Melissa Marr - Made For You

“An antiseizure drug, a muscle relaxer, and … I’m not sure what else.” Grace glances at the bag of medicine. “Sugar water or something for hydration. Plus sedatives and stuff from the surgery.”

“Where’s your mom?” I ask. I’d heard Mrs. Yeung earlier, but I don’t see her.

When my parents travel, she’s my unofficial mom. Truthfully, she fills that function even when they’re home, but when they’re away, she has a signed power of attorney form for emergencies. My parents trust her completely—and for good reason. Mrs. Yeung has all the traits that “good Christians” in the South are supposed to have, including a few that my parents lack. She’s a stay-at-home mom who gave up a career to move to our little backwater town in North Carolina with her husband when he got a chance at his dream job.

“She had to leave,” Grace says. “We’ve been here a lot, and Jimmy had to miss a game already. She wanted to stay till you woke, but—”

“She was here when I needed her,” I interrupt. “She’s awesome.”

Grace scoffs. “Yeah, you say that because you don’t live with her. The other day …”

I know that Grace is still talking, but I can’t focus on what she’s saying. Things don’t add up. I remember leaving the coffee shop. Robert was to meet me, but he didn’t show. We didn’t argue at the party the night before. He was distant, but we didn’t fight or anything. We never really fight. We’re friends who’ve known each other since the cradle and decided to date last year, but honestly, we still mostly feel like friends who sometimes have sex. Fighting isn’t an issue for us, so when he didn’t show for our date and didn’t answer when I called— or when I texted him—I was confused.

Both my parents and Grandfather Cooper were out of town. Grandfather Tilling was home, but he goes to bed early, so I didn’t want to bother him, and I felt stupid calling Grace to come pick me up when it was only a couple miles to walk. Really, it would’ve taken longer for Grace to get there than it would for me to walk it.

“I was on my way home. I remember that. Robert forgot me or something.” I look at Grace, as if her face holds the secrets I can’t find inside my memories. Sometimes with Grace it kind of does. She’s very readable. She squeezes my fingers, and I notice that I’m still holding on to Grace’s hand.

“You got hit by a car when you were walking, sweetie.”

“Hit? Like someone ran over me?” I try to remember, but I have nothing. It’s a bright blur there when I try to think about it.

“Yes.” She starts to tear up and adds quickly, “But you’ll be okay. You hit your head; they call it a traumatic brain injury. That’s why you can’t remember things, and you have a broken leg, some bruised ribs, and … lots of black and blue.”

But Grace looks down and won’t meet my eyes, and I know there’s more.

My mouth feels like the desert looks, and I have to swallow before I can prompt, “And? Am I …” I look down at my feet and quickly wiggle my toes. Then I glance at my stomach and arms. There’s a bandage on my right forearm, as well as scrapes and cuts on my hands. The cuts aren’t as bad on my left arm, but my right biceps is liberally decorated with slashes and dots. My left arm is scratched and cut, but nothing severe. Looking at my skin isn’t going to tell me if there’s something really wrong under it though. “Did I lose an organ or …”

“No! You still have all your organs; you’re not paralyzed. You’ll be fine,” Grace hurriedly assures me. “They put a plate in your leg, but that’s not going to mean much other than physical therapy. You hit your head pretty hard, and we were scared about that. You were out for a while, but you’re awake now and seem okay so … that’s good, too.”

She’s still avoiding saying something though. I know her too well for her to succeed at it. For someone so eager to dive into confrontation with most people, she treats me like I’m in need of sheltering. I take a deep breath and ask, “ And? Just tell me.”

“There was a lot of glass. That’s all. You got some cuts, like on your arm. The big injuries were your leg and your head … your brain, really, but it seems like they’ll be fine.” She holds my gaze as if staring at me will keep me from reading whatever secrets she wants to hide. I know she’ll tell me; she always tells me even when she doesn’t want to do so. Earlier this year, when Amy blabbed to everyone at school that I had slept with Robert, Grace tried to protect me. She shielded me from the things people were saying, but even then, she gave in after a couple of days and spilled. I don’t want to wait this time.

“Gracie … what aren’t you saying?”

She sighs and hedges, “You’re going to have some scars on your face. It’s not really that b—”

“Mirror.”

“Sweetie, maybe not yet.”

“Mirror,” I repeat, louder this time.

“Eva, let’s just wait until you’re feeling better, and it’s heal—”

“Please.”

I watch Grace dig through her bag and pull out the little silver compact that her grandmother gave her for her sixteenth birthday. For a moment, Grace holds it in her hand, squeezing it so tightly that her knuckles look like the skin has grown thinner there.

She holds it out to me, and I don’t let myself hesitate. I’m not vain, not really. I’m not the most beautiful girl in the world, but I’ve always been pretty enough to not be jealous or insecure. I have dark blue eyes, a smallish nose, lips that look pouty, and cheekbones that are defined without looking razor-sharp. I’m not opposed to wearing makeup, but I’ve always been happy that I don’t need it.

I gaze at the reflection in the glass. The girl I see now needs makeup badly. Red lines crisscross my face. Dark blue stitches highlight some of them. As much as I want to, I can’t look away from the tiny reflection of myself, and I’m glad that Grace’s mirror is so small.

I reach up to touch the black-and-blue marks and cuts on my throat, but before I can, Grace grabs my hand. “No touching. The nurses said you shouldn’t irritate the wounds. We had to keep your wrists restrained at first.”

Even as she tells me that I was tied to my bed, which is disturbing on some basic level, I can’t look away from my reflection. I dart my tongue out to touch the cut on my lip and promptly wince. I don’t hurt like I should, and I know that it’s because of the medicine coursing through my body. One particularly long cut runs from just under my eye to the side of my cheek where it curls under my ear and vanishes into my hair. That one has been stitched. Vaguely it registers that the ones deep enough to need stitches are the ones that’ll scar the most. Some of the others are only shallow cuts like the ones on my arm, so I think they’ll fade.

The tiny cuts vanish under the top of my shirt, and I look at my arms again. I was wearing a long-sleeved shirt when I walked home. Maybe that protected them a little, or maybe it was just how I hit the ground or how the car hit me. All I know for sure is that it’s my face that took the worst of the impact. I glance back at the mirror, hoping for a moment that it isn’t as bad as I first thought. It is though. No amount of healing is going to make these all vanish.

I close my eyes, and Grace takes the mirror from my hand. She doesn’t tell me that everything is okay or that it’s not as bad as it looks. She might try to hide things from me when she thinks it’s for my own good, but she doesn’t ever lie to me.

The day of the accident was the last day I was pretty.