Page 2 of Bound By Fury

My chest still burns with shame.

I hadn’t been able to bring myself to wear the necklace at first. I’d merely tucked it into my pocket and carried it with me, a weight to keep me tethered to the ground when all I wanted to do was float up, up, and away from here. From this ache.

Releasing a shaking breath, I curl my fist around the curious gold charm, the metal warm against my palm as I shove those thoughts back into their box. Instead I turn my attention to the apple fritters. Should I get those or the rainbow brownies? A package of frosted mini donuts is crinkling beneath my touch when the old woman previously stationed behind the counter rounds the corner. Our eyes meet briefly, and we both do that strained, close-lipped grin of greeting.

Every time I turn into a new aisle, I tense, wondering if this will be the moment that I come face-to-face with one of the boys. I can see it—our three sets of sticky fingers rummaging through the ice-pop freezer, back when Mr. Mahoney was still the owner, and we could slip through the legs of vacationers like water, coins clattering onto the counter as we ran back out into the blistering sun.

The memories are a knife in my gut, and the pain only worsens when I recall what I saw last night.

The glow from the window across the way.

Malachi’s silhouette dancing against the gauzy curtains.

A year of silence stretches between us. Unanswered questions. The rage of knowing how disastrously things ended last summer. I can’t tell if I’m desperate to see him again because I miss him so much, I can’t breathe—or because I’m desperate to wring his neck.

Still, the heaviness of guilt unfurls in my chest.

It’s all my fault.

I touch my pocket, just in case my phone is vibrating and I haven’t noticed.

It’s not.

The cashier is busying herself with straightening the shelves, her pale hands idling on boxes of Ho Hos as her eyes cut to me once again.

Weaving my way into the next aisle, I stiffen as she trails after me. I will the heat that burns in my lungs to go away. But it creeps, languishing in red as it blooms outward, spreading beneath my skin, darkening the tips of my ears, the back of my neck.

I swipe a two-pack of Zebra Cakes off the shelf and turn another corner, rolling my shoulders against the building tension.

I haven’t had a single fucking second to breathe in the last month. Not since I woke up on my sixteenth birthday and padded into my grandmother’s room, a strange, tingle-like anticipation buzzing across my skin.

Instead of a sea of balloons to trip over and a wall of birthday streamers, what I found was a barren hallway and a closed bedroom door, wide open eyes and a mouth agape, and a pulse so thready I could have sworn it wasn’t there. Instead of sprinkle cake and sparkler candles, what I got was a throat ripped raw from screaming and bruised knees and the feel of her ribs cracking beneath my hands.

No one tells you how bad giving CPR sucks.

No one tells you that you have to hurt people to save them.

And I did save her. But at what cost, and for how long?

I grip the handle of the glass refrigerator and grab a soda, swallowing the lump in my throat. The cashier’s shuffling steps hit my eardrums like claps of thunder, and I try—and fail—to bury my growing agitation as I wander into the next aisle.

Again, I grab my phone. Nothing. I rotate it in my hands. Short side, long side, short side, long side.

Behind me a fluorescent light flickers.

My mother told me she’d call the second anything changes. The nurses practically pushed me out the door. Said something about self-care. That she’s safe with them.

Platitudes meant to placate me.

I blow a raspberry as my gaze shifts to the rounded mirror at the end of the row, and I watch as seconds later, the cashier rolls back into view. Holding my breath, I will away the words barred by the gate of my clenched teeth. I press my palms against my thighs to staunch the tremor pulsing through my hands.

The keys on the woman’s belt rattle as she continues to track me through the store, each scraping of the metal like a scalding nail down my spine.

Truthfully, this feeling has been building in me for days. My composure a fraying thread that’s always one inconvenience away from snapping.

Despite the fact that Gigi hasn’t said a word since her stroke, she spent all yesterday jackknifing up from her bed, her bony, now-emaciated hands ripping at the gown, pulling it from her neck like she was trying to escape from something. I spent the day covering and re-covering her chest and whispering into her hair, “It’s okay. You can go now. You can go now.”

When the meds finally lulled her into a fitful sleep, I watched the glittering stars from her hospice room window and willed the stories of my childhood to be true. Begged them to be true.