Breathe (13 page)

Chapter Fifteen

Garrett

The night before the homecoming dance I knew I could no longer put off renting a tuxedo. I’d waited so long Martin’s on Main Street ran out of my size and I had to drive to Carthage just to get one. I parked in a small lot behind the tailor’s and hopped from the truck.

Carthage was only two towns over and was pretty much a carbon copy of Little Bend—small and stale. The old man who went to get my tux from the back was ancient. Looked like he could have lived there when they laid the first bricks in town.

I paid the man—fifty bucks I didn’t have for a tuxedo I didn’t want to wear to a dance I didn’t want to attend. I’d told Abby I couldn’t keep swimming just to make her happy, yet there I was doing something I didn’t want to for Zoe. I think I believed I owed it to her. She’d been so quick to forgive me.

I was so caught up in my thoughts I didn’t see the Jeep blocking the back of my truck and I didn’t notice Nolan until the force of something metallic collided with my shoulder. I fell to the ground, grasping my injured arm, then rolled over to see Nolan hovering over me with a baseball bat. I kicked at him with both feet and he crumpled to his knees while I scrambled to my feet. I didn’t notice his friends either until they grabbed me from behind and forced me back against the side of my truck.

Tossing the bat to the side, Nolan stood. He rammed his fist first into my gut. I groaned and folded at the middle. When his friends lifted me back up by the shoulders, he wound up and struck me across the jaw. My teeth trembled and I could taste the blood that pooled in my mouth. I spat at Nolan’s feet and he hit me again. The bones in my nose shattered with a sickening crunch.

I was on my knees, pretty sure Nolan was going to kill me when I heard the distinct sound of metal colliding with bone. At first I thought it was my bone, but there was no new pain to accompany the sound. And then Nolan crashed to the ground beside me.

I looked up through my cloudy vision. My head was foggy and I was certain I had a concussion, but I could see Abby clearly. Standing over Nolan with the bat in her tiny hands. Her Uncle Jim ran up behind her and chased Nolan and his friends to their car. They peeled away while Jim and Abby helped me into the back of his SUV.

“My God, he’s bleeding so bad,” I heard Abby tell Jim through the haze. “What am I supposed to do?”

“Keep his head up,” Jim shouted. He tossed her a towel, which she placed against my nose and I heard the crackling of bone. It felt like my nose was on fire and I moaned in pain.

“I’m sorry,” I remember hearing Abby tell me right before I bent at the middle and threw up on her feet. I laughed thinking of Lake Silverton and how I knew then that I loved Abby because she’d thrown up on my feet. I wondered if this moment would have the same effect on her.

Later, at the hospital, she and Jim stayed with me while the doctor reset my nose and a police officer came around, questioning me about what happened. I told him that I’d been jumped and when he asked me if I knew who had done it, I lied and told him no.

“You should have told him,” Abby lectured me as we left the hospital and walked back to her uncle’s car.

“What good would that have done?”

“Nolan Carter is an animal,” she replied. “He belongs in a cage.”

I couldn’t argue with her so I took her hand in mine and brought it to my lips. “I’m fine,” I assured her. “No one needs to go to jail over it.”

“Let’s just be thankful that we were there to break it up and move on,” Jim agreed as I climbed into the backseat of the SUV. Abby followed and I laid down across the bench, resting my head in her lap.

“What
were
you doing there anyway?” I asked Abby while Jim took us back to my truck. She blushed and I thought about kissing her again. To be honest, I always thought about kissing Abby, but her uncle was only inches away in the driver’s seat and I was back together with Zoe.

“I had to have a dress altered,” she revealed. “It’s one of Becca’s and, well, I’m a tad bit shorter than she is.”

I chuckled because I’d never seen Abby in a dress. “A dress? For you?”

“And why is that so funny?”

“I’ve never seen you in a dress,” I admitted. “I bet you’d look beautiful in a dress.” The painkillers the doctor had given me were apparently starting to kick in, destroying the filter between my brain and my mouth.

“It’s for homecoming, so I’m sure you’ll find out.”

It had never occurred to me that Abby would be going to the homecoming dance. She’d never attended a dance before. Not even junior prom. Now I briefly wondered who she was going with before I realized that I didn’t want to know.

“I’m going with Jeff Walker,” she told me anyway.

The pain in my heart at that moment was worse than the pain in my nose. Difference was the painkillers had begun to numb my body while I didn’t think there was a substance on Earth with the power to numb my heart. I knew I didn’t have the right to be hurt or angry. I was the one who’d pushed her away. Right? I was the one who was dating Zoe.

I drifted off, lulled to sleep by the drugs and the smooth vibration of the car. I awoke for a bit when Jim helped my dad get me to my bedroom and then again later when Abby snuck in through the window to my bedroom. I fell asleep holding her, knowing that it wouldn’t last forever.

Chapter Sixteen

Abby

Friday night I got ready for the dance, showering first, taking my time, letting the water fill me until I had the courage to actually leave the bathroom. Until I felt that maybe I could have a good time that night. When I emerged from the smoky room I found Becca and Maggie sitting together on the couch.

I pulled the towel tighter around my body, still trying to hide the bruises even though I knew it was too late to pretend. It seemed old habits would die hard. “Shouldn’t you guys be at work?” I asked.

“You think we’d miss out on helping you get ready for your first dance?” Becca replied.

I’d been fairly certain no one would care. “I’m pretty sure I know how to dress myself,” I told her.

Becca laughed and got up from the couch. Moved toward me. She lifted my hair high up onto my head and then pulled a few strands loose around my face while asking, “Yes, but do you know what to do with your hair?”

I admitted that I didn’t so she and Maggie brought me into Maggie’s room where they set me in front of a vanity. Becca blew dry and curled my hair while Maggie applied some powder to my face and some color to my eyes. When they were finished even I couldn’t deny the fact that I looked halfway decent.

Becca couldn’t stop smiling at my reflection so I sent her to fetch my dress from my room, just so she would stop. Unfortunately, this left me alone with Maggie. We hadn’t spoken much since the night I crawled into bed with her and asked her about my long-absent father, but alcohol had not made a reappearance in the apartment. For that, I was thankful.

“There is something I want you to have,” she told me. I watched as she moved from beside me to the jewelry box on her dresser. She rummaged through until she came up with a necklace. A silver chain with a diamond snowflake pendant. “I thought it might go with the ice-blue color of your dress.”

I fought back tears as she draped it around my neck and clasped it into place. I remembered this necklace from when I was a child. I was always mesmerized by the way it shined, dangling from Maggie’s neck when she would get all dressed up for a night on the town, but I hadn’t seen her wear it in years. Part of me had thought she’d pawned it. Cashed it in for money for booze. But she’d saved it and she was giving it to me.

I brought my hand to the pendant. Swirled it in my fingers. “It’s beautiful,” I whispered, my voice cracking with unshed tears.

“It was my mother’s,” she told me. “The only thing of hers that survived the fire.”

I was curious about the fire. Wanted to confirm my suspicions about Grandpa Rhoades and the cause of the flames. But not more than I wanted to hold on to the happiness I felt at that moment. Maggie had done something nice for me. She’d given me something precious. Something that meant the world to her. I didn’t want to ruin it simply to satisfy my curiosity, so I thanked her instead and she kissed me on the forehead. It was the first time Maggie had kissed me since I was a child.

Jeff arrived a little while later and was gracious enough to smile when Becca insisted on snapping a few pictures. I thanked him during the car ride to school. “No problem,” he replied. “Your mom and your aunt seem really cool.” For once I had to agree. Maggie wasn’t drunk and Becca had kept her irritating perkiness in check. More importantly, they hadn’t fought with each other. They’d put their differences and past hurts aside for one night to help me get ready because they thought it was important. I couldn’t begin to express how much that meant to me.

At the school I searched the crowd for Garrett even as Jeff and I waited to have our picture taken together but I didn’t see him or Zoe. They arrived later while Jeff and I were on the dance floor, drifting together to a Taylor Swift song. I watched Zoe push through the crowd in her slinky, purple dress, refusing to have her picture taken. Probably because Garrett’s face looked like a jigsaw puzzle.

When the song ended I went to get punch while Jeff went to say hello to some of his friends. I greeted Dr. Cross, one of the chaperones, as she ladled the red liquid into a plastic cup for me. “I’m glad I ran into you,” she said as I sipped from my cup.

“Really?”

“Yeah, I haven’t seen you around the bar lately, so I was hoping to talk to you here.”

“About what?” I asked. The familiar fear crept in. The feeling that someone knew something incriminating. Not that I thought anyone would tell me instead of Sheriff Wilson if they did. But I couldn’t understand what else Dr. Cross would want to talk to me about. We hardly knew one another. The only thing we had in common was our love for Charlie. And then it dawned on me that it must be about Charlie and my heart sank remembering Paul Ford’s promise to have him put down.

“There was a petition filed to have Charlie euthanized,” she replied. “Apparently he bit a cop. And well, I have to do it tomorrow morning and I just wanted to make sure you had a chance to say goodbye to him if you wanted.”

I’m sure to Dr. Cross this was nothing. Something she’d had to do a hundred times before, but to me this was devastating news. “You can’t,” I cried. “Paul Ford deserved it. He was harassing me.”

“Might be true, Abby,” she told me. “But if a dog bites someone, I have no choice.”

The room started to spin away from me. I turned my back to Dr. Cross, but staring at the crowd was no better. They danced and blurred together. The lights were too bright, the music too loud. I teetered on the brink of passing out. “Are you okay?” Jeff’s voice asked from somewhere beside me. His fingers grasped my elbow, grounding me to the floor.

“Air,” I told him. “I just need some air.” I rushed across the room, through the swaying crowd, to a pair of double doors that I knew led to a courtyard between the buildings. I sat down on the concrete steps, felt the cold seep through the thin fabric of my dress.

Flurries were beginning to fall from the overcast night sky. The first snow of the season already, when a week before it had felt like summer. I guess those old men knew what they were talking about.

I watched the snow as it pirouetted through the air, landing on my skin, dampening my hair, ruining the style Becca had so carefully crafted from my usually limp hair, but I didn’t care. I had to find a way to save Charlie. I couldn’t let Paul Ford take him away from me.

Freshly fallen snow crunched behind me before Garrett took a seat next to me. “It’s a little overwhelming in there, huh?” he asked and I laughed because the idea that he thought I’d run away from the dance was so ridiculous.

“There going to kill Charlie,” I told him and even as I said it, I knew he’d understand how important the mangy mutt was to me.

“Who?” he asked. “Why?”

I rested my head on his shoulder. “Paul Ford. Tom’s brother. Charlie bit him when he was harassing me outside the bar. Dr. Cross just told me she has to put him down tomorrow morning.”

“I’m so sorry, Abby,” he said and I knew that he meant it. That was one of the reasons I hadn’t said anything to Jeff before I bolted from the gym. I knew that even if he’d wanted to, he couldn’t understand. Not like Garrett did. And anything he could have said would have been hollow.

“I can’t let them kill him, Garrett,” I cried. “I can’t. It’s my fault. He was only trying to protect me.”

Garrett stood. “Okay, calm down,” he said, pacing while he thought of a solution to my problem. A few moments passed before he stopped walking back and forth in front of me. He stared down at me and smiled. “Okay,” he said. “So we don’t. Let them kill Charlie that is.”

“But how can we stop them?”

“We can’t. What we can do is make sure there’s no Charlie in his cage when Dr. Cross comes for him tomorrow.”

“What?”

“We’ll steal Charlie.”

I rested my chin on my hands, looked up at Garrett. “And do what with him exactly? If I keep him, they’ll know. They’ll come for him.”

“So we’ll take him to one of those no-kill shelters. Somewhere far away from here. Somewhere they’ll never find him.”

“Tonight?” I asked, sitting up. I was unsure of how we’d manage to pull it off without getting caught, much less do it before tomorrow morning.

“Sure,” Garrett replied. “Why not?”

There was only one thing holding me back, but I was afraid to say it aloud. Afraid if I did that Garrett wouldn’t want to help me anymore. “The Penn State scouts are coming tomorrow morning,” I reminded him. “I have to be in the pool by nine.”

“No worries,” he promised. “We’ll leave now. We’ll drop Charlie off and I’ll still have you back in plenty of time.”

I heard the door above us on the steps behind me open and close. “There you are, Garrett,” Zoe’s voice rang through the air. “I was looking all over for you.”

I stared down at the ground, at the clean white snow. “Abby’s not feeling well,” I heard Garrett lie to Zoe.

“Do you want me to go get Jeff?” she asked and I cringed because I hadn’t thought about what our leaving would do to Jeff and Zoe. And because Zoe seemed genuinely concerned and I was about to abscond with her boyfriend.

“No. I’m gonna take her home,” Garrett replied and I wished for the power of invisibility because I could feel Zoe’s eyes on me, trying to send me up in flames. Garrett reached out for my hand. I latched onto it like it was a life preserver and I was drowning.

As we turned and started toward the parking lot, he turned his head to tell Zoe that he would call her later. “No you won’t,” she shouted from behind us. I heard her heels clacking on the steps as she descended and sped to catch up. She pulled on Garrett’s arm, bringing us all to a halt.

“Now you listen to me, Garrett Scott,” she screamed. “You are my date. My boyfriend. Not Abby’s.”

“Zoe,” Garrett tried to interrupt but she cut him off. “No,” she told him. “Let me speak. I took you back. No questions asked. I forgave you for choosing her over me once, but I won’t do it again. If you leave now, I won’t be here for you when you get back. Or the next time she crushes your heart. We’ll be over. Do you understand me? Over.”

The better part of me wanted to tell Garrett to stay. That he deserved better than me. That he deserved someone who could love him fully, like Zoe Winchester. But I couldn’t find my voice.

“I’m sorry, Zoe,” Garrett apologized. “If you feel that way, I understand. But I really have to go.”