Shattered (5 page)

I shrugged my shoulders and headed toward his Jeep.  “Nah, don’t need it.” I opened the door and took my seat in the Jeep Wrangler.  I watched him climb into the driver’s seat and nervously fumble at getting his keys out of his pocket.  When he finally managed to start the engine, he turned to me.  His lip was between his teeth again and his deep green eyes smiled at me. I swallowed and tried to remain calm as I felt my pulse speed. He shifted the Jeep into gear and started out of the driveway.  Instead of drawing his hand back to the steering wheel, he grabbed my hand, entwining our fingers together and sending a jolt of electricity through me.  My anxiety flew out of the open cab of the vehicle and let me know, without a word, that what I was feeling wasn’t one sided.

We sat silently, hand in hand, as we drove down the driveway and turned on to the road, listening to only to the roar of Garrett’s exhausts ahead of us and the beating of our blissful hearts.  Then, just as Garrett’s truck disappeared over the hill, the constant roar coming from his tailpipes suddenly stopped.  The rumble was replaced with the sounds of tires squealing, crinkling metal and breaking glass.  Jesse and I looked at each other as we tried to decipher the auditory jumble.  He sped up and what we saw as we crested the hill would be forever burned in our minds.  A bright green combine with its harvest head tangled with white metal and rubber.  Jesse slammed the Jeep into park and we rushed to what was left of Garrett’s truck.  The driver of the combine threw open the door of the cab and carefully maneuvered his way down, unscathed.  He’d already pulled his cell phone from his pocket and dialed for help.  As we approached the wreckage, and saw the blood, we knew there was nothing we, or anyone else, could do.

 When Fire and Rescue finally made it to the scene, Jesse was pacing back and forth, not saying a word.  I’d fallen to my knees and began picking up pieces of the broken glass that was scattered around me, absentmindedly shoving in my pockets. Doing the only thing I could do in the surreal, out of control moment.  We gave the police our statement for the accident report and followed the ambulance to the hospital.  We didn’t speak the entire thirty-minute drive into the city and Jesse never again took my hand in his.

I walked into my bedroom and changed into my pajamas.  I was overwhelmed by the way my day had played out.  I should have stayed in bed.  I threw myself to the safety of my pillow, wanting to curl up under the covers and try to fall asleep.  I knew it would be impossible with everything that was running through my head.  I sat up, crossed my legs Indian-style, and stared around the room.  The purple walls of the room reflected the girl I used to be.  The girl who hung posters of her favorite bands, collected vintage postcards and was excited about all the possibilities that her future held. My eyes settled in on my new collection, a mason jar filled with bits and pieces of broken glass.  When I’d returned home from the hospital I’d emptied my pockets, saving each tiny fragment I’d picked up on the roadside.  Over the last nine months, I’d added to the jar.  I’d always heard people tell stories of seeing birds or butterflies that they’d believed a departed loved one sent to them.  I always seemed to stumble across pieces of broken glass.  I used to think that each piece I found was a sign from Garrett, letting me know that piece by piece I would forgive myself for what had happened and let go of the sadness that seemed to follow me around like a storm cloud.  It was almost full now. Slivers of broken beer bottles that I’d found at parties, shards of windows that were broken by the town miscreants on Halloween, a handful of fragments from a shattered backboard on the school playground, now mingled in a muddled kaleidoscope of colors.  What started out as wishful thinking, angel given signs from above, was now just an imprisoned lot of dirty, broken pieces that used to belong to beautifully glistening wholes.  Just like I used to.  The relationship I’d once had with Garrett and Jesse was now comparable to broken window.

The helpless feeling that so often crept up on me came rushing through my system.  The words of my mother echoed in my mind.  I slid to the edge of the bed and placed my feet on the floor.  Then I did what I thought I needed to do.  I went over to the top drawer of my desk and pulled the medicine bottle from its place of rest.  Fumbling with the small white cap until I managed to remove it, I spilled the contents in my hand and picked up one of the tiny peach colored pills, before placing it in my mouth and swallowing it, along with the feelings that were choking me.

Jesse

I spent the entire morning thinking about her.  Today was her high school graduation and I went back and forth with the idea of going.  I remembered seeing her smiling face in the crowd last year when Garrett and I graduated.  She was cheering and taking pictures like some crazy mother.  It was cute.

I’d opened all the windows of the apartment I lived in above the bar.  I’d been gone for a while and the place needed airing out.  After Garrett died, I’d needed to get away.  I wanted her to go with me, but when I went to ask her to move to Florida with me, my plans changed.

The day after the funeral, I made up my mind.  Alyssa was the only reason I had to stay in this town.  My parents were gone.  My sister was happily married and could take care of the bar.  Me, Garrett and Alyssa had made plans.  We were gonna kiss this podunk town good-bye as soon as Lyss graduated.  We would head down to Florida to work for my uncle.  I knew she had a year left of high school, but after losing Garrett I thought we could both use a fresh start.  She was almost eighteen. She could finish high school anywhere.  Before I headed over to her house, I even looked up the name of the high school in Fort Meyers, Florida.  I could work on the fishing boat, she could finish high school and we could start trying to pick up the piece of our lives. Together.

I felt bad about the way I’d handled everything.  I was still in shock at the funeral.  I hadn’t comforted her the way I should have.  I’d never, in a million years, thought about losing someone so close to me.  I was only eighteen, I shouldn’t have had to attend my best friend’s funeral.  I pulled into her driveway with the printouts on what I’d found out about the school in Florida.  I was going to tell her that I loved her and wanted to take her away from this place that was now tarnished with the memories of losing Garrett.  Just as I was about to knock on the front door her mother appeared beside me on the wrap around front porch.

“What are you doing here?”  she asked sternly, with her arms crossed.  I knew she’d never liked me.  I could never figure out why.

“Hello, Mrs. Boyd.”  I smiled politely, trying to win her over.  “I came to see Alyssa. I need to tal…”

“She isn’t up for company,” she interrupted.

“It will only take a minute.  I wanted to show her something.”  

“Jesse, Alyssa has been through a lot this week.”  It annoyed me that she acted like I hadn’t.  I was there.  Right next to her daughter when we pulled up on the accident.  I’d lost him too.

“I know. I need to see her.  I wanted to ask her to go to Florida with me.  I know she has to finish high school, but she can down there.  I already found a high school for her.”

She hesitated for moment, shaking her head as my proposal sank in. “She doesn’t want to see you.”  I felt like she’d just punched me in the gut.  I’d seen that girl every day for the past six years and now all of the sudden she didn’t want to see me.

“What do you mean?”

“I didn’t want to have to tell you this, but Alyssa told me that she can’t look at you right now.  It’s too upsetting for her.”  I didn’t have a response.  I broke my eyes from Mrs. Boyd’s cold stare.  Through the window, I could see Alyssa.  She was sitting on the living room sofa, with a vacant stare on her face.  The glow that she usually had, had been washed from her face and replaced with nothing.  All I could do was think about her mother’s words.  Maybe I couldn’t fix this.  I let the idea of taking her away, and my heart, shatter into a million pieces.  If she didn’t want to see me, I wasn’t going to force her too.  

“Maybe it’d be best if you went without her. She needs time to heal and she‘s not going to be able to do that with you here.”

I could do that. I could give her time to heal.  The girl sitting in that living room was just a shell of the spunky, free-spirited girl I knew.  Perhaps her mother was right.  I would do anything to make her happy again.  I looked at her sad, sweet face one more time before I left.  I’d regretted that decision each day since.

I decided against going to graduation.  As much as wanted to see her, to talk to her, I wasn’t sure I could handle being in the gym again.  The last time I was there it was for Garrett’s funeral and it was hard.  The last thing I wanted to do was cause a scene.  God knows, people in this town love drama.  I just imagined them all talking about Jesse Vaughn losing his shit at the high school graduation.

I logged on to Facebook and saw that Smolder’s was having a party that night.  I thought she might go; maybe I could catch up with her then.  I typed her name in the search bar and pulled up her page.  I never posted anything on there.  I’d left my account open with the sole purpose of checking up on her.  Unfortunately, she hadn’t posted any pictures or status updates since Garrett’s accident.  Every now and then, January would tag a picture or status with her name in it.  I was glad that she had someone to hang out with.  It made me sad that it wasn’t me.  The last thing Alyssa posted was a picture of her and Garrett a few days before the accident.  I must have taken it and not even remembered.  Garrett was carrying her on his back.  She had her arms wrapped around his neck and was grinning from ear to ear, while he was trudging on acting like she was forcing him to carry her.  His fake look of contempt made me chuckle.  Both of us would have done anything for her.  It came back to me, we’d been fishing all day and on our way back to the truck her sandal strap broke.  Garrett carried her all the way back because she didn’t want to walk up the dirt path that led from the pond back to the road with her bare feet.  It drove me crazy how she hated to get dirty.  But who was I kidding, I would’ve carried her twenty miles if she asked me too.  Sometimes I got jealous about her and Garrett’s relationship.  We were all friends, but the two of them were really close.  I asked him one time if he liked her as more than friend.  He just smiled at me, “I’m just waiting for you to make a move, Romeo,” he laughed.  He’d talk my envy down, reassuring me that she was like his sister and he never looked at her as anything else. He’d spent the better part of last year pushing me to tell her how I felt about her.  “A girl like that isn’t going to wait around forever,” he said.

God, I hoped I hadn’t royal fucked up by leaving.  What if Garrett was right?  What if she didn’t wait around?

Alyssa

“As we close the door on our childhood, many more open with possibilities for greatness…”  January’s voice echoed through the sound system as she gave the speech she’d worked her whole life for.  She’d told me for weeks how nervous she was about speaking in front of, pretty much, our entire town.  The gym was packed with family, friends and faculty.  As I sat there looking out on the crowd, in a medicated haze, I tried to pick out my parents in the crowd.  I knew that when January finished her speech, I’d be forced to walk out into the crowd, hand my mother a flower and thank her and my father for their sacrifices to get me to where I was today.  My mother would inevitably throw her arms around me and act as if she were truly proud of her daughter’s accomplishments. My father would smile and nod.  Graduation was about the only possible excuse to pull my dad from his farming schedule.  “These are prime planting days, Alyssa,” he’d say.     My dad, like so many others in the town, had his priorities thoroughly confused.  I think it was somewhere along the line of: planting, harvesting, money, then way down the on list, family.  It was typical for the fathers in this town to leave the child rearing to their wives, so the only time I really ever saw my dad was at supper, and that’s only if he’d done absolutely everything he
had
to do in the field.

“Here’s to you Class of 2012!” The applause rang out as January finished her speech.  A recorded symphony of violins began playing through the speakers, followed by an angelic voice spouting metaphors of taking chances and becoming everything we could be.  I stood one long stemmed rose in hand, and shuffled my feet under my black graduation gown as I crossed the gym floor to the third row of folding chairs where my parents were seated.  My mother stood and straightened out her perfectly coordinated outfit and took the rose from my hand.  She wrapped her arms around me in a rehearsed scene of endearment.  I didn’t even bother listening to her pretend spiel about being proud of me.  My dad and I shared an awkward hug and I returned to my seat.  When I look around, I realized I was the first one back from the group.  I watched as my classmates and their parents wiped tears from their eyes.  If it weren’t for the pills, I probably would have been jealous that they were all sharing such emotional moments, but the ability to form an emotional reaction was suppressed.  I’d almost decided to forgo the pills this morning, insisting to myself that I was strong enough to handle the pain that came with being in the gym, but the idea of not dealing with the feelings won out.

After graduation was over, I floated through the celebratory dinner held at the Community Center, mindlessly picking at the pork chop dinner that was served and graciously accepting the monetary gifts from friends and family.  I pocketed almost $700 dollars which would undoubtedly go in to the “get the hell out of here” fund. All but $20 of it anyway.  I decided as I was driving home to make a quick stop.  I pulled down an alley and stopped my car behind the house of Dan Gathard, aka “Party Man Dan”  He was a thirty-something local, who had refused to let go of his high school glory days.  He was a frequent guest at many parties and was always the oldest one there by at least 10 years.  He didn’t seem to mind and we didn’t mind him being there. He was the biggest contributor to our alcoholic delinquency.  I rapped on the back door and he greeted me dressed as if he just raided a closeout sale at Abercrombie & Fitch.  While most guys his age had all but given up on dressing cool, he made a concentrated effort to blend in with the younger generation and, in his mind, he was just as cool as he was at eighteen.