“She’ll do that?”
“If I ask, yeah. But don’t be surprised if you have to make a few stops beforehand.”
I shrugged my left shoulder.
He shrugged his right.
We watched Erika destroy the house, before she put it together again, and I wondered the whole time if I was really strong enough to face my past again. I didn’t know how it would feel, coming face to face with Ma.
I didn’t know how strong I was.
21
Alyssa
“Logan?” I whispered, knocking on his bedroom door. He’d been in his room for the past thirty minutes, and I could only imagine where his mind was traveling to after finding out about Kellan’s cancer. I listened to him moving around the room before the door opened. He sniffled a little and ran his hand over his face before narrowing his eyes at me.
“Yeah?”
His eyes were red and slightly puffy. I wanted to reach out to him and wrap my arms around him, pulling him in closer to me, apologizing for his hurts and suffering.
You were crying.
“I just wanted to check in and see how you were doing,” I softly spoke.
“I’m fine.”
I stepped into the doorway a little, growing closer to him, knowing he was far from fine. Kellan was Logan’s world. When he left for Iowa, he only kept in contact with his brother. When he ignored all of my calls, he answered every single one of Kellan’s.
“You’re not okay.”
“I am,” he nodded, a cold stare in his eyes. “I’m fine. I’m not gonna fall apart and shit, Alyssa. People get cancer every day. And people beat cancer every day. He’s fine. I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”
Any normal person would’ve missed it, the small tremble in his bottom lip, but not me. I saw it, the way his heart was currently inflamed with pain. “Lo, come on. It’s me. You can talk to me.”
“And who are you to me, exactly?” he hissed, a bitterness coming through his tone. “How long did you know? How long did you know he was sick?”
My lips parted, but he kept talking.
“So you did know? One thousand and ninety messages, Alyssa. You left me one thousand and ninety messages. You called my phone one thousand and ninety times, but you couldn’t take the time to call and leave just one message telling me my brother had cancer, the same cancer that killed our grandfather?” he hissed, lifting his hand and grabbing his doorknob. He slammed the door shut, and I wasn’t surprised. Everything he said was harsh, but it wasn’t untrue. I did know about Kellan’s cancer for a while, but it wasn’t my place to say anything. Kellan made me swear that I wouldn’t.
My fingers landed against the door, and I closed my eyes. “I live at the last house on the corner of Cherry Street and Wicker Avenue. It’s a yellow house with a piano shaped flower pot on the front porch. You can stop by if you need to, Logan. If you need to talk to someone. You can come whenever, anytime you need to.”
The door swung open, and I gasped lightly as he stepped forward, hovering over me. His face was hard, and where reddened eyes once existed moments ago, they were replaced by an angered stare. “What don’t you fucking get?” he hissed. He stepped toward me as I stepped back. We kept this up until my back was against the hallway wall, and his body was inches away from mine. Our mouths were so close that if I leaned in, I could’ve felt the lips I used to always want against mine. His words fell from his tongue, stabbing me with each syllable. “I don’t need you, Alyssa. I. Don’t. Need. You. So if you could do me the favor and stop acting like we are friends, that would be great. Because we aren’t. We will never be friends again. I don’t need you. And I don’t need your fucking supportive shoulder.”
He walked back to his room and shut the door. I took a few deep inhales, my nerves shaken. My heart hadn’t stopped pounding destructively against my chest as I walked to the living room to grab my jacket and toss on my tennis shoes.
Who was that?
That wasn’t the same boy I knew so many years ago. He wasn’t my best friend.
He felt like a complete stranger to me.
“Are you okay?” Erika asked, frowning my way.
I shrugged my shoulders. “Can you just be a bit easy on him, Erika?”
“Seriously?” she huffed annoyed. “He just snapped at you, literally snapped. And you are asking me to be easy on him? I am two seconds away from telling him to get the heck out of my house.”
“No,” I quickly said, shaking my head. “No. Don’t. He’s going through a lot. I mean, I couldn’t even imagine… If it were you…” My words faded. I wasn’t sure how I’d handle finding out that my sister had cancer. “Just give him a break.”
Her posture eased up. “Okay.” She gave me a hug and whispered. “It’s okay for you to keep your distance from him, Aly. You know that right? I know seeing him again has to be hurting you.”
“It’s fine.” I shifted my feet around and shrugged. “I’m fine with it.”
“Yeah, but it might just be better to keep a safe distance. For both of your hearts.” I agreed. Besides, I didn’t see him finding his way to me anytime soon.
22
Logan
My back stayed against the bedroom door until I heard Alyssa leave. Pushing her away was going to be tough with me staying around town, because such a big part of me always wanted to pull her closer to me.
I sat in my bedroom on my cell phone, with my web browser opened, searching for information about colon cancer. My eyes danced across page after page of information, filling me up with more panic than I’d thought I could handle. For a while I read story after story of survivors, but then somehow I traveled into the dark world of the internet where the stories of those who passed away quickly from colon cancer existed.
I found natural remedies. I found common lies. My eyes stayed open until the sun came up, sending the light through my window.
As my eyes grew as heavy as my heart, I shut off my phone.
The only thing I learned that night was that WebMD was the devil, and Kellan probably wouldn’t make it through the night.
I pulled out a cigarette and lit it with my lighter. I opened the window, sat the cigarette on the ledge, and allowed myself those few moments to hurt.
23
Logan
Doctor James Petterson’s office was cold. Colder than it needed to be. Sure, outside it was probably near the nineties—which was hot for Wisconsin weather—but there was no need for it to be an ice cube in his room. James—or Toothpick Jimmy (TJ) as everyone around town called him because of his tall, skinny body—was the only doctor I’d ever known and trusted. He didn’t seem like a normal doctor, though. Half the time I wondered if TJ was even a real doctor or if he got bored one Saturday night, bought a stethoscope, put on a white coat, and never took it off. He lived in the apartment right above his office, too.
His office even looked like it was a fake doctor’s office. On the mantel behind his desk was a huge deer head that he swore he shot down with his eyes closed years ago. Beside the deer head was what was supposed to be a black bear’s fur, but really it was just a rug he probably found from Walmart on clearance. He pushed the story of how he killed the bear with a beer can in his right hand and a shotgun in his left.
On the corner of his desk, TJ had a jar of jelly beans along with black licorice sitting on the right side.
It blew my mind that a doctor was pushing candy into the faces of his patients so much, but for TJ it made sense, seeing how his wife Effie was one of the town’s few dentists and she was always looking for new patients.
TJ and his wife should’ve used more common sense when picking out the candy though, because nobody in their right mind ate black licorice.
I crossed my arms, pressing them against my body for heat. Shit. I was freezing. My eyes moved to the chair right beside me where Kellan sat.
When I looked up to TJ I saw his lips were still moving pretty quickly. He kept explaining the situation over and over again. A
t least that’s what I thought he was doing. I couldn’t be certain though, because I wasn’t listening anymore.
I didn’t know the exact moment when I stopped hearing the words flying from his tongue, but for the past five or ten minutes I was simply watching his mouth move. Meaningless sounds flowing from his lips.
My hands gripped the side of my chair and I held on tight.
The shock was the worst part, not knowing if I should laugh or cry at the diagnosis. Not knowing if I should get pissed and punch a wall. Not knowing how long I had left with my brother. The overwhelming feeling of isolation took my breaths. The panicked heartbeats that rolled through my system were terrifying, yet not unfamiliar. The fear and anger made each moment unbearable.
“Logan,” TJ said, pulling me back into the conversation. “This isn’t the end for your brother. He’s working with the best doctors in the state. He’s getting the best treatment out there.”
Kellan brushed his fingers against his neck and nodded his head. “This isn’t the end for me, Logan. It’s just a hiccup.” His head nodding paired with his word choice, confused me. If it wasn’t the end, wouldn’t he shake his head instead of nodding?
My right hand brushed against my cheek and I cleared my throat. “We need a second opinion.” I started pacing the small patio porch and my hands raced through my hair. “And then we want a third opinion. And a fourth.”
That’s what people did, right? Searched for an answer that was more pleasant? More promising?
We needed a better answer.
“Logan…” TJ grimaced. “Getting second opinions will only slow us down. We are already attacking this head on, and we are hopeful—”
It happened again. I stopped listening.
The rest of the meeting continued, but I didn’t say another word. There wasn’t anything to say anymore.
Kellan and I drove in silence the whole way back to his house, and my mind wouldn’t shut up, replaying the word cancer over and over again.
My brother, my hero, my best friend had cancer.
And I could no longer breathe.
When Kellan told me that Erika wanted to stop somewhere before she dropped me off at Ma’s, I wouldn’t have imagined us sitting in aisle five of a store for over twenty minutes. It had been a full day since Logan told me the news about his health, and I only thought about using drugs every minute to cope—which was better than every second. Erika had a different kind of addiction that helped her cope with stress, though, called Pottery Barn.
“How long are we going to be here?” I asked Erika, as we stood in front of a display of overpriced plates. We’d been standing there for at least twenty minutes, as she contemplated which new sets of plates to pick up, seeing as how she broke pretty much all of the china in their house.
“Will you hush,” she ordered, her arms crossed, her eyes narrowed, and her mind obviously still completely insane. “This takes time.”
“Not really.” I gestured toward a set. “Look. Plates. Oh, look, more plates. Gee, what do we have here, Erika? Why, I think it’s plates.”
“Why do you have to be so difficult all the time? I was really hoping over these five years that you would’ve grown up a bit.”
“Sorry to disappoint. But seriously, can we get going?”
She gave me an annoyed look. “Why are you in such a rush to go see your mother anyway? You’ve been gone five years, leaving Kellan to handle everything. He had to be there when she fell apart, and you didn’t even check in on her. You never called her or anything, so why now?”
“Because my brother has cancer, my mother’s an addict, and I feel like a shit son and brother for leaving and never coming back. Is that what you want to hear, Erika? I get it, I’m a fuck up. But if you could honestly just take two seconds to stop throwing it in my face, that would be really freaking nice.”
She huffed once, rocking back and forth in her heels. Her stare turned from me, to the plates before us, and we went back to our silence.
Five minutes. Ten minutes. Fifteen-fucking-minutes.
“That one,” she nodded, pointing in front of her. “I’ll take that one. Grab two sets, Logan.”
Turning on her heels, she headed off in the direction of the cashier, leaving me flabbergasted. “Why am I getting two sets?!” I shouted. She didn’t bother to answer me, she just hurried off.
Juggling the two sets in my arms, I staggered to the front of the shop, setting the boxes down in front of the cashier. Erika and I remained quiet until the cashier told us the final pricing of the plates.
“One hundred and eight dollars, and twenty-three cents.”
“You have got to be shitting me,” I choked out. “You’re going to pay over one hundred bucks for plates?”
“That’s none of your business what I do with my money.”
“Yeah, but come on, Erika. You could easily buy some cheap plates from a dollar store or something, seeing how you’ll probably break them tomorrow anyway.”
“I don’t question what Kellan spends his money on, or should I say who he spends it on. So I’d rather you not question my spending choices.”
“You knew Kellan was giving me money?”
“Of course I knew, Logan. If there’s one thing Kellan is, it’s a bad liar. I don’t care that he’s giving you the money, but,” she sighed, and her eyes softened as she turned my way. For the first time since I returned, she looked defeated. “Don’t let him down, Logan. He’s tired. He won’t act like he is, but he is. He’s exhausted. You being back here makes him happy. You’re good for him right now. Just stay good, okay? Please don’t let him down.”
“I swear I’m not using, Erika. That’s not just some bullshit that I’ve been saying. I really am clean.” We each grabbed a box and walked to her car, putting them in the trunk before we hopped into the car and she started driving to Ma’s apartment.
She nodded. “I believe you. But, we are about to go see your mom, and I know how much a trigger she was for you.”
“I’m not the same kid I was.”
“Yeah. I hear you. But trust me. Your mom is the same person she was back then. Sometimes I think people don’t really change.”
“They do,” I said. “If they’re given a chance, people can change.”
She swallowed hard. “I hope you’re right.”
The moment we made it to Ma’s, I asked Erika if she was coming up, and she declined, looking around. “I’ll stay here.”
“It’s safer inside.”
“No. It’s fine. I don’t do too good seeing…that kind of lifestyle.”
I didn’t blame her. “I’ll be down in a few.” My eyes darted around the darkened streets, and I saw a few people hanging out on the street corners, just like when I was a kid. Maybe Erika was somewhat right. Maybe some people, things, and places never changed.
But I had to hope that some did.
Otherwise, what exactly was I doing with myself?
“Just don’t take forever, okay? Kellan’s show is starting in forty-five minutes.” Erika said.
“I guess we shouldn’t have spent like two hours standing in front of plates, huh?”
She flipped me off. A term of endearment, I bet. “I’ll be out fast. Are you okay out here?”
“I’m fine. Just hurry.”
“Hey, Erika?” I said, climbing out of the car.
“Yeah?” My eyes once again glanced to the people on the corners, looking our way.
“Lock your doors.”
I didn’t know what I was walking into. I knew it would be bad, but I guess I didn’t know how bad off Ma was. Kellan always kept those conversations short, telling me that I had to worry about making myself better instead of me worrying about making sure Ma was good.
Now it was his turn to take his own advice.
But that meant that someone had to step up and check in on her, and it had to be me. And I couldn’t let Kellan down when he needed me the most.
The front door was unlocked, which worrie
d me enough to make my gut tighten. The apartment was completely trashed with beer cans, vodka bottles, empty pill bottles, and dirty clothes all over the place.
“Jesus, Ma…” I murmured to myself, somewhat shocked.
The same broken-down couch set in front of the same disgusting coffee table. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t spot the baggie of coke on the table.
I snapped my bracelet.
Just breathe.
“Get off!” I heard screamed from the kitchen, Ma’s voice loud and fearful. My heart dropped to my stomach and I was back in hell. I hurried into the room, ready to tear my father away from her, knowing that whenever she screamed, his fists were finding their way to her soul.
But when I stepped into the room, she was alone, having a panic attack. She aggressively scratched at her skin causing it to turn red. “Get off of me! Get off of me!” She hollered louder and louder.
I held my hands up and walked in her direction. “Ma. What are you doing?”
“They’re all over me!” she screamed.
“What’s all over you?”
“The roaches! They are everywhere! The roaches are all over me. Help me Kellan! Get this shit off of me!”
“It’s me, Ma. Logan.”
Her dull eyes looked up in my direction and for a split second, she reminded me of Sober Ma.
Then she began to scratch again.
“All right, all right. Come on. Let’s get you a shower. Okay?”
After a little work, I got her to sit inside of the bathtub as the shower rained over her. She kept scrubbing her skin as I sat on top of the closed toilet lid.
“Kellan told me you were going to cut back on using, Ma.”
“Yeah.” She nodded rapidly. “Definitely. Definitely. Kellan offered to send me off to rehab, but I don’t know. I can do it on my own. Plus, that stuff costs a lot of money.” She locked eyes with me and smiled, holding her hands out to me. “You came home. I knew you’d come home. Your father said you wouldn’t, but I knew.”
The Elements Series Complete Box Set Page 41
