We Were Lost and Broken Until We Met You Guys

Joe had sauntered after Katherine and our group dwindled into me, Francis, and Bree, who still seemed to be fighting off a headache despite the massive – and I’m sure dangerous – amount of ibuprofen she had taken to fight it off. She rubbed her temples with the tips of her fingers and squeezed her tired eyes shut. She claims to have slept, however after seeing the bruise-like shadows under her eyes I suspect she napped instead of actually sleeping.

“Maybe you need to eat something,” I said to her as I pushed my glasses up the bridge of my nose. She opened one eye. “Now open the other one.” She rolled her eyes when she opened her other eye and put her hands back down to her sides. “We can walk down to the pier and get you something to eat.” She replied by shaking her head in a negative way. “Okay, Princess, would you be more pleased if I carried you to the pier while Nicholas and Francis held hands and sprinkled rose petals – or any other petals from a flower you like – down our path?”

“I am not a princess,” Bree snapped at me. “I am a bitch, and if you wanna see me turn into Super Bitch you’ll stop calling me that and stop being so . . . ugh. Never mind. I don’t want to eat.”

You would think I would shrink away from her Queen Bee attitude. I laughed, knowing it would piss her off, and grabbed her elbow since it was the only part of her I could get a good grip on. She had her arms folded across her chest as she stared at Francis and Nick off in their own little world and talking about a shell that Francis had picked up. Knowing my brother he was telling her that the shell was pretty, like she is. And she just giggled, so it worked. I was surprised. Maybe she didn’t hear me when I told Bree the same thing when we, too, found a shell sparkling underneath the sand. I thought that if she would have heard me she would have given Nick this look that said, “You’re cheesy.” But no, she giggled and blushed. I could tell Nick was eating it up, too.

“But you need to,” I told her as I began to drag her despite her resistance. “A few calories won’t hurt your figure.”

“I ate earlier, didn’t I?” she replied, pulling away but not pulling away. She was halfhearted in her attempt to get away, like she wanted to stay by my side yet, at the same time, didn’t want to stay by my side.

“An orange isn’t enough to sustain you. Plus, if I am correct, and if Kat isn’t lying to me, you have not eaten since Friday at lunch, and that wasn’t much. She said you were mostly munching on Drake.”

“I’m trying to lose weight,” she said, ignoring my comment about Drake. When I glanced back at her through the corner of my eye she looked upset.

“One, you need food to live,” I said after I stopped and kept a hold on her elbow. She had dropped her other arm to her side and she nervously played with the end of her bathing suit, her very flattering bathing suit. “And two, you do not need to lose weight.”

“Yes I do,” she said, and though she put her protective shield up, I could see through it, as always; I saw the hurt behind her livid eyes.

“Says who?” I asked. “It seems to me you’re completely confident with your own body image with the clothes that you wear. And besides, I like your body. I couldn’t imagine you as skin-and-bones and unhealthy.”

“My uncle says I need to,” Bree admitted forlornly as she avoided my eyes. Her eyebrows scrunched together and made her look angry. “Leslie and Sam say I do. Damn it, why am I telling you this? You probably don’t even care.” She turned on her heel and walked away from me as fast as she could. “We are going back to Francis and Nick and you are not repeating anything I just said. Please act like it never happened.”

“Whoa, whoa,” I said, unsure of what just happened. “Bree, what’s wrong with what you just said? I care about everything you say!” She gave me that look, that pissed off and the are-you-serious look. I thought about what she said and pursed my lips. “Oh. . . . Well that’s just stupid.” She scoffed and tried to run away but I grabbed her wrist. “Talk to me, Bree. You should know that you can just spill the beans. I did take care of your drunken butt.”

“I don’t owe you anything,” she said. “I don’t need you.”

“Then why did you come here with me when I asked you to? Why did you let me take care of you after you spilled the contents of your stomach on my shoes?” She didn’t look at me but at the waves crashing down on the sand not too far from us. She even grabbed her sunglasses that were hanging from the pocket on her jean shorts and put them on to shield her eyes. “Bree, what is wrong? Tell me, please. You had no problems talking to me last night when I was driving you home.”

“Not even my cousins know what my uncle, Leslie and Sam say, what I do,” she said, and though it looked like she was staring at someone surfing she could have been looking at me. Those darned sunglasses. “Leslie, Sam, and my uncle – Kat’s dad – they’re right when they say it. I was dealing with this before they told me, but they encouraged it, and Leslie showed me a new way to lose weight – and I have lost weight, at least.”

“But how are you losing it? If you're starving yourself, not eating can actually make you gain weight, you know. You had the top grade in your Anatomy class. You know what your body does if it doesn’t get the nutrients you need.” She just looked blank. “Bree, talk to me, even if you have to use R-rated language.”

“Joe’s walking back,” she said after glancing back the way we came. “Without Kat. She’s leaving.”

I looked back over at Joe and saw him making his way towards Francis and Nick who looked like they were busy sitting on the sand with the mound of sand in front of them. Katherine was walking back towards the parking lot, arms folded, legs moving quickly. She looked back a couple times before she hopped in the car and drove off.

“We’ll go see what’s up, but you and I are going to talk later,” I commanded. “And don’t try to get out of it. We’ll grab a bite and talk.”

She scowled, ripped her wrist away from me, and stomped back over to her cousins and my brother. I tried not to laugh; her anger, now that I see past it, was just adorable. And I knew she wasn’t really mad at me. Her angry, biotch attitude was just a rouse, her protective mask that she put up so no one could read through her. Of course I could read her as easily as I can read music, and she hates it. She fails to see that we are meant to be together.

We got back to her cousin and my brothers and came into the middle of Joe telling the two almost-lovebirds why Katherine was leaving.

“. . . after telling her dad she’d stop at the liquor store she told me to leave her alone,” he said, and I could see the sorrow in his eyes. “You don’t think she means it, do you Francis?” He looked up at Bree and raised his eyebrows. “Bree? What do you think?”

“I’d know more if you repeated the story to me,” she replied, and for the first time I heard her speak with compassion instead of rage. There was the Bree I knew was hiding under the mask of anger and attitude.

Bree took off her sunglasses and her and Francis exchanged a glance. As if she understood Bree’s silent message Francis stood up and turned to Nick; he copied her movement and stood up. “I have to go,” she said, and Bree looked surprised, like this was news to her. “I’m going to see if we can’t catch Kat at the liquor store.”

“That’s not what I meant. He’ll be pissed if she takes too long,” Bree said. “And I don’t want you there when he’s pissed.”

“We’ve been there before,” Francis said quietly, and she sounded sad as she drifted off into some distant memory.

I looked at Bree for answers, but she was off in the same place as Francis. The ghost of some past event was lingering in her eyes and she cradled her shoulder. She looked at me, saw my worried expression and she let go of her shoulder before giving me a dirty look. Oh look, Bree’s evil twin Eerb is back.

“If I can prevent you being there and experiencing it again, I will,” Bree said to her youngest cousin. “If we don’t want her to get hurt then we’re just going to have to see if we can beat her home together and not talk to her until the fat ass is drunk off his -”

“Fat ass?” Francis finished, and she tried to make a joke of it, but I could tell she was not in the mood for jokes. Neither was Bree, for that matter. She was silently flaring her nostrils and shooting daggers at her cousin. “Nick, can you drive me to my house?”

“Francis,” Bree warned and grabbed her cousin’s shoulder. “I don’t want you to get hurt.” It didn’t exactly stop her cousin from walking away with a trailing Nick behind her. I heard Nick ask her to explain what was going on as they went out of hearing distance.

Bree looked over at me with brown eyes filled with fire and ice, rage and worry, two conflicting things that she could only express through wrath. I put my hands parallel to my shoulders in a defensive manner. “Hey, you can always chase after her. I’m not stopping you. I’ll understand if you need to leave. Nick’s driving her home already, so you can go with.”

“It wouldn’t be rude,” Joe added, though I knew Bree didn’t care about being polite or not.

“It’ll be nothing serious as long as Nick doesn’t go with them into my house and as long as Kat gets there as quickly as she can.” She sighed and looked down at the sand castle Nick and Francis had built; I knew they had built it because they wrote Francis + Nick in the sand underneath it. When Bree turned to face me she accidentally erased Nick’s name.

“Do you want me to stay with you?” she asked abruptly. “You better answer now before I leave with my cousin.”

“Of course I want you to stay with me,” I answered as if it was the most obvious thing in the entire galaxy, and it was. “The question is: Do you?”

She glared at me for a split second before her face softened. Bree was a pretty girl, and when her expression softened and she wasn’t glaring at everyone she looked prettier. She looked out at Francis’s distant silhouette, followed by Nick, and she sighed deeply. She stared for a while. I noticed she gets lost in her thoughts a lot of the time. She also told me that she gets lost in her thoughts when I was driving her home after the party. She sure is the chatty, giggly, singing drunk. She sung me the Tigger song from Winnie the Pooh before yelling at me for not singing along and being an “asshole.” I just laughed and hummed along with her silly, childish songs.

Now instead of laughing I was waiting hopelessly for her to say yes, and then I would sweep her into my arms and kiss her worry away. . . . There I go with the fantasies again. I remember the first day I saw her I fantasized about her and I walking on the shore holding hands. However in my vision she looked happy, not confused and upset like she did now. I resisted the urge to pull her into my arms and comfort her. She would slap me across the face with no regrets.

“Yes,” she finally whispered and looked down at her feet.

“Sorry, Joe,” I said to him. “You’re going to have to be the third wheel.”

“It’s not like it’s a date,” Bree snapped. “He can tag along if he wants.”

Joe grinned, but it was forced. “I’m going to catch up and ask Nick to take me home. I need to think. I’m sure he’ll come back to get you. So see you later, Kev. Bye Bree.” He took off at a light jog to catch up with my brother and Francis, and soon enough he caught up to them.

“It’s just you and me, Princess,” I said to Bree with a smirk. She groaned, muttering something about someone – I could only assume it was me – being an asshole before stalking off towards the shore. No one has ever called me an asshole before I met her, and it wasn’t something I heard or said often – at all, really. She was going to teach me bad habits, but for some reason, I didn’t care because I would be with her.

I followed her to the shore and the two of us walked in silence towards the pier. She clutched her stomach every now and again and I knew hunger had finally gotten to her. I knew it could not have helped the headache and the hangover she had. I quickened up my pace, hoping she would hurry as well.

“So where were we?” I asked when we were halfway to the pier. I could smell a mixture of hot dogs, burgers, and the ocean. It was an odd mixed scent.

“You were boosting my shattered ego by telling me you like my body,” she answered. She glanced at me from the corner of her eyes and that smirk – her, “Yeah, I’m better than you” smirk - made its way onto her face. “Which I already knew you did because when you’re nose isn’t buried in the AP Literature book and you’re not letting out your energy by fiddling with your pencil you’re trying not to stare at me.” She looked at me with an expression that was smug and full of mystery.

“You know that by trying to get me to crack your façade is cracking as well?” She raised an eyebrow and I explained: "By telling me what you’ve observed you’ve shown how much you actually pay attention to me.”

“You claim to know me, Kevin,” she replied. “You should know that I am very observant. Reading people – you, in particular - is as easy as reading music.”
“Funny, that’s what I was thinking about how easily I can see through your charade,” I retorted, and she glared at me.

“When I glare at you or get angry at you it only makes you laugh because you not only think it’s amusing you are also astonished at the fact that anyone could ever call you the names I call you because it’s obvious that you don’t hang around people who use a colorful vocabulary nor do you say anything close to what I say.” She spoke so quickly I had to struggle to keep up with her words. “But you want to say a vulgar word only because you’d feel accepted by your peers, rebellious, and you think it will get me to like you more.”

I raised an eyebrow. She had hit the nail on the head with great force. I hadn’t even known I was acting that way until she brought it into the light. “You’re good,” I congratulated, but it was forced and I realized I sounded defeated. “Now why don’t you use that and read your friends Leslie and Sam and figure out that they’re complete -”

“Bitches? Yeah, I know that already,” she snapped. “I’m not an idiot.”

“They’re obviously not your friends. And they’re apparently encouraging the starvation you’re going through. Where do you want to eat?” I asked, gesturing towards the various food stands in front of us as we walked onto the wooden pier. My foot kicked up some sand and it fell onto the wood with a sound that was like rain hitting an umbrella.

“I want a hamburger,” she said, and I could tell her mouth was watering. “With fries.”

“She’ll have a hamburger with no tomatoes or onions,” I said to the cashier of the burger stand, looking at Bree for approval. She nodded slightly and looked surprised that I knew she didn’t like onions or tomatoes. “And add fries. I’ll have the same, and we’ll both have water.”

I paid the cashier while Bree walked off to stand against the railing, her arms folded and elbows perched on it, her legs crossed underneath her, and eyes quizzical. I leaned my back and elbows against the railing too, my body facing the opposite way. I kept my eyes on her face, trying to see if I could read her as effortlessly as she does me. I had no shirt and the railing felt a little too warm against my bare back. I already felt a little uncomfortable with my shirt off, especially around her. I bet she was used to seeing football player abs. All I had were guitar shredding arms, and that probably wasn’t enough for her.

“Stop freaking out about your body image,” she said to me and I raised my eyebrows in surprise. “I notice that too, by the way. Remember when I told you to stop overpowering yourself with cologne? I knew when I first met you that you put on a lot of cologne only because you have a slight confidence issue. I especially knew because I . . . do the . . . same.” She glared at me. “You have a habit of making me say too much.”

I shrugged and said, “It’s because you trust me. And now I know about your body image issues. I’m worrying that you’re starving yourself.”

“You just had to bring it up.” Her expression became less irritated and more tired and defeated. “I’m not starving myself, exactly,” she said, and that was all she said. I waited for her to continue, to explain what was going on inside her mind, but she said nothing. She still said nothing even after I grabbed our food and brought it back to our spot against the railing.

We did talk eventually and in between bites of burger and fries we exchanged facts about each other: I told her that I love to play the guitar, she confessed she does too; I struggle to be the big brother and a good example to my siblings, she confessed that she struggles to keep her head on straight and be a good leader to her cousins; I told her I liked her a lot and she just took the last bite of her burger before announcing that she had to go the restroom.

“Water went through you that quickly?” I teased. She shot me a glare but quickly turned away before I could really see the reluctance behind her eyes, the slight fear, and she clutched her stomach.

I was dealing with this before they told me, but they encouraged it, and Leslie showed me a new way to lose weight. . . ., she had said, and her words echoed in my head as I thought of ways she could be losing weight, why she always goes to the restroom during the class period after lunch and walking back in looking paler, why she was hurrying to the restroom now.

“Shit,” she muttered when she saw the realization cross my face. “Shit on a stick.”

“That’s nasty,” I said, and though I tried to make it sound like I was joking, it was far from joking. “Bree, what you’re doing isn’t healthy. It's only going to hurt you.”

“But I’m losing weight, aren’t I?” she replied. “Leslie and Sam do it, and their teeth aren’t even bad. Doctors say you’ll ruin your teeth doing it, and their teeth are perfect. Leslie recommended this dentist to me so when it starts to affect my teeth -”

“God, Bree, do you know what you sound like? You sound like their freaking puppet. You shouldn’t listen to them at all.”

“It’s better than what I was doing before,” she confessed. “I have always struggled with how I look. I used to starve myself before Kat’s dad, Leslie, or Sam ever mentioned it. Leslie said that if I wanted to stay at the top I had to stop being such a fat ass. When I told her I started throwing up my meals, she seemed pleased, especially when I told her that I lost weight.” Her face went from its usually light tan color to a faint green. “If I don’t force it up, it’ll come up on its own.”

I stared wide-eyed at her. She saw the shock on my face and turned her gaze out towards the public bathrooms. “If you’ll excuse me -”

“No, I won’t,” I said. “Bree, you have to stop this now, and I mean it. You’re only hurting yourself.”

“I don’t want your pity, Kevin,” she said, “I didn’t even wanna tell you. I can’t help it. I want to trust you. You can’t tell my cousins or I swear we’re through.”

“Or you swear we’re through?” I repeated. “Don’t we have to be together for you to threaten to break us up?”

Her eyes widened and she looked scared. She just walked away, heading off to the bathrooms and leaving me to choke on her dust. I went after her but when she heard me calling her name she broke out into a run and I chased after her.

“Bree, wait!” I shouted. “We can talk about this! I’m sorry!” What was I sorry for? I didn’t even know, and as I chased after her I tried to think of reasons why I would be sorry.

The pier was fairly crowded and there were just enough people to block her and allow her to lose me. I tried winding through the crowd to catch up to her but she ran turned into a different part of the pier where I lost her. There were too many possible ways she could have taken: She could have taken the path to the area of the pier that sold clothes, or the path that had all the bars, or she could have taken the path that led to the parking lot.

I figured out why I was sorry: I was sorry for scaring her. I know bringing up any feelings we have about each other – more of what I feel for her because she hasn’t exactly said she likes me, too – is a touchy subject for her. I remember her saying that we were on “completely different social levels” and because of that she “wasn’t allowed to talk to me.” And yet she still talks to me, though I doubt she will now after I mentioned anything about us being together. And despite my efforts, I had lost her in this sea of people, possibly for good.