Maybe he was right. I had no idea how to put him back together. I gripped the bench and tried not to cry. Harris and I had been best friends since third grade. He was the big brother I’d never had, and up until a month ago, he’d been the person who knew me better than anyone, and now I didn’t know if I’d lost him or not.
I walked back up the hill to my car, dejected and helpless, and sat in the driver’s seat with the door open, my head pressed into the seat while cars drove past on the road beside me. I pulled out my phone to check the time and realized that it was still turned off. It had been off that whole time. I turned it back on and called Lily.
“Hey,” I said when she picked up. “I’m on my way home, I promise. It’s a long story, but I—”
“Thank God. Where the hell have you been?”
I tucked my phone into my shoulder to start the car. “What are talking about? I’ve been in Salem.”
“Yeah, and not answering your phone. Michael and I have been trying to get in touch with you for hours.”
“Michael? Why? What’s going on?” I felt dread travel from the back of my neck to my fingertips as I pulled onto the road.
“His mother is in the hospital. It seems like it could be serious. I didn’t tell him where you were, but he’s been trying to reach you. He called me a few times to see if I could get ahold of you.”
I pressed harder on the gas pedal, sending the car rocketing toward the highway. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“You should probably go straight to the hospital.”
Nineteen
It took me forever to find Michael once I was at the hospital. I called him a few times when I got close, but his cell phone went straight to voice mail. I finally got his mom’s information, but she was in the ICU and I wasn’t allowed anywhere near her. There was no one in the waiting room, and I sat out there, listening to the hum of the coffee machine and the sound of the toilet flushing somewhere down the hall, for what felt like forever. It was cold, and I sat in a chair, rocking back and forth to keep myself warm and awake.
Finally, somewhere around two in the morning, a door opened, and Michael came into the waiting room. He was looking around, probably trying to find the bathroom I’d been listening to all night, when his unfocused eyes landed on me. He stopped walking, and the hand that he’d been using to rub his sleepy eyes fell to his side.
I moved toward him, crossing the room to put my arms around him, and I was amazed at how warm and soft he was. I wanted to keep him there and pretend that everything else didn’t exist. I wanted to pretend that the last twenty-four hours hadn’t happened. He was the only good thing left.
He said my name softly, and I felt him pushing me, his hands on my upper arms, until they fell away.
“How’s your mom?”
He didn’t quite look me in the eye, his gaze moving over my head and down at the floor. “She’s not doing so great. One of her lungs collapsed, and they’re having to drain fluid again. Things are really tricky right now.”
“I’m sorry.”
He nodded, still not looking at me.
And then he did. He met my eye, and I knew what was coming before it was out of his mouth. “Where were you? I killed my battery trying to get ahold of you.”
“My phone was off. I forgot I turned it off.”
“You went to Salem, didn’t you? After you said you wouldn’t?”
I stared at him. I could feel something bad coming, like you do getting ready to walk into the dentist’s office when the ache has already become unbearable. I didn’t say anything. He knew, and I knew, and there was no point in confirming what was already out in the open for everyone to see.
He shook his head. “Of course. You’ve lied to everyone else. Why should I assume you wouldn’t lie to me?”
“That’s not fair.” I crossed my arms, suddenly very thankful for the distance he’d put between us.
“I don’t really care what you think is fair right now.”
I closed my eyes against the anger in his voice. It had never been directed at me before, and even though I knew I probably deserved it, it hurt anyway—a sickness that burrowed down deep until I thought I might scream.
“My mother is in the other room fighting for her life, and I needed my girlfriend here with me.”
My eyes came back open, and he was looking at me with harsh accusation. “I had to go. You would have done the same thing.”
“And did it work out for you?”
I was still trying to figure out what I was going to tell him when he spoke again.
“You should go home.”
“But—”
“You can’t come in to see my mom anyway. Family only. So you should just go.”
I stepped toward him, putting out my arms. I wanted to hold him again. I wanted everything to be okay. I wanted to sleep in this waiting room if it meant I was closer to him. But he put up his hands. “I think I just need some time alone.”
“Michael, please. I want to stay with you.” I tried to keep my voice steady when I just wanted to cry.
He shook his head, looked up at the fluorescent light above us, and his skin looked translucent beneath it. He didn’t need to say anything else.
“Okay.” I could feel it coming on, like a cold. “I’ll call you later today.”
“I don’t think you should call me.”
The tears stopped. What hit me then was worse than tears. It was panic and hurt and … nothing. All of a sudden, my body and brain were numb. I didn’t know what to say. He had been mine for two weeks, and that was all it had taken for me to screw it all up.
He wasn’t even looking at me. His eyes were everywhere but my face, but I didn’t want to look away from his because I’d already lost so many people—Dad, Patrice, Marisol, Harris—and I didn’t want to lose him, too. But he still wouldn’t look at me.
“Okay.” I turned and left slowly, hoping maybe he would come after me and beg me to stay. But he didn’t.
* * *
When I woke up, the sun was shining afternoon bright through my bedroom windows. I was still in my clothes, on top of my blanket, and I smelled like hospital. My clock said it was well into the day, almost two in the afternoon, and I’d slept straight through.
I checked my phone, hoping that Michael had decided to call, but he hadn’t. I considered staying in bed for the rest of the day. And then I considered going back to the hospital. Michael had been upset. What if I just went back to make sure that he was okay? I wouldn’t mention our relationship or how much I desperately needed him. I could just see if his mom was doing any better.
When I walked into the living room, where Mom and Lily were watching TV, I knew something was wrong. My mother muted the TV. I wasn’t sure how, but they knew what happened last night. They knew that Michael had broken up with me, if that was what he’d done, and based on the way they were looking at me, they knew just how pathetic I was over it.
“Do you know if Michael came home at all this morning?” I asked them. “Have you heard anything about his mom?”
My sister and mother looked at each other. I hadn’t realized until then that they were both in their pajamas.
“Sweetie,” my mom finally said, apparently after they’d exchanged some sort of silent agreement. “Michael’s mother passed away this morning.”
All the air went out of my lungs. I sank down into the armchair. I thought of Michael’s mom: long hair and kind eyes and a bright smile. A woman who used to dance with her husband and laugh with her son. I felt something crack in my chest, and I didn’t know if it was for Harriet, for Michael, or for myself.
“Where’s Michael? Is he home?” I wasn’t sure how these things worked. I’d never lost someone close to me. I’d never lost someone I shared a home with. I started to get up out of the chair to go see him. He had to have gone home. Would he want to see me? Would I just make it worse? Selfishly, I was prepared to find out.
“Kate.” My moth
er got up off the couch to follow me to the door.
“What?”
“He’s gone. Michael’s gone.”
I had this horrible moment when I thought she meant he was dead, too. It took me looking at Lily, to seeing her wide eyes, to understand that that wasn’t what my mother had meant. “Where is he?”
“He’s in Vancouver. He didn’t even come home. His uncle came this morning to get Michael’s stuff. I only spoke to him for a minute.”
I heard what she was saying. I heard it very clearly, but I still walked to the door, I still put my hand on the knob. “He’s gone?” I’d never closely examined the odd color of our front door, somewhere between turquoise and honest-to-God green.
“He needs to be with people who can take care of him. He can’t stay here. He’s only seventeen.”
I wanted to scream at her, as if that was the most reasonable solution to this miserable situation, so instead I went into the hall and stared at his door. I pressed my forehead to it and remembered the way Michael had come out of it the first time we’d spoken to each other. It was silent inside. It felt like everything had changed, been turned on its head in the last ten minutes. I heard my mother come into the hallway, and I knew she was watching me, but I didn’t know what else to do, so I turned and walked away from her, away from our apartment, away from what used to be Michael’s home, away from everything.
I threw open the door to the roof, and I didn’t wait for it to close behind me as I rushed toward the pool, slipped my shoes off, and plunged in, jeans and all. I let the water close over me and listened to my pulse in my ears as I sank to the bottom. My body felt like a paperweight, sinking until my butt hit the floor.
I sat on my bed, my hands pressed to my ears, trying to block out the screaming. No matter how hard I pushed, I couldn’t seem to quiet them, only block out some words. But I could still make out most of it.
“You’re disgusting!” I heard my mother scream before I finally decided to leave. It felt like the house was going to shake to the ground around me, and maybe I would shake apart with it.
I could hear my breathing in my ears as I crept into the hallway. Even with my parents’ voices attempting to drown it out, every breath was loud in my own head.
“You gave up on us years ago,” my father shouted. “You think you can just paste on a smile and tell yourself it’s okay and that’s going to fix everything?”
I slammed my hands back over my ears and raced down the stairs, the lump that had settled in my throat hours before threatening to surface. I reached out for my mom’s keys, and with my hand away from one ear, I realized the fighting had stopped.
My hand dropped, my body hesitating for just a second. Maybe I’d imagined the whole thing. Maybe it hadn’t really happened. The house was so silent that I could imagine my mother in bed, reading a book, my father lacing up his tennis shoes for an evening run. For a heartbeat, everything felt normal.
And then their bedroom door flew open.
I lunged for the keys and had the door open by the time my dad made it down the stairs to me.
“Kate,” he said, the sound of his footsteps coming close. “Wait. We need to talk.”
I stepped out the door. I thought maybe if I just kept going, he would let me leave. I could walk away from him and go somewhere else to try to breathe. I unlocked the car with a little beep-beep, fully intending to leave the front door wide open if it meant getting away from him faster.
“I know you’re mad, but we need to talk about this.” I felt his hand curl around my upper arm, pulling me to a halt. “I didn’t intend to—”
I wrenched my arm from his grip and spun around to face him. I wanted to say so many things: that I hated him, that he was horrible, that I regretted every second I’d spent looking up to him, trying to make him proud. But I couldn’t say anything.
He was standing there, his mouth hanging open, his hand still stretched out toward me, and I couldn’t say anything. I backed away from him until my legs hit the car’s front bumper. He stood there until I got into the car and drove away—a figure in the open doorway with nothing to say.
I scrambled to get my feet under me and catapulted upward, breaking the surface and gasping for air seconds before the tears kicked in. I covered my face, breathing in the smell of chlorine on my skin like a balm. It didn’t help.
The water was like acid on my skin, and I scrambled to get out, trying to get away from it as fast as I’d wanted to get to it in the first place. I sat on the edge and shivered, looking down at the water like it would come up out of the pool to get me.
I wanted to lay on the bottom until the world ended, I wanted to swim laps until my muscles burned and the rest of the universe ceased to exist, I wanted everything to stop. I didn’t want this life where everything good was eaten up by something awful.
I pounded my fist on the ground beside me, pounded it again and again until my bones started to ache, and then screamed into my open palm until I felt like I could breathe again.
* * *
I went downstairs to take a hot shower, pretending I didn’t see the looks my mother and sister sent me when I told them I didn’t want to eat dinner. I showered and changed into pajamas before climbing right back into bed. I held my phone against my body while I stared out the windows so in case I didn’t hear it ring, I would feel it vibrate against me. I called Michael, but it went to voice mail again and again, and I cried into my sheets until I felt empty and dried out.
I fell asleep when the sun started to go down and woke to the soft clatter of ceramic smacking together. I couldn’t see if it was my mom or Lily in the hazy dark. I pushed myself up and turned on the light. Lily was looking down at me, a glass of water and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in her hands. She put them on my bedside table.
“You should eat.” She took a seat at the edge of the mattress.
I just nodded. I was starving, but the idea of eating was highly uninteresting. “Thanks.” I pressed my back to my headboard and wrapped my arms around my legs. My back was starting to hurt from being in bed for so long. But at least the other pain had subsided, the hurt, the shock, the sadness. It had all faded into the background, letting numbness take over, like a virus that I wouldn’t be able to kick.
“I’m sorry about what happened.” She pressed her hand to one of my feet in an awkward way, though I knew she was trying to be comforting. “I never met Michael’s mom. What was she like?”
A ball of tears settled hard in my throat. “She was really nice.” I pressed my forehead to my knees.
“He found out that you went to Salem, didn’t he?”
I nodded a weird, stilted nod. “I told him I wouldn’t go, but then I did.”
“I know how it feels, you know. It hurts so much to lose someone like that.”
I brought my head up, and somewhere inside, something poked out from behind the wall of numbness. A little anger demon. “You have no idea how I feel. You’re the one that walked away from Tom, remember?”
She looked at me like she had no idea who I was, like I was a stranger on the street who’d shoved her down onto the pavement. Then she shook her head and got up.
“I’m sorry,” I said before she’d taken a step. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I don’t know why I…” Maybe if I saw my face in the mirror, I would look at myself the way Lily had looked at me. Maybe I wouldn’t recognize myself anymore, either.
“I never should have asked you to help me ditch my wedding.” She turned back to me, and I saw that her eyes were wet. She reached up and rubbed her knuckle across her cheek.
“Lil—”
She put up a hand and shook her head. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. I broke up with Jack.”
My mouth fell open. Jack, the hunk. “Wow. That’s, um…”
“When he asked why, I couldn’t really give him a reason, except, you know…” She trailed off, but she didn’t have to say it. Lily wasn’t over Tom. A
nd how could she be? If I felt like this after only knowing Michael for a month, how did she feel after being with Tom for almost three years?
“Anyway,” she went on. “It wasn’t right of me to ask you to bail me out like that. It was selfish for so many different reasons, and I should have…” She sighed. “It doesn’t matter. The point is, I’m sorry.”
I couldn’t figure out how to answer her. But she didn’t wait for me to. She turned and left me there, alone with my peanut butter and my own guilt.
* * *
The last time I had gone to a funeral, I was eight years old, and the funeral was for my father’s grandmother, whom I’d never met. All I remembered was sitting in the almost empty room with my father on one side and Lily on the other, thinking about how I didn’t know the woman inside the casket, and how I hoped they wouldn’t open it.
It was Wednesday, and Lily and I had skipped class to make the drive out to Vancouver with our mother for Harriet’s funeral. I hadn’t spoken to Michael or Patrice or Marisol or anyone who could tell me how Michael was feeling, and it was like an itch under my skin.
I was nervous. Not only because it had been so long since I’d been to a funeral, but also because I was going to see Michael again. I had no idea what would happen. I might not even see him. He might be so surrounded by family members that I couldn’t get close to him. Maybe that was for the best. After all, this wasn’t for him. It was for Harriet.
We pulled up in the cemetery, behind a line of cars, and I didn’t take my seat belt off. Everyone else started to get out of their cars, but I felt like I was suffocating. I had known this woman a fraction of the time that everyone else had, but everything that happened that night, even Harriet’s death, felt like my fault. I knew that was irrational. I knew it didn’t make sense. But nevertheless, it made guilt settle on my chest, bearing down so hard on me that I couldn’t breathe.
“Maybe I shouldn’t—” I started, but Lily leaned into the car and tugged me out. She put her arm around me, and we all pressed in together until we stopped halfway up the aisle. We scooted into three seats and sat down. I looked around, but I didn’t see Michael, and I didn’t see anyone that I recognized.
How to Breathe Underwater Page 23
