Breathe Page 6

  “I am,” she insisted, but she hesitated to finish her thought.

  “But?” I asked.

  “But I was just thinking how this baby will only be an infant when I leave for Penn State. They’ll be this whole person that’s a part of me that I’ll never really know.”

  “Wow,” was all I could think to say. I was struck dumb. I couldn’t believe she was still holding onto the idea that leaving Little Bend would be the solution to all her problems. Problems didn’t go away just because you ran from them. They would hunt you down. Make sure you paid for ignoring them.

  “You know, Ab, just because you go away to college it doesn’t mean you can never come home again. Little Bend’s not going anywhere. Trust me.”

  “Yeah, it’ll be right here where I left it, ruining the lives of a whole new generation.”

  “It’s not that bad here.”

  “ It’s not? Once I leave this place, Garrett, I’m never coming back. You know this.” She shook her head. Looked at me helplessly. Her green eyes big as boulders. “I told you this.”

  “Five years ago, Abby!”

  She flinched slightly from my tone, which made me feel like a dick. Then she lowered her eyes and stared at Water-Abby again. I wondered if Water-Abby would be as big a pain in the ass as Real-Abby was being right then. Maybe I should’ve asked Water-Abby to love me instead. Might’ve made things easier on the both of us.

  “Nothing’s changed,” she finally said.

  “Everything’s changed,” I countered and I meant it. We couldn’t go back. I didn’t want to go back. Loving Abby all those years was like having one of those dog cones wrapped around my neck and an itch I couldn’t scratch. So I said something I’d been afraid to say for a long time. Afraid of how she would react. Of how the truth when it spilled from her mouth would break my heart. “My parents don’t have money, Abby. We’re not poor but we’re far from wealthy. They can’t afford to send me to college.”

  I stopped there to give her time to process the meaning of my words. To fully grasp what it was I was trying to tell her. She continued to shake her head at Water-Abby, like she didn’t believe it. “You’ll get a scholarship,” she insisted.

  “I won’t. I’m not you. I’m not good enough.” Abby was the only one who ever believed I was. Even my own father knew I was talentless. And he should’ve been blinded by unconditional love. Only Abby thought I was great. Only Abby could make me want to be great.

  “Don’t say that,” she cried. “The scouts are coming on Saturday. They’ll see what I see. They’ll see how good you are. Then we’ll swim together next year.”

  “I hate swimming,” I finally shouted, cutting her off before she could lie to herself some more. She looked up and stared at me. Her face had warped into this horrified expression. You would have thought I’d told her I was a warewolf. “I hate it,” I said again to make sure she knew I meant it. “Always have. Did it first to please my father then for you. To be with you. Near you. To have you notice me.”

  “I’ve always noticed you.”

  “Only because I was in the water. You see only one thing, Abby. You’re so focused on swimming that if I didn’t put myself in your way, you’d treat me like you do everyone else. Like I was background noise. Scenery.” I lifted her chin with a fingertip and forced her to look at me. Really look at me. Maybe even see me. “Mr. McKenna told me at the end of the summer that there’s a job at the ranch waiting for me when I graduate. It’s mine if I want it. And I think I do.”

  I was pushing. I knew it. But I couldn’t stop now. I didn’t want to stop now. Her eyes grew moist and I longed for her to cry. To really bawl her eyes out. So I could see that what I was saying had some effect on her. But I knew she wouldn’t. She blinked back her tears and looked at me, her face transforming to stone. Cold. Hard. Unyielding and unreadable.

  “Why are you being a jerk?” she asked. “What is it you want me to say?”

  “I’m just trying to figure out where I fit in to this plan of yours.”

  “You’re supposed to go with me,” she accused. “You were always supposed to go. That was the plan.”

  “Your plan, Abby. Not mine.”

  “I thought they were the same thing.”

  “And if that doesn’t come to pass? If I don’t get in to Penn State? If I choose to stay in Little Bend? What then? Do I get left behind as well?” An overwhelming silence answered my question. I swear to God I could feel the distance between us grow. It pushed against my gut. My heart. Told me to walk away before I lost it. Before I said something I’d regret and ended up losing Abby altogether. “Yeah,” I growled. “That’s what I thought.”

  “Garrett,” she called, trying to stop me, but I was already storming through the doors and out into the parking lot. My tires kicked up dirt as I reversed. I jerked the wheel to turn as I pushed the gearshift into drive and sped onto the blacktop. I was halfway to I-don’t-where when I realized that mine had been the only vehicle in the parking lot and that I’d left Abby stranded. Not that she couldn’t walk home. It was only a few miles. But it was late and dark and the streets were empty. And as safe as Little Bend was supposed to be I didn’t want Abby wandering around alone at night.

  Then again, it would serve her right. Who would rescue her when she went off to college and left me behind? Cursing the part of me that couldn’t bear to let her suffer, I turned the truck around. It seemed impossible that I’d driven so far away from the high school but it took forever to get back.

  A block or so away from the school, outside the bowling alley, I spotted Abby walking along the shoulder on the opposite side of the road. An old Jeep Renegade pulled from the Bowl-o-Rama parking lot and crawled beside her. The soft-top was off so I could easily identify Nolan and his football buddies. Nolan leaned to the side, his head poking out through the open passenger side window while he spoke to Abby.

  I was too far away and the truck’s engine was far too loud for me to hear the conversation but I saw Abby turn to Nolan, her face coiled in rage. She spat fire in his direction and I knew it couldn’t be good.

  When we were sophomores, Abby tutored Nolan—part of the community service project every student at our school was required to complete each year. Abby chose to tutor students failing math and she was assigned to Nolan. When she’d first told me about it she was near to tears because they’d never gotten along. The next time we talked about him, her voice was softer, her criticisms less harsh. Three weeks in, he asked her out and Abby said yes.

  The night Abby and Nolan were supposed to go to dinner and a movie we got stuck in traffic coming back from a meet. By the time I pulled up outside her apartment, Nolan had been waiting for an hour, alone with Abby’s mother.

  I waited until Abby went inside then I circled the block. I wanted to catch a glimpse of the couple as they left for the night. Really torture myself good. But on the second pass, Nolan was on the front lawn, shirtless and pulling his pants on over his boxers and Abby was slamming the front door.

  Abby liked to lie to herself and pretend I didn’t know about Maggie. That I wasn’t as aware as the rest of the town what her mother was like. That because I wasn’t born in Little Bend I’d somehow missed the gossip floating through town. That I didn’t know Maggie was a drunk and that she liked to sleep around. Like I didn’t have to listen to Nolan Carter brag to his friends in the locker room the next morning about what he’d done with Maggie. Like I couldn’t sense the change in Abby when Maggie crossed the line. For the most part, I liked to let her believe it. It was easier for her. Easier for me.

  Abby never wanted to talk about it and I never pushed. I hated myself now for not pushing then. Tore me up that I’d done nothing to stop it. To protect her when her mother refused.

  I swerved into the Jeep’s lane, braked, and blasted my horn. The driver looked up, startled, and slammed on his own brakes, bringing the Jeep to a screeching halt inches from my bumper and sending Nolan’s head crashing against the metal frame
.

  I flew from the truck, leaving the heavy door swinging behind me as Nolan hopped from the Jeep. We stood toe to toe between our vehicles, the glow of the headlights bending around our legs as the sky broke and rain began to pound the ground around us.

  “You could have killed someone, asshole,” Nolan screamed at me through the deafening downpour.

  I shrugged. “Can’t say I’d be sorry if I had.”

  “You really want to do this? You’re outnumbered.”

  To be honest it was the last thing I wanted. I was freezing in a swimsuit that covered only the area between my knees and my hips. And I was pissed. What I wanted was a hot shower and some time to cool off. But I knew underneath the bravado Nolan was nothing more than a coward. That was why he picked on Abby—because she was tiny and fragile, and he assumed weak. But he didn’t know Abby. And he didn’t know me. Growing up in the Scott house hadn’t exactly been all sunshine and rainbows. I knew how to handle a bully. And I knew that if I stood my ground, he’d back down. So, I met his star without blinking and said, “Outnumbered, maybe, but not outmatched.”

  Large drops of moisture fell from the sky, slicked my face, my bare chest, and gathered at my feet. Nolan laughed, trying to sound cooler than I’m sure he felt, and told me “I was lucky he was feeling generous,” that “I’d get what’s coming to me when I least expected it.” More cowardly words were never spoken. Then he got back into the Jeep and I waited while it peeled away, splashing water all over my legs and leaving Abby and I alone, standing in the rain.

  She stood there, her arms wrapped around herself like they were the only thing keeping her from falling apart and she stared at me. “Get in the truck,” I ordered, my tone harsher than I intended. Adrenaline and testosterone were still surging through my veins.

  “Fuck you,” she spat back. “I’d rather walk.” And she did, stalking right by me. I turned and reached for her, grabbing her by the upper arm and spinning her around to face me. She shrunk away from me as if she thought I might strike her and like the sky before me, I broke. Shattered into a million pieces. Wished I could be washed away in the rain with the rest of the dirt.

  I pulled her to me and encircled her body with my own. At first, she resisted, pounding against my naked chest with her tiny ineffectual fists. But then I felt the fight leave her body and she collapsed into me, resting her head on my slick chest. I don’t know how long we stood there, wet and freezing in the rain. But I felt like it might be me that was the only thing holding her together and she the only thing holding me. So we stayed there, clinging to one another for as long as we could.

  Chapter Seven

  Abby

  Sunday morning brought more rain. A wild storm that scratched at the windows and made it impossible to sleep. I laid there for hours in the dark, silently urging the sun to rise so I could find the will to get out of bed. So I’d want to exist. Part of me wished the bed would open up and swallow me whole. Take me somewhere other than that moment. I’d spent the last four hours staring at the ceiling, replaying the events of last night in my head. The things Garrett had said to me. The things that I’d said to him. It was maddening. There’s only so much time a person can wander around in their own head before they begin to wonder if they’re crazy.

  I rolled from bed around seven and stumbled down the hall to the kitchen, following the warm aroma of fresh-brewed coffee. Maggie sat at the table—now clean and free of unpaid bills—sipping from a ceramic mug. She turned her head in my direction when she heard me approach.

  “What are you doing up?” I grumbled.

  “Well good morning to you too, sunshine.”

  Mornings were hard enough. Did I really deserve to have to deal with Maggie so early? Especially after the night I’d had? I’d stopped wishing she’d get up and eat breakfast with me every morning around third grade. When I’d gotten tired of running to her room to wake her up only to find she wasn’t alone.

  “Just surprised to see you up while the sun’s still shining that’s all,” I said, turning my back to her and pouring myself a cup of coffee.

  “I thought I’d go to church with you and Uncle Jim this morning,” she replied and I nearly spit coffee all over the newly washed countertop. I didn’t think Maggie even knew Little Bend had a church, much less what time Sunday services were.

  “You?” I balked. “In a church?”

  To my surprise, she laughed. “Well sure. Why not?”

  “Well, you’re you.” I had trouble picturing Maggie in a church—having to compete for attention against an even bigger martyr than herself. “Won’t the Virgin Mary statue start crying tears of blood? Or the holy water start to boil or something?”

  “I really don’t need any of your lip this morning. Besides, church isn’t for the self-righteous like yourself. It’s for the sinners like me.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Without us there’d be no evil, the world would be heaven, and there’d be no need for religion. It’s folks like me who keep Pastor Williams working.” There was no arguing with Maggie once she’d set her mind to something, so she came with and Uncle Jim smiled like he had in that picture behind the bar.

  After service, on the steps of the church, people reached for Maggie’s hand. Folks who’d looked down their noses at us. Who’d called her a whore or crazy or worse. People who’d stopped me in the aisles of Howell’s grocery store when I was younger to show me pictures and ask if I’d ever seen their husbands or sons at my house. These same people stroked the bony side of Maggie’s skinny hand and offered empty promises. Hollow if-there’s-anything-I-can-dos.

  They didn’t know about Tom. Not the way they thought they did. They knew him only as a man whose life had been cut short. Side effect of consorting with people like my mother they would figure. They couldn’t know what I knew. They weren’t there when he’d moved in with Maggie and I. When the work dried up and the drinking began. They hadn’t had to watch as lack of utility soured a decent man. Rotted him from the inside out. They’d never had to push him off and race down the hall. They didn’t know the fear that could build inside a person when they were forced to listen to the pounding on a door they’d barricaded with a flimsy dresser. They never sat trembling, wondering when it would give. Wondering when something inside them would give and they would break.

  One night he’d forced his way into the bathroom while I was showering. I could still feel the sting of the leather where it met the wet skin on my back. Force against splitting flesh. Welts and bruises I’d had to hide for weeks because I’d left the lights on in the bedroom and he couldn’t afford my carelessness. Didn’t matter much that I’d been paying the electric bill since I’d learned to bus tables. That the money he gave Maggie never went anywhere but a till in the cash register at the local liquor store.

  This is what Maggie had always wanted. To be accepted. To be part of a town that loathed her. I’d just as soon leave the lot of them behind. They weren’t worth the mud on my boots. But Maggie wanted their approval. Craved it. Even more than she craved her next drink. So she lowered her eyes and faked a tear and I wondered if she truly missed him. If she truly loved him. If she’d ever really known him at all. I couldn’t imagine living with someone I didn’t know. Someone violent and unpredictable.

  Part of me hoped she had loved him. Then at least I could accept what she’d done. How she’d looked the other way. How she’d chosen a strange man over her own flesh and blood. Was I so unlovable I hadn’t deserved her protection?

  “It’s been hard,” I heard her say and inside I winced because it’d been anything but. Until his body had been found—until it had washed up on shore as if to haunt me—it’d been four nights of peace. Nights I’d spent sleeping instead of cowering. An unfurling of limbs and spirit that I hadn’t known in months.

  Later, at the bar I counted my measly tips while Maggie wiped down tables and served beers to the few customers who came on in Sundays. I folded the bills and stuffed the wad into the
back pocket of my jeans. We didn’t normally work together, Maggie and me. But she’d insisted on coming in. Insisted on working my tables and playing to a sympathetic male audience.

  Garrett didn’t stop by for lunch like he usually did on Sundays. He’d sit in a booth in the farthest corner of the bar drawing circles on the tabletop with his index finger and poring over a textbook. He would always order a sandwich from the kitchen and insist that I eat half—his subtle way of ensuring I didn’t starve to death. But he wasn’t there today. Just the ghost of him in my mind. And he didn’t call. I waited until well after my shift ended, wiping down tables and restocking glasses. I waited until Uncle Jim demanded I leave.

  “Don’t you have better things you could be doing?” he joked as he pried the rag from my unwilling hands then used it to wipe down the bar. “At least go have Becca make you something to eat.”

  I hadn’t eaten all day. I’d been waiting on Garrett. There were times I thought I’d wait on him forever. He was the one thing that made life in this town bearable. Plopping down in a booth, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and checked it one more time. No calls. “Okay, I’ll go,” I said with a heavy sigh.

  Uncle Jim peered over at me from behind the bar. “Everything okay, darling?” he asked.

  “Depends on your definition of the word.”

  Uncle Jim stopped cleaning and moved to sit down in the booth across from me. “Where’s Garrett?” he asked. “I didn’t see him around today. Don’t tell me you two are fighting.”

  I folded my hands on the table and picked at my cuticles. “It’s complicated.”

  “Is it?” he asked, raising his eyebrows at me. “Or are you just making it harder than need be?”

  My uncle knew me better than anyone. Even better than Garrett. Or at least it seemed. Garrett would never call me on my crap the way Uncle Jim did. Well, he never would’ve before. Lately Garrett had been a completely different person.