Breaking Beautiful Read Online Free PDF Page A

me to the nurse’s office when he saw the blood dripping through the paper towel I was holding over my arm. All Ms. Holt had to do was give me a Band-Aid. Instead, she made me sit on her little paper-covered bed and take off my sweatshirt so she could clean out the wound. When she saw myarms, she asked a lot of questions. I gave her my canned “clinical clumsiness” excuse. I think she bought it, but after that she was always watching me, the way she’s examining the scar above my eye now. At least I have a viable story for that one.
    “How are you doing?” Clair’s eyes are nearly brimming over, but she’s forcing a smile.
    “Okay,” I mutter. My fingers find the rough spot on the stone in my pocket.
    “You poor thing, you’ve really been through it.” Clair sniffs and pulls a tissue from the box on her desk. “We all miss Trip around here. He was so alive, you know, always—” Another firm look and head shake from Mrs. Byron shuts her up.
    Mrs. Byron shuffles through the papers on the desk and produces a little blue card, just like the one I got when I enrolled in school two years ago. She leans over the desk and points to my locker number. “Your locker is down the new hall, on the right.” By “new hall” she means the hall that was added on to the school in 1979.
    “Do you want us to have someone take you there?” Clair asks.
    “No, thanks.” I ignore the obvious stupidity of that question. Pacific Cliffs’ combined school is about one-quarter the size of my grade school in Maryland, and I navigated that when I was five.
    “Your advisor is Mr. Hamilton,” Mrs. Byron continues. “He’s out in the portable this year.”
    I nod and reach for the paper. Before I can grasp it, I hear a familiar fake-sweet, singsong voice behind me. “Mrs. Byron, where can I copy the flyers for the bonfire?”
    I don’t turn to face Hannah—willing her to leave without seeing me—but in another second she’s beside me.
    “Allie,” she gasps. Then she does the last thing I expect her to do. She wraps her arms around me and pulls me against her ample chest. I’m stuck with a face full of her blue silk blouse and musky perfume. I can’t lift my arms to hug her back. All I can think is how different this greeting is from the one I got from her when I moved to Pacific Cliffs.
    Hannah was waiting for me in front of the school after Mom dropped me off that first day. She knew exactly who I was and what had happened between me and Trip the summer before. Mom hadn’t even driven away when Hannah fell into step beside me. We walked together the last three steps into the building, just long enough for her to spit one word in my direction: “Bitch.”
    I’m sure she was responsible for that same word painted across my locker in red fingernail polish a week later. The janitor used acetone to remove it, which made the old paint bubble underneath. Even after the locker had been repainted the same sickening orange brown, you could see what had been written there. If I went to locker 18-B now I’m positive I would still be able to read that label across the front—my greeting every day when I came to school.
    “Oh, Allie.” Hannah releases me and wipes her eyes. “It’s so good to see you. I’m so glad you’re okay.”
    Clair is full-fledged crying, and even Ms. Holt is dabbing at her eyes. Only Mrs. Byron seems unaffected. She reaches for the flyer in Hannah’s hand. “I’ll make the copies.”
    Hannah takes my blue card from between my fingers. “Wehave our first three classes together. Come with me. I’ll walk you there.”
    I have no choice but to let her put her arm around me and guide me down the hall, past the whispers and stares, toward my new, unmarked locker.
    Hannah and I walking down the hall together causes more of a stir than I could have made on my own. I reach to brush my hair against my face, to cover the scar, but there isn’t enough left. Instead, I tug the hat down farther. I’m sure