Breakable

‘So why are you doing this?’ I gritted my teeth as she worked over the bone at the side of my wrist, and tried not to think about the needle stabbing me over and over. ‘For me, I mean.’ I knew Boyce had filled her in. She hadn’t batted an eye when I removed the bandanas.

Her eyes didn’t waver from her work. ‘Because having the ability to make my skin my own again saved my life.’ She wiped the blood away and examined the link she’d just filled in. Her eyes met mine. ‘Some of us can begin to heal the damage people have done to us by escaping the situation, but some of us need more than that. Tattoos make statements that need to be made. Or hide things that are no one’s business. Your scars are battle wounds, but you don’t see them that way. Yet.’ She pumped the machine back to life with her foot.

I felt the burning prick of the needle as she began another link. ‘This ink will make your skin yours again. Maybe some day, you’ll see that your skin isn’t you. It’s just what houses you while you’re here.’ She paused as a roll of chills ran over me. ‘You’re an old soul, Landon. Old enough to make this decision. Just like I was.’

I went home with bandages round both wrists and strict care instructions. ‘This is like a wound of its own,’ she warned me. ‘Do not get a sunburn on top of it.’

For the rest of the month, I kept them hidden, same as always. When the sun touched the bare skin of my wrists for the first time in almost two years, I felt naked. The reactions of most of the people I knew was some variation of Cool tats, man. Some people assumed I’d been hiding them under the bandanas all along, which made me laugh. Yeah. The tattoos are what I’ve been hiding.

Girls thought they were sexy. Sometimes they asked, ‘Did it hurt?’

I’d shrug. ‘A little.’

Dad and Grandpa had similar reactions – a quick flash of the eyes to the ink when it was noticed. A grunt of disapproval. No words spoken.

My next tat didn’t cover a scar – not a visible one. Arianna put a rose directly over my heart. I didn’t need to add her name, Rosemary Lucas Maxfield, to say who it memorialized. Dad didn’t need her name, either. His face mottled purple the first time he walked into the kitchen and saw me in my board shorts and no shirt. He stared at the tattoo, still new and shiny with medication, and his fists clenched. Slamming through the back door, he hadn’t said another word about it until a couple of weeks later, when we were out on the boat.

I’d just baited a kid’s hook. He was ten or so and looked like he would pass out if he had to do it himself. Poor kid. He’d probably rather be building sand castles or slurping a snow cone on the beach than fishing with his dad and uncle. Instead, he would be stuck on this boat all day. I knew how he felt.

As I turned to open another bucket of bait, Dad said, voice low, ‘It’s illegal for you to get those without parental consent. I checked.’ He stared where a dark red petal peeked out from the neckline of my white tank.

I waited, silent, until his eyes, ghostly silver in the bright sunlight, met mine. ‘It’s my skin, Dad. Are you going to tell me I’m too young to mark it on purpose?’

He flinched and turned away. ‘Dammit, Landon,’ he muttered, but didn’t say anything else. Every few months, I added something new. Black flames licking over my delts, following the sharp lines of my biceps. A gothic cross between my shoulder blades for my maternal Catholic ancestry, with Psalm 23 scripted round it. Mom hadn’t been full of religious devotion, but she’d possessed an innate spirituality I envied now, and we’d attended mass often enough for me to have an idea of what it was about. I wondered if it would bring me peace to think of her in heaven, instead of in the ground.

Probably not.

On the second anniversary of the day we buried her, I got my eyebrow pierced. Dad railed satisfactorily while my grandfather seemed baffled that anyone would pierce a body part deliberately. ‘I’ve gotten enough hooks through various parts of my anatomy to not wanna put a hole through m’self on purpose!’ He had a scar near his eye where a hook at the end of an inexperienced fisherman’s pole had almost rendered him half blind. ‘Half an inch more and he’d have yanked my eyeball plum out!’ He was fond of telling the story, and I’d heard it enough times to almost keep from pulling a squeamish face at the imagery.

Come fall, the Hellers were suddenly much closer, because Charles accepted a tenure-track position at the top state university – two hundred fifty miles inland. While their new place wasn’t the twenty minutes we’d been accustomed to when we all lived in Virginia, it wasn’t an impossible distance for a weekend trip. Except to Dad, who refused to make a four-hour drive to see his best friends in the world. His excuse was work, same as always.

I figured then that people never change. Dad might have quit his high-powered banking job, but he brought his workaholic personality with him when he left Washington.

Even though the teaching position was a step up for Heller’s career, Cindy had to look for a new job, and Cole and Carlie had to make new school and neighbourhood friends. I knew they’d done it with us in mind, but Dad closed his eyes to the sacrifice they’d all made. For him. For me.

His silence seemed to blame them for what had happened, though maybe just being around them reminded him. Maybe my presence – which he couldn’t ditch as easily – reminded him, too.

I didn’t need a reminder. I knew who to blame for us losing Mom. Myself, and no one else.