Shattered (2 page)
For example, most of my friends have great memories of going to Disneyland. My parents don't believe in those kinds of vacations. It's all camping or culture for the Kleinman-Moser clan. Vacation as education. Augie loved the Grand Canyon, the Galapagos Islands, Machu Picchu, the Louvre. But I wanted the Pirates of the Caribbean, Toad's Wild Ride, Indiana Jones. Still do.
“You can go on your own dime,” Mom said when I whined about it. “I'm not paying for all that fake Disney claptrap. Where are you going to want to go next? Las Vegas? Climb the fake Eiffel Tower? Go on a gondola ride down a manmade canal in an artificial Venice?” She was smiling, but I knew better than to argue with her. I have the memories my parents want me to have. Up until now.
I dragged myself out of bed and opened my laptop. There was a new message from Augie in my inbox.
Dear March,
You're not crazy.
It's not your fault.
Nobody's life is perfect. Perfect is boring.
This really is something you have to work out on your own. It's about time. I always said you were a smart girl. Gotta go, March. Give my love to Richard and Yvette. Keep me posted.
August
“Thanks a lot, Augie,” I muttered as I shut the laptop and got back into bed. I was exhausted and sad. I wanted to sleep forever. Figuring out my life would have to wait.
Mom and Dad were sitting at the kitchen table when I went downstairs a few hours later to get something to eat. Last winter Mom painted the kitchen a yellow that is actually called Good Morning Sunshine. Even if it's raining, the room feels flooded with sunlight. The oak table is one they got when they were first married and totally broke. They stripped off about five layers of paint and sanded it until it was as soft as silk. Augie and I argue about who's going to get the table after Mom and Dad die. Mom let us use it for anything when we were growing up: eating, arm wrestling, playing Uno, doing science projects, studying, painting, building Lego cities. She says that all the marks we've made on the table over the years add character to it. She's never tried to sand any of them away.
“Augie sends his love,” I said.
“Augie?” My dad looked around the room as if expecting Augie to pop up.
It's a joke in our house that Dad studies memory for a living but doesn't seem to have one himself. Augie and I are named for the months we were born in so my dad would be less likely to forget our birthdays. He still forgets.
“You know. Your son. The one who's in Ontario. The one who's reading Hitler's autobiography for credit.”
Nothing bugs my mom like being reminded that her genius-
IQ
son is working on a degree in German. She acts like fluency in German makes him a Nazi or something. Her family is French and Jewish, which explains a lot, I guess.
In the end, she couldn't stop him going, because he got a full scholarship, including room and board. He's at the top of all his classes, and he's already presenting papers at conferences. In the fall, he'll be studying in Germany as part of an exchange program. I don't know why she can't just be proud of him.
“You came in early last night,” she said as I squinted into the fridge.
“Yeah. Lame party.
Plus ça changeâ¦
” Mom loves it when I speak French. She thinks we are bonding. If Augie had chosen to do a degree in French, she would have been over the moon. “Are there any eggs?”
“
Oui,
” she replied. “Scrambled or fried?”
“Uh, fried?”
“Bacon?”
I turned away from the fridge and stared at her. She never cooks breakfast. She never even eats breakfast. She thinks bacon is cut directly from the devil's ass. Not that she believes in the devil. Something was up. I glanced over at Dad, who was hiding behind the newspaper. No help there.
“What's up, guys?” I asked.
“Sit down, honey,” said my dad, lowering the paper. “Your mother and I have something to tell you.”
My first thought was, Oh, shit. They're getting a divorce. My second thought was, Who's going to get the house? Natalie's dad lives in a shithole downtown, and Nat has to spend every second weekend there. She hates it. My third thought was, Maybe Mom's pregnant. But she couldn't be. She had a glass of wine at dinner a few nights ago. No way she'd drink if she was pregnant. And she's too old. I think.
I poured myself a glass of grapefruit juice and sat down across from Dad. “What's up?” I repeated.
“You tell her,” Mom said, squeezing Dad's hand.
Dad reached across the table and took my hand. If we'd been god-fearing folk, I would have thought we were about to pray.
“Tyler's mother just called. I've got some bad news, sweetie.”
I thought fast. No one knows what happened, I told myself. No one. Not even that ho, Kayla. I pushed away the image of Tyler and Kayla in the hot tub. If I thought about it, I'd go crazy. “It's okay,” I said. “I already know. Nat just called me. Tyler got wasted and hit his head last night at the party, but it's not that serious. A concussion, Nat said. Tyler's had them before from playing hockey.” I took a sip of my juice. My hand was steady. I've had a lot of practice lying to Mom and Dad. Without it, I'd never get to do anything. If lying to your parents was a school subject, I'd get an A+.
I could almost see Mom's brain sorting through the available information:
Tyler is hurt. March isn't
concerned. She came home early last
night. Therefore something is going on.
They'd find out sooner or later, so I said, “We broke up last night. Before he got hurt. Obviously.”
Mom nodded slowly and sat down beside me at the table. “I'm so sorry, March. Do you want to talk about it?” I shook my head, knowing she wouldn't push it. She's good that way. “As you wish,” she said. “Do you want to know what Mrs. McKenna said?” When I nodded, she continued. “It's worse than they originally thought. Because he's had concussions before, he's at higher risk for serious complications.”
“Complications?” I stood up too quickly and almost toppled over. Mom caught me and pulled me back down onto the chair. How could there be complications? Tyler was young and healthy. And I hadn't pushed him that hard. Had I? I put my head on the table and tried to breathe slowly. Green spots floated in front of my eyes. Mom stroked my hair. I started to cry. I cried until the placemat was slimy with snot and my nose was plugged and my eyes were swollen shut. And then I cried some more. She didn't say anything other than “Shhh, shhh, shhh.” At one point, I shook so hard my teeth rattled. Then Dad put his arms around me and held me tight, as if I was a six-year-old who'd fallen off the monkey bars.
Eventually my sobs became sniffles, and then hiccups. I went to the bathroom to pee and wash my face. When I looked in the mirror, I didn't recognize the bloated face that stared back at me. Ugly. So ugly. A hit-and-run kind of girl. The real me. “So much for your perfect life, bitch,” I said to the mirror.
When I came out of the bathroom, Mom said, “Why don't you go back to bed, March. Try and sleep. I'll bring you something to eat in a little while.”
“Not hungry, Mom,” I said. I ached all over, as if I was coming down with the flu.
“We'll see,
cherie
,” she said. “Get some rest now.”
I woke up as the sun was setting. I had slept all day, but I still felt leaden and dull and hideous. I could hear music playing downstairs. Some old rocker that Dad likes. Tom Petty, I think. Dad was singing along:
“I wanna free fall,
out into nothin'. Gonna leave this world
for a while. Oh, I'm free, free fallin'.”
I felt like I was already in a free fall, but not the cool kind the song was talking about. I wondered how Tyler was doing, whether he'd phone me soon. Whether I would answer. As the light faded from the sky, Dad brought me a tray. Buttered toast soldiers and a soft-boiled egg in an egg cup shaped like a pink chicken. A pot of Mom's raspberry jam. A cup of weak tea with milk and sugar. Food for an invalid. Not a killer.
“Thanks, Dad,” I said, sitting up in bed and pulling the duvet up under my chin. He put the tray in my lap and sat down on the end of my bed. Dad's not much for idle chitchat, so I knew he must have something important to say. I lopped the top off my egg and dipped a toast soldier into the yolk. Perfect. Dad sat and watched me eat.
“We heard from Mrs. McKenna again,” he said after a while.
I looked up, a piece of toast halfway to my mouth. “And?”
“And Tyler's still in a coma. He might have what's called an acute subdural hematoma.”
“In English, Dad,” I said, shoving the tray onto my bedside table. The sight of the food suddenly made me want to puke.
“It's serious, March. If he's bleeding into his brain, something has to be done to relieve the pressure. Before his brain is damaged. The procedure is called a craniotomy, which involves drillingâ”
I barely made it to the bathroom before the toast soldiers marched up my throat. When I got back to my room, Dad was gone, along with the tray. I pulled the blackout curtains over the windows and lay in the dark, thinking about drills going into skulls, about blood, about pain. Mom crept into my room at some point. I pretended to be asleep.
“Dear heart,” she whispered. “It's going to be okay.”
She didn't know that. No one did.
I thought about the McKennas, sitting in a hospital waiting room, praying it was going to be okay. Wondering why this had happened to their beautiful boy. I thought about Tyler, his head shaved, motionless under cold, bright lights. The right thing to do was to confess, to sit up and tell my mother that I had shoved Tyler into the hot tub and run away. But I didn't. I couldn't. I was selfish. I know that. All I could think about was how disappointed in me she would be. How horrified that a child she had raised could be so weak, so cowardly, so lacking in common decency. If Tyler died, I would be a murderer. And my perfect life would be gone. Just like Kayla said. I deserved to be punished, but I still couldn't tell my mother. Or my father. I couldn't even tell Augie. I curled myself into a ball and cried myself to sleep. When I woke up, it was pitch-black in my room, and for a moment I had no idea where I was. I pulled the curtains back and let the green light wash over me. The house moaned as a gust of wind hit it. My windows rattled, and I wished I could climb into bed with my parents and listen to my mother sing a French lullaby I used to love. I hummed the tune, but it wasn't the same. I switched on the light, got my laptop, climbed back into bed and wrote to Augie.
Hey,
It's the middle of the night here. Tyler is in the hospital. The doctors might have to drill a hole in his head. I don't know what to do. I think I should go and see him. Even tho we broke up. Am I right?
I miss you.
March
I put the laptop on my night table so I could hear it
ping
when Augie wrote back. Then I sat and waited for the dawn. When it was finally light enough to see, I got dressed in jeans and my old gray hoodie. I let myself out the back door without waking my parents. I'm good at that.
I climbed the hill behind our house and slid through the hole in the chain-link fence to get to my favorite place in the world. Blueberry Hill. Where there are no blueberries. Not that I've ever seen, and I've explored pretty much every square inch of the park. Blueberries grow in bogs (I looked it up online). Blueberry Hill is all rock and Garry oaks and Scotch broom. Augie and Natalie and I used to play
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
on the hill. We all took turns being Buffy, even Augie.
I scrambled down the far side of the hill and tucked myself into a spot Augie and I had discovered years ago. Moss-covered boulders sheltered me from the wind off the sea and hid me from other visitors to the park. Augie and I used to come hereâalone or togetherâto get away from our parents. To read, to stare at the distant mountains, to smoke weed, to drink, to argue, to laugh. I ran away to this spot when I was nine and Mom wouldn't let me have a Barbie. The first time Tyler and I had sex was up here, the summer I turned fourteen. The last time Augie visited, at Christmastime, we came up here and talked. About his courses, about his latest boyfriend, about how crazy Mom and Dad are. It was freezing, but we didn't care. Now I leaned my head against the rock wall behind me, lifting my face to the rising sun and closing my eyes.
I must have sat there for three hours, trying to figure out what to do next. By the time I had the outline of a plan, my ass was sore and my back ached. I didn't get up. I knew I deserved the pain. I stared out at the ocean and poked small holes in my palms with a thorn from a gorse bush. I could hear Augie's voice in my head:
You're a
smart girl, March.
He was always telling me that. I remembered him reading to me when I was about four.
Hop on Pop.
As he read, he pointed at the words with a grubby finger. “This is how you learn to read, March,” he said. “It's easy.” At six, he could already read harder books than
Hop on Pop,
but it was my favorite. He read it to me every night for a year. Then he stopped. “Read it yourself, March,” he said. So I read it to him, slowly and carefully, and he told me I was the smartest girl in the world. I wondered if he'd still think that when I told him my plan. Maybe it would be better not to tell him. Not to tell anyone. Let my actions speak for me.
I was still arguing with myself when I heard voices. A man's and a woman's, calling, “Bonnie! Bonnie! Here, girl.” I hated sharing the hill. I burrowed deeper into my rock cocoon. Out of nowhere, a tiny brown dog hurtled into my lap. It lay still for a second, panting. I wondered if it was hurt, but then it leaped up and licked my face. I picked it up and held it in front of me as it squirmed. “You're a cutie-pie, aren't you?” I said.