The State of Broken Things

Chapter 1: I'm Rewriting Everything

just a heads up, this is a sequel to my other work, "pick up the pieces." this can be read alone, but it may make more sense to read that one first.

happy reading!

- jackie

Adrian ~

    "I have learned that to be with those I like is enough."

Walt Whitman

Chapter 1: I'm Rewriting Everything

    I'm 100% convinced that there are very few things more embarrassing than being late to school on the first day. That happened to me when I was in 4th grade. My mom had just gotten off her 24-hour shift, so we were late. I was upset with her for a while about that, because I had to walk in to my classroom with one of those 'late' slips and it was mortifying. Then she got cancer and died, and trivial things like that weren't worth getting upset over.

    Still, I've always been the kind of person to show up for things half an hour early, just to make sure. If the time of the event was wrong or the venue changed, I would have some notice.  But if I thought I was time-paranoid, my boyfriend Cassiel Mackenzie is a doomsday prepper who would live in his bomb shelter.

    Today is the first day of senior year. Of course, I had trouble sleeping last night and I haven't refilled my meds, so I stayed in bed for a few minutes past my alarm, meaning I didn't leave by 6:45 like Cas asked me to. And reminded me about at least four times the day before.

    "I'm leaving in two minutes," I say into the phone, picking my backpack up off the floor.
"We aren't going to be late."

    "We can't be late on the first day," he says, almost frantically.

    "We aren't going to be late," I repeat. "Orientation doesn't start until 8. It's not even 7."

    "If you leave at seven, it takes you ten minutes to get to my house, and then twenty minutes to get to school, thirty if we stop for coffee-"

    "Which means we get to school at 7:40," I finish for him. "Twenty minutes before class starts."

    It's a funny little reversal. Out of the two of us, he's definitely more stable, so the calming words and soothing logic are usually coming from him for me. I guess it's that I need them for life stuff, like eating and sleeping and dead mothers and absent fathers, and Cas needs them for other stuff. Time and school stuff. He gets so stressed out about school and time and grades.

He's quiet, and a slow smile spreads across my face.

    "Don't laugh at me," he says defensively.

    "I'm not," I say, trying to keep my smile out of my voice. "You're cute like this. Hold on."

    Muting my phone, I duck into the kitchen, where my dad is sitting with Ximena, my little sister. When he sees me, he nods awkwardly.

    "You have her?" I check with him, not wanting to leave her stranded. I usually took her to school last year, but this year he's trying to do more Dad things and take her. He offered for me, too, but I declined.

    "Yeah," he says. "Uh, good luck on your first day of school."

    "Thanks," I say. The words are clipped and short, and as hard as he tries, things are still a little weird between us. It's a lot of polite conversation and half-hearted questions and an overwhelming urge to get out of the room whenever he's in it.

    Let me lay this out for you a little better. The cliff notes, so to speak.

    My mom died a little under a year ago, from cancer she had fought for five years. I was seventeen, my sister was six. My dad was devastated, to the point where he did his best to ignore the presence of any reminder of her, visual or otherwise. And I look like her. Act like her. So when I wasn't getting yelled at, I was getting ignored. And then I fell in love, came out as gay, to which he responded even worse.