Everything Breaks (17 page)

“So what'd you want when you called last night?” She smiled up at me. Her smile is great, the delivery especially. She just beams it right into you. “I was over at my cousin's and I could have called you back from there.” Again, the smile.

“Your cousin . . . Josh?”

She nodded. “We were trying to make a centerpiece for the big family Thanksgiving bash, out of feathers and pinecones? It turned out really gruesome.” She laughed.

“I wanted the homework assignment. No big deal. Just, you know. Math.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well, that's good. That it wasn't a big deal, I mean.”

I nodded and grinned, but I couldn't think of anything to say, nothing at all. I was just too afraid to take a chance on doing it wrong, saying the wrong thing.

I realized right then that this was much worse than just being rusty. My confidence was gone, not that I'd ever been the most confident of people. Still, I'd had confidence that the ground would hold me up, that the sky would stay above my head.

Now, suddenly, I wasn't so sure. Would the ground hold? Could you trust the sky?

Grace bent to fold her jeans at her ankle then fastened the fold tight with her bike clip to keep the denim out of the gears, and as I watched, I made a final desperate struggle to find something, anything, to say or do. Nothing. The place where I used to keep that stuff was vacant, emptied out. No courage anywhere, no talk to talk.

She stood up, took a breath, and gave a little bounce on her heels. “Okay, that's it, then.” She adjusted her helmet, then jogged through the gym and out the back door.

I watched her take her bike from the rack out there. She pedaled away, fast. She's that kind of cyclist, a competitor, a long-distance rider.
That's it, then.
The way she'd said it made me feel sick to my stomach. I chugged the orange drink I had in my hand, then crushed the can and shot it viciously into the trash can as I strode out of the school.

I sat in the car, clutching the wheel, flexing my fingers. Put it behind you. Put her behind you. Think of something immediate to do, anything. Get busy.

I usually work the Christmas season at Greenfield's, wiring together wreathes and pruning Christmas trees. So I'd fill out my application like I'd been meaning to do. That's what I'd do. I'd do it now, right now.

I didn't realize I was on Maple Street until I got to the wild soccer kids' block and had to slow to a total crawl to keep from running over a few of them. They bobbed and jumped around the car like little maniacs, but I'm not sure any of them recognized me or the Olds. Life is a series of strange events when you're that age, if I remember right. Always you're in the present, never in the past. Who could remember from clear last month a green car in Jeremy's yard with a guy maybe dead inside it? How I envied them.

Maple is the main road that goes clear through Clevesdale, but nothing takes me down it on a regular basis except when I'm working at Greenfield's. I probably should have checked before then on the three fake deer Bud had knocked over that day, but to be honest, I hadn't thought of it. Now, though, I watched for the yellow-shingled house, anxious to see if all three of those deer had survived the hit they took.

There was the house. I spotted it a block away. And there were the deer, standing where they'd stood before Bud creamed them. I slowed to a crawl again as I got nearer, checking out their details, looking to see if anything on them was broken or missing or . . .

Grace! Her bike was lying on the sidewalk, and she was bent over it on her knees, her helmet on the ground beside her. I pulled to the curb and jumped from the car.

“Grace!” I called, my heart racing. “What happened?”

“Hey, Tucker!” She stood up and took a step toward me, smiling a sheepish version of her smile. “I've got a flat. It's weird, I think I hit a plastic antler, it looks like. From those deer up there in the yard, I guess. Sliced my tire.”

It's hard to describe what happened next. Something clicked inside me. I don't mean clicked in the sense of someone finally figuring out how to do algebra or even remembering how to talk to a girl. I mean clicked in the sense of I
heard
a small but distinct click, and then I felt something thick and golden speeding through my veins.

“No problem!” I called, smiling my own smile right back at her. “I've got a patch kit and an air compressor right here in my trunk.”

AUTHOR'S NOTE

The idea for
Everything Breaks
came partly from a horrific drunk-driving accident that actually took place at my own high school when I was a junior. There was a closed-casket funeral for one of the boys involved, but this boy's mother understandably didn't like the way we kids were getting into the drama of the thing, thinking of it more like a movie than real life, with us as the stars. She went forward and opened her son's casket and we all got a good look at the reality of death as we filed by him on our way from the church. Believe me, that's not a thing you ever forget, and I used my memories of it as the model for the opening section of this book.

The fourth boy, Tucker, I invented, and of course I imagined up the characters from Greek mythology that are attracted to him by his instability. My parents both died in 2010, and I was grieving as I wrote this book, feeling, in many ways, much as Tucker feels. Writing is always a journey toward understanding, and this time out I wanted to know: When those you love die, what of them lasts? I found my answer, so now I can put them in place in my heart and be simply grateful for their unbreakable gifts to me.