendant absently. “I guess you know that things between my mom and me aren’t so great. Sometimes I just can’t stand it. So I run.”

“Your mom…a lot of people don’t like her in this town.”

“I know. She’s an angry person. She’s always blaming me for stuff, but she never talks about what’s really up her ass.”

“Does she…does she ever hurt you?”

Susannah lowered her head. “Not physically.”

“Oh,” I said.

“I think she’s going crazy, Jeremy. The day before I left, I heard her crying and talking to herself. It was like she was having a conversation. She kept calling, ‘Dougie, Dougie, Dougie,’ over and over, like she was trying to get the attention of someone who wouldn’t answer her.”

“Dougie? Who’s that?”

“Don’t have a clue. Maybe one in the string of assholes and drunks she’s dated. There’s always some loser flung out on our couch.”

“Shit,” I said, shaking my head. I wanted to fix her pain. If we could be together, maybe both of us could heal.

“It’s okay, Jeremy. Soon I’ll be out of the house, away at school. I’m going to get a scholarship to Rhode Island School of Design, and my half-brother will cover the rest.”

I nodded. She had a plan. Did I have a plan? Dad wanted me to go to Cornell. Maybe getting out of Riverton was the only escape for both of us.

“You’re amazing, Suze. They’ll grab you up.”

Now

The next time I open my eyes, the room is flooded with pale morning light. It’s seven AM and the physical therapist is due any minute.

He’s a freckled redheaded guy named Chaz Cooper. He looks like Mark Zuckerberg’s evil twin, doesn’t smile much, and barks short, clipped demands.

I quickly get why. He’s not here to be friends. He is here to boss around the stump.

In an hour of relentless abuse, my vestigial appendage is handled like a butcher dresses a cut of rump roast, finally packaged roughly in a tight bandage. Shaping, Chaz tells me gruffly, so my prosthetic leg will fit properly. “You want to walk again, don’t you?”—he asks, not unkindly, this time.

After Evil Chaz leaves, I slump into the wheelchair to stare at the birds, the stump still screaming in outrage. It only wants to be left alone like a proper stump, a sad monument to its former glory days, not called upon to masquerade as a living tree.

An old minivan chugs into the driveway. Crap. I’d forgotten Marisa was coming. I’m in my bathrobe with only my boxers and no shirt. I’m sweaty, and the stump feels like a bag of glass shards. There’s no time to clean myself up.

Marisa enters shyly, her arms loaded with books. I catch a slight wrinkling of her nose at the staleness of the room, but she’s all business, determined not to let my unshaven, half-dressed half-self get the better of her.

I’m not going to make it easy on her, I decide. I don’t want any part of AP Calculus and I don’t want her.

She sets her stack of books down on Dad’s oversized oak desk, the one I’ve piled with empty cereal bowls, juice containers, history books, magazines, and medicine bottles.

“Will you be comfortable working in here?”

“I guess.” I don’t tell her that nothing is comfortable any more. Especially having her look at me in the state I’m in.

Marisa busies herself clearing away the debris and carefully shifting aside the papers and books littering the surface, a strand of dark hair falling softly over her fragile features as she focuses on her task. Finished, Marisa sits in the desk chair and smiles at me. “Why don’t you come on over and we can get started.”

I blow air out from my mouth and roll toward her, feeling as hideous and freakish as the Phantom of the Opera.

“Wait. One minute.” Marisa digs in the oversized purse she’s hung on the desk chair and pulls out a rectangular object wrapped in a silk scarf. She carefully unfolds the fabric to reveal an old leather-bound book that looks like a lot like a Bible. The gold embossed words are Hebrew. Underneath the Hebrew symbols is imprinted the word
Kabbalah
. On closer inspection, the words
My (very own) Book of the Dead
, are printed in gold ink in tiny, hand-written letters.

Gripping the arms of the wheelchair, I snap, “Where did you get that?”

Marisa meets my gaze and slides the book toward me. “She wanted you to have it.”

I sit forward, suddenly eager to write off my spiritual encounters as a product of Vicodin overload. “You’ve heard from her?”

Marisa smiles sadly. “Not exactly.”

“Then how do you know she wanted me to have this?” I ask, my tone acid I know I’m being a bastard and it feels good. I reach tentatively for the book.

Marisa looks away. “Susannah and I—well I wouldn’t say we were friends, exactly, but I saw the stuff that went on in that house. What she lived with.”

“Like what?”

“Susannah left this for you,” Marisa says in a whisper, “Not me.”

My head spins. I could use a gulp of vodka right about now. “Where do you think she is? What do you think happened to her?”

“I have no idea, Jeremy. She could be anywhere.”

“Dead?”

Marisa shrugs. “I hope not. She’s run away before.”

“Then why would she leave this for me?”

“Why don’t you just look inside and see for yourself?”

The pages are wrinkly and yellow, like the thing has been rescued from a dumpster. In some places, the ink has run so badly that it’s impossible to read. From the looks of it, Susannah has disemboweled an old book and inserted her own blank and printed pages from other books, in a crazed patchwork. She’s highlighted sentences and scratched out others. Old color illustrations have been either defaced or enhanced by her detailed additions. There are pages of drawings, pages of scrawled writing in her tiny, neat hand. After flipping past a few, I realize Susannah has scavenged information on death and the afterlife and cobbled it together in her very own “best of” Death Remix.

Slowly turning the pages, I come to a sheet of thick black paper, inscribed in silver ink, which is free of the binding, slipped in like a note. Ornate flowers, skulls, and tree roots decorate the margins like an illuminated manuscript.

I suck in a breath and read, aware of Marisa’s eyes on me. But I don’t care. This is addressed to me.

Jeremy
,

1) I know why you run
.

2) I know that you drink
.

3) I know you’ve lied to me
.

4) I know you’ve been in love with me since ninth grade
.
(
I can’t tell you how sorry I am that I threw that away
.)

5) I know you’ll help me
.

Susannah

I slam the book closed and let it balance on my lopsided lap, listening to the breath scuff in and out of my lungs. I want to tell Marisa to leave, but for some reason, I find her presence strangely comforting. We are connected now.

“Where did you find this?” I blurt, finally.

Marisa blushes and looks down. “There was a note rolled up inside—in the box of tampons I keep in my purse. Like she knew I wouldn’t find it until—uh, you know. The note said to look in the storage compartment in the back of the minivan. I found the book there yesterday.” Marisa’s voice falters. “With the pair of turquoise and silver earrings of hers she knows I love.”

“Shit,” I mutter, at a loss for anything coherent to say.

For a few moments we both stare at the desk, frozen.

Marisa hesitates, watching me. My teeth are chattering against an incoming tidal wave of pain.

“I don’t think I can do calculus right now,” I say. “The physical therapy took a lot out of me.”

“Are you sure you’re going to be okay alone?”

“Fine,” I mutter. “I’m fine.”

Marisa studies me, chewing her lip. “Your father is worried about you, Jeremy. He wanted me to—he thinks you may need to see someone. To talk.”

“Talk about what?” I’m shivering hard now. It’s difficult to separate the pain from my need for the next fix of meds. I wonder how many more bombshells Marisa intends to drop today, or if she’s emptied her payload.

“Jeremy,” she says quietly. “You’ve been through a lot.”

The words trigger something wild in me. I grab for my crutches and, despite the screaming agony of the blood as it rushes into the stump, force myself out of the chair and violently upright. Marisa takes a step back as I lurch toward her on my crutches.

“How much is he paying you to do his talking for him?” I shout.

For a second Marisa looks scared, until she rearranges her expression into something neutral. She backs slowly toward the door as I thump unsteadily after her.

“He’s paying me to help you keep up with your schoolwork, Jeremy,” she says evenly, like she’s used to reasoning with deranged madmen. “You know that. It’s no secret I need the money.”

“That’s not what I mean,” I say, pressing forward. The veins in my temples throb. I’m being horrible, taking my rage out on this girl so strapped for cash she’d put up with me. But at the moment, I don’t care. I’m shouting at the top of my lungs, my voice rasping and hoarse. “What’s he afraid of, huh? That I’ll end up like my mother? Why does he have to pay you to say it? Why can’t he just say it himself?”

Marisa rushes into the kitchen. I thump after her, even though the floor is slanting beneath me, pain peeling away my vision in strips of hot black. Thrusting myself forward on the crutches, I’m not sure where my next step will land. I stop and grab onto the center island to keep from pitching over.

“Let me help you back to your room.” Her voice echoes from somewhere nearby.

“No,” I say, closing my eyes against the rising darkness. “I can take care of myself. Please leave. I’m sure my dad will pay you either way.” I want to take back those last vicious words.

“I’ll come back if and when you’re feeling more up to working.”

“Sure.”

I hear her hesitate, maybe checking to make sure I don’t keel over. I’m fighting to remain upright, but gravity is winning.

“Sorry,” I say, meaning it. Hating myself for being such an asshat.

“It’s okay, Jeremy.”

Right. I know it’s not. There’s no excuse for taking my crazies out on Marisa. And she probably won’t come back. No matter what my dad offers to pay her.

None of this, I realize, is going to be easy. Or okay.