Fall to Pieces (6 page)

I was supposed to get Petal and meet Mark out in the parking lot. We were supposed to climb into Mark’s car, Cherry Bomb, and drive straight to the barn.

E wasn’t part of the plan. We were supposed to “Fuck him up another time,” to quote Mark. He’s eloquent, that boy.

But I saw E and I grabbed him. Guess this is his lucky day after all.

E says, “Could you just slow down for a second?”

“No.”

He could pull away from me if he wanted. I’m not strong enough to hold him in place. He wants to be here, tagging along with me.

Drop the pretences, Explosive Boy
.

“What are you doing?”

“Looking for Petal.”

I swerve down another corridor with about a million and one dust motes partying in it. Light filters through the stained glass windows. Red, blue, green,
yellow. This is the older section of Sherwood High.

“Welcome to the rich-bitch part of our school,” I tell Explosive Boy. Only the superwealthy kids receive the honor of a locker in this corridor. A locker beneath the gleaming mahogany boards that scream the glory of past students in gold lettering.

Standing here, you can practically feel the money of generations and generations of families. Almost all of them making worthless, but well-paid, contributions to society.

I stop moving when I’m standing beneath a board proclaiming the success of silver-screen actor Brody Ashton, who graduated in the class of ’93. I stop moving because Petal’s at the end of this corridor, crashing her head into a locker. She shouldn’t be here.

She shouldn’t be here because the locker she’s in front of, it’s not hers.

It’s Amy’s.

“Stay,” I tell Explosive Boy.

“I’m not a dog.”

But he listens to me like the loyal hound he is.

I march over to Petal. Tap my shoe against her shoe. “What are you doing?”

I’m using the worst tone in my repertoire. The Nothing tone. It’s my voice pared down to the bone: no emotion, no feeling. But it sounds like a live wire, as if it could electrocute someone.

Then Pet looks at me, and I see the pain pulling her face apart. Her lip trembles and she collapses into me and I hold her. Her tears soak my T-shirt.

“What are you doing here?” I repeat more softly.

Does it have anything to do with what she and Mark aren’t telling me?

A small earthquake rocks her shoulders. Her breaths come in gasps, knifing through her small frame.

“I just thought,” she says, suddenly slamming her fist into Amy’s locker. “I just thought that she might have left something in here. Some hint about why, how she was feeling—”

She breaks free of me. Slams her fist into Amy’s locker again. And again.

Petal has never exactly been a pacifist. It’s why Mark and I were so surprised when she shut herself away after Amy died. We thought she would fight the sadness. But Petal didn’t leave her bedroom for two weeks aside from going to the bathroom. She didn’t shower. She didn’t speak to a soul. When she came out, she was ten years gaunter, ten pounds heavier; and she still barely spoke. At first. But Pick Me Ups breathed life back into her, brought back some of the fight that made her burn bright, bright, bright as if she were slightly mad.

And she’s kicking the lockers now. Again, again, again, again, again. Kicking them so hard that her shoes
leave slight dents in the metal. It’s extreme, even for Pet.

Her new skin, the one that makes her pirouette and attempt to steal from vending machines, peels away. And the truth about her, her heart and her guilt and her lies, is on display for the world to see. It’s a shame that it remains unreadable, unfathomable to me.

She collapses, slides down against the cream-colored lockers. Her butt hits the rich, burgundy carpet, and she makes this sound. Halfway between a sob and a swear word.

“I just can’t believe Amy would do this to us,” she says. “I can’t believe it.”

I don’t know what to say, because I can’t believe it, either.

Silence. The dust motes float over us, flashing through the red light and then the green light. Petal’s sitting in the blue light shredding her nail, as if she doesn’t know what else to do.

“Mark and I are going,” I say eventually, knowing that this is the only thing that might help her. “We’re going to the barn.”

I don’t have to ask whether she’s coming. She gets to her feet and follows me down the corridor. She throws me a weird look when Explosive Boy tags along with us. He gives her a wide berth. Even the grenade boy knows not to mess with Petal.

She watches him as we move through the corridors but doesn’t say anything.

And then Petal’s banging open the door that leads to the parking lot in that typical, melodramatic way that all of us have. Me included. Weak sunlight floats over E and me, who are left standing in the doorway.

E raises his brows at me. “Let me guess,” he says. “You’re all from rich-bitch central.”

Because melodrama like this is reserved for the wealthy? Please.

Only Amy was from rich-bitch central. And maybe me. I could have a locker in the hallowed older section of Sherwood High. God knows I would if my father had stopped working long enough to realize that the administration hadn’t already given me one. But this is my father and work we’re talking about—they’re going to the grave together—so that’s highly unlikely.

If he ever comes home again, or if I discover where he’s hiding, maybe I’ll tell him. Maybe the injustice of my locker location will recapture his attention.

“Just get outside, okay?”

Mark stands next to Cherry Bomb. She looks just like she usually does—like a cherry-colored bomb. Yeah. We’re really imaginative when it comes to naming things.

Mark looks like he usually does, too. Wonderfully idiotic. He’s smoking a lollipop. The strawberry-colored sphere disappears into his mouth, pops back out again. Puff, puff, puff. Imaginary bits of lollipop smoke cloud the air.

“Mature, man.”

Way. Too. Blunt. E.

Mark takes the lollipop out of his mouth. “Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.”

“Well, at least I’m witty,” E returns.

And then Mark’s moving toward E, his lollipop held aloft like some kind of sword, and I want to laugh so fucking hard. Instead, I put myself between them before my best friend perpetrates an act of lollipop violence. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, ladies. Too much testosterone.”

Their laughs crack the air at the same time.

Ice breaks.

“Hey, man,” E says. “I’m Tristan.”

“We’re all calling you E,” I tell him.

“I don’t—”

“You’re E. Get the hell over it already.”

E looks at Mark, trying his best to pull off a lost-puppy-please-help-me look. It doesn’t work too well. E’s ember hair is burning up against the white sky. He may be a grenade and a Kid Whisperer at the same time, but he’s sure as hell no puppy dog.

“Don’t look at me.” Mark pops the lollipop back into his mouth, resumes his smoker act. “I still don’t like you.”

“What the
fuck
are you doing here, anyway?” Petal glares at Explosive Boy.

The broken ice freezes back over.

“I don’t know,” he says. “Ella just dragged me along.”

Spotlight on me.

“Fresh meat, shaking things up,” I say, rattling off the same excuses I gave Mark. Pet doesn’t look convinced, and the glare she shoots me is so frosty it stings. Well, I can be a frigid bitch, too. “How about I fucking wanted to, Petal, okay? How about this is exactly like us wanting to start Pick Me Ups in the first place? Like you wanting to join in.”

And just like that Petal looks as if I’ve snapped her in two. My words might sound inane on the surface, but if you dig a little deeper, the barbs will bite into your skin.

’Cause Mark and I invented Pick Me Ups without Petal.

We invented Pick Me Ups without Petal because she wasn’t there. When she came out of her room, though, she saw things differently. She thought we’d spent the time bonding or something instead of just jumping off shit.

Now she feels like she’s the outsider, the one on the
edge, even though it’s she and Mark who are trying to drug me with their sideways words. Even though it’s Mark and Pet who are holding back on me.

And now she’s looking at me, and I want to tell her I don’t mean it, any of it; but I won’t. I can’t.

I have to make her think it’s real. Because I can’t stand being the outsider, either.

“Okay,” Petal says eventually. She pulls herself together, stretches a smile across her face. Runs her tongue across her front teeth, up over the edge of her lip. “So, what are we going to do with him?”

What
am
I going to do with him? Send him spiraling into a Pick Me Up, yes. But how?

“Yeah, what are you going to do to me?” E asks.

I ignore him.

My hands are moving now. Fingers threading their way through Mark’s hair, disentangling today’s hippie scarf. It’s a lurid pink.
Snap. Snap. Snap
. I pull it taut between my fingers, grin at Explosive Boy.

He bends backward. “No,” he says.

I step forward. Back he goes again.

“Come on, E,” I say. And then, because lying is my favorite hobby, I add, “Pink’s really your color.”

“Where are you taking me?”

He’s still tilted away from me.

“The b—”

“—nowhere important,” I say, cutting off Mark. “You don’t know until you get there, okay?”

“Not okay.”

“Please. Your curious-bitch act is starting to annoy me.”

“Your bitchy-bitch act is starting to annoy
me
,” he says, but he stoops so I can wind the scarf over his eyes. Around, around, around. His nose and eyes vanish beneath the pink gauze.

When he’s properly blindfolded, Mark opens Cherry Bomb’s back door. Her familiar smell drifts to me. Boozy breath and late nights. Weirdly comforting.

“Ladies first,” Mark says, gesturing to the door.

And Petal, without being told, immediately gets it and shoves E headfirst into the car. Our teamwork. It’s a thing of beauty.

At least it would be if I didn’t know they were lying to me about Amy.

“Ouch,” Explosive Boy says, straightening himself on the backseat, on Cherry Bomb’s landmine-of-holes upholstery. I watch as Explosive Boy dips his fingers into one of these backseat potholes. He snatches his hand back and flinches.

We howl with laughter.

But it dies out quickly. Probably because we’re all thinking about how Cherry Bomb got those battle scars.
Amy. Amy did that. When she was so fucking smashed after this party in tenth grade. Grabbed a rock from somewhere and started slashing at the material, singing “Amazing Grace” beneath her breath the whole time.

Mark let her do it. He just kept driving, letting her destroy his car.

“Relax. It’s stuffing,” Petal says to Explosive Boy, who’s still looking freaked-out. “You know the shit that comes out of cushions?” And that’s Petal. The Petal I knew before Amy died, who was truly fucking concerned about people beneath her diamond exterior. She’s not nice—none of us are nice—but Petal’s the closest. And she has this amazing ability to compartmentalize. Pet can make mincemeat of some kid at school and then go out all weekend and fundraise for starving children in Africa.

She’s the most loving misanthrope I’ve ever met.

She turns to me. “You sure you want this guy doing a Pick Me Up?”

I nod. The real reason I want Explosive Boy here goes beyond showing him I don’t need his pity. The real reason he’s here is purely strategic. It’s because I need to figure out what Mark and Pet are hiding. And to do that, I need someone else to be the outsider, to push against us.

Push us together.

“I’m sure,” I say. I nudge Mark. “Give me your keys.”

“Why?” Shock and horror crash into each other on his
face, mangling his sweet baby-angel features.

“Seriously?
You
are afraid of
my
driving?”

There’s a reason Cherry Bomb is such a bomb. That reason is Mark.

“Fine.” He fishes the keys out of his jeans pocket. Tosses them to me. “But I’m riding shotgun to make sure you don’t kill us all.”

Petal winks at me. “Wonderful,” she says, slipping into the backseat. “I get to guard our prisoner.”

And then I’m hopping into the driver’s seat. Putting my hands on the steering wheel. Turning the key in the ignition.

It’s only when the engine roars to life and the entire car shakes around me that I figure out what I really want to do to E.

We’re not going to the barn today.

I
PULL OVER
next to the unnamed jungle park at the edge of town.

We get out of the car, shoes scuffing the pavement, kicking mushroom clouds of dust into the air. Petal’s holding Explosive Boy’s elbow, making sure that he doesn’t walk somewhere stupid, like back out onto the road. But she’s looking at me. Looking at me as if I’m tearing her heart into halves, quarters, eighths, sixteenths. Shreds. As if I’m absolutely gutting her.

She thinks I’m going to keep us from Pick Me Ups today.

Where are we going?
she mouths at me.

Trust me
, I mouth back.

She digs her nails into Explosive Boy’s elbow so hard he jumps. “Shit,” he says. “What was that for?”

“Fun.”

Mark, who’s standing behind them, throws back his head and laughs.

I start walking toward the trees at the edge of the park. No one follows me. I slow down, wait for them. Nothing. The silent, dusty road breathes against my back. I pause. “Are you guys coming?”

“Coming where?” Mark says. “Let’s get back to the car. Let’s
go
.”

Let’s go. Let’s get into Cherry Bomb and speed toward the barn. Let’s speed toward our falls. Let’s slam into the hay. Feel our pulses dim. And let’s find that moment. That one moment in the fall that feels like absolution, like bliss, like a miracle’s taken place inside our bodies.

But we’re not going to the barn. Not today. Because jumping off shit in the barn isn’t working anymore. I need to try somewhere new. Something else.

I stare at the trees. They’re a mass of silvery brown, slurring and blurring into one another. Packed too close, like my mother packs her suitcases. But through a teensy-tiny gap between their trunks, I spot a rusty chain hanging from a green metal bar.