“I’m here.” He taps his chest. “I’m here. I’m always going to be here.”
He shakes his head. “You said we needed a break. I didn’t want a break. You said.”
I nod. I asked for that when things started to crumble.
When the yelling started. Before it was all over.
“I don’t want to go anywhere,” Taylor says. “Didn’t want to.”
“You’re not even eighteen.” Those familiar words are in my head, loud. And I say them to Taylor.
He looks out the window, which has gone all steamy. “I know what I know. I know how I feel.”
I wasn’t allowed in for The Talk.
Zacheus wanted me there. Wanted Rachel. But Daddy and Mom said no—like they already knew where this was headed.
And then the words came.
“I’m a religious writer! A missionary! You’re the son of a religious writer. Of a missionary! You’re not even seventeen!”
“So what! So what! What does age matter? I love her.”
“You’re too young to love anyone.”
Mom’s words were like a slap to Zach. He told me so, later.
“How will you take care of three people? You’re not even out of high school.” Mom’s voice was razors. I could hear that myself where I stood hidden in the hall. And then after a thousand beats, “What will the neighbors think?”
“Where are we going?” Taylor asks.
We creep along, that’s how hard the rain comes down.
We’re blind.
“Your house?”
I don’t say anything. I’m exhausted. Limp from almost-living. From trying to live in a place that is crooked, where I can’t get a grip on anything.
“Mine?” he says.
“Yours.”
“My mom’s not home.”
Mine is, I want to say, but that’s a lie. Bodies that don’t speak aren’t a presence. They don’t count.
Zach on the hospital bed.
Slight bruises on his neck.
His lips tinged blue.
Hooked up to everything.
Already looking gone.
Is he gone?
How can I stand it? How? My legs won’t hold me up, and I fall, catching myself at the foot of his bed.
Across from me, Daddy has given up praying that Zach will make it. It’s three days later.
My brother’s an organ donor. “We can’t let the organs fail,” the doctor says.
“Right.” That’s my father’s voice. It comes from a tin can.
It comes from a different world.
Right?
And Mom, screaming at me as the time comes to let him go, screaming at me!
We are a family, lost.
I’ve never told anyone about all of it.
Not about all of it.
Not Zach talking to me before.
Or him telling me about the baby.
(Or the fight. Oh! The fight!)
Or how my lungs felt so crushed inside that I couldn’t let any more than a gasp of air between my lips
when it was finished.
“Do you remember the first time we met?”
I sit on a bar stool in Taylor’s kitchen. The storm rages on outside. I have on a pair of his shorts and a giant T-shirt of his. Even his socks are too big for me, the heel hitting up above my ankle.
I shake my head.
He slices two BLTs in half, puts them on creamy yellow plates.
“What? The girl always remembers. It’s the guy who doesn’t.”
I offer him a bit of a smile. “I can’t keep a lot in my head. Sorry.”
Taylor pads over to the fridge, pulls out a big bottle of Coke, and pours two glasses full. “Want ice?” he asks as the Coke reaches the tippy-top of the second glass.
“No, thanks,” I say.
He brings the drinks over, sets one in front of me, then slides the sandwich over too. He settles on the other bar stool. Lightning changes the colors of the kitchen to an odd white-blue, then thunder rocks that whole house. The lights go out. We’re in the dark.
(I’d still be walking if Taylor hadn’t picked me up. Would Mom care if I was struck dead by lightning coming home from my brother’s grave? Or hit by a car? Or picked up by a bunch of rapists? Would she care?)
“We were over, a bunch of the football team, for hamburgers. Remember? Your dad was cooking them.”
“What?”
“When we met. The first time. And you got that weird round brush caught in your hair, and your mom thought it would have to be cut out. But your dad and Zach got it free and burned a whole grill of burgers.”
Lightning splits the sky again, and it sounds like the thunder might be right on top of us this time.
I cover my ears. Close my eyes. “You were there?”
Taylor laughs. “Yes. I was the guy drooling all over myself.
I thought you were so pretty, London.”
More lightning. More thunder. And me saying, “Oh!”
Sometimes I cannot swallow for the pain.
Even here, with Taylor, where I know I’m safe.
Sometimes I feel like I’m still stuck in those last few days.
That I can’t get past anything that happened.
That the last real moment for me was hearing my brother, Zach, alive.
I keep trying to remember him that way.
Remembering his last day with me, his room, dark. Him so sad.
But there.
Right there where I could reach out and touch him.
Sometimes there is no air or too much air, there is no floor, no real feelings, no truth—not even from my father.
My daddy.
The missionary who writes about God and goodness.
It’s like God shook the world side to side, and for some reason I can’t find my feet under me.
Taylor and I kiss for a long time, even though I said I had to brush my teeth (his mom has a year’s supply of toothbrushes in the bathroom closet), even though I said his mom wouldn’t like it, even though I thought of Jesse’s fingers burning on my face.
His mouth is minty, Colgate minty. His breath hot. My hands are in his hair, on his neck. When I pull back from Taylor to take in air, I see the lights have come back on.
“London,” he says. His eyes are closed.
Mrs. Curtis’s opening the front door then. I hear the key in the lock. Hear the door open.
I put my hands on Taylor’s face, one on each side.
He opens his eyes. He takes my wrists in a gentle grasp.
I press my lips to his again. A good-bye kiss that feels like fire. Stand. Dizzy. He runs his hand up my leg, just under the bottom of those too-long shorts. When was the last time I shaved? I worry about it a second, then decide I don’t even care.
“Oh, London,” Mrs. Curtis says, surprise in her voice. She looks right away worried.
“I’m going home now,” I say, though I don’t want to.
Nothing waits for me at my house.
I feel dead there.
“Where are your clothes, honey?”
“She got caught in the storm, Mom.” Taylor stands up behind me, slips his arms around my waist, rests his chin on my shoulder. He’s never done anything like this in front of his mom before, even though we dated for months. “They’re in the dryer.”
Mrs. Curtis gives a little nod.
I want her to touch me so much, I miss a mom so much,
I miss my mom so much, that I break loose of Taylor’s hug and walk to her. I kiss her face and her cheek cools my lips.
“Thank you,” I say. “Thank you.”
Do the dead feel pain? Do they? Is Zach still hurting?
Still fighting?
Is he as sorry as I am?
Burning in hell?
Is there purgatory?
Is there a prison for him on the other side?
Does he stand in a room full of devils?
I won’t believe it.
Not for one awful m
istake.
Not when he was loved so much.
Not when he loved so much.
I refuse to believe any of that.
Taylor takes me home, the whole way holding my hand.
The rain has stopped. Has darkened our world.
“I’ll get you for school on Monday, okay?” He says this without looking at me, just staring at the road ahead.
Our headlights cut through the steamy darkness. Trees crowd us from the sides.
Jesse and Lili go through my mind. “I have a ride home though,” I say. “But I’d like it if you got me in the mornings.”
My mind says—or is it Zach whispering in my brain from the dead?—Start your day with one. End it with the other.
Tsk, tsk, London.
Taylor looks at me. Did he hear Zach? Did he?
Shhh, I think. I would like it if he picked me up—if I saw him first thing.
“Okay,” he says.
We’re quiet all the way to my house. There’s no moon.
And then we see someone.
Ahead on the road.
Someone—I can see them now, though we’ve slowed way down—someone in my brother’s hoodie, his number thirty on the back. New Smyrna High Barracudas. The colors red and black.
I choke.
“Zach?” I say. Though I know this can’t be. Something is wrong. Not just that my brother is dead. Something else.
“Zach?” My voice is a whisper.
“London, no,” Taylor says. “That person is too small to be Zach.” But his voice sounds weird. He’s not sure either.
At once I want to jump out of the moving vehicle, run to the person ahead of us. I also want to get away, drive in the opposite direction. A scream rises in my throat, and I stop it with my hand. Just hold my neck. Hold it till we pass.
She looks me right in the eye as we go by her.
My mother.
“Don’t stop,” I say as Taylor slows the car. “Don’t.”
“But . . .”
“Please.” My heart jumps in my chest. I squeeze Taylor’s hand in both of mine. “She’s out walking.” The lie is there for the taking. “She does it a lot.”
To tell the truth, I don’t know what my mother does when she leaves the house anymore.
“She needs to be alone.”
I don’t know this, either.
But
I cannot bear the thought of my mother ignoring me as we try to give her a ride. I can’t hardly think it now.
I saw the look on her face when she recognized me.
I saw it.
I don’t let Taylor open my door.
He hasn’t even turned off the ignition and I have my foot out, ready to go.
I jump out of the car and run, holding my clothes in one hand—keeping Taylor’s shorts pulled up with the other—to the front door. The porch light is on and I run to that. I hear the car whine as it backs up. I splash through a puddle. Every step I take, every one, builds a rage inside me.
When I reach the porch, I slip on the wet wood, almost falling. Then I throw the door open so hard that it bounces on the wall.
“Hey, hey, hey,” Daddy says, appearing from the back of the house. Then, “Oh,” when he sees me.
Like he doesn’t know I live here.
Like he’s surprised I showed up.
Has he forgotten me already?
I was only gone one night in all these months.
Once!
And then this day. This day when he didn’t check on me.
This day when I was gone after a night away.
My mouth opens. The words come out. I don’t even know what they are till I hear them in the air around us.
“I didn’t leave forever.”
Daddy pauses. His face goes slack, like our separateness was holding it up.
“I know that, honey,” Daddy says after a few seconds. He reaches for me, but he doesn’t try that hard, and when his hand misses mine, he just lets it dangle at his side.
“But she doesn’t,” I whisper.
“It’s hard for her, London.”
I tilt my head. Look at him more closely. Does he know what he just said? Did that really come out of his mouth?
“It’s hard for all of us. All of us.”
“She was his mother, London. You’ll understand when you’re a mother yourself.”
“She’s my mother too,” I say, so worn out my mouth might never work again.
Then I head to bed.
If Zachy’s death should be hard on anyone, it’s me.
Yes! All of us! I admit, all of us. Everyone who knew him.
I’d never take anyone’s sadness and keep it as my own. I can hardly hold what I carry now.
But his going is hard on me.
Me!
I hear her come in later. Much later.
I hear the low mumble of my father’s voice.
I hear her speaking, trying to keep calm. Trying to keep her voice low.
There’s silence for a bit. Then my father’s voice. The door to their bedroom opens and closes.
I wait for my mom. Wait for her to come talk to me.
I’m lying in bed, all my muscles so tense that I wonder if I’ll get a headache.
I’ll forgive her for ignoring me.
I will. She doesn’t even have to apologize.
If she comes in. Just steps in and says my name, she’s forgiven.
She could even yell and I’d take her back.
She could yell for me leaving her on the roadside.
She could yell for me opening the blinds.
I don’t care.
I hear footsteps in the hall.
I hear breathing. It’s Mom, right?
I hear her light step move past my room, past my open door, past me, and on down the hall to Zach’s room.
I used to be alive too. Really alive.
We all did.
Thump thump thump thump thump.
Thump thump thump thump thump.
Thump thump thump.
Thump thump thump.
Thump thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
I wake from my own screaming.
Heart pounding.
Hands sweating.
“Zach!”