All We Could Have Been

by TE Carter

  “How do you imagine ‘doing it’ looks? If you did it right?”

  “I don’t know. I think if I knew that, I’d be able to figure out where I’m going wrong.”

  He nods. “How are you feeling about today? About seeing Scott?”

  “Do you think that’s why I still can’t put things together right?” I ask.

  “Maybe. I think it could help to talk about it.”

  “I can’t, though. I don’t know how to talk about it. Like, it’s there, in my head, all the time, but I can’t find the words. They don’t exist. I want to talk about it. I want you to understand. But I literally can’t.”

  “Are you angry?” he asks.

  “I was yesterday. I was really angry.”

  “Who were you angry with yesterday?”

  “Scott. For the first time I was really angry at him.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because it’s not fair. He took so much from us, and now I have to go there today and do something for him, but it’s not right. What about me? When will my life not be about this anymore?”

  “Is that what you want most? If you could change any one thing, is that what it would be?” Heath asks.

  “No. I’d stop being angry at myself if I could change something,” I admit.

  “Why are you angry with yourself?”

  “I don’t know. I guess … I wish I could remember. I wish I could make sense of it all, and because I can’t, I feel like I’m somehow to blame. I’m angry at Scott, but I still love him, and I feel like I shouldn’t. I should feel more for Mrs. Cabot and her kids. I shouldn’t lie. I should face my past. But should is just a word. It’s a direction from someone else. And I’m angry I can’t do what I should, but I’m also angry that there’s even that expectation.”

  “This is a defense mechanism, Alexia. It’s a healthy response to trauma. But to move on with your life, we need to find a way to make it not the only thing going on.”

  “Do I deserve to move on with my life?” I ask.

  “Why wouldn’t you?”

  “What about everyone Scott hurt? Not just the people he killed, but everyone? Mr. Cabot? People in town? My parents? Me? How do I have the right to act like everything is normal? I don’t get to live a normal life. That’s my penance.”

  Heath leans back in his chair. It’s a rocking chair, and it looks absurd when he leans back like that, because he looks like a hipster uncle with designer taste.

  “I want you to think about this, and I don’t want an answer today,” he says. “I want you to think about it, and when you come home again around the holidays, we can talk then.”

  “Think about what?”

  “I want you to think about why you feel you need penance. I want to know why you think you’re in any way to blame.”

  “Rory … that girl … She said I was privileged. Am I?”

  “I think that’s a word that requires a great deal of unpacking, and I think you have other things to process first. I think there are levels of what we experience, and I think people on the outside only see some of those, which allows them to feel that they can understand the layers they can’t see.”

  I look around his office and start to cry. “I’m so scared.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of today. I’m afraid of what he’ll be. Scott. I’m so scared of reconciling him with what I remember. Of him being nothing like my memory. Of him being exactly like he was. I don’t know which would be worse.”

  We sit in silence, although time’s up. Time’s been up for a while now, but Heath doesn’t push me to leave. Eventually my dad knocks on the office door. He looks sheepish, and I know he spent ten minutes sitting in the car, talking himself into coming in. He doesn’t want to pull me away from this place just to make me face the one thing I’ve kept avoiding.

  Heath gives me some tissues and I dry my eyes, trying to put myself together. My dad goes back to the car after checking on me, and I schedule an appointment for after Christmas.

  “I’ll see you in a few weeks, okay?” Heath says as I grab my coat. “And don’t forget what I asked you to think about.”

  I nod and leave the office with two words running through my mind: Penance. Blame.

  I used to cut the words people said into my skin. Now I don’t hurt myself anymore. At least not where it’s visible. Instead of remembering on my flesh, I take their words and I play them over and over in my mind every day. Every hour. Every second.

  But I’ve never asked myself why. I’ve never stopped to wonder where their words end, where they belong to them and don’t serve as an extension of me.

  As my dad drives us toward the prison, I stare out the window. The snow’s passed completely, and there’s almost no remnant of it. Except in what used to be flowers alongside the bland buildings. Now they’re just death with a dusting of winter.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  When you avoid something, you never really escape it. You just put it somewhere in your head, but it’s always there, reminding you that you’re trying to pretend it isn’t.

  I’ve thought about Scott every day since he was arrested, and I always tried to imagine him in prison. What a prison even looked like. But all I had to go off was movies and TV, so I’ve created this entire world for my brother to live in that looks nothing like the real thing.

  Except for the barbed wire around the place. That’s right out of my nightmares.

  “I thought people didn’t work today,” I say to my mom as we cross the parking lot. It feels too bland for a parking lot at a place like this. We could be at Walmart.

  “They made an exception. I wasn’t about to pull you out of school if I could avoid it.”

  My dad coughs from my left side. It’s weird having my parents flank me on my way into a prison.

  Inside, the lobby looks like Heath’s office building—with the addition of a row of metal detectors, a security team, and countless cameras. Little red eyes watch me from every direction. I think this must be the worst part of all—the way you can’t escape notice. You’re forced to be reminded of what you did all day every day, because the cameras and the eyes behind them won’t let you forget. It’s a worse punishment than probably anything within these walls.

  Or at least I would think so, but what do I know? I’m a seventeen-year-old girl afraid of herself.

  I don’t like how the security guards look at me. They make me feel guilty. They look at me like I’m a criminal, and I hate that I feel ashamed of something I didn’t do.

  I take out my wallet and put it in the little plastic bin, sliding it down the belt to be scanned. I don’t like the way everyone can see inside it. I’m not even sure why I brought it in. Maybe I thought there was a gift shop.

  My mom goes into one of the other lanes, and they go through her purse. Then they open Scott’s birthday card and read it. Once I’ve passed through the security area and met my dad on the other side, we head to where my mom is, waiting while a guard reads the card aloud to another guard.

  “I think it’s copacetic,” the guard reading it says. “Nothing odd?”

  “Why are they doing that?” I ask my dad.

  He shrugs. “Potential for codes, I guess.”

  “Codes? Like in a spy movie?”

  “No, it’s … There’s a hierarchy inside here, Lexi. And it reaches outside.”

  “And they think Mom’s part of it?” I want to laugh, but he’s not smiling.

  “Never underestimate what people will do for someone they love. Even if that person deserves to be here.”

  Once the card is cleared and it’s determined my family isn’t part of some secret society helping with a massive prison break or whatever, they lead us down a hallway, through several doors with alarms, until we reach a dank room. The only light comes from a small line of windows on the very top of the rear wall, but the windows are grimy. Lights come through an opaque curtain of time.

  A guard grunts in the direction of a table against the
back wall, with five brown folding chairs around it, waiting for a conference. My parents each take one, familiar with this place and its procedures. They leave a space for me between them, where I sit and stare up at the ceiling. Several ceiling fans spin, but barely.

  The two people who join us at the table are wearing suits, but they’re the suits of people who work for the state. The man’s doesn’t fit right; it’s too tight in the shoulders, but the sleeves go to his fingertips. Hers fits fine, but there’s something wrong about it. I’m no expert on fashion, as clearly noted by my yellow skirt and blouse that my mom picked out, but this woman’s suit is old. Someone probably wore it, and wore it at least a decade before I was born.

  “We’re glad we’re finally getting a chance to meet you, Alexia,” the woman says as she tries to sit on the folding chair. She rocks back and forth, and her skirt rides up when she sits. She doesn’t cover the fact that she’s uncomfortable. In this place. In that suit. In general.

  “Yes, it’s a delight,” I reply.

  “Alexia,” my mother growls in my ear.

  “Sorry,” I mumble.

  The woman pretends not to notice and takes out a legal pad and a tape recorder, along with a small bag of pens. All from an oversized black bag. It feels so rehearsed. I hate it. I hate that my brother and my life are just notes jotted on a piece of paper, the same paper she’ll use when she goes to jot down someone else’s life.

  “Have your parents explained the purpose of this meeting?” the man asks. He’s bored. Probably angry he’s even here. I imagine his wife and kids at home, tired after a long Thanksgiving of running around between relatives’ houses and then late-night shopping for bargains. I create an entire world for him because his world is more interesting than this room.

  I nod.

  “For the purposes of this session, can you confirm that aloud?” the woman asks.

  “Yes, I understand why I’m here.”

  This isn’t an ideal time to have an existential breakdown. But when I say it, I start wondering if I do understand. Not just today, but why here? Why me? Why that day? I feel like I’ll never know why Scott did it. Why he couldn’t have just come to pick me up and we could be somewhere else right now. This man in the ill-fitting suit could be at home, napping with his family after hitting the Black Friday sales. This woman could be doing anything else, so she wouldn’t have to keep pulling at her skirt. My parents could be writing yet another book about the importance of meter in Anglo-Saxon poetry, or whatever they’re into now. All these things could have been avoided. Scott just needed to come get me like he did every other day.

  And that starts me on the path that I live on. How it’s my fault. If I’d been sick that day and he hadn’t needed to come get me, he wouldn’t have been able to go there, because I would have been home. If I’d walked home sooner instead of waiting for him.

  If I’d …

  If I’d …

  “Miss?” the man in the suit says, but my brain doesn’t want to hear him. It doesn’t want to be in this room, on this chair, in the dim light of winter. It’s pulling me back to that October afternoon and I’m sitting in front of the school and I’m texting Scott and he’s not answering and I can’t breathe and I can’t stop it and …

  “Lexi, we’re here,” my dad says, putting his hand on my shoulder.

  I nod again, but it’s through the space of five years. The walls of the room are also the trees in front of my middle school, and we’re sitting around another table, but this time it’s with a detective and Scott’s already been taken and the bloody clothes are being placed in a bag and the detective is asking me about Mrs. Cabot and what I know about her.

  “Does she need a minute?” the man in the suit asks my mom.

  I want to say no, and I shake my head, but I can’t see his face. He’s the detective, not this man in the suit, and my parents are watching me, but they’re in two places as well.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, and then it’s an echo. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

  “Maybe we should try another day,” the woman says, and I see her reach for the tape recorder, but it’s also the glass of water my mom gave the detective that day.

  “No!” I cry out, but I still can’t find my way to this room and to now.

  “Perhaps you could give us a moment,” my mom suggests. I’m aware of the two people in the suits leaving, taking the notepad and the tape recorder and even the pens, and then it’s me with my parents and the ceiling fans.

  “Alexia,” my mom says, but she’s not sure what to say. “Should I call Heath?”

  I’m crying. Because I don’t want to be here, but I can’t not be here. I want to be at drama club, and I want Chloe to be mad at me because Ryan gave me a ride somewhere, and I want that to be all.

  I want a new reality.

  I shake my head. “I just don’t know what they want me to know.”

  “What do you mean, sweetheart?” my dad asks, talking to me like he did when I was a kid, and I wish I could curl up and be that girl again. I imagined seventeen being so different.

  “I don’t know why he did it,” I say. “I don’t even know who he is. How am I supposed to—?”

  My mom cuts me off. “Alexia, I don’t think you understand.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “No one’s asking you to pretend it didn’t happen. No one expects you to think Scott’s something he’s not. All they want to know is what you know him to be.”

  “But I don’t know. That’s just it, right? How could I? I haven’t seen him since that day. I mean, except in court, and that…”

  I only went to one day of the trial. There shouldn’t have even been a trial, since Scott confessed, but the attorney wanted to argue that he was innocent. He had to sit there and say the words not guilty after he’d already told the police what he’d done. The trial didn’t last very long. Even my brother didn’t want to fight for himself.

  I remember going, seeing all the reporters, watching Scott sit up front with his attorney. Heath thought it might be good for me to face it, but then I went back to school afterward and everyone had seen me on TV somehow as my parents tried shielding me from the media when we walked to the car. It was only supposed to be one day, and it was supposed to be safe. Heath thought I might be able to find solace in it, but all I found was more of the same.

  “Lexi, everyone already knows what your brother did. All they care about now is what you remember,” my dad says.

  “And if I say the wrong thing?” I ask.

  “You’re not responsible for your brother’s life. You’re only responsible for yours. We didn’t ask you to do this because Scott’s future is dependent on you.”

  “Why’d you ask me to do this, then?”

  My dad looks at my mother and then back to me. I remember loving my father. I remember being a family, and it hurts to see the echo of it now. I still love them, but they’re almost strangers because of how much time we’ve been apart.

  My dad gets up and hugs me to him, and I disappear into the comfort of it.

  “Lexi, you need to live your life. You need to close this chapter with Scott.” He pulls away and looks at me, his eyes wet. “We didn’t ask you to do this for him. Today isn’t about your brother’s future, honey. It’s about yours.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  When the people in the suits come back, I tell them what I remember.

  “So your brother loved comic books?” the woman asks.

  “He loved stories. And the best part of it was that he taught me to love them,” I say. “I didn’t care about superheroes or teams of mutants. I cared about being normal. Scott never did. He used to tell me that it didn’t matter. That all the normal people were really just hiding who they were. I don’t know. He got the metaphor of superheroes way before I did.”

  “Were those the only comics he read?”

  I shake my head. “He read everything. Well, everything we were allowed to read. My parents were really strict
about making sure everything was age-appropriate or whatever, but he read a bunch of different things. He liked this one … It was about a samurai rabbit. I forget the name. But it was all in black and white, and there were all these animals. Like ninjas and bounty hunters. It wasn’t cute, though, you know? Like it was serious stuff, but they just happened to be animals.”

  The people in the suits nod. I don’t know how useful any of this is, but I can’t help feeling lightened by it. I’ve barely mentioned my brother since I was twelve. I couldn’t talk about him when I was trying to disappear. And even with Heath and my parents, we talked about the murder and how Scott had affected me. But we didn’t talk about Scott. Who he used to be. We never remembered.

  I like remembering, even if nothing I say helps right now.

  “I love my brother,” I tell them. “But he did this horrible thing. I know he did. He didn’t even deny it. And I know that’s part of who he is, and I’m gonna have to live with that for the rest of my life. Worse, I’m gonna have to live with the fact that he’s never going to be only that person. Because the guy you know, the one who’s a file, the one who sits in this place, he’s only a part of the person. Inside that guy there’s still the boy who read comic books with me and taught me the alphabet and burned grilled cheese sandwiches.”

  I laugh and shake my head, remembering how ashamed he’d look when he’d hand me my lunch. “For the few years before it happened, our parents let us stay home without a babysitter during the summers, because it was only for a few hours. My dad spent hours teaching Scott how to cook before they allowed it. Hours. And Scott could cook just fine. Except I only ever wanted grilled cheese, and Scott couldn’t make a grilled cheese without burning it. Every single one tasted like char.”