The Truth About Fragile Things (4 page)

“Charlotte Exby,” Phillip said almost carelessly.

My cheeks tightened, pulled in toward my clenched teeth. “Exby?” I whispered.

Like a paper match that hits the first dust of kindling, that tiny word burst in the middle of me, building until the heat reached the back of my eyes. I looked down at my book, terrified Phillip would see the fear creeping over my face.“Do you know that name?” Phillip asked, leaning forward.

I shook my head, my denial scrambling against the truth, but the facts were too smooth, too slippery for leverage. She was the right age. Two years younger than me. I had never asked the name of the baby in the widow’s arms. She couldn’t possibly be…
        Something rolled over in my stomach. “I don’t feel well,” I said more to myself than him.

“Are you okay? Do you know her?”

I shook my head again and with great effort gave Phil a weak smile. “I don’t know her. I just feel feverish. Probably why I didn’t want to eat in the cafeteria. Too noisy for my headache. I think I’m going to call my mom and go home.” I rose, grateful for my ability to look calm when I feel anything but, and headed toward the office.

When I texted my mom that I didn’t feel well she called and excused me for the rest of the day. It wasn’t until I was in my quiet car, the warmth of the sun baked into my cloth seats, that my hands started to shake. I imagined Charlotte in the middle of the lunchroom, watched her full lips slowly pronounce, “Megan Riddick killed my dad.” I shivered at the picture. Gossip like that would race through the school, weaving itself into every conversation.

I put my car into reverse and purposely took the long way homeside roads home, where the streets narrowed and receded into tree lines and the blue sky was so quiet it stilled my thoughts. When I got home I gave my mom a smile, told her it was just a headache and retreated to my room.

I would tell my mom if I needed to, but I still didn’t know for certain. Even if Charlotte was who I feared, there was still chance I could speak to her. Maybe she would agree not to say anything. Maybe if I told her what my mother had been through…

I sat down on my bed and pulled my pillow onto my lap, unable to finish my thought.
What my mother had been through
? However awful, my mother’s suffering couldn’t compare to Charlotte’s. Charlotte never knew her father. I pictured her face in the lunchroom, on the steps outside the door, her thick hair waving as she ran away from me. He never saw how pretty she turned out. No, I could never ask Charlotte to pity us. She had every right to hate us. I laid down and did the only thing that came to mind; I pressed my head into my quilt and whispered, “I’m sorry.”

 “Mom said you were sick.” Lauren stood in my doorway, her blond hair hanging in a long ponytail that couldn’t hide the way her ears stuck out from her head. That might be my fault. I used to pull them out like a monkey to make us both laugh.

“I’m doing okay.”

“Oh, good!” Her frown of sympathy sprang into a smile like it had been difficult to hold down for so long. “Is Phillip coming over to practice today?”

My sister had fallen prey to Phillip’s irrepressible flirting at the tender age of ten. I looked away so she wouldn’t see my scowl. “No.”

“I think you should marry him,” she told me and wiggled out of her shoes.

“As entertaining as it is every other day of my life, I am not in the mood for this discussion today. If you like him, grow up and take him.” I sighed. “The rest of us will thank you.”

“I don’t like him!” she shrieked and promptly turned the color of a ripe strawberry. Lauren more than makes up for whatever inability I have to blush.

“Good. Neither do I.”

“But…” she continued, the word escaping like leaking air. “If I were
you
, I might. Because then I’d be the right age.”

She flopped onto my bed and turned her face to me. She had an innate, unconscious ability to position the line of her shoulders and neck and turn her head so the patch of light from the window kissed her eyelids. She was every kind of cute I wasn’t.

“Right age, yes. But that doesn’t change the fact that he’s mostly a moron.” I tapped my eraser to my chin, enjoying her amused smile. “How was school?”

“Fine,” she closed her eyes and yawned. “Can you help me with my geometry?”

“In a while. I’m figuring something out right now.” I rubbed my eraser across my forehead before I bent over my work again.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. She inched closer, her voice low, confident in her ability to extract a confession. “I can tell something’s wrong. You were faking today, weren’t you?”

I looked past her joking eagerness—stared into her eyes. It was a risk, but she was the only person I could tell without ripping open a wound. She hadn’t been there. She didn’t carry a scar from that day like the rest of us.

 “Close the door,” I said softly. After she obeyed she crawled back onto my bed. I swallowed a few times, making sure there was enough room in my throat for the words. “Remember that man who saved my life—Bryon Exby?” She nodded and I continued. “Well, it looks like maybe his daughter just moved into my school. Her name is Charlotte. I saw her today.”

Her eyes widened, grew bluer with disbelief. “You’re kidding me. Does she know? Did you talk to her?”

“I can’t. She won’t talk to me. I know she knows because she just glares at me. She hates me. I tried to introduce myself and she ran away.” I dropped down on the bed next to her.

“So what are you going to do?”

“Just leave it alone until she lets me talk to her, I guess.” I suddenly wished Lauren was six months old again—wished I could hold her tight against me until my stomach stopped twisting. “I’m scared she’s going to tell everyone. And I can’t even blame her if she does because she deserves some revenge, but can you imagine what people will think of me?”

Lauren choked on an indignant laugh. “Revenge? You were hardly more than a baby. No one will think anything.”

“Maybe not.” I only said it for the privilege of not talking anymore.

“Everyone loves you. How is someone giving their life to save you going to change that? People will probably think you’re even more special.”

“That would be the worst kind of special to be,” I said, more roughly than I should have. “I don’t think I can stand for people to think of me that way.”

“What way?” Lauren’s finger pulled my hair behind my ear and I closed my eyes.

“Like someone who benefits from hurting people.”

She slid down beside me, her much smaller body curving against mine, as if she knew what I’d been thinking of moments before. Her arm slipped protectively over mine. “You never hurt me.”

It surprised me how good it felt to know that was true. I exhaled and sat with her sentence for a minute, letting it drift around my head. Before I sat up I asked one thing of Lauren. “Let’s not tell Mom and Dad yet. I think it will just upset them.” I shook my hair out, smoothed my expression to calm indifference and slid my homework over on my desk. “Bring up your geometry,” I told her in my usual voice. She closed the conversation as neatly and easily as I did, something I’ve always loved about her. Lauren doesn’t let things linger. Doesn’t over-analyze. And she isn’t particularly adept at geometry, either.

Hits and misses.

If my personality began the day Bryon Exby saved me it would explain so much. But it didn’t and it doesn’t. I didn’t get serious and worried the day he died. If I am to believe reports, I inhaled and decided this whole life thing wasn’t going to work out for me. I had a case of colic that made the nurses cry and left my parents in a state of shock for the first year of my life.  From my first day of life I took more than I gave—I took time, energy, sleep, happiness, and before the ripe age of two, I managed to take a life.

To be fair, there are pictures of me smiling as a child, but most of them, the candid ones where I am not facing the camera and plastering on the expected grin, catch me with round cheeks, a firm, serious mouth, and my eyes distant with thought. I’d give good money to know what I found so worrisome when I was on a tricycle. The one that troubles me the most is a snapshot taken  when I was four. I held my new baby sister, Lauren, on my lap as she reached out with extended fingers and a grin that took up her entire face. Behind her, I do not look sad, but I study her with a look of intense concentration as if there will be a test on happiness later. I think I was hoping if I turned up my lips the way she did that it would mean I was silly. Content. Carefree.

I was wrong.

My smiles have a desperate edge to them like the shape of waning moon. That’s why I practice. When I catch myself in public with a worried expression I smooth out my forehead and turn up my lips. “Smile, Megan,” I instruct myself. “Don’t look scared. Don’t look scary.”

Which will never explain how I always end up surrounded by people who are nothing like me. Like Phillip. Phil. Philly. Moron. Whatever I call him, he’s the same. He moved to town in the sixth grade after his dad retired from active service, and since he is half Puerto Rican with the ability to perfectly imitate his father’s Latino accent, he became an instant hit with every girl as soon as he said, “Hola.” I ignored him as long as I could, but then they placed him in the gifted class in the seat next to mine. I harbored serious doubts about his supposed IQ because his favorite thing to do was impersonate idiotic cartoon characters. But criticism of gifted standards aside, we sat next to each other in a class of only eight students for two hours a day for three years. Despite my best attempts, he grew on me.

We both ended up with lead roles in the eighth grade school play and the acting bug hit us so hard we decided to take high school by storm. The stage is where I make sense. When I step onto it I lose the part of me that worries. She runs away. And she never shows up again until I’ve washed the last of the thick stage makeup down the drain. Then I am just me again.

Megan. The girl who practices smiling.