“I don’t care about them!” he yelled back, but the tears running down his face made me think he was lying.
“How can you not?” I pushed.
“That’s not why I wanted to get back in there and don’t pretend it’s the reason you came either,” he snarled.
“What do you mean?”
“You wanted that!” he shouted, throwing his hand out to gesture at the file on the ground. “To get answers, just like me. To find something that can fix … everything.”
“I’m not going to apologize for doing what I need to for the people I love,” I spat, my mouth feeling like it was full of marbles, my knees hurting from running, my eyes stinging with tears.
“And how did that work out for you, huh?” Damien said, stepping toward me, like he believed himself more menacing than he actually was. “Do you feel fulfilled? Are you happy with this whole errand?”
“Why are you saying it like this was my idea?” I asked. “Damien, this was entirely your plan, I came along to help you—”
“To help yourself, more like.”
“Okay, yes, I had my own reasons!” I shouted. “But, god, has no one ever done a kind thing for you?”
He opened his mouth, fire in his eyes, ready to rebut.
“That’s a rhetorical question,” I snapped. “I know the answer.”
“Oh, you do?”
“Yes.” I nodded. “The answer is yes, people have been kind to you.”
He clenched his jaw.
“You might not want to admit it,” I continued, “but you’ve had people who care. You have people who care.”
“You?” He scoffed.
“To start.”
He didn’t seem to have anything to say to that, the wind letting out of his sails. He looked down at his feet, scuffing his shoes along the forest floor before tilting his head back up to look up through the trees to the night sky, squinting hard like he was trying to stop himself from crying.
Even now, going back over the whole thing in my head, I can’t explain it, but that set me off. Watching Damien, the most casually cruel person I’d ever met, the only person who has made me feel even a little understood these past six months, this Tin Man who let me into his dreams, trying his best not to feel anything just … broke me. If he wasn’t going to crumble, then I would, for the both of us.
I felt my knees hitting the dirt beneath me, my torso bending forward like I’d been snapped in half, folding in on myself involuntarily, as a sob was pulled out of me. Loudly, painfully, viscerally. Without a care of being heard or getting my hands dirty as I sank them into the mud and leaves, clutching at the earth like it was the only thing keeping me tethered to the ground, I cried. I cried in a way I didn’t know my body could produce. I never expected to cry like that in my life. In a strange forest with a strange man, my strange self screaming into the ground while my body tried to purge the truth from its own reality.
“Rose…”
I heard his voice distantly, saw the shuffle of his feet in my periphery, blurry through my tear-filled eyes. Something in the back of my mind braced for impact, for empty soothing words, a hand on my shoulder. But nothing came. I sobbed and sobbed, the only moving thing in a still world.
When the storm finally subsided, leaving my body nauseated and dizzy with the effort, I wiped my eyes on the backs of my hands, the only clean parts of them, and looked up. Damien was sitting there, a few feet away from me, his arms around his tented knees, looking down into his lap like he was just … patiently waiting for me to finish.
I sniffed loudly and his head snapped up. We stared at each other, the tears in my eyes mirrored in his, a fraction of what I’d shed but sharper and shinier.
I sniffed again. I don’t think either of us knew how to break the silence.
We sat there, for a long time I think, unmoving, three feet apart but unable to bridge the gap at all. I hated every second of that silence. I didn’t want to commiserate anymore, didn’t want to wallow in my own misery. It felt … well, not good, but like something to cry that hard, to let the emotion overtake me, violently pour itself out. An empty, anonymous forest now carries that splatter, but at least it’s not inside of me anymore. I let the monster roam free.
“Fucking forests…” Damien muttered finally.
“What do you mean?” I asked, my voice a shadow of what it had been when I’d last spoken.
“Just … I’ve never had a good time in one,” he said. “Only … turning points.”
I thought it was odd, that he wasn’t commenting on the breakdown I’d just had. He wasn’t trying to comfort me or check in with me, but he also wasn’t disgusted or afraid. He was just … there. I was appreciative of it in the moment, the lack of judgment, the lack of expectation that I would explain what I was feeling, but thinking back on it now … I don’t know. There’s not a wrong way to feel. But it’s like something in Damien broke a long time ago and he’s never been able to get his insides ticking again.
“What do you mean ‘turning points’?” I asked, relieved to be turning the conversation to him and his problems.
“You can’t go back, Rose. There’s a certain point where you just … you can’t ever go back. In the span of ten years, I’ve burned bridges on both coasts and now I—I have nowhere to go.”
“There’s a lot of country between Boston and LA, Damien.”
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “Yeah, I guess there is.”
A warm breeze moved through the trees, carrying the true smell of a summer night on it, humid and tangy. I closed my eyes and longed to be anywhere else. I could hear Damien’s shaky breathing next to me.
“This thing that you have,” he whispered, “it will swallow you whole if you let it. Trust me.”
I looked up at him to see tears rolling down his face.
“I won’t let it,” I said, not sure if I believed it. He nodded, but I could tell he wasn’t sure if he believed it either.
“I’m never going to see you again, am I?” I asked, surprised by how even and calm my voice was.
“Would you want to?” he asked. It wasn’t a dig or a passive-aggressive call for help, but one of those rare genuine questions. I decided it deserved a genuine answer.
“I don’t know.”
He nodded, like I’d just told him something eminently practical, and stood up.
“That’s good,” he said. “You’ll know eventually. It’ll wear off.”
“What will?” I asked, taking his offered hand, letting him pull me to my feet.
“The doubt. It’ll wear off and you’ll realize the answer to that question is a very simple no.”
“You don’t have your ability, Damien,” I pointed out. “You never have around me. I’m not being influenced by anything.”
He gave a dark, hollow laugh.
“As far as we know,” he said. “But maybe it’s not my power. Maybe it’s just … me.”
“Damien—”
“My name is Robert, actually,” he said abruptly. “You can call me Robert. I mean, you can call me whatever you want, it doesn’t matter, because as soon as I get in that car, you won’t be calling me anything.”
“What do you want to be called?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” Another honest response. I had just gotten good at reading him, only for him to walk out of my life forever.
May 29th, 2017
Dear Mark,
I went back. To the AM.
I wish I could explain exactly why I did it. I told Rose it was because of Blaze, because I wanted to help her find a cure for her dad. And maybe it was partly because of that—I do want her to be happy, but I knew that Blaze wasn’t there yet. I wouldn’t have wanted to see him even if he had been. He wasn’t there when I erased everyone’s memory of me. I’m terrified to find out what he remembers.
But I never should have asked Rose to come. I’m not sure why I did.
Watching her break … I wanted to break too. I haven’t done that in so lon
g. Let everything out. From what I remember, it feels absolutely terrible in the moment but then … there’s relief. There’s feeling lighter. Feeling better. Is that how things are supposed to be? Are things supposed to get better with each passing year? Or is life just a slow descent into misery? Fast in my case, I guess.
It was so familiar, watching her sob into the forest floor. Like a recurring dream that you don’t have for years and then one night, it grabs hold of you and you wake up with a familiar taste on your tongue. Except that is a dream I have—dreams of dirt graves and tall trees and people I love looking at me like I’m the worst thing to ever happen to them. And maybe I was. God, I hope I was the worst thing to happen to them. I hope I’m the worst thing to happen to Rose. I hope I’m the worst thing to happen to you. You all survived me, maybe a little rougher around the edges than you were before, but alive. Alive and ready to move on beyond me, without me.
I cried like that in a forest. Full body sobs, racking your body and carrying so much oxygen into your lungs you think you might either pass out or throw up. Rose didn’t throw up, but I did. Moved just in time to not do it over Isaiah’s grave.
I’ve never told anyone that before. That I broke down. Before I saw the Unusuals for the last time, I fell apart. I wonder now if some part of me, deep down, knew that I had already said goodbye to them. That maybe that’s why I didn’t cry even one tear as I drove away from Los Angeles.
I wanted to comfort her. Hug her. I can’t remember the last time I hugged someone.
I don’t want to be this person anymore. I told her that two months ago and I meant it then. I want to be someone else. I want to be someone who would have comforted Rose without hesitation. Who would have known exactly what to do, how to soothe her, what to say to make things better.
I want to be the person that would have known how to comfort you. How to take care of you. How to love you.
I don’t want to be me anymore. And maybe that’s a choice I have.
LATER
I slept for a few hours before waking up from a nightmare of running through hallways, never finding an exit. I tiptoed downstairs to get water, grateful that the house was pretty much empty. Our parents were away for the long weekend, getting some much needed R&R for the both of them (probably one of the reasons I even considered joining Damien, the fear of my parents being away and something horrible happening to them while they were gone driving me to act without thinking), and Aaron had been fast asleep when I came home.
When I got downstairs, I discovered he wasn’t asleep anymore. I didn’t even make it to the kitchen, Aaron’s voice from the living room stopping me in my tracks.
“Where the hell have you been?” he said, his voice quiet and unfeeling. A very bad sign. I decided not to pretend he didn’t already know everything.
“Why don’t you tell me?” I said.
“Rose,” he started, clearly putting a lot of effort into keeping his voice calm, but the use of my actual name told me everything about his state of mind. “How could you be so stupid?”
“I had to try,” I said, and that seemed to wake something in Aaron and he was up from the couch and pacing in the span of a blink.
“Look, I know that we’ve both been going through a lot with what’s happening with Dad,” he said frantically, “but breaking into the AM with a known criminal?! You really thought that was the best idea?”
“I don’t see anyone trying anything else!” I shouted back, now that he’d broken the seal on the volume of our voices. “I had to try,” I said again, and Aaron furiously shook his head.
“No, you—you wanted to do something reckless,” he said. “The dreamworld has become too predictable for you, too boring, and you wanted to mix it up—”
“Oh come on, that’s not fair—”
“It’s completely fair!” he yelled. “That’s all you’ve been doing the past six months. Just reckless thing after reckless thing—”
“I just—I wanted to be an active participant in my life!” I shouted, words Dr. Bright had said to me coming out of my mouth in an unconvincing parrot. “Isn’t that what you all wanted? Isn’t that what you and Mom and Dad have been pushing me to do for months?”
“Rose, you really think this is the best way to do that?” Aaron shouted back, his face lined with pain that made him look ten years older. “We meant—we meant for you to spend more time with Emily, bring her over for Shabbat, spend more time with us—”
“Because you’ve so clearly relished time with your little sister,” I spat. “You know, I don’t think it counts as really wanting quality time if you only want it when I’m in crisis.”
“That’s not fair.” He took a step back, shaking his head.
“Oh, it isn’t?” I continued, unable to stop the words pouring from my mouth, even though I could feel their sharp edges as they rose up my throat. “Sorry, could you remind me of all the times when you asked me to hang out because you wanted to spend time with me? When we really connected outside your dreams?”
“What are you—” He blinked. “I’ve tried, Rosie, but for the past few months—since the beginning of this year—you’ve just kept pushing me away! I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you in high school. I’m sorry I was caught up in my own stupid bullshit all the time, but I’m trying now, and that has to be good for something.”
“What exactly are you trying to do?” I asked. I wasn’t trying to hurt him, to argue, I genuinely wanted to know, but I don’t think I had any control over how my voice was rising and crashing against him and I saw him flinch.
“I’m trying to be your brother, Rosie.” He sighed, his shoulders collapsing.
Aaron has always towered over me—him as tall and thin as I am short and stout, a visual representation of what opposites we are, even though we have the same unruly brown hair, the same dark brown eyes, the same pronounced eyebrows and strong hands, made slender and nimble by our respective passions. We’re fun-house-mirror versions of each other, a bastardized set of twins. Always one goddamn step from clicking together completely.
“That’s all I’m trying to do,” he said. “And I’m sorry I’ve failed until now. But you need to meet me halfway.”
“I have been meeting you halfway. Every time I’ve been in your dreams it’s—” I choked around the words, tears gathering at the corners of my eyes. I turned around, putting my back to him and the living room and marching into the kitchen.
“Rosie, what are you—” I heard him say, feeling his lanky form following ten feet behind me.
“Right there,” I said, pointing out the kitchen window into the dark yard. “You and me used to sit right out there and play pirates and help Dad with his little projects and we—we connected!”
“Yeah, we did!” he agreed. “But why—”
“I can go back there in the dreamworld!” I shouted. “I don’t even participate, not always. Sometimes I just want to watch you and Dad, being together, laughing, and—”
A sob rose in my throat, making it hard to talk.
“I’ve been trying to connect, I have.”
“That’s not how to connect, Rosie,” he said, softer than he had any right to be when we were supposed to be shouting at each other.
“Why not?” I yelled. “You get to read everyone’s minds and you’re telling me you don’t use that to understand people better?”
“Clearly not!” he shouted, throwing up his hands. “Because you just said that I don’t understand you and apparently I’m reading your mind all the time!”
He paced around, his arms waving like he was a frustrated, neglected marionette caught in a strong wind.
“I didn’t say you were good at it,” I snapped, that toxic feeling of being mean to someone I loved circling round and round in my chest, the strong and recognizable monster that I felt completely powerless to stop.
“For fuck’s sake, Rosie.” Aaron groaned, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his palms. It was so late. Early. The clock on the microwave gl
owed 5 a.m. I remember thinking that our parents were expected back in sevenish hours and in that moment, I wasn’t sure if Aaron and I would still be standing there.
It’s now a little after seven thirty in the morning. I’ve been lying in bed for an hour, willing myself to go to sleep. But I couldn’t. Despite all the time I’ve spent sleeping in the past six months—the near perfection I achieved at falling asleep and waking myself up—it has been impossible this morning.
I was replaying every moment of the fight with Aaron in my head anyway, so I figured I should write it down.
“I just really don’t understand you,” he had said, shaking his head. “I don’t understand how you could trust someone you barely know and help them commit a crime.”
“Damien understands me,” I argued and Aaron laughed darkly. “He does.”
“Rose, he’s a thirty-year-old man whose only friend seems to be a nineteen-year-old girl that he coerced into breaking into a government facility with him,” Aaron said simply. “It doesn’t matter if you feel understood by him, that’s not real.”
“He’s twenty-nine,” I rebutted, like that meant anything at all. I knew it was weird. I’ve known the whole time. I know that it’s strange that Damien and I have been friends in the same way that I know I will never see him again.
That was when I started to cry again. Not just little tears, but another wave of enormous sobs. At that point, I’m not sure what I was even crying about. I thought I had cried about my dad, my life, in the woods, that I had gotten everything out, but there I was, sliding my back down the kitchen cabinets until I was sitting on the floor, because I just couldn’t support my own body weight anymore.
“Rosie—” I heard Aaron whisper and then he was next to me on the floor, his long arms wrapped around me. I turned my face into his chest and cried into his sweatshirt, his hands rubbing my back like they would whenever I got sick when we were little. That just made me cry harder.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered into my ear. “I’m so sorry that things have been like this. But they’re going to get better, I promise. I’m here now. I’m here now.”
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