This is Not the End

by Chandler Baker

  He opens them and stares up at the ceiling. “I said that I can’t.”

  “Fine.” I split the spine open to the dog-eared page. “Then I’ll read it to you.”

  “I didn’t invite you in here.” There’s a snap to his tone that stops me cold, mouth open, ready to begin the first word of chapter twenty-five. “You just busted in.”

  “Yeah, because Mom and Dad wouldn’t let me in to see you.”

  “It wasn’t Mom and Dad, Lake.”

  “But—” His meaning dawns on me too late.

  “I didn’t want to see you.” My mouth goes dry. “There’s nothing you can do to help. There’s nothing anyone can do to help. I’d be better off if…if I were dead.” He chokes on the word. “Now can you please…Can you please just get out, Lake? You’re annoying me. Don’t you get that? I’m tired right now. I just…I just want to be alone.”

  There are no words. I try to tell myself that this is just the dumb tree talking. That Matt will get over it. He’ll have time to heal on the inside and things will be different. Quietly, I close my book and slide off the bedside.

  And as surely as I tell myself that Matt needs time, I know that my heart has already begun to fracture—irreparably—just like his spine.

  I wonder if for the rest of my life, I’ll be haunted by beautiful days. I wonder if I’ll look out on a cloudless sky splashed with sunshine, hear the roar of the ocean, feel wind tickling my face—then just when I start to fill up with happiness, stop short on a single moment. I’ll remember the blood and the gore and the sadness and the death that the nice day might be hiding just underneath its sparkling surface, waiting to spiral and spread like a drop of red in water before it taints the whole glass. And almost everything will look like a mirage, wavering and waiting to disappear the second I get too close.

  From the breakfast table I stare out over an uneaten bowl of oatmeal at the beachfront behind our house. Splashes of water turn to foam between the jetty rocks. I’m trying to cling to snapshot images of Will and Penny, alive and happy, but each time I try, they keep dancing away, as fleeting as the whitecaps that dot the sea.

  “Lake?”

  My elbow hurts. My back hurts. My neck hurts. My heart hurts. And not in that order. I stir the congealed oats before letting the spoon clatter into the bowl. “Lake?” I’ve been hearing Will’s words as an echo since the accident: Your wish is my command. How many days has it been, anyway? Three, four, maybe five? I wish for you to be alive, Will. That’s what I wish for. Your wish is my command. That’s the only thing that I wish for. I pick up the spoon from the bowl and watch the oatmeal fall plop, plop, plop.

  “What do you think he meant?” I murmur out loud.

  My mom clears her throat. “What do I think who meant by what?”

  I blink. My vision adjusts from the faraway plane to the one two feet in front of me where my parents stare from a couple of seats away at the table. Have they been hovering this whole time?

  I exhale. “Will. Just…something he said.” Because I can’t expect them to have the answer. “Something to do with my birthday.” I glance between them and wrinkle my forehead. “What’s today?” I ask, trying to remember. “Is it a weekend? Shouldn’t you be biking or at work or something?” I say to my dad.

  Dad stopped golfing with his friends after Matt’s accident, but he found an old road bike in the garage and he started riding that—obsessively, it seemed—for hours on end. But when he’d get back from his routes, he’d be calmer, friendlier, and so Mom kept taking care of Matt during those hours too, even though she had to do it all week as well. That’s why her clothes are always several years out of style and she never updates her haircut.

  It sounds bad to say this, but I understand my dad more for his bike outings than my mom for her unflagging ability to care for my brother.

  “It’s Tuesday,” he says.

  Then my dad touches Mom’s elbow and it seems to give her the courage to speak. “Honey.” She’s using her Matt voice on me. “Maybe those questions can wait. Your father and I want to talk to you.”

  I blink again. I can’t seem to focus on these two. I return to staring out the window. I imagine Penny and me out on the stretch of private beach doing cartwheels until we get dizzy.

  “Sweetie, we need you to try to focus.” I can tell Dad’s trying to strike a balance between gentle and stern.

  “Sorry,” I say.

  My mom puts her hand over mine and pulls it into her chest. “Lake, please, we know this is an extremely sensitive time, but there were some things you said in the hospital about resurrecting Will and Penny and we just want to make sure that…well, that you know that’s not possible.”

  This. It would be easier to swallow shards of glass. But of course they’re right. One. I’m going to have to make a choice.

  “I know,” I mumble and glance down at the table and then at our clasped hands. I can’t have them both, I add silently. This is my new reality.

  Her smile is small and weak, but there’s a hint of pride there too. “We don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea.”

  I shift to the edge of my seat. My mother’s eyes are gray this morning, and sad. It’s early and I know she’ll have already changed Matt’s catheter bag and given him a sponge bath in bed.

  “Who do you mean by ‘anyone’?”

  She grips my fingers more tightly. “Lake, we love you so, so much. We’re here for you.” She looks up at my dad and he wraps his arm around her shoulder and squeezes her arm before returning the full weight of his attention to me. Meanwhile, a coldness spreads underneath my ribs. “What we mean to say is, while we know Will and Penny were your best friends, Matt is your brother.”

  My gaze hardens. The chill turns icy and begins creeping out into my limbs.

  Dad must decide that it’s finally time to take his turn, because he starts talking. “In the hospital, you mentioned resurrecting Will or Penny.” Calm, methodical, laying out the facts for me. “We know the news was a shock to you, but we also know that you know”—he tilts his head toward me—“that you’ve already promised your resurrection choice. Isn’t that right?”

  My mouth is numb. “To Matt?”

  The right answer. Dad nods. Pleased. “Yes, to Matt.” But then he must catch my expression—honestly, it’s a mystery to me what my face looks like, but I’m guessing it’s not good. “We’ve had this agreement.” His voice goes down an octave.

  Matt. Dead. Me. Alive. The thought of my brother killing himself on purpose because I said he could has always made me feel sweaty under my arms. But now it’s making me downright nauseated.

  “But…but…that was before, though.”

  His Adam’s apple bobs in his throat. “Yes, that was before Penny and Will died, we know.”

  I shake my head. “No, that was before Matt told me my two best friends died, the same way—the same way he might have told me my goldfish had gone belly up.” My pitch is rising. I feel my cheeks turning hot. I set my cast on the table and it bangs loudly.

  I know in the depths of my soul that these are the words that have been brewing, but I am surprised to be able to say them out loud so easily. The truth is, I’m not even sure I love Matt. Not after everything.

  “But—” Mom curls her now empty hands into her lap.

  I bolt from my chair. I would bolt from my skin if I could, but I’m stuck in it, so I make do. It feels good to tower over them. “Matt’s alive. There’s a big difference. If he wants to live his life as a complete ass-face, well then that’s his business, but at least he’s breathing. At least he has a chance.”

  Mom takes a sharp breath. “You don’t understand—”

  “You don’t understand. Lots of people are disabled, Mom. And they have perfectly happy lives.”

  “Yes, and lots of people are—”

  “Don’t.” Dad cuts over her. I’m breathing hard, but I let him speak. “Lake, I know these are tough choices.” His reasonableness makes me want to punch hi
m in the nose.

  “Yeah. Yeah. They’re tough choices.” I jab my thumb into my sternum. “They’re my tough choices. I should never have let you try to make them for me in the first place.” My face is wet now.

  Mom covers her mouth. She’s shaking her head slowly and I’m watching her face break open like an egg. “Lake, Lake, honey.” She opens her arms like she’s ready to wrap me up and pet my hair the way that she used to, and now I’m just wishing she had never stopped reading magazines on my bed while I got ready in the morning. “We’re sorry. We—we’re sorry.”

  I don’t go to her. I just stare, mouth open. However I feel about Matt, I do love my parents, deeply, because I know they’re only doing their best. But all of a sudden, loving them and loving Penny and Will feel like currents pulling me in opposite directions.

  Dad looks to her. He places his hand on her shoulder. She sinks into the seat back. I catch a small nod. “You’re right, Lake.” His voice is gravelly. “You’re…absolutely right. But—” I tense and he holds his palm out to stay me. “Bear with me. Will, Penny, or…well…you’re going to be dealing with loss. We’ve spoken with your doctors and we think it’s important for you to see a therapist.” I start to protest. I’m sensing a trap. He cuts me off. “Right away. You’re young. This kind of trauma, it’s very real.”

  “I don’t need to talk to a stranger to know that.”

  “Maybe it will provide some clarity for you.”

  I soften. He doesn’t mention Matt. He doesn’t insist on the promise I made. The promise I already know I’m not keeping. Matt is alive. My friends are not. There can’t be a more stark distinction. Meanwhile my head is spinning, with nowhere to land.

  “Please,” he says. “This one thing. For us.” And that’s the line that gets me.

  My jaw clenches. I want to talk to Penny, not some shrink who knows nothing about my friends, who knows nothing about anything. But despite everything, despite how for years it’s felt like Matt, my mom, and my dad have formed their own family and forgotten to ask me to be in it, despite that, I still don’t want to hurt them. “Fine,” I say. And then I add, “But that’s the only thing I’m doing.”

  I need some air. And some space. Miles and miles of each if I could get it. I can’t. Or, rather, even if I could there’s no running away from what’s happened.

  So, it’s a small thing, but I convince my parents I can drive myself to the therapy appointment that it turns out they had already booked for me. A few days ago, when I needed to get away from my family, I could run to Penny and Will. Now there’s only this. I can tell my parents are trying to do “the right thing” and are struggling to figure out what exactly that means. I don’t blame them. There’s no handbook.

  The heat fumes off the asphalt and snakes around my ankles. I drop my sunglasses into the seat behind me before I close the door and squint up at the sky, which is exactly as blue as it was on the day of the car wreck.

  That’s the problem. None of this seems real, because the world’s not cooperating. I keep getting this feeling, like I’m just waking up from a nightmare, when actually I’m still living in it. Even the building of Garretson, Smith & McKenna looks more like a law firm than a psychology practice. I’m already starting to sweat by the time I cross the lot and push through the glass door into a blast of air-conditioning.

  I have to blink several times to adjust to the artificial light, and I’m rubbing at my eye sockets as I approach the linoleum countertop with the sliding window. A middle-aged woman slides open the Plexiglas between us. “Name, please?”

  “Lake Devereaux?” I say it as a question. My heart rate has already picked up its pace to that of a brisk jog. I try to relax by pinching the pressure point between my thumb and pointer finger, another Penny technique, but I’ve had what doctors call “white coat syndrome” ever since I was a kid and so my blood pressure skyrockets the second I’m in a doctor’s office. Even one where there are no needles involved.

  The woman tap-tap-taps her keyboard. “First visit?” she asks without looking at me.

  I shift my weight in my sandals. “Yes, ma’am.” I rest my cast on the countertop in front of me and pick at the cottony inside near the knuckles while she finishes finger pecking. Finally, the woman slides a clipboard in front of me. She frowns at my cast. “Can you write with that, hon’?” she asks.

  I nod. “I’m right-handed.”

  “Dr. McKenna will take that from you when she calls you back.” The glass slides into place, like a limo divider, letting me know that the conversation’s over.

  I find a seat in the waiting room, which is empty but for one person, a boy around my age bent over a magazine. I choose a chair along the opposite wall so that two rows of chairs separate us. This feels like proper waiting-room etiquette. Particularly in a therapist’s office.

  I slip the pen from the top of the clipboard balanced on my lap and begin jotting down answers.

  Current medications? I hesitate, then write None.

  I used to carry an inhaler with me everywhere I went, but I haven’t needed it in years. My parents say I must have outgrown it, that when I quit playing soccer my lungs had a chance to recover.

  Anti-depressives? No.

  Suicidal thoughts? Never.

  Self-harm? Never.

  Family history of clinical depression?

  I think about Matt. Does it count if he had extenuating circumstances? Depression hardly seems genetic when it stems from paralysis. I quickly scribble No as my response. Because I suppose becoming a world-class jerk is a different thing from being depressed…right?

  God, I’m already regretting agreeing to this.

  From the other side of the room there’s a rustle of pages, footsteps, and then a shadow crosses on the ground in front of me. Without lifting my chin, I glance up from my clipboard to see that the other waiting-room occupant has moved to a chair just across and one to the right of mine. He has reopened his magazine and is now hunched over with his elbows on his knees flipping through the glossy insides. Dark hair falls down over his forehead.

  Okay…I think, shaking my head and returning my eyes to the questionnaire.

  How many items are on this thing anyway? I lift the page and peek underneath. Double-sided.

  The boy sitting across from me clears his throat. I jot down another answer. Then, he clears his throat again. Keeping my head down, I close my eyes and pull in a deep breath. The aisle between us is narrow and his body feels close, like he’s punctured the carefully drawn boundaries of my personal space. Obviously he knows nothing about waiting room etiquette. By the third time that he clears his throat I press the clipboard down onto my lap and sit up, startled to find a pair of blue eyes trained on me. It takes only another quarter second for my own eyes to trace the outline of an angry red birthmark that covers the top quadrant of his face, from the middle of his forehead and down the bridge of his nose until it falls off to the left, cuts partway down his cheekbone, and recedes into his hairline, just below the temple. The effect reminds me of a picture book that my mom used to read to me as a kid featuring a dog named Spot.

  Damn, I think. I know this face.

  I press my lips into a thin line, the way I do when I make eye contact with somebody I don’t know in the grocery store and quickly glance away. Too quickly, I realize.

  But he won’t recognize me, I tell myself. It’s been too long, too many years, and I don’t have a mark as easily recognizable as his.

  The boy sitting opposite me is one I went to elementary school with very briefly. All the kids in our class pretended he had some infectious disease because of the birthmark on his face. Nobody would go near him except for this weird smelly girl with constantly dirty tights that you could always see because she kept taking off her shoes. What are the odds?

  I can still feel his stare on me and it makes me fidget in my seat.

  Psychopath, I want to say, but instead I curl my legs into the chair underneath me.

  �
�They don’t really read those, you know,” the boy says, giving no indication that he knows we’ve met before.

  “Oh?” I raise my eyebrows before turning back to the long list of questions that fill the page. This time, I’m careful not to stare at the birthmark.

  I try to focus on the next question, begin to write an answer and then scribble it out.

  “I’m telling you.” I hear the magazine flip shut. “There’s no point. Dr. McKenna—you’re with Dr. McKenna, right?—will take the clipboard from you and set it on her desk, never to be looked at again. End of story.”

  “Is that so?” I say, instantly annoyed. I bite my tongue and soldier on through the next series of checkboxes, if for no other reason than as a semipolite means to avoid having a conversation in the waiting room of my soon-to-be therapist.

  “You’re wasting your time….” He clucks his tongue and raps his fingers across the closed magazine.

  I sigh and, relenting, look up. “How do you know?” I ask, this time unable to avoid looking at the raspberried skin. I don’t recall whether he was this annoying back in grade school. Probably that’s why he didn’t have any friends, I muse, making myself feel the tiniest bit better about being a shallow kid some-odd years ago.

  He glances down at his lap for a split second and then angles his face slightly away, like he had noticed me noticing. “Well, for one, I’m pretty much an expert in all things psychotherapy. Not to brag, of course. For two, I filled out the entire questionnaire as though I were Count Dracula. Medication: ‘O’ Negative. Allergies: Garlic, the sun, holy water. She never said a word.” He sits back and looks directly at me again. “Same thing at the other place I used to go to. Dr. McKenna’s way better, though. Trust me.”