Breaking Free Read online

  If we really want to try to measure good versus bad decisions, then we have to understand that it varies from person to person. Point of view is crucial in trying to grasp why people act like they do.

  For instance, maybe Brad had an unsatisfying home life; therefore, he sought pleasure from sex in the most twisted ways to sate some deep-rooted desire for love. Or maybe I was smoking crack, and he was just a colossal douchebag.

  Either way, Brad had already made a long series of decisions that had landed him here. As had I, as had Clare. As did every single human being on the earth.

  I had to smile sadly to myself, sick to my stomach. We are all such masochists and sadists sometimes, without even realizing it. I had a big decision to make. It would definitely change which side I had been assigned to so far at school.

  If nothing else, it would have a direct effect on someone else. And those decisions are always the scariest.

  I thought through the possibilities in my head, playing out different scenarios. There was always the obvious option of talking it over with an adult or authority figure. Except all the fake support they would lend would be bullshit.

  Parents and administrators weren’t the ones who stopped fights from happening or blocked vicious Internet posts, or would stop the general torment that would inundate Clare if the school went ahead and acted like I thought it would.

  I sighed heavily. If I knew more about Clare’s parents, maybe I could get a better handle on her situation at home and how much support she could expect from that direction. A big part of being scared and in the closet was being afraid of how your parents would react. I knew.

  Of course, I was a complete hypocrite for wanting her to come out to her family. God knew I hadn’t done it with mine in the healthiest or safest way. My parents found out I was gay in the suicide note beside my bed when they found me passed out with a bunch of empty pills bottles around me.

  I sighed. So that option for getting Clare some help was probably out. I thought through a few more possibilities, but I had absolutely no idea how to help her that didn’t involve myself directly.

  Well. Crap.

  I could lie to myself and say that I didn’t want to help, that this wasn’t something I had intentionally taken on. So then why did I go to her in her car on Friday? It would have been perfectly acceptable and extremely easy to have just walked past her car and not given it a second thought. I’d had nothing to do with what had happened to her. Right?

  But whether I want to admit it or not, I felt like I owed her. Besides, I wanted to help her. Something about her, how she’d just sat there and cried like it was normal, had compelled me to help her in the first place.

  Maybe a little part of me had wanted to help fix her and, in doing so, put the pieces of her back together in a puzzle shaped to fit my liking. It was sick to say, but it was true. We all have delusional, screwed up ideas of what other human beings are meant to be. And if we meet someone who isn’t quite like our ideal image of them but is still malleable, then why wouldn’t we try to reform him or her into exactly what we want?

  We all have a little Brad in us. For better or worse and in different amounts, but either way, the drive to make other people our own, just how we want them to be, is still there. Anyone who says they don’t ever have that impulse is lying to themselves.

  My mind wandered to all of the ways I could help her, all the ways to worm myself into her life, so I could be there to help her superglue the parts of herself back together. At the end of the day, shaping someone and helping them become a new person isn’t all bad. If Brad had used his influence over her in a positive way, maybe he actually could have helped her become a better person.

  But this wasn’t about Brad. This was about Clare and trying to figure out what to do to help. Problem was, the only way to help someone was to actually help him or her.

  I groaned, rolling onto my stomach on my bed. It was frustrating how something so seemingly simple could be so complicated that the ramifications were mind-boggling. I sighed.

  The thought of being a friend to Clare and being subjected to the ridicule and suspicion of everyone at the school wasn’t nearly as scary as the thought of being consumed in the feelings I had experienced in class when I turned my back on her.

  At the end of the day, it all boiled down to whether or not I could live with myself if I chose the latter.

  Yep, life was going to suck for a while, maybe even a long time. But it would get better. It had to.

  Seven

  WHEN I got to school on Tuesday, I was ready to stand ardently by Clare’s side. She and I could take on the world together if she could forgive me for turning away and let me help her.

  But she didn’t show for Spanish class. She wasn’t anywhere to be seen at school, and the gossip at lunch was that she was too humiliated to show her face. Confused, I went through my day in outward normalcy. Had I blown my one chance to do the right thing for her?

  Cam and Freddie surprised me at lunch by apologizing. Cam said she hadn’t known what she was saying or stopped to think about what any of it had meant. Her explanation echoed all through my head that night as I reviewed my science notes.

  “I didn’t really understand what I was saying, Raimi. I mean, God. When Clare walked into the lunchroom Monday, it was like she had the plague or something. Everyone just looked down, and anyone who did look at her said the most awful things. It was horrible. I realized they sounded like I had on Sunday. I was ashamed, just sitting there, watching it.”

  Cam had one thing right. Sometimes the worst crime of all was inaction.

  Wednesday morning, I was ready for Clare to walk through those doors. I would help her, and we could take on the stares together. And then she didn’t show. Again.

  I sat with Cam and Freddie like usual and asked them if they would be okay with Clare sitting with us once she was back. They shared a long-suffering look and eventually nodded reluctantly at me. Shauna agreed readily enough, too.

  I couldn’t get an answer out of any of the other kids who usually sat at our table. I honestly thought that some of them would leave if she sat with us. That was okay. A few empty seats would just mean more room for our stuff during lunch.

  Thursday morning, I was sure Clare would show. I was positive that this would be the day that I would get to show my support to her, to the school, and most importantly, to myself. I needed to make a difference with her, to distinguish myself from the backdrop of mindless sheep that just accepted people making her life a living hell. I had to prove that I would be there for her.

  And yet, the day passed by utterly Clare-less. It was getting stifling to walk through these halls and wonder what she was doing, if she was okay, if she was angry with me, or if she was too busy dealing with her pain to be angry at anyone.

  Friday, I warily awaited a no-show from Clare. There was a party Saturday night that everyone was talking about. It was supposedly going to be so wild that even Shauna was wary of going. I loved Shauna, but she was crazy when it came to partying. I begged off of going, telling the group hastily that I was busy. Everyone else at the table had an excuse not to go either, mumbling about various classes and tests they really needed to crack down and study for.

  We all pretended to believe each other out of courtesy. But at the end of the day, it was because none of us had a particular interest in going to jail for one party.

  LATE SATURDAY night, a loud banging at my front door startled me awake. I regained consciousness slowly. I had been sleeping on the couch in the family room, having passed out while trying to read some mind-numbing tome for my English class.

  I rubbed my eyes, confused. Neither of my parents were home. They had taken Zach on a fishing trip somewhere across the state. The noise outside didn’t subside as I crept into the kitchen warily. The clock read 1:06 in the morning. Grabbing the biggest knife I could find, I proceeded to the front door.

  Breathing heavily with the heat of adrenaline coursing through my veins,
I threw open the door with the knife outstretched as a warning. Clare blinked blearily at me through a stained face full of tears. One of her eyes was swelling, developing what looked like a really painful bruise.

  I started to lower the knife to my side and opened my mouth to speak, but she leapt forward and enveloped me in a hug. I reached up to hold her back, but the knife slid into her stomach like butter. Her eyes widened in horror and pain as she recoiled away from me. I screamed in fear when her body sank to the floor.

  I held her head in my hands, shrieking for her to stay alive. Her eyelids closed in resignation, her turquoise pupils dilated. Clare’s breath stopped entirely. She was dead, and I had killed her.

  My eyes shot open.

  I was on the couch.

  Breathing heavily.

  My clothes stuck to me with the same cold sweat clinging to my forehead.

  It was just a dream.

  Ohmigod. Only a dream.

  A freaking nightmare.

  But on a small scale, it was exactly what I had done to her on Monday. I didn’t go back to sleep that night. The only thing I really knew at that point was that I had to see her and try to fix things if they were broken. Which they were.

  SUNDAY MORNING, I left the house in jeans and a comfortable sweater. The air had taken a sudden turn toward frigid. Well, it was cold to me, at least, a recently transplanted southerner. I was on my way to the coffee shop a few blocks from our house, humming along to the radio, when a text dinged on my phone. I didn’t think anything of it. I was one of the very few responsible teenage drivers who didn’t text and drive.

  The coffee shop was mostly deserted except for a few people reading the paper in the farthest corners from the entrance. I ordered a double-shot latte, already starting to feel the effect of not sleeping after that god-awful dream last night.

  Taking a sip of my steaming drink, I sat down at one of the quaint oak tables. I was just finishing writing my report for Lit (not sleeping is, however, good for finishing boring required reading) when the door gusted open, letting in a rush of freezing air. I shivered in my sweater when I looked up.

  Clare stared at me like a deer in the headlights. Her big blue eyes looked even bigger and bluer in the gray early morning light filtering through a heavy haze of clouds.

  I stared at her for a minute, not quite believing it was her. Belatedly, I started to stand up just as she turned to leave. Thankfully, she stopped when I hastily pulled out the chair across from me and sat back down in mine. I stretched my hand out, motioning for her to take a seat. She stared at me for a minute before closing the door behind her and taking a single, tentative step toward me.

  I smiled and stood up again, walking over to her. She rubbed her hands uneasily across her jeans, smiling hesitantly.

  “Let me buy you a coffee,” I said.

  She just nodded. It was the least confident I had ever seen her. She bordered on being downright skittish. She didn’t speak because the barista already knew what her “usual” was. She didn’t speak when she sat down across from me, either.

  She sipped at her hazelnut-scented coffee and grimaced at the first sip. I raised a questioning eyebrow at her. “Wrong drink?” I murmured.

  Clare laughed a little. “I hate coffee, but I love caffeine. So I get a triple shot of espresso with as many pumps of hazelnut and vanilla syrup as they’re allowed to put in one drink.”

  God, that sounded disgusting. I opened my mouth, and then closed it, making her laugh even harder.

  I shook my head, shrugging as I leaned back in my seat to study her. “I never took you for a caffeine addict.”

  She snorted. “I’m not an addict. I can stop any time I want.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, I’m sure you’ll quit right after the world ends.”

  A blush colored her face—which was a definite improvement over the vampirically pale look she’d been working when she came in here. She looked out the window, toying with the strings on her black-and-orange hoodie. I sighed. It had obviously been Brad’s.

  Her hair was loose and wavy, for once not curled or straightened into submission. And she wasn’t wearing a stitch of makeup. I had to say, it was the most real she had ever looked to me. It wasn’t as if she was this perfect, unattainable Barbie doll anymore.

  I tilted my head. “If you don’t mind my asking, why are you still wearing his hoodie?”

  She didn’t look at me. Instead, she murmured quietly, “I do mind.”

  I nodded, assuming it was still a little too fresh for her. Mentally, though, I sighed. The twisted psychology of clinging to her abuser’s clothes was beyond my limited understanding of such things.

  “So what’s going on in your life, Rain?” she asked quietly. “You already know what’s going on in mine.”

  I chuckled softly. “You know my name isn’t Rain, right?” I looked up from my cup to her face.

  She was staring intensely at me, her blue eyes vividly alive on my face. “I know.” She didn’t say anything more.

  I sighed, not understanding why she was so difficult to decipher sometimes. “I’m fine. Passing all of my classes, so that’s good,” I murmured.

  Clare just continued to look at me. I felt as if she was expecting me to continue, so I did. “Everything is going great. My parents and I are good, my friends and I fought, but we’re good now. Really, everything is pretty mundane in my little corner of the world,” I said.

  Her gaze kept on holding mine. “Why did you fight?” she inquired.

  I tapped my fingers against the wooden table. “You,” I responded.

  Clare looked away as an ashamed pang crossed her face. “Well, that’s no good,” she whispered.

  Outside, a patter of rain fell hard and heavy all of a sudden. How appropriate. I took a moment to gather my thoughts.

  Then, I admired the ceiling as I commenced talking. I really didn’t want to have to see her reaction when I muttered, “My friends had a pretty harsh reaction when they first saw the picture. I more or less told them to get their heads out of their asses, and that they had no idea what they were saying.”

  I chickened out on peeking at Clare as I continued. “Cam returned the favor by throwing the Bible in my face, which is utter crap by the way, considering she is anything but Christian. Anyway, I just wasn’t going to stand there and let them trash you because I know how hard it can be,” I finished in a rush. I kept staring at the ceiling. Fascinating stuff, ceiling tile.

  She cleared her throat, but I kept my gaze fixed on one tile in particular. “Rain,” she said.

  “Yeah?” My voice was quiet.

  She paused.

  I heard one of the customers leave, the sound of rain filling the small space loudly until the door closed again, muffling the storm.

  Clare obviously had no idea what to say next.

  I finally looked down at her, letting a big gust of air out of my lungs. Her eyebrows were knitted together in concentration. I guess it was her turn not to meet my eyes because she was doing a thorough examination of the floor.

  “What do you mean, you know how hard it can be?” she mumbled low. “Have you… been through something like this before?”

  My breath caught. My phone dinged again from my bag. I ignored it. “I meant exactly what I said,” I replied.

  She didn’t breathe for a minute, and I was reminded of my terrible dream. Her eyes danced across my face, alight. Her perfect teeth were bright in the shaded room.

  “Rain, are you gay?” She asked it with so much awe that I had to giggle a little.

  I shook my head and said patiently, “Yes, Clare, I’m a lesbian.”

  And not two seconds later, Brad and a group of his friends walked in. Clare paled considerably, her shoulders freezing with tension. I didn’t say a word as they all shot us poisonous glares, Brad’s the most terrifying and worst of them all. He pointed at Clare and laughed a little, meanly.

  She recoiled like he had hit her. I reached across the table and sei
zed her hand in mine. Her eyes got huge, and she tried to pull back as she looked back and forth between me and the boys. I squeezed her hand, not moving a finger.

  We were in this together, whether she liked it or not. One of the boys, no doubt thinking himself very clever, whistled at us. But I had caught her terrified stare with mine, and I wasn’t about to let her look away.

  Eventually, an eternity later, she returned my squeeze, as a tiny hint of a smile spread across her features. The boys didn’t seem to know what to do with us, and they eventually left. But not before my phone dinged a third time.

  Clare flicked her gaze to my bag. “Are you going to get that?”

  I had a hunch that it was a certain psychopath IM’ing me anonymously. And frankly, as I watched Brad walk out of the shop and into the downpour, I didn’t care if people knew or not. But that could’ve been the lack of sleep talking.

  Either way, though, I was making this decision right here, right now, with Clare as my witness.

  “Absolutely not.”

  Eight

  I EVENTUALLY pulled my hand away from Clare’s and checked my phone. The only incoming message was from the app Brad’s earlier messages had come through on. Without hesitation, I deleted it.

  Clare and I talked for what seemed like hours in that coffee shop, going through three more caffeinated beverages each. I wasn’t going to sleep till about Wednesday. When we looked out the window, it was still pouring, but the sky was dark and threatening now, through the rain.

  I glanced over at her and was rewarded with an absolutely beaming smile. She was happy, and that’s all the confirmation I needed that I wasn’t a nuisance to her. She was actually enjoying herself. And hey, if I gave her a tiny reprieve from the misery everyone else was busy heaping on her head, then it was a day well spent.

  When the sun started to set, the gray clouds growing ever grayer, I sighed in regret. “Well, I guess this is it for tonight. School is going to come really early tomorrow, considering I’ll be up all night after all that caffeine.”