Don't Let Me Go

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

“Absolutely not.”

  “Seriously? You’re not going?”

  “I didn’t say I wasn’t going. I said I wasn’t ready. And I never will be. So let’s just hurry up and do this thing before I change my mind.”

  Rayleen swung the door inward, and a blast of morning air hit Billy in the face.

  It reminded him of red wine. Scary. Distantly familiar. Too long forgotten. Nice.

  Together, almost as one entity, they stepped out on to the stoop.

  “You OK?” Grace asked, peering up at his face.

  But Billy’s throat had tightened and his chest had constricted, so it would have been impossible to answer. Instead he gestured forward with his chin.

  They stepped out to the stairs and began to descend.

  Five concrete steps. Only five. Billy began to calculate how many years it had been since he’d climbed them, either up or down, but he soon realized the answer wouldn’t serve him well, and so changed the subject in his brain.

  Over his head, he heard a bird chirping an excited song in a canopy of trees.

  “They still have birds in L.A.?” he attempted to ask, but no sound emerged.

  He tried to think, to remember. If birds sang in the trees outside his apartment, he would have heard them from inside. Had he? He couldn’t remember positively, but he didn’t think he had. Did that mean he was now alive in a way he had not been until this very moment?

  Duh, as Grace would say.

  He whipped his head around to see his building, now three buildings down the street from him. He had walked outside, on to the street, and three buildings away while pondering songbirds. But, now that he saw it back there, looking so distant, the panic found him, caught him, knocked the wind out of him. It felt like a vise crushing his chest. His face felt cold, yet he could feel beads of sweat break out on his brow.

  He stopped dead.

  Rayleen stopped with him, but Grace walked a couple more steps, hit the end of his arm and bounced back.

  “What?” she asked.

  But Billy couldn’t speak.

  “You need to go back?”

  “Are you OK?” Rayleen asked.

  He shook his head, and found the movement weirdly unsettling. As if he were only barely balanced, and any sudden moves could send him flying.

  “You can go back,” Rayleen said. “If you need to.”

  “Just a little more, Billy,” Grace whined. “Please? Just down to the corner.”

  Billy shook his head again. More carefully this time.

  “OK,” Grace said. “Well, that’s OK. You did good for your first time.”

  They both let go of his hands at exactly the same time, apparently not thinking he might be a helium balloon, and they might be the only ballast pinning him to the earth. Without the warmth of their hands to ground him, standing on the street three doors down from the safety of his home was unimaginable. What had he been thinking?

  He began to run.

  It should only have taken a few seconds to reach his own front door again, but instead time stretched out, betraying him. He told himself it could only be an illusion, but it was such a vivid illusion, and so extreme. Still, in what seemed like ten or fifteen minutes, he arrived back at the front door of the building, twisted the knob violently, and tried to push his way through. Instead he bounced off again.

  He tried again. It was locked.

  A flare of panic struck him, a reaction similar to throwing a bucketful of grease on to a fire that had already been burning well enough to overcome him.

  He steadied himself, and pulled in a big, manual breath.

  “This door doesn’t lock,” he said out loud, surprised by the return of speech. He must have been doing a good job of calming himself. “We’re just not turning the knob correctly.”

  He tried the knob again. No, he realized. There’s really only one correct method for turning a knob. And this door was locked.

  He thought about trying to catch up with Rayleen and Grace, but that would involve moving in the wrong direction. He looked for them, to see if they were close enough to hear him if he yelled. But they were nowhere. They were gone. They must have turned a corner, but Billy didn’t know which corner, or which way they would have turned.

  The only way out of this would require getting the attention of one of his neighbors inside.

  Not Jesse, he thought.

  He pounded hard on the glass of the door with the backs of both fists at once.

  “Felipe! I’m locked out! Can you come open the door?”

  He waited. Nothing.

  He looked up at the second floor. Was it Felipe’s apartment that faced the street, the one whose windows he could see from the stoop? Or was that Jesse’s? He didn’t know, because he had never been upstairs.

  “Mrs. Hinman!” he screamed.

  A few desperate seconds later he saw the third floor window pop open, and Mrs. Hinman’s head poke out.

  “My goodness,” she said. “What on earth is all that shouting about?”

  “I’m locked out,” Billy said, and hearing his own words out loud forced a few hot tears to flow. He couldn’t hold them in, no matter how hard he tried.

  “Well, my goodness. There’s no need to make such a fuss about it. Why didn’t you take your key?”

  “I did! I did take my key! To my apartment! This front door doesn’t lock!”

  “Well, of course it does, dear, or you wouldn’t be locked out.”

  “Since when? Since when does this front door lock?”

  “Oh, ten years at least.”

  Billy sat down hard on the concrete stoop, his back up against the door. He couldn’t see Mrs. Hinman from that position, which seemed like an improvement.

  “Or at least eight or nine,” he heard her say.

  All the fight had gone out of him. He pressed his back harder against the door, feeling drained and sick. He still needed to get in, but he only had just so much energy left to do anything about it.

  “Can you come down and let me in?” he called, not sure if his volume would even reach her.

  “I suppose I could, though the stairs are awfully hard on my knees.”

  “Can you please hurry?”

  “Now why on earth would you ask me to hurry when I just told you the stairs are hard on my knees?”

  Billy squeezed his eyes closed, semi-resigned to being stuck in hell. This is what happens when you go out. This or something else uncontrollable. You leave your safe environment and things just happen, and then what do you do? Well, there’s really not much you can do. You’re stuck. It’s what you get.

  The door behind Billy opened in suddenly, spilling him on to his back in the hallway. He looked up to see Jesse standing over him.

  “You OK, neighbor?”

  Damn.

  “I got locked out,” he said, sounding pathetically childlike. Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. There were tears on his face, he was drowning in an obvious state of paralyzing panic, and his sneakers were too white. It was not the way he wanted to be seen. Damn. “I went outside, and I didn’t know they’d put a lock on this outside door, and I got locked out.”

  Jesse reached a hand down to help him up.

  Billy looked at the extended hand for too long before taking it. But in time he did bring himself to take it, and be helped to his feet. He could feel his own hand trembling as Jesse pulled on it, and he knew Jesse could feel it, too.

  “You went out, though,” Jesse said. “That was good.”

  Oh, God. He knows. He knows everything.

  “I have to practice,” Billy said in a shaky voice.

  They walked down the hall together, toward Billy’s apartment door. Jesse had a hand on Billy’s shoulder. Apparently Jesse was smart enough to know a helium balloon when he saw one. He knew better than to let go.

  Billy dug his keys out of his pocket with trembling hands and opened his door.

  As he stepped back inside his familiar cocoon, everything drained away. Everything. His pan
ic. His energy. His ability to think. Everything. It left him empty and hollow enough to echo, like a shell that washes up on the beach when the organism has vacated it through death.

  He sat down hard on the couch and looked up at Jesse with dull eyes.

  “I thought it was interesting,” Jesse said, “when you said you were going to Grace’s dance recital. I thought, Wow. If you’re agoraphobic, that’s a big statement to make.”

  All is lost, Billy thought, though fortunately the thought was backed with little emotion. Jesse knows everything.

  “I thought I could practice,” Billy said in barely over a whisper.

  “You can,” Jesse said, sitting too close to him on the couch.

  “Today was a glorious example.”

  “Tomorrow will be better, because I’ll make you a copy of the key to the outside door.”

  The cat came meowing around, and Billy picked her up and held her tightly, enjoying her warmth, the softness of her fur, and the rumble of her purring. Unfortunately, though, it forced a few more tears to slip past the guards. But it was too late, anyway. It was too late to hide who he was from Jesse.

  “I don’t think one day will be time enough to recover.”

  “OK. Day after tomorrow.”

  “I don’t think I can,” Billy said, his face buried in cat fur.

  “Want some help?”

  Billy looked up, half aware of a cat hair in his eye. “What kind of help?”

  “Want me to come along? It’s better if you’re not alone, right?”

  “I wasn’t alone. Actually. I was walking to school with Rayleen and Grace. But then I had to go back, and they kept walking.”

  “So if I came along, I could make sure you got back OK.”

  It was too much, really. It was simply all too much. On the one hand, it brought a swell of elation to think of taking a walk with Jesse every morning. But like that? With Jesse as a nursemaid to make sure he got home without falling apart? It was simply too many emotions at once, and Billy had no capacity left to process them.

  “I’m so ashamed,” Billy said.

  “Why? Why should you be ashamed? I had an uncle who had agoraphobia and a panic disorder. He never tried to go out. The whole time I knew him. You tried.”

  “I tried,” Billy said, parroting emptily. “I failed.”

  “Big deal,” Jesse said. “So what? Keep trying.”

  Grace

  Billy held Grace’s hand as they walked up the stairs to Jesse’s.

  He was dressed nicely, Billy, in a white sweater and jeans, and Rayleen had given him a haircut, and then she’d blow-dried his hair so it looked soft and fluffy and shiny. He looked like a regular person, just like anybody else. And, also, he was walking up the stairs to Jesse’s, just like anybody else. Maybe that little walk out of doors on Monday had done him good. Then again, four more school days had gone by, and Billy had ignored them all and stayed in. So, then again, maybe not.

  “You’re doing good going upstairs,” Grace said, because her first-grade teacher had taught her that you should always say something positive and nice about somebody before you criticize.

  “Thanks,” he said. He was never too talky outside his own apartment.

  “But you are going to try walking to my school again, right?”

  “Oh,” Billy said. As if she were just waking him up in the morning. “Oh. Right. That. Yeah. Tomorrow. Tomorrow I will.”

  “Tomorrow’s Sunday. You missed the whole rest of the week. You know this has to be Saturday, because if this wasn’t Saturday, then this wouldn’t be the first day everybody could come to the smudging meeting all at the same time. Did you really not know that?”

  “I guess I was doing my best not to think about it,” he said.

  Grace had been all set to argue with him, but then she didn’t, because she thought that was a very honest answer.

  By now they were standing in the upstairs hall in front of what used to be Mr. Lafferty’s apartment, and it made Grace’s tummy nervous, because, the last few times she’d been here, it had been weird, even if the last time did end on a great note with the arrival of the cat. Billy’s hand got a little tighter on hers, too, and she didn’t think it could be for the same reason, but she didn’t know what reason it could be.

  “Jesse is going to come along next time we walk,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “For moral support.”

  “What’s so immoral about it?”

  “Not that kind of moral. Like morale. Like when you want someone’s morale to be better, so you come along for moral support.”

  “I have more trouble trying to understand you when you talk, Billy.”

  “I know. It’s a wonder you put up with me.”

  “Yeah. OK. Fine. So bring Jesse. I like Jesse. Rayleen, though. Rayleen’ll be pissed.”

  “True,” Billy said. “She will.”

  The door flew open wide.

  “Neighbors!” Jesse said.

  Then he looked at Billy for a long time, and took hold of his shoulders, and turned him first one way, then the other. Like there were sides of Billy he just had to see.

  “You cut your hair.”

  “Rayleen cut it,” Billy said, sounding embarrassed.

  “Looks nice. She did a nice job.”

  “She kept saying she couldn’t do it. Only Bella could do it. But I told her whatever she did would be better than leaving it the way it was. When I finally wore her down it turned out fine.”

  “That’s a lot of hair to lose after all those years.”

  “Tell me about it. I feel weirdly light.”

  “You should give it to that place—”

  But Grace knew what he was going to say, so she jumped in and said it for him. “That makes wigs for cancer people! Rayleen thought of that. She took his ponytail to work with her, so she could do that.”

  “Should’ve known Rayleen would think of everything,” Jesse said.

  • • •

  The white sage made Grace’s nose tickle, as though she might be about to sneeze. It was wrapped up into something like a stick, like the world’s fattest cigar made out of sage leaves. But instead of being wrapped in one big solid leaf, like a cigar, it was wrapped in a criss-crossing of heavy blue and green threads that burned as the sage burned. Jesse held a lighter to the end of it for the longest time while Grace watched a curl of the smoke rise up to touch the ceiling of what had used to be Mr. Lafferty’s apartment.

  Jesse had grouped them all around in a circle, with a plate in the middle for the sage, if he needed to put it down. Next to the plate Jesse had set a copper bowl and a short, thick, carved wooden stick, both of which Grace had been watching, because she knew those two things fit into all this somewhere, but she didn’t know where.

  She looked around the circle, and around the apartment. Jesse didn’t have a lot in the way of furniture, probably because he had come to LA on a plane, and was only staying a few months. But, even so, even without much stuff, the place was nice because he had all the drapes pulled back and the windows wide open. So there was light, and air. Nobody else’s apartment had light and air. Grace knew they were afraid of unlocked doors, and each other, but what did they have against light and air?

  Grace already felt she might miss Jesse some when he moved away again.

  “Wait,” she said to Jesse. “We can’t start yet. Somebody’s missing.”

  She did a quick count in her head. Billy was here, and Jesse of course, and Rayleen, and Felipe, and of course Grace herself was here, too.

  “Mrs. Hinman! We have to wait for Mrs. Hinman,” she said.

  “She’s not coming,” Jesse said. “She says this is preposterous.”

  “Oh,” Grace said, surprisingly disappointed that there should still be disagreements within the group. “But it isn’t. Preposterous. Right?”

  “I guess it is if you think it is,” Jesse said.

  It was one of those sentences that seemed to make sense t
o grown-ups, and Grace was wise enough not to question it.

  Jesse put down his lighter and blew on the end of the sage stick, which glowed brightly red.

  “The former Mr. Lafferty,” Jesse said, like he was saying hello to him directly. Like Mr. Lafferty was right here at the meeting, and not former at all. “I didn’t know you at all. These people I brought here today, they all did. They have some thoughts they want to get off their chests, I think. They feel like you were unkind to them, and I’m not saying you weren’t. I see no reason they would lie. But now that I’m living here in your leftover energy, I want to tell them something they probably don’t know — and maybe you didn’t even know it, either. You were scared. Did you know you were mean because you were scared? Well, you were. I know what fear feels like, and that’s what you left behind in this room. So we’re going to clear this room of all the leftover fear, but we’re going to remember just enough of it to remind us to live our lives and be less afraid. See there? Everything has a purpose, even if it’s only a reminder of what not to do.”

  Jesse stood in front of Billy, and Billy got this weird, shy smile on his face that Grace had never seen before, like he was embarrassed, but embarrassed in a way he sort of enjoyed. He also didn’t look like he was just dying to run back to his own apartment, but maybe he was, and Grace just couldn’t see it from the outside. Or maybe he wasn’t, because maybe Jesse was giving him morale support.

  Jesse blew on the end of the sage stick, sending a soft curl of smoke Billy’s way. Jesse waved at the smoke with his hand so that it wafted all around Billy, from over his head to down below his knees. Billy didn’t sneeze.

  “I’m smudging each of you at the same time as the apartment,” Jesse said, “in case there’s any of his leftover energy in you. Which there probably is. Billy? Want to say anything to your former neighbor?”

  Billy filled up his chest with air. It got big and puffed-out. Grace could see how big it got.

  “Yes. I’ve decided I forgive you,” Billy said, and then looked surprised, almost as if somebody else had said it. He looked around a minute before saying anything more. “I forgive you for yelling at me when all I did was look out the window at you, and I forgive you for all the terrible mean things you said when you came to my door that day. I really do. I’m not just saying that because I think I’m supposed to. All of a sudden I really do. You know why?” He looked around at different parts of the ceiling, like he was trying to decide which direction to talk in. “Because I only had to deal with you twice, but you had to live with you every minute of every day, which is probably why you didn’t live very long. So now I just feel lucky. And I feel bad for you. So, whatever you did or said to me, the hell with it. I’m seriously ready to let it go by.”