by Rachel Kane
But I couldn’t keep this from him. I felt bad enough about talking to Amanda behind his back, and keeping that secret, and that was nothing. I had to give him the book.
And then what? He’d just sink deeper into this conflict with his family, without anything being resolved. And I’d still be the outsider, the one everyone hated.
I didn’t know what to do.
I pulled out my phone, and realized I had missed calls. Stupid signal in the hospital.
Eli had called me six times. No messages. No texts.
I sat with my back against the edge of the bed.
Was I ready to talk to him? Was I ready to hand over the book, and watch him be torn apart by it? Or ready to keep it a secret from him, and have a shadow fall between us?
Fuck, I was so tired. My fucking Pop was in the hospital. I didn’t have time for big secret books, or anything. I didn’t have the energy for it.
Maybe I would talk to Eli and just not mention the book. Not yet. Tell him about it tomorrow, or the next day, or the next.
Maybe I didn’t want to be involved in this anymore. Ever since Eli walked into my life, things had started going wrong for me. Yeah, sure, I was in the closet, but I could’ve figured that out eventually. But now everything was wrong. It hurt. I kept being confronted with decisions that I didn’t know how to make.
What was I even picturing with Eli? He’d said he ought to move out here, but that was so unrealistic. He wouldn’t last five minutes in this town. There was nothing for a guy like him to do. No library, no coffee shops, no theater. Just a bunch of old houses and trailers, a bunch of guys going to work at the factories and warehouses, then coming home.
And it wasn’t like I could move to the city. There was nothing for me there. Nothing but his shitty, snobby friends looking down their noses at me.
Besides, I couldn’t leave Pop. That was clear. I needed to stay close to him.
So what kind of fucking future did I even have with Eli?
“Fucking book!” I yelled, and threw the pages across the room. They scattered, caught by the air, flying. I wanted to punch something, and instead my big gesture was just landing softly on the floor like a pile of dead leaves.
“Everything is fucked up because of you!”
I don’t even know who I was yelling at. The book? Eli’s uncle? Eli himself?
Myself?
“I just want to go back,” I said to the empty room. “Back to when Pop was okay, and I knew what the fuck was going on in my life. I don’t want him to die, and I don’t want to have to make fucking decisions right now.”
It turned out I didn’t have to make a decision. As I was gathering the pages back up one more time, my phone rang.
It was Eli.
30
Eli
I don’t think I’ve ever felt as guilty, as when Jake explained where he had been that night.
I felt petty, and shallow, and like the shittiest boyfriend who ever lived.
“But is he okay?” I asked. “I mean, I know he’s not okay, but is he—”
“I don’t know,” said Jake, his voice very quiet on the phone. “I just don’t know.”
If only I could have driven to see him. Maybe Amanda could take me. Maybe I could brave it even though they’d told me not to drive with this head injury. (Wait, no, how many glasses of wine had I had? Was that why my head felt so awful right now?)
This urge to see him, to protect him, was as overwhelming as it was frustrating.
But so was the idea that even if he hadn’t been avoiding me tonight, all the other stuff Amanda and I had talked about was still absolutely true.
And yet I couldn’t speak a word of it to him. Not now. I was not going to bombard him with my personal shit, while his father was in the hospital. That would be so selfish and wrong.
But it’s just going to drag it out longer, said part of me. You’re basically putting yourself on hold. All this shit is still going to be there later.
“I found your book,” he said.
“My robot book?”
“What? No, your uncle’s book.”
I couldn’t even speak for a moment. “Uncle Ron? But I thought your dad threw all his stuff away, I thought—”
“Yeah,” he said. Like he didn’t have the energy to waste a single syllable. “He lied. It’s here.”
“But why would he lie, why wouldn’t he—” I stopped myself. Jake was too distraught for those kind of questions. He’d never say that…but I could tell. Even through the phone, I could tell.
“Listen,” I said instead. “I’m coming over.”
“No,” he said. “You can’t drive.”
“I know that. But you stay put. I’ll get Amanda, or get a cab, and I’ll—”
“No. There’s no need.”
“You’re hurting, Jake.”
“I just wanted you to know I have the book. And about Pop. I’m going to go now.”
“Wait, what’s going on, Jake, hold on.”
“I think I need some time,” he said.
It was like the phone had turned to ice in my hand. I wanted to drop it. Its coldness burned my skin.
“We don’t…we’re not… Look, don’t decide anything right now,” I said. I couldn’t get my words out. Too much stress, too much wine at my sister’s place, too many emotions.
It felt like we were crashing all over again. That same sense of being totally out of control of your own life. Nothing you could do but hold on and watch it happen. I hated it. I hated the pain in his voice, and the idea that Amanda had been right, and that maybe we were breaking up when I didn’t want to, but things were out of my hands—
I took a deep breath. Panic wasn’t going to help anything.
“Please talk to me, Jake.”
“I will. Later. I just need to figure some things out.”
“Us? Is it us you have to figure out? Because I should be there for that, I should be a part—”
“Eli…I just don’t have the strength for this right now.”
The phone went dead in my hands.
At times like these I sought someone to talk to, someone I could trust, someone who would listen to me and offer wisdom that would help me make the right decision.
There was no one left in my life like that.
There was simply no one to talk to anymore. Everyone had declared sides.
But it’s funny, because in that silence, in that inability to talk to anyone about us, all I could think about was him: Jake, all alone, thinking he had to bear this pain without me.
It focused my mind in a way I had not felt since we left the mountain.
All this talk of red flags, of the future, of everything, it just got in the way. There was a problem to be solved. Someone who needed my help. I was the only one who could help.
It was a long cab drive to his house. I don’t even want to say how much it cost.
(”You sure you want to take a taxi?” asked the driver. “You know once I leave the city, the price goes up.” I didn’t say a word, just nodded.)
It wasn’t until the cab left, that I realized Jake’s truck wasn’t out front.
A deep fear settled in me. Here I was, in the middle of the night, in a town I didn’t know. The only places I’d ever been in this town were the hospital and the airport. I was looking up the hospital’s address on my phone when I realized, no, Jake hadn’t been there anymore. That had been the whole point of his call. He hadn’t been able to get through at the hospital.
I had no idea where he was, or how to find him.
My head was throbbing. I don’t have time for another damn headache, I told myself. I have to find Jake. He needs me.
I should have taken some ibuprofen before I left the house. The headache had been sneaking around the corner of my attention for days. I’d been keeping it at bay, but it was just waiting for an opening, so it could pound the inside of my skull.
Like it was starting to do now.
Maybe you are more injured
than they realized.
There was no time for thinking like that. I had to find Jake.
“Okay, brain, problem-solving mode: On.”
When I was little and was given a hard task, I would pretend I could turn into a robot. Logical, emotionless, able to solve anything with my intelligent circuitry.
That’s because you spent your whole childhood being punished whenever you showed an emotion. Remember the science fair?
“I don’t want to remember the science fair right now,” I said. “I have a problem to solve. Beep boop.”
Once I thought about it for a minute, it was obvious. If he wasn’t here, and wasn’t at the hospital, he would have to be at either Marcia’s or his father’s house. Right? And we could safely drop the idea of him being at Marcia’s because if he’d gone to her for comfort in the middle of the night while turning me away…well, he wouldn’t. There was no sense in being jealous about it, because that’s what drama people do, and I refuse drama.
So he had to be at his dad’s. His pop’s. Beep boop.
It wasn’t hard to find the address. My phone drew a blue line from where I was standing, to a neighborhood a little under a mile away.
It’s just that, as I was walking, the headache came back. A car passed by, and its headlights seemed so intense, so bright, that it was like lasers shining into my eyes, like an explosion happening right in front of me.
I had to take a second to rest.
Wouldn’t it be funny if a lot of the crazy emotions of the last few days were because of a concussion?
No, brain. No, it really wouldn’t be funny. I had to keep moving.
If I can climb a mountain, I can walk a mile to find Jake.
It wasn’t even the cut on my forehead that hurt. It always made itself known in its own way, mostly by itching; I really wanted to scratch those stitches. But this was something deeper, something that seemed to coincide with my pulse. Pound, pound, pound.
“If I die out here, Jake, I hope you realize it was because I love you. Because I wanted to build something real with you, and not let it get swept away just because shit is complicated. The only way we’re going to survive is by communicating.”
Another car passed, and its lights seemed to scream in my skull. As it roared by, the world trembled, the road buckling beneath me. Out of the corner of my eye I could see a great light, like a new sun had opened up in the midnight sky. All hail the new sun, I thought, before losing my balance.
I was like a plane losing power, falling through the sky, my wings, my arms, unable to sustain me in the air. The road rushed up at me like a mountain. And look, here came another car.
I felt so distant from it all. I was falling into the road. Would I crash and explode, like the plane had? Would I burst into flames? The car was racing forward.
Goodbye, Jake. I honestly loved you, and meant to work all this out with you.
When my head hit the road, the world exploded into bright arc-light, like fireworks inside my head. It was beautiful, and I felt so distant from the world that had hurt me.
Such a strange feeling.
“Oh my god, Eli, is that you?”
This is how I knew I was dying. I could hear Jake’s voice calling to me from the distance. It was like having my life flash in front of my eyes, except with words I could hear, instead of anything I could see.
“Jesus, what happened, why are you here… Eli?”
I felt a hand take mine. A strong hand, strong like steel. Maybe it was a robot’s hand. Maybe after a lifetime of denying my emotions and trying to be logical, my reward was to be uploaded to Robot Heaven.
Robot Heaven was so quiet, so black. The opposite of that morning on the mountain, when the sunlight had engulfed us, when we had been flooded on every side by birdsong. So dark, so silent. So perfect.
Like being switched…off.
31
Jacob
The ER nurse looked at me sympathetically. “You keep bringing us patients, we’re going to have to give you an ambulance.”
“Please just help him,” I said, feeling breathless.
“You know we will, baby.”
“Can I go back with him?”
A raised eyebrow. “Now, are you family?”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I am his family.”
If I had taken my eyes off the road for a second, it could have been a tragedy. But I was tired, I was feeling weak from worrying about Pop, and so I was trying to drive as carefully as I could.
When I saw the man fall into the road, I thought, that guy looks like Eli, but that was ridiculous. Eli was back in the city. This guy was stumbling around like a drunk at first, before falling.
The truck tires screeched as I braked hard. I went up on the curb. Jumped out.
And there he was.
He’d been coming from the direction of my place, and I had the craziest idea that he had been trying to walk to Pop’s to find me. That was ridiculous, because Eli had no business being out here at all, not in his condition, and certainly not after our tense conversation earlier. He should be mad at me, not coming to see me.
“Jesus, what happened,” I’d said. “Why are you here… Eli?”
I squeezed his hand.
“Jake?” he said.
“Yeah, it’s me.”
He smiled, his eyes closed. “I saved you.”
“Concussions are tricky things,” said the doctor. “That’s why we say not to exercise, no TV, no stress. No wine. The only cure is rest.”
I looked down at Eli. They’d replaced his bandage, and dressed a scrape he’d gotten on the road, but he was still in his clothes, and looked…normal. Not at all the way Pop had looked with his tubes and machines.
He might have looked normal, but to my eyes, he was helpless as a kitten.
“Will he be okay?”
The doctor nodded. “When he had his scans last time he was here, we didn’t see any structural injuries. But he can’t go for walks right now. No exertion. Just rest. I know how you young men are. He was probably playing football the day he got out of the hospital.”
I almost laughed at that, the idea of Eli playing a sport…but then, since he’d injured his head in the crash, he’d climbed a mountain, pulled me off a cliff, and of course then there was all the sex.
Oh no, did I hurt your brain?
That did it. I laughed. I couldn’t help it anymore. The doctor looked skeptically at me, and I shook my head. “I’m sorry…hah…it’s just, it has been a hell of a time for us.” I couldn’t say anymore, doubled over with laughing that might have been mixed with crying.
Eli stirred in the bed, a smile creeping across his face. He drowsily opened his eyes. “What did I miss?”
“There was this kid named Benjamin,” Eli told me. “The bully of our school. Everybody’s got one, right? One kid who makes your life hell. Ours was Benjamin. He was giving me a hard time at our science fair one year. I was so proud of myself. I’d made a project about robots. See? Even then, I loved them.”
It was seriously late at this point. I’d already texted my boss to tell him I couldn’t come in to work the next day. By the time we got done with paperwork in the ER, it was nearly three in the morning.
Now I was taking him home. To my home. I wasn’t supposed to let him sleep for a while, just keep an eye on him.
“Amanda was there,” he continued, “and she wouldn’t stand for it. She gave that boy hell. Let me tell you, as her little brother, I knew how hard she could throw a punch. And she hit him! I was in shock when it happened. He was yelling at us both, then she swung on him!
“I think we were both thinking that would be the end of the fight. Isn’t that what everyone always says, that bullies are cowards deep down, and if you stand up to them, they’ll go away?
“But Benjamin wasn’t going away. He was furious. He looked at her. He didn’t say anything. No more threats, just a deep, silent hatred. It didn’t stay silent for long. With a deep bellow, he swung his fist a
t her.”
“At Amanda? He was going to hit your sister?”
“When I was saving you from the cliff, I felt like my mind suddenly switched into a different gear. One minute I was afraid, panicked, unable to think. Then the next minute, everything was clear. Like the world had slowed down, giving me time to calculate. That’s how it was at the science fair. I could see his fist. I could almost see the air swirling around it, as it cut through the atmosphere, aiming towards her. I felt outside of myself. I reached over and pushed her out of the way. That fist just kept coming, like he couldn’t slow down, like he couldn’t pull it back. He fell. Right in the middle of a circle of kids who were cheering for a fight, he fell flat on his fucking face.”
I looked over at him. “You saved the day.”
He nodded, then winced and touched his forehead. “Yup. Funny how that keeps happening.”
“You came to save me, tonight.”
“Your dad is sick, and you’re sad. Of course I came to save you. That’s what I’m here for. I’m your boyfriend.”
I was so exhausted, I didn’t know that I had any more room for emotion left in my heart.
And yet, I did.
There was still room for love.
“I always think of love as a one-way thing,” I said. “Like…you have to take care of people. That’s love.”
“But it’s not like that,” Eli said. “You have to receive it, too. You have to let other people take care of you. It has to be both.”
“I’m starting to realize that,” I said.
“This is it?” he asked, his eyes wide. “This is the book?”
He was on my couch, and all the lights were on, and a pot of coffee was going in the kitchen.
“When I was talking to Pop, I’d gone over there to come out to him,” I said. “I thought I’d get it out in the open, once and for all. But he turned out to be so sick, I couldn’t. But then he seemed to say he already knew.”
