Broken (23 page)

Tony and I run onto the field, pushing our way through the players standing around Mitch. He’s gasping, hands pressed to his chest. I kneel beside him and find his pulse. It’s skipping erratically like a kid playing chopsticks.

The crowd separates and Mom arrives, accompanied by Mr. Beltzhoven and Coach. She throws a bag to the ground and grabs her stethoscope.

“He’s been drugged,” I tell the coach.

He doesn’t hear me. Too many people talking at once. Mr. Beltzhoven does though, glaring at me like I’m the one who gave Mitch the OD. “Stand aside, young lady. Let your mother work.”

Mom kneels beside Mitch on one side, me on the other. I grab his wrist again and feel for his pulse. Nothing!

I start CPR, pushing my weight against Mitch’s bulk and getting nowhere fast. Tony quickly drops his backpack and takes over for me.

“Epi,” Mom snaps, pulling the stethoscope from her ears. “Get me the epinephrine from the med kit.”

Coach opens the medical bag and rummages through it.

Maybe I know nothing about living life as a normal girl, but I know a lot about medicine. Including everything about Long QT.

“Stop!” I shout. “Don’t let her give the epi.”

“Scarlet, you need to let me do my job.” Mom’s tone is a knife, cutting through the noise, aimed at me.

I know that tone. You do not mess with Mom when she uses that tone. That tone means:
obey
or
suffer
the
consequences.

Not this time. I know better now.

“You’re the one who gave Mitch the drugs,” I yell loud enough for everyone huddled around us to hear. Now all eyes are on me. Including Mr. Thorne’s and two referees who have joined us. “If she gives him that epi, it will kill him.”

Tony pauses long enough to say, “Scarlet’s right. Listen to her.”

Then he goes back to pounding on Mitch’s chest. He’s sweating, panting as he pumps. Mr. Thorne spells him while I tear open Tony’s backpack and pull Phil out. I pop open Phil’s front and grab the electrodes that need to be placed on Mitch’s chest. If we get him hooked up fast enough, we can save him.

Tony struggles to unfasten Mitch’s pads without getting in Mr. Thorne’s way. “We need a knife or pair of scissors to cut these off.”

“Help me attach these,” I plead to the adults crowded around us.

“Nonsense,” Mom says. “Give me that epinephrine. Now.”

Coach hands her the epi. I hesitate, almost back down, until I see her smile. No one else is in position to see it; it’s aimed at me and me alone. More than a smile, a smirk. Victorious, gleeful, powerful. In her glory.

Ready to kill.

Tony lunges for her arm, knocking the syringe of epinephrine away. Coach and two players grab him, hauling him off Mom.

I take advantage of the distraction, pull up Mitch’s shirt, and get one electrode stuck to his belly. Now I just need to get the other one placed with his heart between the two.

Mr. Beltzhoven scrambles in the grass and finds the syringe. He hands it to Mom.

“Stop!” I try one last time. “She’ll kill him.”

“You two.” He points to two football players. “Restrain that girl.”

“No!”

Now both Tony and I are squirming in the grasp of football players.

“I think we should listen to Scarlet,” Mr. Thorne says, sweat dripping from his forehead as he keeps pumping on Mitch’s chest. He’s huffing and puffing and the compressions aren’t doing much good as he wears out.

Mitch is turning blue; he doesn’t have any time left. Mom snaps the cap off the epi.

“Halt,” a man calls. I glance over. Another police officer. Jordan’s with him but no longer in cuffs. Behind them are Nessa and Celina. “Don’t touch him.”

Jordan twists the syringe from Mom’s grasp. The football players are shocked and confused. I squirm from their grasp and return to Mitch’s side. Jordan crouches beside me. “Scarlet, what do you need?”

“Get this on his skin across from his heart. On the right side of his chest or back, wherever you can put it as fast as possible.”

The entire stadium is watching us. Jordan, Celina, and Nessa join me and Tony on the ground. He yanks Mitch’s jersey and pads out of the way, sliding the electrode in place. Beyond us the adults are shouting at each other.

“No one should touch the patient. Analyzing,” Phil tells me once the electrode is in place.

Come on, come on. The words stampede through my brain. What if we’re too late?

“Shock advised. Stay clear of patient.” Phil’s voice is so calm. Wish I felt that way.

“Get back everyone,” Tony says.

“Push the flashing orange button now,” Phil instructs. “Deliver shock now.”

Electricity jolts through Mitch’s body. His back arches and hands jerk up. Then he bounces back against the ground.

“Shock delivered. Be sure to call emergency medical personnel. It is now safe to touch the patient,” Phil announces. Do I detect a note of satisfaction in his tone? Probably not but I reach for Mitch’s pulse and it’s strong and steady. His eyes flicker open and he moans.

The medics arrive and we scramble back to make room for them. “What’s going on?” one asks.

Mom is still arguing with the cop, so I give the report. “Seventeen-year-old white male, no past medical history, suspected Exzyte, synthetic marijuana, and bath salt overdose complicated by recent ingestion of alcohol and caffeine. Patient was running and collapsed, went pulseless. CPR was begun as the AED was applied. Shocked out of it with good pulse and capillary refill. Respirations normal, still altered level of consciousness.”

“Good work, we’ll take it from here.”

They quickly package Mitch for transport and run him off the field onboard their stretcher. Leaving me to face Mom.

But this time I’m not alone. I have my friends to back me up.

Mom spots me and breaks free of her argument with the police officer. She takes the three steps needed to reach me. Her chest heaves and her cheeks are puffing with every breath. I’ve never seen her this angry. Never. Every wrinkle on her face is etched into her skin as her muscles contort with fury.

“How dare you!” She slaps me so hard I would have fallen if Jordan and Tony hadn’t caught me.

Oblivious to the gasps of the crowd, she reaches her arm back, ready to haul off and hit me again.

Too late. Mr. Police Officer, who from the stripes on his sleeve I’m guessing is Jordan’s dad, yanks her arm down, twists it behind her, and has her in cuffs before she can sputter a protest.

“Let’s go. All of you. We’re going down to the station and straighten all of this out.” He begins to walk my mom through the crowd of stunned players. “Now!”

We fall in line behind him.

Tony reaches for my hand and suddenly I don’t really care what happens next. I know it’s not going to be easy and there’s a good chance Mom will convince the cops she’s innocent. I’ll deal with that when it comes. At least the people who count, my friends, know the truth.

“What happened to you?” I ask Celina as we straggle off the field.

Thousands of eyes are on us but the crowd is eerily quiet as if they realize they’ve witnessed something remarkable, even though they have no idea what happened. Celina is leaning heavily on Jordan’s arm; there’s blood on the collar of her shirt.

“She”—she nods at Mom—“hit me on the head and locked me in a cupboard.”

“Had her gagged with duct tape, hands and feet too,” Nessa put in. “Good thing I thought to look there. She could have suffocated.”

“No, I couldn’t have. In fact, I was almost free when you got there. Had most of the tape scraped off my face and wrists.”

“And how were you going to get out of a locked cabinet without me finding the key?” Nessa shot back.

“Thank you, Nessa,” Jordan says, using his free hand to pull Nessa to him and kissing her on the top of her head without ever letting Celina go. He nudges Celina.

“Yes, thank you, Nessa.”

“You’re so very welcome,” Nessa says with a hop turned into a curtsy.

Jordan’s dad leads us through the maze under the bleachers and we end up at his squad car parked alongside two others. Leaning against one is the first officer—the one who had Jordan in cuffs before Mitch knocked him down. He’s looking a bit sheepish.

“Sorry about that, kid,” he tells Jordan. “But you know, I have to take any report of assault seriously.”

I glance at Jordan, raising an eyebrow to encourage him to explain, but he simply nods to the officer and shakes his hand. “Of course, sir, I understand.”

Tony whispers, “He was about ready to knock your mom off the bleachers to get her to tell him where Celina was, but your mom started screaming before he even touched her. Cop didn’t believe Jordan or me, was gonna lock him up.”

“Guess we’re lucky his dad was on duty.”

He nods. We sort ourselves out between the three cars. Mom alone in the back of one. Tony and me in another. And Nessa, Jordan, and Celina in Jordan’s dad’s. The officer driving us tells us not to say anything until we get to the station. He says it in a way that makes me think he’s doing us a favor.

I’ve never been near a police car before. They’re not as glamorous as you’d think from the movies. The rear seat is hard plastic and stinks of vomit and pee. It’s pretty claustrophobic back there with the steel mesh on the windows and between you and the driver. Worse than an MRI machine.

But not so bad with a guy like Tony holding your hand the whole time.

Then we get to the station and they separate us all. I end up sitting in a room by myself for what feels like hours. It’s got blank cinderblock walls, no windows, nothing but two chairs and a table. Finally, I end up folding my arms on the table and falling asleep.

No clowns or laughing women chase me in my dreams. No crying little boys. In fact, for the first time in a long time, I don’t dream at all.

“Scarlet. Scarlet, honey. Wake up.”

I blink and open my eyes. It’s my dad. Maybe I was dreaming, maybe this entire day has been a dream. Who knows? Maybe my entire life.

Dad doesn’t look happy. Behind him stands a man in a suit who also looks very unhappy.

No dream.

I jerk upright. Suspicious. Does he believe me? Or Mom? Is he going to make me go back home with her?

“What’s going on?” I ask.

At least Mom’s not here—which I hope means she hasn’t talked her way out of everything yet. I’m betting on her doing just that. After all, anyone savvy enough to manipulate world-class doctors for years can probably handle a bunch of small-town cops.

“Scarlet, this is Mr. Anderson. There was an emergency hearing and he’s been appointed your guardian
ad
litem
.” Dad squirms. He obviously wants to say more.

“Thank you, Mr. Killian. I’ll take it from here.” Mr. Anderson steps forward, between Dad and me. “I believe the detectives are waiting for your statement?”

Dad heaves in a breath. Holds it for a long moment then lets it escape. He nods and says nothing, but does stop to kiss me on the cheek before leaving. I touch my finger to the warm spot left by his kiss.

The door closes behind him and I suddenly feel like I’m adrift, floating on a sea of uncertainty.

“Why isn’t my dad my guardian?”

“The district attorney thought this best. This way everyone’s interests are represented.”

Even I can read between the lines of his legal mumbo-jumbo. “He wasn’t involved.”

I think. I hope.

“Can you prove that?” He doesn’t wait for my answer. Good thing, because I don’t have one. Instead, he pulls out a legal pad, uncaps an expensive-looking pen, and sets a digital recorder between us. “How about if you tell me everything? From the beginning.”

It’s been an amazing month.

Turns out I’m not really allergic to anything. Me, Nessa, and Celina have been trying every kind of food out there just to see what I like and don’t like. And guess what? I like it all! Except raw sushi and oysters. But everything else, even sardines and artichokes and weird little fruits that are the ugliest thing you’ve ever seen—Jordan found me those, left them in our locker wrapped in a big purple bow.

I haven’t seen my mom since the police took her after the family court judge found her guilty. Not guilty of everything—not yet. She still faces assault and attempted murder charges because of Mitch and Celina. But that’s criminal court, which takes a lot longer.

Living without her hasn’t been as hard as I thought it might be. Not that it’s easy either.

Dad lets me do anything I want. Sometimes I take advantage of his guilt, but Nessa says that makes me normal, so I don’t feel so awful about it. And sometimes I tell myself he owes me. What do I want from him as payback, I’m not sure…maybe my childhood back?

The judge made Dad and me go to counseling, alone and together, and he’s going to decide in another month or so if my dad gets to keep me or not. He has a hard time believing someone as smart as my father could have been so clueless for so long. But hell, even I was clueless. We were all so busy trying to make Mom happy, we forgot to take a look at what was really going on around us.

The shrink the judge sent me to is a woman, about Mom’s age. I think he did that on purpose, just to torture me or something. At first all I did was sit in silence, dissecting her every word and gesture, trying to uncover the hidden meaning behind them, certain she’s manipulating me, just like Mom did. Whatever she asked me to do, I did the opposite.

If she asked me to be honest, I lied. If she asked me to express my feelings, I shut down. If she tried to help me relax, I blew up in anger—that was the breakthrough, I guess you could call it. Finally, no, not finally, for the first time ever, I let myself get angry at my mom, at my dad, at my life.

After that, no one else wanted to be around me for days. Anything set me off—Nessa called it PMS on steroids—but I was like an addict; once I started feeling things for real, I couldn’t stop.

Tony and I talk a lot. But we also spend a lot of time not talking. We’ll go to the park and play like we’re little kids. My old favorite, the teeter-totter, which isn’t quite as much fun now that I’m tall enough to touch the ground with my toes. The swings are my new favorite, especially when I sit on his lap and we pump together, our bodies moving in unison. And the tilt-o-whirl. I’ll lie in the middle and he’ll run around the edge, spinning it as I stare up at the sky and clouds and trees overhead, breathing in the clean, fresh air of my new world.

We even figured out how to kiss finally. I go right and he goes left. I always start things, control how long, how hard—I need that right now. Sometimes he gets frustrated with it, sometimes even angry. I don’t understand guys and I can tease him without meaning to. But we’re both learning.

Even when we fight, it’s okay. Another lesson I needed to learn, probably should have learned way back in kindergarten.

He has a way of letting me know, even when he’s mad at me, that he still cares. He touches his finger to his lips then turns it over, like he’s releasing a kiss into the wind, sending it my way. Telling me that he wants
me.
The abby-normal girl, the extra-ordinary girl, the broken girl who almost died.

When he does that, it’s like the whole world stops.

Nessa laughed when I told her that, said it’s just hormones, which is probably true, but I don’t care. Knowing why something happens doesn’t make it any less fantastic.

My counselor says I’m “blossoming.” Sounds lame, but inside I know she’s right. For the first time, my clothes actually fit. When I look in the mirror, I see a real girl, someone with a life ahead of her, not a half-dead girl.

Jordan’s helped too, even though he still doesn’t say a lot. I’ve watched him play soccer and he’s so intense, rips around that field like it’s a canvas of mud and grass and he’s an exuberant kindergartner who gets to finger-paint with it all. He doesn’t get angry when they lose. I think maybe because he puts his heart and soul into playing and just has fun.

I want to live that way. Not necessarily happy all the time, but appreciating all the possibilities that surround us in every moment and taking full advantage of them.
Carpe
diem,
Celina’s mom calls it. She’s like Jordan. Doesn’t talk much, but when she does, it’s well worth listening to.

Live for the day.

Which makes this morning all the more painful.

Dad pulls the car up behind a gray sedan and we get out. Neither of us says anything. Me because it’s too much work just to keep from crying or screaming or lashing out at him.

Him? I’m not sure why he isn’t talking. He used to be such a big talker, but I’m finally realizing all those words were just a smokescreen. Hiding the fact that he never really said anything.

My legs feel stiff with the cold. I’m wearing jeans that are finally looking broken-in, a State Police SWAT sweatshirt Celina gave me—it’s too big but makes me feel strong; it used to be her mom’s—and a Juicy Couture hoodie Nessa lent me. She sent the matching pants as well, but as much as it’d be fun to make my dad go nuts by wearing them, I can’t lower myself to providing free advertising to a company by wearing tight-fitting pants with “juicy” written across my backside. Talk about demeaning.

I might be not-so-normal, but I have my pride. It’s newly found and hard won. And I have the scars to prove it.

The leaves are off the trees and the mountainside is bare to the wind. We’re back in Jeanette. Where we lived when I was young.

Where Ash died.

Where he was killed.

Which is why we’re here. It’s taken this long to get an exhumation order. Mom’s lawyers fought it every step of the way. But when the DA in our county found that no autopsy or toxicology screen had been done by the Jeanette coroner (a funeral director who admitted that Mom talked him out of the autopsy, and that even if he had wanted, he hadn’t had the budget to do a complete investigation) and the State Police detectives learned Mom had gotten a prescription for liquid codeine (for a toothache—she’d gotten her dentist to call it in for her) filled the day before Ash died, the judge signed the order.

And here we are. Sun barely up over the mountains in the distance, no birds singing, not around the graveyard at least, only the sound of a backhoe digging through the dirt.

Dad and I watch in silence, our hands almost but not quite touching.

“I didn’t know,” he whispers. Mainly to himself, because I’ve heard it before and I’m not listening anymore.

At first I forgave him. It was scary enough facing life without Mom around; I couldn’t bear to lose Dad as well. But funny thing is, he’s even more terrified of not having Mom around than I am. Like he needed her in some warped way.

My life depended on her—literally. But from the way he keeps turning to me to make decisions, plan our future, seems like his did as well.

I don’t have the words to describe how angry—no, furious, no, something beyond fury—that makes me feel. At him, at her, at myself.

The only innocent in all of this is Ash.

My fingernails bite into my palms as they raise the cement container that holds his casket. It’s a big hole but such a tiny gray box.

The detective overseeing things nods to us. The workers stop, the container resting on the grass beside Ash’s headstone. They step back and give us space.

Dad doesn’t move. He tries—one aborted step forward that leaves him grasping the top of a tombstone for balance. He slumps, turns his head away, but not before I spot his tears, glistening in the dawn-slanted rays of the sun.

I walk to Ash. As I do, the birds start singing again. I imagine my little blond dream boy bobbing his head around a headstone and grinning at me, as if he’s playing hide-and-seek and wants me to join in on the fun.

And what fun we would have had, me and Ash. I might not remember any of our life together, but my imagination is plenty good enough to fill in the blanks about what could have been.

What will never be.

I place my palm flat on the concrete slab holding Ash’s coffin. It’s chilly but not as cold as I feared. Clods of dirt cling to it. I scoop some into my fist, molding it into a small ball.

Just like we used to make dough balls for fishing. A stray memory hits me like a sunbeam. Me and Ash fishing from the side of a stream, tiny bamboo rods clutched in our hands.

Laughter.

His and mine.

And Dad’s.

Tears spark my vision as I look up. The little boy is there. He waves at me and blows me a kiss good-bye. As if he’s given me this memory as a going-away present.

I don’t want him to leave. It feels like part of my insides have been ripped away, tearing me in two as he fades from sight.

Dad places his hand on my shoulder. Turns me to him.

The workers return to remove Ash. Dad and I cry together, clinging to each other for support. The dirt in my hand crumbles and slides beneath my fingers, dribbling to the ground.

Finally I step away from Dad. “Let’s go home.”

As we drive over the mountains and back to Smithfield, I think about what I’m going to tell the judge. He’s given me the option of leaving Smithfield—and Dad—for good if I want. Said he’d let me live with my aunt, Dad’s sister, in Harrisburg. I’ve only seen her maybe half a dozen times my entire life.

Living with a stranger. Or living as a stranger.

Those are my options.

By the time we get into Smithfield and drive past the high school, I have my decision.

It’s scary. Terrifying.

Which is exactly why the new me, the contrarian me, wants to do it. Just because I can.

Hell, I think I am going to do it.

Stay here. With my dad. With the gossip and stares and bullies at school.

With my friends.

Because let’s face it. Life’s too damn short to leave the people you love behind.