Reclaimed

by Sarah Guillory

  I turned around and rested my chin on Jenna’s head. “Haven’t you ever wished you could erase your mistakes and start all over?”

  “Yes,” she murmured, her lips against my throat.

  “Well, I did,” I said.

  “But you didn’t,” she argued, pulling back and glaring at me. “Luke is still there, still struggling to get out, and you’re still carrying that guilt around your neck like some huge stone. You can’t bring Ian back by becoming him.”

  “I tried to be him for three months,” I said. “And then I didn’t have to, because he was there. It was like I’d been given a second chance to make it right. I don’t know if I want to lose that.”

  “Your mother deserves the truth. It’s up to her whether or not she believes it. But she’s your mother. You have to tell her before you forget again.”

  I was afraid to let him go. What if I told the truth and Ian disappeared for good? I didn’t know if I was strong enough for that. Maybe I wanted the delusion.

  But I had to try. For my mom. Maybe for me. But more than anything, for Jenna. She made me crave freedom and then believe it was actually possible.

  THIRTY

  LUKE

  I didn’t know why Jenna was going with me. I wasn’t even sure why she was still willing to be around me. She should have run screaming when she found out the truth. When she learned how completely crazy I was. Delusional. Insane. Clinging to a life that no longer existed. Creating my own reality.

  But it didn’t really feel like that. Ian had been a part of me for so long that it made perfect sense to still have him here. I couldn’t lose him completely—he was an extension of me. I’d always had Ian in my head. Having him there now wasn’t strange to me at all. It would have been stranger for him not to be. I didn’t know if I could survive if he were completely gone. Our lives, our minds, were too intertwined.

  In the beginning, Ian was around so much because I wanted him to be. I’d locked myself in my room and refused to come out. I’d let him take over. And then I lost control over it. My grip weakened.

  Holding onto this reality was hard, like trying to keep up with a moving train. It hurtled toward the locked door, and I could feel Ian trying to wake up. I wanted to stay, but it was like fighting gravity. I was going to lose eventually. Pain gripped my head.

  Jenna shut the back door softly behind her. “Sorry,” she said, “I had to steal the keys. Help me push the Bronco down the driveway. If I start it here, Mom will wake up.”

  I was going to get her in trouble. Again. But I knew I wouldn’t be able to tell the truth if Jenna wasn’t there. She made me hate the lie.

  Jenna climbed in the driver’s seat and put the Bronco in neutral. I pushed it down the driveway while she steered. I was sweating and my legs were burning by the time I’d pushed it far enough down the road for it to be safe. Jenna started the engine as I climbed into the passenger seat. I wanted to drive forever. But running from the truth was what had gotten me into this mess, and even though telling my mom was going to be the hardest thing I’d ever done, I had to do it. It was going to hurt everyone, my mother especially. I hated myself for being unable to do anything but cause pain.

  Jenna held my hand, grounding me in reality. Holding onto Luke was getting harder. There were spots in my vision, in my memory, and I felt everything sliding away. The backs of my eyes throbbed.

  It was late when Jenna turned into our driveway, but Mom wasn’t home yet. Jenna pulled up next to my truck and killed the engine. We were silent as we sat in the dark, fingers intertwined.

  I wanted to take everything back. I wanted a do-over, a cosmic rewind. There were so many things I would do differently.

  “I’m right here,” Jenna said. “It’s going to be okay.”

  I loved her for lying. There was no way anything about this was going to be okay. Mom was going to hate me for not being Ian. “You can’t take back a lie that big,” I said. “It can’t be fixed. With that one lie, I destroyed everything. And nothing I ever do will make that okay.” But I was going to try anyway.

  The house was dark. I flipped on lights and walked into the kitchen, surrounding myself with Luke. Maybe the cabinets would help me hold on a little longer. They were something I had been able to fix. Now the kitchen I’d torn to pieces looked even better than it had before. I wished life worked that way.

  Jenna hadn’t followed. I found her in the living room, looking at a framed picture on the coffee table. It was a close-up of Ian and me in the tree house. Our arms were slung around one another, and we were grinning, the kind of smile only children could have—absolutely no shadows.

  “Ian?” Jenna asked, pointing at the boy on the right.

  “Nope. Me. That’s Ian,” I told her.

  She shook her head. “You two really did look alike.” She was whispering, like she was afraid she’d wake the dead. I was afraid of that too.

  There had never been a Luke without an Ian. Hell, at one point we’d been the same person. One cluster of cells became two clusters of cells, which became us. It was always we, never just me or I or mine. Ours. Us. Even when things started to sour, when we started going in different directions, we’d still been connected. It had never been any other way. I didn’t know if it could be.

  “Here.” I walked to the other side of the room and opened the trunk in the corner. Mom kept the photo albums tucked away. Remembering was hard for her, too. I thought sometimes she even pretended it was true, that we were both still here.

  “Do you want to look at some pictures?” I asked, pulling out a couple of albums.

  Jenna looked a little unsure. “I don’t want to upset you.”

  “It’s okay,” I told her. “I probably won’t remember it later.”

  Jenna flinched.

  “Sorry,” I said. And I was. About so many things.

  She sat on the sofa, and I settled in close beside her. I could feel her all along the left side of my body—her arm against my arm, her leg against my leg. I etched her in my mind.

  Mom had them organized perfectly. The first picture in the album was a side shot of my mom, pregnant. She couldn’t get her arms around her belly. Next was a picture of both of my parents, my dad’s hand resting affectionately on her stomach. They didn’t really look like my parents. My parents were resentful and sad. Which was mostly my fault.

  Ian and me as babies. I couldn’t even tell us apart then. I wondered how Mom and Dad had. Maybe I really was Ian. They could have gotten us mixed up when we were three or four months old and I really was Ian and Luke really was dead.

  Our first day of kindergarten. Little League. Boy Scouts and school plays. There were tons of pictures of us in front of waterfalls and monuments, the Grand Canyon and German castles. Jenna was fascinated by all the places we’d been.

  “I’ve been everywhere, but I’m from nowhere,” I told her. “I don’t have a home to return to.”

  “Of course you do.” Jenna kissed me lightly on the side of the mouth and tucked her head into my shoulder. Maybe she was right—maybe I was home.

  There was never a picture of just Ian or just me. Birthday parties found us standing right next to each other, identical stacks of presents, identical grins. On Christmas morning, we wore matching pajamas and opened matching presents.

  There was a picture of the tree house again. In this one Ian was standing in the tree, holding onto a can with a string. I was on the ground, at the other end of the string, an identical can in my hand. I remembered that day. We’d seen a commercial with the can telephone on it, and Mom had explained that sound ran up the string. Mom had laughed when I asked why people didn’t just use their cell phones. Mom had the best laugh—loud and goofy. She would throw her head back and squint her eyes tight; her whole body laughed when she did. I missed it.

  Mom explained that, before cell phones and Walkie-Talkies and everything else, kids played with these. Ian had wanted to try it out. I’d thought it was stupid—we had cell phones—but I went
along with what Ian wanted. He was my brother—I couldn’t tell him no.

  Ian wanted to climb up and test it out. I’d stood on the ground with the can to my ear and waited. When he spoke, I wasn’t sure if I heard him through the can or just in my head. I had told him it was pointless. We’d always been able to hear one another.

  We were older in the second album. I flipped faster, wanting to get done—like ripping off a Band-Aid. Ian and I weren’t together in all of these. Hidden behind a picture of Ian in his football uniform, I found one of Ian smiling with his girlfriend, Mandy. God, it hurt to look at that one. I’d killed her, too. There were a few with me—us standing in front of the fireplace with our homecoming dates. Ian was smiling. I was scowling. Typical.

  The pictures stopped suddenly. We hadn’t taken a single one since the accident. None of the moments since then were worth preserving.

  Headlights flashed across the living room. I shut the album and took a deep breath. I pulled Jenna into the kitchen. My fear was reflected in her face.

  I heard Mom’s key in the door. I listened to her footsteps as she crossed to the hall table and tossed her keys down. She sighed—I imagined her stretching out her back. It would have been a long day. Mom was on her feet all day, fixing people. She must have felt helpless when she couldn’t fix her own son.

  Mom’s shadow grew taller and taller until it bent around the wall and across the ceiling. I reached over and grabbed Jenna’s hand. She gave it a squeeze just as Mom stepped into the kitchen. Mom froze, her surprise quickly turning to anger.

  “What are you doing here?” she snapped at Jenna. “Don’t you think you’ve done enough?”

  Jenna flushed. “Stop,” I told Mom. “I want her here.”

  Mom stepped closer to me. “We came here to start over. We came here for you to get better. She’s making it worse.”

  “Luke,” Jenna began, “I should probably—”

  Mom was livid. “I told you, Luke is dead!”

  It hurt to hear, even though I’d been trying to convince everyone of just that. “I’m not dead.” I took a deep breath. This wasn’t going to work if I was mad.

  “Ian,” Mom began, stepping toward me.

  My head was coming apart, like one of those bridges that opened in the middle. It felt like I might fall into the gap. “I’m Luke,” I said, trying to convince myself, too. “You always assume I’m Ian. I’m Luke.”

  Mom turned her back to Jenna, her hand settling on my shoulder as she lowered her voice. “Okay. I’m sorry.” Her hand was shaking. “Of course you are. You know I sometimes get you two mixed up. You look so much alike.” She forced a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Where’s Ian?”

  “Sit down,” I told Mom. She did. Jenna stood off to the side, her arms folded across her chest. I leaned across the table and looked Mom straight in the eye. “Mom, Ian is dead.” I’d never believed I could say those words. There was no taking them back now.

  Mom paled, but she didn’t move. “That’s not funny. You’re tired. We’ll make an appointment with Dr. Benson in the morning.”

  “Mom, I need you to listen. Just listen.”

  I told the story for the second time that night—the kiss, the anger, the alcohol and accusations. I admitted that I’d wanted Ian’s unblemished life and I’d lied. At some point Mom started crying and shaking, but I could tell she didn’t really believe me.

  “I’m sorry,” I finished. For killing Ian. For lying. For being me.

  “I’m losing my mind,” she whispered to herself, staring at her hands. Tears dropped into her palms.

  “Mrs. McAlister, please. Luke is telling you the truth.”

  Mom turned on Jenna. “What do you know about any of it? You weren’t there.” Her sobs were screams. “You didn’t have to watch them lower your child into the dirt. You didn’t see grief take the one who remained. You don’t know what it’s like to see a ghost every single day.”

  Jenna didn’t answer.

  “Mom, I know it’s hard to believe.” My head was nothing but pain now.

  “You’re sick. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You’d rather Luke was dead than Ian?” I asked.

  She clutched her throat and blinked hard. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

  “It was easier to believe that Luke was dead. Better.” I stood up. I was shaking now. Mom stood up and crossed to me, but I stepped away. “If you’d looked hard enough, you would have seen that it was me. You didn’t want to. You wanted Luke to be dead.”

  She slapped me. Hard. She looked even more surprised than I felt. I pulled my shirt up. “Look,” I said. “Look at this scar. Remember? Look hard. It looks nothing like Ian’s scar. Nothing.”

  Mom was shaking her head back and forth, staring past me.

  “Or these cabinets!” I threw my arm out. “You know Ian couldn’t have done this—he was failing woodshop until I built that damn birdhouse for him!”

  Mom stopped looking past me and through me and around me. Her eyes jerked side to side as she examined my face.

  “Or the time I came home drunk and drove over the mailbox. Remember that? Ian was out with Mandy and Dad was in the field. You promised you wouldn’t tell if I promised I wouldn’t do it again. Only one of us held up our end of that bargain.” My throat was tight, the words hard to say. “You made me get up early the next morning and put up an identical mailbox so Dad wouldn’t know. You made me go with you to the hospital.”

  Mom nodded, denial and truth battling in her expression.

  “You made me volunteer every Saturday for two months. I hated it. You showed me every drunk driving patient. You made me deliver their flowers and go with you when they needed pain meds. I was standing in the hall when they told Reed he wouldn’t walk again.” Reed was a high school kid who’d been brought in late one night. Reed hadn’t even been drinking. He’d been driving home after a basketball game and someone else had hit him and stolen his future. He’d been picked up by Chapel Hill the week before. The drunk driver had died on the operating table. “But I didn’t learn my lesson, did I?” My head felt like someone had split it with an ax. “Do you remember what you told me that day? ‘I can fix drunk. I can handle arrested, suspended, even expelled. But I can’t fix dead.’” That had been six months before the accident. “You were right, Mom. I couldn’t fix dead.”

  “Oh my God, Luke.” Mom threw her arms around me and cried into my neck. She whispered my name over and over again, her words trying to convince her of what her arms were still unsure of. It had been so long since she’d hugged me. I wrapped my arms even tighter around her.

  “Oh God,” her voice cracked as her arms dropped to her sides. I didn’t let go. “Ian.” Her face twisted in agony as she pushed away from me. It felt like he’d died all over again. For her, he had. I was empty and caved in, and I wanted to take everything back. I just wanted him back.

  Mom swayed, and Jenna rushed forward and put her arms around her. Mom sobbed Ian’s name. He heard. Pain shot through my head, and I fell to my knees. Darkness.

  JENNA

  Mrs. McAlister ordered me out of the house right after Luke blacked out. I wanted to stay and make sure he was okay, but I couldn’t argue with her. She looked deranged—not that I blamed her. I wasn’t sure if she understood, or even believed, what Luke had been trying to tell her. It was too much—to suddenly be reunited with the son you thought was dead while being faced with the death of the one you thought had survived. I kept waiting for her to snap or go into shock or something. Not that it changed the fact that there was only one, and he thought he was both. I wanted to stay to make sure she was going to be okay too, but she ordered me out, and I was too exhausted to argue.

  I drove home slowly, my head heavy and dark. My brain grappled with the puzzle—I had most of the pieces together, but I couldn’t make sense of the picture. Ian’s death hurt, but then I had to remind myself that I’d never known him. The Ian I knew had been nothing but Luke’s
guilt, glued together by memories and regret. But it didn’t really feel that way.

  I was going to have to face the fact that the boy I’d fallen in love with was seriously unstable. Luke was only present in flashes, in stops and starts, in glimpses. The rest of the time he was hidden away somewhere. I imagined him trying to escape his pain, finding some dark place to hole up in while Ian was awake. But I still couldn’t imagine them as one person. Every time I tried, I saw twin brothers, two separate people. Ian stood up straight while Luke had a tendency to slouch. Their laughs were different. And Ian had never kissed me like Luke had.

  I loved the most flawed boy I could’ve found, and my loving him wasn’t healthy, for either of us. I just wanted to crawl into my bed and forget.

  I got home just before dawn. Thankfully, Mom was sound asleep. I didn’t want to explain to her where I’d been—not that it was any of her business. And it wasn’t like she’d made the best decisions in life. She was not the person to lecture me about restraint.

  I put my keys back in their hiding place and dragged myself upstairs. My mind was having trouble holding on to thoughts. My eyes were gritty, and it felt like a thick fog had rolled through my brain. I wasn’t going to have any trouble sleeping, no matter how worried I was. My body just couldn’t take anymore. I didn’t even take off my shoes. I fell face-first on the bed and was asleep almost instantly.

  THIRTY-ONE

  LUKE

  I woke up in my room, but I couldn’t remember how I’d gotten there, nor did I have any idea how long I’d been out. It was dark, but I wasn’t sure if that meant I’d been asleep a couple of hours or if a whole day had passed. Or more. I’d never been that disoriented. I rolled over and stared at the strip of light seeping in from underneath my door.