The Truth About Fragile Things (5 page)

I
navigated
school like a criminal the next day, slowing when I reached corners, scanning hallways before I entered. While most of my body stifled under a numb dread, my ears hummed with life, catching every sound, waiting to hear my name in a fascinated whisper. I jumped when Mrs. Dexter called on me in sociology. I flinched when someone shouted my name, only to turn and find they were yelling to a different Megan—a  Megan I wished I was at that moment. When last hour ended, I bolted. If anyone had found out I didn’t want to know until the next morning. It meant one more night of sleeping in the safety of my secret.

When the doorbell rang at home that evening I was the only person there to answer. Mom was picking up Lauren from dance class and my dad wouldn’t be home until after dinner. Half of my nails were wet with a pale gold polish because I needed to distract myself and try to slow down my heart after its constant racing all day. My bottle of “Hollywood Dust” was working a little, my breathing regular as I painted stripe by careful stripe, until the bell echoed through the silent house and startled me.

I looked down the hall to the staircase, trying to judge if it was worth it to put away my polish and hop down the stairs. I weighed the chances of it being a guy selling pest control or an alarm system. Just as I pulled the applicator back out and decided to ignore the door it rang again. There was an urgency to the sound, something that reminded me of the way my blood pulsed in my fingers whenever I scanned a hallway at school looking for Charlotte. I blew out a frustrated breath, dropped the applicator back into the bottle and spread my fingers carefully. Just as I reached the top step the person started knocking.

“Patience is a virtue ,” I said in an exasperated whisper. I pushed my hair off of my forehead with the back of my wrist and opened the door.

Charlotte stared back at me, her sandy hair too thick and heavy to move in the light breeze. Her dense eyebrows gathered together, but not in open anger like the first time she saw me in the cafeteria. She seemed to be battling something inside, her light brown eyes guarded.

“Charlotte,” I said. It was neither question nor rebuke. I felt an unexpected calm despite slamming head-on into the moment I’d been dreading. Relief washed over me that this scene was playing out in total privacy.

“You know me?” she asked. There was a depth to her voice, something husky and low. I registered her surprise just as she leaned back, doubt spilling over her soft features.

“I do now. My friend Phillip asked around and found out your name. Then I realized.” I glanced down to my nails, upset that they were wet. Upset that such an important moment was hindered by something as stupid as sticky nail polish. I could not reach out to her. Did not have the option even if I dared. “Do you want to come in?”

She looked past me into the house like it was a trap. I tried to make it easier for her. “I’m here alone. Or we have a bench in the backyard.”

She nodded with her eyes, just a fast blink and a turn. I closed the screen behind me and led her to my mom’s cement bench in the garden. Guilt balled in my stomach as I sat. Mom always sent us to this spot for time-outs and I sensed the ghost of every past transgression as I took a seat—
Megan, no lying. Megan, you didn’t clean your room. Megan, don’t tease Lauren. Megan, you killed that girl’s father. Go sit on the bench.

The concrete was cool through my jeans and I adjusted myself at one end, spreading my fingers across my lap. I realized we were both studying the metallic paint against the pale white of my skin. Only four fingers done. The pinky was a blank slate. The color looked wrong on me. Everyone would know that I don’t really care about fingernails; would know it was a shallow attempt to blend into the pack. Just like my failed experiment last year with lipstick. You can’t paint a smile on me. It doesn’t work.

Charlotte held a piece of paper, but she hid it against her legs out of my sight, unwilling to share. My tongue followed the shape of my teeth as I wondered if it was the article from the day he died. I pulled my unpainted hand into a fist as I imagined how many times she had held those newspaper clippings and watched the footage of grim reporters showing me unharmed, piles of flowers left by the curb.

“I didn’t know we’d go to the same school,” I told her.

“We wouldn’t have. My mom remarried. We moved the end of last year.”

Remarried because she lost her first husband. Because of you.
I heard it in the way she clenched and stretched her fingers. I looked down where the first impatient mums were starting to bud at my feet. “How did you know I was here?”

“I heard your name at school. I’ve always known your name.” Her face twisted with a quiet pain. I dropped my gaze, ashamed I never learned hers. “I just double-checked and found out you were the same girl. I knew the second I saw you. I could tell.”

I gave myself one second to look at her. That seemed the longest I could bear the heat in her eyes without it scalding me. I would have never known she was the baby in the red blanket. I stopped and stared at her red shirt, wondering if I was making the blanket color up or if I had really seen it once in a picture. It didn’t matter. There was no way to wrap her up and make her feel better now. Our pain outgrows our comforts sometimes.

 “I’m here to forgive you,” she stated, the angry tone contradicting her words. I looked at her and found the same fearless determination I saw the first time she met my eyes. She was not afraid of me at all. Not afraid to offend me or trouble me or crush me. I wondered if she knew that she could do all three.

“It wasn’t my idea—to forgive you,” she continued. “It was my dad’s.”

“Your stepdad?” I tried to clarify.

Her eyes narrowed as she recoiled. Everything about her looked like a snake drawing back to strike. “My
dad
. You only get one.”

I wanted to ask her what she meant, but the question that came out was one I didn’t know I harbored. “Do you remember him?”

“No,” she snapped. “Not at all.”

She let the truth settle in with the silence and it was blacker and more terrible than I imagined.
So that’s it. I took all of him. Didn’t even leave a memory
. My eyelashes crushed back a tear, but it escaped out the far corner of my eye into my hair.

“What do you mean it was his idea to forgive me?” I silently prayed he had spoken from the grave, or predicted the future, or something miraculous and indisputable happened to confirm that he held nothing against me. “How would he have known?”

She made a scoffing noise and pulled her hand up so I could see an old sheet of notebook paper, legal sized and folded over to fit inside a plastic page protector. “He didn’t know you. It’s just the closest I could get.”

“I don’t understand.”

Charlotte flashed the paper toward me. “My dad left a list. A list of things he wanted to do someday.” She clenched her teeth together and it reminded me of a dog warning someone to back away. “This is the most important thing I own.”

A razor sharp anchor dropped through me, slicing my heart as it sank into the blackness of my stomach. Sometimes I forgot how much I had stolen. Every dream. Every accomplishment. He had thought of his tomorrows. Planned them.

“The first thing on the list is to forgive his dad.” She shifted the paper even closer to me, revealing the first thing of Bryon Exby I ever saw other than a picture in a newspaper—his handwriting. It was small and tight and difficult to read. But there it was:
Forgive my father even though he doesn’t deserve it.

“I don’t…” I started.

“His dad was a jerk. I never met him but my mom says he left when my dad was a teenager. They never made up. But my dad wanted to forgive him. My grandpa died three years ago before my mom ever showed me this list. Since I can’t go forgive my grandpa for him I had to think of someone else to forgive. And I thought of you.”

Because you killed him.
The rest of her sentence hung horrible and indestructible in the air. I took a breath but it seemed to jump sideways, miss my lungs, and pass like a cold wind through me.

“I thought if I did something on his list it might be…” She ran out of words and fumbled for a new sentence. “Maybe I would feel…”

“Better?” I asked her.

“Maybe.”

“Do you?”

She looked up at me with no emotion other than bewilderment. “I have no idea. I don’t think so.”

“I’m sorry it’s not working,” I dropped the words like a robot. All I could process were the words on the page:
even though he doesn’t deserve it.

“Maybe it would if I meant it. I’m trying to forgive you. I guess I just don’t … want to.” She slid her hands over her tanned legs and grabbed her knees, her knuckles paled by the strength of her grip.

I compared the picture of Bryon Exby in my mind to the girl next to me. He was black and white. She was sun-kissed and sarcastic. I could not connect the two. “Maybe you started with the hardest one. Is there anything easier on the list?”

She lifted the page from the bench where she set it and let me read.

Forgive my father even though he doesn’t deserve it

Surprise party

Skinny dipping

Walk Char down the aisle

Watch a meteor shower

Give Melissa diamond earrings

Whitewater rafting

Perform live on stage

Backpack without a tent

Sleep under the stars in a hammock

“I don’t think he ever finished writing it,” she told me before I got to the bottom of the list. “I think he was just doodling. My mom found it in his work notebook a couple of years after he died. It’s a short list. It can’t be everything.”

“Surprise parties aren’t hard,” I offered.

Her eyes met mine. “I’m not exactly in a party mood.”

“You could sleep under the stars,” I tried again.

“I did. I mean, I will. I tried a sleeping bag in my backyard last year, but it didn’t feel right. It wasn’t the right spot. I’ll figure out a way to do it all. I just figured, ‘start at the top.’” Her voice was rough, defensive, and she stood up. “At least I tried.” Her eyes passed over me and I felt an emptiness as she took in my dark hair, my face, my arching eyebrows, my long body. I knew what she was seeing. She was seeing a girl not worth her father’s life. A girl who didn’t “deserve it.”

She started to walk away, but at the fence she threw her rich voice over her shoulder. “I won’t stare at you anymore. I’ve seen enough.”

Something broke inside me. I’d been found wanting. Not even worth her contempt. I glanced down and saw a gnat stuck on my wet fingernail. One wing struggled but there was no hope. He would die on my hand.

I wanted to apologize. And fight. There was a battle warring under my skin. I followed her to the front yard and my voice came out broken and uncertain. “I could help you, you know.”

Charlotte stood still, only halfway turned to me, her eyes darted on my face the way light strikes and retreats on lapping water.

“I don’t need your help,” she said. But it was like a bad lip reading because I heard her asking me to realize she was lying. She built up volume and continued. “I don’t even know if any of this counts. You can’t do a bucket list for someone else, can you? The point is to do it before you die. So, that sucks.”

She was asking me to disagree, to prove to her that she could somehow reach her father through that small slip of paper. “I think you can,” I promised. “But some of those are big things. You might need help. You can’t drive. I have a car.”

She wavered. Her resolve tilted, just like her chin that she tipped to the side as she assessed me. “We don’t have to get my mom diamond earrings. Doctor Dave already did that.” Her expression soured.

“Who’s Doctor Dave?” I asked.

“My old therapist. Apparently that whole doctor/patient thing doesn’t apply to parents. While I was telling him about my dad, he was falling in love with my mom.” Her raspy voice nailed disdain. She made disgust its own dialect. If she didn’t have such smooth, plump cheeks and eyes the color of graham crackers I would swear she was a bitter old woman.

“So that’s one down.” I pulled on my hair and shook it behind my shoulders the way I do when I’m nervous. “You can pick what to do next.” When her demeanor softened I tried one last tactic. “It might help with the first thing on the list. Might help you forgive me, I mean. If I help you.”

“Maybe,” she conceded. “But only if we do it all my way. I only call you if I can’t do it alone.”

I nodded. I heard her real terms: I am in charge. You obey my orders. You owe me.

“One condition,” I pushed back. Her eyes flared with indignation, but I kept speaking. “You tell me about your dad.”

That seemed to placate her. She took a step closer to me and I thought of her father, wishing I could remember the moment he saved me. Wishing I could see the look in his eyes when he made his choice. As Charlotte wrestled with her decision I realized that might be the closest I would ever come to witnessing that instant.

When she still didn’t answer I wondered what she was waiting for. Wondered what I said wrong. What I didn’t say. “I never got to thank him,” I added. “ I’ve always wanted to. Maybe if I helped you I would finally feel like I got to do that. Say thank you.” I was two years older and half a foot taller, but I stood nervously under Charlotte’s gaze. She was right. I owed her. I owed everyone. If I didn’t find a way to pay somebody back I would be the one thing I couldn’t bear—I would be useless.

“Okay,” she agreed.

My breath rushed over my lips and the wind washed the sigh of relief somewhere I could not see. Beneath her glare Charlotte was merciful. She inherited at least that from her father.