Free Pieces of a Mending Heart by Kristina M. Rovison

cautious.
                  “Even more so,” I answer immediately.
                  “Do you believe in second chances?” he says, sounding hopeful.
                  “Absolutely,” I say, eyes threatening to fill with tears.
                  “I’ve waited to hear you say those words for a long time. I’ll tell you my story, but only if you tell me yours first. I want to know about these,” he says, releasing my hands and pushing up the sleeves of my shirt, revealing my wrists and forearms. In one quick movement, he flips my hands over so the inside of my scarred wrists are exposed.
                  I instinctively want to snatch my hands back and run away, but I stay rooted in place, trapped in Tristan’s gaze.
                  “Do you believe in angels?” I ask, sounding breathless.
                  He sucks in a breath, and gives a strangled “Yes, I believe in angels. Yes, I believe in God. Yes, I believe in second chances.”
                  “Good. Then you won’t think I’m crazy,” I say.
                  Telling Tristan my story doesn’t feel like a betrayal; it feels like a weight is being lifted off my shoulders, as cliché as that sounds. I begin at the very beginning, with David’s story.
    * * *
    The summer I turned ten years old was one of frightening close-calls. I was almost caught kissing Freddie Johnson in the closet during recess, almost caught climbing the tree in the backyard ( which I had be en repeatedly told not to climb , ) a nd almost caught with the guilt of the not saving my brother’s life.
                  David was sixteen at the time, in his second year at public high sch ool. He was wild and unpredictable, but I cared about him . Even though my parents had their hands full keeping him in line, he was a lways there to play ball with me. One day, as I got off the bus from school, I noticed he wasn’t there waiting for me on our porch, like he usually was. Our parents worked seventeen hours a day, five days a week, so he spent an awful lot of time alone while I was at dance practice .
    I ran into the house, backpack banging against my body, waving my math test in the air and screa ming “I got an A !” through the house. Immature for a fifteen year old? Yes, but I’ve always been so bad at math, I needed to celebrate, even if no one cared.
    With each sile nt moment that passed, my smile faded and I started calling David’s name. I heard a massive thud from above my head, and I raced up the stairs, dropping my math test in the process.
    I looked in his bedroom first, finding nothing. Then my room, also nothing. Finally, I opened the door to my parents’ massive master bedroom, finding nothing. I called David’s name again as I walked towards their bathroom in tears . I opened the door to see his body on the floor, in the fetal position, an empty pill bottle in one hand, a picture of me in the other.
    Screaming, I shook him as hard as I could, yelling his name repeatedly, beating his back with my fists. Nothing happened, and my sobs turned into uncontrollable screeches as I watched my vivacious brother turn into a cold, lifeless statue of what could have been. I ran downstairs, falling down the last few and landing on my hands and knees, tears blurring my vision.
    In the kitchen, I grabbed the phone off the receiver and dialed 9-1-1 as I ran back up the stairs. The operator tried calming me down, telling me to go back downstairs and unlock the front door for the paramedics, and then to start CPR. Don’t worry, help is on the way, she had said.
    Five minutes later, I was slamming my palm into David’s chest, trying to follow the op erators’ instructions. Being fifteen with the body of a ballerina , I hadn’t had the proper strength to do compressions correctly, so I improvised. David was breathing, but barely. The paramedics ran up the stairs and into the