Breathless (5 page)

“What is it?” I pul ed the comforter under my chin. The scent of English roses wafted up from the section of fabric where my mom had sat.

“To help you sleep,” she answered, thrusting her hand closer.

I reached for the pil the way one might reach for tarantula. Sure, they didn’t
normally
bite, but the threat lay as close as the fangs resting against your palm. What would happen if the shadowy stranger came back for me tonight? Would I be too groggy to escape? Or would I sleep through his appearance? Actual y, the last part didn’t sound too bad, so I slipped the pil onto my tongue and chased it down with a sip of water from the glass on my nightstand.

“Good girl,” Mom said. She bent down to kiss my forehead before she lifted the tray of discarded food from the floor and walked to door. She paused at the light switch, then flicked it off with her elbow. “Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

***

My heart stirred, trying and failing to beat its way out of the cage created by the sleeping pil . It was a strange feeling, to know I should be afraid—that I
needed
the fear to pump adrenalin into my blood to ensure my survival—yet to not have my body cooperate. In fact, just waking up felt like pushing myself through a curtain of syrup. The harder I shoved, the deeper I sank.

The tapping continued.

I opened my eyes. Shadows danced on my ceiling, blurred by the weight stil pressed against my eyelids. I bal ed my hands and rubbed at the grit matted in my lashes and tried again. Several blinks and I stil couldn’t see more than fuzzy shapes outlined by the moon.

The tapping became fevered, a sporadic rhythm that my pulse, a lazy river in my veins, should have matched. I moved my head to the side and saw the outline of a shadowy figure standing outside of my room, one palm pressed against the glass.

Great. I’m going to have to get the glass cleaner.

The thought was so ridiculous that I laughed, a sound that swirled around my head like water in a drain. A tiny voice inside my brain warned me that I shouldn’t be laughing, that the appropriate response to a stranger outside my bedroom was to scream—a thought I found even funnier, so I laughed harder.

The figure stopped tapping and cocked his head.

I stopped giggling. “Sleeping pil ,” I explained to the stranger, my voice gurgled and thick. “It’s affecting my brain. I can’t think straight so . . . I real y can’t deal with you tonight. You should go.”

His shoulders fel , as if disappointed. I almost felt bad that I couldn’t be a more exciting murder victim. “Sorry.” My tongue felt thick and fuzzy, like it’d been wrapped in gauze. “Try back tomorrow.”

The shadow backed away from the door and melted into the night. I turned on my side and gave in to the blackness that poured over me like ink.

Alone in my head, I swam through my dreams, looking for the pieces of myself that never came out in the waking world. Not much remained, but what did, I rol ed in like a dog marking its scent.

Sleep was sacred—
my
time. Tomorrow, when the alarm clock blared the white static of a nonexistent radio station,
my
time would be over and I would surrender myself to the authority of Sir’s command. But for now, I could lie in the satin sheets of unconsciousness and simply
be.

The hiss of static from my clock radio dragged me from sleep like a chunk of pineapple fished from the bottom of a gelatin mold. Slow and sludgy. My pounding head rol ed against my pil ow. I was going to need some serious caffeine to pul myself out of the lingering grasp of the sleeping pil .

Mom cracked open my door as soon as I switched the alarm off. Like always, she was dressed in her faded “Mom” pants—jeans with such a high waist they buttoned inches below her breasts. She had kept her makeup simple, as usual—a brush of blush and a dab of gloss but never any foundation. Her hair, the color of harvested wheat, was smoothed into a ponytail on the back of her head. Zero percent style, one hundred percent my mom.

“You have fifteen minutes until breakfast.” She stepped in and closed the door soundlessly. “Just enough time for me to help you get dressed and for us to go over Dog of the Day.”

I pul ed myself up into a sitting position, then tried but failed at not wincing when a wave of pain rol ed across my shoulder.

Mom’s smile tightened at my pained expression. “I’l need to re-dress that as wel .” She jutted her chin at my shoulder before walking to my desk and ripping free the page with the Chow Chow, revealing today’s date.

“Here we go.” She lifted the calendar so I could see a photograph of a smal , fuzzy grey dog with a white beard. “Today’s dog is the Miniature Schnauzer.”

“It looks like the doggy version of Gandalf the Grey,” I said, identifying my favorite character from J.R.R. Tolkien’s series.

Mom giggled at that. “It says here that the Miniature Schnauzer originates from Germany in the early twentieth century.” She rattled off the definition: “‘They were original y bred to hunt rats but make excel ent companions. While they are affectionate toward their owners, they may be standoffish toward guests. Miniature Schnauzers have a tendency to be vocal.’”

As Mom placed the calendar back on my desk, I peeled the covers back, swung my legs to the ground, and curled my toes into the thick carpet.

“Doesn’t sound like the dog for me.”

“No?” Mom pul ed a pink plaid button-up shirt from my dresser along with a pair of jeans. She set them on my bed before helping me off with my shirt and removing the bandage on my shoulder.

I winced when she smeared on the antibiotic. “We don’t have a rat problem.” I didn’t want to tel her that the real reason was that I’d been ordered around by Sir long enough. I didn’t need a dog to take over when I moved out.

“Your wound looks pretty good.” Mom smiled as she taped the fresh bandage into place. “I’l bet in a couple of weeks you’l be completely healed.”

I nodded and al owed her to help me slip on the hideous pink top. Definitely not my style of clothing, but that was okay. I kept several spare shirts tucked inside my backpack and a few more in my locker at school. While she stood before me, buttoning my shirt, I looked over her shoulder at the sliding glass doors. That’s when I saw it. Something roughly the size of my fist, looking very much like a rock, sat on the concrete step outside my bedroom.

My first thought was that a rock or chunk of bark had been blown into the yard and had somehow found its way onto the deck, but then I noticed a piece of twine wrapped around it and tied into a bow. Weird.

“Edith?”

“Huh?” I looked up at my mom to find her eyebrows knitted together in worry.

“Are you feeling okay? Maybe I could talk to your father—”

“No!” I forced a smile on my face. “I’m great. I just . . . zoned out a bit. I think that sleeping pil made me a little groggy.”

Mom nodded, but her eyes said she wasn’t so sure.

“I’m fine, real y. Give me five minutes to brush my hair and find my shoes and I’l meet you at the table.”

“Okay.” She walked to the door but continued to throw me worried glances. “Just don’t be late. You know how your father can be.”

Father.
Every time she said that word I had to swal ow the bile that rose up my throat. Why couldn’t she see that the man she thought she married didn’t exist? She’d buried the reality beneath a mountain of excuses. I wondered what would happen when the excuses final y ran out.

I pushed the thought away as I shut my bedroom door, then dashed to the sliding glass door—I had my own problems to worry about. I stepped outside. The morning air slammed into me, thick and wet, like the steam rising above a pot of boiling water. I kneeled, and grabbed the object. I inspected it, discovering that it was neither a rock nor bark as I’d thought, but an oyster shel tied together with twine.

I sucked on my bottom lip, tasting the saltiness of the sweat that had beaded along my skin. The knot had been expertly tied, and it took me several minutes of picking and tugging before it came undone and the shel fel apart in my hands. Inside, instead of an oyster or a pearl, there was a round stone, unlike any I’d seen before. It was twice as large as the pearls on my nightstand and green, like the color of seaweed bending under the tide. Despite the morning’s heat, the stone felt cool as I rol ed it along my palm. The sun’s light reflected shimmering gold flecks on its surface.

I wondered at the meaning. The oyster had been tied up like a present and left outside of my door. Was it a gift? And if it was, why had it been given, and who had given it? The shadowy stranger? Pressure built against my forehead, warning me that a headache was close at hand.

Sir’s voice bel owed from outside my bedroom door. “Five minutes!”

I pocketed the strange stone, along with the twine, and scrambled into my room. I tossed my book bag over my shoulder and yelped at the pain that erupted. This injury was going to take some getting used to. After hastily running my fingers through my hair and snatching Aunt Margie’s pearls from the nightstand, I left my room.

When I arrived in the kitchen, the lingering smel of bacon made my stomach growl. Sir pushed his plate away from him and stood. “You’re late.”

He opened a nearby drawer, snagged a protein bar, and tossed it to me. “Breakfast is served. Now let’s go.”

Mom didn’t say anything as she scrubbed the maple syrup from Sir’s plate.

I shoved the bar in my backpack and tried not to groan. Tree bark had more flavor than one of Sir’s protein bars.

Sir grabbed his keys that hung from a hook by the door. “Are you waiting for a written invitation?”

“No, sir.” I fol owed him to the 4x4 and climbed inside. After buckling my seatbelt, I sat back against the stiff leather seat and tried to ignore the tightening inside my chest. Soon I would have to face the stares and whispers I knew waited for me at school. I was sure everyone had heard about the accident: it was high school, after al , and a person couldn’t sneeze without half the school talking about what color the mucus was and whether or not it affected your social status. Only the cool kids had lime green snot. Sea-foam green was
so yesterday
.

Sir glanced at me. “Have you remembered anything else about the accident?”

I pul ed my backpack against my chest like a shield. “No, sir.”

“You wil ,” he said, then turned on his favorite conservative radio show.

The weight of his words settled on my shoulders like a wal of cement. Last year we’d toured a military school. I couldn’t help notice that most of the kids seemed even more lost than me. Lifeless clones marched across the too-green grass: glazed expressions lost to the spirits crushed within. Sir hadn’t been serious about enrol ing me at the time of the tour. Our visit was to serve as an example of what would happen if I stepped out of line. The tone of Sir’s words let me know the threat remained. I, too, could belong to the ranks of uniformed kids whose souls were dug out like melon-bal s, their hol owed-out shel s fil ed with barked orders. How could I survive such a thing? A nagging voice inside my head told me I wouldn’t.

Ten minutes later we passed the Valparaiso High School sign and pul ed into the lot. My stomach lurched. Here I was about to enter the school’s hal ways, while several of the kids in the boating accident would never walk through the metal doors again. I bit my trembling lip. I’d never felt more alone.

Sir turned down the radio. “Be here at fifteen-hundred sharp. Got that?”

“Yes, sir.” I stepped out of the 4x4, my backpack no longer a shield but an anchor that weighed down my footsteps, forcing me to endure the unwanted attention that much longer.

Ahead of me, what looked to be a freshman boy exited his parents’ car.

“Have a great day, Henry!” his father cal ed. “Love you.”

The boy said nothing as he darted away, blushing.

Longing, like a blue-flamed torch, burned through my body. Henry didn’t know how lucky he was. If I were him I’d be so happy that I’d get a T-shirt with the words
My dad loves me
screen-printed on the front. But, unfortunately for me, I wasn’t Henry and they didn’t make Tshirts that said,
Yay!

My stepdad hasn’t killed me yet!

I approached the stairs to the school and almost didn’t notice the girls lounging by the doors until they ducked their heads and whispered in frantic hisses as I began my ascent. Even the bronze eagle in front on the school’s entrance, a gift from the Class of 2006, seemed to watch my progress with unblinking interest.

My shoulders hunched, I pushed past the maroon doors and darted inside.

Where it was worse.

The hal s were no longer the sea of teenage bodies into which I could blend and maintain anonymity. As I walked to my locker I felt like Moses, trekking across the parted Red Sea. To either side of me, students moved to stand against their lockers, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, as if I, too, had died in the accident and it was my reanimated body that roamed the hal s. Or maybe it was the cloud of death, stil clinging to me, that had them backing away. If that were the case, I wished I had a straw so I could suck it in. To end it al .

And how many of them would prefer my nonexistence? How many of my peers would gladly exchange my life—the quiet, new girl who had no friends—for the lives of the footbal players and cheerleaders that had been lost? I couldn’t blame them. They missed their friends. But at the same time, I knew the accident thril ed them. I could tel by the excited shivers of the students I walked past.

They might not voice it out loud, but people loved death. They loved it for the same reason people rushed outside to watch a gathering storm. It’s exciting and mysterious—a puzzle waiting to be solved but lacking al the pieces. They yearned to stand before it and admire the beauty, the power, the actual hand of God—but not before painting lamb’s blood over their doorways lest the angel of death visit
their
household.