The Shape that Breaks

Chapter One: That’s Why They Call It Heartache

I find it a big coincidence that the day Alex broke up with me was the day my Grandpa Eric was born, especially because Grandpa Eric was the one to tell me that I’d break hearts some day. I guess it was the other way around.

I pressed my fingernails into my palm, trying to resist the urge to look at him. It was torture that we had so many classes together; it gave him ample opportunity to ignore me and it gave me too much time to stare at him in my peripheral vision. Lunch was my only reprieve; I spent it in the library, surrounded by stacks of books, the place where I felt most comfortable. It was easier to hide from Jess and Logan that way, easier to hide from the concerned looks they constantly exchanged whenever they were around me. It wasn’t fair that they knew me so well because it made it ridiculously difficult to hide things from them.

Mrs. McCarthy had scribbled on the board while I was off in my own brain, complicated formulas that, as I hastened to write, she began to erase. I leaned away from Alex, towards Kira, the bitchy overachiever who sat on the other side of me who never failed to copy the notes perfectly. “Can I borrow your-“ I began, but she pulled her notebook out of my sight.

“Pay attention next time,” she hissed, curling her lip at me in disgust.

I wanted to be angry, but the emotion just smoldered in my stomach without sparking alight. I glanced at Alex, hoping that he’d overheard her rudeness and would proffer his notebook like old times, but he didn’t seem to notice my plight. He looked like he was in deep concentration, tapping his pencil against his binder, but he wasn’t doing the Geometry work we’d just been assigned. I could just see, over the thick lip of his math binder and the squished blob of his backpack, the tattered, chicken scratch filled pages of his songbook.

I swallowed hard and unconsciously pressed my fingernails harder into my skin. For a moment, the pain of losing him when he was so close was almost unbearable. It was like losing a part of me that I hadn’t even known existed, that I hadn’t even thought I’d needed.

The bell knocked me out of my trance and it brought him back to reality as well. In the split-second before I looked away, his eyes caught mine, and they seemed to stare straight into my insides, like he could see all of me in that moment. His eyes sent a shock through me; his beautiful cerulean eyes.

I shot my gaze down to my things, embarrassed as I gathered them and zipped my messenger bag closed. When I finally summed up courage enough to look up again, he was gone, swept up in the end-of-school din. I blinked, wishing my eyes would stop filling with tears every time this happened, wishing the pressure on my chest would cease.

Logan once told me, “That’s why they call it heartache, babe, because it hurts.”

-

I stared into the mirror, sniffing. This was becoming routine for me, coming into the girl’s bathroom every day and crying my eyes out. The janitor was probably used to seeing me, cheeks flushed and eyes bloodshot, as I exited the toilets. She probably thought I was smoking weed or something.

I splashed water on my face from the tap, sniffing again, before grabbing a paper towel from the dispenser. I had to admit, I looked like crap. My hair, which before now I usually took the time to straighten before I got to school, was a mess of curls, wild and too short to even think of putting in a ponytail. I’d chopped it off the week before, a rash decision that my mom paid good money to fix into something passable. It looked semi-normal now, but Logan and Jess were still pissed that I’d done it without telling them. My hair had always been waist-length, even when I was a kid, and Alex used to love-

I pushed the thought out of my mind and stomped out of the bathroom, still struggling to stifle back the tears I thought I’d run out of.

The walk home was uneventful, as usual. I read my book on the way, a skill that had taken me a long while to master, so it passed quickly. There was no one home when I got there; my mom worked until five on the weekdays. It took me too long to find the key, distracted as I was by trying not to glance across the street. My willpower broke just as I inserted the key into the lock.

Alex’s shiny silver Suzuki sat in the drive way, behind his mom Grace’s sedan and next to his dad’s pick-up truck. One new vehicle sat on the curb, however, a big orange U-Haul van.

My hands seemed to stop working, but when I finally fumbled into the house, taking big gulps of fresh, Ferbreeze-scented air, all of the emotions I expected to feel - sadness, remorse, loss - never came.

Instead, I felt free.

Author's Note: So, I've begun again, people! The Shape that Breaks, formerly Golden Eyes, is back. I've spent the past couple of months finishing it, and now you guys get to see the rewrite. Expect regular updates, since I have nothing better do with my time. Hope you guys like it!