Breaking Glass (29 page)

Susannah sits hunched on a rock by the reservoir dressed in the clothes she wore the night she disappeared. Behind us, Trudy Durban is building a raft made of crosses.

Smiling, her eyes vacant and bruised with dark circles, Susannah pushes up her sleeve to reveal her inner arm, purple veins visible through the fragile skin. I watch, horrified as she punctures the skin with a fingernail. Dark red blood pools around the wound. Digging into the skin with a finger, she rips out a strand of veins like pale blue tree roots. “You never know what you’ll pull out if you keep digging,” she says, laughing. “Come with me, Jeremy. You know you want to.”

She dives smoothly into the water, and despite my hesitation I follow, diving deep into the turbid waters. But I lose her in clouds of brown mud, somehow ending up inside my mother’s car as it plunges into the Gorge, yet again.

C H A P T E R
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Now

I wake, choking and gagging. I’m lying on the hallway floor on my side, covered in yellowed newspaper, my arm twisted beneath me at an awkward angle. It hurts like hell, but somehow I manage to prop myself up to a sitting position. Two limbs down, two to go.

My ears are ringing. Salty liquid collects in my mouth. I put my fingers to my lips and they come away bloody.

There’s the faint squeak of the back door swinging open. Light, hurried footsteps patter on the kitchen tiles.

“Jeremy?”

“In here,” I call out hoarsely.

Marisa peers down at me, cell phone in her hand. I sigh, my eyes flickering closed.

“What happened?”

My thoughts are mixed up. Deranged. I see things. In the darkness behind Marisa, lights shimmer. Susannah’s here. Watching. Always watching.

“The guy who died… I know who he is.”

“What guy? Jeremy, you’re not making sense. Lie still. The ambulance will be here in a minute. I’m going to call an ambulance.”

“Susannah.” Over Marisa’s shoulder I see her outline, a shape made of stars glittering against the void. She stands at the center of a tempest of whirling papers, hair whipping around her like tentacles.

In the ambulance, under the glaring lights, I waver between bright and dark. Light streaming through leaves. Susannah’s green eyes blaze from within the water that rises around me, an oily black whirlpool. Bony fingers rest on my shoulder. Digging into my skin, pulling me down. Down. I cling to Marisa’s warm hand.

“I’m t-trying to help you, Suze,” I choke out. I squeeze Marisa’s hand but I can’t see anything through the crash of the waves. I’m so cold. “You wanted me to find out, Susannah, didn’t you? That the guy…the guy who died was your mother’s boyfriend. The one in the yearbook photo with the heart drawn next to his face.”

“Jeremy,” Marisa says from somewhere nearby, “lie still.” The rhythmic rocking of the road beneath us lulls me quiet. My head pounds, but the rest of me is numb. I close my eyes and try to float on the surface of the water. Try not to sink.

“They’re going to lock me away,” I hear myself mutter. “Because I’m nuts, Suze. Stark raving mad. Like my mother.”

“No,” Marisa whispers, leaning next to my ear. “You’re not crazy. You’ve just hit your head one too many times.”

The nurses in the emergency room let Marisa stay, since my dad isn’t able to get a flight home due to storm delays. I’m laid out on a bed behind a curtain. My skull feels like it’s been skewered through the temples, then roasted on a spit.

“Jeremy,” she says softly, trying to gauge if I’m all there or not. I blink to clear my vision but everything is surrounded by a fuzzy aura.

“What were all those newspapers on the floor in your house?” she asks.

“Just stuff from the attic,” I mumble.

“You said something weird. About some guy who died. What were you talking about?”

Did I? My head throbs. Behind Marisa, a hazy Susannah figure floats, cloaked in midnight. Her disappointed eyes burn through my haze and tell me that I haven’t solved her murder because I’m such an accident-prone yutz.

“You shouldn’t listen to me, Marisa. I’m crazy.
Estoy loco
.”

Marisa squeezes my arm. “I was coming over to tell you that Derek Spake called me. He was trying to reach you. He said he needed to talk to you, but you wouldn’t answer your phone.”

I try to sit up, but the white lights shoot needles behind my eyes. I quickly fall back against the pillow, eyes squeezed closed. “What did he want?”

“He wanted to explain about him and Ryan. To come clean. That it’s not at all what you think.”

“Just more lies to cover the truth,” I mutter.

The doctor steps behind the curtain and gestures for Marisa to leave. He prods my shoulder and forearm. I wince.

The hazy Susannah form watches me hungrily from the falling shadows.

I’m trying
, I say, mouthing the words. I don’t want the doctor to see me talking to a ghost. Or a hallucination.

“I’ll be sending you for x-rays to see how serious your concussion is, but at a glance it doesn’t look so bad,” the doctor says. “And your arm is just a sprain—” His words are broken off by a commotion. Shouts and scuffling feet fill the emergency room. An urgent voice blares over the loudspeakers.

“I’m sorry, but you’ll have to excuse me,” the doctor says calmly, “a code blue just came in.” He dashes through the curtain, but it slips back in place before I can see what the hell is going on. I call out to Marisa, but no one could possibly hear me over the ruckus. I’m alone, in pain—disoriented and stranded.

Finally, Marisa rushes in, her large eyes dazed with shock.

“What the fuck is going on out there?” I ask, my speech slurred. I try unsuccessfully to sit up again.

She falters before her words rush out and lash me like a whip. “Ryan tried to hang himself. They said he’s in cardiac arrest. But—but he’s alive.”

I fall back on the table and close my eyes, dizzy. No.

C H A P T E R
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Now

Marisa and I wait for almost an hour for the doctor to return. Though I’m more alert, I’m still not much company. I steal glances at the dark fringe of her downcast lashes as she dozes off. She may look as fragile and as precious as a glass doll, but underneath she’s forged from steel and concrete.

If I believed for a minute that she would be interested in a one-legged loser like me, it would only serve to prove how crazy I am. It’s a business arrangement for a financially strapped girl. And that’s all.

Just the same, I’m not sorry she’s here.

When the doctor comes back, my head is somewhat clearer, though the scent of vanilla still lingers in my nostrils and I catch vague glimpses of Susannah from the corner of my eye. I don’t tell anyone.

I press the doctor for information about Ryan. He’s in the ICU, but the doctor is tight-lipped about offering any further details.

It’s long past midnight when the x-ray results come in. I’ve got a bad sprain and a mild concussion. My arm is secured in a sling that’s strapped to my chest. The doctor gives me a warning about taking more care. That’s it’s easy to get hurt when you’ve got only one leg.

Since I’m under eighteen, the staff won’t release me to Marisa’s care, so I’m wheeled into a room for the night. Marisa offers to stay, but the hospital staff insists on sending her home in a cab.

Once she leaves, I lie on the bed, unable or unwilling to sleep, though my eyes sting with exhaustion. Thoughts of Ryan circle my brain like vultures, ready to pounce the moment my eyes drift close.

I have to see him.

The wheelchair is folded up and parked behind the door. I make one of my usual mad hops, and pray that I don’t lose my footing and fall flat on my sore arm.

The ICU floor is deserted and silent save for the beep and hum of the machines. I make lopsided progress, my single foot dragging me forward, my good arm pumping the wheels. Peering into mostly empty rooms, I finally find the bed with Ryan in it and roll cautiously to his side.

His neck in a brace, Ryan is unconscious. He’s entangled in a network of tubes and wires, like the briars that surround Sleeping Beauty’s castle. But there’s nothing beautiful about him. His skin is so pale it’s almost transparent, the veins in his thin eyelids etched like a topical map of a tributary system. I stand and whisper into his ear, slightly sickened.

“Ryan.”

There’s not even an eye flutter.

I rest my head on his chest and listen to his heart thrum steadily. “I’m so sorry, Ryan. Please, wake up.”

The clonk of boots on linoleum jars me out of the moment. I fall back into the wheelchair, cornered as Patrick Morgan thunders toward me, rage burning in his blue eyes like gas jets.

“What the hell are you doing in here, you fucking bastard? Did you come to gloat over your handiwork?”

Black spots cluster like ink stains, and against the dark backdrop Susannah’s image ripples like backlit silk.

I hear Patrick Morgan hurtling toward me and fight for my vision to return.

I’m certain he is going to kill me.

I kick out blindly and land a lucky bull’s-eye right to the balls. Patrick Morgan yowls and stumbles back. I scramble to wheel past him, my surroundings still gray and hazy. There is a scuffle, then silence. Before the dark peels away, I feel myself pushed from behind, propelled forward.

A familiar voice asks, “You okay, dude?”

When I can finally see and breathe again, I’m looking up at Derek Spake, his eyes puffy and bloodshot, his hair a wild spiky mess.

“I think that asshole was trying to kill me.” I say.

“Welcome to the club,” says Spake. “I had to get you out of there. He was like a charging bull.”

I lift an eyebrow. Why on earth is
Derek Spake
in this hospital? I don’t get it. Spake registers my confusion and offers, “I was the one who found Ryan hanging in the garage. Another minute and…”

“How did you know to look?”

“He called me to say goodbye.”

I slant my head. “He called
you
?”

Spake rolls me down the hall to an empty lounge room and sits on a couch opposite me. He chuckles, tears sparkling in his eyes. “He’s been trying to tell you for months. But he was scared, Glass. Scared of Patrick Morgan.”

My insides twist.

“Ryan and I,” Spake continues softly, “we’re…together.”

“Ryan and
you
?”

Spake nods, a wistful smile curling his lips. “Ryan put up an amazing front, didn’t he?”

I close my eyes and shake my head. Fucking Ryan. All those years, I never had an inkling. I was too busy wishing I
was
him. “He was a better actor than I thought.” My eyes snap open. “But what about Susannah? Did she find out?”

Derek Spake doesn’t get the chance to answer.

There’s a violent energy in the lounge, as if lightning is building inside the fluorescent bulbs overhead. The lights crackle and dim. Sweat breaks out on my forehead. I see only Susannah’s eyes as the room explodes into bits, the pieces raining down around us in slow motion like we’re two people trapped in the world’s weirdest snow globe.

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