Breaking Read online

  It isn’t until the shower is on, the scalding water running over my scalp and down my shoulders, that I realize what I’m doing. I’m standing in the exact spot where Ariel took her last breath. It’s the first time I’ve taken a shower here since the night she died.

  I look down, watching the water pool between my toes before trickling toward the drain. I wait for the memories to crash into me. Ariel’s hair floating beneath the surface of the water, her voice repeating the words of our final argument. Do you love him …

  But there’s nothing. She’s not here anymore.

  I turn the faucet, and the steady stream of water sputters off. I climb out of the shower and wrap a towel around myself, using my palm to clear the condensation from the mirror. My face reflects back at me: glossy hair, clear skin. I lean closer to the mirror, peeling my lips back from my teeth. They’re straighter, whiter, unstained. I chomp them together twice, like I’m testing whether they’re real.

  I don’t look like the Charlotte that Ariel and Devon knew anymore. I’m different. Better. And it’s not just my appearance—my classes feel manageable for the first time since I started at Weston. My fencing is improving. I’m eating lunch with the most popular girls at Weston.

  Maybe my old friends were holding me back.

  The thought feels like a betrayal. I reel away from the sink and spin around, pressing my back into the cold porcelain so I don’t have to face my reflection anymore. Apparently, all it takes is one good day to make me forget how Ariel used to make me laugh whenever I got a bad grade. How Devon used to fix the game whenever we’d play MASH, so we’d all end up with the lives we wanted.

  Chloe and her friends might let me sit at their lunch table and invite me to parties, but they’ll never be like Ariel and Devon. They’ll never be family.

  A tear leaks out of the corner of my eye. I brush it away, hating myself for my willingness to forget them. I need to remember why I came back here. To find Ariel’s clues. Solve the mystery of what happened to her and Devon.

  My strange dream echoes through my head. I see Jack staring at me, and I hear laughter echoing through the trees. You already know the truth.

  No, I think. I’m not the reason they killed themselves. There’s something else. Something I’m missing. I slam my fist against the sink, and I swear I hear the porcelain crack beneath my fingers. I flinch, but it’s still intact when I look down at it. Obviously. I’m not strong enough to break a sink in half.

  The flyer Molly gave me peers up from the bottom of my trash can. I threw it away last night, sure that nothing could compel me to brave the senior bonfire alone. Now I lean over and pluck it out of the trash, flattening it against the side of the sink. It’ll be dark, and the entire senior class will be there, but the bonfire might be the only chance I get to search the woods.

  I run a finger over the blocky black letters. Water drips from the showerhead and hits the porcelain tub behind me. The sound echoes off the bathroom walls, hollow and haunting.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Branches reach across the darkening sky. They sway in the wind, sending shadows dancing over my feet. I step into the woods, and voices travel through the trees to greet me. They boom and laugh and shout. Beckoning.

  I pick my way over sticks and twigs and rocks, unsteady on my heeled booties. I hadn’t realized it would be this dark tonight, or that there’d be so many people here. It’s going to be damn near impossible to properly search the place, especially if Ariel’s next clue is as small as the bottle she tucked in with my underwear.

  Anxiety rises in my chest, but I push it back down. There’s really only one place Ariel would have left something for me. We had this cove we liked, where the trees made a canopy of leaves overhead, blocking the sky. We hid secret notes under the rocks that littered the ground and scrawled our names on the trees and christened the ground with spilled wine. I’ll sneak over later, when everyone else is drunk and sloppy.

  I tug the sleeve of my sweater past my knuckles, fighting the urge to shiver. It’s too cold to be out without a coat, with snow still melting under the trees and ice coating the packed-dirt path. But tonight the cold doesn’t bother me as much as usual. Orange light flickers through the trees. People spread blankets around the bonfire, and crouch on fallen logs and rickety lawn chairs while a song with a heavy bass line thuds around them. People weave away from a table that holds cans of soda and a bowl of punch. Usually someone brings a keg, but because of Devon’s death, we have teachers chaperoning the party this year. They don’t seem to notice the silver flasks being passed from hand to hand.

  I hover at the edge of the trees, wondering what to do next. I never had to worry about attending a party alone when Ariel and Devon were alive. It didn’t matter what the event was, or who was dating who—we were each other’s dates, always. It feels weird to be standing here with no one. What do other people do at these things?

  I spot Zoe near the edge of the clearing with a few others—girls with clunky glasses and loose-fitting clothes and edgy haircuts. Geek chic. I turn in place, scanning the crowd for anyone else I know. I don’t recognize Molly until she swivels around, lifting her hand in a wave. She’s drawn thick kohl liner around her eyes and yanked her hair into a tight bun that pulls at the skin around her forehead.

  “Charlotte! You came!” Molly throws an arm around my shoulders and spins me to face the rest of her crew. Suddenly, Jack is standing over me, staring with inappropriate intensity considering that Chloe is hanging from his arm.

  “Hey,” I say, and he nods with just his chin. A new song starts to play, all gravelly voices and lusty chords. It’s sex made into music. The space between Jack and me seems to pulse. Firelight dances across his perfect face, elongating his nose and chin and making his eyes look almost black. Every bone in my body turns to dust.

  I quickly turn my focus on Chloe so that I don’t collapse onto the ground in a heap of skin and blood. Oh—

  Chloe got a haircut. Her bronzy-blond locks stop just below her ears, the edges spiky and uneven against the nape of her neck. Just like mine. I have to remind myself to close my mouth.

  “Don’t be mad.” Chloe wrinkles her nose, pinching a lock between two fingers. “I didn’t mean to play copycat, but your hair looks so cute. I couldn’t help myself.”

  “It’s okay,” I say without thinking. My brain is several paces behind. The most popular girl at Weston has copied the choppy, awful haircut I gave myself after Ariel committed suicide. I know it’s been looking better, but still. I hacked it off with a freaking plastic razor.

  I glance back at Jack. He’s still looking at me, transfixed by something happening with my lips. I run my hand over my mouth, and he shifts his eyes up again.

  Chloe looks at my mouth, and then at her boyfriend. She tightens her grip on his arm. “Jack, tell Charlotte I’m not being creepy. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”

  “What?” He pulls his arm out of Chloe’s hands, and she punches him playfully on the shoulder. He’s looking at me again, and this time he seems to be distracted by the portion of collarbone framed by the V of my sweater. He raises his eyes to mine.

  “Is that new?” he asks. Chloe turns to me like she, too, is fascinated by the timeline chronicling my ownership of this sweater. I feel naked. Is that new? Come on, Jack. What kind of guy asks about a sweater?

  “Um, no,” I say. “It’s pretty old.”

  Molly taps Chloe on the shoulder, and Chloe turns around. I use the sudden distraction to raise an eyebrow at Jack over the top of her head. You’d be amazed at how much you can say with an eyebrow. Jack and I used to communicate with them almost exclusively. He’d wiggle his eyebrows at me across the classroom when Mr. Oakley said something inadvertently dirty during a lecture on the bubonic plague. He’d lift both eyebrows in mock surprise when I dominated during a round of flip-cup.

  Now my eyebrows are saying, What the hell is wrong with you?

  Jack shrugs. Unlike eyebrows, shrugs ar
e infuriatingly vague. He looks at my collarbone again, and I honestly can’t decide if I want to slap him or stick my tongue down his throat. Clearly, this sweater was the wrong choice for tonight.

  Chloe turns back around, and I force my mouth into a fake smile. “It looks really good,” I say. “Your hair, I mean. Suits you much better than me.”

  “That is not true,” Chloe says. She shouldn’t be so nice to me. I basically just screwed her boyfriend with my eyes. She and her friends should be spreading vicious rumors about me right now. They should be filling my conditioner with Nair and stealing my underwear after gym class. But Chloe just smiles and shakes her head. A shiny blond lock falls across her forehead, and it couldn’t look more perfect if she’d planned it.

  I turn to the other people in the group, searching for anything to help me change the subject. My eyes drop to the white rose pinned to Molly’s shirt. Kevin and Vivian stand beside her. They’re wearing flowers, too.

  “Those are for your friend, right?” I search my memory for her name. “Mary Anne?”

  Vivian lifts a hand to her rose. “We’re actually wearing them in honor of all the students we’ve lost over the last year,” she explains, tracing a petal with her finger. “We were just talking about them.”

  “No other school in the area has had so many deaths,” Chloe chimes in. “Isn’t that strange? It’s like Weston is cursed.”

  I let my eyes go unfocused, and Chloe’s face becomes a blurry mess of shapes and colors. I want to go back to talking about my bad haircut or my sweater or how Chloe and Jack keep touching each other or anything to keep us from discussing this. Chloe wants to know why Weston has so many more deaths than other schools? It’s not like it was an accident. Devon and Ariel took their own lives. Suicide tips the scales.

  Chloe keeps on talking, but I stop listening. It’s easy—like hitting Mute on a remote control in my head. Is this what things are going to be like from now on? Awkward conversations with girls I don’t even like. Gossip and fake smiles and long stretches of silence, all of us trying to come up with something to say.

  “Charlotte?” Jack’s voice is a lighthouse steering me out of the fog. I blink, refocusing on his face. He finally seems to have figured out which parts of my body are appropriate to stare at while in the presence of his girlfriend because he’s looking at my eyes, and some of the fiery intensity has drained from his gaze.

  I exhale. Okay. I can handle this.

  “Hey,” Jack says, waving his hand in front of my face. “Still in there?”

  “Sorry,” I say. “Spaced out. What were you saying?”

  “Just that some of us were thinking we could drive up north, to the juvie center where Mary Anne used to work. Maybe leave flowers for her or something.”

  “You knew her?”

  “Yeah.” Jack frowns, like I should have known this. “We were in French Club last year.”

  “You don’t take French.”

  “You don’t have to study the language to be in the club.”

  “I didn’t know that,” I say in a perfect politely curious tone. I give myself a mental high five. Nobody who overheard this conversation would think that I’m calculating the inches between Jack’s lips and mine. That I’m trying to figure out a casual way to run my finger along the back of his hand.

  “Anyway,” Jack says. “You could come with us.”

  I picture the three of us in the backseat of some car: Chloe sitting on Jack’s lap, my leg pressed against his. He wants to go back to the way things were when Ariel was alive. Making eyes at each other behind his girlfriend’s back. Sending texts she’s not supposed to see.

  “There should be enough room. Kevin has a car,” Jack says. Kevin turns at the sound of his name, sloshing the sticky red contents of his Solo cup onto my boots. I leap backward, but not before punch soaks through the pale brown leather.

  “Kevin obviously won’t be driving the car,” Jack mutters. Chloe swears, and Vivian smacks Kevin in the arm.

  “How much booze did you put in there?” she snaps. He shakes his head, unable to focus on her face.

  “WhatdidIdo?” he mumbles.

  “It’s fine,” I say, shaking the punch from my boot. “I’m going to see if there are napkins near the punch bowl.”

  “You want me to come with?” Chloe offers. I try not to visibly cringe.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I say, backing away. “I got it.”

  I turn before Chloe can come up with some other reason to follow me through the party. I couldn’t give a shit about these boots, but I’m happy for an excuse to get out of this conversation. Jack can’t honestly think I’m going to trail along after him and Chloe, like I used to trail along behind him and Ariel. Living in Ariel’s shadow was one thing. It was Ariel. She was worth it. Chloe’s just another blond girl wearing too much lip gloss.

  I weave through the crowd and disappear into what I assume is the line for drinks. Coming here was a mistake. I need to duck away from this crowd and check the cove as quickly as possible. Then I can go home.

  I glance over my shoulder to see whether Chloe’s still watching.

  “Worried your doppelgänger followed you?”

  I turn toward the voice and spot Zoe standing next to the punch bowl. She stares at me over the lip of a red Solo cup, and then her dark eyes flicker to the group behind me. “Don’t worry. She’s staying put.”

  I grab a cup and ladle some of the sticky, sugary concoction into it, just to have something to do with my hands. Zoe pulls a plastic water bottle out of her pocket and tips it into her drink. I raise my eyes.

  “Vodka,” she whispers, stealing a glance at the teachers. They’re huddled together on the other side of the bonfire, looking like they’d rather be anywhere else in the entire world.

  “I didn’t know you drank,” I say. Zoe sneers and puts the bottle away.

  “Why? Because I’m Asian? You think I have some tiger mom following me around to make sure I stay in line? That’s Chinese mothers, FYI. My mother’s French.”

  “I meant because you’re an athlete,” I say. “Don’t they get all bent out of shape about underage drinking in the Olympics?”

  “Oh.” Zoe flashes me a fast smile. It reminds me of Ariel’s smile—there and then gone, like you’d imagined it. She takes another drink of punch. “You’re probably right. Sure you don’t want any?”

  “I’m heading back to the dorms.”

  “Really? Doesn’t Chloe want you to be the new Heather?”

  I frown. “What?”

  “From the movie Heathers?” I shrug, and Zoe cocks an eyebrow. “Seriously?” she says. “You’ve never seen Heathers?”

  “I don’t watch a lot of movies,” I say, turning down the path that leads to the dorms. Time to put this disastrous experiment in social interaction behind me.

  “You’ve been different since you got back,” Zoe calls after me. I stop and turn around. Zoe is studying me, like she’s looking for a clue. “It’s almost like you’re somebody else.”

  “Yeah? Who’s that?” I ask. Zoe looks into her drink and shrugs. It’s a vaguely French movement that seems to involve her entire body.

  “Ariel,” she says. “Or Devon.”

  I’m flattered, but Zoe didn’t say it like it was supposed to be a compliment. I think of what she told me after our fencing match. Go home before you end up like your friends.

  “I don’t see anything wrong with that,” I say.

  Zoe raises an eyebrow. “Noted.”

  I glance at Chloe’s group again. Vivian says something, and Molly laughs, spraying the ground with soda.

  “You can do better than them,” Zoe adds. “I overheard them talking in the bathroom and, apparently, the great and popular Chloe is losing status with the underclassmen. They all think it was slutty to go after Jack so soon after everything with Ariel. Vivian had this idea that they should cozy up to you. She thinks people will stop gossiping if it looks like you approve.”

 
Zoe takes another sip of her drink, looking extremely pleased with herself. I wait for this new information to hit me. For the pain or hurt or anger to explode through my chest, making it necessary for me to mumble some excuse and run away. But Zoe’s words have no effect. It feels obvious, even a little boring. Of course Chloe and her friends are using me. It’s the Weston way.

  “Why are you telling me this?” I ask.

  “Honestly?” she says. “I thought maybe you’d cry.”

  I resist the urge to “accidentally” knock her drink over. “Sorry to disappoint.”

  Zoe smirks. I walk away before she can say anything else, mentally calculating how long it’ll take me to make it to the clearing in the dark. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Jack separate from Chloe’s group and start toward me.

  Shit, shit, shit. I walk faster.

  He follows me without saying a word. We walk away from his friends, to the edge of the party, silently, like this was our plan all along. Two hundred thousand questions flash into my head at the exact same time. Is Chloe watching? What are we doing? Would Ariel …? It feels like standing in the middle of Times Square, trying to choose one message from the myriad. Everything is flashing lights and screaming voices.

  Then I step out of the clearing and into the trees, and everything inside my head goes still. Jack follows, wordless. I lead him off the familiar path and into the deepest dark. I know this part of the woods by heart. I hear his shoes crunching over dead leaves. His slow, even breathing grows heavier the farther we move away from the light of the fire. We’re alone now, but I don’t turn around. We are Orpheus and Eurydice traveling out of Hades. If I look back, he’ll vanish.

  My feet carry us to our place, the one Ariel, Devon, and I never shared with anyone else. Her laughter still hangs in the air here like a physical thing. It spiderwebs through the tree branches. It gets stuck on my face as I duck into the clearing. I take a deep breath and turn around.