A full night earlier than the traditional birthday eve. Are they trying to force my hand? To cover their own tracks by making it less obvious what perverse game they’re playing? They’re asking me to give up on my friends. My friends who lied to me. My parents who lied to me. It’s all too much.
“How—” I stammer in disbelief. “How do you even—how do you know about those? No.” I shake my head. I’d been prepared for something terrible, but nothing like this. The shock hits me like a bullet shot point-blank.
“We didn’t,” Mom admits. “Or rather we didn’t know that they actually happen in real life. Matt explained them to us.”
“Then you should know how disgusting they are,” I spit.
“I don’t want Mom and Dad to be involved or face any repercussions,” Matt says. “They’ve kept their end of the bargain.” I can’t help hearing this part as an accusation. “I don’t want them to make any other sacrifices. Since I can’t do it on my own, this seems like the best option.”
I stare at him. Hate radiates off my skin. I was so stupid to have thought things were changing between us.
“And we agree, actually.” My father’s mouth forms a grim line. This is when I notice the dark circles that bruise the skin underneath both of my parents’ eyes and I wonder how many hours they’ve stayed awake at night thinking about sending their only son off to die without them. “Jeremy’s picking him up tonight.”
“Jeremy?” I repeat. “When the hell did you—when did you talk to Jeremy?”
Matt holds my stare. No. I can’t believe I drove him there, that I helped facilitate this. So that’s why he was so willing to have his play date with Jeremy, so that he could talk him into this stupid charade. Jeremy, who has lived as the black sheep in his cousin’s house for years, who has always marched to the beat of his own drum, who has always had his own ideas as to what is right and fair.
“I’m not doing it.” I cross my arms and jut my jaw out like a little kid. “I don’t know what you have in mind, but the whole point of a death party is that the person with the resurrection choice assists in the…in the…Look, I’m just not participating. In any of it.”
There are tears in Mom’s eyes and her lower lip looks shaky.
Dad nods. “That’s fine, Lake.”
My lips part.
“Cripple exception.” Matt smiles. He actually smiles. “I’ll have help one way or another. Most people feel bad for cripples.”
Each of my family members looks like a stranger to me. I wish they were strangers. I wish I’d never been born or that if I had been, not as a Devereaux. I hug myself, then rake my nails down the backs of my arms. Enough, enough, just enough of this already.
“Lake, your brother is going to be dead tomorrow.”
Tears flood my cheeks. I can hardly breathe. I lift my chin. “Good,” I say, because I want him to hurt the way that I hurt. “Maybe…it’s better that way.”
This is a mistake.
Part of me hoped Jeremy wouldn’t text me the address when I asked. After all, I hid in my room when he came to pick Matt up, borrowing my mom’s van for the occasion.
Last chance to say good-bye. Last chance for good-luck wishes. Last chance for prayers: each of these thoughts crossed my mind when my dad came to knock softly on my locked bedroom door. The words that I said when I last spoke to Matt—shouted at him—ring in my ears. Despite my best efforts, most of the anger and contempt has gradually seeped out of me bit by bit. What’s left over is a sickening sense of dread.
I didn’t answer my dad’s knock. I stayed curled on top of a nest of blankets while my brother left to do the unthinkable.
Except all I could do was think about it. I had to, and after I finished thinking, I wound up here. At Matt Devereaux’s death party. Welcome to the world’s most morbid sideshow act, folks. Now, who brought the popcorn?
The guy controlling crowd flow at the front of the house doesn’t give me a hard time when I give him my full name. Apparently word travels fast here. Everyone expects the sister of the boy in the wheelchair who’s dying to be in attendance. Everyone but me, anyway.
The house is modern, with floor-to-ceiling panes of glass, white walls, and colorful art that looks like a five-year-old painted it. This type of event draws a more dramatic crowd—kids who like to wear all black, outline their lips in maroon, and dye their hair—but this party seems to be even more thick with the goth cliques. They look out of place posing on the sleek concrete floors and congregating around the crystal-blue pool lit up with floodlights.
My nerves feel like a system of sparking wires and I flit in and out of groups of people talking, drinking. There are Jell-O shots in the kitchen, a keg on the outdoor patio, and a couple of boxes of pizza open on a set of lawn chairs.
Very few of the faces look familiar, even though a lot of the partygoers appear to be my age. I see a couple of girls from my school sitting on a counter with their heads tilted toward each other, laughing. One of them lifts her chin and smiles at me when I pass, but we don’t exchange any words.
For the most part, I can float around like a ghost and no one notices the former dead girl haunting their party. I still can’t wrap my mind around the fact that I’m resurrected. Now I don’t know where to turn. Should I go live in a commune? Do I need to change my name to Blossom or Karma or Rainbow Bright? None of that feels like me, but I don’t even know how I’m supposed to feel anymore.
I wish to be anywhere but here, and then I tell myself not to wish for anything. The full moon is tomorrow, but still no invitation has arrived with the location of the final destination in my birthday scavenger hunt.
I take a seat on one of the lawn chairs next to the pizza boxes. There’s a slice of pepperoni left over, but I don’t have any appetite for it.
I rock in place. I don’t want to be here, don’t want to see this, want to leave, leave, leave. I want Will here so that he could scream his head off at Jeremy for letting something like this happen. But there’s only me.
Then I’m scanning the party for my brother when Jeremy walks by. I jump to my feet and snatch his wrist. “Hey!” I say. He stumbles from the force of my grasp. “What do you think you’re doing?” I ask.
“Going to get a drink,” he says with his typical drawl. His T-shirt is wrinkled and his hair looks predictably slept on.
“With my brother, you idiot.” So much for diplomacy. “Who do you think you are?”
He shoves his hands into his pockets. “Look, Lake, I think you just need to chill for a second.”
“Chill? Chill? That’s your big advice? Chill. God, you’re an even bigger slacker than Will thought you were.” Jeremy doesn’t look particularly offended. “Who asked you to get involved, anyway?” I continue.
“Matt did.”
People are starting to take notice of us now. Probably wondering why I’m freaking out.
“I think that’s the guy’s sister,” I hear one onlooker murmur.
I lower my voice and step closer in to Jeremy. “You realize what this means for Will, don’t you? What the point of all this is?”
Jeremy shifts his weight and scratches the stubble on his cheek. “I realize that Matt was a good friend before all this, and that he should have some control over how or whether he lives his life. I don’t know what you’re going to do, Lake.” His eyes are clear when he says this. There’s no red in the whites, no sign that he’s been smoking. He looks the most together that I’ve seen him in years. “That’s up to you. But your brother has made it clear that he’s finished living like this no matter what. I believe in self-destiny. I didn’t try hard enough to be there for him before.” He shrugs. “I guess I just want to make up for it.” He gives me a pointed look and then he slopes off in the direction of the keg.
I stand there, numb, while whispers gather around me. This moment is surreal. My brother will be a spectacle. The entertainment of the night. The disabled boy who wants to die. And everyone will watch.
This place,
this party, it’s all the things my brother has grown to hate, but he’s willing to be here because he wants out of his body that badly. He’ll even risk never coming back. The craziest part is that I thought things were changing for us. The past few weeks, was it only my imagination or were things really getting better? I could swear I’ve seen glimpses of my brother, the one who read to me, hiding behind the boy who felt trapped in his own body. I know I have.
My throat clenches until it’s nearly sealed shut. I don’t want to miss him anymore. Just as I was starting to get him back. This has nothing to do with what I choose and everything to do with Matt and what it means to die like this. This will change him, not fix him, and I’m scared—terrified—that I’m witnessing the last few minutes of knowing the boy I grew up with.
I need a drink, so I make my way into the kitchen, where I find bottles of liquor lined up on the countertop. I grab onto the neck of the vodka bottle and pour some into a plastic cup. I don’t bother with a mixer before I knock back the clear liquid in one gulp.
The alcohol burns my throat. I cough and sputter, once again drawing the attention of the people around me, some of whom snicker at me for not being able to take a shot. I don’t mind. The burn helps. I like the way that I can trace it all the way down to the pit of my stomach, where it seems to take at least some of the spark out of my short-circuiting nerves. I pour myself another. And then one more, this one slightly bigger, so that it takes me two swallows to finish the whole thing.
By the fourth, I don’t cough when the vodka goes down. The burn has transformed into a warmth that coats my insides.
“There he is.” One of the girls who laughed at my alcoholic ineptitude points subtly for the benefit of her friend with too-black hair and a nose ring. The comment’s not directed at me, but I look anyway.
Matt. My heart squeezes. Jeremy is positioned at the back of his wheelchair, pushing him toward the outside patio. I check my watch. It’s 10:30 p.m. My brother’s hair has been cut, washed, and combed. The skin around his chin is just a tiny bit pink from a fresh shave. He has let Dad dress him in one of his button-down shirts with a tie looped through the collar. Long dress pants cover the pair of emaciated legs that dangle onto the wheelchair stirrups.
My first step is uneven and I find myself focusing to resume a straight line. I swish open the sliding glass doors to meet my brother.
“Matt,” I say.
He cocks his head in that appraising way that he has, but there’s a slight tug of amusement at the inside corners of his eyes. His signature scorn is gone. “Already celebrating my untimely demise, I see.”
I realize I’m still holding the bottle of vodka. I set it slowly down next to me.
“Not funny.” I try to focus on the warmth in my belly to keep the nausea at bay. “Matt, I have something to say to you and I want you to listen.” Matt opens his mouth, but I hold my hand up and he stops himself. “What happened to you is balls.”
“What?” He squints up at me.
“What happened to you is balls. Balls!” I say more loudly. “I mean,” I say, remembering the words that had helped me, “like it really, truly sucks. World’s largest Hoover-vac suckage. Universe’s biggest black hole. A giant deep-sea octopus with a million bazillion tentacle suckers. That kind of suckitude.” I thought I’d run out of tears. Boy, was I wrong. “In all this time, I haven’t once told you how cosmically unfair your life is and I’m so, so sorry.” I’m choking on sobs and thick, syrupy mucus unleashed by the vodka.
Matt stares at me, mouth agape.
“I’m so sorry, Matt.” Impatience is scaling up my insides. Stay with him, I tell myself, he’s listening. “This doesn’t feel right, though.” I gesture at the whole party and everyone who I know is watching me. “Please, I know, but…but you’re my brother. Please, Matt. This doesn’t feel good to me. Does it to you?”
Matt’s voice is soft. “It’s okay, Lake. It’ll be over soon. It’s…it’s…it’s okay.” He glances over at the glittering pool. “The quadriplegic accidentally drives himself into the pool. A real tragedy.” He wears a wistful quarter smile. No sarcasm. “But quite poetic.”
“No, Matt,” I say softly so that I’m sure no one else can hear. “No, I know what it’s like to drown.” I shut my eyes tightly. Maybe if the memory had been mine all along it would have faded with time. The edges would have worn dull and I wouldn’t feel like the air is being slowly squeezed from my lungs all over again. Matt is going to die. The pressure of the water is going to set fire to his lungs. It’s going to drive him crazy until he can’t stand it anymore and he opens his mouth to take a breath and, despite knowing that he’s surrounded by nothing but wetness, he’ll be surprised. He’ll think there’s been a mistake and it won’t be over nearly as fast as it should be. And there will be no turning back.
“I’ve missed you,” I say. “I’ve missed you for all these years. My brother. The one who built canal systems in the sand and read to me about talking lions. I missed you like you’d been dead for five years. But you never died. You’re still my brother. It’s my fault for not realizing it before. And this…feels wrong. It is wrong. Please, Matt. I don’t know if being resurrected changed me, but I don’t want the person that you are, the one right this second, to die. And I don’t think I have it in me to use my resurrection choice. So please, I’m asking you not to leave me with that choice. You don’t want to go through dying. I can absolutely promise you that. So don’t. You can have the life you should have been living all along. I know that you avoided looking for it because of…because of me.” I take a deep, shaky breath. And rest.
The arches of his eyebrows collapse, his forehead crumples, the corners of his mouth twitch downward. I want to throw my arms around his neck because he’s there, my brother, my brother is there.
And then the music cuts off. A bell chimes three times. No, no, no. It can’t be time. Not yet.
As if reading my mind, Jeremy reappears. “It’s go-time, buddy.” He nods at me and wraps his hands around the wheelchair handles.
“Matt, tell them,” I say.
Matt gives me a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “We’ve come too far, Lake,” is all that he says. That layer of sweat that coats his forehead, it’s the only thing that gives him away. I watch in stupefied silence as Jeremy takes him from me. The crowd thickens all around, putting bodies between me and my brother.
There’s roaring in my ears. The sadness in the room feels infinite. This is happening. There will be pain and then there’ll be nothing.
I should be stronger for my brother, who watched me die and broke his back trying to save me. I should hold his hand, comfort him, but the booze has turned me spongy and my legs are practically useless.
Through a space in the audience, I watch Jeremy stand up straight. “I commit—” His voice cracks and he has to push his fist into his mouth to recover. “I commit my friend, Matthew Devereaux, to death.” Again, his voice rises in pitch. It’s uncomfortable watching him. There’s none of the hard-line joy that I witnessed at my first death party. Jeremy touches Matt’s shoulder robotically. Matt stares at the rim of the pool.
Somebody should have given him a drink, I think. Too late. Too late. It’s all too late.
“So that he can return to this life anew.”
The crowd comes alive with muttering undertones. Matt looks up from the pool. He turns his head and stares straight at me, like he can see that I’m hiding here. A coward. Matt’s never been a coward.
I shrink into myself. Then I actually stumble backward.
I hear another boy’s voice, more confident. “In front of these witnesses, do you go willingly into the darkness?”
I can’t stand to listen to another word. I turn my back to the pool, to Jeremy, to my brother, at which point I accidentally careen into a goth boy in a black skirt and army boots. He catches my elbow and I use his shoulder to balance, afterward pushing off him like a boat shoving away from a dock.
My feet cri
sscross over each other. The vodka swirls around in my head and makes my cheeks tingle. The thing I want most is to get away. I knock one of the fancy abstract paintings crooked on my way out of the cold glass tomb of a house.
Feeling for my keys in my pocket, I click the lock button so that the car horn blares. I locate my car parked down the street. How long has it been? A minute? Two minutes? Three? Long enough to have no one left?
The second I sink down onto the leather seat, I dissolve into sobs, the kind that send violent tremors through my body, like I’m being electrocuted.
I manage to shift the car into reverse. I tap the bumper of the car behind me before I put the car into drive. It lurches as I switch between the accelerator and the brake. At last I free my car from the parking space. I barely push my foot down on the pedal, almost idling down the deserted street. I can hardly see. There’s no such thing as windshield wipers for the drunk and crying.
Three blocks down, a stop sign seems to pop out of nowhere. I slam on the brakes and the wheels screech to a halt. The nose of my car is nearly a car length into the intersection when a pickup truck whizzes past, honking.
I drop my forehead to the steering wheel. My whole body has erupted in shakes and quivers. I shut my eyes and picture the explosion of the Jeep’s windshield. Crystal shards raining down on blacktop. The piercing sound of screams and the deep-blue sky.
Another car swerves to miss me. I peel my face from the wheel and let my foot off the brake. Driving as slowly and as carefully as I can after far too many vodka shots, I pull into an alley beside a gas station and dial the number of the only friend I have left in this world—if I have even that. Then I curl up in the backseat and wait.
I wake up to the sound of knocking and peel open my eyelids. A nose is pressed against the car window, smearing the glass with puffs of fog.
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