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1

I don’t know why I broke up with Ethan. I really don’t. I mean, he didn’t do anything wrong. And he’s in love with me and everything. So why did I break it off?
Well, first, it was our names. Ethan and Elaine, how cheap is that? Dreadful. Even my name alone sounds terrible- Elaine. At one point I liked people to call me Laine, but that would never work now, after. Laine, Lane, Lois Lane, Clark Kent, Superman, Christopher Reeves, wheelchair, my mother. Everything connects.
No, that would never work.
People call me Bird now. But it’s a stupid story and I don’t want to tell it.
But they couldn’t put Bird on things like our wedding invitations, and I got sick of Ethan and Elaine. So I broke up with him. He was part of before, and I broke up with him.
I’m a dolt.

2

By before I mean three months ago. Before the crash. Before the accident that confined by mother to her shiny new wheelchair. Before the accident that killed my father and brother. Before before before.
Before, things were alright. Not great, but alright. My brother was a bit of a delinquent, smoking weed and other useless stuff. Stuff that goes on behind the scenes, stuff I (being totally ignorant to things other than kissing that you get asked about in games like have-you-ever; I always won those games) probably couldn’t imagine, and if I did imagine it, I wouldn’t like how it looked. Or smelled. These things, these behind-the-scenes things, did not please my dad. Therefore, arguments. They’d scream almost daily, scream at each other, scream past each other, scream at themselves. Back and forth, accomplishing nothing. But I had a room with a door, I had a Discman with quality headphones. Not much a Discman couldn’t solve before.
My mother was somewhat quiet and clever, like me. Pretty, unlike me. Lovely blonde tresses, sparkling green eyes, whatever. Liked things clean. Liked to play tennis. Jogged, kept fit. Tried to get us to eat healthy, failed. Nice enough, but I could only relate to her on a few levels.
We got by.
Now we really don’t. My lovely mother can never jog again. She doesn’t clean. I had to clean for awhile, until she was fired from her job. That was sort of alright; I always forgot, and when I remembered, I did a half-assed job of it. We had to move in with my aunt. She is lousy and boring.
And my brother and father are dead.
At least it’s pretty quiet around.

3

“So wait, you broke up with him because of alliteration?”
Enter Beth.
“Yes, Beth, I broke up with him because of alliteration.” I tried to roll my eyes and only managed to sort of glance up.
Beth is my best friend. At least, that’s what she tells me. I’ve never been totally convinced.
“That is not a good enough reason, Birdy.” We were sitting on her purple carpet in her room. It was posh.
She pushed me over. I was sitting cross-legged and she was on her knees, so she had pretty good leverage. I fell and she glared down at me. Some Grateful Dead was playing on the classic rock station that Beth never turned off. I never really prescribed to that whole Deadhead thing. I was more Ledhead than Deadhead.
“If it read ‘Ethan and Elaine’ on our wedding invitations, what would people think? That we were snotty and snobby and smarmy and all sorts of nasty ‘s’ things.” I wrinkled my nose up at her.
“You don’t even know what smarmy means,” she accused. She got up off of me and I turned my head. It was true. I didn’t know what smarmy meant.
“So? That doesn’t change the fact that Elaine and Ethan sounds like something off of a Lifetime movie. Or maybe a Hallmark Channel movie.” I spit.
“Don’t do that!” Beth snatched a tissue from the box next to her and cleaned up my spit. The box had a distorted Van Gogh painting printed on it. Sunflowers. I hated sunflowers. I turned to stare at the violet walls. So posh.
“Your room is posh.”
“Is not,” she said, and sort of kicked me. I turned to look at her and opened my blue eyes wide, putting on a pleading air. She kicked me again, and then sat down next to me.
“You’re afraid to be happy, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, and spit again.

4

Ethan Summers is a maniac.
A pyromaniac.
I’m serious.
He isn’t one of those childhood cases, where the loony in question set his grandmom’s house on fire when he was six and went on to build bombs by ten, no, but he’s a pyro all the same. It’s not the usual rebellious fixation that teenagers seem to have with fire, spraying cologne on their shirts and lighting it on fire. He has a serious fixation with the flame.
When he’s happy, he lights every candle in his room, turns the lights off, and basks in their glow. He stares at the flames when he’s stressed and needs to relax. He absolutely cannot fall asleep unless a candle is burning nearby; it’s a wonder that they haven’t fallen over and engulfed him in the flame that he loves so much.
When he’s angry, he lights things on fire and throws them into the street. When he’s pissed, he throws them in front of cars- but never too close. He isn’t a bad kid.
Just a pyro.
And I adored him.

5
Adore?
Adored?
... adore.

6

It went something like this:

It is after school in front of my locker.
“How do you feel about coming over to watch a movie on Friday? Are you free?”
“We’re through.”
“What? Are you kidding?”
“No.”
“You’re breaking up with me?”
“Apparently.”
“Forget this.”
He walks down the hall. Picking up speed as he goes. I watch him leave, getting small, one point perspective, gaining perspective, my boyfriend-no-ex-boyfriend running away from me. No doubt confused, no doubt hurt, no doubt going to set some things on fire. I hoped those things weren’t alive.

I woke up the rest morning with red burning eyes and a hoarse throat from screaming into my pillow.
I am a stupid girl.

7
“Is Ethan coming over tonight?”
It is wrong to hurt someone who is wheelchair-bound.
“No.”
“Why?”
“We’re done.”
She looks stunned. I run upstairs so she can’t see me cry.
I look in the mirror at the tears on my face and want to slap that face. I brought this upon myself.

8

Beth never seems to stop kicking me.
“You are so stupid.” It’s her new mantra. “I do not get you. You are so stupid. You are so freaking dumb.”
I want to stab her. I get up, not looking at her, not looking at her angry face, angry because I was hurting myself, angry because I was confused, angry because I was so stupid, so stupid.
I walk across her posh purple carpet and along her posh violet walls and before I walk right out of her posh lavender doorframe I think I turned and yelled something about her being too stupid to see that her room was posh, and if so I'm glad I forgot it because it was a really dumb thing to say.
And when I got home I went right up to my room, my room in my aunt's house with the mint green wallpaper and the white carpet and I hate white, I hate it, and I sleep forever the end.

9

No, I didn't. No, I didn't sleep forever. I did sleep for twelve hours though. Long enough to make my prissy aunt mad.
“Elaine!” she calls. “Elaine get up right now!”
I grumble.
“Get dressed, you have a visitor!”
Oh, that’s why she was calling.
I went downstairs. It was Ethan. He looked small.
“Laine...” he begins.
“Don’t call me that,” I say, and shut the door in his face.
“Was that that boyfriend of yours?” my nosy prying aunt asks. “Why did you shut the door on him?”
“Because I’m so stupid,” I mumble, and start up the stairs.



10

The doorbell rings.
He’s very persistent.
I open it again, sort of annoyed, and he grabs me and holds me close.
I fight. I punch and I scream and there’s tears in my eyes and it’s all very baffling but he still holds me there, close in his coat, and the cold air wraps itself around my legs.
And eventually I give up.
And have an epiphany.

Ethan. Pyro. Flame. Fire. Burning. Searing. Pain. Screaming. Tearing. Ripping. Loss. Death. And death is final. Final.

“I broke up with you because my brother and father died,” I tell him.
He smiles like his heart is breaking. “I know,” he says.
Tearfully, I tell him, “They call me Bird because I got high and acted like I was a bird.”
“You’re a really terrible liar,” he says, and pulls me closer as I burrow into his coat to forget about the world.