“I didn’t go,” I said, my throat thick. “I couldn’t go. I couldn’t face Kellen and his mom when all this is my fault.”
“Carson, it wasn’t your fault. It was an – ”
“An accident,” I snapped. I was so sick of hearing that. “I know.”
Dr. M didn’t say anything. Finally I cleared my throat. “He wasn’t… buried, was he?”
“No,” she said. “He wasn’t. Lena told me that Kellen was very adamant that he did not want Tony to be buried because he was claustrophobic. He was cremated instead.”
Kellen would think of that. He was still in the role of big brother, protecting Tony from his fears. I was glad he’d done it. I couldn’t stand the thought of Tony’s little body buried under six feet of dirt.
“They did put a memorial box out at the lake across from the bookstore Kellen works at so that people can leave little messages or memories if they want to. The lake was one of Tony’s favorite places.”
I nodded. I didn’t want to talk about the memorial service anymore. “Has he… has Kellen been here since it happened?”
“I can’t,” Dr. M started.
“I’m not asking about his sessions, I’m just asking if he ever came,” I said. “He hasn’t, has he?”
Dr. M didn’t answer, unwilling to blur that doctor-patient line people kept warning me about. She didn’t need to say anything though. The look on her face said it all. Kellen wasn’t coming to therapy.
“I haven’t talked to him either,” I said. “He doesn’t want to talk to me. He hates me.”
“Why do you say that?”
“He didn’t want me there – at the hospital,” I said. “I went that day and he told me to leave. He said he didn’t want me there. He screamed it, actually.”
“Have you tried contacting him since then?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Did she miss the part where he screamed at me?
“Because,” I said. “If he doesn’t want to talk to me then he doesn’t want to talk to me. I don’t blame him.”
“Did something happen, Carson? Something between you and Kellen?”
I laughed humorlessly. “Besides the fact that I killed his brother?”
“You didn’t kill Tony. It was – ”
“An accident.”
“Exactly,” Dr. M said.
“It doesn’t matter how many times you try to tell me that,” I said. “It doesn’t change the truth.”
Dr. M looked at me. She was giving me her “explain yourself” face.
“Kellen found out about my father,” I said after a moment of uncomfortably avoiding Dr. M’s gaze. I didn’t have it in me to assert my dominance with the staring game. “He found out my father is alive. I guess I sort of found out too. I mean, nobody ever called and asked us to identify a body so I figured he was still breathing, but the man is a ticking time bomb. It wouldn’t have been a shock if he actually was dead.”
“So you told Kellen about your dad. Did he not take it well?”
“Not exactly,” I said.
I told her about my father’s phone call and mine and Kellen’s fight afterwards.
“Why did your father call?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “The beauty of smashing a phone is that it stops talking.”
Dr. M nods. “And this is why you think Kellen is mad at you?”
“Well, there’s a lot of material to work with there – my undead father, my nasty comments, his brother,” I said. “And I don’t think he’s mad at me. I know he is.”
“But if you don’t talk to him then how are the two of you going to fix things.”
“We’re not,” I said. “We’re over.”
“Just like that? Is that what you want, Carson?”
“It’s not up to me. My brother isn’t dead,” I said. “And every time he looks at me all he’s going to see is that I’m a terrible girlfriend that’s still alive, while his sweet little brother isn’t.”
“But Kellen never said he never wanted to see you again.”
“It was implied.”
Dr. M shook her head. “You shouldn’t make assumptions about the way people feel, Carson. You should give them the opportunity to explain their feelings themselves.”
“I think the volume of his voice explained things pretty well,” I said. I looked out the window. “It’s ironic, isn’t it?” I said. “The only boy I ever actually loved is the one boy I didn’t have sex with.”
Love. There was that word again. Why couldn’t I say it when it mattered?
“He loved you too, Carson,” she said gently. “He loved you for you.”
I turned and glared back at Dr. M. “You didn’t even like us together,” I said.
“That’s not true.”
“You told me to stop treating him like medicine. You told me to find my own dreams. Why do you want us to patch things up all of a sudden?”
“I wanted you to see yourself the way that Kellen saw you,” she said. “I didn’t want you to be apart, I just wanted you to be able to stand strong on your own.”
“Well it doesn’t really matter now because we are apart. It’s too late to fix this,” I spat out. I folded my arms over my chest. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
Dr. M tilted her head and her face softened. “Carson, let me help you get through this.”
I laughed but it sounded hollow. Tears sprang to my eyes. “Help me? You can’t help me,” I said. “Unless of course you can resurrect the dead and bring…him back. Or maybe you can change my personality and make me less of a bitch.”
Dr. M studied me for a moment. “Carson, why won’t you say Tony’s name?” she finally asked.
She wouldn’t understand. It was one thing to think his name, but saying it was too much.
“I can’t,” I said. Tears clouded my vision and the office around me looked hazy. I wanted to hold in my feelings. I wanted to keep everything all bottled up, but I could feel all the bottles of emotions in my chest start to clang together. I knew they were going to shatter any minute.
“Why?”
“Because,” I burst out, getting to my feet. The blanket slipping down onto the chair. “It shouldn’t have been him! It should have been me. He was just a little kid and he was caring and kind and loving and all the things I’m not. And Kellen – Kellen didn’t deserve to lose his brother. Kellen had gotten his life together. He’d gotten his fucking shit together!” I clutched the sides of my head with my fists and sank onto the floor. “It should have been me,” I repeated, sobbing.
“But Carson,” I heard Dr. M say calmly above me. “Isn’t that what you’re doing? Getting your shit together?”
I was so shocked to hear Dr. M swear that I looked up. I tried to control my breathing. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. I just ended up sputtering in a fit of coughs though. “No,” I managed to get out. “My life is a mess. I’m a mess. I haven’t gotten any better.”
I sat there for a few seconds, wondering if I should tell her about the cutting. Kellen told me I should. He said she’d be able to help. I wasn’t sure if that was true and I wasn’t entirely convinced that she wouldn’t lock me up in some fluffy room with white walls, but I really didn’t have much to lose. “I lied to you before,” I added. “I was cutting myself. Not all the time, but I was doing it.”
My words were muffled and broken up by little hiccups, but I was pretty sure Dr. M got the gist. She nodded.
“Did you cut yourself after you found out about Tony?” she asked.
“No,” I said, honestly. “But I wanted to.”
“But you didn’t.”
“But I wanted to.” I said, getting frustrated.
“But you didn’t,” Dr. M repeated, her voice level. “Even though you wanted to, you didn’t. That’s progress, Carson. You need to stop looking at how far you have to go, because you’ll get there. You will get there. Focus on how far you’ve come. Be proud of that.”
“But
I won’t get there,” I said, shaking my head. “You don’t understand. The only reason I got this far is because of Kellen. He saved me.” I could feel the tears flowing fast down my cheeks. “He saved me and now he hates me and I don’t know what to do.”
Dr. M looked at me with sad eyes, but there was something else there too. “Kellen didn’t save you, Carson.”
I opened my mouth to protest but she put up her hand to stop me. “Kellen showed you that you were worth saving, but he didn’t save you. You did that. You saved yourself, Carson.”
You saved yourself, Carson.
I heard this sentence repeated in my head, but this time it wasn’t Dr. M’s voice saying the words.
It was Kellen’s.
And then I heard something else, something Kellen said to me the day we had our first kiss.
You have no idea how special you are right now.
When would these voices stop?
But one day you will.
Would I? Would I ever get there? How could I get there without him?
I hope I’m here to see that day. I hope you’ll let me be here.
I wanted him to be there. I would have let him be there.
I felt like a war was going to break out in my head, my brain the battlefield. I looked up at Dr. M and even though I knew I must have had a crazed look on my face, she had that same expression that I couldn’t quite name.
You’re a special person, Carson.
“Don’t go back, Carson. Whether you and Kellen end up together, continue on. Keep going. Keep fighting.”
I didn’t want to argue with Dr. M anymore today. This was something we weren’t going to agree on, because it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that Tony would never have a tree full of leaves. He’d never have another dessert before dinner. He’d never have another today or another tomorrow and it wasn’t fair that I would. What did he do to deserve having to leave? What did I do to deserve getting to stay?
And the question that really sickened me, the one I’d been asking myself for the past few days was, in the aftermath of death, why was I so concerned about my relationship status? And did that make me a horrible person?
I cleared my throat and glanced at the clock. “Can I leave early?” I asked.
Dr. M nodded. “Sure,” she said. “But please come back next week, Carson. You can get through this and reach the other side. I want to help you. Let me help you.”
I got up and walked away without saying anything. When I reached the door though, I turned around. “Are you worried?” I asked. “About Kellen skipping his session?”
“Are you worried, Carson?”
I thought about Kellen and the hospital and the drugs that the doctors had filled his body with. “I think so,” I said.
“Carson,” Dr. M said. “You say that Kellen saved you, but I don’t think you realize how much you did for him. If he were in trouble then I think you might be the only person that would be able to help him out of it.”
I was a little surprised by this. I’d known that Kellen wanted me around, but the idea that he could need me just seemed too crazy. What shocked me even more was that Dr. M had been the one to tell me this. Had she just tiptoed the doctor-patient line? Had Kellen talked about me in his therapy sessions as much as I talked about him?
I didn’t ask. Instead, I turned back towards the door.
“It’s never too late, Carson.” I heard Dr. M say behind me. “It’s never too late to fix something up. Even if it seems like everything is hanging by a single thread, that just means there’s one less thread that has be sewn.”
When I walked out the door I looked around the waiting room and when I got outside I looked around the parking lot. There was no bike, no boy in a baseball cap. I wondered if even a single thread was left to hold this world together, or if maybe it really was too late.
Chapter 44
Thunderstorm
There’s a hole in my heart
And I don’t know if it’ll ever be filled
My mind is a thunderstorm
Rumbles rocking my world
Lightning striking me down
I’m caught in a cloud
Stuck in a downpour
Under a sky of grey
Will the sun will ever come out again
I don’t know, so I sit still
Forever scarred by the storm
Two weeks went by and the pain was as intense as ever. I swore the universe was against me. My nights were haunted by Tony, my days by Kellen. Little pieces of him kept popping up and each time it was like a stab to my heart, a fresh wound. The other day I found the little bicycle cutout I’d thrown beside my bed while crafting. I couldn’t bear to throw it away, but I also couldn’t look at it either, so I’d glued it to the inside cover of my poetry book.
Then Lena called me. I hadn’t spoken to her since she’d called and told me about the memorial service that I didn’t end up going to. I didn’t answer the phone this time though. I didn’t know what to say. There was nothing I could have possibly said to make up for the fact that I was the reason her son was gone forever.
So I continued to wallow through the night and into the morning, just like I had every other day for the past two weeks.
“Carson,” my mom said when she came into my room one afternoon and found me sitting on my bed and staring out the window, still dressed in a sweatshirt and sweatpants with my hair in a giant knot on top of my head. “You can’t keep going on like this. You need to snap out of it. You need to start living again.”
I didn’t respond to her and she ended up huffing and walking out, slamming my door behind her. She didn’t get it. She didn’t get that before Kellen I wasn’t really living at all. I was just existing.
The sky broke shortly after my mom left, sending large droplets of water down on the earth. As soon as I watched the first few hit my window, I was pulled outside by some unexplainable force. I sat on the porch and watched as the rain fell down hard around me. I think part of me hoped that Kellen would walk out of the storm, just like last time. He’d jog up and pull me in his arms, say he forgave me and that he was sorry for telling me to leave, that he’d never abandon me again. And we’d dance in the rain like we did before and then we’d go to his house and bake chocolate chip muffins with Tony. Everything would be okay.
But everything wasn’t okay. It wasn’t raining because the Jordans were going to be brought back to me. It was just raining to rain. Maybe it wasn’t the universe that was trying to torture me after all. Maybe it was just me. Maybe on some psychological level I just wanted to feel the pain and punishment and that’s why I saw them everywhere. Bikes were bikes and coloring books were coloring books. A storm was just a storm. I was the one putting so much damn meaning into everything.
I pulled a crumpled up piece of paper out of my pocket. As I was walking out of my room I’d seen the Happy List sitting there on the floor and, like with the little bike cutout, I hadn’t been able to just leave it there so I’d shoved it in my pocket and carried it out with me. I regretted tossing the dumb list aside when Kellen had tried to reach out to me. I’d lied to him when I said I didn’t care, because I did care.
I cared about him. It wasn’t about the list, it never was. It was about being with him while doing the things on the list. It was about creating lasting memories with him, but they were supposed to be lasting memories that we’d share and laugh about for years and years and years. I wasn’t supposed to be left with all of this to deal with on my own.
I would’ve given anything to do the things on the list again, with Kellen. I would’ve given anything to do it all again – the right way. With Kellen.
I wished I could make things right. I wanted more than anything to make things right.
A car sped down the street, pulling my attention from the list. As my eyes followed it out of sight, they fell on the far side of the porch where my bike was leaning up against the house.
That’s when it hit me. All these weeks I�
�d been acting like Kellen was the one that had died, but he was still here. He was alive. I couldn’t take back what I’d said to him at my house and I couldn’t take back the accident that stole Tony from him, but maybe Dr. M was right. Maybe I could still fix things between us. I had to at least try. I owed it to Kellen to at least try, but I also owed it to myself.
Before I could talk myself out of it I shoved the list back in my pocket where it would hopefully be semi-safe, grabbed the bike, and peddled into the storm.
By the time I pulled up to Kellen’s house I was soaked, out of breath, and freezing. All I could think about was getting out of the rain. I rode right up to the house, leaned my bike against the side, and ran up the steps. Lena’s car was parked in the driveway so hopefully that meant someone was home. Most relatively sane people stayed indoors during torrential downpours.
I knocked on the door and waited, feeling the rain drip down my back, my clothes clinging to my skin uncomfortably. I was shivering when Lena opened the door a minute later.
“Carson,” she said, surprised.
“Um,” was all I could manage to get out of my mouth. Lena’s cheeks were puffy. She looked tired and her green eyes were glistening with fresh tears. The animated sparkle I’d gotten so used to seeing, the same sparkle that usually lived in Kellen’s green eyes, was gone.
Lena seemed to snap out of some kind trance. She looked around outside. Maybe she was just now noticing the rain. Maybe in her world it had been raining like this for the past two weeks – no breaks in the clouds, no rays of sun shining through. “Come inside,” she said, pulling me towards her.
I stepped through the door and was instantly enveloped in warmth. Something felt off though. No doubt this house had been haunted by memories too. Lena had probably been spending her time fighting off her own ghosts.
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