Heart of Glass

Everybody needed someone to lean on. It was a crucial part of human nature. For me, though, it was a little bit more important than it was for everyone else; in fact, my entire human existence depended on it. I'm Abigail Price, and I'm a doll.

I guess that I should explain. I started out as a doll. After twelve years in a little girl's closet, that little girl became not so little, and she was off to college. I was put with all of her other old toys in a box at a yard sale, where I was bought by a woman in her early thirties. Two years later, and I had discovered something about her that I never would have guessed based on her appearance: she was a witch. After three years, my new owner, Mary, used her magic to transform me into a human.

There was just one catch: if my heart ever got broken, I'd turn back into a doll.

For three more years, until I was eighteen, Mary raised me as her own daughter. I wasn't on the same level of knowledge as other people my age, and I never even had a crush on a boy, so naturally, I became the school outcast. It wasn't like the huge, lightning-shaped scar on my forehead helped any.

You see, when I turned from a doll into a human, all of the cracks in the porcelain skin I'd had as a doll showed on my human skin. My first owner didn't take very good care of me, so I had a lot of scars on my body that matched the one on my forehead.

In some ways, it was a good thing that nobody focused on the fact that I had silver-blonde hair and cerulean eyes and fair skin, which apparently were a big deal to humans in fiction books, which were also a big deal to humans. All anybody focused on was the scar on my face, and that meant that nobody ever fell in love with me and nobody ever broke my heart. I didn't know anything else.

We all wanted something from this life. Once in this poem I read, it said that we wanted to love and to feel ourselves loved in this world, but not me. It got a little lonely sometimes, but I wanted nothing more than to stay human.

Maybe it was just a little bit ridiculous that I never really felt the desire to fall in love, but it was what I needed to do, and I was willing to do it. I promised myself that I would never fall in love, and it worked for over ten years. I was a human just the way I wanted to be for twelve years before I found out that there was another way to be human without avoiding love. All I could hope for was that he wouldn't break my heart, but even the idea that that could happen didn't seem that bad.

Let me just start from the beginning.

It was Christmas Eve, also known as my twenty-seventh birthday, and I was alone as usual. Mary was on a cruise in the Carribean, and she'd called me earlier to say happy birthday, but it got lonely being alone in Baltimore in my tiny apartment on Christmas Eve.

That being said, it was six PM, and I was going insane sitting alone and watching episodes I'd already seen of How I Met Your Mother on Netflix. It was what I'd been doing all day, and I needed to get outside or I was going to burst.

So I paused the episode that I was watching and pushed myself off of the couch and to my feet. After I changed into a pair of skinny jeans and a long-sleeved, dark blue shirt, I pulled on a heavy coat, a dark red beanie, and a pair of winter boots. I wrapped my neck in a scarf and finally opened the door to my apartment.

I rode the elevator alone, and the main lobby of the building was empty except for the receptionist. I stepped outside into the snow and started down the street. The sidewalk was nearly deserted, in spite of the fact that it was typically a pretty busy street, and the street was lit only by streetlights. It was freezing, but I loved the snow so much that I almost felt sad that the walk was over when I walked into the nearly empty coffee shop, Marcella's. It was my favorite place to go for a cup of coffee when I was lonely, and I loved talking to the owner, a motherly British woman named Marcy.

"Hello, Abby," Marcy said in her thick accent as soon as she saw me. "Happy birthday, darling."

"Thanks, Marce," I replied. "How are you tonight?"

"A bit tired, but that's a personal issue. Today is about you, love. How would you like the usual on the house?"

"That would be great. Thanks. How is Mark?" I asked.

Mark was Marcy's husband, and he came in to help occasionally.

"He's great. He's at home with the kids today, but he told me to wish you a happy birthday if you came in," Marcy said, handing me my cup of black coffee.

"Tell him I said thanks. Merry Christmas."

"I will. Merry Christmas to you, too, love."

With that, I went to sit at a table in the corner of the room.

It was ten minutes later that I heard the shrill sound of about eighty screaming girls outside.

“Probably some celebrity,” Marcy said, obviously annoyed. “What in the world would someone be doing out at this time?”

“I did it,” I joked.

“True.”

Just moments later, the bell above the door rang, and Marcy’s face lit up. When I turned around, there was a very attractive boy pressed hard against the door to hold off the mob of girls outside.

“Hey, Marcy,” he said, out of breath. “Do you mind if I lock this? I’ve had a hella long day.”

“Of course, love. I didn’t know you were off tour. How was it?”

“Thanks,” the boy said, walking over to the counter, not even glancing at me. The snow was already melting on his head in the warmth of the homey coffee shop, and his caramel colored hair was soaked through completely. “I just got back today. It was good, but it was long. You know, the shenanigans get a little old after a while.”

“I can understand. Where are the other boys?”

“Rian’s with Cass, and Jack and Zack went to see their families,” the boy said.

“Tell them to stop by, would you?”

“Of course.”

“Alex, this is Anna. Anna, this is my nephew, Alex. He’s in a band,” Marcy said, her face glowing with pride. It was pretty sweet actually, that she was so happy to see him.

"Hey, Anna," Alex said, holding out his hand.

When I went to shake it, though, I jerked away in pain. There was a huge crack on my palm; a reminder to myself that I should tread carefully.

"You said you went to school in Boston?" Alex asked.

"Yeah, I went to Berklee," I answered, grinning.

Alex and I had stayed in Marcella's for an hour just talking, and now we were heading back to his place, since he was parked just around the corner and my apartment was a three block walk from the coffee shop. Besides, he was Marcy's nephew. I knew I could trust him. Not to mention, that I already liked him too much to just leave. I'd break my own heart. If I was going to turn back into a doll, I'd like to do it in a good way.

"Really? What did you study?"

"Music therapy," I said, grinning even wider. I loved the kids that I worked with, and I was really passionate about my job.

"I've never heard of that. What do you do?"

"I work with teenagers who have depression or who come from really bad homes and I just play music for them for an hour. Like, they'll request a song that makes them happy, and I'll play it on my guitar and sing it. Music reaches every part of the human brain, so it works really well."

"What if you don't know the song?"

"My patients are usually about fourteen to seventeen, so there's a pretty common theme of Blink, Fall Out Boy, Greenday, Yellowcard, stuff like that."

"What's the most common song you get requests for?" Alex asked.

"Oh, there is this one that I had to look up the first time someone requested it," I said after a moment of consideration. "You probably don't know it, it's got good lyrics, and the guitar is pretty brilliant, but it's pretty depressing, to be honest. It's called Therapy, it's by a band called All Time Low."

I could tell Alex was holding back laughter.

"What?" I asked.

"You never did ask about my band, did you?" he asked.

"No, what does that have to do with anything?"

"I wrote that song," he said, and my eyes widened.

"No way," I protested. "Did you really?"

"Yeah," he said through laughs that he wasn't holding back anymore. "All Time Low is my band."

"You should've told me that your band was super famous! I thought you were like a fifteen-year-old playing in his garage with his friends and 'touring' around the city."

"Do I really look like I'm fifteen to you?" he laughed, pretending to be offended.

"Yes," I joked back.

"So, Anna, do tell me," he said softly. When he turned to face me in the middle of the sidewalk and put his hand on my jaw, I didn't know how to react. "When was the last time a fifteen-year-old boy kissed you?"

And just like that, his lips were on my own, and he was kissing me in the snow under a streetlight just like in all the movies. It felt completely foreign, but good at the same time, because it was Alex and his lips were so soft, and the stubble on his face was rubbing against my own face. I'd never known before that what I thought it was to feel human was actually nothing at all like being human felt. I never knew before that I couldn't feel truly human without Alex.

"When I was fifteen," I said when he pulled away.

"What?" he asked confused.

"The last time a fifteen-year-old boy kissed me was when I was fifteen."

Of course, I left out the fact that it was because he'd been dared to kiss me and that it was completely disgusting.

"Goddammit, Anna, that kiss was supposed to make you forget about the bastard. Let me try again."

And like that, we were kissing again. This time, though, I really did forget the boy who'd kissed me when I was a Sophomore. The only boy who'd ever kissed me before Alex.

"It worked that time," I said, out of breath.

"What do you say we actually go back to my place now?" he said, grinning.

It was two months before I met Alex's friends. He told me that it was because he didn't want to screw things up between us by moving too quickly, although I loved to joke to him about the fact that we did have a pretty intense make-out session the day we met. He hated when I brought that up.

So we were outside of Jack's house, and I was shaking with nervousness, and Alex could tell because he had his arm around me.

"Don't worry, baby. Jack is gonna love you," Alex assured me.

"What if he doesn't?" I asked, but, as I looked into his golden brown eyes, I knew that he was right. I doubted he would hate me, anyway.

"He will," Alex promised, kissing my temple. "I promise. What's not to love, anyway?"

"My scar," I said, suddenly thinking of the one thing I'd forgotten about just briefly. "What if he says something about my scar?"

"He won't," he said, knocking on the door for the third time. "Jack! You lazy piece of shit, I know you're in there!"

"I'm fucking coming, goddammit!" a voice called from inside, and it was only moments before a lanky boy with spiked skunk hair, a black shirt, and skinny jeans answered the door.

"Jacky!" Alex joked in a teenage girl imitation before pulling Jack into a hug.

"Lexy," Jack whined. "I wanna see your girlfriend, not you."

"Fine, fine," he said, pulling out of the embrace. "Jack, this is Anna. Anna, this is Jack."

As expected, Jack did a double take of my scar, and Alex punched him in the arm, hard.

"Ow, what the fuck, man?" Jack protested.

"Don't stare," Alex said, and I couldn't help but grin at his protectiveness.

"It's okay, baby," I said quietly.

“Okay. So, how did you guys meet anyway?” Jack asked.

“We met at Marcella’s. I’m friends with Marcy, and Alex came in while I was there on Christmas Eve. The rest is history.”

It was totally unexpected when Alex broke up with me a year later. Everything had been going totally fine, but nothing ever works out the exact way you want it to. I was sitting in my apartment watching Modern Family when my buzzer rang and the receptionist told me that Alex was here.

“Send him up,” I said with a smile.

Two minutes later there was a knock on the door, and I went to answer it. Alex was standing in my hall, and just his appearance confused me. He was wearing the same clothes he’d been wearing when I’d seen him three days ago, and it didn’t look like he’d gotten any sleep in about that same amount of time. His hair was disheveled, and there were dark bags under his eyes.

“Hey, Lex,” I said gently. “What’s wrong, baby?”

“Anna, we have to break up,” he said, and those words completely stopped my breathing.

“What?” I gasped, and I knew that the fact that I was literally short of breath was a sign that I wouldn't be a human anymore when all of this was said and done. “Why?”

“I’m leaving for tour soon, and I don’t want to go and risk hurting you if I do something stupid.”

I just nodded.

“Can you just...go? I need some time to think about this.”

What I meant was that I didn’t want him to be here when I turned back into a doll.

“Yeah, of course. Can we still be friends?”

“Maybe,” I said, and with that, I closed the door in his face.

When he was gone, I found myself wandering toward the couch and crumpling into it. As I started to get hotter and hotter, I started shedding the layers I’d been wearing to battle the February chill, until I was lying on the couch in just my bra and underwear.

In the full length mirror across from me, I could see something that startled me, to say the least. When I reached up to touch my chest, my suspicions were confirmed. It wasn’t just an illusion in the mirror; there was a tear in my chest the size of my thumb, and as I got up to look at it in the mirror, it kept getting bigger and bigger, exposing my sternum and ribs, as well as the organs underneath. Right in the center of my heart, there was the beginning of a tear just like the one that was opening up right now and exposing my insides.

As I kept watching, the tear kept getting bigger, and all of the skin around it started to crystallize and dissolve, until my entire torso was bare, and then the same started to happen to my legs, and then my muscle, and then my bones. All that was left of my body was my organs and my head, and I watched as my organs disappeared one by one, and then my face, and I was a doll again. My worst nightmare had come true, and it was all my fault for falling in love with Alex.

ALEX

It had been three days since I broke up with Anna, and she wouldn’t return my calls. We were leaving for tour the next day, and I desperately needed to talk to her; to get her back. I’d known right after she slammed the door in my face that I’d made a mistake. I knew that I could be good to her, even though the whole reason I’d broken up with her was that I simply didn’t trust myself.

So, finally, after exactly forty-six unanswered phone calls, I decided to go to her apartment. Luckily, the receptionist in her building let me go up to her apartment even though she didn’t answer the buzzer.

She didn’t answer when I knocked, so I tried the door, and it was unlocked.

“Anna?” I called when I was inside, but she was nowhere to be found.

All that was there was a porcelain doll in lacy underwear and a silky bra with Anna’s face.