The Arrangement Anthology (25 page)

CHAPTER
4

The days pass slowly with little sleep. It’s hump day. Three days since I last saw Sean. Three days since he ripped a hole in my heart. In two days I will work for Miss Black and not get paid. In two days I will pay for my mistakes. I can’t think about it. Not now.

I slip out of bed before Amber and jump in
to the shower. The hot water beats some of the tension out of my sore body. Quietly, I move in the room and get ready for the day. As I dress, I look for my Mom’s cross. I feel myself sinking and I want it. I dig through my jewelry and fail to see the necklace.

The last time I had it was
over the weekend at Mom’s grave—then the beach. A shiver slips over my spine. If it fell out of my pocket at the beach, I’ll never find it again. I dig through my dresser again, but it’s not there. A frantic feeling is squeezing my throat. I find the clothes from the beach—still filled with sand—and dig through the pockets. My chest constricts. I can’t breathe.

My eyes have the stinging
panicky thing going on when Mel pushes the door open. “It’s pancake day. Get a move on girl.” She snaps her fingers at me. Amber rolls over, muttering nasty comments at Mel. Mel steps inside and finally takes a good look at my face. “What’s the matter?”

“I lost my mom’s
necklace. It isn’t here.” I clutch my face, trying not to freak out. I turn to Mel and drop my hands to my sides. “I must have dropped it on the beach.”

Mel
knows how much that necklace means to me. A sad smile softens her features. Mel jerks her head toward the door and says, “No problem. Field 5, here we come.”

“But—”

“But nothing, Avery. Come on. I bet we have time to grab some hotcakes to eat in the car. It’s not the same thing, but it’ll be better than nothing. There’s an hour and half before class. We can totally make it there and back in time. Come on.” Mel turns and heads out the door.

I’m on her heels. We pretty much run to her car. Mel is wearing a nice pair of jeans
with rhinestones on the back pockets and a form fitting sweater that shows off her curves. I’m wearing ratty jeans with holes in the knees, a tank, and my holey sweater. The wind cuts through it, stinging my skin.

Mel takes a fast detour through
a McDonald’s drive-thru and grabs us breakfast. Then, she speeds out to Jones Beach. The bridges are empty at this time of day. The only people up this early are deer and cops.

Mel stuffs her face with
a pancake rolled up like a burrito. When make it to the parking lot, she says, “Okay, we have about 45 minutes before we have to leave. I know where you guys were, but let’s start from where you parked and then head out onto the sand.” I nod and point to where we parked that day. Mel rolls the car into a slot and kills the engine. We both get out and start looking.

The huge
parking lot is empty. The wind blows hard, tangling my hair behind me. When I see the beach, a new set of memories floods my mind. Sean. His hands, his touch. Oh God. I wish I never met him. I wish he ignored me that night, like every other person on that road. Why’d he have to help? Why’d I ever talk to him? Every time I blink, I see Sean’s eyes and hear his voice. His smile comes racing back. Everything from the kite hitting his head to the way his lips pressed against mine comes back in a rush.

“You okay there
, Avery?” Mel says, staring at me.

My eyes are wide. I haven’t blinked. I’m gazing at the sandy
boardwalk leading out to the beach. Clutching my hands into fists, I work my jaw and say, “I’m fine. Let’s go.”

We spend the next hour looking through the sand.
Basically, we wander the beach, barefoot and sweep the sand away looking for something silvery and glittering beneath the surface. As it gets closer and closer to time to leave, my heartbeat turns panicked. Where is it? Eventually, I give up trying to locate it with my feet. I’m sifting through the sand on my hands and knees, but I can’t find Mom’s necklace. It’s the last piece of her that I have. My brow is pinched with remorse. It doesn’t matter where we look or how far we fan out.

Mom’s
necklace is gone.

I sit back on my knees and look up at the sky. It’s gray with streaky white clouds. Pressing my eyes closed, I stop thinking.

Mel watches me. I feel her eyes on my face. A moment later, she’s standing next to me. I feel her hand on my shoulder. I open my eyes and look up at her. “It’s not here, Avery.”

I stand and brush the sand off my jeans. I’m frozen to the core. I look out at the waves pounding into the sand. I wish my heart would freeze. I wish I didn’t fe
el so much. I can’t handle this. I can’t bear what my life’s become.

Mel snaps her fingers in front of my face. When I don’t react, she grabs my shoulders and twists
me toward her. “It’s not here, but that doesn’t mean you won’t find it.”

“You’re too nice.” I breathe, still numb.

This can’t be happening. My heart races as I glance around
, looking at everything, but seeing nothing. Panic is strangling me. I feel it, but I don’t let it overcome me even though I want to, even though I feel the need to fall to my knees and scream that life isn’t fair. My hysteria gets shoved back into its box. One day it’ll spring on someone like a crazed jack-in-the-box and scare the shit out of them.

Mel’s lau
gh pulls me back to the present. I glance at her. Mel has a doubtful smile on her face. “Too nice? That’s not something I hear every day.” Mel sighs. Tilting her head, she says, “Come on. Nothing good is going to come from sitting out here and freezing our asses off. Let’s go to class. I’ll help you pull apart your room later. I bet it fell behind the dresser or some dumb shit.” Mel’s words are kind, but I hear it in her voice—she knows I lost it. She knows the necklace will never been seen again, and she’s worried about me. She thinks I’m coming unglued, that I’m about to fall apart.

Swallowing hard, I follow her back to the car
. As we walk, my eyes scan the sand dunes, the spaces between the boards, and finally the sandy parking lot. Nothing. My mother’s cross is gone. The wind whips my hair into my face and stings my skin. I wish to God that I never came out here with Sean. I lost so much that day, more than I could bear to lose.

I refuse to fall apart.
I refuse to succumb to the sensations choking me, to the stabbing pain in my hollowed-out heart. I won’t turn to dust. This will not destroy me.  I am strong.

Sucking in the cold air, I let it fill my lungs until
they ache. I hold it a beat longer than I should and let it out slowly. My breath makes a long, white cloud. My fingers ball up at my sides as I wonder why I can’t give up, why I can’t simply fall to the ground and die. I’ll survive this, I know I will.

That necklace was
n’t holding me together. Something else is—something strong—but I have no idea what it is.

CHAPTER
5

Time passes painfully slow. I stare, not looking, not listening. Lectures blur together and I move through campus like a robot. I smile when I should, wave at my friends, and basically go through the day on autopilot. It isn’t until my lab with Marty that he calls me on it.

“Avery,” Marty
says, leaning in and pinching my arm.

“
Owh!” I finally glance at him and actually see him. For the first time since we left the beach, my eyes focus and I actually see him. “What’d you do that for?”

“You’re
mixing the wrong stuff together. Snap out of it! You’ve had this glazed over look on your face all day.” He watches me for a second.

Surprised, I fli
nch and look up at him. His brown eyes are like big candies. He’s nothing but sweetness and I’m nothing but bitter. “Sorry,” I say, and tuck a curl behind my ear. I reach for the lab sheet and confirm my mistake.

“There’s nothing to apologize for—well, not unless you blow us to kingdom
come. Why don’t I do the lab and you fill out the sheet?” I smile weakly at him and sit down on my stool, taking the paper in my hands.

“So,” Marty
says, his eyes darting over to my seat occasionally, “What are your plans this weekend?”

The corner of my mouth pulls up. It’s a lame smile, the kind that covers how stupid I feel. “I’m working.” And not getting paid
, because I’m an idiot and threw all my money back at Sean. Why did I do that?

I push the thought away
, knowing that if I was given the chance for a do-over, I’d repeat the entire night just as it was. Some kind of resolve swirls in my stomach and I feel it creep through my body. I won’t live my life halfway. That’s why I’d do it all over again. That’s why I’m a moron. I’d tell Sean that I loved him, that he scares me to death, and then I’d stand there and wait for him to reject me. Maybe I’ve got a martyr complex. I rub my fingers against my temples, trying to fight off the headache that’s closing around my brain like a vice.

Marty mixes something together. I write down the
quantities on my sheet. After a moment, he says, “Ah. Do you know what you’re doing, yet?” Marty doesn’t look at me. His hands have a slight tremor, or maybe I just imagine it.

I jot down the next answer
and say, “No. I’ve been demoted. So it shouldn’t be anything major. Probably a date or something.” I tick off a few more things on the sheet. I’m not sure how much Marty knows. Mel filled him in at least a little bit, but he hasn’t spoken to me about it.

Marty doesn’t look up at me.
Maybe it’s me, but he seems really tense. His fingers wrap around a beaker and he holds it too tight. The glass shatters in his hand. I jump from my seat at the same time everyone in the class looks up. Marty’s fingers uncurl one by one. Streams of blood drip from his palm. Without thinking, I grab my sweater and pull it over my head so that I’m only wearing my tank top and jeans. I take the sweater and brush away the glass that’s sticking to the blood on his hand. I grip his wrist tightly and pull his hand up over his heart. Marty watches me, his dark eyes don’t leave my face. I don’t think. I just react. There’s no TA, no prof. I look around the room, but no one offers to help.

I tug Marty away from the lab table, and say, “I’m taking him to the health office. I’ll be back to clean that up.” No one answers. They watch me lead Marty out of the room.

Marty’s eyes are on my hand, watching my hold on his wrist. He swallows hard, like he might faint. I grin at him, suddenly worried about what to do if he does pass out. Marty is way too big for me to carry to the nurse. A hysterical image of me dragging the giant guy by his ankles, through the grass, all the way across campus, pops up in my mind.

I smile and glance at him. “You’re not going to pass out, are you? Because I don’t think I can carry you. I’ll have to drag you to the nurse
’s office, and I’ll probably ruin that shirt you love so much…maybe even nag your head around.” I grin at him, but Marty still looks at me with a super weird expression.

We walk down the hallway and I’m trying to hold his wrist up by his shoulder. My sweater is turning red
. It’s wrapped around his hand. Damn, that’s a lot of blood. He must have continued to squeeze the glass after it shattered.

Marty blinks a few times and gets
the wry smile on his face that he’s usually wearing. He pulls his wrist free from my grip. “I can do that. I’m not going to pass out, either, so stop thinking about rolling me down that hill by the cafeteria.”

I laugh nervously. There’s something about the look in
Marty’s eye, the way he won’t meet my gaze for more than a second. Marty stops at the exterior door at the end of the hall. I push it open and we walk outside. Glancing in the direction of the hill, I say, “We should do that anyway. I mean, when’s the last time you rolled down a hill just for the fun of it?”

“When I was five.”
He smirks. “Yeah, you’re right. It’s been too long. If I wasn’t hemorrhaging, I’d make you do it now, but alas, I’ll have to take a rain check.”

“Alas?
” I tease. “Really?”

Marty shrugs.
“Sure, why not? I think I may speak in medieval talk all day tomorrow. I’ll make sure to raise my hand in each class so I get called on. The professors love it when I do that. A few weeks ago I talked like an 80’s dude all day. They loved that.” Marty blinks hard and grits his teeth. “I think there’s glass in my hand.”

“Yeah, there is. Don’t squeeze it!” I snap at him
and make him hold his hand up by his shoulder. His shirt is getting a red blot. The cut must be deeper than it looked. I want to scold him. This seems so stupid, so unusual for him. It almost seems like he did it on purpose. “What made you do that, anyway? This isn’t like you.” It’s not like Marty at all. He’s normally meticulous to the extreme. Breaking a glass in his hand was the strangest thing he could do, shy of eating it.

Marty
doesn’t look over at me, works his jaw and stares straight ahead. “I don’t know. It just broke.”

Smiling, I say, “Glass doesn’t just break—”

“Well, it did. Damn, Avery. Back off. Shit breaks sometimes.” Marty keeps walking, taking his long strides, but I stop. He’s never spoken to me like that before. Marty is always all gossip and smiles. He never raises his voice. If he swears, it’s for drama. He’s never sounded like that before. I find myself standing still and my feet won’t move.

After a few paces Marty
stops. Looking at the dead grass beneath his shoes, he says, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to…” His voice trails off. Lifting his gaze slowly, Marty looks at me. There’s something there, something that doesn’t make sense. He’s looking at me with this raw expression on his face, like I was the one who shoved the broken beaker into his hand and made him bleed.

“
It’s been a rough couple of days.” He smiles at me and whatever I thought I saw is gone, concealed behind the mask of smiles and laughter. “I’ll take care of this on my own. If you could go back and grab my books, that’d be great. I’ll get them from you at breakfast, okay?” Although his tone makes it sound like he’s asking me, I know he isn’t. For some reason Marty doesn’t want me around right now.

Confused, I nod. I wonder what I did that
bothered him like this. I can’t think of anything, but I don’t press him. “Sure. I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry about anything. I’ll finish up the work and turn it in, too. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Marty nods curtly. He turns and walks away without looking back.