Falling to Pieces (3 page)

“No, thank you. We’ll be fine. Thanks for the ride.”

“It’s not a problem.” He unclipped my helmet and carefully lifted it off. “You ever feel like going for another one, let me know.”

I had absolutely no idea how to translate that, but I was certain it involved him laughing at me some more.

“Yeah. Right. Sure. Thanks.” Normal people can manage more than one word sentences. Not me.

“Have a good weekend, Jade.”

“You, too.” There. Two words. That was progress. Too bad I doubt he heard it because he was already peeling out of the complex.

I stood on the sidewalk watching him go, wishing I was still on the back of that bike, leaving this place behind
, too.

“Jade!” My mother’s bark cut through my daydream as effectively as a
n ice cold bucket of water. “Move your ass. You know I can’t lift these heavy things.”

I knew all right. She hadn’t been able to lift so much as a trash bag since she’d thrown her back out in a ‘workplace injury’ when I was in elementary school. Workman’s comp had lasted a while, but when that ran out and lawyers were too expensive to file a lawsuit against the shipping company she’d worked for, we were left with only unemployment. It wasn’t much, but it covered rent and beer. What else could we possibly need?

Four trips up three flights of stairs later, I was sweating like a pig and had decidedly accomplished my workout for the month. All I wanted was to climb into a shower and then crawl back into bed where I planned to rouse my study habits from hibernation. We were three weeks into classes and my first exam was coming up. Time to crack a book.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

I glanced from my mother, to the fridge, to the stack of empty beer cases near the garbage can, and back to my mother again. Realization hit me and I sighed. Trudging back to the refrigerator, I removed four cans and placed them in the freezer.

“
How dare you
?” Mom crossed her arms and glared at me from beneath lowered brows, her small mouth puckered like she’d tasted something sour. My stomach dropped. “How dare you act like your life is so difficult? I’m the one saddled with an ungrateful brat. I’m the one who has to worry about things like rent, and bills. I feed you, keep a roof over your head, clothes on your back. I certainly don’t have to. I could just dump your sorry ass, like I should have when you were born. Like your father did.”

“I’m sorry.” What was wrong with me? I felt nauseated
with disgust for myself. All I wanted to do was make her happy. Make everyone happy. I just wanted people to like me. But the harder I tried to do the right things, say the right things, look and act the right way, the worse I made it.

All thoughts of studying discarded in the corner of my room along with my stack of books, I crawled into bed and pulled the blanket over my head, silently wishing it could devour me whole. Save everyone else the trouble of my existence.

Three

Gym class existed for one reason and one reason, only. Two hours a week was not enough to keep anyone in shape. No. Its sole purpose was to humiliate people like me. And if the whole running, jumping, athletic thing wasn’t enough, there had to be witnesses. A whole class full of them. A class including not only Doug and his friends, but Kiernan Parks, as well. Gym class was very close to what I imagined the seventh level of hell to be like.

The sport of the week was announced as volleyball and I wanted to bang my head against a wall somewhere. Not that it really mattered, I would have had the same reaction to pretty much any sport known to mankind. I wasn’t exactly what you’d call coordinated.

The teachers had already divided the class into teams—because allowing us to choose for
ourselves could have been ‘embarrassing’ and caused ‘self-esteem issues’. That didn’t do anything to help with the groans, though—the loudest coming from Doug when I was assigned to his team. The only mercy I received was that Kiernan was on the opposing side.

We broke up, each team claiming their side of the court, and fell into position, which basically consisted of Doug directing me as far out of the way as he could get me. And so, the torture began. I suffered through a solid half-hour of pure panic, praying each and every time the ball was hit that it wouldn’t come anywhere near me. And I was doing okay
, until I ended up positioned dead center in the court. Everyone rotated so there really was no avoiding it. Just like there was no avoiding it when Jeff served for our team and Kiernan returned it . . . straight to me. I tried to get my arms up, I really did, but being the total spaz that I was, couldn’t quite manage it. The volleyball bounced off my shoulder and landed on the floor at my feet.

I stood there for several long moments that bordered on eternity, staring down at it, terrified to lift my eyes and face my teammates. Could I be a bigger loser? Finally, Jeff—one of Doug’s
football teammates—stepped in, scooping up the ball and tossing it to the other side.

“Nice try.”

Why don’t you do us all a favor and play for the other team?

He clapped me on the shoulder before moving to his next spot in the rotation. I couldn’t blame him for being sore. He was an athlete. It was in his nature to be competitive and, God, I sucked. Like a
freaking black hole.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, shuffling into the
side row.

I waited for the other side to serve, until I was sure no one was paying attention to me, and slipped away. Snagging the bathroom pass from the wall beside the door, I waved it at Mr.
Peterson—the morbidly overweight gym teacher who liked to yell at us to ‘run faster’, while simultaneously stuffing Oreos in his big mouth—before ducking out of the room.

Away from the echoes of shouts and shoes, I locked the stall door and sat on the lid of the toilet, pulling my knees to my chest. I needed a minute. A minute to compose myself. A minute to swallow back the tears threatening their way to the surface. I took a deep breath and held it. The
smell wasn’t exactly conducive to deep breathing, but it was better than returning to class with red eyes and a blotchy face.

One lone, rebel tear squeezed its way out from beneath my lashes and trickled down my cheek before I swiped it away. I was
n’t going to cry. Not here. Not now. Not about stupid volleyball . . .
Why did I have to be so bad at everything?
. . . Or stupid Jeff . . .
Couldn’t I do anything right?
. . . Or stupid Doug . . .
Get through one day without embarrassing myself?
. . . And definitely not about stupid Kiernan Parks.

Everyone just wanted me to go away, to disappear, and I would have been all too happy to comply, but the world—and those
damn gym teachers—just kept pushing me back out there, demanding that I ‘participate’. Thankfully, they were collecting balls and tearing down nets by the time I returned. Clean up I could handle.

“Hey.” Kiernan jogged up behind me as I started rolling a net. “You okay?”

Oh crap, was my face a mess? Did I take too long in the bathroom? God only knew what everyone would be thinking then.

“I didn’t hurt you, did I? With the ball?”

Did you pull something in all your spastic flailing?

“No.” I really did not want to talk about it. “I’m fine.”

“Okay. Just wanted to make sure.” He bit his lip, watching me as I continued to roll the net. “Sorry about that.”

“My fault.” I was the disaster out there. What did he have to apologize for?

“I just—”

“Jesus, Jade, you roll the net about as well as you play the game.” Doug tugged the net from my hands and started rerolling it. “Can’t you do anything right?”

I swallowed the shame and stared at my feet as Kiernan’s eyes flicked from me, to Doug, and back again. Scowl etched firmly in place, he backed away as though he didn’t want to be seen with me any longer. I could relate.

“Sorry, Doug.”

“Just go get changed. You’re going to make us late.”

The locker room was already crowded by the time I trudged in. Something I hated. It meant
there would be a line for the bathroom. Most girls used the mirrors to check their hair and reapply makeup. Not me. I scooped up my clothes and waited for an open stall. They had enough to talk about with my clothes
on.
The last thing I needed was for prying eyes to get a glimpse of what was underneath. Victoria’s Secret model, I was not.

As expected, Doug was impatiently waiting outside the locker room door by the time I finished.

“Took you long enough. Thought you’d at least accomplish a little more than,” he scanned my body head to toe, “
that
.”

I sighed. I wasn’t very good at accomplishing things. He of all people should know that by now. He’d seen me fail enough times.

Somehow I managed to make it through the rest of the afternoon without any more scarring incidents. Kiernan avoided me like a pro, except in the lunch room, where he appeared thoroughly annoyed by my presence, glaring at the table where I sat beside Doug as he devoured his sandwich and half of mine. I don’t know what his problem was. I’d practically handed his team the win,

***

Stress was exhausting. And since stress was practically my middle name, nothing sounded better than a nice long nap by the time I got home. Wasn’t that wishful thinking? The chemistry test was tomorrow and I was unprepared. The word ‘woefully’ sprung to mind. All the studying I hadn’t accomplished while hiding from the world all weekend needed to happen. It was going to be a long night.

I had no idea just how long until about a half-hour in. I was sitting at the kitchen table, listening to mom snore from where she’d passed out on the couch, a grand total of two pages into the text, when she started gagging.

“Mom?” Shit, this happened sometimes. She’d drink so much her body would try to get rid of it in her sleep. A couple years ago, she’d nearly drowned in her own vomit. If I hadn’t been there . . .

Shoving my chair back, I rushed to her side and carefully rolled her onto her side. “Mom, can you—?”

She gagged again, her entire body heaving, and vile, nasty puke spewed all over the floor, the couch, and—

“
Augh!” I jumped back, but not in time. Hands up in disgust, I stared down at the warm slime plastering my jeans to my leg. “Oh, my God. Oh. Ew.”

Mom flopped back and I
slopped through the mess to reposition her on her side again, in case there was a round two to come.

“Gross, mom.” Her hair was stuck to the side of her face and vomit covered most of her shirt. What the hell was I supposed to do with this? “Mom, you
gotta get up. I gotta clean this up.”

Nothing. She was out cold.

“Mom! Come on, get up!” I shook her and still nothing. This wasn’t going to work.

“Fine.” Heaving a sigh, I peeled off my soiled jeans and tossed them in the corner. Grabbing the whole roll of paper towels, I mopped up the mess on the floor and as much as I could get off the couch.

Then came the fun part, moving mom. She was dead weight and, for a skinny woman, heavy as hell. With no small effort, I hoisted her up to sitting and managed to strip off her shirt.

She slumped over to the opposite end of the couch as I mopped up her face, chest, and hair as
best as I could with only wet paper towels to work with. Not a chance I was getting her all the way to the shower. She’d have to take care of that herself when she came to.

After that, I attacked the couch again, scrubbing the stains until the pale green spots faded back into the normal ugly rust color. Thank God it was still warm out, because the stench was nearly overwhelming. I opened every window in the apartment and drained a bottle of air freshener.

The whole process took longer than you’d imagine. It was dark out by the time I stepped out of the shower and tossed all of our dirty clothes into a wash bag to haul over to the laundry room. We couldn’t afford to let them stain.

The hypnotic sounds of whirls and thumps nearly lulled me to sleep in the hard plastic chair as I watched our clothes go round, and round, and round. My chemistry book sat open and ignored in my lap. We lived right next door, but I’d learned my lesson about leaving my wash unattended the hard way not long after we moved in. I’d run home to grab some more money just to find our entire load of clothing
stolen by the time I got back. That wasn’t about to happen twice.

I was switching the load over to the dryer when my all-time favorite person on the planet sauntered in. DJ Wallace, rocking his signature slicked back hairstyle
. A cigarette dangled from his fingers as he released a stream of smoke from between his lips. I assume it was supposed to make him look cool, but all it did was cement the ‘bad news’ rep he had going for him. I was pretty sure he was on a first name basis with half the cops in the area.

“You got anything for me tonight,
sweetness?”

I glanced around the room, over the rusted machine
s and battered chairs, to the peeling linoleum tiles on the floor. “You’re seriously trying to rob me in a laundry room? Does it look like I have anything for you?”

“Didn’t say I wanted your money.”

Skeeved goose-bumps broke out over my skin. I wasn’t really afraid of him. He was trouble, everyone knew that. But it was also common knowledge that he lived by the motto, ‘don’t shit where you eat’. He might have raised hell elsewhere, but he left everyone who called this pit home alone.
Usually
.

“Get lost, DJ.” I don’t know what it was about him—maybe the fact that I’d have to sink pretty low for him to look down on me—but I felt more confident talking to DJ than pretty much anybody else on the planet. Not that that made it any better. His presence alone was enough to make my skin crawl.

“Ah, c’mon. Don’t be like that. I’ve had my eye on you, Jade.”

Goodie
goodie gumdrop. Mom would be so proud. Actually . . . she might be. Slamming the lid of the dryer a little harder than necessary, I shoved in my last few quarters and resumed my seat near the wall.

“What’s this?” Before I could stop him,
DJ tugged the book out of my hands and flipped it shut to take a look at the cover. “Chemistry? Well, aren’t you a smarty.”

Next to him, an ant hill looked like a brain trust. “Give it back.”

“Hold on, I want to take a look at what important things they’re teaching youngsters these days.”

He might actually know if he’d bothered to attend a single day of school in the past three years. Flipping through the pages, he tore one out to take a closer look.

“Hey! Knock it off!” I jumped from my seat, planning to rescue the book, but when he produced a lighter from his pocket, I backed off. DJ wasn’t exactly known for his mental stability. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to get your attention.”

“You’ve got it.”

“I’m not so sure that’s true. I think you’re still thinking about this here book. But . . .
if the book wasn’t in the picture anymore . . .” He lit the page and watched it burn until he couldn’t hold it any longer before dropping it to the floor. It shriveled and curled into itself until there was nothing left but a pile of ash.

And DJ. Still holding my chemistry book.

“DJ, please? Don’t do this. I really need that book for school.”

“
Psh. School. Who needs school? So worried about being teacher’s pet and getting straight A’s. Where does that get ya? Do they pay you for good grades now? Will A’s take care of the bills? Buy the things you need? Build your cred? Does anyone even notice? I could provide that shit for you, ya know. Better than some damn report card.”

I flinched as the book banged off the hard plastic chair and fell to the floor. DJ strolled back out the door he came from, looking none the worse for wear, and I sunk into my seat, letting the repetitive thump of the dryer sooth my raw nerves. I knew he was an idiot, a drop-out, a petty criminal, and probably
high, but his words spiraled around and around my brain for the next twenty minutes.