Everything Breaks by Vicki Grove Page A

the shower, and watched blood and mud mix at my feet and swirl down the drain. I pushed my hands and forearms hard against the shower wall, but still I heard myself moan. I hobbled back into my room and dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, biting my bottom lip bloody as I pulled that rough denim up over all that skinless flesh.
    The phone kept ringing and ringing, the one downstairs. I’d turned off my own phone yesterday, hoping to get some studying done before the bonfire. Now I took it from the backpack on my desk and saw it was clogged with messages. I frowned at it, then bent, stifling a groan, and threw it under the bed. I heard it skid into a nest of books and shoes, out of my reach and sight.
    Janet’s father, Bud, was still snoring across the hall, which was good. Since we shared the bathroom, I’d been worried I’d wake him before I could figure out how to dodge him. The last thing I wanted was to have to talk to anyone, and it was especially hard to talk to Bud these days, he was so old. I stripped the bed and took the long and painful journey down the stairs. I shuffled to the laundry nook, stuffed my sheets into the washing machine, dumped Tide and half a gallon of Clorox in with them, slammed the lid, and started the machine. Then I shuffled aimlessly back into the kitchen.
    There was the usual note from Janet tacked with one of her heart-shaped magnets on the refrigerator, written Saturday night before she went to bed, giving me Sunday morning instructions and late-breaking Saturday news and so forth.
    Tuck—Just thought you should know Bud made me take him for his driver’s test again this afternoon and, no big surprise, he failed. The eye test part, like both other times. They won’t let him take it a fourth time, so he’ll be grouchy tomorrow when he gets up. Just thought you ought to be warned. xxoo Janet PS Don’t show this to Bud!
    Good old Janet, always leaving a
PS
to warn you of something obvious. She’d written this, what? Three hours before she got the midnight police call? I stared at the bright yellow bee printed in the corner of her notepaper. The smile of the identical bees on each sheet of Janet’s notepaper was not just insane like I’d always thought but completely sinister, I saw now. It mocked those who actually had to somehow live, not just pretend to, who actually had to deal second by second with three dangerous dimensions. I wanted to tear off that bee’s paper legs, to make it suffer, because suffering was another thing it knew absolutely nothing about and never would.
    I crumpled the paper and tossed it hard into the waste bin, then wandered out the back door from force of habit, heading vaguely to the hoop house like I did all mornings. The dew crawled up my jeans, clammy and cold against my throbbing legs.
    Things inside the little greenhouse were so lush. Arugula, chard, all those good salad fixings. This would have been a perfect barbecue day, cool and sunny.
    I began to shake, hard, all over. I fumbled for some of the vegetables nearest my feet and rolled them into my shirt, then I lumbered back inside, dumped the bright, strobing vegetables onto the table, and stared at them, trying to remember what they were.
    The phone in the kitchen started ringing again. I picked it up before I remembered I didn’t want to. It was Mary Beth Chandler. Under other circumstances, I would have considered a call from her an answered prayer. Any boy in the junior class would have.
    â€œDead,” she whispered into my ear. “Zero, Trey, Steve, all dead. It’s just so unbelievable, Tucker, you know? And we figured you were with them last night . . . before? So Jessie and Aimee are here with me. We had a sleepover after the, well, after the bonfire was, you know, called off because of, well, you know. And we’re calling to tell you we’re, like, really, really sorry. But glad it wasn’t you too, I mean. Oh, Tuck! This