Breaking Glass (7 page)

I glance at my watch. Dad’s probably dead asleep by now, so there’s little chance he’ll pop in and catch me in the act.

I slump over in my wheelchair, the last of my energy drained, and stare at the dancing flames. I wonder if I’ve totally lost my mind—if the pain, vodka, and Vicodin have finally evaporated the last drops of my sanity.

Clutching Susannah’s pendant, I begin, hoarsely and deliberately, to recite the incantation. There’s a strange power in the words as they rise from my chest. The floor beneath me tilts and lists, like I am on the deck of a storm-tossed ship.

I summon thee
the one to be,
the one who lost her life,
her happiness,
family and friends
I call now in the night
.

I repeat the spell three times. When I am done, I am a hollow vessel filled with light. There is no sign of Susannah in spirit form, or anything else for that matter, just flickering candles and the darkness that tugs at my extremities, pulling me toward an abyss. I struggle to focus but the room is blurred. Time slows to a grainy Susannah-style stop action. I’m fading and my leg burns as if acid has seeped under the cast. Shivering, I slip down into cold waters.

C H A P T E R
s i x

Now

Objects and debris float by. I half expect to see the Wicked Witch pedaling past. Up ahead, incongruously, is a dining room table set with five candles. A woman sits, her back turned to me. I hesitate, because once I draw another foot closer, I recognize my mother.

She turns, her hair coiffed in its neat blond bun, not a strand out of place. Dressed in a prim white tailored shirt, just the way I remembered her most mornings. She is sipping coffee from a teacup. She smiles at the sight of me as I paddle toward her, and I’m struck by the realization that I must be dreaming. Candles are burning underwater and I’m about to have a nice chat with my dead mother.

Her delicate features are expectant, hopeful. “You called for me, Jeremy?”

She gestures toward one of the brocade-upholstered dining room chairs. It’s as if our whole dining room has been transported to the bottom of the Riverton Gorge.

“I, uh—not exactly, but I was thinking about you.” Not wanting to offend, I hedge, my heart racing. “I’m always thinking about you, Mom,” I stammer.

“I know you are, honey. I did leave rather abruptly.” She smiles, studying me. In this dream, my cast is gone. My damaged leg radiates an eerie bluish glow. Refracted by the underwater tableau, it casts our faces in bluish light.

“You’ve grown so much, Jeremy.”

I nod. Of course I have, I think. Eight years will do that to a boy.

I hear a ticking noise, as if a timer will soon go off and then something horrible will occur. Like, maybe I’ve cast the wrong spell. “I’m not dead, am I?”

Mom shakes her head, still beaming as if she is at my high school graduation. “No, honey. Not at all.”

“Do you know where Susannah is? Is she here with you?”

Mom shakes her head sadly. “I’m sorry. I can’t say I know what you’re talking about. But you really should take care of that leg, Jeremy. It’s giving off the strangest light.”

Mom disappears—dining room table and all. I sink lower into the frigid depths of the Gorge, my leg glowing like an electric eel.

Now I’m floating upward in an ocean of seamless white, propelled by a jet stream of warm milk. Instead of the pale blue glow, my leg is blurred, as though my dream is a video and the camera lens couldn’t focus in on it. Confused, I paddle through the thick white expanse, headed somewhere, wondering idly if I really am dead and Mom was too polite to say so. But I’m kind of too relaxed to care.

I come to rest on a soft surface enclosed in a white membrane, a chrysalis inside its fuzzy white cocoon. It’s warm and cozy in here. I think I’d like to stay indefinitely. But something tells me the world outside of my casing is not heaven. Not by a long shot.

A voice pierces the gauze of my white world. Shapes move as if behind a plastic shower curtain. I struggle to understand the words, to understand where I am.

There is that familiar smell. Those familiar beeping sounds. The hushed voices. The scrape of a chair on linoleum.

Had I ever left?

“He’s coming to,” says a woman’s voice.

My eyes blink open and the light hurts like razors are slicing into my corneas. I close them fast, but not before recognizing Dad, his tired eyes peering over a surgical mask.

“Hey, kiddo,” he says softly.

I peel open one eye and peer at my leg. Instead of seeing it and the pins sticking out of it, there is a flat section of blanket clear up to the hip. A wave of sudden nausea hits. I squeeze my eyes closed and sink deeper into the pillow, hoping I’ll open them again to find myself on the debris-strewn floor of my father’s study, the acrid stench of burnt candles riding up my nostrils.

“I’m going to let the doctor speak to you, Jeremy, if that’s okay. She can explain.” Explain? Like what they did with my leg? Did it have a proper burial? I never even had the chance to say goodbye.

“Why, Dad?” I moan.

“It had to be done,” Dad mutters. “The leg was already in danger. The infection came on so fast. I’m—I’m so sorry.”

I hear the scrape of his chair and the soft pad of his shoes as he exits my room. I smell the doctor’s perfume as she pulls up a chair beside me and gives me the lowdown. Her voice is tender and soothing, but the words she utters are far from it. Fast-moving infection in an already severely compromised limb. Tissue death. How they tried to save the knee, but couldn’t. How with the right rehabilitation and prosthetic I can walk again. Maybe run.

Yeah, sure, I think. In the Special Olympics. But I say nothing. Only nod with my eyes still closed and catalog how I’ve lost the only things I’d ever loved. My mother. Susannah. Running.

But I have plenty of history. No shortage of that.

She leaves me staring at the inside of my eyelids, listening to the beep-beep of the machines and thinking about how I would very much like a drink.

But for now, massive doses of painkillers will have to do.

An orderly comes in with a pitcher of water and a cup. Once he leaves, I prop myself up and pour the water. For some reason, I am fascinated by the condensation that collects on the cup’s circumference.

The curtain around my bed rustles gently, followed by a faint waft of vanilla. My heart speeds up.

“Is someone there?”

Then I see it. And blink because I can’t be sure I’m not dreaming.

Words are forming on the cup as if written with a finger.

I’m sorry
.

I study the words and they vanish, filling in with more condensation.

I lean back onto the pillow, convinced the painkillers are causing me to hallucinate.

C H A P T E R
s e v e n

Now (December 4th)

If I thought recovering from a leg amputation meant that the hospital staff would just leave me alone to vegetate, discarded like a banana peel, I was wrong. I don’t even have time to brood over the bandaged appendage that measures half the length of my one remaining foot. It’s barely worth calling a stump. It’s more like a stub. Or to be more specific, a nub. It’s not even as long as my—I can’t even finish that thought.

I’m told repeatedly the bone infection had come dangerously close to killing me, as if the entire hospital staff feels the need to explain that they didn’t just get excited with a handsaw. It was necessary to remove all of the diseased bone. Saving the hip joint was considered a big win. I’d come perilously close to losing that as well.

My days post-surgery are chocked with dizzying changes of dressing, merciless massages, pokes, prods, and painful scrub-downs by a woman with hair growing out of a mole on her chin. I am no longer handled like an egg. Instead, muscular people of indistinguishable gender move me around and make me stand on my one leg to the point where I feel like their Ken doll, or at least an over-sized stork. And peeing on one leg may very well be the low point of some very low days.

The room fills with flowers from well-wishers, but I refuse to see anyone but my father. I want the whole damn town to leave one-legged Jeremy Glass alone. I imagine the clucking tongues of the Riverton wags sitting at Awesome Cow, whispering about that poor unlucky boy and his tragedy-plagued life.

My father glances at me with a wounded gaze that rarely fixes on mine. He says little beyond slight words of encouragement when I manage to hop around the room on my crutches. My balance is good for a beginner, the physical therapist tells me, but it’s harder than I would have thought. I am lopsided. Asymmetrical.

The desk nurse informs us that we have a visitor who won’t take no for an answer. It’s Patrick Morgan. I tell Dad I don’t want to see him, or Ryan, or anyone else for that matter, but Dad insists. Patrick Morgan is not a person you deny. He
owns
Riverton, as well as the building in which Dad’s small law office is housed, my father reminds me. As if he needs to.

I’d always thought my dad and Patrick Morgan were friends from way back, the pre-cursor to Ryan and me. These days, I’m not sure. Dad seems skittish. Under his mild words, I catch the implied message. My destroyed physical condition is not a free pass. I’d better patch things up with Ryan for the good of our family’s future economic health.

In the moments before Mr. Morgan arrives at my room, Dad turns to me, face grave and splotchy.

“Do you take me for a fool, Jeremy?”

“What do you mean?”

“You think I don’t know how, after the accident, the medical reports on your blood alcohol level miraculously vanished? You can thank Pat Morgan for that.”

Heavy footsteps approach, growing closer. “So he told me.”

“I just didn’t think that issue was a priority, given your condition. But by no means are you off the hook, Jeremy,” Dad hisses in my ear in the seconds before Patrick makes his entrance, his arms laden with a giant tower of cookies wrapped in purple cellophane and tied with a perfect white bow. His feet are festooned with the most pretentious cowboy boots I’ve ever seen. Red alligator with black snakeskin. I know it’s crazy, but I can’t help but think he’s subtly rubbing it in that he has two legs and so does Ryan.

Over the years, Patrick Morgan has been my Little League coach, soccer coach, and unofficial running coach. In fact, he was the first person to tip off my spectacularly un-athletic father about the speed of my running stride. He just never expected me to be a better runner than his perfect son.

Today, the thought of pity from him makes me cringe. More likely, he’ll be secretly happy to have me off the team so I can’t make Ryan look bad with my faster miles. Those days are gone for good.

Win for Team Morgan.

Dad takes the cookies from his hands, cookies that I know Ryan’s mother Celia baked just for me. Mr. Morgan’s pointy boots clop to my bedside. He leans over, brow furrowed, his eyes, vividly blue as a lit gas burner, filled with deep concern. He says, in a solemn whisper, “Ryan understands now why you were so abrupt with him the other day. You must have been in terrible pain. We’re all so very sorry this happened, Jeremy.”

“Thanks,” I say. His pity is like sandpaper on my eyeballs. I think I want to scream or rap him over the head with a crutch, but I keep my face composed in a pleasantly flattered expression.

“Celia would have come, but you know how she gets. She’s very choked up over your—over your situation—and didn’t want to upset you. So she sent these cookies instead.” Patrick Morgan pauses a minute to look up at Dad, who starts to fidget as if he’s standing barefoot on hot sand. Mr. Morgan adds, “We all love Celia’s cookies, don’t we?”

Dad coughs into his hankie, like he’s suddenly got a chicken bone lodged in his throat, and ducks out into the hall. I fight back the ridiculous tears that well in my eyes. For a long time, Celia Morgan’s tried her best to fill the Mom-shaped hole I was left with. I wish fervently that it is her standing there instead of Ryan’s father, but she is an emotional person, known to cry at funny movies, and would most likely be bawling her eyes out over me. Not what I need at the moment.

“It will be tough for Ryan without you on the team to keep pace for him.”

No. I do not need to be reminded of all the things I won’t ever do again. I look away.

“But don’t worry, son. You’ll be back. We heard that your dad’s insurance only covers a cosmetic prosthesis. The team is taking up a collection for one of those high-tech titanium types the soldiers get. It was Ryan’s idea. He’s already collected two thousand dollars.”

I turn to look back at him. “Seriously? He didn’t have to do that.”

Patrick Morgan shrugs. “He thinks he does. I know you boys have had your differences lately. But—well. Ryan would really like to see you.”

Differences.
What’s one missing girl between friends?

I look down at my ex-leg on the blanket. I can still feel its weight pressing into the mattress and wonder how long my nerve endings will take to understand it’s gone for good.