Broken (30 page)

Fifteen problems on the board later and the first cell phone goes off.

“Sayer Thomas,
” she says without turn
ing around,
“
put
that
phone on my desk.”

A col
lective gasp runs around the ro
o
m
, followed by furtive movements and sounds. Lots of people looking in their laps, none of them smiling, all of them turning off their phones.
The rest of the class passes in a stunned, well-behaved silence. Second hour is taken up
with
more thunder, rain lashing the windows and
a movie to round out our study of Gothic literature.
How many times can I stand to watch Dracula in a week? The flickering light reflects from the surface of my cast and eventually lulls me to a doze.
Mr. Hansen wakes me near the end, nudging me.

“Pain killers
can make you drowsy,” he says, t
hen pats me on the back.

The entire building
’s
lights flicker when I hit the second floor hall on my way to the catwalk between the main building and the gym complex.
I brace myself for a run in with Daniel’s ghost, or Josh’s fiery other
who haunted my dream
. Instead I see Alex, standing halfway between the catwalk doors and the stairs, an obvious debate raging in him by the look in his eyes.

“Hey,” I say, hurrying up to him.

What’s wrong with him? The graveyard
and deer are t
he only time
s
I’ve seen him so unsettled.

“That’s my line,” he says, voice husky, but eyes not quite in the moment.

“What’s the matter?
” The urge to touch him burns in me. His crossed arms hint it wouldn’t be welcome. “
Lost?”

“Not really. I know where I need to go, I just don’t like the options to get there.”

“Where
’s your next class?”

“I have weight training.” He casts a nervous glance at the doors
.
“I just…don’t like the idea of that walkway.”

“Don’t be silly.” I offer my left hand. “
I walk it every day
, and
it’s
way better than getting soaked in the downpour.”

Everything in him tilts off-center, away from the lightning knifing through the doors. Then he threads his fingers through mine, and nods.

“Do you have a fear of heights or something?” I ask. Valid question, seeing as I’m dating him now.

“I never did before…” The doors wheeze inward
, opening onto th
e
catwalk, a
tunnel through the storm. Wind and water heave to either side
. “But this
doesn’t
feel
right
.”

Tension heightens through his fingers
w
here they wrap around my hand.
Storm
wind
s
buffet the tunnel, and the floor
lurches
a little
under our feet. At each end
,
the flexible buffer zones give with the force of the gust. The tension in Alex’s fingers increase to something closer to vice-grip than human.
He stops moving and I have to pull to make him take a step.

“
Come on.
Alex,” I huff and tug again. “
What’s the matter with you
?
”

“
I’m okay,”
he whispers
.

N
o, he’s not. I
can see
the raw, damaged boy surfacing in him
,
pressing under his scars.
We walk past a panel of glass, rain streaming down, and t
he sense of wrong
often whispering
from him turns to a shout.

“Oh my God, Em.” Alex stops dead, voice gone guttural and grip gone way too tight.

“What?”

“Something’s wrong...” Alex’s face is ashen, his hand paws at his chest. What’s the matter with him? His gaze locks on the plummeting water. His hand fists in his sweater, right over his heart, like he’s trying to stop it. “Emma, help me.”

“I’m right here.” I stroke his arm with my cast. “You’re fine.”

“No I’m not.” Wind gusts shove against the glass walkway, and the catwalk heaves. Alex’s muscles clench, then his arms fly out like he’s fighting for balance. “Oh God! I’m gonna fall!”

I catch his hand, and he jerks it away. His infectious panic claws at my chest, clenches around my throat. Alex slings a confused, terrified glance at me, but seeing me makes it worse. His eyebrows shoot up, his mouth stretches in a silent scream and Alex staggers backward, arms flailing.

Daniel’s last moments flash in my mind. If it wasn’t for the physical differences between Alex and him, I’d swear I was watching Daniel fall to his death again.

My heart rate ratchets up. Tears tighten my windpipe.

How can this be happening? I shake my head, letting the tears fall. It’s a losing battle when I’m trying to keep two people’s sanity. If I were alone, I’d fall apart. I reach for Alex again, his flinch only making my chest ache worse.

“God. Don’t look at me!” He throws a hand over his eyes and rams his back into the brace between panes of glass. “I’m falling and all I see is your face!”

“You are not.” Memories run in a loop behind my eyes, twisting my heart until I think it’s going to break. Still, I run to his side and peel the fingers from his eyes. “Listen to me. You’re on the catwalk, having a panic attack or delusion or something.”

“It’s real!” he shouts. “It’s REAL! I’m falling and dying and I see your face.”

His words are a pure echo of the hell I’m feeling inside. My heart cracks, ache shooting through me when he curls into a fetal position. His entire body jerks, a grunt escapes him like it was driven from his lungs in a collision. The door at the far side opens. I don’t look away from Alex. Even a glance to the side rips at my heart, and there’s so little left. When voices bounce our way, I scream for help.

“Falling and dying and I see your face.”

“You are
not
, Alex.” My voice breaks. But Daniel did. And his eyes stayed riveted on me until he struck the cement below.

“Red in my eyes when the lights went out.” He scrubs his face with his jacket, like he’s trying to wipe something from his eyes, and the zipper scratches his forehead.

The moment cuts like a double-edged knife; hurts to see him reduced this way, hurts hearing what I hear and knowing what I saw once already. I shake my head, my cast pushing back against the ache in my chest. This can’t be happening.

Carpet tugs at my knees when I kneel in front of him. I’m struggling to hold on—he pitched over the edge and fell, too far gone to reach now. Touch is reassuring, I’ve heard, and I need it as much as he does. I rest a hand on his arm. His fingers search for mine, clench around them.

“You were wearing your favorite white tank top.” He shakes his head. “And my red hoodie.”

He might as well rip my heart out and throw it on the carpet. Only three people knew what I wore that night. One is dead, the other isn’t here.

“I’m wearing your blue hoodie.”

“I know,” he moans.

He’s calming down, totally confused still, but I think the worst is over. I wish it was for me. The full force of what he went through slams into me. My throat hurts enough to have screamed Daniel’s name again, my heart hurts enough to have lost him again. Because, in a horrid, impossible way, I think I just did.

Footsteps pound and bounce around us when the paramedic and school nurse rush up. They crouch to either side of us, hands hovering, not knowing what to do.

“You have to let him go, hon,” the medic says, her voice calm and so out of place.

Alex’s fingers convulse around mine, and I wince. He isn’t letting go.

“Son, you’ve got to loosen up.” She pries his fingers from mine and a piteous wail comes out of him. “Emergizer!” he whimpers when they force him to stretch out on the floor. “Emergizer, don’t leave!”

The words are a sledgehammer to my chest. How does he know that name? Only one person ever called me that.
Only one
. My throat cinches tight on a wail of my own. Mind reeling, I scoot out of his reach.

Questions rocket around from the emergency responders and bounce off Alex and me. Neither of us can muster a response.

“What happened?”

“What caused this?”

“Did he fall?”

I cover my mouth and ease back, afraid of the answers. They don’t need to know he’s delusional. He’d have to be to see Daniel’s death through Daniel’s eyes. And those words…that nickname…

They were Daniel’s last words to me before he fell and died.

I slump to the glass window and watch in a numb state of shock as the medic runs the normal list of trauma questions on a confused Alex. He casts glances at me, tears glistening in his Daniel eye, and a cut on his forehead exactly where Daniel’s skull had split. Time bleeds into nothing, movements blurring in the catwalk and in my head. The paramedic coaxes Alex to his feet, and the nurse pulls me to mine.

When the medic and Alex pass the doors, my heart fractures, and the tears come.

“What happened back there?” the nurse asks.

“I’m not sure,” I mutter. “I think he has a fear of falling…”

A lie is so much better than the truth.

Alex Franks relived Daniel’s death.

Chapter Twenty-One

“No, I’m not fine,” I grumble at the nurse. “And, no I do not want you calling my mom. I just want see if Alex is okay.”

“You can’t right now.” Her dark ponytail swishes when she packs away some gauze in the white cabinet on the wall.

“Can’t as in not capable?” So I’m cranky. I’m emotionally fried potato-chip crisp and don’t want someone crushing what’s left of me. “Because I can walk just fine.”

“No.
Can’t
,” she stresses, “because his father is with him and insisted on no visitors.”

Oh God. “His father?” I echo. My stomach knots into a nauseous tangle. He broke bones in my hand just at the mention of Alex being my friend. If he knows I was with Alex, that we’ve been together the past week... what will he do? “Please tell me my name is being kept out of it.”

“Well,” she fidgets at her desk. “I’m not sure.”

“Can you check? Please?” She casts a concerned look at me. I don’t say anything, don’t move, but I let my focus fall to my cast. Her eyes widen, then she picks up the school phone and dials a number. She paces to the far side of her office, behind a privacy screen. The conversation is hushed and short. “Yes, Emma,” she confirms when she comes back. “Your name has been kept out. Now, what’s this all about?”

“Two weeks ago, I punched my locker and hurt my hand. Alex told me to go to the doctor. His father was the attending physician at the clinic, only I didn’t know who he was. When I mentioned Alex was my friend, he crushed my hand, breaking the hairline fractures.” She sucks in a little gasp. “My mom filed a complaint, threatened a lawsuit.”

“Are you afraid he’ll hurt you again because of this?”

“I don’t ever have to see him again. I’m worried what he might do to Alex if he thinks I’m involved.”

Her curls slide when she nods brusquely. She strides out of the office completely, dialing the phone as she goes. Left alone, I worry the paper on the examining table to confetti, and agonize about Alex. What
happened
to him up on the catwalk? Why is he channeling Daniel’s behaviors, his words, and his death? My heart clenches in my chest, and hurt sucks the air from my lungs. My brain is running on a treadmill of razorblades, every thought and question as cutting and painful as the next.

Will I ever be free of this pain?

The nurse returns, an all-business expression on her square face.

“Alex will be going home,” she says. “And seeing as you are refusing treatment, and me calling your parents, I’m sending you back to class.”

The bell for the end of fourth hour rings. After stopping at my locker for my afternoon books, I head up to the Sciences wing and Mr. LaRue’s Dune Ecology class.

Josh Mason sits in his normal seat when I walk in. He stiffens, and gazes snap from him to me and back. Seems the gossip chain has been working just fine, and in my favor for once. Everyone knows I broke my hand on Josh’s puffy, black-and-blue face. The flickering light of the storm outside splashes on the dune grass blades in the pot at the end of Mr. LaRue’s big lab table. I stand there, even after the bell rings, then deliberately run the pad of my thumb down the blade.

Heat flares across my skin, red appears in the cut. I pinch my finger over it, trapping the blood. Rather than sit in my usual seat, I walk to the far side of the room, and take the seat behind Asia Folley. There, beneath the privacy of my desk, I guide the fat drops to my pink cast, and draw a heart in blood, over where the broken heart lives in the skin of my wrist.

I blow out a short sigh, and organize my books and papers. Asia turns around during roll call, and says in a conspiratorial whisper, “Next time you punch that jerk, take a video.”