Bend Me, Break Me (10 page)

She looked so much better on Friday. Much, much better. I had tea and, this time, a book. I’d made an educated guess about which one she wouldn’t have and might want.

“
Slammed
?” she said, reading the title. “What’s it about?”

“Well, I haven’t read it, but it just seemed like something you might like,” I said. I’d searched online for a while before going to the bookstore and asking a girl around Ingrid’s age what she would recommend. That was the first title she pulled off the shelf and after skimming a few pages, I bought it, along with a few others that she would get next week. I also bought the sequel,
Point of Retreat
, just in case she liked the first one.

Her eyes skimmed the back cover.

“Slam poetry?” she asked.

“Yeah, I guess there’s a lot in it. Like I said, I haven’t read it, but it just said ‘Ingrid’ to me.” She raised both eyebrows. I loved it when she let her face be so expressive.

“Books talk to you?” she asked as we walked into class and took our seats.

“Oh yeah, all the time. Don’t they talk to you? They scream out ‘read me! Read me!’” She snorted and I wanted to congratulate myself on causing that reaction.

“Now you think
I’m
the crazy one,” I said.

She just pressed her lips together and shook her head as she put the book in her bag. I hoped she would read it this weekend and tell me about it on Monday.

My heart lurched when I read that the main character in the book Coen gave me had a dead father, but I tried not to show it. He didn’t know. He was just being Coen, as usual, doing nice things for me because of whatever reason.

I pulled the book out of my bag when I got back to my room. I didn’t have anything else to do tonight, so I started reading, but I had to stop pretty quickly.

It was just a little too much. The writing was good and the story was interesting, but I just couldn’t tonight. Maybe tomorrow. I set it on my desk and watched television instead, but the book kept calling to me, so I picked it back up and tried again. I pushed through the difficult parts and before I knew it, I had a few pages left, I was starving and I seriously had to pee.

I closed the book after reading the last page and just sat in bed for a few minutes. This book was something special. It picked at the wounds inside me, but didn’t rip them open. It distracted me from my own pain by letting me experience someone else’s for a little while.

I thought about texting Coen and thanking him, but it was the middle of the night. He’d asked me if I wanted to hang out again on Sunday, but I’d told him I had something to do this weekend, which we both knew was a lie.

I was worried that I was taking too much from him and giving nothing in return.

Sleep was going to be impossible for a few hours, so I decide to get out my notebook and scrawl a few words. The start of my own poem. I just let the words come without thinking of their implications.

Here I am,

Your mystery,

But I’m not,

A mystery at all,

I’m just a girl,

A girl with a useless heart,

There is no fix,

There is no remedy,

There is only me,

Your damaged mystery.

I scribbled some other words and half-thoughts before putting the notebook back and closed my eyes.

Ever since that day I’d spent at Coen’s I’d been sleeping… not well, but better. The nightmares that plagued me had given me a short reprieve. They would be back, they were never far away, lurking in dark corners and in shadows. Still, I would take this moment and let myself have it. Let myself sleep.

Coen called me on Saturday and I almost didn’t answer. No one called me anymore, except for scammers from other countries. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d actually answered my phone and hadn’t let it go to voicemail. Yet another thing at which I was rusty.

“Hello?” I asked. I’d been re-reading my favorite parts of the book.

“Hey, what’s up?” He sounded like he was trying to be casual. Like we called each other on the phone all the time.

“Um, not much? You?” We were both failures at this. Should have stuck to texting.

“Yeah, same here. Look, you can absolutely say no to this,” he said and I heard someone say something in the background and then Coen reprimanding them. If I had to guess, I would have said it was Marty.

“Okay?” I said.

“There’s this party I’m going to tonight and I wanted to know if you wanted to come with me.” The words came out in a rush. He was nervous. Well, so was I.

“A party?” Past Ingrid would have been all over this. She loved parties and being around large groups of laughing friends. Current Ingrid wanted to throw up when she thought about it.

“Yeah. You can seriously say no. Absolutely no pressure.” I had the feeling he wasn’t the one asking, Marty was, and Coen had caved to pressure.

“Oh, um, yeah, parties aren’t really my thing.” Anymore.

“I figured, but I just thought I would ask anyway.” He stopped speaking and I thought I heard a scuffle and someone saying “You should come!” Marty was relentless, but he didn’t know me.

“Well, thanks for asking, but I’ll pass.” Forever. I couldn’t foresee a circumstance when I would ever go to a party again.

“Are you sure?” There was something in his voice that made me feel a little flash of guilt for saying no, but I let it pass. I couldn’t go to a party. Not now, not ever again.

“Yeah,” I said, chewing on my lip. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

“Okay,” he said, trying not to sound disappointed and failing. “Maybe we can still hang out tomorrow? Actually study this time. Or we could watch movies or whatever. Whatever you want.” He was always so accommodating and even though it was sweet, it irritated me as well. I didn’t know what I wanted from him anymore. Everything was so screwed up now.

“Yeah, sure. How about you come here?” The instant the words were out of my mouth, I wanted to reach out and snatch them back. But you can’t unsay something.

“Cool, yeah.” I told him which room I was in and he said he’d see me at noon and would bring lunch. I told him he didn’t have to and he said he wanted to and he was going to do it even if I told him not to.

“Okay, see you tomorrow.”

“Bye, Ingrid.” That little shiver went through me again, when he said my name. I thought it would go away by now, but it jolted me every time.

Once my homework was done, I went out to my car and drove off campus. I didn’t have a destination other than somewhere else. Somewhere other than where I was.

I used to drive with the radio on, but now I left it off.

My mind wandered and I let it, as long as it didn’t get too close to certain things. Then I would divert it to something else, like making another turn with my car.

I didn’t know I was thinking about Coen until his face appeared in my thoughts. I was no closer to figuring him out than I’d been that first day when he’d told me I’d dropped my pen and we’d both known it was a lie.

He puzzled me. Intrigued me. Drove me crazy. Made me feel things I thought were dead and buried. His voice unlocked doors that I struggled to keep shut and put new locks on, but he just seemed to keep finding keys.

He was ripping me apart and I was letting him. If I wasn’t careful, he was going to see the shape of my soul and I couldn’t let him. I picked up my phone to tell him that we couldn’t hang out, but my hand refused to complete the action and instead I tossed my phone on the floor by the passenger seat.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to smash my car into a guardrail. I wanted it to break through and sail down an incline and smash into a tree. I wanted it to careen off a bridge and into the water, flooding the interior and sucking me down with it.

I wanted…

With shaking hands, I pulled the car over into a gas station and turned it off before resting my forehead on the steering wheel. My breaths came in rapid bursts.

Some of my thoughts seized their moment and flooded forward, bursting like fireworks.

Shattered glass. My sister’s eyes, the same color as mine, wide and unblinking. My mother’s hand, reaching for her. Pools of blood merging with each other. My dad, tied to a chair with his head thrown back, a bullet lodged in his brain and his face blown apart from the impact.

I forced myself to look and remember every single detail. Everything. The ticking of the clock, the drip, drip, drip of blood from Dad’s fingertips on the carpet.

A stain that would never come out.

With a gasp, I yanked myself out of the nightmare memory and raised my head. No one had noticed me. My hands gripped the steering wheel so hard that my fingers ached. Breathing wasn’t easy; my lungs kept spasming and refusing to work.

It took a long time for me to regain control. At last, I was ready to drive again, but I had to grab my phone to use the GPS that would take me back to campus. I had no idea where I was.

There was a text from Coen.

What is your opinion of red velvet cake?

A simple question, but it hit me hard. Maybe it was the fact that he was thinking about me when he wasn’t with me just like I was thinking about him.

All of a sudden, my need to talk to someone, to talk to him was the only thing I cared about.

He picked up on the first ring.

“Hey,” I said, wishing my voice wasn’t shaking.

“Hey, are you okay?” Of course he picked up on it right away.

“Yeah, I just… I just wanted to talk to you.” I couldn’t lie.

“Yeah?”

“Uh huh.”

There was a beat of silence.

“I really like red velvet cake,” I said, staring out the window as ordinary people pumped gas and went about their lives.

“You do?”

“It’s my favorite.” I knew he was smiling.

“Lucky guess. I’ll put that in the Ingrid file.”

“The Ingrid file?” I’d completely stopped shaking.

“Right. The file I keep in my brain about you. About the things you like and don’t like. I’ll add red velvet cake to the ‘like’ column.”