The Things We Break

Chapter 1

A GIRL NAMED EVAN

“Evan Michael Blu Carter,” my mother yelled from the doorway.

I knew the reason she was upset. There was a boy sprawled across my bed.

Not just any boy. Tristan Anderson. We were both fully clothed, and the room reeked of stale beer and bonfire.

Tristan’s nose was pressed against my neck, and his breath was warm on my skin.

I didn’t need to open my eyes to know our limbs were tangled in the blanket.

His hand on the bare flesh of my stomach. It all felt so normal.

Even though we had broken up two weeks ago.

“Do you have to yell?” I groaned, covering my face with my arm.

“Don’t sass me, young lady.” My mother stomped into the room and tore open the curtains.

I knew what would come next. She’d start preaching about how she couldn’t deal with “this.” “This” being me and my behavior.

A behavior she swore was me acting up since my father died.

My father’s death had nothing to do with Tristan in my bed.

That started when I was thirteen and he was fourteen and I learned the truth about the bruises.

I squinted against the bright sun that now flooded the room.

My mother fluttered around, pulling wet towels off the bathroom door and kicking shoes out of her way. She was dressed in her new uniform: spandex and a bright pink shirt made of some wicking material. That was Harold’s fault.

“It’s eight, and you’re still in bed. With him. Evan, this has to stop.” She shoved the drawer of my dresser closed with her hip.

Harold was my mother’s newest “this.” Four months ago, it had been a biker from South Dakota. And before that, a farmer from the neighboring town. If she thought my behavior was a reaction to my father’s death, she should’ve taken a long look in the mirror.

“I want him out of here and this room cleaned up. Harold is coming over.” She looked around the room. “Your father would be disappointed in all of this.”

“I could say the same for you,” I mumbled as she stomped out of my room.

My dead father’s disappointment was her newest weapon.

Disappointed that I missed curfew or that my room was a mess.

Disappointed that my grades had slipped, that I had slipped.

Someone should have reminded her my father was dead and the dead couldn’t be disappointed.

I untangled myself from the beautiful boy whose dark hair hid his best feature.

His eyes. Bright green with dark lashes that softened the sharp cut of his cheekbones.

I brushed the hair from his face. The reason he had slept in my bed had turned purple in the harsh morning light.

Tristan’s dad had been drunk again. They fought, and Tristan lost.

“Don’t go,” Tristan mumbled, trying to pull me back down on the bed.

One bright green eye shone through the tangled mess of hair.

I believe Cupid made his mouth for kissing.

It was perfect, even busted. And he loved to use it for that.

Kissing. That was the reason we broke up.

He used that perfect mouth to kiss another girl.

He also had his hand up her shirt but the kissing hurt more.

I should’ve told him to call her last night. Let her pick up his broken pieces.

But I didn’t because I still loved him. Our lives were so tangled up in each other’s, we couldn’t go two weeks apart.

No, I couldn’t go two weeks without him.

So when he called, drunk, and had nowhere else to go, I let him in.

Into my room, then into my bed and back into my life.

I told myself it was because he had nowhere else to go, not because I missed him so much.

He took my hand and kissed my fingertips. “Please don’ go.”

I traced the delicate point of his top lip now marred with a cut.

James, Tristan’s father, gave him that. James had done the physical damage while his mother had watched.

I didn’t know which was worse. I don’t think she loved him.

How could she watch it happen? And that was why Tristan kissed that girl.

Because James hit him, and his mother watched.

And the only way Tristan knew how to cope was by getting high.

And when Tristan got high, he did stupid shit.

“Why did you kiss her?” I whispered. He cupped the back of my neck, pulling me closer.

“I made a mistake. She meant nothing to me.” His voice was heavy with sleep. It was so hard to remember he hurt me. Especially the way he looked stretched out next to me. Tristan was good at being Broken Tristan. But in his defense, I didn’t think he knew how to be anything except broken.

I pressed a kiss to his mouth. Because I wanted to. I needed to know he was okay. And to prove to the other girl he still kissed me, still loved me. I wanted to say more, but I heard the doorbell and my mother bitch about my next visitor.

A soft knock on the doorframe, and the quiet voice of Tristan’s little brother, Noah, ended any conversation about how much the girl didn’t mean to him.

“Hey, Noah.” I smiled at the younger, lighter version of Tristan. Noah had his mother’s scared blue eyes and dirty blond hair. His face still held some of the innocence his brother’s had lost years ago.

“Hey, Evan. Tristan, Mom wants you to come home.” Noah toed the edge of the rug.

Tristan sat up, rubbing his face and stretching. His shirt rose up, showing last week’s disagreement with his father. He hadn’t called me that night. My fingers itched to trace the yellowing bruises. To press kisses to them. To replace the pain with something else.

“Is he home?” Tristan looked over at his little brother.

Noah shook his head, not making eye contact with me. Tristan did what his mother wouldn’t do. He took care of Noah, made sure he was fed, went to school, and had clean clothing. He also took the abuse, the screaming, the bottles being thrown.

“Did you eat?” I asked, sliding from the bed. I did what I could to help Tristan with Noah.

“No. Mom had to work, so she said… I mean, I’m fine,” Noah told the floor.

Laura, their mother, worked a part-time job at the C-store on the edge of town.

I thought a job would help her leave James.

Tristan had said that was why she always went back, because she couldn’t support him and Noah.

But all the job did was give James another reason to hate Tristan.

“Come on, let’s go see what Dar is cooking up.

” Darcy was my mother’s full name, but Harold called her Dar, so now I did. I put my arm around Noah’s shoulders.

“Ev,” Tristan called.

He hated it when I did this, treated them like charity cases, but I hated when he had his hands up another girl’s shirt. I turned my back to him, flipping my hair over my shoulder. “I don’t know if the fact she meant nothing to you makes it any better.”

In the kitchen, Dar was wiping the counters down and replacing the flowers.

I opened the neglected breakfast cupboard.

Once it had been filled with all my favorites.

Then my father died, and my mother wasn’t equipped to handle all the normal parts of life like breakfast or a grieving child.

“We have Life, Special K, and…” I moved a box of Dar’s newest fad diet cereal out of the way.

“And what look to be diet bars?” I held up the box with a big red A on the front.

My mother had always been thin. But at forty-six, things weren’t as firm as she wanted. And since Harold, who was ten years older, liked his women “tight,” she was on another diet. I didn’t want to know what the hell “tight” meant.

In the back of the cupboard sat a familiar blue box. “How about Pop-Tarts?” I looked down at Noah, who twisted the string of his hoodie around his finger. It was one of Tristan’s hand-me-downs from eighth grade. I wore it once during a field trip.

“Oh, no you don’t.” My mother tried to close the cupboard door.

She, unlike my father, never liked the role of being a parent.

Kids were messy and didn’t always fit into the Better Homes his father had been Stewert Joseph.

And since my mother wanted no other children, I was Evan Michael.

Blu came from my mother’s side. All the girls had colorful middle names.

My mom was Violet—the color, not the flower.

My aunt was Rose. Again, the color, not the flower.

I got Blu, not even spelled like the color. I got the jackpot of shitty names.

I was supposed to be Eva Michael Blu. But a mistake at the hospital turned me into Evan. My father loved it, so it stuck. In grade school, I told everyone to call me Eva until Tristan. He liked the name Evan better and said it fit me, so I was back to being Evan.

And I was glad. My name was all I had left of my dad, thanks to my mother.

“Yes, you do, and that boy always brings it out. Grab the Pledge and make yourself useful.” My mother motioned to the coffee table.

“His father was a drunk, you know. Messed up in the head too. Why Laura settled for him I’ll never understand.

She was a good girl, came from a good home. Just like you.”

And if Tristan had come from a “good home,” my mother would be ready to marry us off. My friends wouldn’t question why. My teachers wouldn’t frown when Tristan and I walked into class together, his arm flung over my shoulder, his mouth pressed to my hair as he told me how much he loved me.

“She and I were cheerleaders together.” My mother rattled on about the “good old days” back when she had been homecoming and prom queen.

She loved to remind me she had been a cheerleader and class president.

She still thought those things mattered.

Like those made-up titles were the deciding factor in how the world should treat her and those who hadn’t been lucky enough to get one.

That was what living in a small town would do to you.

It kept you small. My mother wanted those same titles for me.

Like a dowry for my future husband. And here we have Evan Michael Blu Carter, the girl with a boy’s name, but she was class president in tenth grade, a cheerleader in ninth, and the best part, she has all her teeth.

I tried cheerleading during my freshman year.

But then I discovered sex with Tristan, and it was either the squad or him.

And a bunch of giggling girls couldn’t compete with sex and Tristan.

Besides, I wouldn’t need those silly titles.

I wasn’t going to stay in this small town.

Tristan and I had bigger plans. We’d leave together.

We’d get an apartment and live big lives away from these small people.

I looked back to the door that Tristan had just left through.

It was only a kiss. He swore he hadn’t slept with the girl.

And we had a history. A good history. A history I wanted to build my future on.

I watched my mother carefully make vacuum lines in the beige carpet.

I wouldn’t end up like her.