Fall to Pieces (9 page)

I try to keep on walking, but Explosive Boy grabs my wrist. Pulls me back. “This,” he breathes, “is your idea of an initiation? This was a Pick Me Up?” He runs his hands through his hair. “God, you guys are so fucked up...”

He’s just finding that out now? “Again with stating the obvious, Sherlock.” I try to sound mocking, bitchy, but my throat’s a desert. My voice rasps out, dry as sandpaper.

“Why? Why the fuck do you
do
this?”

“Why?” I give him a blank stare.

There is no
reason
behind what we’re doing. Pick Me
Ups are all passion. Most people in this town would say that we’re being self-destructive, and they’d be right; but they’d also be wrong.

Because when you’re that close to the ground and you’re hoping to fall so that it won’t be game over right then and there, it’s more powerful than anything else. Envy, hate. Love. It all pales in comparison. Pick Me Ups eclipse the world, leave you alone for a split second that feels infinite, where you feel infinite.

And then, of course, there are the memories of Amy.

But even if I wanted to, I couldn’t articulate any of this to Explosive Boy. So I say, “If you don’t know, no one can tell you.”

He sighs, and his head flops onto his chest. “I get the feeling that I’m missing something here.”

My voice has come back. Thank god, because I really need to throw out words that will make Explosive Boy hate me. Make him realize that yesterday with the crying was just a onetime thing.

“You’re missing a lot, but it isn’t my job to fill you in.”

“Actually,” he says. “I think it is.”

This boy. Just. Does. Not. Back. Down.

I step closer. Because if he’s not backing down, I have to attack, don’t I? I run my fingers through his wet hair, mess it up. Bed hair slicked with gel. But I step away before I speak because I’m aware that my breath
probably smells terrible right now. “Don’t you get it? I don’t owe you anything. I don’t know you; you don’t know me.”

And then he’s the one attacking, moving way too close. He lets his head fall forward, and our foreheads meet. Breath kisses breath. “You owe me an orgy,” he says. When he gives me my personal space back, he reaches into his jacket pocket, pulls out a box of Tic Tacs. Throws them at me.

I catch them, surprised. He gave me Kleenex, and I got him pushed off a bridge. Why the fuck would he give me anything after that?

He shrugs. “Your breath stinks, and I owe you. For saving my life. Consider us even now.”

I reel because, shit, I saved his life. I saved this random boy’s life, but I couldn’t save my best friend’s.

“Well,” he’s saying, “almost even. You still owe me that orgy.”

Mark glowers at him. “I’m not participating.”

“Did anyone ask you?”

Pet speaks up. “Let’s just go home.” Mark opens his mouth, doubtless to say that he doesn’t want to go home, that he won’t; but Petal glares at him. “All of us,” she says firmly.

“Fine,” Mark grumbles. I toss him his keys. He turns away and starts cutting through the bushes. “I’ll see you
tomorrow,” he calls over his shoulder. “We’ll need to pay a visit to the barn.”

Explosive Boy stares at me and Petal until she raises a single, slim eyebrow. “Didn’t you hear?” she asks in a tone so bored it’s insulting. “We’ll see you tomorrow.”

I watch, amused, as E reacts to Petal’s disdain just like all the other kids at school—with a smile. A puppy dog smile that practically begs her to change her opinion of him, to like him. It’s always this way with Petal. She likes nobody, wants nobody to like her; but everybody wants her to like them. No one is immune to her enigmatic charm, the combination of her looks and violent charisma. And she knows it, too.

Petal keeps her brow arched, tilts her head. She doesn’t have to say anything more for Explosive Boy to know that he’s been dismissed. He fades from sight, melting quickly into the trees.

Once he’s gone, Petal grabs my arm and tries to tug me along, but I shake her away. “I can walk on my own.”

She doesn’t reply but stays beside me as we make our way through the trees. She stays beside me when we leave them, when we begin tramping down the leaf-littered streets of Sherwood. She stays beside me until we’re standing outside of my house. God, I love her for that.

For a moment both of us stare at that spot on my front lawn, the one where Amy snapped her neck that night.
Then Pet wraps a loose arm around my shoulders. “We’re okay,” she whispers. Her arm slides away, and she does, too. She walks down my street, walks away from me.

Leaves me alone.

I do the same thing I do every time I’ve gotten home early for the past few months. I climb up onto the roof and stare at the front lawn. Let my eyes bore into the dirt and weeds, let the storm of thoughts brewing in my head break all over the place.

What will happen to me if I keep up this way?

If I play Russian roulette.

If I go bungee jumping without a cord.

If I keep climbing up onto my roof in the moonlight. Keep looking at the tangle of weeds. Keep feeling that tingle in every single one of my limbs.

Here’s the truth: I don’t want to die. I mean, I do. We all do, or else we wouldn’t be playing Pick Me Ups.

But I’m not going to die. I’m going to fall down, and I’m going to pick myself up, and I’m going to keep going.

Because dying? Not an option. Not till I’ve figured out the truth.

I
SPEND MOST
of the next school day in Cherry Bomb, whiling away the hours. Listening to the bell ring to signal the shift to a new class again and again and again. Mark’s not skipping for once in his life because the administration’s finally threatened to revoke his scholarship, and Petal didn’t turn up today. She claims Wednesday is the worst day of the week.

So it’s me, myself, and I out in the parking lot.

I’m sprawled on Cherry Bomb’s backseat, foam from the holes Amy poked two years ago whispering against my back. When I was younger, when my family was still whole and my father still looked at me as if I were his world, he’d speak in clichés and tell me that the sky was the limit. Today my sky is the dirty brown car roof. Today I feel limited and safe and confined and conflicted and longing. Mostly longing. Longing for a combination of past innocence and future hope.

So when Explosive Boy taps on Cherry Bomb’s window, I ignore him because he is neither past nostalgia nor future hope. Unfortunately, he pretends to ignore me ignoring him and keeps right on tapping away at the window.

“Ella,” he says, his voice muffled by the glass. “Come on, open up.”

Sigh
. I twist myself out of my supine pose and open the door to make room for him on the backseat. He climbs in, bringing a stray leaf with him. It falls, an orange butterfly fluttering from the tattered corner of his blue jacket, to the car floor.

“Hi,” he says.

I don’t reply.

“So, where are we going today?”

I let out a deep breath and say, “Are you fucking serious—you want to come with us?”

Yesterday we pushed him off a bridge. Yesterday he punched Mark in the face. Yesterday I was certain that my plan to bring E into this strange game to spice things up had failed. That I had destroyed him appropriately, and he would never give me Kleenex or a pitiful look ever again.

Now I’m not sure.

“Yeah, I’m still interested in that orgy,” he says in a tone that’s so playful I know he’s using it to mask something, to hide some other agenda.

And that’s what stops me from telling him to get the hell out of the car. My curiosity about his hidden agenda. Well, that and my need to unite Mark and Pet and me. To make them spill the truth about the night Amy died.

“You’ll see when you get there,” I say to Explosive Boy.

He surprises me with his maple syrup smile. As if he doesn’t give a fuck that I’m being a bitch to him. “Going to blindfold me again?” he asks.

“No.” I check the time—ten minutes before the last class lets out. “But Mark will be here soon, and he may want you to get the fuck out of his car. No guarantees that you can actually come along for this ride.”

“I’d better make the best of my time here, then,” E says, nodding. He leans back, folding his arms behind his head. Then he kicks up his feet, draping them over the front seat. He drums his muddy feet against Cherry Bomb’s already-ruined leather and gives me an angelic smile.

I snort. “Mature. Wasn’t punching the guy enough?”

“Let’s see,” Explosive Boy says, squinting as if he’s thinking real hard. “He pushed me off a bridge and nearly killed me. I punched him and messed up his car a little. We’re
totally
even.”

That shocks a laugh out of me. Yes, sarcasm is the lowest form of wit—but it’s still a form of wit. I wasn’t
expecting much wit from E. Just endless brooding and gunpowder cologne.

“So you are pissed off about that?” I ask him.

His jaw tightens. “Pissed off is the tip of the fucking iceberg,” he says. “But short of punching you, I’m not sure how to deal with that emotion. And I don’t hit girls.”

“You sexist pig.”

He raises an eyebrow. “You’re impossible to please, aren’t you?”

“Basically.”

He shakes his head and pulls an iPod from the pocket of his tatty jacket. “Want to listen?” he asks, holding out an earbud to me.

I take it because there’s nothing else to do. But when I put it into my ear, when I hear the song he’s listening to, I wish that I hadn’t. “This was Amy’s favorite song,” I say, swallowing hard.

“Little Wing,” Jimi Hendrix. She always said she could hear velvet in this music. Rich, purple velvet and sex.

“Your friend, right?” he says. “The one who died? I’m sorry.”

I pick at the foam spilling from Cherry Bomb’s ruptured upholstery. I can feel his eyes on me. In my peripheral vision, I watch his lips part. But before he can say anything else, the car door swings open.

Mark. Today’s scarf is highlighter yellow, and he’s got
a lollipop in his mouth again. He raises his eyebrows at E. “Comfortable?” he asks in a tone that implies he’s once more on the brink of committing an act of lollipop violence.

E removes his feet from the front seat and slings an arm around me. “Oh,” he says, shuffling slightly closer to me, bringing the smell of gunpowder with him, “very.”

“Ha. Ha. Ha. Just hilarious,” I say, putting the distance back between us, letting the smell of gunpowder fade away.

E drops his arm from my shoulder and smiles sheepishly. “Sorry,” he says as Mark starts up Cherry Bomb’s engine.

Mark ignores him. “Petal’s meeting us there,” he says.

We don’t speak on the way to the barn, but E keeps “Little Wing” on repeat. And Jimi Hendrix croons and croons and croons in my ear about a girl with a circus mind and a thousand free smiles.

When we enter the barn, Petal waves to us from the third floor. Maybe watching me jump off a bridge has emboldened her.

I climb the stairs, ignoring the looks Mark and E give me. On the second floor, I turn back to them. “Coming?” I ask.

They follow, grumbling.

“This is not a good idea.” Mark’s lost the lollipop, but he hasn’t yet managed to find a convincingly serious expression. I doubt that day will ever come.

“Well,” I say, “as the inventor of Pick Me Ups, you, my dear Marcus, are not allowed to comment on what is and isn’t a bad idea.”

I reach the third floor ahead of Mark and E, and Petal immediately points to a space in the middle of the barn. I follow her finger. The gnome’s glossy ceramic coat winks up at me from the bales of hay.

I smile to thank her for bringing my ref as Mark and E join us.

Mark takes a look over the edge, and his face pales. It’s a long way to fall. He steps back from the edge and starts yammering about plans to get a gun so we can play Russian roulette instead. Pet bobs her head up and down like a buoy in the ocean. But we all know there’s nothing about this buoy that’s going to keep her afloat.

I am silent, but unafraid. Completely unafraid. I slide toward the edge. Creep toward my fall.

E puts a hand on my shoulder before I can get too far. “Why?” he asks. “Why do you do this?”

I don’t say anything, and neither does Mark. But Petal—softhearted Petal—finally gives E the explanation he’s been hankering after. About Pick Me Ups. About Amy. And even as she says it all, even as she tells him about
how Mark thought we could use Pick Me Ups to understand Amy, it sounds forced and stupid. Because it’s more than that. It’s so much fucking more than that.

Explosive Boy doesn’t seem too convinced. “Is this really the best way for you guys to get close to Amy?” he asks. “And I mean, no offense, but I didn’t even know Amy. There’s really not much of a reason for me to be tossing myself off shit and putting a gun to my head. I don’t want to die.”

He doesn’t get it. Pick Me Ups aren’t only about death. They’re about really, truly feeling the world around you. They’re about the rush. The way the blood floods your head, pounds in your eardrums. The wind whistling by as you fall. And of course, the adrenaline spike when you hit the ground.

This is about living as much as it is about dying. About pleasure as much as it is about pain.

Petal shakes her head at E. “You don’t understand anything,” she says, echoing my thoughts. “What are you even doing here? You just want to get into Ella’s pants, don’t you?” She raises her eyebrows. If he says no, she’ll make social mincemeat of him at school.

We know. He knows.

But judging by the grin on his face, he doesn’t care. Maybe Explosive Boys don’t do well socially, anyway.

“You got me.” He holds up his hands, palms out.
Surrenders. “But jumping off things isn’t going to get me into Ella’s pants. And almost killing yourself isn’t going to get you into Amy’s mind.”

“What do you know?
What?
” My voice shrieks, grating like sandpaper against his cheeks. I can practically see it obliterating his freckles. I want to swear so fucking badly. But swearing would be an admission that he’s right.

He isn’t. Pick Me Ups are worth it. I’m getting my memories back.