Unbroken: 13 Stories Starring Disabled Teens Read online

  She cut her eyes at me. “Won’t that up your risk for mania?”

  A laugh bubbled up in my throat, like the cheap champagne we’d nicked from her parents’ liquor cabinet and drunk cross-legged in her basement, toasting ourselves, our ancestors, and the crooked stars we were born under.

  “You sound like WebMD,” I told her, and it wasn’t an insult. Lucy had become a walking resource on all things bipolar II since I’d been diagnosed two years ago.

  “And you didn’t answer my question.” It was too soft to be angry, but too firm to be shrugged off.

  Outside the window, open fields and dense patches of trees with their thinning red, yellow, and orange leaves and the occasional aging farmhouse gave way to towering Revolutionary homes and quaint bricked storefronts. The sunlight chose that moment to come back, and I looked away, annoyance flaring and coursing through my veins, leaving them bruised.

  “Calculated risk,” I replied. The thick grayness that had settled in the space between my lungs crept into my voice. “Apparently the confusion and trouble remembering basically everything was a pretty sizable red flag. Also the weight gain, the fact that my hands wouldn’t stop shaking, and the weird salty taste that I couldn’t get rid of were all signs that maybe it wasn’t the right med for me.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “It’s about time. There’s roughly a million other mood stabilizers out there and they had you on the oldest one. What about your Celexa?”

  “We kept it the same. Twenty milligrams twice a day. We’ll ‘revisit’ the dosage in two weeks and consider other options to add to it.”

  Lucy could swear in two languages, and she did so in both now.

  “I know,” I said.

  Her grip on the wheel was tight, bleaching her tan knuckles bone white, crescent moons against the midnight leather.

  Finally she nodded and fumbled in the console for the twin pairs of sunglasses we kept there. I leaned forward and turned the radio back up, searching through the crackling stations till I found our girl Dolly.

  I slid my pair of dime-store shades on and looked over at her as I sat back, her fingers drumming a lazy beat on the shifter, the pale sunlight caressing her thick black hair. Lucy was the kind of effortlessly cool that stuck with you. Quiet and steady and sure, the loyal middle daughter of Cuban immigrants. She was battered hand-me-down leather jackets and discount geek shirts and a red string tied around her ankle.

  She was third-grade sleepovers and tenth-grade parties and as certain—maybe more—as the ground beneath my shoes.

  She caught me staring and flashed me that almost smile, and the sudden flood of gratitude for the girl next to me was overwhelming.

  I loved her.

  It wasn’t the kind of love that filled my gut with butterflies or made me cover the pages in my notebook with my first name and her last. It wasn’t marriage certificates or baby names. It was something older than that. Quieter. It was bones knowing bones, and being built with pieces of the same exploding star.

  I shifted slightly in my seat, a little closer to her, but only just, as she flipped on the signal to turn down the street the school was tucked away on. “Tired sisters,” I muttered.

  “Weary daughters,” she replied in the same tone.

  She glanced at me, and suddenly my bones ached a little less.

  * * *

  I moved through the day like I always did. Mindlessly shuffling from class to class, relying on muscle memory to perform the most mundane tasks and socialization. There were pages to read and notes to take, and my hand moved across the paper robotically. It matched my smile and my hollow words to people who’d one day be close friends again. I remembered little. I rarely did. Dr. Briar said that would improve as the lithium left my system completely.

  Until then, I existed. I slid between my classmates and classes, my mask slipping the moment I was sure no one was looking in my direction, something that was happening more often as of late. It’d be easy to get lost here, in the spaces where I felt like a ghost, a spirit who couldn’t touch or be touched. It’d be easy, so easy, to drown.

  But I kept swimming back toward shore.

  Back toward Mama. The littles. Tabby.

  I kept swimming back to Lucy.

  * * *

  Lucy pushed her plate of fries across the perma-sticky table toward me. I didn’t have to say I wasn’t hungry, and she didn’t have to remind me food was generally important for survival. I took one because she wanted me to, and she tipped her head at me, shoving a handful in her own mouth.

  I scanned the crowded cafeteria while I chewed, looking at and for nothing in particular, but my eyes landed on Tabby anyway. She was seated at a table close to the center of the room, laughing at something without any real conviction on her face.

  I frowned. It was comfortable on my face, worn in from all the recent overuse. I forced myself to swallow the lump of fry, cringing when it settled in my gut like stone. I shouldn’t have felt the sharp pang of jealousy, both that Tabby could laugh with others but not me and that she was better at pretending than I was.

  Lucy was humming under her breath. It was low, too low almost, a barely-there whisper that I shouldn’t have been able to hear in the dull roar that was a hundred-plus kids squeezed into a space designed for maybe half of them, but Lucy was my moon, and if music comes from the sky, it draws your attention.

  It worked as she no doubt intended it to. I took a deep breath. Another. Then I pulled my eyes from Tabby and snagged a few more fries before shoving the plate back at Lucy.

  “It’s not you,” Lucy said quietly, picking up a fry and popping it in her mouth.

  “Could be,” I replied, and reached across the table to pull her straw wrapper toward me, mostly to have something to do with my hands. “She’s mad at me again. I wouldn’t let her go to the mall on Saturday with Gina. Her brother was gonna drive them.”

  “David?” Lucy scowled. “He lost his license.”

  “Exactly.” I twisted the wrapper into a tight rope, focusing on the process more than was entirely necessary.

  “She’ll get over it,” Lucy said firmly. “That boy is reckless at best. I wouldn’t put my worst enemy in a vehicle with him.”

  “I mean. I might.”

  There was that laugh, and I was laughing, too, and even our amusement was in harmony.

  If there was a life before this one, Lucy and I had been together in that one, too.

  “Fourteen is such an obnoxious age,” Lucy continued. “God. Remember us at fourteen? We could be such little shits.”

  “You never were,” I pointed out. “You just went along with my schemes.”

  “Which mostly involved us being little shits.” She reached for my bottle of soda.

  I snorted. “We sound like a pair of grandmas right now.”

  “Aren’t we, though?” She nodded at someone over my shoulder and took a long drink. “I don’t know about you, but my hips are killing me.”

  “My back has been giving me hell lately. Bet we’re gonna have rain soon.”

  “Lord knows we need it.” We were interrupted by Shannon, who was kind enough not to mention the fact that we’d stopped sitting at our old table and invited us to a party I already planned on skipping at her brother’s house. Once she’d left, Lucy turned back to me. “So what’s the plan for today?”

  “Kids have a doctor’s appointment.” I gave up trying to twist my paper rope any tighter and started smoothing it back out. “Four.”

  Lucy flashed me a grin. “Perfect. I love when we get to cruise over there.”

  I didn’t try to protest. Didn’t try to wave her off and insist we could take the bus. Instead, I gave her a small smile and a quick exhale, a quiet thanks in the language only we spoke.

  * * *

  The second half of the day passed like the first. Hazy and distant. It wouldn’t always be like this. My doctors kept reassuring me that it only took the right combo of medicines and therapy and I’d feel more like the gi
rl I used to be; but for now, that switch in my brain labeled high and low was flipped down. If I was lucky, this would be as bad as it got.

  Lucky and I weren’t always on speaking terms.

  * * *

  “I love this part of town,” Lucy declared, eyes hungrily taking in the tidy brick buildings full of shops and cafés and diners. The cobble sidewalks were crowded, a mix of teenagers and old-timers and construction workers who’d knocked off early. “We don’t come here nearly enough.”

  In the backseat, Pauly sat forward and nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah, Lucy.”

  Lucy glanced in the rearview mirror and smiled at him, melting his baby six-year-old heart to a puddle. Pauly thought she’d hung the stars. “Hell yes, little dude. We need to hang out here more.”

  She was still smiling when she looked over at me. “We should move here after we graduate. Live in one of those little apartments over a store.”

  She was always saying things like that, placing a future version of us in different locations, like trying on dresses for prom. I grinned back at her like I always did. Because something about imagining that us, older and wiser and different, made my lungs feel a little less tight.

  “The bookstore,” I said. “Maybe we can get jobs there. We’d be so hipster cool.”

  “Yes.” Lucy hit the wheel with her palm. “God, I can already smell the pages and coffee.”

  Marisa was staring out the window when I glanced back at her, her tiny chin resting on her knobby knees. At nine, she was all long limbs and sharp angles, and a thick wall of silence. She’d always been a quiet kid, the calm beat before Pauly’s stomp of noise, but now she was a lost daddy’s girl, hiding in it.

  My throat was hot and full of glass, the knot in my chest tighter and heavier when I turned back around.

  Now.

  Then.

  Before.

  After.

  This was how our lives were measured these days. There was us before with Daddy and us now without him. I wondered if we’d ever be able to get our feet under us to navigate the without or if it’d always be like this. Five ships, lost at sea, looking for a lighthouse and only finding darkness where it once stood.

  I wanted to hate him for what he did to us. For Pauly, too young, too innocent, too baby sweet to understand Daddy wasn’t coming home. I wanted to hate him for tucking in Marisa that last time, kissing her forehead like he always did, knowing he wouldn’t be there to put her on the school bus in the morning. I wanted to hate him for Tabby’s anger and the lines bracketing Mama’s lips that hadn’t been there before.

  I wanted to hate him for me, too. For leaving me behind to daddy his children when I still needed one myself.

  But I was too tired.

  Hate like that took work to keep up, and all my energy was dedicated to surviving.

  He was gone.

  I was here.

  And Lucy was driving.

  * * *

  Marisa was called in first. When I rose to follow her, she shook her head, small and slight without meeting my eyes. On the one hand, I was relieved. It was one less thing for me to do, one less interaction I had to have. On the other, here was proof that I was failing. Neither of my sisters needed nor wanted me. I was a poor substitute for who they did need. Lucy winced when I sat back with a sigh before leaning over the arm of her chair toward me.

  “Did I tell you Ricky has a girlfriend? Apparently, they met online and they’re in love and gonna get married,” she said, her voice low and amused.

  I quirked an eyebrow at her. “He’s fifteen.”

  She laughed like rolling thunder. “Which the entire family pointed out to him numerous times. He also doesn’t know her real name or where she’s from, which in my opinion puts a little bit of a kink in things.”

  Pauly fidgeted next to me, and I smoothed a hand over his sandy hair. “Where did he even meet her?”

  “He wouldn’t say.” Lucy straightened and nodded toward the nurse walking into the waiting room with a folder in her hands. “I’ll wait for Marisa,” she said a second before Pauly’s name was called.

  I squeezed her fingers as I took Pauly’s hand and followed the nurse back.

  * * *

  He chattered the entire time; he always did, words flowing out of his little mouth in a steady stream. Dr. Raza nodded and chuckled as she looked him over before declaring him healthy.

  She waited until I’d helped Pauly down before he could attempt it himself and was reaching for his and Marisa’s checkout paperwork.

  “And you?” she asked softly, her hijab the deep blue of twilight, her eyes burning bright like stars beneath it. “How have you been doing since you saw Dr. Briar on Friday?”

  Pauly shifted from foot to foot in front of me, anticipating what was coming next but too polite to outright ask for it.

  Dr. Raza smiled down at him with amusement as she dug into her pocket and produced a handful of stickers. He was bent over them instantly, a finger slipping into his mouth as he considered his options with all the grave seriousness only a six-year-old can accomplish.

  She stared at me over his head, patient but steady.

  “I don’t know,” I told her honestly.

  She nodded, taking my answer for what it meant and what it didn’t. “Are you safe?”

  My yes came quick and firm.

  “Good. If that changes—”

  I cut her off with a too-sharp “I’ll call.” I wasn’t sure if I could hear the same information yet again without wanting to crawl out of my skin.

  I hustled Pauly out of the room and down the hall as he held his stickers up for my approval. Lucy and Marisa met us at the checkout desk.

  Lucy shook her head at me as they settled in beside me and Pauly to wait; she’d tried and failed to draw Marisa into conversation. I blew out a ragged breath, and Lucy’s shoulder found mine, the pressure gentle but unwavering.

  My hand barely shook when it was our turn, and I passed the paperwork to the smiling receptionist in bright Scooby-Doo scrubs.

  * * *

  Later. It was always later. The day always slipped through my fingers, minutes like grains of sand, my palm suddenly empty.

  Coming into a darkening house. Homework. Dinner was fry-bread tacos, almost like Elisi used to make. Mine most often came out of a discount store can.

  The light bled out of the sky, and Tabby’s key never turned in the lock. After too many phone calls, I finally tracked her down at Gina’s. She was staying the night, she told me defiantly, daring me to argue with her. I was too emptied out, too soul sick, to hear how I wasn’t her mother.

  I left a note for her real one, next to the plate she’d heat up when she finally came stumbling in, hands shaky and fumbling, petite feet swollen in her cheap clogs.

  The littles took showers, and Pauly still needed help with his. His voice filled the small space, echoing off the tiled walls. The question didn’t come until I was drying him off.

  “River?” His hazel eyes were wide in his baby-chubby face. My hands stilled, towel over his hair.

  “Yeah, bubbie?”

  The urge to frame those cheeks, my brown against his tan, Mama’s genes contrasted against Daddy’s, rose and fell in time with his smile.

  “When’s Daddy coming home?”

  My heart gave a lurch.

  “I don’t know, bud,” I told him, my voice the only light-as-a-feather, stiff-as-a-board Mama would ever let me play. I resumed scrubbing his short hair dry. “What did you say Tanner did again?”

  And he was off, filling my ears with playground gossip.

  In their room, I picked and laid out their clothes for the next morning. Marisa never wanted me to tuck her in, but Pauly did. He looked tiny in his race-car bed as I pulled the covers up to his chin and laid a kiss on his head. Marisa twitched when my lips met her damp crown, but her watery eyes met mine when I pulled away.

  “Story?” Pauly’s sleepy voice stopped me at the door.

  “Tomorrow,�
� I told him, the lie singeing my tongue. Guilt tugged at me, but we were old friends, and I carried it with me as I walked through the house and flipped off lights and checked the doors.

  My hand trailed against the walls as I made my way down the hall to my room, the drywall unyielding against my fingers. Would the walls of our new home be as solid? Would they be able to contain us? Or would our grief, our heartache, our anger, our anxiety, spill out, saturating whatever new street we ended up on?

  I didn’t bother with pajamas. Just stripped off my day clothes and collapsed onto my bed in my underwear, worn sheets soothing against tender skin, the familiar quiet of the house settling around me.

  I stretched my fingers toward the moonlight crawling across the floor, but they fell short.

  My hand dropped.

  I rolled onto my back.

  And I broke around a dry sob.

  My edges blurred against the faded stars on my old sheets. Pieces crumbled, drifted away, scattered across scratched wood and collected in corners. The clock in the hall ticked off the minutes, a separate pulse in my ear, and Tabby’s empty twin bed loomed across the room.

  I blinked against the heat behind my eyes. Blinked again as Lucy crawled through the window on a moonbeam, curtains rustling around her. She peeled away from the silvery light to step toward the shadows.

  Toward me.

  I slid over to the wall out of habit, and a beat later her shoulder was a solid weight against mine.

  I couldn’t see Tabitha’s empty side of the room over Lucy’s body. I couldn’t drown in that treacherous silence where Tabby’s voice should have been because Lucy’s steady breathing filled it.

  My fingers twisted in the sheets until they found hers.

  She sighed and tightened her grip.

  “Marco called. He’ll be home in two days. Took off to New York of all things, on Daddy’s money, too. Daddy went nuclear.”

  I tried my voice. It came out mostly steady. “They’re lucky they have you. All of them. You’re the lighthouse in the middle of Ricky and Marco’s storm.”

  “Hush now,” she whispered in that way she always did when I handed her exactly what she needed.

  The quiet felt less malicious now that Lucy was guarding it.