Unbreakable

“What’s the deal with the King?” Elle asked, using her favorite nickname for Elvis.

“He’s been acting weird.” I didn’t want to elaborate.

I wanted to forget about the graveyard and the girl in the white nightgown. But I couldn’t shake the image of her feet hovering above the ground—or the feeling that there was a reason I couldn’t stop thinking about her.

3. BLACKOUT

The house was dark when Elle dropped me off five minutes before curfew, which was strange because Mom always waited up. She liked to hang out in the kitchen while I raided the fridge and gave her a slightly edited play-by-play of the night. After my self-imposed exile, she’d be amused when I reported that nothing had changed.

Elle had dragged me around the lobby with her while she flirted with guys she would never go out with, and I got stuck making awkward small talk with their friends. At least it was over and no one had asked about Chris.

I unlocked the door.

She hadn’t even left a light on for me.

“Mom?”

Maybe she fell asleep.

I flipped the switch at the base of the stairs. Nothing. The power was probably out.

Great.

The house was pitch-black. A rush of dizziness swept over me as the fear started to build.

My hand curled around the banister, and I focused on the top of the stairs trying to convince myself it wasn’t that dark.

I crept up the steps. “Mom?”

When I reached the second-floor landing, a rush of cold air knocked the breath out of my lungs. The temperature inside must have dropped at least twenty degrees since I left for the movies. Did we leave a window open?

“Mom!”

The lights flickered, casting long shadows down the narrow hallway. I stumbled toward her room, my panic increasing with every step. The memory of the tiny crawl space in the back of her closet fought to break free.

Don’t think about it.

I edged closer.

This end of the hall was even colder, and my breath came out in white puffs. Her door was open, a pale yellow light blinking inside.

The stench of stale cigarette smoke hit me, and a rising sense of dread clawed at my insides.

Someone’s in the house.

I stepped through the doorway, and the wrongness of the scene closed in on me.

My mom lay on the bed, motionless.

Elvis crouched on her chest.

The lamp in the corner flashed on and off like a child was toying with the switch.

The cat made a low guttural sound that cut through the silence, and I shuddered. If an animal could scream, that was what it would sound like.

“Mom?”

Elvis’ head whipped around in my direction.

I ran to the bed and he leapt to the floor.

My mother’s head was tilted to the side, dark hair spilling across her face, as the room pitched in and out of darkness. I realized how still she was—the fact that her chest wasn’t rising and falling. I pressed my fingers against her throat.

Nothing.

I shook her roughly. “Mom, wake up!”

Tears streamed down my face, and I slid my hand under her cheek. The light stopped flashing, bathing the room in a faint glow.

“Mom!” I grabbed her shoulders and yanked her upright. Her head swung forward and fell against her chest. I scrambled backward, and her body dropped down onto the mattress, bouncing against it unnaturally.

I slid to the floor, choking on my tears.

My mother’s head lay against the bed at an awkward angle, her face turned toward me.

Her eyes were as empty as a doll’s.

FOUR WEEKS LATER

4. GRAVE JUMPING

My bedroom still looked like my bedroom, the bookshelves crammed with sketch pads and tins filled with broken pencils and bits of charcoal. The bed was still positioned in the center like an island, so I could lie on my back and stare at the posters and drawings taped to my walls. Chris Berens’ Lady Day still hung on the back of my door—a beautiful girl imprisoned in a glass dome floating across the sky. I had spent more than a few nights inventing stories about the girl trapped inside. In the end, she always found a way out.

Now I wasn’t so sure.

I had two days to take this place apart and box up everything that mattered to me. The things that made this room mine—the things that defined me. I’d tried a hundred times over the last month, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. So I enlisted the only person left who loved this place almost as much as I did.

“Earth to Kennedy? Did you hear anything I said?” Elle held up one of my sketchbooks. “Do you want these in the box with art stuff or in the one with books?”

I shrugged. “Whatever you think.”

I stood in front of the mirror, pulling out the faded photos tucked around the edge: a blurry close-up of Elvis swatting at the lens as a kitten. My mom wearing cutoffs at about my age, washing a black Camaro and waving a soapy hand at the camera, the silver ID bracelet she never took off still dangling from her wrist.

A nurse at the hospital had handed me a clear plastic bag with that bracelet inside the night my mom was pronounced dead. She’d found me in the waiting room, sitting in the same yellow chair where the doctor had spoken the two words that shattered my life: heart failure.

Now the bracelet was fastened around my wrist, and the plastic bag with my mom’s name printed at the top was tucked inside my oldest sketchbook.

Elle reached for a picture of the two of us with our tongues sticking out, mouths stained cotton candy blue. “I can’t believe you’re really leaving.”

“It’s not like I have a choice. Boarding school is better than living with my aunt.” My mom and her sister hardly spoke, and the few times I did see them in the same room, they had been at each other’s throats. My aunt was just another stranger, like my father. I didn’t want to live with a woman I barely knew and listen to her promise me that everything would be okay.

I wanted to let the pain fill me up and coat my insides with the armor I needed to make it through this. I imagined the dome from Lady Day lowering itself over me.

But instead of glass, mine was made of steel.

Unbreakable.