If

by Nina G. Jones

  He paused, looking at me like I had deeply insulted him. “I’m scaring you? You are my world, Bird. You think I would hurt you? I would jump off this fucking roof for you!” He stormed over to the ledge. Images of that night when he climbed it flashed in my thoughts. This time I thought if I didn’t stop him, he could jump. It was like he thought he was invincible.

  I shook my head, now sobbing.

  “Can we just go back home? Then we can talk.”

  I needed to get him off the roof and I needed to be around other people who were sane. Ash was making me think that I was beginning to lose my mind.

  His foot tapped erratically against the ground. “I gotta go.”

  “Ash, wait. Please don’t go,” I pleaded, my voice quivering from desperation.

  “I’ll be back. I just gotta get some paint and I’ll be back.”

  He kissed me on my wet cheek and bounded through the doorway.

  I tried to chase after him but my legs were shaky from the anxiety, and he was fast. I couldn’t think clearly. I didn’t know how I could stop him. I wasn’t family. I didn’t know the laws about what to do with someone who had lost their mind.

  He was gone so quickly.

  BIRD

  I knew Jordan wouldn’t be home, but like a drone I pounded on his door, hoping he would magically appear. Of course, no one answered.

  Ash ran out into the street with no shirt, no phone, and no wallet. I feared for his safety. He wasn’t in his right mind. He had snapped.

  I grabbed my phone to call the police when I finally had a moment of clarity. I dropped to my knees in front of Ash’s bag and pulled out his cell phone.

  My hands shook uncontrollably as I flipped it open and went through the small contacts list.

  MILL.

  I had never spoken to Miller. I didn’t even know if he knew I existed. Last I heard, Ash wanted to give him space. But if Miller was to Ash anything like Jessa was to me, he’d help.

  I hit “call.” The sound of my nervous breathing and the phone ringing competed for my attention.

  “Ash?” a guy’s voice answered. He had been sleeping. I had forgotten it was almost midnight.

  “Hi . . . I . . .” my voice was stuffy and shaky. “Hi Miller, my name is Bir—Annalise. I know your brother.”

  His voice cleared. “Is everything okay? Is something wrong?”

  “I don’t know. I’m his girlfriend and, um, he just freaked out. He ran out with no shirt and he doesn’t have a wallet. I don’t know what’s happening to him.”

  “What’s your name again?”

  “Annalise.”

  “Okay, it’s okay. Did you call the cops?”

  “Not yet.”

  “When did he leave?”

  “Just a few minutes ago.”

  “Has he been acting strange before this? Hyper?”

  “I guess.”

  “Has he been sleeping?”

  “Maybe not as much. He’s been working a lot. I’ve been working a lot so I wasn’t around as much. I mean yes, I guess he has been really excited but I’ve been gone the past few days almost all day . . . sometimes I’d be asleep before he got off from his shift at the restaurant. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Is it okay if I come over to your place? In case he returns?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. I will be there in thirty minutes. If he returns, try not let him leave. Okay?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “I’m on my way. Text me your address.”

  ASH—2 YEARS EARLIER

  I swear I saw Sarah. I was in the studio, finally painting again. After she died, I got sick. I couldn’t get out of bed, food was unpalatable, my body ached. The pressure of going back to school in a couple of weeks and the show I also had coming up only made me sink deeper into my bed.

  Eventually, my mother, who wasn’t in very good shape herself, had a doctor come to our house. He gave the family Xanax like he was handing out Halloween candy. In a couple of weeks, just in time to get back to school, I started to feel like moving again. By week three, when I was back in New York, I didn’t just feel good again, I felt fan-fucking-tastic. I felt like I could paint for days, and I had so many ideas. This usually happened. I would go for a few days or weeks, in my “crazy painting Ash phase,” my family would call it. Then I would get kind of uninspired and bummed and take some time off. But this Crazy Painting Ash was the best yet.

  It was like a billion tiny fires raged in my cells. The pressure of Sarah’s death and everything coming up had put a stop to my creative thoughts, but now it was like someone unplugged that little cork that was holding the dam from bursting and now I was flush with ideas. I was a raging white river bursting with color and shapes and movement that had to be translated into the physical form.

  I didn’t have time to sleep, or eat, or go to class. Two weeks, two whole weeks of a non-stop flood of ideas. This show was going to put me on the map. I wouldn’t just be a boy prodigy, I was going to be the fucking man.

  Someone poked their head into the studio I was using. I pitched an unopened jar of red paint at the door and it exploded. I wouldn’t tolerate someone disrupting my flow. But then I stopped. The face at the door. The features were familiar. I had seen them for fifteen of my nineteen years. Oh my god, Sarah is alive!

  I flung open the door, my hands now covered in red paint, and looked down the hallway. “Sarah! Sarah!”

  There was no response. I had scared her away. All this time she was alive and just scared to come home because of the drama she had caused, the guilt she had caused me. Sarah had taken it too far just to show up again.

  It was snowing, but I didn’t have time to grab a jacket. She already had a head start. I busted into the stairwell, jumping five to six steps at a time to catch her.

  I emerged onto the streets of lower Manhattan. “Sarah!” I screamed. I started running. I had to find her. I had to bring her home. Then everything could be back to the way it was.

  I ran past the subway and heard a train coming. If she was running, that’s where she would go. I ran down the stairs, jumped the turnstile and slid right into the train as the doors closed. A black woman with a geometric hairstyle and tons of shopping bags between her legs looked up at me.

  “Miss . . . Miss. Did you see a girl? About sixteen. She has, um, brown hair. About here,” I motioned to my shoulder. “Green eyes. She’s about five-six.”

  My eyes darted to the pole I was grasping, which was now smudged with red paint.

  “I’m sorry. No.”

  I spun around several times trying to see where she went. Then in the next cart, I saw her. The back of her head covered in straight brown hair gliding from one end of the cart to the next. I ran to the end of my cart and flung open the door, the loud churning of the train beat at my ears. Hunter green spots pulsated before me in sync with the violent sounds.

  By the time I got to the next cart, she was gone again. I looked up and through the small windows and saw she was in the following cart. I followed her all the way to the end but when I reached the last cart, she wasn’t there. She had to have just gotten off. I exited onto the platform. I was so hot, so fucking hot. I ripped off my shirt, tucked it into my back pocket and resumed my search.

  People swarmed Grand Central Station like worker ants, going to their posts. She could have gone anywhere from here. But I had to find her. If I didn’t find her this time, we would never see her again.

  The station was humming with sounds and smells and my vision was flooded with circles and squares and squiggles of blue, red, and green.

  I walked by a piece of metal paneling, and in the reflection, I saw myself: shirtless, covered in paint, my hair limp with sweat.

  I tasted licorice. I always tasted it when I was anxious or upset. Tiny needles were poking me. Not painful, just distracting.

  I had to find Sarah. It was almost February. She didn’t have money. She had to be cold.

  “Sarah! I’m sorry! Come back!�
� I screamed as loud as I could.

  BIRD

  MILLER WAS TALL like Ash. But his eyes were copper and he was fuller in build. His brown hair was clipped close to his scalp, not shaggy like Ash’s. Their resemblance was subtle. From what I could tell by Miller’s clothes, even slapped together in the middle of the night, he was definitely a lawyer.

  He knocked and when I opened, he put up his finger to signal he was on the phone.

  “Yes. William Asher Thomas Thoreau. He was treated at Bellevue in New York City and then transferred to NYU Medical Center. His doctor here is Servus. This is important—he is not schizophrenic. He has synesthesia and it has been confused with that in the past . . . No thorazine . . . I understand, but if he does show up and I find out this was not heeded, there will be hell to pay . . . Thank you.”

  He’s definitely a lawyer.

  He glanced at his phone before turning his attention to me.

  “Hi, I’m Miller, Asher’s brother.” I realized he said Asher’s first name was William. Even though he never went by that, it stung a bit that Ash never told me. It made me feel like I didn’t really know him.

  “Hi, I’m Annalise, but everyone calls me Bird.”

  “Bird?” His eyes scanned my place like he didn’t really want an explanation. He looked back over to me. “I don’t know how he does it. I guess some things never change,” he said to himself. “So, Ash has a girlfriend?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “We met because he saved my life. Some muggers attacked me and he stopped them.”

  He leaned back a bit, taking in the news. “So, you’re the one who jumped in and stood up to those assholes?” He pointed a finger at me. “Kudos and thank you.”

  “I think I made it worse when I did that.”

  “You’re both alive, that’s a plus in my book. So I made some calls on the way over here, so far he hasn’t been picked up. I know some people at the LAPD. If anything comes in sounding like him, they are going to let me know and also get him right to UCLA. If he comes back here, we’ll work on getting him 5150’d.”

  “Wait. I don’t understand what’s going on. What wrong with him?” Miller was moving fast and I was just trying to grasp what was happening.

  Miller had a look of realization and rubbed his forehead. “Oh, I’m sorry . . . I didn’t think to ask . . . Ash didn’t tell you . . .” His voice trailed.

  “Tell me what?”

  He took a deep breath and let out the words. “Bird, he’s bipolar. Severely.”

  “Bipolar?”

  I had heard the word a million times, but I took it for granted. Like “schizo,” or “psychotic.” Those words were thrown around to describe erratic behavior, but I never put much thought into them because I would never need to know the details. My life would not need that vocabulary.

  “Do you know what that is?”

  “I think so . . .” The clouded thoughts began to part, making way for me to put the pieces together: his sometimes bottomless sadness and his boundless energy. It was like there were three people in Asher: My Asher, sick Asher, and frenzied Asher. Up until now, I kind of liked that about him.

  “Well it’s when someone goes between highs and lows, but far more than just a mood swing. Sometimes it gets really extreme, especially if he doesn’t sleep. He was only diagnosed a couple of years ago and he’s had some issues managing it. What Ash is going through right now is a manic phase. And I am assuming he’s gone off his lithium. He’s only ever gotten this bad once before. He hates the medicine because it dulls his senses. You know about that at least, right?”

  I barely nodded.

  All of Asher’s comments about losing his vision and getting it back developed a new meaning. Somehow I felt like I had pushed him to get it back without knowing any better.

  “How could I not have known?” I asked myself out loud.

  “Don’t beat yourself up. I am pretty sure he had it for years before we ever noticed it. We always just thought Asher was high-energy and eccentric. In a family full of straight arrows, he was the one with the crazy abilities, and my parents wanted to support his artistic side. So when he would get all hyper, stay up, not eat, or act like a total prick, we just thought that was his method. He could be a lot of fun as a teenager, doing crazy things, taking risks none of us had the balls to. The girls loved him—sorry.”

  “Mmmhmm.” I didn’t have the energy to be jealous of some high schoolers.

  “Then when he slept and moped for days or weeks on end, we just thought he was a sensitive artist or that he was tired from working so hard or being a moody teenager.”

  I shook my head in disbelief. I was both despondent and pissed. I felt like Ash had betrayed me by not telling me. But more than anything, I was scared I would never get him back. He was so distant on the roof, like he was trapped inside of another person, like someone had taken his mind and body hostage.

  “Then how did you find out?”

  “I don’t know if he told you, but our sister died.”

  “Yes, Sarah.”

  “Yes. He sank into a deep depression. He was studying art in New York City around that time. And he was becoming this big deal. This boy wonder who had a special way of seeing the world, who could put it on canvas. He was under a lot of pressure with a show coming up and he didn’t want to cancel. The doc put him on some anti-depressants. We didn’t see it as a big deal. I mean, shit, our sister had just died. Docs will fling anti-depressants at you after that. Well, apparently typical anti-depressants can trigger mania. Out in New York, he didn’t have family to watch over him. He had an episode and they found him on the street, wandering, hallucinating. He was institutionalized for a while, but we were able to get him level again.”

  “Oh my god.” Everything began to make sense. The pieces fell together as I had gotten to know Ash, but it was as if something was slightly off, one piece not settling into its spot. Learning what Miller told me, all the pieces finally clicked, drawing the entire picture for me. Ash wasn’t just sad about his sister’s death, he was literally sick about it. He was lost in a loop of bipolar disorder and guilt and now I understood why he felt like he was such a burden to anyone who got too close.

  “He had to move back home. All his plans in New York went to the wayside. The momentum of his art career stopped because he stopped painting. At first, on the lithium, he wasn’t himself. He would have really bad shakes and his thinking was cloudy. The doc kept insisting it would likely go away over time, but he was really frustrated. And then one day he just up and left. It took months before I saw him again, and now . . . it’s like I can’t reach him. And trust me, I try.”

  “I feel that way sometimes, too.”

  “The fact that you can get him to stay in one place for more than one night is a miracle. He doesn’t want attachments. And he fucking hates walls.”

  We both kind of laughed. But it was a sad laugh because we were part of the saddest inside joke in the world.

  “Yeah, we go to the roof a lot. Do you know why he hates them?”

  “You mind?” Miller asked, motioning to a wooden chair.

  “Please.”

  He sat down, glancing at his phone, and then let out a deep exhale as he prepared to fill me in. “The crash had Ash pinned in the car for a while next to Sarah, who was already dead. They were submerged. Well, not completely, the car was tilted and she was submerged and his side slowly sank under.”

  “Oh my god,” I whispered and I covered my mouth in disbelief.

  “Ash was awake for at least some of it, though for some reason he doesn’t remember it. It could have been because he hit his head, but we think it probably more psychological. Then not too long after, when they found him in New York, it was a lot like today. He had nothing on him so it took a while to identify him. He was hallucinating and he kept telling them he was seeing sounds and stuff like that and they assumed he was schizo. They put him on thorazine, which makes it really hard to communicate because your face goes limp. So, he had
a few bad days locked up in Bellevue. He had to be restrained and . . . anyway . . . ever since then he hates being inside for long periods of time.”

  It was something about the way Miller said that last sentence that made me emotional again. I had kept it together for Miller up until that point. I think it was because I knew that inside Ash, whether he was being loud and frenzied, or quiet and pensive, there was an endless well of fear and pain. He was lost when I found him and I thought he had found his way, but no, there was still so much more to go. I thought arrogantly that I was guiding this lost person who I loved back on track, but all this time I wasn’t even using the right map.

  I bowed over and covered my face as the tears escaped. Miller was much more hardened than me. This wasn’t his first rodeo and he was dealing like a grizzled pro. He knew the routine. And I never liked to admit when I was scared, but I was. I loved someone who was very sick and I was finding out so much he hadn’t told me. I loved Ash with the purity and intensity of a first love. There was life before falling for Ash and after falling for him. He had changed me. I was so deep in with him that I felt like I was drowning in this illness right alongside him.

  Miller rubbed my back gently, but it wasn’t any consolation, because I wanted Asher to be the one to tell me everything would be alright.

  “We just have to get him in the hospital and we’ll get him better.”

  “But he’s been there before. Will he ever really be better?”

  “I don’t know, but I have to believe he will. Because I can’t lose another sibling. And I just hope that Asher finding you and trying to get his life in the right direction is a good sign. Maybe this was a misstep. Stress, love, even his art can be a trigger. And the problem with Ash is that, though the meds help, I think he likes the high. He hates the way the meds dull his senses, and I haven’t found a way to convince him to stay on them uninterrupted. He misses checkups, he doesn’t have the patience to experiment with new medications that might have fewer side effects. More importantly, I can’t find a way for him to get over Sarah’s death.”