by Gregory Ashe
“Do the right thing by Austin. If you care about him, you’ll do that much for him.”
I didn’t see the hallways. The air was still funny. The lights were still funny. I just followed the penny-bright spot that I could focus on. It was like those old singalongs. Follow the bouncing ball. I did follow it. I followed it until I was out in the April day, and the light wasn’t quite as funny, and the sun seemed to levitate everything around me: the asphalt, my sneakers, my wrists and elbows and shoulder blades, the blocky outline of the HVAC units on top of Western Bighorn Hospital, the mountains, the sky. It was like falling up. Gravity had gotten fixed on something bigger than Planet Earth. It was fixed somewhere out in that darkness. It was fixed somewhere in the back of my head.
I walked ten miles before the red Lakewood showed up again, stopped, and the ancient lady behind the wheel in her polyester jacket and skirt the color of Pepto eyed me like I was holding a gun on her, but she settled her purse and clamped it against her leg and reached across the seat to open the door. When she dropped me at the far edge of Vehpese, where another state highway cut up toward Sara’s, she adjusted the pearls around her neck and said, “Young man, I think I’d like to take you to my church.”
“Is it a Christian church?”
“Of course.”
“Forgiveness? That kind of thing?”
“I should say so. Our Lord and Savior—”
“Even for guys that really fu—” Sara’s angry face snapped across my mind. “That really mess up? Mess up everybody’s life, all the people around them?”
Her face softened. The pearls shone as she counted them between her fingers. “Young man, those are exactly the people who need forgiveness the most.”
“And you believe they get it?”
“I’ve got my Bible here.” She squirmed in her seat like she’d dropped a winning lottery ticket, her hands running into the footwell, searching. “Let me just read you something, and then you’ll know that anything can be forgiven, and the darker the sin, the brighter the dawn—”
“Not interested,” I said, and I slammed the door and stomped the rest of the way to Sara’s house.
My head was hurting. My throat was dust. Even inside, where daylight only entered as an oblique film across the furniture, my eyes throbbed like the worst hangover I’d ever had. In the pantry I found another envelope of raspberry lemonade, and I mixed up a gallon and drank it down, and the sugar rush buzzed through me like honeybees under my skin. I made a sandwich—swiss and ham and a limp leaf of romaine, mustard, rye—and I ate it even though my stomach had shrunk to the size of a grape seed.
As I rinsed the plate, I stared out onto the high plains, where the wind cuffed the rangegrass, flattened it, spread it out until I felt like I could see farther than anybody had ever seen before. But I wasn’t really seeing anything. I was inside my head. The darkness was eating me up, and I was looking into it.
For some silly reason, I had thought that the problem was that I couldn’t choose. I had somehow convinced myself that I had a chance at happiness with both of them and I had to choose. I had thought—There’s really only one guy. For me, you know. Just one—that I needed to decide: safety or danger, steady or wild, love or a drug that scorched along every neural pathway.
But maybe that wasn’t the right choice. Maybe the right choice was about me. Who would I hurt less? Kaden was right: Austin had a chance. He could go to college, find a great guy, live a decent, happy life. Not with me in the picture. That might have sounded arrogant, but it didn’t come out of the conviction that I was the best thing to happen to Austin Miller. It came out of the knowledge that I was the first thing to happen to Austin Miller, and knowledge that Austin was loyal, that he made sacrifices, and that he’d keep being loyal and making sacrifices until I’d wrung out every last chance he had at happiness and left him a wreck.
Emmett, on the other hand. Emmett had a mountain of his own baggage. Emmett was broken, like me. Emmett had some kind of night vision that let him see into the black spots inside me and give me what I needed: drag a razor up his own arm, for example. I’d fuck up Emmett’s life, too. But he knew that. He knew how to handle it. When it got to be too much, he could kick me to the curb. The plate spun out of my hands, clanged against the stainless steel sink, and rolled to a stop. I turned it over in both hands, looking for cracks and finding none. I was smiling. It would be better with Emmett. He knew how to kick me to the curb. He’d done it before, hadn’t he?
And didn’t I owe it to him? Half his body had a new landscape of scars and mutilations, and he’d done that for me. Didn’t I owe him the best of whatever I could give him until he’d had enough of me, until he was done with me? Couldn't I give him that much?
Everything felt so clear. Everything settled in my head, and I shoved the plate into the drying rack. Everything made sense. But it was like dusk: the light just kept dropping away. Right now, for this minute, I could still see to the horizon. But that was an illusion because it was getting darker and darker inside my head, and I wondered why making a decision, making this decision, hadn’t swamped everything like a klieg light.
Perched on the edge of the sofa, with the smell of Sara’s potpourri in my nose, I settled the weight of the heavy phone on my leg and dialed twice: first, just tracing the numbers. Then a deep breath. Then I punched them.
He answered, but he didn’t say anything. He was just breathing. His normal breath. I’d heard it a hundred times. A thousand times.
“Your parents ever come back?”
“They’re not coming back. Lawayne made that really clear to my dad.”
“He’s dead, Em.”
“They’re not coming back.”
“Are you going to—to wherever they are?”
His breathing changed. There was a hitch in it. Maybe pain. Maybe hope. “That’s not what you want to ask me, tweaker.”
“Are you going to leave Vehpese? Are you going to move back in with them, or are you going to go somewhere else? Start a new life?”
Another of those hitches. Like maybe he was crying. But his voice didn’t sound like he was crying. “Just ask what you want to ask me.”
“Will you run away with me?” It sounded so juvenile once it was out of my mouth. It sounded like clubhouses and a backpack stuffed with Kraft Mac & Cheese.
Another hitch. And then a rasping noise like he was wiping his sleeve across the phone. “Yeah.”
EMMETT PICKED ME UP on the Ducati. He didn’t come to the door. He didn’t call to let me know he was there. The roar of the motor announced him, and because in spite of everything that had changed, Emmett Bradley was still one big fucking showboat, he expected me to trot out as soon as he pulled up. And I did. No more games. No more jerking him around to try to show him who was boss. When the Ducati crunched gravel outside, I shouldered my backpack and trotted.
Dusk. I could still see the horizon. Or maybe I just thought I could. That was the thing about light going out: you thought you could see right up until you couldn’t. The wind smelled like wet grass and the Ducati’s exhaust and hot engine grease. My skin prickled. Some of that was the cold. Some of that was Emmett’s leather jacket hanging open, the thin tee underneath not hiding the taut lines of scar and muscles on his chest.
“Where’s your bag?” I asked as I climbed up behind him, my backpack heavy on my shoulders.
He grinned at me from behind his visor. The scars twisted the corner of his mouth. “I’ve got credit cards, tweaker.”
“Don’t call me that.”
He opened his mouth, paused, and the savaged corner of his mouth pulled into a frown. “I’m sorry.”
Wrapping my arms around his waist, I settled my chin on his shoulder and let that be my answer.
I didn’t ask where we were going. I didn’t care. Anywhere but here. We drove. We drove fast. So fast, in fact, that when we hit those long stretches of snakeback highway curving along the high plains, the D
ucati felt like it was coming off the ground, like the air was picking us up the way it grips the underside of a plane’s wing, like nothing could keep us here, not even the traction of tires on asphalt.
Night closed down, hung over us in a black cup full of stars. We kept driving west. And then there were lights ahead of us too. Most the dirty yellow of sodium vapor streetlights. Some brighter, whiter. A few red winks.
The Ducati slowed.
My fingers tightened, coiling the zipper of his jacket, gathering inches of his cotton tee.
Buildings massed on the right side of the road. I recognized those buildings. I’d been here earlier today, and Western Bighorn Hospital hadn’t changed in the last six hours. Heavy heads of ragweed smacked against my jeans and left mustard-powder prints as the Ducati bumped onto the shoulder.
“I don’t want to say goodbye to Sara. It’s better if I don’t, Em. I’ll call her. I’ll tell her not to worry.”
He rolled his shoulders. He twisted at the waist. It was like his clothes were too small, or—no. No. Like I was holding him too tight. Letting the bike lean, he dropped the kickstand and swung off. Swung free of my grip. His eyes were those funhouse, fallaway dark again. He held out a hand. “Take a walk with me.”
“This isn’t a very romantic spot.”
“Take a walk with me.”
“I just want to go, Em. Can we just go? Let’s go as far as we can tonight. I don’t care if we sleep in a ditch, but let’s just go.”
“Vie Eliot,” he said, and I was in those eyes again: no up, no down, no falling, no flying. “Please take a walk with me.”
The Ducati’s headlight sprayed a rainbow across the film of motor oil and gravel. The halogen incandescence hit us at mid-thigh, and it slipped lower as we walked down the stretch of shoulder. We were walking into the blackness. Together. And Emmett’s hand found my wrist, and then my palm, and then my fingers. The bandage on the inside of his arm rasped and rustled. When we got to the turn-off for Western Bighorn and the gravel ended at a strip of freshly-patched blacktop, Emmett stopped.
He didn’t say anything. Maybe he couldn’t say anything. His eyes were darker than the darkness, and I reached out and brushed against his mind and found the invisible wall still there, just as high and hard as it had ever been, but I didn’t need to read his thoughts because I already knew.
“I told you I was going to do two things that would piss you off.” He must have taken a breath because his chest rose and fell, but he barely had the air to say, “This is the second.”
“No.” I shook my head. “No. Absolutely not. I choose you.”
His voice came out dark and thick like molasses. “You still love him.”
“I love you.”
“I’m not stupid, twea—” He bit the scarred corner of his mouth. “I’m not stupid. I know how you feel about me. And I know how I feel about you. But you love Austin. And he loves you.”
“I love you. And you love me.”
“I’m not any good to you like this—” His hand traced a half-moon over the scarred side of his face.
“No.” The leather jacket’s zipper bit into my palms as I shook him. “No. No fucking way. You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to say that you’re no good for me. You don’t get to pretend like things will be better this way. You don’t get to make that decision.” And I knew I was a hypocrite. And I didn’t care.
For a moment, genuine amusement glowed in Emmett’s face. “You still don’t understand. I get to do whatever I want. Whenever I want. And you’ll let me.”
“I won’t.”
“Yes. You will. You’re going to walk down to the hospital. You’re going to take the elevator to the fourth floor. And you’re going to tell Austin you’re sorry for all your fucked-up behavior and tell him how you feel.”
My eyes were burning; they felt hot enough to turn the whole night to fire. I shook my head.
“Vie—”
When he touched me, it was the breaking point, and I jerked away, shaking my head, shaking everywhere like a flu had settled into my bones. “I can’t. I can’t, Em. He doesn’t understand how . . . how fucking broken I am. He looks at me and he thinks everything’s ok, or that everything can be ok. He doesn’t get it. I’m a wreck. A total shitpile. Nothing’s ever going to get better. There’s something wrong with me, something that goes all the way down, like this—like this black hole in the back of my head, and it’s eating me up, and Austin will never understand that. But you do. You know it. You can see it. And you—you can still love me, even though I’m fucked up beyond repair. Please don’t do this, Em. Please don’t. Please don’t do this.”
He laughed. It was soft. It was a surprise. It raised the hair on the back of my neck, and it would have made me furious except it was so kind. And I’d never heard that gentle, kind laughter from Emmett Bradley before. His whole face had a firefly-light with that laughter.
“Tweaker, you are just so damn stupid sometimes.”
I stared at him, realization flooding in. Of course Emmett wouldn’t want me to go with him. He might be broken, but I was shattered, and Emmett didn’t deserve to be the one who got cut on all the sharp edges. The rest of it—the fantasy that Emmett could see through the pitch-black shadows—that was just in my head. This, right here, this was reality.
“Fine.” I tugged on my coat, trying to settle it on me in some way that would smother the frantic beating in my chest. “You’d better go, then. Before the sheriff starts thinking clearly and decides he wants to know more about what happened up at Chapee.”
“I’m sorry I laughed. It’s just—sometimes you’re so dramatic. You know that? You don’t mean to be. You’re all tough and grim and make those faces like you could chew through an airplane hangar, but that’s the drama right there. That’s all part of the show.”
“I get it Emmett: you don’t want to be me with me. You don’t have to be a fucking prick about it.”
“Vie, I love you. Like, a crazy person kind of love. When you touch me, when you talk to me, when you look at me like you’re going to chew through another airplane hangar or two just to get to me, just so you can rip my clothes off—I’m not sane anymore when you look at me like that. I’m not rational. You think I’m addicted to heroin because I shoot up at night, because I can’t sleep? I’m addicted to you. The last few months, not being near you, heroin was my fucking methadone. That was what kept me from kicking in your window in the middle of the night and who cares what Austin would have said.”
A beat-up little Ford Focus drifted by us. Ragweed bowed in the rush of air following the car. The heavy yellow heads tickled the inside of my hand.
“That’s got to be the most messed up way of saying I love you. Ever.”
“Maybe.” A smile ran across his lips, a zig-zag lightning crooked smile. “But what you’re talking about, all that stuff about a hole in your head, how you’re broken, how there’s something wrong with you, that’s bullshit. Kind of heinously stupid bullshit, actually, considering it’s the twenty-first century.”
“Will you flip your asshole switch to off for one second and—”
“Vie, you’re not screwed up. You’re not broken. You don’t have a black hole in the back of your head.” Another of those jagged lightning smiles pulled his lips crooked. “You’re depressed. You need help. You’ve been through shit most kids, most adults, most people never have to handle in their lives. And you know what the good news is?”
I pushed past him, checking him with my shoulder, my heels striking hard on the asphalt. He caught my arm. Wrestled me toward him. I was stronger, and I got free, but my back smacked against one of his invisible barriers, and I was stuck facing him.
“This time. This one fucking time you have to listen to me.”
“Don’t give me that depression bullshit. I’m not depressed, I’m—”
“What? Because you’re psychic, you can’t be depressed? Everybody else in the world, e
verybody else who feels the way you do, they’re depressed, but for some magic reason, you’re different? Bullshit. Heinous bullshit.”
“You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”
“Sure I do. I love you. All I do is watch you and think about you. Every fucking hand on the clock points at you—at least, that’s the clock in my head. You’re depressed—”
“Stop saying that.”
“You’re depressed—”
“Shut up, Emmett.”
“You’re depressed. Or you’ve got depression. Or whatever the right way is to say that. But you know what the good news is?”
I met his eyes. I was thinking about how fast I’d have to throw a punch to flatten his nose, and I decided I probably couldn’t throw faster than he could put up a barrier.
“The good news, sweetheart, is that they’ve got ways to treat depression. They’ve got meds. They’ve got therapy, and baby, you need like a lifetime of therapy.” One of those lightning smiles sizzled at the ruined corner of his mouth. “And it’s going to take a lot of hard work. But the good news is there’s nothing magic about depression, ok? The good news is you can get better.”
My whole body was on fire, and I dashed at my eyes with my wrists, and my throat and nose and head were full of snot.
“Come on,” Emmett said, hugging me against him, the smell of leather and bergamot and his skin running through me like a horse tranquilizer.
I snuffled into the jacket. Getting him snotty was poor payback for what he’d done to me, but he’d have to live with it. “It doesn’t feel like that,” I mumbled into his chest. “It doesn’t feel like it’s ever going to get better.”
“Yeah, but it will. It will. Come on. It’s going to be ok. You’re going to be ok. You’re not broken or any of that stuff. You’re going to get better. And you’re going to have a great life. Maybe it’s with Austin.”