Of Breakable Things (7 page)

In life, the Lasalles did their best to protect her, but Alex’s illness was always a fascination for other children, another Parrish legend to explore. When she was young, Alex hardly minded the attention. It filled the void at home. To other little girls, she was a walking, talking porcelain doll with her large eyes, heart-shaped mouth, and snowy skin. But the years went by, and the attention developed as much as she did, which is to say, not at all. She was always classified as the sick girl. Perhaps this explained why she allied with Liv Frank, who had also been born into a predetermined stigma. During adolescence, images are as malleable as cement.

By the time she reached middle school, the constant company of the Lasalles was often torturous. They could effortlessly turn heads in their direction. Guys wanted to be them and girls wanted to be with them. They allowed their power to roll off their backs, while Alex was sentenced to the sidelines, where she felt stifled by it. The Lasalles became more mesmerizing the older they grew. On the contrary, as Alex aged, she only seemed smaller and weaker in comparison.

Parrish Day was the most important event of the year in their little town. While the Fourth of July meant family fun, fireworks, and corn on the cob, the eleventh of July was a day of guilty pleasures. It was a hazy, scorching mess of barbecue, beer bottles, beaches, and boat races. Every adult in the community drank too much, smoked too much, and laughed too hard to notice what the kids were doing, particularly at night during the beach bonfires.

On her thirteenth birthday, Alex sat sifting her toes through the cool sand, watching the tide stealing the grains like it was the world’s hourglass. She was finally old enough to recognize that her differences were hindrances. And she was becoming jealous of other girls, and not in the petty ways she always had—this wasn’t about playing sports or riding water slides. The other girls would get to grow up, and they would have children and grandchildren. They would get to live in ways she couldn’t.

The Lasalles dominated the volleyball sand, and the shimmering flames of the bonfire lit the scene, accentuating the definition of their muscles. They stood like four Adonises while their opponents were mutts, panting pathetically opposite them.

“Come on, guys, make this a little difficult for us!” Jonas taunted them.

“Alex, what’s the score?” Kaleb called, fanning himself with the football jersey he’d draped around his neck. “And don’t lie just because you feel sorry for those guys.”

“We only need one more point to win.” Chase turned and winked at Alex, and she felt her stomach flutter.

Jonas continued his bantering. “Do you think you guys might be able to score at least one point? Or are you too distracted by the girls?” His gibe was followed by a tittering of high-pitched giggles from their female audience.

“Stop being so obnoxious,” Gabe ordered.

Kaleb threw the ball into the air, but he didn’t direct it over the net. Instead, he aimed it at Jonas’s head. It ricocheted off Jonas and spiraled right to the hands of Gabe, who bumped the ball to Chase. Alex watched him spike it as easily as dribbling a basketball.

Kaleb pumped his fist, and the girls next to Alex began to whoop and holler like a bunch of drunken cowgirls. She scooted away from them, embarrassed. A redhead leaned in close to her. She reeked of seaweed.

“Your boyfriend is adorable,” she said with a slight slur, holding her cup out towards Chase.

“Oh. No. He’s not my boyfriend.”

“Really? But I always see you with him.”

Another girl leaned forward. “They’ve been inseparable since kindergarten,” she said to her friend. Alex recognized Posey Freebelanger. She had always been rather annoying, but boys liked her because she was curvy and she had a pretty face. Looks were about all she had to offer, because her name was enough to make her a social outcast, and her IQ wasn’t much higher than the SPF on her sunscreen. She’d once invited Alex to a sleepover and convinced her parents to take them to a bounce zone. A bounce zone! Alex had sat on a bench for two hours watching the other kids jump and scream and laugh, and Posey’s mom had complained she’d wasted money paying for Alex.

The redhead stood up to get a better view of the game, sloshing her drink and staining the sand. She peered down her long nose at Alex and flipped her hair over her shoulder. “You are such a tiny little thing. You must be freezing.” Her comment could have been an attempt to be friendly, but it didn’t properly mask the scorn.

Alex recoiled from the girl’s grubby fingers. “I’m okay.”

“Seriously, do you ever eat?”

One of the girls sitting with Posey could barely keep her eyes open. Sticks and leaves stuck out from her bleached blonde hair. She lifted a shaky finger at Alex. “Wait, you’re that girl. Aren’t you the one who is like … dying?” Posey tried to shush her friend, but Alex had heard the question loud and clear. She eyed the girl’s disheveled hair and wished she was callous enough to say,
But somehow I’m not the one who looks like she just crawled out of a grave.

Redhead pointed to Jonas. “I used to sit next to him in health class,” she said in a scornful voice. “He’s cute, but he’s an ass.”

Usually Alex reprimanded Jonas for his behavior, but this girl seemed like she deserved it.

“Chase is better looking anyway. How do you stand having such a gorgeous best friend?”

Alex wasn’t quite sure if the question was rhetorical.

Bleach Blonde was swaying in rhythm with the cattails by the water’s edge. “So what will he do when you die?”

Posey jumped in. “Sorry, Alex. She’s drunk.”

Alex hated girls like this, ones who used excuses like drinking to defend their candidness when really they were just mean.

“I’m just saying maybe you shouldn’t keep him all to yourself,” Bleach Blonde retorted.

Chase appeared beside them. “What are you talking about?”

Posey began to speak, but Alex cut her off, finding courage in Chase’s presence. “Oh, these girls were wondering what you’ll do with yourself after I drop dead.”

Anger plagued his gorgeous face. “How did that topic come up?”

Redhead shrugged a shoulder. “My friend has had a little too much to drink.” She helped Bleach Blonde to her feet, but their legs tangled, and they both tumbled back into the sand.

Chase looked disgusted. “Maybe you should get them home.”

Redhead and Posey were already pulling Bleach Blonde away into the shadows. “I’m starving,” Alex heard Bleach Blonde wail, but they didn’t even make it off the beach before she fell to all fours and began to vomit.

“That’s really gross,” Chase said.

Alex was quiet.

“Hey.” He lowered himself to his knees in front of her and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. He followed her gaze to the trio of girls who were still on the outskirts of the beach. “Forget them.”

Alex nodded halfheartedly. Chase snatched her cup from her hands and tossed it into the sand, then squeezed her fingers. “Look at me.” She surrendered, and the corner of his beautiful mouth lifted slightly. “You are perfect.”

There was silence for several moments before Chase whispered, “Are you okay?”

His brothers came bounding over.

“What’s wrong?” Kaleb demanded, seeing Chase kneeling in front of Alex. Jonas started towards the girls in the distance, but Gabe grabbed his shirt. They huddled around Alex, and she realized that yes, she was okay. Despite her limitations, she wouldn’t trade her small slice of life for anyone else’s. She couldn’t be resentful of who she was, because unlike any other girl in the world, she had Chase, and she had the Lasalles. And they were worth it.

***

“Well, Jonas, where have you been?” Kaleb demanded, tossing a ball from hand to hand.

“Jonas shrugged in response. “I had to play tour guide. You know.”

Kaleb caught the ball and stepped forward. “No, we don’t know. Since when are
you
helpful?”

Alex stood in silence, her eagerness creeping higher than the redwoods. They weren’t Chase, no, but they were pretty close. Her mask hindered her peripheral vision, but Jonas must have gestured to her because Kaleb suddenly dropped the ball, and Gabe’s mouth fell to the pavement with it. “Is that who I think it is?”

“Have you ever met anyone else that small?” Jonas said scornfully.

Kaleb let out a low whoop, ripping the mask from his face. He lifted her off her feet and swung her around like a child. “You aren’t fragile anymore!”

Gabe shook his head in disbelief. “Thank goodness,” he said, looking at his brothers meaningfully before wrapping his arms around Alex. He gently lifted the mask from her face with hope in his eyes. He seemed afraid that it wouldn’t really be her underneath.

“See, I always told you there was a perk to being the sick girl,” Kaleb laughed.

“Do you think that’s why … ?” Gabe’s uneasiness transferred to Kaleb, who gave one sharp nod of his head.

“Why what?” Alex pressed him.

“Nothing,” Kaleb said hastily, flashing his charming smile. “What a day to arrive!” He took Alex’s mask from Gabe and refastened it to her head.

And suddenly they were hugging her again, passing her back and forth like a lucky charm. And she didn’t mind whatsoever. Seeing the Lasalles was like finding the missing pieces of her heart. But it would be Chase, she knew, who would be the adhesive to hold it together. Before she could ask about him, Kaleb spun around with a wicked gleam in his eye.

“Wow, Jonas, that was really nice of you to escort Alex through the festival.”

Jonas studied the crowd indifferently. “I figured Alex always followed us around like a stray dog anyway. I gave her a break since it’s her first day after dying.” His posture, his tone, his expression—it was all back to the Jonas of old. Bored. Uncaring. Acerbic.

“We were actually coming up to find you because we needed you in order to win a little wager.”

“With who?”

Gabe groaned. “Do you have to ask?”

“Legacy kids?” Jonas flattened his mouth like a toad, disdainfully.

“The Darwins, of course. Who else?”

Alex raised her brows, but Jonas shook his head as if to say,
You don’t want to know.

“What did you wager?” he asked, snatching a new mask. “Nothing of mine, I hope.”

Kaleb responded with a humorless laugh, leading Alex to believe that probably, yes, he’d risked something that belonged to his brother. “Doesn’t matter. Who cares about the Darwins now? This is a party! And now we really have something to celebrate!” Kaleb swung an arm around Alex and pulled her towards the commotion on Lazuli Street. His features were so similar to Chase’s that Alex could barely stand to look at him.

He led the group, with Gabe and Jonas flanking his sides, just as they’d done as children entering the playground. Alex and Chase had always hung back together, and she was painfully aware of his absence now. She wanted to know why they were avoiding the topic. “Kaleb?”

But her voice dissolved in the noisy ruckus. Kaleb took the hands of random girls, swinging them around, dipping them low, and kissing them on the cheeks. He traded masks and accepted a cup from a vendor, thrusting it at Alex.

“What is it?” she asked, scrunching her nose. Yet another question no one could hear. It drowned in the sea of faceless color.

Gabe mimicked drinking and urged her with a thumbs-up. Alex swirled the glass and a mist rose, carrying with it the scent of popsicles, chlorine, and sun-kissed skin. She sipped the weightless vapor, and it swaddled her in comfort. It was liquid summer.

Kaleb and Gabe joined in the merriment, singing loudly and climbing the podiums to high-five the party-goers. They lifted Alex on their shoulders and made the disarray fun because they took charge of the chaos and made it their own. Jonas lagged, grumbling about how embarrassing his brothers were. It didn’t take long for him to disappear, a typical move once the shadows of his brothers were cast over him, so Alex was surprised when Gabe felt bothered enough to stop the group.

While they waited for Gabe to locate Jonas, Alex tried to ask about Chase again. But Kaleb, who found it hard to remain sedentary for any long period of time, darted away and climbed a balcony to join a band singing “Only the Good Die Young.”

Alex took a seat on a table of gold masks and watched the show.

Two women approached. “They must be newburies,” one of them remarked with a grandmotherly tone of reprimand.

“Music isn’t what it used to be,” the other woman agreed, examining the masks. “And in my day, costumes were much more elaborate. Now it’s all just plastic and feathers.”

“Remember the year everyone impersonated the French royals?”

The other woman chuckled. “Josepha and Johanna didn’t like that too much, did they?”

“Not when the faux revolution began.”

Even behind their masks, misleadingly, these ladies didn’t seem to look a day over twenty, and yet they sounded like finicky old women.

“Why did you want to come over here with the newburies?” the first woman asked.

“I was curious.”

“Why?”

“Change is in the air. Don’t you feel it?”

“Not really.”

“Then you haven’t been paying much attention. The trees have been talking, warning us that change is coming. And Maori told me that all of his sunflowers have been following the sun east to west. It’s a sign to keep an eye on our youth.”

“You spend too much time gossiping.”

“It isn’t just gossip! What about the incidents?”

“Paranoia,” the woman scoffed. “We’ve been around long enough. We’ve seen it and heard it all before.”

“I tell you, something foul is brewing around here, and I’m not talking about the stench wafting from Duvall’s chimney.”

The other spirit sighed loudly in disapproval.

“I just want to catch a peek at some of the new ones. I hear there are siblings.”

“They’re masked, or haven’t you noticed the theme of the party?”

“You of all people know that it takes more than a mask to hide a face.”

“Hey!”

Alex jumped when Gabe appeared beside her. She glanced at the other side of the table, but the two women disappeared behind a curtain. “Did you find Jonas?”