Chelsea Fine - Best Kind of Broken

Red turns to green and our eyes pull apart.

I haven’t been in a car with Pixie since the night of the accident, and it all seems too familiar. My shoulders are tense and my knuckles white as they grip the steering wheel.

I clear my throat. “I’m sorry. For taking off after Charity died. I shouldn’t have left.” I clear my throat again because it’s starting to close in. “I should never have left you.”

She watches me for a long moment. “It’s okay. It’s not like I stayed by your side either.”

“I’m still sorry.”

Silence.

I inhale deeply and attempt to make light conversation. “So Ellen says you might transfer to NYU this fall.”

“Yeah. Maybe. If I get in. What about you?” she asks. “Ellen said you dropped out of college after the season ended and haven’t reapplied yet. What happened?”

Dropped out. That’s a nice way of saying it.

“Studying wasn’t exactly my top priority last fall, and I don’t know if I really want to return.”

A long lull follows as we stare at the dark road outside and the rain that blurs it. I manage to get her back to the inn without maiming her and slowly pull into a parking space. I don’t move to get out and neither does she, so we’re sitting in the dim light shining in through the windshield from the inn’s front porch. I can smell her lavender shampoo.

“Thanks for the ride,” she says, still not moving from the car.

I nod. “I’m sorry about everything tonight. Sorry I implied that you were mine. That was lame. I know you’re not anyone’s. I wasn’t trying to be a Neanderthal, I swear. I was just… God, I was pissed at Daren for trapping you in that car and scaring you like that and—”

“I’m glad you were there.” She smiles and shifts uncomfortably. “I’m sorry I hid my scar from you. That was… immature.”

I shake my head. “I don’t know why I pounced on you about it. It’s really none of my business.”

More silence. More rain.

She shifts again. “Do you still want to see it?”

I blink and then nod, even though the idea scares the hell out of me.

She slowly unties the dress cover thingy she has on and slips it down her shoulders until she’s wearing only her bikini top. And cutting a thick diagonal through her chest is everything I did wrong. Red and jagged, it looks out of place against the flawless skin of her breasts and stomach.

I can’t pull my eyes away from it. I can’t.

“Levi.”

I broke her. I broke everything.

My heart starts to pound in my ears.

“Levi,” she says again, and I meet her eyes. “I’m okay.”

“I’m so sorry.” My voice cracks as my eyes fall back to the scar. I can’t help myself as I touch a hand to her skin. I lay my palm flat against the center of her chest, my fingers in line with the diagonal, and feel her heartbeat pulsing beneath me.

She covers my hand with hers. “I’m okay.”

I stare at her small hand, covering mine, for a moment. Suddenly overwhelmed with emotion, I gently slip my hand out from under hers.

She looks down and puts her hand on the door handle, biting her lip before looking back at me.

“And I am yours,” she says quietly. “Even when you don’t want me. I’m still yours.”

She exits the truck and walks inside the inn as rain continues to beat on the windshield.

I don’t regret it.

I’ve been so afraid of Levi seeing my scar, so scared that the red reminder of Charity would destroy him, that I failed to realize how healing showing him might be for me. The sight of my scar might have cut into Levi, but it patched up a bleeding piece of my soul that I didn’t think I’d ever get stitched; the part of me that refused to see Charity’s death in Levi’s eyes; the part of me that denied his pain.

So I don’t regret it.

Even now, ten days later, when Levi still won’t look at me or speak to me, I don’t regret it. Charity is dead. I am scarred. Levi is haunted.

These are the real things, the true things.

And the truth is easier to breathe in than the lie. Uglier perhaps. But far less suffocating without the cloud of denial I’ve kept around me all this time. Denial is thick and sweet, and for the past year it filled up my lungs until they threatened to burst. But truth… truth is clean and pure. And yes, it hurts when I inhale it, it hurts to cleanse out the sweet smoke, but breathing out is like new life.

With black paint staining my fingers, I step back from the small canvas I’ve been working on all morning. It’s not perfect. It’s not even close. It’s a mess of gray, with shards of black and slits of white, but it’s what I want to see.

With careful hands, I hang the canvas up to dry beside the three other similar paintings I’ve been working on for the past few days.

Four paintings. One subject. A million unspoken things.

When she was nine, Pixie found a dog on the side of the road and brought him to my house out of pity. She was always finding stray, ugly animals and taking them in like she was some kind of angel of all living creatures.

Of course we fell in love with the mangy puppy immediately, and Maverick—Charity named the mutt Maverick—became a member of our family. But two years later, Maverick died, and everyone, including myself, was devastated.

The night we lost Maverick, Charity and Pixie crept into my room and crawled into my bed with tears streaming down their faces, convinced the heartbreak would hurt less if the three of us stuck together and slept beside one another. They were right.

And in junior high, when Charity and Pixie snuck into that horror movie and were terrified that an ax murderer would come for them in the night, they crawled into my bed again, sleeping soundly under the illusion of my protection. They came to me for bravery and strength.

I don’t feel brave or strong anymore.

It’s the crack of dawn and I’m in the garden fixing a planter wall that’s been lopsided for two months. Ellen didn’t put it on my list of things to do, but it’s been driving me crazy, so… yeah. The planter will be fixed today.

An elderly guest named Paul is sitting on the nearest garden bench, watching me re-lay the bricks for the planter.

“I used to garden,” Paul says, eyeing me carefully. “Still do, actually. But only during certain seasons. Do you like to plant things?”

I lay a new brick down. “Not really. I’m more of a ‘fixing things’ kind of guy.”

He laughs and the sound is hoarse and gritty, like he’s been smoking for fifty years. “That’s pretty much all planting is¸ fixing. You grow a flower or a vegetable—you spend months watering it and protecting it from the sun and critters—and then one day it starts to die and you have to fix it.”

My thoughts go to Charity. I banish them.

Then my thoughts go to Pixie, and I don’t banish them.

Paul leans forward on the cane in his hands. “It’s the damnedest thing, a dying plant, and it makes a man want to give up. But that’s the beauty of gardening, son. You can revive the things that wither.”

I lay another brick and shovel back some dirt from the flower bed. “It sounds like rewarding work.”

“Oh, it is. It is.” He’s silent for so long I think maybe he’s fallen asleep, but when I look over at him, he’s wide-awake and watching me lay the last brick down.

Finished, I stand and dust my hands off on my jeans and pick up my supplies.

“They’re stronger, you know.” Paul looks up at me.

I shield my eyes in the morning sun. “What’s stronger?”

“The plants that you revive,” he says. “When you bring something back from the brink of death, it fights harder to thrive.” Paul leans on his cane again and smiles. “So is the story of life, I guess.”

* * *

“Ellen says you still have the spare keys?” I say outside of Pixie’s open bedroom door. This is the first we’ve spoken since the Fourth of July Bash.

“Oh. Yeah,” she says. “I found my own set yesterday. Now, where… did I put… the spare keys…?” She glances around. “You can come in. This might take a minute.”

I step into Pixie’s room, not sure if I want to be here. It feels personal. And it smells like her, which makes my chest feel funny.

There’s a tension in the air I’ve been trying to ignore all day, but with every passing minute it growers thicker and tighter. Tomorrow is almost here.

I can’t think about it, so I concentrate on mundane objects as she searches for the keys.

Dirty clothes on the floor.

Paintbrushes in glass jars. Stained. Frayed. Chewed at the ends.

She’s always been such a mess. I like her messy.

My eyes wander and land on four paintings strung up against the wall, and my feet absently take me there. I blink as I take in the dark-haired girl with light in her eyes and mischief in her smile. She’s fearless and pensive. Laughing and free. She’s everything I remember and more.

Charity.

My stomach fills with longing, but not the sad kind. The meaningful kind. The kind of longing you feel when you think about your first roller coaster or your first perfect game. The longing that makes you wish you could experience it again, but so grateful you had it in the first place.

I touch a finger to the closest painting. “These are beautiful.”

Pixie hesitates. “Thanks. Sometimes I see her and I just want to remember.”

I nod because I get it. “I like that you remember.”

She finds my eyes, and all I see is a sad little girl who lost her friend. Everything inside me wants to cross the space between us and pull her into my arms. The last time I felt this way was at Charity’s funeral. There were people in dark clothes everywhere, saying things to me I couldn’t hear. There were tears and prayers filling up the cemetery. And then there was Pixie.

Seated in a wheelchair five people away with bruises on her face and a thick bandage peeking out from her purple dress. The girl wore purple. Charity’s favorite color. Tears fell down her cheeks, but her face was expressionless.

I wanted to hug her then. I wanted to pull her close and tuck us into each other, where there was no one else to mourn Charity. Just us. Because no one else understood. Just us.

“I found the keys.” Pixie looks up at me, and I’m suddenly looking at Charity.

I’m watching her play with dolls and dress up like a princess and ask for a kitty every Christmas. I’m hearing her tell on me for lighting firecrackers in the backyard and whine when I get to stay up later than she does. I’m watching her cry on her first day of junior high when some girls made fun of her outfit, and lock herself in her bedroom when Jason Hampton broke up with her. I’m seeing her grow up, I’m sharing my banana splits with her, I’m watching scary movies with her in the upstairs bedroom so Mom and Dad can’t hear us, I’m giving her a ride to the mall and yelling at her for taking my credit card. I see Charity and she’s beautiful and happy. And worth reliving every memory.

I blink, and it’s Pixie staring back at me.

“I miss her,” I blurt out.

It’s the first time I’ve felt safe enough to admit that to someone aloud. It’s the first time I’ve been able to say that without feeling guilty.

Pixie nods like she totally gets it. “I miss her too.”

She gets it.

There is nothing extraordinary about today.

It is just a day. A Saturday, to be exact, at the end of July. The morning birds are chirping outside. The wind is blowing through the fields out back. And I am alive.