Broken Glass (8 page)

I talked to one person after the funeral, and that was Laura Andrews.

“I’m sorry,” was all I could say, hugging her. She wasn’t crying, which surprised me.

“I don’t think any of this is real,” she said, grimly, and there was a glimmer of hope in her eyes, which were dulled over from lack of sleep…or feeling…or…lack of
anything.
“He’ll be back before week’s end. It’s just a nightmare. A long nightmare that you can’t seem to escape, and it doesn’t end until things are at their absolute worst.”

I told her I loved her and left. She would be living in that nightmare for a long time.

I stayed with my mom that night. In my wallet, there was a picture of Tyson
and me. I gazed at it for hours,
looking at his eyes. I’d never look into those
eyes again. I’d never kiss him, hold him, tell him that I loved him,
hear him say he loved me…

I took off my engagement ring and studied it. It gleamed in the light of my bedroom. I’d nev
er walk down the aisle with him.

And I remembered something as I lay in bed that night, in the dark, all alone. When he’d said that he had a feeling that he might just not be there one day…he’d known it all along. And for a split
second, I was angry with Tyson
for leaving me.

Three days I stayed in my room, an utter insomniac. I picked up my phone a couple of times and dialed Tyson’s number. I was hoping it would be as Laura had said
,
just a nightmare that took a while to wake up from. But he was gone.

Mom wanted to talk about it with me, I could tell, but I refused. Talk about it? Would that make it better? Would that make everything okay? Would that bring Tyson back to me? No.

On that third day, I went back to the apartment and Cassie was gone. There were two envelopes on the table addressed to me. One I could see was from Emily, by the
California
return address. The other just had my name on the front. I opened it first. I
nside were the keys to Tyson’s El C
amino and a note from Jake.

Ava,

        It’s yours. He paid it off. The insurance papers are included. I a
lready signed you,
just call
them with the necessary info. The car is at Pete’s when you’re ready to pick it up. There were only two things he ever treasured more than anything els
e his entire life: you and the C
amino.

Love, Jake

I examined the keys in my hand, turning them over slowly, touching every inch of the key and the key chains. There were three key chains on it.
One he’d gotten at a Sting concert, one was a shovel that had the inscription:
Life’s a garden,
dig it
, and the last was a picture of he and I at the beach our freshman year of college.

With the keys and Jake’s letter clutched tightly in my hand, I picked up the other envelope from Emily and went to my room. I opened Emily’s letter and sat down on my bed to read it. She didn’t know about Tyson and what had happened. She wrote that she was sorry she hadn’t responded to my last letter sooner. She congratulated me on my engagement to Tyson and went into this big long spill about how lucky I was to have found true love. I let the letter fall from my hand to the floor after I’d finished reading it and curled up in a ball on my bed. I began to cry, those keys still within the tight grasp of my fist. All I had left of him was a
damn
car
.

I tried to kill myself that night. Somehow, I’d managed to cry myself to
sleep, and when I’d woken up,
I went to the bathroom and slit my right wrist with a razor. Before
I could slit my other wrist to i
nsure that I would, in fact, succeed in what I’d set out to do, the bathroom door was flung open and Cassie rushed in. She yanked the razor away from me and dragged me out of the bathroom. She wrapped my wrist in a towel, crying and screaming through the entire ordeal. Trevor was there, too, talking on the phone to someone about me
—
telling whomever it was that I was out of control and needed help. The feeling of hopelessness was gone now. I was numb.

Jake came
and picked me up at around eleven-thirty
that night. H
e said to get my stuff together,
that I’d be staying with him for a while. He didn’t want to tell my mom what was going on because he didn’t want her to have to deal with that. Part of me wanted to yell at him
—
at all of them
—
for expecting me to be okay when the other half of me was dead. How did they know? How could they even imagine what it was like for me? How could they think they were doing something good in stopping me from taking my own life? What did I have to live for?

But I did as Jake said. I didn’t have much stuff that really mattered to me. I crammed all my clothes and the stuff Tyson had given to me and all the pictures of us into a duffel bag.
I also took the keys to the El C
amino.

Jake tried to get me to register for my last semester of classes in the fall. I refused. He tried to get me to go to work. I refused. He tried to get me to do
anything
, but every time, I just refused.
I spent most of my time in the
El
C
amino, which was parked in Pete’s garage. I just sat in it, thinking, crying, remembering all that I’d had. There was a cross and rosary beads ha
nging from the rearview mirror. S
ome old Irish woman had given them to Tyson at one of his shows for good luck. I looked at that cross for so long and I tried to pray to God. But there was only silence ringing in my ears. Forever unanswered prayers. I ended up tearing the rosary beads and cross down from the rearview mirror and breaking them into pieces against the dash. Faith was useless without love. I had nothing, least of all love. I knew nothing of faith anymore.

I’d carved the words
infinity +1
into the metal p
iece on the passenger side door
when riding with Tyson once. I let my fingers run over it many times while sitting in the
El
Camino
. Ah, but now I knew that infinity was a myth. Nothing lasted forever.

I went out to the
El
Camino
one night, after staying at Pete’s under Jake’s supervision for about three weeks. Everyone was asleep. I stuck a sock in the exhaust pipe of the car and cranked it. As the now toxic air slowly crept around my face and engulfed my senses, I held a picture of Tyson and me in my hand. I lay my head back against the headrest of the car seat and closed my eyes. I felt myself drifting away and for
the first time in over a month since I’d lost Tyson.
I could really
see
him.
I saw every detail of his face;
his full lips, his bright blue eyes, the dimples in his cheeks. I could hear his laugh, I could hear him sing, I could hear the scribbling of his pencil as he wrote a song. I could smell his cologne, the shampoo he used for his hair. I felt his skin against my skin, the perfect way his hand fit in mine, his arm around my waist. I tasted his lips, the chicken and macaroni he’d used to make me when I’d had a bad day. Oh, there he was, right in front of me, smiling, holding out his hand, waiting. I reached out to him.
I’m coming, Tyson
, I said in my mind, mouthing the words, even.
I’m coming…

But something happened before I could get to him. Something hard hit me, knocking me away from Tyson and into a black oblivion.

I emerged from a deep sleep momentarily, just to say his name and then my darkness was replaced with a nightmare. I was in the car with Tyson and the guys. They were laughing. Tyson unbuckled his seatbelt to take his coat off.

“NO!!”
I screamed.
“TYSON!”
But he couldn’t hear me. None of them heard me. There was a squealing of tires and they all screamed. Tyson’s face twisted into fear and surprise and there was a sudden jolt.

The tree.

I watched, and it was as if it were in slow motion. Tyson was lifted from his seat and went through the glass of the front windshield easily.

“TYSON!”
I screamed, reaching out. Suddenly, I was out of the car and in the grassy field below the road. I saw the car, turned over, with Pete struggling to get out. I looked up at the road, saw a limp figure in the tree. I ran up the hill, screaming, sobbing.

“TYSON! TYSON! NO!”

I stopped below the tree to look at him. His body was mangled, the limbs of the tree protruding through h
is back. He was like a rag doll,
tattered, torn, and lifeless. I began to climb up the tree. If only I could get to him. If only I could get to him, he wouldn’t
die. I could save him, I could…

I saw his face. Unlike the rest of him, it wasn’t bloody or broken. His eyes were open, unblinking, gray. They’d lost the bright blue. They were gray and dull. The defined jaw was set forever in his last breath. He was gone.

He was gone.

I reached out to close his eyes with my hand, but as soon as I’d touched him, I was lurched back into total darkness again.

7.

I woke up two days later in a hospital bed. When
I tried
to open my
eyes, I did so very slowly, as the brightness of it the solid white room
washed over me…like I was being born again.

There was a chair beside my bed, and in that chair sat a blonde girl in a pink blouse that seemed to match the pink puffiness of her eyes.

“Ava!” she whispered, when she saw me looking at her. “Finally! Oh, honey, how are you feeling?”

And then I remembered.

“Tyson,” was the first thing uttered from my lips. And then Cassie began to cry.

“Oh, Ava, I can’t believe all this is happening!” she sobbed, clutching my hand. I just stared at her.

“Was I in a wreck?” I asked her, in an oddly calm voice. Cassie gave me a blank look.

“No,” she replied, obviously surprised by my question. “Tyson was in a wreck, Ava…not you.”

“Where is he?” I asked. I was deranged. Who’d have ever thought that it was possible to forg
et the untimely death of the love of your life
?

Cassie looked down and didn’t answer me. The door to the room opened then and a tall, redheaded boy stepped in.

“Ava, you’re awake,” he said, smiling slightly. “How are you feeling?”

“Tell me he’s
not dead, Jake,” I whispered
.

“Jesus Christ,” Jake muttered, putting his head in his hand. “Ava…”

“TELL ME HE’S NOT DEAD!!” I screeched, sitting up in the bed suddenly. A wave of dizziness hit me and I vomited unexpectedly all over myself.

“Ava!” Cassie exclaimed, getting to her feet. “Oh,
I’ll go get the nurse!
” She ran out of the room and Jake got a towel from the table beside the door.

“Let’s clean this up,” he said, wiping the puke off of me with the towel. “It’s no big dea
l, Ava. Just a little throw-
up.”

I grabbed hold of his wrist then.

“He’s gone, isn’t he?” I whispered, my eyes filling with tears. Jake looked at me for a moment.

“Yes, Ava, he is,” Jake told me quietly. “And you’ve tried to kill yourself twice because of it.”

“Oh,” was my reply.

“Ava, listen,” Jake said, leaning in closer to me. “You’re very sick. Do you understand that?”

“Well, what do you expect me to be, Jake?” I asked him coldly, my eyes meeting his. “The love of my life is d
ead. Did you expect me to be
baking
cookies with the girls?”

Jake just shook his head and walked away. The nurse rushed in with Cassie then.

“Oooo, we’re a mess, aren’t we?” The nurse said, coming over to me. I gave her a look.

“Why don’t you talk to me like I’m four years old?” I said dryly. The nurse looked at me as if I’d slapped her hard in the face.

“Uh, she sat up too quickly,” Jake said. “And she threw up.”

“We’ll get you cleaned up,” the nurse said stiffly and came over to the bed. “Can you stand up?”

“Yeah,” I replied. I threw my legs over the side of the bed and stood up slowly. Another wave of nausea hit me, but I managed to suppress it.

“Now, I need you to take off that gown so I can put a clean one on you,” she said.