All We Could Have Been

by TE Carter

  My dad squeezes my hand under the table, and I smile at him.

  “Do you think your brother is capable of rehabilitation?” the man in the suit asks. He doesn’t care about grilled cheese or about what I remember. But I’m glad I get to remember.

  “I don’t know. I’m seventeen. I don’t know what happened that day, but I can tell you there wasn’t a reason. It was what it was. He murdered three people because he felt like it. That’s inside of him. That’s who he is.”

  “And the boy you just described?” the woman asks, packing up her pens because they’re done with me. I didn’t give them anything useful, but it felt good to say what I said anyway.

  “That’s who he is, too.”

  “We really appreciate your insight, Miss Stewart,” the man says, and they talk to my parents for a few minutes. Policies and timelines. What to expect. It’ll likely be after Christmas before we get an answer. It won’t really matter, but maybe my parents will feel better if Scott goes someplace where people talk of hope.

  I wait, wondering how far away he is. Wondering what he looks like. I’m sure they made him cut his hair. He used to chew on it when he got nervous. I try picturing him as an adult. Grown up. But I can’t.

  A guard comes into the room to escort us to where Scott will be.

  “Are you all coming?” he asks.

  My mom looks at me as the suit people sneak past the guard and out into the world, taking my memories and my secrets with them. To pile them up with all the memories and secrets of the other people they see.

  “It’s up to Alexia,” my mom says.

  I don’t want to be alone. I don’t want to sit with Scott and try to pretend neither of us is hurt. I don’t want to visit him and act like it’s normal that I showed up today, as if this were common. But at the same time, I don’t want to sit on the side, an observer. I don’t want my parents to dominate the moment and leave me still detached from him.

  I shake my head. “You’ll be close, though?”

  “We’ll be right through the door,” my dad says.

  I follow the guard out into the hall, through more doors, even farther from the light and from freedom, to face my brother for the first time since that afternoon a lifetime ago.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  I notice his hands first. Everything about him is so much larger than it was the last time I saw him. He’s gotten taller, but he’s expanded outward, too. Into muscle and sinew. Tough. He looks like he belongs here, and it’s terrifying. But then he lifts a hand to grab the phone, and I see his fingernails. He still bites them. He always did when he was nervous, and they’re bitten to almost nothing now.

  I lift the phone on my side, too. It’s so surreal. Sitting here like someone in a movie. My brother behind glass.

  No, not my brother. This man. This man who’s swallowed the brother I knew.

  “I always wondered if I’d see you again,” he says as an introduction.

  “Hi.”

  “So they asked you if I could get better, huh?”

  I nod, clutching the phone to my ear. My palms are sweating, and the hard plastic of it feels like liquid.

  “I won’t ask what you said.”

  “I told them I didn’t know. I told them what I remembered.”

  Scott nods and stands up. I wonder if he’s done with me already, but I realize he’s trying to look at me, to see as much of me as he can despite the glass and the setup. I stand for a moment and then sit back down, not sure if I feel ashamed. I hate that this is how I feel near my brother.

  “You look like sunshine,” he says. “I don’t see that much in here.”

  I don’t know what to say. I just watch him. This person who looks like a memory. But a memory that’s changed while you’ve tried to forget it.

  His head is shaved nearly bald. None of the kid I remember remains. My brother was scrawny, although always athletic, but now he fills the space between the two walls that make this cube.

  “Mom and Dad said you live with Aunt Susie now,” he says.

  “This year.”

  “How’s that?”

  “It’s okay. Do you remember when I was seven and you were ten? She came to Christmas with that guy she was dating? I think his name was Aaron? He was a magician?”

  “And he kept trying to show us card tricks, but he messed them all up?” Scott answers. “Like even the most basic ones. And you tried to help him and you’d lie about which card you picked, hoping he’d feel less embarrassed?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “That was him.”

  “Are they still together?” Scott asks.

  “No, she’s single now. I can’t say it’s surprising.”

  He laughs, and it shatters me through the phone. It’s the same laugh I hear still. The one I can sometimes hear across time. The one that filled my life until I was twelve. It’s so unfair he can still laugh the same way. I can’t remember the last time I felt able to laugh so freely.

  I must flinch, because he stops abruptly.

  “I’m so sorry, Lexi. I never meant to hurt you.”

  “But what about them? You killed them. You meant to hurt them.”

  “I know.”

  “Why?”

  It’s amazing how three letters can sum up a lifetime. Everything rests in those three letters. I need to understand. I need him to give me a reason.

  “I don’t know,” Scott says. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know.”

  I try to remember Mrs. Cabot. Lucy. Miles. I know their faces so well from the media, but I still can’t really remember anything about them. Nothing that matters. They’re only names and faces and scattered visions of things I might have known. I hate myself because I can’t remember something this important. I feel like it’s the least I can do. I should have memorized everything they were. Kept a record of what my brother erased.

  “Please,” I beg. “I need to know why.”

  “There was no why. That’s just it. I don’t remember anything about that day. Before it, I mean. I came home and I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t upset. I wasn’t anything. That’s what I remember. Feeling nothing. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know why I didn’t feel anything.”

  “Even after?”

  He shakes his head. “Not until I saw you. I remember wanting to cry because I’d hurt you.”

  “They said in the newspapers that you showed no remorse,” I tell him. “That you were calculated. That was the word they used. I hated that word. I couldn’t even sit through fucking math class anymore because of it. All I could see was your face and hear the things people called me.” I pause. He won’t make eye contact with me anymore. “Has Mom ever told you what they did? How hard it was for us?”

  “No, but I can imagine.”

  “Can you?” I ask. “Can you really? Can you understand what it’s like to know you can’t have friends? To only have friends if you lie to them about who you are? I’ve moved every year because people hated me. They didn’t want to be near me, like I was contagious.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “But you’re not. That’s just it. You’re not sorry. You don’t even know why you did it, so how can you be sorry?”

  “Lexi…”

  “You’re not sorry to Mr. Cabot, are you?” I ask. “He moved away, too. Right after the trial. He almost stayed. He was going to keep living there, if you can believe it. But then he met someone. Some woman from a counseling group or whatever. He should have been allowed to be happy, but he brought her home one night and some journalist saw it and people wouldn’t let him forget. Someone wrote something online. They claimed he hired you. That you were paid to do it so he could be rid of his family. For this other woman. The one he only met because he had to go to a group for people who were falling apart.”

  “That’s bullshit, but I can’t say it surprises me.”

  “Well, it surprised me,” I say. “It surprised the hell out of me to watch everyone mourn for him for all that time. To bring him casseroles
and Christmas presents and cry with him at the funeral. And then they suddenly changed their minds. They started talking and then they thought they had the right … Once they started talking, it was impossible, you know. It was impossible for him.”

  “What do you want me to say?” Scott asks, and this time he looks at me. His eyes shimmer with tears, but he won’t cry. Not here. Because it’s a waste of time to cry here.

  “I want you to tell him you’re sorry.”

  “I don’t think he wants to hear from me,” he says.

  The metal chair under me is uncomfortable. Scott probably lives in a room with a chair like this and some kind of cot. I’m sure it’s nothing like his room at home, with his video games and his comics and the things he cared about.

  I’m kind of glad he lost all that. I’m kind of glad he has to spend the rest of his life sitting on chairs like this.

  “Tell me you wish you could take it back,” I say. “That you would take it back if you could. I know you can’t, but tell me you’d give anything to take it back. Tell me you wouldn’t do it again if we could reset time.”

  “I can’t say that.”

  “Why not? Why can’t you do that for me? After everything you’ve stolen, why can’t you give me that?”

  “Because it’s not true. Not totally. Yes, I would take it back knowing what I do now. I would absolutely take it back to make it so you wouldn’t have to sit here, looking like sunlight in a place that forgot sunlight before either of us was born. But if I hadn’t done it? I don’t know. I don’t know if I can say I wouldn’t do it again.”

  He pauses and lifts his hand to the glass, but I don’t press my hand against it. I hold myself as small as I can on the chair and wait for my brother to tell me it’s not true. I never realized how badly I wanted it to be a mistake. I knew it wasn’t, but I guess I still wished it was.

  “Honestly?” Scott continues. “I can’t say it, because I probably still would have done it if I hadn’t done it that day. Maybe not them. Maybe someone else. Maybe it wouldn’t have even happened yet, and your life would be different, but I don’t know. I don’t know why I did it, and because I don’t know that, I can’t say what I would have done. I just think this is inside me. I don’t think you can change what’s inside you.”

  “Everyone says the same thing is inside me,” I tell him.

  “I don’t believe that.”

  I don’t know how to have this conversation. I love my brother, but it’s real here. Suddenly it’s all real, and it’s a new feeling, because I’ve always put it outside me. Like it happened, but only in a bad dream or in a movie. But he’s here and it’s real and the Cabots were real, too, and I can’t even remember them properly.

  “I’m sorry,” Scott says yet again.

  “You should be. Do you know what it’s been like for Mom and Dad? For all of us? We don’t live in the same house. We can’t. I don’t have a home anymore. I go from place to place because nothing feels real. I try to be someone, but I’m nothing but an idea. I’m a memory of summers and a brother who saved me from spiders and all the things that were supposed to happen. I’m not even alive, Scott.”

  “I know, Lexi, and I’m sorry. I promise, it hasn’t been easy here, either.”

  “No. Fuck you. Absolutely not. Don’t compare us. Don’t try to make this about you,” I say. “You put yourself here. How dare you sit there and tell me how hard it’s been for you? How dare you pretend it’s anything like it’s been for me?”

  I try to figure out how to say it all. How to turn all the memories and the could-have-beens and the things people thought about me into something I can explain.

  “I was supposed to go to prom last year,” I tell him. “I spent days flipping through magazines, looking at dresses. I wanted to tell Mom, to have her take me shopping, but I was afraid of giving her hope and having things go wrong. I wanted to be a normal girl, but I didn’t get to be. Do you know what happened at prom?” Scott shakes his head. “Yeah, well, neither do I, because when people at school found out about what you’d done, my date changed his mind. So I’m glad I didn’t tell Mom after all, because she would’ve had to live it all over again. To hurt for all the things she’ll never experience. She’ll never take me to look for dresses, because I’ll never be the girl who gets to have those things. Or if she does, it’ll be as a stranger, because I haven’t lived with her and Dad in five years.”

  “Lexi—”

  “I was sixteen last year. I was a junior in high school, and I wanted to go to prom. That’s what you do at sixteen. Not me, though. I don’t get to do those things. Because of you.” I pause. “I can’t talk to Mom about prom or things I care about, because I can’t disappoint her when they never work out. I have to plan how I function around what will hurt everyone least. I shouldn’t have to think about these kinds of things, Scott.”

  “Lexi—” he tries again.

  “I’m not finished,” I tell him. “This year I met a guy. I really like him. And sometimes when I’m around him, I can almost forget. He makes me feel okay. So I decided that because he can make me feel okay, then maybe enough time had gone by. I thought maybe … I had friends. I thought they were really my friends. And I started to think that maybe, finally, they liked me. That people would like me in spite of everything.”

  I pause, feeling the tears dropping onto the little desk in front of me, but I don’t take my eyes off my brother. I don’t even move, because I’m afraid it isn’t real and I can’t say these things a second time.

  “I thought things had changed,” I continue. “So I told my friends about you. You said you weren’t surprised about how people treated Mr. Cabot, so I doubt you’ll be surprised this time, either, but I was. I was devastated when I realized that they’re not really my friends. They can’t be. Of course they can’t, right? Because I can’t have friends, can I? I can’t have anything. Because of what you did. You’ve done this to my life, and you sit there and you can’t even give me a reason? You can’t even tell me why you’ve taken so much from me?”

  “I thought it would be better if I told you the truth,” he says. “I thought you’d be better off if I didn’t lie and tell you I knew why I did it.”

  I pull up my sleeves, pressing my skin against the glass, and I show him the scars along my arms. Raised white and pink lines. Scar tissue spelling out my story.

  Psycho. Freak. Evil.

  I show him the words, show him what he did to me. What he created for me.

  “Do you see that?” I ask. “These are the things they’ve said about me. I kept a diary of everything I remember. Of everything people said because of you. Do you see what you left me? These are the things I am, Scott. These are the things you made me.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Lexi.”

  “Yeah, me too. I’m sorry you weren’t there. I’m sorry that it took me this long to recognize this. I’ve hated myself for years. This morning before I came here, I had to go to yet another therapy session, and my therapist asked me to think about why I feel like I’m to blame. He asked me what I thought I did to deserve all this.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Scott says.

  He reaches his hand up and touches where my arm still presses against the window. He places a finger along the word Evil, and I can almost feel his hands on my skin. I can almost remember him holding me when he’d push me on the swings. I can almost remember, and I almost let myself forget right now, but I fight it. Because I’ve spent five years surrounded by memories, letting them dim all the things I couldn’t face.

  I’ve spent five years trying to understand, and he doesn’t even have an answer for me.

  “You’ve taken everything from me,” I tell my brother. “I grew up a shadow of a girl. I’m not a person anymore. I’m just leftover damage from you. You said I looked like sunlight, but that’s a lie. I’m wearing yellow because I have to coordinate my clothes in solid shades so I can pretend I have control over any part of who I am. That I have a vo
ice in my own life. I can’t function without this, because it’s the only way I know how to decide my own fate. It’s all I can do to hold on.”

  I try to control the tears, but the entire world is a vacuum. Sounds and light and time are all fuzzy edges as Scott and I sit suspended on some kind of event horizon.

  “It’s not fair,” I say. “You took away who I was and everything I was supposed to be. I don’t know who I am anymore. You’re supposed to be my brother. You’re supposed to have cared. Sure, I guess you owed me nothing, but I trusted you, Scott. I counted on you, and you were supposed to be there. You were supposed to protect me. And it turns out that you couldn’t. You couldn’t save me from my biggest threat, because that was you all along.”

  “I don’t know what to say, Lexi. I don’t know what to tell you except I’m sorry,” Scott says.

  “It’s fine. There’s nothing left to say. This is it. This is who we are.”

  I look at him one last time. Try to remember. Try to separate this man from the brother I loved. The one who believed in me. I try to isolate what it felt like to be happy from the girl I am now. All this fear. The anxiety. I try to find Scott through all these things, try to make them tangible. I assign all the painful thoughts to the parts of him that have changed. Rory and her flyers are my brother’s shaved head. Being afraid of mixing colors in my wardrobe is the way his right eye doesn’t open all the way anymore.

  “I’m not coming back,” I tell him. “At least not for a while. Maybe someday I will. Maybe someday when I figure out who I am outside of what you’ve done, I’ll be a different person. Maybe I’ll be able to forgive you, and the memories won’t hurt so much that I can’t breathe. But I can’t do this again until I can figure that out. I miss my brother, but my brother isn’t real. You’re not him, just like I’m not the girl I was. None of us are the same anymore. That’s what you did.”

  “I know.”

  I pause, debating whether I want to say more, but I can’t. I just can’t. I hang up the phone and he looks at me, but I can’t meet his eyes. I don’t want to be here anymore.