Even If the Sky Falls

by Mia Garcia

  “Dad’s whiskey?”

  “Yes.” He was irritated, shoulders bunched, picking up the larger pieces of the bottle and tossing them in the sink. “Dad’s whiskey, all right?”

  Adam dumped the soaked towels in the sink and shook out the smaller pieces of glass. “I’m fine, Jules, just go.”

  I stayed, wetting a paper towel and moving in to help. As I bent down to gather the smaller pieces of glass, Adam grabbed my hand. “I can do this, Jules.” He was so fast that I slipped a bit, planting my hand to balance myself, and a glass shard sunk into my skin. I wrenched my hand away from Adam. The blood was slow to gather and the shard was only halfway in, but man did it hurt.

  I felt Adam hovering behind me. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, his voice taking me back to when we were younger and he’d broken something of mine or teased me until I cried. “Julie. I’m sorry.”

  “I was just trying to help.”

  “Yeah, I know. I . . .” He was gripping the towel in his hand like he was going to rip it to shreds. Then, just like that, all the tension was gone, his shoulders slumped and he extended his hand. “Let me see.”

  I hesitated. I didn’t want to but I did. When I put my hand in his it felt like a test, but I wasn’t sure who was taking it. Adam was gentle then, guiding me toward the kitchen counter, placing my hand over the sink. “It’s not that bad.”

  Drops of blood ran down the drain. “Still hurts.”

  “I believe you.” The corners of his mouth lifted.

  Adam retrieved the first aid kit Mom kept in the kitchen.

  “I don’t think we’ll need stitches,” he said in a mocking tone, but his eyes were worried.

  He ran water over the wound. I tried very hard not to wince when the cold hit my hand, but I jumped anyway. In one swift movement, Adam pulled the glass out with the tweezers and it felt worse than it had going in. Blood flowed down my arm, and Adam pressed down on the cut with a piece of paper towel before cleaning it with the alcohol and putting a Band-Aid on it. Within a minute the Band-Aid was soaked, and we changed it for a new one.

  “I need stitches.”

  “You need stitches,” Adam echoed. He threw the shard into the sink so hard I jumped again.

  “Don’t worry, it will stop eventually. It’s not that deep.” The cut was deep, but I didn’t want to cause a fuss. I watched the blood pool below the second Band-Aid, and I pressed down to slow its flow. I could feel Adam’s eyes on me. He grabbed a paper towel, folded it, and placed pressure over the cut.

  I noticed the small tremor in his right hand. “Why don’t you let me help? We can finish faster and replace the whiskey before Dad figures out it broke.” It broke—not you dropped it. “We can put the towels in the washing machine and mop the floors. It will be like nothing happened.”

  Adam checked the paper towel on my hand, the blood was already slowing. “Okay,” he said, and we set about erasing the last couple of minutes. Once the kitchen was scrubbed, we dropped the whiskey-soaked towels in the washing machine and headed out. Adam looked more animated than I’d seen him in a long time—like he was getting a second chance to redo this morning. And me, I was on his side, making it happen, partner in crime.

  At the strip mall I stayed in the car watching as he went in and came back out with a new bottle and something else. I didn’t catch what it was before he shoved it beneath his seat and started up the car. I picked at my cut for the rest of the trip, gauging how much pain I could take before I flinched.

  “Checking to see if it still hurts?”

  The bleeding stopped but the cut was open, gaping, and raw below the paper towel. “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “It does.”

  Adam kept his eyes on the road. “Good to know.”

  “Think it will scar?” Like yours, I thought. Tell me how you got those scars. The voice inside my head was so clear and strong, nothing like the one I used to speak out loud. Tell me the whole story, it said.

  “Probably.”

  I ignored the voice and lightened my tone. “Think it will make me look badass?”

  The side of his mouth twitched. “Sure, kid.”

  From beneath his seat came the sound of glass meeting glass.

  “What’s in the bag?”

  “Whiskey.”

  “And . . .”

  “Whiskey.”

  I nodded. “In case you drop another bottle?”

  “Yeah.” He paused, hands tightening around the steering wheel. “Sure, kid.”

  Something clicked. I was staring out the window, watching the thin strips of white on the road fade below the wheels, the trees blur, all to the soundtrack of the clink, clink, clink of those damn bottles.

  I hadn’t wanted to see it. I thought the smell was from the broken bottle, hadn’t I? Had I really? Clink. And what, he’d just dropped it accidentally? Clink. And how much liquid did I actually see on the ground?

  Clink.

  And what about that tremor?

  I reached back under his seat, and the bottles smacked against each other as I placed them on my lap. I took a bottle out, feeling the weight of it.

  “What, do you want some?”

  I pulled the other bottle out. “How much did you have before it fell?”

  Adam didn’t answer.

  I pressed down on my cut, feeling the rush of pain that overpowered the fear. “How much?” I asked again.

  He let out a breath, quick. “Just let it go, kid. I’m fine.”

  The bottles clinked in my lap, mocking me, their joyful sound triumphant. I hated them.

  “You aren’t fine,” I said. I opened the window and dropped both bottles out, watching them crash into the road. The sight of amber liquid staining black delighted me.

  Adam slammed on the brakes—we were lucky there wasn’t anyone behind us and that we were wearing seat belts.

  “What the fuck, Julie?”

  “What the fuck, Adam?” I replied, taking off my seat belt and rubbing my neck. Adam was out of the car and opening my door in seconds, pulling me by the arm.

  “What the hell is wrong with you? Do you have any idea how much that cost?” He pointed at the smashed bottles a few yards down the road. “I thought we were in this together!”

  I nodded, not in agreement, but to settle the thoughts in my head. The sight of the broken glass, the sound of his rage, spurred me forward. I decided to let everything go before doubt or fear caught up to snag the words from my mouth. “That would require both of us to actually try, Adam.”

  He turned away from me, building his own walls taller, thicker, stronger than mine.

  I needed to attack those walls, and I needed to do it now. “Why won’t you try, Adam?”

  “You think I’m not trying?” His voice was thick and coated in anger and shame.

  “I don’t. I think you’re falling and you’re not picking yourself up. I think you’re shutting us out.”

  I waited for a reply but one didn’t come.

  “I want my brother back, jerk. I want the motormouth who used to talk all the time about the stupidest crap, so much stuff I didn’t care about, just to torture me.”

  A ghost of a smile.

  I kept going, encouraged. “Like that one time you talked to me for thirty minutes about how they discovered Velcro, just out of the blue, with no segue into the conversation at all. I miss that. Or the way you used to pretend you didn’t like it when Abuela beat you at poker.” Deep breaths. “Where are you, Adam? Where did you go, and why do you refuse to come back? It can’t be that nice of a place. Not if you have to drown in whiskey.”

  He rolls his eyes. “I don’t drown in whiskey.”

  “You swim in it.” My hands started to shake. “I’m afraid of you, Adam. And I’m afraid for you. I think you need help, and I asked Mom and Dad to find you help and—”

  He rounded on me. “You did what?”

  My voice was losing its ferocity. “I told them you need help.”

  “
Are you deaf? I don’t need help, Julie.”

  “You do.” Tears streamed down my face as I continued. “You do and they see it, even though they’re afraid of losing you.”

  “I’m fine; they aren’t going to lose me. You aren’t going to lose me. You’re being a child.”

  I stomped my foot on the ground just like I used to when I was younger. “You aren’t fine. And that’s okay, you just did a tour—God, Adam that HAS to have done something, and I think you have PTSD.”

  Adam laughed and that was worse than a foot stomp or tears. He’d dismissed me. “Don’t, don’t talk like you know what that is.”

  The street was still dead silent. I prayed for a car to drive by, to cut the tension.

  “I looked it up on the internet and—”

  Adam’s smile was cruel, a face I didn’t recognize. “Oh, amazing. Please tell me everything you’ve learned from the internet.”

  “Emma and Kara—”

  “Do not tell me you brought your friends into this, Jules.”

  There was something to his voice, a callousness, that sent shivers up my spine. This was not going the way I’d hoped. Adam should’ve wanted help, he should’ve wanted to get better. Things were supposed to get better. Instead he pushed his fists against the hood of the car until the metal gave.

  “You tried to choke me.” The words were out of my mouth before I knew I’d said them.

  “I—” Whatever he meant to say died.

  “Come back, Adam.” I steadied my voice and wiped the tears from my eyes. “I miss you, and I know, I know I won’t get you back, not a hundred percent, but I’m afraid that if I don’t fight for you now, that if you don’t fight, I won’t get any of you back.” I walked toward Adam to meet him halfway. “Please let us help you.”

  “I am back,” he said, straightening up, pulling the keys out of his pocket. “This is all that’s left.”

  He got in the car and took off, leaving me on the side of the road.

  I probably made that damn cut worse than it was. I pressed my thumb into it until it throbbed. I peeled off the scabs and scratched until it was raw, over and over again. I needed it to still be fresh, to still hurt, because then I hadn’t wasted time. I hadn’t let Adam down. I still had time to help.

  My dad tried to track him in his car but never found him. My mom and I called all his friends, begged them to let us know if Adam had stopped by, but nobody had seen him. I wandered around the neighborhood searching for his car, praying that he had just driven down the block and parked someplace nearby while he cooled off.

  It was not the first time I prayed to Abuela Julia for my brother’s safety, but it was the first time I felt guilty for doing so.

  Here’s to Remembering

  Here’s to forgetting

  your smile and your grace.

  The way that you blush

  when I look at your face.

  Here’s to forgetting

  the night that we had

  the secrets we shared

  our souls laid bare.

  Here’s to forgetting

  impossible things.

  The feel of my heart

  and your wicked grin.

  Here’s to remembering

  the taste of your lips

  the feel of your hips.

  Here’s to remembering

  feeling alive

  missing you the moments

  you’re not by my side.

  Out of the Darkness

  WHAT HAPPENS TO YOUR BODY WHEN YOU FALL ASLEEP? IT IS still there—in bed—of course, resting, but what is that? You close your eyes and time continues and you just lay there. How strange is that? The time is gone and you wake as tired as when you first felt it pull you down. And that’s what it is now—a blink—I remember the river, fighting, my body giving all it had and my mind shutting down, a light dimming, my eyes closing and it is gone.

  “You see that nice young man? . . . So many injuries today . . .” The voice is like a song. So very different from the siren screech of the hurricane, which is gone. Gloriously gone.

  My mind reaches up from the darkness toward the voice.

  “You think you’ll get lucky?”

  A second voice, deeper.

  “Hope so.” Her voice drops. “Need . . . sweet smile to brighten my day.”

  Music, no—a laugh. “You are too old!”

  “Young at heart, honey.”

  The voices fade, but I keep pulling at the space they occupied. Making my way up and out, pushing through the fog to Miles. Miles.

  I flex my hand, feeling fabric underneath my fingertips when I should be feeling his skin. Where is Miles?

  My eyes finally open to a light so bright it slices through me. I lift my hand and something comes with it—wires, ropes, what is this? I search an encyclopedia of words in my head and all I find is “dangly hospital things.” That can’t be right.

  “Don’t try and pull that out, honey,” I hear as someone enters the room, a different voice from before. My vision is still fuzzy around the edges, and it takes a moment for the woman to come into view. Her braids are gathered on her head like a crown, with a few strands falling across her face. “Can’t spare IVs on anyone today. Need all we got.”

  IVs equal dangly hospital things. I nod. My head is heavy, every part of me feels like one giant pulse. How is it possible to feel this much?

  “Everything”—I lick my lips, my voice cracking, dry—“feels broken.”

  “Mm-hmm.” The woman picks up a chart from the foot of my bed and jots something down from the monitors. She smiles at me, and it is tired but sweet. “Let’s see, we got a sprained wrist, about a dozen cuts and scrapes, and a bruised rib. Not to mention the minor concussion, but we’ve been monitoring you all day, so you’re in the clear for that one. You’re a lucky girl.”

  “Lucky?”

  “Got a couple of people weren’t that lucky. . . . Storms always hit us harder than we think.” In the bed next to mine, a woman leans hunched over holding another woman’s battered hand. My feet peek out from under the blankets; a few of my toes are a dark-purple color, and when I try to move them there’s a sharp pain that makes me wonder if she forgot “broken toe” in the list of injuries.

  The nurse places the chart back on my bed.

  I sit, a sharp intake of breath as every part of me shoots with pain. I can feel the batch of stitches along my arm. Another tighter section along my shoulder.

  “Want me to wake Romeo up?” He points toward the right of my bed, near the windows, to a slumped figure. For a moment I think it’s Miles—my heart leaps, then stumbles as I gather all the details: no beautiful blue hair or dark skin, no long legs that can’t be hidden. It’s not Miles. Tavis is crumpled to my right, arm in a sling, head resting against the wall.

  “Been here for a couple of hours now.” She offers me another sweet smile before she turns.

  “Was there anyone else?”

  “Far as I know, but haven’t been on shift for long. I can ask one of the other nurses if you want?” I’m too slow to answer, and she places the chart back on the foot of my bed. “If you need anything there’s a button on the side of your bed.”

  The nurse is gone before I can ask her for the other nurse or any nurse who can tell me about Miles. But she’s down the hall and I’m left alone with Tavis for the first time since I ditched the prayer circle a lifetime ago. An empty sinking feeling seizes me that something terrible has happened to Miles. I think back: How far away had I gotten? There’d been solid ground below me, I know there was. Tavis shifts, I hold my breath. Just don’t move, I tell my body. He settles again.

  How quietly can I get out of bed before he wakes up? I test the needle in my arm—am I ballsy enough to pull it out? Tavis stirs. No! Go back to sleep. Or, you know, just go back.

  “Hey there, Jules.” Tavis rubs at his eyes, stretching before reaching for my hand.

  Please don’t touch me. Please go away. Please leave. My body i
s angry. I don’t want him here, not anywhere near me. This is not who I need.

  “Julie,” I say instead. “My name is Julie.”

  Tavis ignores the comment, touching my leg. I inch away, and he drops his hand. “How are you feeling?”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “Where’s who?”

  “Miles.” I say—then remember that’s not his name, it’s the name I gave him. “Where is he?” My voice wavers a bit. I close my eyes, concentrating on the pain.

  “Hey. Hey.” Tavis sits down, I want to jump out, but I’m not sure how far I will get. “Everything is going to be okay. We found each other, that’s all that matters. You’re safe now.”

  I shake my head, willing my mind to remember something, anything that will tell me where Miles is. I go back to the river, his hand slipping out of mine, his voice screaming for me.

  “He’s tall, has hazel eyes and blue hair and . . .”

  “Who was tall?”

  “Miles,” I say again. You aren’t listening to me.

  “Jules, you aren’t—”

  I’m reaching for the call button. This exchange needs to end.

  “Julie. My name is Julie. I need to speak to the nurse, I need to know he’s okay. He was with me at the river.” The rest is gibberish. I begin to sob because Miles is not here, because Miles was in the river and I don’t know if he made it out.

  Tavis rubs my back. I cringe and roll away. He reaches for my hand, trying to take the call button and calm me down, but it does the opposite. I swat his hand away and press the button. I press it again. No nurse.

  “You and I are lucky to be alive; don’t you understand that, Julie?”

  I understand—I more than understand. I understand that Miles might be dead. That no one was there for him, took care of him, kept him safe. He was all alone. I pull at my hair, curl into myself, angry at Tavis for opening his stupid mouth and then angry at myself for thinking that Miles is dead, for surviving without him. And that is the clearest thought. It feels like pressing down on my cut. It sears through me and brings me back to the present. Miles is not dead. He is not dead until I search every spot—no matter how long it takes.