He came camping with us, he cut school with us, he loved us. He was such a good guy and he was such a good friend, and I just can’t . . . I just can’t . . .
“Sloane,” James says, pulling my arm. But I’m rocking, banging my forehead against the window, trying to make the memories, the regret, the pain go away. I want to stop moaning because I don’t even know what I’m saying. But I can’t control myself. I can’t control anything.
And just then James slaps me, hard. I gasp in a breath, snapped out of my hysteria as my cheek stings. Normally James would have talked me down, held me to him. But instead his eyes are swollen and red from crying. His skin is blotchy and wet. I’ve never seen him look like this, and I touch my face, still stunned.
James hitches in labored breaths, his body nearly convulsing with them. I’ve stopped crying, but my head throbs from where I was banging it on the glass. James still says nothing and then looks past me to Miller’s house, just as the porch light clicks off. He whimpers, and I reach for him but he backs against the car door.
Slowly, he pulls the driver’s side handle and opens it, falling out onto the street. “What are you doing?” I manage to say. But he doesn’t look at me as he scrambles up, staring at the house with horror on his face. And then James turns and starts running, his sandals clapping on the pavement. I push open my door and scream after him. “James!” I yell, but he’s around the corner and out of my sight.
I can’t move at first. I’m hyperaware of everything around me, the orange haze low in the sky from the sunset. The trees swaying in the wind. I think about going up to Miller’s house and asking if I can lie in his bed for a while, feel close to him one last time. But that’s the kind of thing that gets you flagged.
Miller. I’ll never go with him to the river again. We’ll never have lunch again. He’ll never turn eighteen. Oh, God. Miller.
I blink, but no tears fall because my eyes are dried out and scratchy. I touch my cheek again where it still stings. It occurs to me that James didn’t say anything—he didn’t tell me I was being hysterical. He didn’t hold me and tell me to cry it out. He didn’t tell me it would be okay.
He didn’t say anything.
Suddenly my heart explodes with worry. I clamor all the way out of the passenger seat and race around the car, getting in the other side and slamming it into drive. I need to find James. I grab my phone from the center console and call him, my fingers trembling over the numbers.
There’s no answer until his voice mail picks up. “It’s James. Talk to me, baby.” I hang up and dial again, turning down the same street where I saw him running. It’s empty, and then the streetlights turn on. Where is he? He needs to be okay. He needs to tell me I’m okay.
I press down on the accelerator, looking frantically around the streets. James’s house is only a few blocks away, so he might be there. I hope he’s there. I’m going to find him and I’m going to hold him.
The car tires bump the curb hard as I pull up to his house. I run, not even shutting the door, and race to his front porch. I rush inside and yell for him, but no one answers. His dad isn’t home and I wonder what day it is, if he’s on a date tonight.
“James?” I’m screaming. “James?”
Silence. I trip as I run up the stairs, banging my shin hard on the wood. I curse under my breath but scramble ahead. I have to find him.
I burst into his room, and the minute I do, I freeze.
My James is sitting on the floor near the window, shirtless, in jeans. He pauses and looks up at me, his eyes red and swollen, his mouth slack. I barely recognize him. I hitch in a breath as he lowers the pocketknife, blood running down his arm, pooling in his lap.
“I needed to add his name,” he says, his voice thick. “I couldn’t wait for ink.”
I drop to my knees and begin crawling toward him, shocked, horrified, desperate. Miller’s name is carved jaggedly into his flesh. Blood is everywhere.
James lets the knife fall to the carpet.
He blinks likes he’s just noticing me. “Sloane,” he says softly. “What are you doing here, baby?”
I reach for him and bring his head against my chest. His blood is warm as it runs over my hand. James lies there listlessly as if he’s empty. As if he’s dead, too. And I won’t cry anymore today.
Because I know that James is now infected.
“It’s going to be okay,” I say, brushing back his sweaty blond hair. No emotion in my voice. Just the impossibility of it. “Everything is going to be okay, James.”
• • •
Luckily the cuts aren’t too deep, and I help James clean and cover them with a bandage and a long-sleeved shirt. I go through his dad’s medications until I think I find something that will calm him down. I clean his room, trying to scrub the blood out of his carpet but then opting to cover it with a chair when I can’t. I take the knife and throw it in the trash, considering hiding all the knives in the house, but I don’t want his dad to be suspicious.
James stares up at the ceiling, shaking even under the covers. I get into bed next to him, glancing at the clock and knowing his dad will be home soon. I wrap myself around James and hold on tight. I wait until the pills take effect, and when he’s asleep, I slip out. I hope that his father hasn’t heard about Miller yet. I hope that he’ll get home from his date and go to sleep, and then leave before James wakes up in the morning.
Then I’ll come over and get James ready for school. He’ll need time, need me to keep him normal, but then he’ll be fine. James will be eighteen in five months, and then after that they can’t take him away.
I’ll keep him safe, just like he kept me safe after Brady died. Because that day at the river when my brother killed himself, I almost went with him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
MY BROTHER AND I WERE ONLY ELEVEN MONTHS apart, yet oddly enough, we never fought. Brady was my best friend, one of my only friends other than Lacey. And even though he had James, he never shut me out.
In the weeks before my brother died, James and I had been meeting secretly. When he’d stay over, he’d show up in my room at three in the morning, kissing me quietly while everyone slept. He’d leave notes under my pillow when I wasn’t home. We’d become completely infatuated with one another.
We didn’t tell Brady, not because we wanted to keep it secret, but because we didn’t want it to be awkward. And if everyone knew about James and me, they wouldn’t allow us constant access to each other—sleepovers, camping trips.
Brady had been seeing that girl Dana, but they broke up. She told James that Brady was acting strange, that he was cold. James waved her off, but when he confronted my brother, Brady just said it wasn’t a big deal. That she had bad breath anyway.
My brother had made it his personal mission to teach me how to swim, always going to our same place by the river. There isn’t much of a current there, just a deep pool of water. But this one afternoon, he took me and James to a new spot.
“It’s really beautiful there,” he said as he drove. “It’s perfect.”
James snorted in the backseat. “Just so long as I get to see your sister in a bikini.”
Brady smiled, his shadowed eyes glancing in the mirror, but he didn’t tell him to shut up. Instead he kept driving, like he had all the time in the world. I looked back at James, but he just shrugged. I remember thinking that maybe we’d tell my brother that day, that maybe it was time for him to know about me and James. I even thought that maybe he knew about us, but James didn’t think so. He said Brady was just stressed about finals.
We never got the chance to tell him.
I was in my bathing suit as Brady stood at the edge of the drop, looking down at the rushing water. A soft smile was on his lips.
“You can’t swim in that!” James yelled to him as he laid out his towel far back in the grass. “We should have gone to our usual spot.”
Brady looked over, the light reflecting off his black hair. The sun made his pale skin look sallow and shiny. “I
didn’t want to ruin it for you,” my brother called.
James pulled his eyebrows together, and then laughed. “Ruin what for me?”
“The usual spot. I figured you’ll still be able to go there after. Maybe you can teach Sloane how to finally swim.” He darted his eyes to mine and smiled. “She might listen to you.”
I paused then, and stared at him. “What are you—” Ice-cold pain ripped through my body when it hit me, when the moment actually became clear. At just about the exact same time, I saw James jump up from his towel.
My brother was poised on the end of a twenty-foot drop, and he bowed his head to me, his eyes glassy. The dark circles under them were navy blue. I hadn’t seen it coming. I hadn’t recognized the signs.
“Take care of each other,” Brady whispered to me like it was a secret. And then he held his arms out at his sides and fell backward off the cliff.
My screams ripped through the afternoon air, and I looked back to see that James was still too far away. I didn’t know how to swim, but I ran full force and dove in after him. The minute I smacked the water, cold rushed up my nose and I choked, flailing wildly. “Brady!” I tried to yell, but gulps of water kept entering my mouth.
There was another loud splash behind me, and I knew it was James. I don’t even think he saw me as he swam past, just as good of a swimmer as Brady. A log was jutting out from the bank and I grabbed onto it, watching.
The current was so fast it was pulling my legs downriver as my body clung to the wood. And then I saw Brady—he was floating, facedown. He wasn’t swimming. I screamed again, pointing toward him as I watched his body slam into a rock, and then another. James’s arms were furiously lapping over and over, but Brady was too far ahead.
I started to cry, sobs curling my body around the branch. When Brady’s body slammed against another rock, it stayed there long enough for James to reach him. James banged against the boulder, crying out as he did, but he pulled Brady to shore and started giving him CPR.
He was frantic, pounding on his chest, breathing into his lungs. But I could see from where I was that even if Brady wasn’t full of water, his neck was broken. His head hung oddly to the side; his eyes stared out at nothing.
My brother—my best friend—was dead.
Comforting numbness seemed to stretch over me then. James was crying, screaming for help. He stood up, his hand shielding the sun as he looked for me. And I let go of the branch, letting the icy water pull me under.
I tried to drown, and really, it wouldn’t have been that hard. The current was strong enough to keep me under, and I hoped I would pass out, blocking the images of my dead brother’s last stare. I knew I couldn’t go on. I couldn’t face my parents. My life.
But then James had his forearm around my neck, pulling me to the bank to lay me on my back. I was choking, vomiting even then. My ears were plugged but I could see James above me, tapping my cheeks to keep me awake. When I could keep my eyes open, he left, running to his towel where his phone was.
James saved me. But he couldn’t save Brady—neither of us could. In the end we did just as my brother asked—we took care of one another. Sometimes the survivor’s guilt was more than we could bear, a secret between us that we never let show. But we were all we had left.
• • •
As I sit in James’s house Monday morning, watching as he slowly pushes his bandaged arm through a shirt I picked out, I think that it’s always been him doing the work. James has been the constant. Now that part of him is broken, finally infected. And just like that day at the river, I want to let go and go under.
“I brought Pop-Tarts,” I say, brushing his hair aside as he sits and stares out the window.
“When’s the funeral?” he asks, his voice so low I can barely hear it.
I swallow hard. After I left James Saturday night, I pushed down every feeling I had, let myself become a machine, doing whatever’s necessary to keep us alive. Together. When I got home, my parents told me that Miller’s mom had called and spoken with them.
“They’re not having a funeral,” I say. “The Program thinks it might instigate more suicide, so just his mom is allowed to bury him.” Miller’s face, his smile, pops into my head, but I quickly lock it away. There is no time to mourn.
James presses his lips tight together as his eyes well up. “It was my fault,” he says. “Just like Brady. I was too late. I should have never left him behind.”
I wrap my arms around James. “Miller was sick, James. There was nothing we could do.” He turns in my arms.
“And Brady? I was there and I couldn’t save him.”
My heart aches, but I can’t let myself think about Brady today, not when we have to go to school. “I couldn’t either. And what’s done is done. You need to pull yourself together.”
James reaches up to put his palm on my cheek, and I turn my face into it. “I can’t,” he murmurs.
I stare into his blue eyes, panicking, but I press my forehead against his. “I will save you this time,” I whisper. “I will save us both.”
James pulls me into a hug, burying his face in my neck, and I run my fingers down his back, trying to calm him. I’ve never felt strong, not when so many things in this world are out of my control. But now I have to be. Because I’m all we have.
CHAPTER NINE
In the past day have you felt lonely or overwhelmed?
NO.
Have there been any changes in your sleeping patterns?
NO. I haven’t slept since Miller died.
Has anyone close to you ever committed suicide?
I fill in NO. I stare at the darkened oval, willing it to be true. Wishing that I could ever just fill in the goddamn NO! I blink back the tears that are starting, and I erase the mark, making sure no traces of it exist. And then, with coldness in my soul, I fill in YES.
After an hour of intensive therapy to deal with my “loss,” I find James at my locker and walk him to his classroom, making sure he can pass for normal—at least for fifty minutes. When I get to economics, the first person I see is the handler, the dark-haired one who’s always watching me.
Next to mine, Miller’s desk is empty, and a deep hollow feeling opens in my chest. But in the corner, watching me with a soft smile on his lips—as if he’s been waiting for me—is the handler.
My heart races as I sit, not looking back at him again. I wonder if I’m about to get flagged. Please, God. Don’t let them take me.
When the bell rings, Mr. Rocco walks in and shoots an uneasy glance at Miller’s desk and then at the handler before launching into his lesson. I clasp my hands under my desk, squeezing tightly to keep my composure. It’s torture, trying to pay attention, trying to put up the appearance of wellness. I want my phone to vibrate so that I know James is okay too. But nothing happens.
Sweat has started to gather on my upper lip, and I feel like I can’t take another moment of not knowing how James is when the bell finally rings. I jump and immediately stuff my book into my backpack, standing quickly as I head toward the door. Just then someone grabs my arm.
I swing around, startled, and am face-to-face with the handler. I suck in a breath, nearly falling over. It’s happening. No. No. No. It’s happening.
The handler lets go of my elbow and smiles sympathetically. “Sloane Barstow,” he says, and his gravelly voice is like sandpaper on my soul. “I’m sorry for your loss. I just have a few questions for you if you don’t mind.” His eyes are wide and dark, his skin a deep olive. He’s twenty, maybe younger, but I see no true compassion on his face. I see something else, something that makes my stomach knot. He wants to take me.
“I already had therapy today,” I say, stepping back from him.
He laughs. “This isn’t therapy. Follow me, please.” He walks past me, and I’m struck again by the medicinal smell of the handlers. I wonder if he has drugs on him right now that could put me out, something they occasionally do when apprehending someone for The Program. Or he could use the Taser
at his waist.
I feel for my phone in my pocket, but don’t dare text James. I need him to stay calm. But then I wonder if they’ve gotten to him, too. I hope not. He’s in no condition for an interview.
It happens, after a suicide. They send us all to counselors to make sure we’re okay. Sometimes a few extras are sent in to interview those who aren’t taking the loss well. But it’s rarely a handler. It makes me uneasy that this is the same guy who’s been watching me since taking Kendra. But I have no choice so I follow him toward the main office.
When we get there, a small room is ready for us. Two chairs face each other in the dim space. I gulp down my fear as I enter, hating the idea of being alone with this guy. But principals and teachers don’t interfere with The Program. They look the other way when I enter.
“Please sit,” the handler says, closing the door behind us and drawing the blinds. My fear is so strong, but I know I can’t let it show. I take a deep breath and lower myself into the chair.
“This really isn’t necessary,” I say, trying to sound like a normal girl. “I hardly knew Miller.”
The handler smiles at this, coming to sit across from me, the knees of his white pants almost touching mine. I try not to flinch away from him. “Really?” he asks, obviously knowing the answer. “Well, then how about Lacey Klamath? Or perhaps your brother? Were you close with them?”
I must visibly pale when he mentions Brady because he bows his head as if apologizing. “Miss Barstow, it has come to our attention that you are high-risk. You’ve suffered tremendous loss recently, so it’s only my intention to evaluate you.”
He’s lying. He wants to flag me. They don’t care about us, only the appearance that what they do works. I curl my toes hard in my shoes as the handler runs his eyes slowly over me. Goose bumps rise on my skin.
“Let’s start with Miller. You were out of town when he terminated himself, correct?”
I hate him for making it sound clinical. “Yes.”
The Program Page 6