But even as he was being tender, he wouldn’t let it go.
“Look, I like your sister. You know that. But you have to admit that she’s not the most considerate person.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m trying to help you here. Trying to give you some perspective.”
“But what kind of perspective can you have? You have no idea what it was like in our house.”
He took this as an invitation to say, “Then give me an idea! Tell me! You’ve invited me over, what, twice? Three times? I wouldn’t even know your sister if she didn’t give us rides. And yes, you’ve told me things—but you haven’t told me everything.”
I didn’t understand how he could expect that. How anybody could expect that.
I said to him, “There’s no way to tell you everything. Why would you ask me that? I told you about the time Darren made me practice answering the phone for two hours straight because he thought I’d answered it disrespectfully. I told you about being kicked out of the house and sleeping in the backyard because I hadn’t finished my chores before bedtime. I told you how he instructed Mom not to get us birthday presents, because birthday presents only spoiled us—and how Mom went along with it. Don’t you get enough from knowing that?”
“I’m just trying to understand.”
“I know. And I appreciate that. But you can’t understand. Nobody can understand. Nobody except Bea.”
It’s not a contest. I don’t want him to feel like it’s a contest. Because what kind of contest is it if he’s never going to win, and doesn’t even understand why that’s a good thing?
Next he asked me if you were planning to come back. I hope it’s okay that I told him, no, I wasn’t expecting you would.
Then he said, “So she thinks emailing you is enough?”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
“Actually, I’m not convinced that it is.”
I wanted to know where this was coming from. I asked him why he was acting all down on you.
He countered with, “Why won’t you tell me where she is?”
I gave him as much of the truth as the truth would allow. “Because I can’t.”
“You can, Ezra. It’s just that you won’t.”
“Fine,” I told him. “I won’t.”
That got to him. I could see the words strike, could see him weaken for a moment, and knew I had done that to him.
He should have stopped it there. But he didn’t. He pushed back harder.
“And it’s not just that,” he said. “There’s something else you’re not telling me. I know it.”
I tried to halt the damage. I said what I thought would make it better. I told him, “If there is something I’m not telling you, I promise it has nothing to do with you. It all has to do with me.”
Now he reached out and touched my arm, took my hand. Still tender, he said, “But you see, here’s the thing: I thought we’d gotten to the point where something that has to do with you automatically has something to do with me. I thought we were at least close to that. It’s how I feel. But maybe you don’t feel the same way.”
I pulled away—him holding my hand felt like a trick.
“You’re twisting this into something it’s not!” I insisted. “This has nothing to do with whether or not I care about you. Of course I care about you. And trust you. And love you. But none of that means I can tell you everything. There are going to be things I need to keep to myself. There are going to be things you can’t understand.”
“I won’t be able to understand them if you don’t tell me about them!”
“No…that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the fact that you have this pretty decent family and this pretty decent life and there is no way to explain to you how wrong things can get when you don’t have any idea what wrong feels like. I tried to burn my house down, Terrence. You would never do that, and you would never have any reason to do that. I can tell you about why I did it. I can try to make you understand. But I could talk to you for hours and hours and you still wouldn’t know a tenth of what it feels like, how many things are going on in my head at once. I am giving you as much as I can, I swear. But that’s all I can give. When I heard from Bea, you were the person I wanted to tell. This is where I wanted to be. You have no reason to be upset, or angry, or whatever it is you are right now.”
I want so much to tell you he got it.
But he didn’t get it.
He was hurt. And I was pissed that he was hurt. And he sensed that and got even more hurt.
It wasn’t a fight. You and I have been a part of enough fights that I know this wasn’t anything near a fight. But it was like after all these months of feeling like Terrence and I were getting closer and closer, I’d done something to point out that we were actually further apart than he’d thought. And once I did, it was hard to feel close again.
Do you want to know how I know Terrence is a good person? It would have been so easy for him to push me even further. It wouldn’t have taken more than a few more words from him to turn the rip into something impossible to mend. Hurt puts your pride on the line, and I know the damage that can cause. I would have hurt him more, Bea, if he’d said the wrong words. But instead he said, “I guess the important thing is that your sister is okay, wherever she is. And you’re not alone.” Then, before I could respond, he said, “I need pizza. How do you feel about pizza?”
I told him he knew how I felt about pizza. Which made him smile and say, “Yeah, I suppose I do.”
We got pizza. (His parents were out somewhere.) We sat on his family’s lime-green couch and watched some Netflix.
The distance is still there, Bea. And I’m confused. I’m just going to let it all out here.
I think he might be the best part of me.
I think it’s probably not healthy for the best part of me to be someone else.
I know I need his help.
I don’t know how to ask for it. Because, let’s face it, asking for help is not something we’ve ever been good at.
(That makes it sound like it’s our fault. I know it’s not our fault. If we’d ever asked for help, there would have been hell to pay, and that’s the part that’s wrong.)
I guess what I’m saying is—I know I’m sending him mixed messages. I’m telling him I need his goodness and at the same time I’m saying his goodness disqualifies him from really understanding what my life is like.
I know I need to figure this out.
You have to be feeling it too—now that you’re out of the house, aren’t you seeing more clearly how abnormal our normal was? Or maybe you saw it more at the time.
I’m going to go now and text Terrence and thank him for being there for me. I hope that makes him feel better and closer.
I also might ask him for some help with my homework.
He loves that. He pretends it annoys him. But I swear, he loves it.
Your abnormal brother,
Ezra
Subject: Get your head out of your navel, Ezra
From: Ezra
To: Bea
Date: Sun 14 Apr 23:36 EST
ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME In ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME between ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME all ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME my ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ranting ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME about ME ME ME ME ME ME myself ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME I ME ME ME ME ME ME am ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME actually ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME going ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME to ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME remember ME ME ME ME to ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME wish ME ME ME ME ME ME ME
ME ME you ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME good ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME luck ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME with ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME Mystery ME ME ME ME ME ME Guy ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME tomorrow.
Love me,
Ezra
I MEAN
Love, me,
Ezra
Subject: So…?
From: Ezra
To: Bea
Date: Mon 15 Apr 21:12 EST
How’d it go?
Subject: Dying here. Hopefully not dying there.
From: Ezra
To: Bea
Date: Mon 15 Apr 23:17 EST
You realize I’m going to be afraid he was a serial killer until you tell me otherwise, right?
Subject: RE: Dying here. Hopefully not dying there.
From: Ezra
To: Bea
Date: Mon 15 Apr 23:19 EST
Or a kidnapper. Wouldn’t that be ironic?
Subject: RE: Dying here. Hopefully not dying there.
From: Ezra
To: Bea
Date: Tues 16 Apr 01:01 EST
Going to sleep now. I better wake up to a full accounting of the evening’s events.
Subject: Not dying here.
From: Bea
To: Ezra
Date: Tues 16 Apr 11:34 CST
Dear Ez,
Do you ever feel small? Like so small you could fit in your own pocket? Like as small as, I don’t know, a baby, back when you had someone to cut your food and feed it to you? I wish I had someone to do that right now. Or bring me ginger ale and crackers the way Sloane’s mom does when she has cramps or the flu, the way Mom never did, not even before Darren.
I feel so small, I wonder if I’m invisible. I feel as small as a flea. I’m looking at my foot right now, and there it is, but it’s kind of a surprise to look down and see it because it’s there and it’s real and it’s not small at all. (Also, my shoes are totally thrashed. I walk so much in my new life that the soles are wearing out.)
Why do you, my wonderful sister, feel invisible?
I’ll tell you, Ez.
I am small and invisible and disappearing before my own eyes because I went to the Designated Meeting Spot yesterday, the one I have imagined and reimagined ever since I first knew I was coming here. I went there and stood with my heart beating out of my chest for everyone to see, and I wore a stupid, hopeful look on my stupid, hopeful face and I stood there for ninety-three minutes.
Ninety-three minutes.
Waiting.
For nothing.
For no one.
Because Mystery Guy didn’t show.
Which means your sister, Beatrix Ellen Ahern, is an idiot.
We always knew it was true, right? Maybe you should tell Terrence. He’ll love it. He’ll be like, I could have told you that. Only he’ll say it nicely with his hand on your ankle.
I know I shouldn’t be mean.
That’s what I do, right? Take my anger out on people who don’t deserve it. I wonder where I could have learned that. The thing is, I really believed he would be there—Mystery Guy. I told myself, Don’t pin all your hopes on this, Little Mary Sunshine. Things don’t always have a way of working out the way you want them to.
But I went and believed anyway.
And of course he didn’t come.
And I haven’t heard from him.
And I am here in fucking St. Louis, Missouri, where my only friend is a woman with a collection of parrot earrings and an old Italian man who smells like garlic and has a forest of hair growing out of both ears, and my shoes have holes, and I’ve been wearing the same clothes for weeks, and I either sleep on a public bench or a hostel bunk bed, and buy my meals at gas stations—when I decide to splurge and eat—and I’ve started smoking when I can bum smokes off strangers because this is how stressed out—and, fuck it, scared—I am. And you know I can’t smoke because I’m allergic, and smoking was what killed Aunt Lucy, and before that it aged her five hundred years by turning her face into a prune. So this is what I now have to look forward to.
Whatever you do, Ez, don’t ever be like me. Be you. You’re the best part of me. You always have been. You’re the only good part of me.
And now there’s nothing left. Just my ratty shoes, tapping under the desk, and now that I think about it, maybe my foot isn’t real at all. If I took off that shoe, maybe there would only be air where my foot should be. Because I am smaller than a flea. I am nothing.
Bea
Subject: Maybe dying a little.
From: Bea
To: Ezra
Date: Tues 16 Apr 11:51 CST
Listen, we both know I can be Bea-centric, so here’s my attempt at not being that on top of everything else.
I’m sorry about Terrence’s reaction. I’m sorry I’m the cause of it. If I hadn’t left my life behind, you all would be peachy keen and hugs and rainbows and fucking unicorns like always.
As usual, that’s on me.
What’s also on me: You now know Joe isn’t all he’s cracked up to be. If I’d just stayed two more months until I graduated, you wouldn’t be a prisoner in someone else’s home. You’d be a prisoner in our home, but at least your idea of Joe would remain intact. And it’s nice to believe in people, isn’t it? I’ve completely enjoyed the fifteen minutes of it I’ve known in my short, sad life.
Mom. Despite everything, there’s this guilt. Maybe it’s more the guilt of hurting someone I want her to be as opposed to the someone she actually is, but it’s still guilt. At the end of the day, I have that at least, and my crap shoes, and this crap new hair I’ve given myself (think Kurt Cobain or Debbie Harry).
Do me a favor. Text Terrence right now. Tell him you suck at all homework. Tell him you might fail if he doesn’t help you. Tell him your academic survival depends on him. Let him know he matters. Tell him your sister is gone, but that doesn’t matter. Terrence matters. Focus on that.
Give Joe a kiss. Or a hug, whichever will creep you out less. Tell him it’s from me, that it’s the hug you know I’d want him to have, you know, if you’d heard from me.
Be happy.
And don’t burn down any more houses.
Although I do have to say, that was pretty fucking badass.
Love,
Bea
p.s. Believe it or not, there’s also the guilt of not liking Darren. I know Mom loves him, for reasons we’ve never understood. I’ve tried to see something in him. Anything redeemable or lovable that could be the why of her loving him more than us. But I’ll never get it, Ez. Never.
Subject: How Bea came to be (in a strange city miles from home)
From: Bea
To: Ezra
Date: Tues 16 Apr 12:36 CST
I could show you the emails. I won’t, but I could. He didn’t beg me to come here, but he made promises. Promises, Ez.
I just want you to know that I haven’t lost my mind. That there’s a reason I left our Indiana home for sexy, glamorous St. Louis, Missouri.
We’ve been talking for just over nine months. It started on a Sunday afternoon, which isn’t usually when monumental things happen. Mom and Darren were out. You were out. The house was dull and peaceful, and I remember thinking: What would it be like to live in a dull and peaceful house all the time?
It was an accident, the way I found him. I tweeted some bullshit about being a prisoner in my own home, in my small town, and he tweeted back. And then, boom, there he was. Just like that.
; I didn’t answer him. You know how I am. And then he tweeted me again: I know you’re out there. And I wondered if maybe he was psychic, or if there was some hidden camera somewhere in my computer, so for three days I didn’t even get on Twitter, just in case he would know. I made out with Joe and hung out with Sloane and I drove you to Terrence’s the night Mom grounded you. Remember?
And then I couldn’t stand it anymore. He’d gotten under my skin, don’t ask me why or how. So I followed him. On Twitter, not in real life. For forty-eight hours, he didn’t respond, so I felt like the world’s biggest asshole, but I still didn’t unfollow him, and then in the forty-ninth hour, he did it. He followed me back. And I get this direct message from him saying, There’s more to life, you know, but it’s like you tell yourself you don’t deserve it. Why do you do that?
And my heart is going a hundred miles an hour because this is the most insightful thing anyone has ever said to or about me.
So I write: Maybe I don’t deserve more.
He writes back: Why so angry?
I write: Because, well, life.
Him: So change it. Stop bitching and be the change you want to see in the world, Gandhi.
Me: Maybe I like being miserable.
Him: I don’t think you do. I think some people do, but you’re not one of them. You’re made for bigger things.
Me: You don’t know me.
Him: You’re right. But I can put the pieces together.
And then he writes: I want to know you.
No one’s ever said that to me before. I want to know you. Most of the people I know make it clear they don’t want to know me, and here is this guy, this stranger, who is taking the time to talk to me. It sounds pathetic, but I had to believe that he was who I thought he was, don’t you see?
Take Me With You When You Go Page 7
