Where We Go From Here

by Lucas Rocha

  “But you can’t act like you don’t have any responsibility for what happened!” he screams, and I notice he’s balled his hands into fists. “None of this would have happened if you’d been more careful. You can’t be mad at me when this was all your fault!”

  And there it is: the punch to the gut—the thing no one says but everyone thinks.

  “I’m sorry, I …” He tries to lower his voice, then takes a step forward in an appeasing gesture.

  But now I’m the one losing it. “Choice?” I raise my voice, telling my headache and hangover to just eat it. I can’t believe what he just said. “You think this is a choice?!”

  “It’s the consequence of your actions, and you need to deal with it,” he says in a low voice. So selfish. “I don’t have to be dragged into all this shit just because I like you.”

  “Moron. You are nothing more than a spoiled brat who thinks he knows how the world works.” I’m choking on the tears trying to stream down my face, but I hold them back. “Get out of my house.”

  He stares at me and doesn’t budge.

  “Out,” I repeat. I don’t want to talk anymore; I don’t want to hear one more word or look at his face, not now, not ever.

  “So that’s how you’re going to deal with—”

  “OUT!” I lose it, charging to the bedroom door and yanking it open. “NOW!”

  Sandra sees the scene from the couch, her eyes wide when she raises her head, totally forgetting about whatever she was checking on her phone.

  Victor raises his hands and takes long strides toward the living room without making another sound. He grabs his things from the table, shoves them all in his pocket as quickly as he can, and calls to Sandra, who remains silent. She doesn’t ask what happened but looks at me doubtfully, and I glare back, annoyed.

  Eric arrives as they are heading out. He’s carrying a backpack and still has some leftover makeup on his face, the look of someone who probably met a fan who made sure his night was much better than mine. Sandra and Victor don’t say anything as they take the stairs down.

  “Hey, what’s the rush?” he asks with a smile. Then he walks into the apartment and sees me, still standing in my bedroom, breathing heavily. “Was there a fire?”

  I don’t wait for him to come closer. Instead, I walk to him and bury my face in his shoulder, letting all the tears out.

  “Oh, Henrique” is all he manages to say, squeezing me into his slender body as my chest heaves uncontrollably. I can’t breathe, but I can’t stop crying, either.

  And I don’t ever want to stop.

  THERE’S NO ONE BY MY side when I take my medicine the second time.

  The process is the same: At first, lying in bed, everything seems fine, but as soon as I get up to go to the bathroom, the world starts spinning like I’m an ice skater performing a triple axel. I lean against walls and furniture as best I can, trying to hide what’s happening. It’s as if I were drunk.

  The doctor said it gets better with time. And for heaven’s sake, I need it to get better.

  Then come the nightmares. When I least expect them, they’re there, tormenting me with their bizarre, nonsensical imagery.

  The first is of a woman dressed in red. She’s standing, and even in the darkness, I can see her dress floating at her feet, her dark hair falling over her shoulders. She steps closer, little by little, and I notice her face has no eyes, nose, or mouth. Yet I can feel it when her skin comes close to mine, radiating heat and making me sweat so much that it stains the pillow.

  I wake up in terror, my heart fluttering, body drenched in sweat, throat dry. I don’t want to get up for more water because I know I’m going to bump into every single piece of furniture in the apartment and wake everyone up. So I pull the sheets off me and open the window, softly so I don’t wake Vanessa.

  I pray for a breeze that doesn’t come and, lying on my back, look up at the ceiling. I feel my eyelids get heavy as time passes, and I stare at the shadows appearing on the ceiling from the few streetlights outside. The tree branches form hands that become arms, and I can see fingers flexing and coming to life, changing from a pattern in the concrete to a three-dimensional form in the darkness. It’s as if the shadows have come to life and started moving forward, and then they grab me by the neck and suffocate me.

  I cough and open my eyes again. My second nightmare.

  It will get better with time, I think again. Everything is going to be all right.

  I really want that to be true.

  +

  The next few days don’t go much better. Not just because of the sleepless nights—sleepless more out of fear that the nightmares will come back than of the nightmares themselves, since they have been happening less—but also because of my mood swings.

  The first one I’m able to recognize happens on a Wednesday evening, and I have no idea what makes me act like such a jerk. Vanessa is sitting on the bedroom floor, as usual, with books scattered all around her, spirals of DNA drawn on ruled paper, and the radio on with her classical music cranked all the way up.

  I walk to the radio and turn it off.

  “I can’t hear myself think!” I say, annoyed, lying down in my bed and closing my eyes, feeling the weight of the world crashing down upon me. Gravity annoys me.

  “Hey! I’m trying to study!” she complains when the sounds from the street, as well as of my mom and dad talking about whatever is on the evening news, waft into the room.

  With my mom in the living room and my dad in the bedroom and the TV loud enough for both of them to hear it, their conversation isn’t exactly quiet.

  “Put in your earbuds,” I grumble, and she swears but unwillingly takes her phone out, plugs in the earbuds, and starts the music again.

  Cranked up to the highest volume.

  I try to ignore the loud noise coming from her earbuds, but I can’t. One of my feet seems agitated, going up and down as the violins roar and echo in a bothersome clatter that seems to enter my head like nails on a chalkboard.

  “Vanessa, turn the volume down!” I yell, but she doesn’t hear me. She’s too focused, her head bobbing, scribbling down her dominant and recessive genes. “Vanessa! VANESSA!”

  I get up and rip the earbuds out of her ears.

  “I can’t hear myself think!” I say again.

  “And why is that my problem?! Leave me alone!” she complains, retrieving her tangled earbuds from the floor and looking at the copper from the bare wire on one of the ends. “Look at what you’ve done!” She shows me the mangled earbud I broke when I pulled it.

  “I told you to lower the volume on that crap twice, and you couldn’t even hear me!”

  “How old are you, Ian? I need to study here; how hard can that be to understand?”

  “I can’t understand how you can study with all this noise in your head! Do you think you’re going to get into college if you can’t even concentrate when someone is talking right next to you?”

  “That’s none of your business!”

  We’re raising our voices more than usual, louder than the TV in the living room, which our mom notices.

  “What’s going on in here?” she asks, opening the door to our room and looking from Vanessa’s crossed arms and her mad expression to me, impatient.

  “Who knows?” is Vanessa’s honest answer. “Ian must have stepped on a nail and decided to take it out on me!”

  “Ian?” My mother shoots me a questioning look.

  “My God, can’t the two of you leave me alone for one single moment?” I put on my flip-flops, grab my phone, which was lying next to my pillow, and leave.

  I walk to the front door and turn the key to unlock it.

  “Where are you headed, buddy?” my dad asks, more curious than disapproving.

  “Anywhere that’s not here!” I say, leaving and slamming the door behind me.

  My house is suffocating. I know I’m acting childish, but the mix of sounds and heat bothers me, making my head spin in a type of nausea that is n
ot a side effect of the medicine—or maybe it is and I just don’t want to admit it. I’m unsure about whether I want to take the elevator or the stairs, then choose the second option and manage to go down only two flights before I have to stop, hold on to the rail, and take a deep breath with my eyes closed. My heart is beating fast, and sweat is running down my temples. It feels like the universe is crushing my body.

  I squeeze the phone in my hand and sit down in the silent staircase, praying no gossipy neighbors will decide to use it right this moment and ask me what the matter is. There are two cigarette butts on the floor from someone who couldn’t be bothered to throw them out. I kick them while going through my contacts list, searching for Gabriel’s name.

  I scroll down through G and get to H, where I see Henrique’s name. Before I can think it through, he’s the one I’m calling.

  “Hello?” the voice on the other end says after the second ring.

  “Is it always this bad?” I ask, skipping the whole “Hey, how’re you doing? I’m fine, and you?” preamble.

  “Hello to you, too, Ian,” he answers sarcastically.

  “I don’t know if I can do this, Henrique.”

  He knows what I mean. It’s not just the medicine or the side effects or the mood swings or the shortness of breath. It’s the fear and loneliness, the secrets and this annoying tendency to worry about what other people think.

  “If you keep thinking about giving up before you even try, you’re probably right.” He says this with a soft voice, as if he were one of those bosses who fires an incompetent employee on staff, all while wearing a friendly smile on his face. And yet, I feel the words like a slap in the face; they’re so different from what I expected to hear.

  I remain silent.

  “But if you think there’s more to life than that, then everything will work out,” he continues, his voice softer.

  “I’m so … pissed at the world!” I say, unsatisfied, wanting him to tell me the formula to put an end to this feeling. How can he seem so calm when it feels like everything is falling apart?

  “Welcome to the club,” he says with a hint of sarcasm.

  “Does it get better?”

  “If you let it, it does. Give yourself time to get used to these changes, Ian, and try not to lash out at people, as hard as that might sound. No one else has anything to do with your problems.”

  “Including you,” I say, noting the impatience in his voice.

  He laughs. “I already told you: You can count on me, you idiot. After helping me this weekend, you scored some extra points. Not that it did much, but at least you tried.”

  “So that’s what it is.”

  “What?”

  “That’s why you’re in such a bad mood.”

  “I’m not in a bad mood.”

  “Henrique, I’m in a bad mood, and misery loves company.”

  This time, Henrique lets out a weary sigh. “Maybe,” he answers.

  “You want to talk?”

  “Have you noticed that every time we start talking about your problems, we end up talking about mine? It’s now our routine.”

  “What can I say? Your life is much more interesting.”

  “I wish.”

  Then silence.

  “So …” I let it hang for a moment. “Why the bad mood? What happened between you and Victor?”

  “It wasn’t quite a scene from a Tessa Dare romance novel,” he grumbles. “It was more of a Nicholas Sparks kind of fight. The type that doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

  “That bad?”

  “That bad.”

  So he gives me the broad strokes, in a low, sad voice, of what Victor said to him. I feel my entire body prickle.

  “I don’t know if I want to see him again,” Henrique concludes in a clearly dispirited voice.

  “You’re giving up before you even try?” I ask.

  “Hey, that’s my line!” He lets out what is supposed to be a laugh. “But this is different.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “He hurt me.”

  “People hurt each other every day, Henrique. I just hurt my sister over something really idiotic.”

  “What he said to me … I don’t know if that’s something I should forgive. That I can forgive.”

  “So you like to hold on to your grudges?”

  “No, that’s not what it is, it’s just that … it’s so exhausting. I wish everything could be … normal, you know?”

  “We have to start getting used to the fact that our normal is not the same as the normal we see in Hollywood movies.”

  “That would be so much better.”

  “I think you can look at it in two ways: You can forget that Victor exists and stop talking to him, and eventually find someone who will make you happy, because after all, there are seven billion people on this planet, and not all of them can be jerks; or you can talk to him, because I know you like each other, and try to figure it out the best way you can. I’m going to get very cliché now and say I think this is the time to listen to your heart to see if it’s worth staying with Victor. Has he tried calling you yet?”

  “At least fifteen times. He left a bunch of texts, too, but I haven’t read any of them.”

  “Well, at least he’s trying.”

  “But what if he’s just another disappointment, Ian? Let’s assume I start talking to him again. How long until he rubs it in my face and hurts me again? How long before he uses my past as an obstacle to our future?”

  “I don’t know. You don’t know, either, and I bet Victor doesn’t. But there’s a difference between being in a relationship where we know the other person is no good for us and being in one with someone who made a mistake. From everything you told me about Victor, he’s immature, but he makes you feel good. He said some shitty things, and I don’t want you to let him think that there’s any excuse for that, but at the end of the day, it was a mistake. And mistakes must be forgiven, as hard as it is to get over them.”

  “Whoa.”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t know you were taking psychology classes. Aren’t you a math major?”

  “Economics. People think it’s math, but it’s actually a social science. And we have an economic-thinking class. It’s the closest we get to trying to understand how the human mind works.”

  “It’s working out. You could start your own practice.”

  “If nothing else works out, I’ll sell my advice on the beach.”

  I realize we’re reaching that point where silence will take over the conversation, but I don’t want to hang up. I hear Henrique’s breathing on the other side of the line, and it soothes me. When I hear about his problems, I realize that we’re both deep in our own crises and paranoias and that talking about them is helpful; it makes everything more bearable.

  “Ian?” Henrique asks after almost ten seconds, during which I am lost in these reflections.

  “What?”

  “Just making sure you were there.”

  “I’m still here but have to get going. I walked out of our apartment in a panic, and I’m sure my mom is wondering what happened.”

  “Okay. Take care, all right?”

  “Thanks, Henrique. For everything.”

  And I hang up the phone, feeling weary.

  I go back to my apartment after taking about a dozen deep breaths.

  “Is everything okay, Ian?” my mom asks as soon as I walk in, dragging my feet and looking at her with an embarrassed grin on my face.

  “I just needed to get some air. Finals start next week.”

  “You’ll end up having a heart attack if you’re still stressed like that when you turn nineteen.”

  “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” I say with a grin, and drag myself back into the bedroom.

  Vanessa has turned off the lights and is already in bed, looking at her phone. She scrolls through Instagram, taps a picture twice, scrolls a bit more, smiles, narrows her eyes, taps twice, and keeps scrolling.
>
  I walk up to her bed and lie down next to her without saying a word. She doesn’t complain or ask what I think I’m doing but moves over to give me more space, still staring at her screen. Scrolls down, taps twice, smirks.

  “I’m sorry,” I mumble, gazing at the beams under my bunk bed. “I was kind of a jerk, wasn’t I?”

  “A huge jerk,” she says.

  I want to have a conversation with her. Tell her about my life, my problems, keep her up to date so she won’t think I’m just an annoying older brother.

  “I know” is all I can say.

  She turns off her phone and remains still, now looking up, too.

  “Do you think I’m going to get in, Ian?”

  “What?”

  “Into college. Sometimes it feels like I’m studying so hard, but nothing is sticking. Sometimes it seems like it’s all a series of things that don’t make sense that other people are able to understand, but I’ll never be as good as they are.”

  So here she is, making my selfishness blatantly obvious. This whole time I’ve been thinking only my problems mattered. She’s also a ball of anxiety with expectations for the future, kind of like I was when I was taking my college admission exams.

  “Of course you’ll get in, Vanessa. If that’s what you want and you try really hard, there’s nothing you can’t accomplish.”

  I’m not sure I’m speaking the truth, but it seems like the right thing to say right now.

  I pull her into a hug, and she buries her head in my shoulder.

  “You’re still a jerk,” she mumbles, closing her eyes.

  “I know,” I answer, also closing mine. “But I’m your jerk.”

  I fall asleep right there, and that night, there are no nightmares.

  I CAN’T GET THE IMAGE of Henrique’s expression when he told me to leave his apartment off my mind. I twist and turn in bed, thinking about how everything I said was unfair, and I rehearse conversations in my head where I try to apologize sincerely. I realize, way too late, that my words were cruel, but the worst part is that his eyes had an exhaustion about them the moment he heard those words, as if he’d known that, sooner or later, I’d become just another disappointment in his life. It must have seemed to him that my words came from a script—a story he was all too used to hearing.