Breaking Glass (16 page)

Now (December 23th)

It’s two days before Christmas. Six weeks and one day since Susannah disappeared. Five days since the Vicodin released its stranglehold on me and I returned home from my third visit to the hospital in as many weeks. Twenty-one days since my right leg and I parted ways.

Chaz brought me new crutches, a sleek pair that cuffs onto my forearms with rubber handgrips to support my weight. They’ve made bounding around the house much easier.

The town is caught up in its annual holiday frenzy, and one missing girl isn’t going to stop that runaway train. I think of Trudy Durban, alone with her collection of crosses and God knows what else in her under-heated old house, pacing the floors in sensible pumps. No one else is worrying if Susannah’s lying dead in a ditch, or if she’s a runaway, or if she’s living as a sex slave in Thailand.

Without the Vicodin coursing through my system, and given my
predisposition
, as Dr. Kopeck so delicately put it, to mental illness—as in, my mother was completely off her rocker—I’ve started to question my supposed brushes with the afterlife. And maybe just about everything else since the accident.

Just the same, I’ve torn my room apart in search of Susannah’s artifacts and turned up nothing. The history on my computer has been wiped clean. There’s nothing to confirm that the Death Book, or the artwork, or even the YouTube links ever existed.

Was someone in here—or had none of it ever happened?

I saw the movie
Shutter Island
. For the main character, the hallucinations were his reality. I wonder if my mother had delusions. And if I can trust my own memories at all.

I’m too embarrassed to ask Marisa about the Death Book. I’ve nearly gotten myself convinced that my cracked mind conjured the entire pathetic episode to avoid the harsh reality that, just like my leg, Susannah is gone for good. But the echo of a name rings in my ear.
Derek Spake
.

I’m not sure what he has to do with anything, but his name is all I have.

And despite the possibility that I may be starting to lose it, the fact remains—I still need to find out what happened to Susannah—before I
totally
do.

Dad has knocked off work early. His office building held their annual Christmas party and I can smell the liquor on his breath, even from where I sit. The smile comes more readily to his lips. Dad hardly ever drinks since Mom’s death, but he stumbles a bit as he steps over the threshold and joins me in the study.
He can’t hold his liquor as well as me
, I chuckle to myself.

“The Morgans are having their annual Christmas blowout tomorrow night, and guess who’s the honoree?”

“Beyoncé?” I offer.

Dad guffaws and leans against the doorframe. “Very funny. It’s
you
.”

My heart plummets. A tsunami of nausea crashes into my stomach. I should have seen this coming, since the Morgans seize every opportunity for media coverage. Each Christmas, the local TV news and papers dutifully show up and run a piece in the Sunday paper. It’s their version of community outreach. “Why
me
? I didn’t do anything Morgan-worthy.”

Dad tears off his jacket and flings it on the desk chair. “C’mon, Jeremy. I think you have an inkling of what they’re up to. Ryan’s raised nearly half the money it costs for your prosthetic, and Patrick wants to crow about it to show what an outstanding citizen Ryan is.”

I roll over on the bed to face the wall. “Just what I need. I think I’m busy tomorrow. I’ve got to scrub my stump.”

Dad pads unsteadily over, sits beside me, and rubs my back. “You can’t hole yourself up in this house forever. Soon, you’ll have to go back to school.”

I close my eyes and shake my head. “I’m not going. I can’t.”

“This isn’t negotiable, Jeremy.”

I flip to Disk 2 of Ken Burns’ The Civil War, but it’s not distracting enough to take my mind off the looming train wreck. Scenarios of tomorrow night play out in my head, each one more humiliating than the last. I sip from the canteen, allowing myself only a few swallows. There’s still plenty more in the bottle, but I know I’ll have to taper off the vodka. The supply is finite. But the idea of life stretching before me without my last remaining crutch is too terrifying to think about.

I close my eyes and try to envision Susannah sitting across from me. Would she laugh at my horror, facing a houseful of the people I’ve known my whole life? Tell me I’m ridiculous? Or would she suggest we ditch the party and catch an indie film instead?

Her absence hits me like a kick in the groin. The room’s silence roars in my ears. My heart starts to pound. My leg itches for a run, the urge echoed in its shadow twin. I’d give up an arm to be able to bound out the door into the falling snow like I did last winter, when the waters came rushing in like they do now.

Last year, I ran a mile in a blizzard to Susannah’s house. She didn’t ask questions or laugh at me. She just welcomed me in and gave me hot cocoa.

I gulp down the last drop in the canteen, swirl the sweet heat in my mouth, and let it coat my throat. My famous self-control is all shot to hell.

It’s time to face facts. I’m Jeremy Glass. I’m a one-legged alcoholic, Susannah, the girl of my dreams, is never coming back, and it’s entirely possible that, like my mother before me, I’m slowly losing my mind.

I slip into a restless sleep, fully dressed.

I run naked on a track, a wide groove plowed through a deep field of snow. There’s packed ice beneath my bare feet. People line the circuit, cheering, and throw flowers in my path as I run. I’m winded, the ragged breath puffing out in smoky wisps. My feet ache from the cold, but I keep running, each step a blistering agony.

In the distance I see the finish line, but the closer I get, the further it recedes. A figure in a white parka emerges from the haze and walks toward me, headed the wrong way on the track.

Pain knifes up through my feet to my thighs. I glance down. Hairline cracks form on my ankles like old paint, then deepen. Flesh falls away from the bones in meaty chunks, but I keep running, a trail of vivid red in my wake.

The figure stops a few feet in front of me. It’s my mother, her face as pale as the snow, her eyes flat and dark like chips of coal.

She points at my legs and laughs. “You can’t walk away, can you Jeremy?” She turns to the cheering crowd, and with a flourish bends in a deep stage bow to a surge of applause.

Fully clothed in cold weather running gear, Ryan strides past toward the finish line. I slow as the remaining flesh strips away to reveal bare bone. I run until my stick legs snap simultaneously, like dry twigs, and disintegrate into ash. I drop to the ground onto my back, a half-man beached in the snow.

From the corner of my eye, I see someone running toward me, hair streaming like a banner. Susannah hauls me onto her back and runs the rest of the race like a powerful mare. We edge across the finish line a split second before Ryan. The crowd cheers and pelts us with flowers.

Susannah lowers me carefully to the ground and kneels beside me. “You won’t walk away, Jeremy. And not just because you can’t.”

She leans over me, her lips parted. I open my mouth hungrily to receive her kiss, but she pulls away and whispers, “Ask Ryan about Derek Spake. Tomorrow. Don’t forget. And look in your gym bag, Jeremy.”

I wake up trembling, the want of her kiss still tingling on my lips. Unable to return to sleep, I study the strip of moonlight that slants across the study floor.

My gym bag is still in the trunk of my car, the last place it was on the night of the accident. I peer out the window. A thick layer of snow covers the long sloping driveway. My car is parked at the bottom under the carport, the same place it’s been since that night.

I throw on a jacket and a pair of thick sweats. Letting the empty leg trail, I slip into a sneaker, grab the crutches, and head out the door, knowing the minute my foot hits the ice-coated driveway that I am a complete moron. After a few yards, I’m already sprawled on my butt with no hope of getting vertical. I slide the rest of the way, my crutches serving as ski poles, glad for the isolation of our house so that no one can witness my ridiculous butt-sledding.

Finally, after another Paralympic decathlon event, I reach the car, retrieve the gym bag with my numb hands, and rummage through the dirty socks, spare sneakers and gym towels without even pausing to feel sorry for myself. I’m a man on a mission.

There’s a stiff envelope at the bottom of the bag, and I wonder how I’d missed it. I used to run every day, without fail, no matter the weather, and I could swear that envelope had not been there the morning of the accident.

But here it is. Frozen through, I open the seal and slide out a photo printed on plain printer paper. It’s a poor shot, grainy, with most of the faces in the crowd out of focus. The photo, I realize, was taken in early October, after we’d trounced Hurley High in a death-defying sweep.

I’m in the foreground, motion blurred, as I wave our team banner over my head. Behind me is a mass of bodies clustered in one celebratory mob. Someone has circled two heads way at the back of the crowd with orange marker. I peer closer, straining to see by the light of the open trunk.

It’s Ryan and another guy I recognize instantly as Unspeakable Spake. They’re staring at each other, Spake’s hand extended toward Ryan, as if to give him something. They’re motionless in the midst of the frenetic activity that surrounds them. What does this mean, I wonder, and why was it so important to Susannah that I see this? Did Susannah
know
Spake? It’s hard to tell what Ryan and Spake’s intense glances communicate. Hatred? Understanding? Had they fought that day? I try to think back, but I don’t remember them acknowledging each other, let alone getting into a brawl.

I pocket the photo, return my gym bag to the trunk, close the lid, and begin my reverse sleigh ride up the hill.

I’m cold as hell, my miserable butt is numb, but my jaunty spirits warm me.

I’m not crazy after all.

Not yet, anyway.

Inside, I strip off the wet clothes. The bandage around the stump is drenched, so I peel that off, too, and slip, completely naked, under the covers to try and warm up. In no time I’m hot, so I throw the covers off and lay flat on my back, my eyes closed.

The air has weight. The near kiss from the dream is still driving me crazy. The tingle of her lips on mine. Her breath, warm and sweet. A shiver rushes to my groin and I pull the covers over me to hide my shame. An invisible girl is getting a rise out of me.

But I take my fantasy a step further, anyway. Making imaginary love to Susannah is nothing new. I’ve been doing it for years. But this time is different. I can
feel
her cool breasts crushed against my chest. Her hands slide up the sides of my ribcage and a hot shudder rolls through me as her lips open to mine.

Jeremy
, she whispers.

My eyes snap open, blinking into the pre-dawn light that dusts the room in shades of gray.

Shit. I know what I felt. I glance down. The rest of me is equally convinced, as evidenced by the small hill still protruding from the blanket.