The Truth About Fragile Things Read online

  The girl’s face flashed in my mind: full, soft, beautiful, livid. There was no fear sitting deep in my bones. The only feeling I had, traveling between my joints, tightening every hinge, locking me in one frozen emotion, was guilt.

  “I’m heading home,” I told them, taking my backpack from Phillip’s arm. “And you owe me five dollars.” They laughed behind me as I walked away, unaware I wasn’t smiling with them.

  I don’t remember the sirens or the screams from that terrible morning. I can’t recall my mother’s panic or the pain of my skinned knees. Not even Bryon Exby’s strangely calm face when he looked up at the people who raced to him first. We found out his name that night when the hospital called us and told us he hadn’t made it. I learned all of that from other people, snatches of old news reports and witness accounts in the newspapers, and turned them into a memory that is mostly artificial. But I do remember the orange butterfly— bright as a drop of sun, brief as the gold light of a struck match. One flap of color that rippled and wrinkled all the fabric of fate and led me to the street where I would kill a man before I even knew my last name. And to this day the impossibly beautiful insect looks like nothing but death to me.

  There was a flurry of news spots in Kansas City, and then it showed up as a blip for two days on the national news: Man gives his life for a little girl he didn’t know. We met Bryon’s widow, Melissa, and his baby at the funeral.

  Some people claimed my mother should be charged with neglect for letting me run into a busy street. My father turned off the television and computer and my mother cried herself to sleep for weeks. That’s when my father switched jobs, we sold the house, and moved an hour across town to new friends who didn’t know. My mother’s voice lost its strained accents. She grew plump and round and smiling with new life. My sister, Lauren, arrived full of light and need and distraction. And we started to live again because we let ourselves forget, at least on the surface.

  CHAPTER 3

  Vowing not to endure the lunchroom again, I packed my lunch and retreated to the library the next day. I was determined to get through a couple pages of Chaucer for extra credit, even though I have an A+ in AP English. Everyone I know hates reading Chaucer, but I am strangely pulled to his cryptic words. I like things that take up every corner of my brain and leave no room for anything else. I was only halfway through the first page when Phillip found me. He waved from the computer desks and joined me at the corner table.

  He pushed his wavy hair off his forehead. “I knew you were hiding.”

  “I’m not hiding. I’m working.”

  “Well, stop working. Is that an assignment?” He grabbed my frayed paperback from the table, careful not to lose my place. “We’ve never done this.”

  “You’re in a different class. And it’s not an official assignment.” I gently took it back.

  “Show off,” he said with grin. “You should stop reading Chaucer,” he told me, but he pronounced it Chow-ser. “Quixote is better for the soul.” He rolled the word into the back of his throat before letting it slide off his tongue. He likes to pretend he is Latin at heart but I’m pretty sure asking for one more water at a restaurant is as far as his Spanish extends. “Can you seriously read that?”

  I looked at him with steady eyes. My best defense is not talking and letting other people fill in the holes. Like always, he complied. “I have something way better than that granola bar you are not supposed to be eating in the library.” He paused and I could see the dark specks in his hazel eyes. “I know her name.”

  “Whose name?”

  “Freaky Freshman. I asked the girls in third hour drama and they knew her. She’s brand new. Just moved here.”

  “I knew I didn’t know her.” I exhaled in relief.

  “Her name is Charlotte. Does that ring any bells?”

  I rolled the name over the quiet parts of my mind, letting it brush against old memories, forgotten acquaintances. The only Charlotte I knew was a black spider who befriended a pig. I finally shook my head. “I have no idea. I don’t know any Charlottes. That’s a pretty name, though.”

  “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 a
bility 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.

  CHAPTER 4

  I navigated school like a criminal the next day, slowing when I reached corners, scanning hallways before I entered. While most of my body stifled under a numb dread, my ears hummed with life, catching every sound, waiting to hear my name in a fascinated whisper. I jumped when Mrs. Dexter called on me in sociology. I flinched when someone shouted my name, only to turn and find they were yelling to a different Megan—a Megan I wished I was at that moment. When last hour ended, I bolted. If anyone had found out I didn’t want to know until the next morning. It meant one more night of sleeping in the safety of my secret.

  When the doorbell rang at home that evening I was the only person there to answer. Mom was picking up Lauren from dance class and my dad wouldn’t be home until after dinner. Half of my nails were wet with a pale gold polish because I needed to distract myself and try to slow down my heart after its constant racing all day. My bottle of “Hollywood Dust” was working a little, my breathing regular as I painted stripe by careful stripe, until the bell echoed through the silent house and startled me.

  I looked down the hall to the staircase, trying to judge if it was worth it to put away my polish and hop down the stairs. I weighed the chances of it being a guy selling pest control or an alarm system. Just as I pulled the applicator back out and decided to ignore the door it rang again. There was an urgency to the sound, something that reminded me of the way my blood pulsed in my fingers whenever I scanned a hallway at school looking for Charlotte. I blew out a frustrated breath, dropped the applicator back into the bottle and spread my fingers carefully. Just as I reached the top step the person started knocking.

  “Patience is a virtue ,” I said in an exasperated whisper. I pushed my hair off of my forehead with the back of my wrist and opened the door.

  Charlotte stared back at me, her sandy hair too thick and heavy to move in the light breeze. Her dense eyebrows g
athered together, but not in open anger like the first time she saw me in the cafeteria. She seemed to be battling something inside, her light brown eyes guarded.

  “Charlotte,” I said. It was neither question nor rebuke. I felt an unexpected calm despite slamming head-on into the moment I’d been dreading. Relief washed over me that this scene was playing out in total privacy.

  “You know me?” she asked. There was a depth to her voice, something husky and low. I registered her surprise just as she leaned back, doubt spilling over her soft features.

  “I do now. My friend Phillip asked around and found out your name. Then I realized.” I glanced down to my nails, upset that they were wet. Upset that such an important moment was hindered by something as stupid as sticky nail polish. I could not reach out to her. Did not have the option even if I dared. “Do you want to come in?”

  She looked past me into the house like it was a trap. I tried to make it easier for her. “I’m here alone. Or we have a bench in the backyard.”

  She nodded with her eyes, just a fast blink and a turn. I closed the screen behind me and led her to my mom’s cement bench in the garden. Guilt balled in my stomach as I sat. Mom always sent us to this spot for time-outs and I sensed the ghost of every past transgression as I took a seat—Megan, no lying. Megan, you didn’t clean your room. Megan, don’t tease Lauren. Megan, you killed that girl’s father. Go sit on the bench.

  The concrete was cool through my jeans and I adjusted myself at one end, spreading my fingers across my lap. I realized we were both studying the metallic paint against the pale white of my skin. Only four fingers done. The pinky was a blank slate. The color looked wrong on me. Everyone would know that I don’t really care about fingernails; would know it was a shallow attempt to blend into the pack. Just like my failed experiment last year with lipstick. You can’t paint a smile on me. It doesn’t work.

  Charlotte held a piece of paper, but she hid it against her legs out of my sight, unwilling to share. My tongue followed the shape of my teeth as I wondered if it was the article from the day he died. I pulled my unpainted hand into a fist as I imagined how many times she had held those newspaper clippings and watched the footage of grim reporters showing me unharmed, piles of flowers left by the curb.