Breaking Glass (2 page)

Since eighth grade, when I discovered that liquor dulls my terrors, I have been a master thief and spy.

Not even Ryan knows.

Just a sip to calm my shaky nerves. One tiny sip to beat back the rising waters that threaten to drown me. I can do it. I pride myself on my steely self-control and my ability to remain stone-cold sober, even when the track team holds a victory keg party. They call me Jeremy the Teetotaler, Jeremy the History Nerd, who never partakes.

I snap open the glove compartment. The innocuous silver bottle is shoved behind the owner’s manual, gas receipts, and a collection of PowerBar wrappers. I raise it to my lips and gulp once, twice, three times, the cold liquid igniting as it hits my throat. It takes two, three more gulps to slow my heart to normal speed. The bottle is nearly empty. I cap it and return it to the compartment, warmth flowing to my cold fingers. I’d need to drink three times as much as that to lose focus.

Swerving through the deserted black roads, slick with rain over the ice, I follow my usual running circuit. This is familiar turf. Practically my backyard.

Yes. I can do this. Susannah knows my route, so I hope she’s come this way and parked, knowing I’d find her. She wants me to find her. To comfort her. I’ll tell her everything. How I’m sorry for lying to her. For letting Ryan hurt her. And maybe, at last, she’ll accept that it’s not Ryan she wants, but me.

But there’s no sign of her.

After driving and searching fruitlessly, my mind churning with outcomes, the now-driving rain blurring my windshield, I can’t stand it anymore. My heart is racing. Just one last sip to fortify myself is all I need.

When I round the next hairpin curve, my headlights flash on Ryan’s car parked behind Susannah’s, both engines running. I squint through the rain and mist and spot them behind the guardrail, illuminated in the headlamps’ cone of light. There’s no shoulder on this side of the road, so I pull over when I can, about twenty yards past them.

When I finally get out of the car, I can hear her shouts over the racket the rain makes. My head is buzzing, but my thoughts are clear.

In fact, they’ve never been clearer, as the roots that entangle me fall away.

The damp air smells like freedom.

Susannah screams, and pounds at Ryan’s chest with her fists. He shoves her hard and she falls backward. I don’t see her get up again. Raucous arguments are nothing new between Susannah and Ryan, but I’ve never seen him hit her before.

There’s a steep decline into the woods where they’ve chosen to have their argument, and I worry Susannah could have gotten hurt. Ryan disappears now, too.
What the hell are they doing?

I begin to run at full tilt. I still have some distance to cover, but that’s no problem for me, even with the Absolut pumping heat through my veins. But my boot heel catches on a wet leaf and slides out from under me.

I’m flying, but I land softly.

I should have worn my running shoes, I think crazily, then scramble to my feet.

There are blinding lights. The squeal of brakes. Breaking glass.

I don’t make it to the other side.

C H A P T E R
t w o

Then

Art class was mandatory freshman year, and I’d spent most of my summer griping about it. I preferred to be out running, not cooped in a smelly room with Mr. Wallace, the creepily silent art teacher who looked like an iguana, but with even less personality.

None of my track buddies were in the class with me, so I fidgeted on my stool, trying to figure out a way to get an extra period of gym.

Five minutes after the late bell rang, a bronze-skinned girl with a cloud of hair a shade lighter flounced in. She wore a tight-fitting black T-shirt and baggy black cargo pants tucked into lace-up combat boots. Mr. Wallace’s iguana-eyes followed her to the empty stool next to me. When she got closer, I could see the tiny white hand-written letters on her shirt that said “laugh.”

I’d never seen anything so beautiful in my life.

“Is that an order, or a noun?” I whispered once Mr. Wallace looked away, busying himself with the attendance roster.

A slim eyebrow arched over one bright green eye. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

“If I’d met you before, I wouldn’t have forgotten you.”

I rubbed my sweating palms against my jeans. Scrawny as I was, I knew I had no chance with this girl. But at least I could charm her with my biting wit.

“I looked a little different back then,” she said, leaning in so close I could almost taste the scent of vanilla on her skin. She pulled away just as Wallace began to read off the attendance.

After my name was called, she leaned in close again and said, “Jeremy Glass, say hello to your Pirate Queen.”

I had no idea what she was talking about, but I did learn her name was Susannah Durban. The syllables sat on my tongue like melting sugar.

Now

There’s some kind of fog in the room. Through the fog I see my father’s eyes.

“Jeremy,” he says. “Can you hear me?”

The fog is heavy. It bears down on me, forcing my eyes to close.

“Jeremy. Stay with me.” Air hisses in my ears. I’m losing the sound, too.

It seems like a long time later when my eyes flutter open again. My gaze lands on my father. I struggle to understand why I am lying on my back trying to focus my vision on my dad’s bloodshot blue eyes.

“Jeremy,” he says. “There was an accident last night.”

My mind scrambles to piece together the last thing I remember. Susannah and Ryan fighting. Oncoming lights. I struggle to sit, but everything, every inch of me screams with pain.

“Did something happen to Susannah?” I think I am shouting, but instead it comes out as a muffled croak. I sink back on the pillow and let my eyes slip closed.

“Nothing happened to Susannah, as far as I know,” Dad says.

I sigh, my eyes still closed, the harsh light stabbing through my eyelids. My heart is starting to race and I remember the flask. And how buzzed I was as I stepped onto the road. My memory stops there. Had I ever made it across? “Was her car still there?”

The chair scrapes the linoleum as he slides it closer to me. “I have no idea. Susannah Durban isn’t really my main concern right now, Jeremy.”

My eyes blink open and scan the fluorescent tableau. Machines purr, hum, and bleep. Wires and tubes sprout from me like I’m some kind of space-age hookah pipe.

It’s me. I’m the one in a hospital bed. Not Susannah. I’m numb, floating, but I can feel my weight sinking into the hard bed. One foot pushes up from under the blanket and I wiggle my toes to make sure it works. The other leg, mottled and swollen as a raw sausage, is suspended above the bed, enclosed in a configuration of rings and pins. It tingles vaguely, but doesn’t actually hurt.

“She was there. With Ryan,” I say.

Dad stares at me, his eyes weary and filled with something vague. It dawns on me that it is resignation. It’s the same expression he dons before a particularly tough trial, along with one of his expensive but slightly worn suits. His calm demeanor makes me want to vault from the bed, run into the hall, and keep going.

No way that’s happening.

Dad sighs. “Actually, Susannah’s mother, Trudy, called this morning to tell me Susannah never did come home last night, as if I could do anything about it.”

Was she on the run again?
Susannah had run away seven times since Freshman year Dad had had to intervene on Mrs. Durban’s behalf to stop child services from placing her in foster care.

“I told her that, at the moment, I had more pressing things to attend to,” he adds.

“Shit.” I glance at my engineering feat of a leg and realize that I won’t be running anywhere for a while.

Dad pushes away the salt and pepper flop of hair from his forehead. His face is creased and the skin under his eyes puffy beneath his lawyer’s composure. “Don’t worry about Susannah. Worry about yourself.”

He looks away. I can tell by the way he swallows he has more to say, but I’m too tired to ask. I want to know if they found the water bottle full of vodka, then I realize a simple blood test will tell them the whole story. But mostly I want to know where, exactly, Susannah is. I reach for my phone. No texts from her.

I don’t even think about Ryan, until he walks into the room.

Dad has ducked out for coffee. It’s me, Ryan, and the beeping of the machines.

Ryan pulls up the chair Dad has just vacated. “I came as soon as I heard.”

I furrow my brow and search my memories. “Dude. Weren’t you there?”

Ryan twitches the sandy curls out of his eyes. He studies me, confusion and sorrow mingling on his face. “I was so busy having it out with Susannah we didn’t even hear you. Then she started to run, so I chased her.”

I stare back at his uber-sincere expression. This from a guy who was pissed I hadn’t lied well enough for him. I grind my teeth. “She
ran
? I thought I saw her fall. It’s all rocks, and then there’s that steep slope to the reservoir.”

Ryan shrugs. “She tripped, got up and started running like a mad cow.”

“She tripped, or you pushed her?” I try to sit forward, but pain lances through my leg as if a team of chainsaw-brandishing dwarves have crash-landed on it. I fall back shakily onto the pillows.

“Take it easy, Jer.”

I search my mind for details, but the night is hazy, a mix tape of rain, vodka, and bright lights. And then Susannah’s face is in front of me—glistening lips, autumn leaf eyes, tears sparkling on their rims. The urge overtakes me, like it always does when there are things I can’t face—the urge to run. But I’m pinned to the bed like a butterfly specimen. “Where is she now, Ryan? My dad says she never got home last night.”

“Jeez, Jeremy, how should I know? I
did
follow her. It’s pretty rough going on those rocks. It hasn’t changed since we used to fish there. And the weather last night was hideous. The ground was slippery. I lost my footing and wrenched my ankle. I couldn’t keep up. I just lost her.”

“So, she vanished into thin air. And a high school track star like you couldn’t keep up with her. You expect me to believe that?”

“C’mon, Jeremy, what’s up with you? It wasn’t like I didn’t try to follow her. She was hysterical and I was worried because she cut her head when she fell. But I could barely walk with my ankle, you know, and I lost track of her. I figured she probably doubled back to where her car was and took off. I got back to the road just as they were loading you into the ambulance. You can check the police report. They asked me if I’d seen what happened, but I didn’t find out it was you in there until later.”

“You left a bleeding girl stumbling around in the woods and you didn’t wonder why her car was still there,” I say in a monotone. “And your ankle looks okay today,” I add.

The nurse comes in, adjusts my drip bag, then leaves. Ryan leans forward, his voice soft. Reasonable. “She wasn’t that hurt. Just a scratch. Shit, Jeremy. You know Susannah. She pulls these stunts all the time. She used to run away all the time.”

“Right. I saw you hit her, Ryan.”

Ryan turns a bit green. “C’mon, Jer. It was just a little shove. If you saw us, then you know she was slamming me with her fists first. I wasn’t going to
do
anything with Claudia Herman. Suze is just—
oversensitive
. You know how she gets.”

I’m getting fuzzy. It must be the drugs they keep pumping into me. The words kick out like a knee to the groin. I’m shouting now, my voice hoarse, my mouth flooded with a sour taste.

“You mean how she gets when you
fuck around
behind her back?”

I want to suck the words back in. In all our years as The Lone Ranger and Tonto, I’ve never violated the sidekick rules. Even when I had to bite my tongue so hard it bled.

Outside my room, I hear voices speak rapidly in urgent tones, too low to understand but loud enough to recognize. It’s Patrick Morgan,
Esquir
e, talking to Dad. I’d know his booming voice anywhere. Ryan’s uber-influential father is probably here to make sure the Morgan interests are safeguarded—as in, Ryan’s name is kept clean. He had to have heard my outburst and now Dad is most likely supplicating himself and pleading to the Almighty for forgiveness on my behalf.