Breaking Beautiful Read online

  What? I’m not sure. It’s not like anyone is going to be mean to me. They’ll all be nice. Dripping with niceness. And that will be worse.

  Even Hannah George will be nice to me now, keeping up her “Beachcomber’s Queen” appearance. Hannah was never nice to me before. Not that I could blame her. She was Trip’s girlfriend before me. They’d been together since seventh grade. But the summer I turned fifteen she spent a couple of weeks at a basketball camp in California—the same couple of weeks I was in Pacific Cliffs. The summer Blake was gone.

  I had watched Trip skim boarding along the edge of the surf for a long time before he acknowledged me. It was July, but the beach here is pretty much always cold. I was wearing a bikini top and board shorts—hoping he would notice.

  “Hey. Cat girl, right?” Trip had called. The summer before he had helped me rescue Sasha, a little tiger-striped kitten, from a crab cage, a cage Blake was convinced Trip had put her in.

  “Allie,” I yelled back.

  “Right, Allie. You still got that cat?” He tucked his skim board under his arm and started walking toward me.

  “Yeah.” I shrugged, but my heart was pounding under the narrow string that held the two halves of my swimsuit top together. “She lives with my grandma.”

  In his wet suit, the blue one that brought out his eyes, Trip looked like a surfer Ken doll. The suit hugged his chest, and his hair fell in wet waves over his ears. He stepped closer. “So, you around for a while?”

  I tried to stay casual and barely glanced up from my magazine. “A little while.”

  He stopped so his shadow fell on the page I pretended to read. A drop of water slid off his hair and onto my arm. “Long enough for me to teach you how to skim?” He nodded to the board under his arm.

  I remember looking up, seeing his grin, and wondering how anyone could get tan on this beach and how anyone could have teeth that white.

  I never figured out how to skim, another in a long line of coordination-required, failed sporting attempts. It was really just an excuse to hang out with Trip. I didn’t know about Hannah then, or if I did, I’d forgotten. It didn’t make much difference. When Trip kissed me good-bye at the end of my visit, I didn’t expect to see him for at least a year. I didn’t know I would be back six months later, this time as a resident of Pacific Cliffs. Dad was being deployed again—the last time before he retired from the Army. Grandma’s health wasn’t good so we moved here before he left. Pacific Cliffs was my mom’s hometown and where Dad promised her we would live once he was out of the Army, so we stayed even after Grandma died.

  Trip dumped Hannah for me as soon as I moved in. That was enough to make every girl at Pacific Cliffs High School despise me. They were all loyal to Hannah because they’d known each other since they were in diapers. I was the outsider who stole the hottest guy at school. They’ve all hated me since I moved in, one of about a million reasons for me to avoid going back there.

  Blake is still at the door—waiting for something. Sasha, the kitten Trip rescued—now a fat cat—weaves herself between his feet. He bends down to pet her and she raises her head and rubs against his hand. She used to arch her back and hiss at Trip whenever he tried to touch her. “A lot of thanks I get for rescuing that beast,” he would say, and laugh. It made me wonder if Blake was right about Trip locking her in the cage.

  “Why don’t we go for a walk? We could go to the beach. It’s actually a nice day, and you need to get out of the house.” He nods toward my window.

  “I can’t.” It hurts when I shake my head. Even if I wanted to go, there are two major problems with me and Blake going for a walk. One, the cliff road that Trip drove off that night is visible from any point on the beach, and I don’t know if I can stand to see that place again. And two, the second I go anywhere with Blake the rumor mill will be unleashed. Some girls have to worry about a story getting around school. In a place the size of Pacific Cliffs, the whole town knows your business almost before you do. Like my house, Pacific Cliffs isn’t a good place for keeping secrets.

  “Oh, yeah, well.” He looks down at the floor and digs into his pocket. One lock of sandy hair slips over his eyes when he looks up at me. I resist the urge to brush it back. He clears his throat—“Um”—and brushes his hand across his neck. “I have something for”—he clears his throat again—“something that’s yours.” He holds out his hand.

  I gasp and take a step back.

  He’s holding a palm-sized stone, round and polished smooth, dark brown with gold stripes that dance in the light like they were alive.

  Guilt flashes across his face. “It’s yours, isn’t it?”

  “Where did you find it?” I barely breathe. My heart thumps, and my scar pricks for attention, but my fingers ache for the familiar smoothness of the stone’s surface, for the bumps along one side, and for the rough spot in the middle.

  He swallows. “Up the cliff. By the road.” He breathes in. “Where they found you that night.”

  The side of the road by the cliff is covered in loose rocks, sand, and scrubby beach grass. Blake finding the tigereye by accident is improbable. Finding it even if he searched for a long time would probably be impossible. But I don’t question him. I reach for his hand, dig the rock out of his palm, and slide my thumb across it.

  It feels warm from Blake’s touch.

  “Tigereye stone,” the old woman at the fair had said, “beautiful and rare, like your eye.”

  “The freaky one,” Trip said, and James and Randall laughed. My left eye is normal—dark brown, but the right one has a streak of gold in it. A little bit of extra pigment. Something that made me feel special when I was a kid. Now it just makes me feel like a freak. And now that my “freaky” eye is framed by a lumpy scar it looks freakier than ever.

  Trip didn’t buy the tigereye the woman was trying to sell him. That one was bigger and strung on a silver chain. He told her it was cheap junk. The woman gave me this smaller stone when I came back to her table looking for my lost purse.

  “Tigereye is powerful,” she said. “It gives the bearer the attributes of a tiger—empowerment, strength, courage.”

  I press the stone into my palm until it hurts. I look up at Blake. “Thank you.”

  He backs away. “I’d better go.”

  I nod and push the door closed. Before it clicks shut he adds, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Chapter

  3

  I can get away with staying in my room for most of the day, but I’m still required to eat dinner with the family. As soon as I get to the table, I know something’s up. It’s the way my parents are sitting—their chairs a little closer together, a little farther from me. Mom twists her napkin. Dad has his hand on her back.

  I’ve seen this too many times before not to know what’s going on. They’re presenting a “united front.”

  Mom and Dad and their united front always meant something in our lives was about to change or that I was in trouble—another move, Dad being deployed, problems with my grades.

  Usually when they do this, Andrew and I sit opposite them, close together, my hand touching his under the table—our own united front. In seven moves, six different schools, four states, and two foreign countries, our only constant was each other. Dad got deployed, Mom cleaned and purged and organized. Andrew and I stuck together.

  Only this time there’s a subtle difference. Andrew’s chair is parked closer to them than to me—too far away for me to reach his hand. And he won’t look at me.

  Dad clears his throat. “Allie, we need to talk.” Mom nods to show their unity. “We know the accident was hard on you. And losing Trip, but you have to get on with things. You need to go back to school. You can’t stop living because—”

  I look up at him. Meet his gaze hard. Dare him to finish that sentence. Because Trip is dead.

  He looks away—a first. I’ve never been able to stare down the sergeant major before. He stands up, breaks ranks, and walks all the way around the table. He look
s down at me. This time I look away. I’m used to Dad being strict and unfeeling, but the tenderness in his eyes I can’t take. “Trip is gone, honey.” He touches my arm. I study the brown-gold patterns in the scarred wood floor. They remind me of my tigereye. “He isn’t coming back. And it’s time for you to start living again.”

  They keep saying that. “Trip is gone.” Like I’m holding out some hope that he’ll come back, pull up to the driveway, bound up the front steps with flowers or a present for me, to apologize for being gone so long.

  “We think maybe you need to see someone.” Mom’s voice cracks. “Ms. Holt from the school said she knows a woman down in Aberdeen. A grief counselor—”

  “No.” The sharpness of my voice surprises me. I tear away from Dad’s hand and face them from the other side of the room. “No!”

  “Allie, you need to—” Mom starts.

  “—calm down,” Dad finishes. He moves toward me.

  I glare at him again. “No shrink. No counselor. No way.”

  “Hon, it will make it easier, if …” Mom slides her knife closer to her plate. “If”—she adjusts her spoon—“if …”

  “If the new investigator wants to question you,” Dad finishes for her.

  I stop and blink once, and then again as that thought settles on me. That’s what this is all about. Everyone wants to get into my head and find out what’s buried there. What I don’t remember. What I do.

  Andrew is watching me—concern and fear in his eyes. His body shakes. It’s harder for him to control his movements when he’s upset. “A-A-l—”

  His tremor snaps me back to the table. I glare at him, too. I can’t believe he’s on their side. “No.” I turn on my heels and flee. Run to my room and slam the door.

  I expect someone to come after me. I’ve only slammed the door a few times before when Dad was around. It was always followed by him stomping down the hall, flinging open the door, and yelling, “That kind of behavior isn’t tolerated in this house!”

  But no one comes. Not Dad with his heavy footsteps, not Mom with her clicking heels, not Andrew in his chair.

  I stride to my dresser. The sudden urge to throw something, break something, is overwhelming. I clench my fists to keep from sweeping the dresser and knocking everything on it into a broken heap on the floor.

  I won’t go to a counselor.

  I’m not crazy.

  I throw myself on the bed and stuff my pillow into my mouth so I can scream without them hearing.

  No.

  I can’t have anyone prying into my head, pulling out the secrets I don’t want to share. Things I can’t remember. Things I have to keep hidden. Since the accident my mind is so full of fuzz that I can’t trust the lock on my brain.

  I press the pillow against my eyes and try to shut everything out, take in a few breaths, to get control. Blood pounds in my ears. My head throbs between the scar on the back of my head and the one over my eye. My hands are shaking with anger that I don’t understand.

  What gives them the right to care now?

  Now that it’s too late?

  The stone that Blake brought me is still on my nightstand. I set it there before I left my room for dinner. I didn’t know I would need it.

  My hands shake as I reach for it now. My brain wants to explode. I could throw it hard enough to break the mirror. Hard enough that the pictures of me and Trip would shatter into a million pieces. I slide my fingers over the smooth surface and take in another breath.

  Courage.

  I wonder what the woman knew about courage. About the kind of courage I would need. Or about the courage I lack.

  I hold the stone to the light. The stripes dance. I find the rough spot in the middle and rub it, concentrating on making it smooth.

  I’m eighteen. An adult. Short of having me committed, putting me in a straitjacket, and hauling me off in a little white ambulance, they can’t make me go anywhere. They can’t make me talk to anyone.

  I breathe in and try to count the stripes on the stone, but they swirl and move too fast. Breathe again. Count. Breathe. Close my eyes to shut out the dancing stripes and my throbbing head.

  The hall floor clicks with Mom’s footsteps. I should have known it would be her. Dad doesn’t deal with emotions and Andrew won’t even come all the way into my room anymore.

  She knocks, but I don’t answer. I slide the stone into the pocket of my sweatpants and sit up on the bed. I don’t look at her when she comes in. She sits beside me, sighs, and glances around my room—taking it all in. Clothes on the floor, the pile of schoolbooks in the corner, and my “clutter”—posters, stuffed animals, shells, snow globes, knickknacks. Stuff I’ve collected from all of our moves. I’m the family pack rat. Mom is a neat freak and ultraorganized. My room is a constant irritation to her. I wonder what she’d have done if I had swept everything off my dresser and onto the floor. Everything is such a mess she might not have even noticed.

  She reaches over to run her fingers through my hair, forgets and brushes against the scar, then recoils before she can stop herself. She touches my back lightly, but settles for her hands in her lap. “I don’t know why you’re so angry with us. We’re only trying to do what’s best for you.” She sighs. “I’m not equipped to deal with this. I need some help. You need some help.”

  “No.” I study the handmade rag rug on the floor, something I saved from Grandma’s house.

  “You can’t live in this room forever.”

  I touch the stone in my pocket. “No.”

  Mom starts picking at her perfect nails. “I know you’re hurting, but you have your whole life in front of you. It’s your senior year. You have to move on. Having someone to talk to about things, someone trained in this sort of thing, might be the best thing.”

  I run my fingernail along the bumpy side of the stone, three “things” in a row. And not one mention of the word “death.”

  “You can’t go on like this.”

  I press the stone hard into my palm.

  She breathes in and then speaks deliberately. “I want you to be able to move past this.”

  I grit my teeth and close my eyes. What she wants is to have her orderly life back. To pretend nothing happened. To pretend there’s nothing wrong with me. Just like before. I open my eyes and look into hers. Now that my whole family is after me about the counselor thing I won’t have any peace.

  What are my options? Let some grief counselor sift through the pieces of my mind that are left, or go back to school and pretend everything is normal? Not like I haven’t done that before. “I’ll go back to school tomorrow.” The words come out so quiet that for a minute I hope she didn’t hear them.

  But she grabs on to them immediately. “If that’s what you want.” She adjusts the band on her watch. “And only if you’re ready.” She looks at the piles of clothes on the floor. “I could throw something in the wash so you would have something clean to wear. And I have some cute scarves, or maybe a hat, you could use to cover your hair.” Her eyes trace the wound on the side of my face. I lean forward and cup my hand over my eye scar.

  Unbelievable. She made the leap from “Are you sure you’re up to going?” to “What will you wear?” and “How will we cover your scar?” in less than a heartbeat.

  She pats my knee. “I’m sure it will start to fade soon anyway.” She stands up. “It might be hard for you at first, but I know this is the right decision. It’ll be good for you to be back at school, back with your friends. I’m sure they’re worried about you.”

  Friends? I press the stone hard against my thigh. After eighteen years it still amazes me how little Mom knows about my life. She sees what she wants to, even now.

  She stands up. “I’ll bring you in some food, okay? And I’ll get these”—she scoots my dirty clothes into a pile with her foot—“into the wash for you.” She tucks the pile of T-shirts, sweats, and underwear under her arm. She pauses at the door. “I think going back to school is probably the best thing. It will give you
a chance to share your feelings with other people who loved Trip. People who understand what you’re going through.” She walks out and closes the door with her foot.

  Share your feelings? Did she get that out of some “Helping Your Child Deal with Grief” pamphlet?

  People who understand?

  I cross the room to the shelf above my desk. I set down the stone and pick up one of about a hundred pictures of me and Trip. My long blond hair, his clear blue eyes and dark good looks, set against the background of a mountain stream and pine trees—we look like an ad for Abercrombie & Fitch—the perfect couple.

  “Watch your head.” He reaches up and holds the branches away from my face. I stumble over a vine and slip in the mud, but he catches me. “Careful. Maybe I’m going to have to carry you.”

  I laugh. “No, just don’t let go of my hand.”

  “Don’t worry.” He presses my fingers to his lips. “I won’t.”

  No one understands.

  “Here it is. My special place. I found it when I was four-wheeling. No one in Pacific Cliffs knows about it but me.”

  “It’s beautiful.” I turn a full circle and look up; a canopy of green-filtered sunlight falls over a meadow of wildflowers, moss-covered boulders, and a bubbling stream.

  He steps forward and cups the side of my face. “Not as beautiful as you.” I blush and look away. He slips his hand in mine. “And now for my surprise.” He leads me around the back of the tree. Carved in the trunk are the words TRIP LOVES ALLIE.

  “Oh.” I cover my mouth, barely able to believe that he wrote that for me.

  He wraps his arms around me. “Now it’s our special place.”

  I trace the letters on the tree behind us in the picture.

  No one knows what’s churning inside of me.

  Crushing guilt.

  “We have to hurry. Dad wants us at his dinner meeting tonight.” He opens the door for me and then stops, staring at my boots and the bottom of my jeans. “What the hell did you step in? Mud? It’s all over your pants.”