Breaking Free (17 page)

Chapter 27
:  August 25

I follow Marta out
of the house, but regret my decision within minutes of getting into the Subaru.  She drives us down the street a couple of houses and parks outside Jenna’s home.

“What are we doing here?” I ask.

“You said you wanted to tell them what happened, but never had the chance.”

“I’ve changed my mind.”

“Why?”

I stare at the front door, the door I’ve entered thousands
of times without even knocking and try to come up with an answer.

“I bet they miss you.”

“We should go home.”

“At least say hi to them.”

“Are you coming?”

“No.  I’ll wait here.”

I open the car door and stand on the sidewalk, but make no move towards the house.  It’s only a hundred feet away, but it might as well be a hundred miles.  I want to tell them what I did, but something is stopping me.  Maybe it’s because I’m afraid of anyone else hating me as much as I hate myself.

Just as I’m about to climb back in
to the car, the front door opens and Jenna’s mom, Elise, sticks her head out.  “Kelsie?” she asks, squinting into the afternoon sun.  “Is that you?”

Knowing I have no choice, I trudg
e up the walk.

“Oh, it is!  Come on in.  We’ve missed you so much.”

She meets me on the front steps and engulfs me in a hug.  I awkwardly hug her back, questioning whether she’ll kick me out once I tell her what I did.  “We’ve been wondering how you’re doing,” she says, leading me into their sitting room.  It’s a room I’ve never sat in before.

I glance around at the baby grand piano and wainscoting along the walls.  The furniture is a yellow striped pattern, which is pretty, but much more formal than the rest of their house.  I sit up straight and try crossing my legs, but it doesn’t feel right, so I uncross them and fidget instead.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

“Can we sit
somewhere else?”

“
Sure,” she says, standing.  “Would you like something to drink? Maybe a snack?”

“What do you have?”  I slap my hand over my mouth at the automatic response.  It’s what I always asked when Jenna offered me something after school.

She gives me a small smile.  “The usual things.  Help yourself while I make some coffee.”

I open their fridge and am surprised that the contents look the same as always.  Jenna’s dead, but the fridge
hasn’t changed a bit. I move over to the pantry and select a bag of Krispy Kreme powered mini-donuts.  That was always one of our favorites.

I sit at the kitchen table while Elise puts a
k-cup in the coffee pot.  “Sumatra, right?”

I no
d, surprised that she remembered.

“You’re in luck.
I just stocked up on these yesterday.”

Jenna and her parents liked Pike Place
coffee.  They only bought Sumatra for me, so I’m shocked she even bothered buying it now.  It’s not like I’m a regular visitor anymore.

I thank
her when she places a steaming mug in front of me and then watch her make another cup.  “What happened to your arm?” she asks, frowning at the scabs and stitches.

“I cut myself.”  It’s amazing how honest I can be about it now.  I have to think that’s some sor
t of personal growth, even if I’m still totally crazy.  Or maybe it’s just another side effect of the drugs.

“On purpose?”

My mouth is full of donut so I nod.

“Why would you do that?”

I swallow and say, “It felt good.”

She grabs her cup of coffee and joins me at the table.  Sitting
across from me, she wraps and unwraps her fingers around the mug before saying, “Are you doing alright, Kelsie?”

I shake my head.  “No, not really.”

She stands and comes to my side, tears glistening in her eyes.  Pulling my head against her chest, she says, “Me neither, honey.  I’m a mess.  Some days I can’t even get out of bed.  It hurts, doesn’t it?”

I nod as her heartbeat throbs against my cheek.  It reminds me of all the times Jenna held me after Sheila threw hateful words in my direction.  I close my eyes and feel Jenna’s arms around me, her chin on my head, her hands stroking my hair.  I picture her face in my mind.  Her wide blue eyes and blond hair.  We could be sisters.  Everyone told us that.   We even pretended to be twins when we were little, wearing matching clothes and doing our hair the same.
  We couldn’t wait until we got married and had little girls of our own.  We knew they’d be best friends like us.

“They’ll never be friends,” I whisper, my voice catching in my throat.  “She didn’t even have the chance to get married.”

“No, she didn’t.”  Elise’s hands tremble against my head and her heart skips a beat.

I sniff against the tickle
in my nose.  My body shakes as I try to stop the tears that are threatening to fall.  “It’s not fair.”

“No, it isn’t.
”

When I feel her tears land on my forehead, I realize I can’t
help it anymore.  In one uncontrolled motion, the air rushes out of my lungs and my body jerks spastically as the silent cries escape.  My vision becomes blurry and I realize I’ve broken through the fog of my drugs.  I’m feeling what I want to feel.  Sorrow.  Anger.  Guilt.

We sit like that for
a long while, each of us sobbing for the Jenna we knew and loved.  The daughter.  The best friend.  The girl we’ll never see again in person, only in our dreams.  Dreams that will grow fainter and fainter over time until she’s just a vague memory and I’ll have to look at pictures to remember her crooked smile.  The spark in her eyes.  The nerdy glasses she loved.

“I miss her,” I cry,
salty tears falling into my mouth.  I use the back of my hand to wipe my nose.

Elise pulls a tissue from her pocket and hands it to me.  “Me, too.”  She takes one f
or herself and blows her nose.

I hold mine in front of my face. 
“I—I have to tell you something.”

She
pulls away from me and wipes her cheeks with her fingertips.  “Uh huh?”

I take a deep breath and
when I try to talk, it comes out as a whimper.

“What’s wrong?”
she whispers.

The flood gates open
again.  My eyes are raw.  My nose is leaky.  I hate what I’ve done to Jenna.  The pain it’s caused her parents.

“Oh, honey, it’s okay,” she says, wrapping me
in her arms again.

“
No.  It’s not.  I killed her.  I’m so sorry.  So, so sorry … “

“Shh …
shh … Kelsie, honey, it’s not your fault,” she says, patting my back.   “It was an accident.”

“No.  She didn’t want to go.  I made her.”

“Kels, it was an accident.  There were lots of things that went wrong.  We shouldn’t have left the liquor cabinet open.  Plus, there was the other driver coming at you in your lane.  If it weren’t for him, this never would’ve happened.  And she wasn’t wearing her seat belt …”

I’m still sobbing, so she pats my back
again.  “Shh … it’s not your fault.  Please don’t ever think that again.  We don’t hold you responsible and Jenna would never hold you responsible.”  She grips my head between her palms and kneels down to my level.  I’m sure her red eyes match mine.  “Do you believe me?”

I wipe some tears away, but can’
t give her an answer.  She holds me again until my sobbing eventually turns to hiccups.

“Come with me,” she says, offering me her hand.

I take it and allow her to lead me to the staircase.  When she tries to go up it, I balk.  There’s only one place she could be taking me and I don’t want to go there.

“Please,” she says.  “I haven’t been in there since the night
it happened, but I have to clean it out.  My therapist says I need to remodel it, get rid of most of her stuff, only keeping the most sentimental items.”

When she tugs on my hand,
I slowly follow her up the stairs and into Jenna’s bedroom.  It looks exactly like I remembered.  The vanity where we first applied makeup.  The cork board where we threw darts at Sheila’s picture.  The framed photo of us five years ago on the beach.

E
ven the fluorescent purple nail polish is sitting on her desk where we left it the last night.  I pick up the bottle and turn it over in my hands, remembering the hard time I gave her about the color.

“Do you want that?”
Elise asks, sitting on the bed.

I no
d and slide it into my pocket.

She
scan the room and I see more tears collecting at the corners of her eyes.  “What else would you like?” she asks and then bites her lip.  She’s on the verge of breaking down again, too.

I
open up the walk-in closet and step inside.  Leaning against the door, I take a deep breath and try to collect myself.  My eyes burn and my nose tickles, but with two more breaths, I’m able to control it.  I glance around the small space.

Her jewelry box is sitting on a shelf to my right.  I lift the lid and run my hands over the rings, necklaces, bracelets, and earrings.  The entire box is packed, but I’m looking for something in particular.  It’s probably the least valuable item in there, but it means the most to me.

Elise steps behind me.  “Would you like her sapphire earrings?”

I shake my head.

“Her pearl necklace?”

“No, I’m looking for her half of the charm we
got in fourth grade.”

“The
plastic best-friend one?”

I nod.

“Let’s see if we can find that.”  She opens a hidden drawer and pulls out expensive piece after expensive piece.  There are two tiny diamond earrings and Elise stares at them for a long time.  “These were her first earrings.  We got her ears pierced when she was only four months old.”  She pockets the earrings and wipes her nose with a tissue.  “I know it’s in here.  She kept all her favorite pieces in this drawer…”

“Is that it?” I ask, pointing to a gold-colored disc lying on the bottom.

Elise picks it up and I know immediately that it is.  She had the “Best” part and I had the “Friends” part.  We won them at the Santa Monica pier and wore them until eighth grade when we finally realized they were beyond tacky.  I undo my necklace and slide it on.  It’s cheap and plastic and just as tacky as it always was, but I don’t care.

“Would you like any of her clothes?”

Jenna had even more clothes than me so her closet is packed.  I pull out hanger after hanger like you do in a store, but then feel disgusted by myself.  “I can’t take any of this,” I say.

“It’s going to Goodwill if you don’t.”

I nod.  I borrowed her clothes all the time when she was alive, but it’s different now.  I wouldn’t be able to wear any of it without constantly thinking of her.  I know that wouldn’t be good for me.

I retreat to
Jenna’s bedroom and lay down on the bed like I did hundreds of nights, staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars that are barely visible during the day.  We put those up when we were eight.  Jenna kept saying she was going to throw them out, but I think she liked staring at them as she fell asleep just as much as me.

“I’ll take the stars.”

“Okay.  Let me get a ladder so we can get them down.”

When she leaves the room, I roll on my side and look out the window.  I can see my house and my
bedroom window.  We used to use flashlights to send signals to each other at night.  I climb off her bed and crawl under it to see if the flashlight is still there.

In no time, I locate a box and pull it out.  Not only is the flashlight in there, but so is
what must be every note we ever passed in school, from third grade until the day she died.  Hundreds of them.  I can’t believe she kept them.  I open one randomly and read her elegant script and my barely-legible scrawl as we had a conversation on a piece of paper throughout our fourth-period English class.

Did you hear what Travis said during gym class today?

No.

He said he got lucky over the weekend, but I know that’s a lie because my girl Kels would not lose her virginity without telling me.

:)

What?! Why didn’t you tell me?!

You hate Travis.

He’s an asshole …  How was it?

Awful.  I don’t think he knew what he was doing.

Did you?

Of course not.   There was a lot of grunting and pawing and re-positioning.  That was all in the whole minute it lasted.  First time having sex, first time faking it.