Page 18 of The Heart That Breaks
“‘Night, Dad.”
I sit there for a while after he goes upstairs, wondering why I’m wanting something I’m probably not going to have. Is it just the challenge of it and the fact that I’m not used to hearing no?
If it is, then that pretty much makes me a jerk.
The truth is I think it’s actually way more than that.
*
Ann-Elizabeth
THE NEXT MORNING, I wait until I hear Lance’s truck roll down the driveway before I leave my room for the kitchen. “Morning, Mama,” I say, sitting down at the table.
She looks over her shoulder from her spot at the stove. “Morning, Ann-Elizabeth. The bus will be here in a few minutes. I’ll feed Henry this morning. You go on and eat.” She places a plate with two eggs and a piece of toast in front of me.
“I’m not really hungry,” I say.
“You have to eat before you go to school. Your brain needs fuel for all that work you do there.”
I pick up my fork, cut off a bite of egg and put it in my mouth with little enough enthusiasm that Mama stares at me for a second and says, “Are you sick? And what happened to your face?”
“Tree branch,” I say, amazed how smoothly the lie slides from my lips. I wonder if this will be my new thing. Becoming a practiced liar. But then if Lance weren’t in our lives, I’d really have no reason not to tell the truth.
“Did you put anything on it?” she asks.
“Yes.” I take a sip of my orange juice and slide back from the table, walking over to the cabinet where I keep Henry’s food. “I’ll feed him on the way out,” I say, grabbing my backpack.
“Ann-Elizabeth. What on earth has gotten into you?”
“Bye, Mama,” I say, heading out the door. “Have a good day.”
Outside, Henry waits at the end of his chain, his tail thumping at the sight of me. “Hey, sweetie,” I say, putting the bowl down in front of him.
He digs in. I hear the bus coming, lean down and give him a hug as I say, “See you after school.”
I take off running, reaching the edge of the driveway just as it rolls up. The door pops open. Mr. Bowles, the driver, gives me the same cheerful greetinghe gives me every day. “And how’s Miss Ann-Elizabeth this morning?”
“Good morning, and good, thanks,” I say, climbing on and walking to the back. I take the seat I always sit in.
A mile or so down the road, Brandi Stone gets on and slides in beside me like she does every morning.” Hey, Ann-Elizabeth,” she says.
“Hey, Brandi.”
She goes to the middle school where our bus stops before dropping us high schoolers off. She’s been sitting with me since her first day of kindergarten when she walked down the aislewith a terrified look on her small, grimy face.
Most kids get the benefit of a parent’s need to make their child shine for their first day of school. But not Brandi. Her mom, Crystal, had sent her off that morning, looking as if she hadn’t had a bath or washed her hair in a week or more.
There were no pink ribbons setting off Brandi’s pigtails. Instead, her hair had been a mass of tangles, matted so tightly in the back that I had first thought the only thing to fix it would be a pair of scissors.
When I slid over that first dayand offered her a spot beside me, Crystal had taken it as if she had been thrown in a pond with no idea how to swim and I had just tossed her a life jacket. “What is school like?” she had asked me in a quivering voice.
“Kindergarten is the best year ever,” I told her, seeing that she needed some reassurance. “The teacher will read stories to you a lot and you’ll get to take naps and have snacks.”
She had smiled hopefully at this. And I noticed that her teeth, like her hair, looked like they hadn’t had much attention either.
“Does she beat you if you’re bad?” she asked, her voice still unsteady against the words.
“No,” I said, trying to hide myshock.
