Breakable by Aimee L. Salter Read Free Book Online Page B

green light blinking to let me know yet more of my classmates had taken
the time to get in touch.
    I
needed a bumper like that for my heart.
     
     
     
    Doc’s
face is blank. When I close my mouth, he doesn’t move immediately. And when he
does, it’s a simple tilt of his head, as if he’s listening to something I can’t
hear.
    Then
he takes a breath. “Did she ever confront you about the phone again? Or mention
the texts?”
    I
shake my head. “A couple days later she left a new card for my phone with a
note telling me to change the number and not give it to anyone except Mark.”
    “Did
you do that?”
    “No.
I cracked the screen really bad when I threw it. It never really worked right
after that. And since it had just become another way for people to taunt me, I
just stopped using it.”
    His
eyebrows climbed almost to his hairline. “At seventeen years old you stopped
using a cell phone?”
    “What
choice did I have?”
    His
inability to come up with a better answer is satisfying. But it also lowers my
defenses. I find I’m suddenly desperate, again, for someone – him – to tell me
those texts were wrong. To tell me I was strong.
    But
I know what’s coming. I can’t need his approval. I have to be sufficient. Sane.
    His
lips purse under the light fringe of his mustache. “I’m sorry that happened to
you.”
    I
tipped a shoulder. The fire in my scars made me wish I hadn’t.
    "Stacy,"
he says quietly. "I'm here to help you. You know that, right?"
    They
are simple words, but the well of emotion that springs up in their wake
surprises me. I am suddenly hopeful and afraid in the same breath.
    “I’m
on your side, Stacy. No matter what else happens, I want help you.”
    No
matter what . Does he
mean it? No one’s ever said that to me before.
    I
swallow and start talking so I won’t cry.

 
    Chapter Seven
     
     “Don’t
let Mom rattle you.”
    The
words came as a whisper, half an hour after I got home. I’d been in bed,
drawing frantically, trying to put all my tension and feeling and fear onto
paper. It wasn’t working. When I heard her voice I jerked, startled, and my
pencil jagged across the sketch. I swore. But if Older Me was talking to me,
that meant I wasn’t completely alone.
    Pushing
my papers aside, I jumped off the bed and walked to the large mirror on my
closet door.
    “You’re
still talking to me,” I said sheepishly.
    She
gave me a look that said I hadn’t been forgiven, but then she glanced over her
shoulder and turned back wide-eyed. “I don’t have long,” she whispered. “Tom
heard me earlier and he’s freaking out. But I had to see what happened. I was
there when you got home.”
    I
blinked. That meant she’d come to the mirror on the wall in the dining room.
I’d never looked past Mom.
    She
shook her head. “You can’t let Mom get under your skin that way. You can’t let
anyone do that to you.”
    “Are
you kidding me? I’ve got some jerk sending me sexts and she thinks I’m asking for it! I show up at the dance and Finn humiliates me in front of my entire
class. And Mark’s dating Karyn. ” My hands were in my hair because it had
honestly started feeling like my head was going to explode.
    Older
Me’s hands came up, soothing. She kept her voice to a whisper. “I know. I do.
But you have to keep going. You just have to. If you push through this, it will
work. You’ll show them. You’ll show them you didn’t deserve this!”
    Those
words... I didn’t deserve it.
    I
chewed them over. They felt right and wrong at the same time. They were true,
but I didn’t believe them.
    I
let my eyes wander over the room, my bag, my pictures. It felt like sitting in
this room with the door closed was my only safe space.
    Older
Me kept talking. “You think the way these people treat you is the end of the
world. But I can tell you, it isn’t what happens to you in your life that
destroys you. It’s what you do about it.”
    “Are
you trying to say it’s my fault