Breaking Read online

  I lift the dress from the box and gently rest it against my knees. The lace is spiderweb thin. I worry it’ll come apart in my hands.

  It’s beautiful, but it’s just a dress. Not a clue.

  During history class the next morning, I try to think of every place that was important to Ariel. I spend most of the period hunched over my desk, scribbling things down and crossing them out again.

  “Miss Gruen?”

  I look up too quickly, and pain shoots down my neck. I bite the inside of my lip to keep from grimacing. Someone laughs behind me, the kind of low laugh that’s almost a release of breath.

  I clear my throat. “Yes?”

  Mr. Oakley raises an eyebrow. Shit. He must’ve asked a question. The backs of my ears grow warm, but I keep my face carefully blank. A clock stares down from the wall above the door, second hand ticking like a metronome. The other students sit, silent, around me. No one whispers the answer. No one tries to help. Their excitement over my impending embarrassment vibrates through the air like electricity.

  I lift a hand, pretending to study my cuticles while I think. Zoe sits in the desk next to me. She lowers her head, and her black hair swings forward, cutting a sharp angle against her cheek. She’s doodling something in her notebook, drawing a thick square around the words—

  “‘Ptolemy I Soter,’” I read out loud, shifting my eyes back to the front of the room. Zoe slaps her notebook shut, cheeks flaring. Mr. Oakley turns back to the whiteboard and scrawls my answer. Zoe scribbles something on a piece of paper and tosses it to me. I slide it onto my lap and read while Mr. Oakley has his back turned.

  Cheating will get you booted again.

  I grab my pen and add: So will staying out all night.

  I toss the note onto Zoe’s desk and turn back to my own notebook. Last year, back before she became a fencing star, Zoe used to hide behind her hair and speak only in old movie quotes. I think I liked her better that way.

  I tap my pen against the side of my desk as I reread my short list:

  Bathroom

  Devon’s dorm

  Woods

  Med Center

  I’ve already drawn a thick, angry line across the word “bathroom.” I pull my pen through it again, just to drive the point home. That leaves three places. I drop a spot of ink onto the page next to “Med Center” and slowly darken it with my pen. Ariel, Dev, and I all did the internship together last semester, though we spent more time whispering in the supply closet than actually interning. Ariel might have hidden something there. I have my first shift next period.

  I hurry out of class as soon as the bell rings, making it onto the bus into Underhill seconds before the doors slide closed. I take a seat near the back, dropping my bag on the floor between my feet. I suppose it’s weird, how we leave school to do shifts at the Med Center in the middle of the day.

  A few Weston students perch on the edge of their seats near the front of the bus, talking in thin, high-pitched voices as we crawl through the trees toward town. They’re underclassmen, probably freshmen. I recognize one of the girls from CNN. Aurora or Audrey or something like that. She’s the senator’s daughter, I think.

  She turns and sees me sitting at the back of the bus. Her eyes go cartoon-character-wide, and she whips her head back around, leaning in close to her friends. I can’t hear her whispering, but I don’t need to. I know what she’s saying.

  See her? That’s the one. She knew the suicide girls. She was their friend.

  A second later, they all lift their heads and look at me. I slouch down in my seat and stare pointedly out the window to keep from meeting their eyes.

  The bus rumbles to a stop in front of the Underhill Medical Center fifteen minutes later, its automatic doors screeching open. I wait for the other Weston girls to leave, and then I grab my bag and climb from my seat, shivering against the sudden rush of winter air. I pull a scarf out of my bag and wrap it around my neck, not caring that the Med Center is only a few yards away. I ball my hands into fists and stick them in my coat pockets.

  The hospital looks like it was built here by mistake. It’s a mountain of glass and steel towering above the leafless trees and dead grass. It belongs in Manhattan or Chicago, not a Podunk town in Upstate New York. Light ripples off the wall of windows, seeping into the dull gray sky around it. Everything about it is modern and cold and state of the art. It’s my mother, transformed into a building.

  I head inside. There’s a sudden rush of warm air, a thick smell of antiseptic, the muffled hum of voices. Carpeting swallows my footsteps as I move from the entry to the main hall to the lobby, wood-paneled walls around me.

  You need a badge to get through the main doors, but I lost mine months ago, so I give my name to the woman working the reception desk.

  “The volunteer coordinator will be with you shortly,” she says, pointing me to the waiting area.

  I settle myself into a stiff wingback chair. The lobby has always felt more like a hotel than a hospital. A wall of windows overlooks the surrounding woods, and there’s a fountain in the far corner spurting a trickling stream of water over a bed of mossy rocks.

  I close my eyes and smell cigarettes—the expensive French ones Devon occasionally bummed from Zoe. I feel sleepy and loose, like I’m pink-wine drunk. Devon and Ariel persuaded me to steal my mother’s keys and sneak in here after hours one time because Devon thought there would be painkillers hidden in the cupboards. But we only found tongue depressors and floss and brochures for volunteer programs. We cut the pictures from the brochures and glued them to the tongue depressors and spent the rest of the night performing increasingly lewd puppet shows and laughing until wine came out of our noses.

  “Charlotte?”

  I flinch and open my eyes again. Amelia Potter, the Med Center’s volunteer coordinator, stands in front of me, wearing crisp white scrubs and black tennis shoes. She’s pulled her black hair into a tight bun, making her face look long and pointed.

  “Your mother mentioned you’d be starting up again today.” She smiles in a way that tells me she hates me and all other kids whose important parents get them second chances they don’t deserve. So at least we’re getting off on the right foot.

  “Yes.” I stand and pull my bag over my shoulder. “Thanks so much for letting me come back after—”

  Amelia waves my apology away, but her expression doesn’t change. “As long as you’re willing to put in the work this time, I’m happy to have you back. Come with me.”

  She turns on her heel, walking at a brisk clip. I follow her through the familiar maze of hallways, past rooms filled with patients and doctors and expensive-looking equipment. The Med Center is huge. There are a million places Ariel could’ve hidden something. I don’t know where to begin.

  Amelia stops in the middle of the hallway, sneakers squeaking against the tile.

  “Go ahead and get changed,” she says, nodding at a door to her left. “I’m sure you remember where we keep the scrubs. And make sure you wash your hands for exactly two and a half minutes using soap and the hottest water you can stand.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I say, heading into the locker room.

  “Make sure to scrub under your nails!” she calls as the door swings shut behind me.

  I change quickly and store my clothes and bag in one of the metal lockers lining the walls. The locker room seems like an unlikely hiding place, but I check the rest of the lockers and open all the cupboards, digging behind stacks of fresh scrubs and a box of extra trash can liners. Nothing. Frustrated, I quickly wash my hands, cringing under the scalding water as I stare at the clock on the wall above the sinks, watching the second hand tick slowly past.

  After I’m done, Amelia leads me to the Med Center’s free clinic. Filmy curtains hang from the ceiling, sectioning the room into half a dozen areas, each containing a narrow hospital bed and a jumble of complicated-looking machines.

  “We’ll start you off slow today,” she says. “Just stop by each cot and change
out the patients’ pillows, clear away the bedpans, and make sure there are enough linens in the cupboard. Think you can handle that?”

  I nod and Amelia pats me on the shoulder, telling me to come find her when I’ve finished. I get started, pulling linens out of cupboards and checking bedpans and fluffing pillows. It takes about ten seconds for me to remember why I stopped showing up for these shifts. Without Ariel and Devon around, interning at the Med Center is mind-numbingly boring. There’s no one to make jokes or tell stories with. Just cupboard after cupboard of scratchy hospital linens, and bedpans that always smell faintly of piss and bleach, and glassy-eyed patients asking if you want to be a doctor when you grow up.

  A few other students from school wander through the room, performing their own tasks, but I duck my head whenever they come close. They probably recognize me, but they’re polite enough to walk past without pointing and staring, like the girls on the bus.

  “Can you get me some more gauze from the supply closet?” a nurse in pink scrubs asks after I’ve been working for almost an hour.

  “Sure,” I say. I head to the closet in the hall and grab a few rolls of gauze, then hurry back. The nurse thanks me and leans over a cot near the windows. A man lies there, a thick layer of bloodstained bandages hiding his face.

  “What happened to him?” I ask.

  “We aren’t really sure,” the nurse explains, unwrapping the fresh gauze. “He’s a John Doe. Someone dropped him off a few weeks ago. Looks like he was badly injured in a fire, but he hasn’t regained consciousness yet, so we haven’t been able to confirm anything.”

  She cuts a length of gauze from the roll. “If he doesn’t come out of this soon, we’ll need to transfer him to long-term care.”

  I kneel next to his bed and pull two fluffy pillows out from the shelf beside him. The nurse eases him forward, and I slide a new pillow behind his back. I turn to grab another.

  There’s a flicker of movement outside the window. I spot it from the corner of my eye and jerk my head around on instinct. Nothing there.

  The nurse looks up from the machine she’d been studying, eyebrows furrowed. “Is something wrong?”

  I stare out the window for a beat longer. The bushes are still trembling, but it could just be the wind. Or an animal. My skin itches, though. I feel like I was being watched. Like the woods themselves were tracking my movements.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” I say, sliding the second pillow behind the patient’s back. “I just thought I saw something.”

  Chapter Twelve

  I’m outside Mother’s office when my phone beeps. I fish it from my backpack.

  Jack’s name flashes across my screen. Can we talk?

  The words crawl over my skin like ants. I wonder if Chloe looks through his phone, like Ariel used to. If he had to delete this text as soon as he sent it. I used to love the mystery of it, how I had to destroy his messages, like a spy in a movie, as soon as I read them. How his words only existed in my mind. Now it just makes me feel guilty.

  I stick the phone back into my bag without responding and knock on the door.

  “Come in,” Mother calls, her voice muffled. I open the door. She glances up from the stack of papers she’s holding, a ballpoint clenched between her teeth.

  “Charlotte?” she says, removing the pen. I frown, taking in the mess of her usually pristine office. A stack of files sits on the corner of her desk, spilling ragged-edged papers across the shiny surface. A few of the books on her shelf have toppled over, and her most prized possession—a sleek black samurai sword given to her by a Japanese businessman—sits crooked in its stand. It looks like it’s going to fall over.

  I step into the office, closing the door behind me. Her closet hangs open, a white lab coat dangling from the doorknob. A local news program blares from the tiny flat-screen TV sitting on the bookshelf next to her sword.

  “… the fire spread fast. So far, there’s no word as to what caused the initial …”

  “Is this a bad time?” I ask, tearing my eyes away from the screen.

  “Oh no, it’s fine.” Mother clicks the television off and removes the lab coat from the door so she can push it closed. “The board is going through a bit of a disaster at the moment and—”

  “Still?” I interrupt.

  Mother blinks. “Pardon?”

  “You said they were having some kind of crisis yesterday in the car.”

  “Did I? Anyway, take a seat. I wasn’t expecting you for another …” She glances at the clock above the door and frowns. “Is that the time?”

  “I can come back later,” I say, backing toward the hall.

  “Sit.” Mother slips into her lab coat, nodding at the chair in front of her desk. “How was your first day?”

  “Fine.” I shift uncomfortably on the stiff leather chair. “Normal.”

  “Amelia took care of you?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s good.” Mother frowns. “Your hair looks better. Did you even it out last night?”

  “I washed it,” I say, tucking a strand behind my ear.

  “Is that all?” Mother walks to the other side of her desk and sits. Her fingers are smudged with ink, and she’s left black prints on her coat. I stare at them for a long moment. My mother is never disheveled. She’s never out of sorts. The crooked samurai sword stares down at me like a warning.

  I start to rise from my seat. “Are you sure you don’t want me to—”

  “I spoke with that college counselor I was telling you about the other day. Petra, remember? Anyway, she mentioned a few study programs we could get you enrolled in before you take the SATs again this spring. Your scores last year were atrocious …”

  I drop back into my seat as she talks. Mother knows I don’t want to go to college. I’ve told her a dozen times.

  “Obviously, you’ve missed admissions for this September,” Mother says. “You were supposed to get your application in by the end of January.”

  I squirm. This chair is ridiculously uncomfortable. I reach for the knobby thing that controls the lumbar support.

  “Petra seems to think you have a good chance of getting in somewhere decent next fall. Apparently, taking a gap year is in fashion …”

  The chair sinks to a foot above the ground. I release a grunt and nearly knee myself in the chin. Mother presses her lips together, the muscles in her neck tightening.

  “Sorry,” I say. I twist the knob to get the chair to rise again.

  “Did you eat breakfast today?” Mother asks. I don’t answer. She stands and crosses the room before I can protest, pulling her purse off its hook on the back of the door. She digs around inside and removes a protein bar, which she holds out for me.

  I stare at the bar like it might bite. “I’m fine.”

  “You’re not fine. You’re not eating again, and it’s affecting your concentration.” She shakes the bar. “Eat.”

  I still don’t reach for it. You probably think I have an eating disorder, but that’s not it. I just don’t like being told what to eat. When to eat. I get enough of that in the rest of my life.

  Mother closes her eyes. “You’re not leaving here until you take this, Charlotte.”

  I groan but lean forward anyway, pulling the protein bar from her fingers. “I’ll eat it on the bus,” I lie.

  I make it back to school just in time for lunch. Daily announcements crackle over the loudspeaker. The girls’ soccer team is headed to nationals. Kelly Wexler and Roger Graham were named presidential scholars. Evan Whitney was admitted to the MIT summer science program.

  The list goes on, but no one claps or lifts their head or even seems to hear what’s being announced. Some of the other students talk while they eat, but most are hunched over books and notecards, memorizing lists of elements or long-dead presidents while they munch on broccoli. The announcements hang over them like threats.

  Do better, try harder, study more …

  Jack and Chloe sit next to each other at a table across
the room. He hasn’t texted me again, and I doubt he’ll try to talk to me here, in front of her. I watch them from the corner of my eye as I push a chunk of chicken around on my plate. He says something, and she throws her head back, laughing loud enough for the entire cafeteria to hear. I cut the chicken into teeny-tiny little pieces. She’s wearing his track jacket, the blue one with WESTON printed in silver letters across the chest.

  “Why do you wear this?” I asked him once. We were in the quad last year, just the two of us. I leaned over and pinched his jacket sleeve between two fingers, the fabric slick to the touch. “You aren’t even good at track.”

  “Ouch,” Jack said, pressing his hand over his heart. “She wounds.”

  “Ha-ha,” I said. I was still holding his jacket, and he turned too quickly and the sleeve tugged up over his arm, my fingers trailing along the skin between his wrist and his elbow.

  It felt exactly like that thing that happens when you shuffle your feet across carpet and then touch someone. Static electricity. I could feel every hair on my body standing on end. Every inch of my skin hummed.

  When I looked up again, Jack was staring at me like he’d never seen me before. His breathing had deepened, his eyes sparked, and then he stood too quickly, made an excuse about being late to study hall, and was gone.

  That was the last time we touched.

  My cheeks burn at the memory. I shift my eyes back down to the shredded chicken sitting next to the perfectly balanced portions of broccoli and quinoa on my plate. Weston only serves gluten-free, macrobiotic food. I can’t quite bring myself to lift it to my mouth and chew. Mother’s protein bar still sits at the bottom of my backpack, probably squished between some books. Before leaving the Med Center, I grabbed a bag of chips from the vending machine and ate those instead. They tasted wonderfully artificial.

  Chloe laughs again. “Jack, stop it!” she squeals.

  I stand and dump my lunch into the trash, uneaten.

  I make my way to the locker room and start changing into my fencing uniform: a puffy white jacket, metallic-gray lame, and lace-up boots. I have a minute until class starts, so I poke around, wondering if Ariel might’ve left something for me here. The girls’ locker room wasn’t on my list, but there’s no harm checking.