The Best of Friends

by Berry, Lucinda

  “You’re going to be okay,” I whisper in his ear. “I promise. Tomorrow is the next step in your healing.”

  EIGHT

  DANI

  Bryan grabs me as soon as I walk into our house after my visit with Lindsey at the hospital. I was hoping he’d be asleep by the time I got home since it’s so late, and I quickly hide my disappointment before he notices.

  “What did she say?” he asks as I slip my shoes off and set them next to the other disgruntled pairs lining the entryway. “I want to know everything.”

  “Be quiet,” I whisper. “You’re going to wake the kids.”

  He snorts. “Nobody’s up.”

  Caleb might be, but I don’t say that to him. I smell the whiskey on his breath, which means I can’t ask if he checked on him either. He stands in front of me in the entryway, blocking the hallway with his body, his muscular chest puffed out. His eyes meet mine with a menacing challenge. I remind myself what the marriage therapist said at our last session about assertive communication.

  “Bryan, I feel like now might not be the best time to talk about this because it’s so late, and we’re both tired.” Did I sound confident? Keep the focus on my needs and what I wanted?

  He makes a dramatic production of bowing and moving to the side so that I can walk past him. I step around him, wishing it were this easy, but I can tell from the way he stands with his arms crossed on his chest that he’s not finished with me yet. I hurry upstairs, hoping he waits to corner me until after I’ve checked on Caleb.

  His door is still cracked the way I left it earlier, and I peek through the opening. The night-light casts a strange glow on his long body sprawled across the bed. His sheets are tangled around him like he’s been wrestling in his sleep. His eyes are closed, and he looks like he’s sleeping, but it’s hard to tell. I told him fake sleeping works the same as real sleeping because it relaxes your body, so that’s what he’s been doing for the past two nights. I don’t know if it’s true, but it made him feel better, and that’s all I care about.

  How does Bryan expect any of us to sleep in this house after someone died in it? When we left the emergency room that night, we weren’t allowed to step foot in our house because it was an active crime scene investigation, but that was totally fine with me because I didn’t want to go anywhere near it. I assumed we’d never go back inside. After all, Caleb’s best friend had died there, and how could we do that to him? It never occurred to me that Bryan and I wouldn’t be on the same page about something so obvious.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said when I brought up selling the house and moving. He talked about cleaning it up like the blood was Kool-Aid one of the kids had accidentally spilled on the floor.

  They actually have businesses that specialize in cleaning up crime scenes, and he hired a blood-removal company once the investigation was complete. We walked into a house that was disturbingly clean, as if nothing had ever happened. It sparkled more than the day we’d moved in. There wasn’t a trace of anything except the smell of their antiseptic and heavy-duty cleaners.

  It doesn’t matter how pretty or pristine things look, though. Nothing changes the fact that Sawyer died in our house. I feel it every second that I’m here. I see a puddle of his blood spilled on the wooden floor like flashbacks from an event I never experienced. I can’t imagine what it’s like for Caleb. His trauma psychologist, Gillian, is usually so good at keeping a neutral face, but even she couldn’t hide her disapproval when Bryan announced he planned to take Caleb home when he was ready for discharge.

  I shut Caleb’s door and head to the master bedroom at the end of the hallway, not bothering to check on Luna. Bryan’s perched on our king-size bed waiting for me. His chiseled face is shaved and as wrinkle-free as it was in college when we met junior year. Back then, his Spanish accent was the most exotic thing I’d ever heard. It has lost its charm over the years now that I know he can turn it on and off whenever he chooses. I avoid eye contact and move into the bathroom, grabbing my pajamas from the hook on the back of the door. His stare pierces me from behind as I undress and slip them on without turning around. I draw out washing my face and brushing my teeth for as long as I can until I’m left with no choice but to turn around.

  “So?” He pounces immediately. “Are they getting a lawyer too?”

  “She didn’t say.” I take the decorative pillows from my side of the bed and carry them to the window seat, where I stack them in their designated spots. “She asked if we planned on having Ted there when the detectives spoke to Caleb and Luna.”

  “And you told her yes?”

  I grab the pillows from his side and bring them to join the others, holding my breath as I pass in front of him and letting it out when he doesn’t grab me. He’s tired too. Good. “I told her that we didn’t know.”

  “Why would you do that?” He narrows his eyes to slits.

  Because I don’t want her to hate me, but I can’t tell him that. Instead I shrug and sheepishly look away. Lindsey pretends our situations are the same, like we’re both waiting for our children to talk, but they’re not. Everybody feels sorry for Jacob, and they feel even sorrier for Lindsey the more she refuses to accept the doctor’s grave prognosis for Jacob’s recovery, but they don’t have the same level of sympathy for Caleb or me. It doesn’t help that his fingerprints are all over the gun. And it’s our gun. Bryan won’t let me forget that. Neither did Detective Locke. That was clear in the way he called out to us as we followed Ted out of his office earlier.

  “Did you know that kids over fourteen who commit firearm crimes in the state of California are almost always charged as adults?” he asked. “How old did you say Caleb was again?” He knows exactly how old Caleb is, as well as what he ate in the cafeteria on that awful day. Even though they waited to interview us, they talked to plenty of other people about us.

  Bryan started to say something, but Ted hurried us out the door before he had a chance to finish. Ted swore Detective Locke was only trying to scare us, and if that was the case, he’d been successful. Caleb won’t survive jail. I never should’ve let the gun in the house.

  I didn’t grow up with guns, but Bryan did, and he was convinced we needed one for self-defense. He was raised on the South Side of Chicago, and despite the cul-de-sac nestling our two-story home in a gated community, he still acted like we lived in the kind of neighborhood where break-ins happen all the time. He kept it in a locked safe in our walk-in closet. I’ve always wondered how much protection it gives us being buried back there. By the time we got to the safe and worked the combination, wouldn’t the intruder already be on us? I mentioned it to Bryan once, and he laughed at me like I was being ridiculous.

  He wanted to keep it a secret from the kids, but there was no way I was having it in the house without them knowing about it. What if they stumbled on it when they were playing and thought it was a toy? At least I won that battle and we showed the kids the gun. Bryan stressed how important it was for our protection, while I focused on never touching or playing with it. We showed them the safe in the closet so they’d know where it was at all times. We never gave either of them the combination.

  Caleb has always been a genius with numbers and taking things apart. He spent hours dismantling his cars and trucks when he was a toddler. Once he took apart an old microwave Luna found in the garage. He was only eight.

  That’s how I know he’s the one who got the gun.

  What was he thinking? Why would he do something like that after all the times I’ve harped that guns aren’t toys? It’s those stupid video games he plays with his friends. All they do is shoot people, so he’s become totally desensitized to it. I hate those games.

  They’re the reason the boys were over here that night to begin with. Caleb got the latest version of some game they could only play on his Xbox. It was rare to have the three of them sleep over. When they were younger, they worked their way through all our homes in different rotations so we all had our equal share, but in the last
couple of years, they’ve spent most of their time at the Mitchells’. They pretend it’s because Sawyer has a better setup in his game room, but it’s because Kendra and Paul are rarely there, which makes their place a teenage paradise.

  Bryan interrupts my thoughts. “Ted is going to be here at eight so we can prepare Caleb and Luna for their interviews. I want them to have plenty of time to practice their responses. Let’s wake them at seven to make sure they’re fully cognizant and alert by the time Ted gets here.”

  He makes it sound like they’re taking their SATs in the morning. Caleb doesn’t know he’s going in front of Detective Locke tomorrow, even though I can’t imagine how that interview will go, since Caleb falls apart if you push him to talk about whatever’s locked inside him. He’s able to acknowledge questions nonverbally, and sometimes he’ll indicate responses in writing, but he stops all that once anything moves into uncomfortable territory. I planned on warning him about it when we got home this afternoon, but he was sleeping. Mom said he’d cried for three hours after we’d left. His anxiety pill had done nothing to calm him, and he’d finally fallen asleep out of sheer exhaustion; I didn’t want to wake him.

  I clear my throat and brace myself, preparing for the verbal assault that’s sure to follow what I’m about to say. “I’m not sure we should coach Luna. Maybe we should let her answer the questions by herself. Besides, it’s not like she’s been around much to know what’s happening.”

  Luna couldn’t be further removed from our family. She couldn’t wait to leave home and took college-preparation courses in high school so that she could graduate early. These are the first nights she’s slept here since she moved out a year ago. I couldn’t even get her to stay overnight at Christmas. Her disdain for me started when she was fourteen. Everyone assured me that it was only hormones and I’d get her back in a couple of years after they had leveled out, but she turns nineteen next month, and she’s never been more impenetrable.

  He scoffs at me. “Of course she needs to be prepared. We’re not going to let this incident ruin any of our lives.”

  My insides recoil like they’ve slammed into a wall. Incident? That’s what he’s calling this? One of Caleb’s best friends is dead, and the other one is in a coma. We step around their imaginary bodies in our family room. Caleb’s life will never be the same. Ever.

  “You’re right,” I say and plaster the good-wife smile on my face. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  NINE

  KENDRA

  “Can you at least come downstairs and try?” Paul asks as he stands in Sawyer’s doorway, unable to walk through it. He hates Sawyer’s bedroom and avoids it at all costs. I tried going downstairs and throwing something together for Reese to eat, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. The police station visit drained all my energy. I buried myself in Sawyer’s bed instead. That’s how Paul found me a few minutes ago.

  I shake my head. “I can’t. I’m sorry. I already tried.”

  Please go. Why won’t he just leave?

  “Try again.” His voice is strained, pinched.

  Last night he hinted that I don’t think his grief is comparable to mine, as if we’re in some disgusting competition about whose pain is the greatest. I’ve never wanted to choke him as much as I did in that moment. I’ve barely cooled off. Clearly, he’s in the same boat.

  “Just fix him toast. It’s way too late for him to be eating anything heavy anyway.” I roll over, turning my back to him.

  “That’s not the point. He needs you. He needs to spend time with you.” He shuffles back and forth. He’s reached his limit. Too much time surrounded by Sawyer’s things suffocates him.

  “I know that,” I say, not trying to keep the irritation out of my voice.

  He doesn’t bother turning around as he grabs the door and shuts it behind him.

  Finally.

  I pull out Sawyer’s phone from underneath the covers and type in his pass code. The detectives took it for evidence the night of the accident and only gave it back to us three days ago. I’ve been carrying it with me ever since. I won’t even let Paul hang on to it just in case he misplaces it or loses it somehow.

  There were 817 unread text messages from after his death, and I answered them all. Even the broken-hearted emoji ones that made me want to slam the phone against the wall. Nobody texts anymore. I miss the notification sounds.

  I’ve started going through his videos, but there are so many it’s going to take forever. His goofy, crooked smile illuminates each one. Sometimes I watch to be near him, and other times I watch for clues about what happened. Lindsey and Dani are convinced it was a horrible accident, but I’m not so sure. A gun that accidentally went off? Not just once but twice? You can accidentally shoot yourself in the head—it wouldn’t be the first time a kid has done something stupid like that—but how do you shoot yourself in the stomach? That’s where they shot Sawyer, or where he shot himself, depending on whose story you believe, but none of it makes sense.

  So far, there’s not much I haven’t seen before, since I go through his phone on a regular basis. Girls were my biggest concern three weeks ago. His athletic scholarship was so close to being finalized, and I’ve been paranoid about him getting someone pregnant his senior year and ruining it all. It’s a pointless worry, but it happens all the time. It happened to Jimmy Krueger, and everyone thought he was bound for the pros. Girls have been after Sawyer since ninth grade, and their attention only increased once the college scouts started showing up at his soccer games.

  Sawyer and Jacob were an amazing team on the soccer field. Jacob played center forward, and Sawyer was a striker. They functioned as a pair. A beautifully choreographed pair—that’s what the Post Tribune called them in the article they did earlier this year. Their competitive streak was clear from their first practice, when they got into my Voyager ruffled and upset after learning the referees didn’t keep score at their games. They were appalled at the coach’s suggestion that there weren’t any winners or losers.

  “Mommy, why do we play if nobody wins?” Sawyer’s small voice called out from the third row. I always made him ride back there whenever we had friends in the car.

  “Because then it’s just for fun,” I said, sounding like the pamphlet they’d sent home with all the kids before practice. Their website stressed noncompetitive play. It seemed a bit much, and I tended to agree with Sawyer, but it was best to always maintain a united front with the other adults in his life. I learned that the hard way.

  “That’s dumb,” he said.

  “Yeah, so stupid,” Jacob said, slurring all his s’s. He’d start speech therapy next week. Lindsey’s pediatrician had made her wait until he was four—stressing lots of kids caught up by then. Lindsey made the appointment the day after his fourth birthday, when nothing had changed.

  “Dumb. Dumb. Dumb,” Sawyer piped up.

  “Hey, you guys, settle down,” I said. In another thirty seconds, they’d be shrieking at the top of their lungs, and I couldn’t handle it. Not when I had a throbbing headache.

  My eyes mist at the memory. I force myself to focus. Recenter.

  “Sawyer, talk to me,” I whisper to his phone. I hold his world in my hand. There’s got to be a clue in it, and I won’t stop until I find it. I just wish I knew what to look for.

  Detective Locke said it’d be easier for the kids and make them feel less intimidated if he interviewed them at their homes. I jumped at the opportunity because I can’t stand leaving the house. I don’t know about Lindsey and Dani. I’ve been ignoring their texts and calls. Doubt creeps into my decision as I watch technicians wheel more audiovisual equipment into our living room. It feels so invasive. Reese grinned at me like he was about to go on TV while they hooked a microphone to his shirt, and he’s been sitting in the same position on the couch, looking starstruck, while Detective Locke drills him with questions.

  He isn’t getting anywhere with Reese, but that’s what I expected. Reese has no clue what’s going on
in Sawyer’s life or in any of his friends’. Sawyer, Jacob, and Caleb don’t have any room for Reese in their trio. There’s only a two-year gap between the oldest, Jacob, and Reese, but it never mattered. It might as well have been decades separating them. The boys used to take turns paying Reese not to play with them.

  I wanted to be angry with them, but I didn’t blame them for excluding Reese. I love him, but he doesn’t play well with others, even me, and I’m his mother. Things always have to be his way, and he gets mad if they’re not, which doesn’t make him an easy person to deal with. It doesn’t help that he’s socially awkward and blurts out whatever comes to his mind at any given moment.

  “Did Sawyer confide in you about things going on in his life?” Detective Locke asks. He’s been asking the same thing for the past hour, just in slightly different ways—Do you and Sawyer tell each other your secrets? Has anyone ever told you anything and asked you not to tell?—like he expects to trip up Reese eventually.

  Reese shakes his huge head back and forth. His head has been off-the-charts big since birth. His former pediatrician told me some kids have their adult-size heads by the time they’re five, but Reese surpassed that years ago. His large head only makes his skinny body appear smaller. Emaciated—that’s how his current pediatrician referred to him at his last well-child visit. He’s as picky about food as he is people.

  Sawyer spoiled me by being a perfect baby because I assumed his good nature was about me being a good mother.

  And then I had Reese.

  He stubbornly refused to come into the world when it was time, and my labor had to be induced. Within hours, he tied my umbilical cord in knots, and my doctor performed an emergency cesarean section. He came out screaming and didn’t stop wailing for the next two months. Beauty and the Beast. That’s what I called them during those grueling days when I was at home with a baby and a toddler. Only to Paul. Never to them. Except now Beauty is gone. There’s only Beast.