The Last to Let Go

by Amber Smith

  Suddenly I know—just know, somehow—that this all has to be some kind of a nightmare. So I turn around and look. Turning, faster and faster, in circles, looking fiercely, scanning, watching for any signs, some bizarre, out-of-place detail, a clue that I’m about to wake up. Any second I’ll be back in reality, and maybe I’ll have to do this whole day over, retake the stupid AP Bio exam. But that’s okay. I don’t mind. I’ll ace it a second time. I’ll shower. I’ll eat another bowl of cereal. I’ll walk to school again. I’ll sweat. I don’t care. I’ll do it all over if that’s what it takes.

  That’s when my roving gaze catches Aaron. His body jerks to a halt as he rounds the corner, and he stands still for a moment. That’s my sign. There’s no reason in the real world Aaron should be here right now. Then he’s running toward me. Fast.

  I raise my arms over my head, signaling to him. I want to call out, Don’t worry, this isn’t even real, but he arrives so quickly, ramming into me as he grabs hold of my arms. I feel the squeeze of his hands, feel the weight of his body crashing into mine, feel my feet anchored to the ground like they’re made of cement. I see the panic in his eyes, I hear his voice, loud and real—this is definitely my brother. He’s here, right now, in the flesh.

  “What’s going on?” He takes my face in his hands. “Brooke, look at me. What happened? Mrs. Allister called me.”

  I can only shake my head. I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know what happened. When I don’t answer, he pushes past me, rushing to the paramedics. They yell at him to get back, but he doesn’t listen. “Oh my God, Callie—what the—what’s wrong with her?” he shouts at them.

  “Calm down, you need to let us—” one of the paramedics tries to say, coming between him and Callie.

  “This is my sister!” he shouts at them. “Don’t you dare tell me to calm down. What’s wrong with her? What happened?”

  I slowly walk up behind him, reality gaining on me with every step.

  “She’s in shock,” I hear the other one answer.

  “Is she hurt?” Aaron asks, his voice breaking like glass.

  “No,” the first one tells us. “I don’t see any physical injuries.”

  Aaron starts looking around exactly as I did, like maybe he’s searching for dream cues too. But then something in his face changes. It hardens and cools as he blinks away the tears that were on the verge of spilling over, and—just like that—he grabs on to the guy’s collar. “What the fuck is going on here?” he demands with this intensity that makes him look and sound so much like our dad it scares me.

  Another pair of hands pulls him back by his shoulders. And then he’s on the ground. Tony’s on top of him. Aaron’s struggling, throwing punches, nothing connecting.

  “Enough!” Tony yells, holding Aaron’s arms down against the blacktop. Then quieter, “That’s enough. Pull it together, all right? Your sisters need you.”

  Aaron goes still, like some kind of tranquilizer has been injected into him and is in the process of being dispersed into his bloodstream, calming his limbs into submission. He looks at me over Tony’s shoulder, his face changing back to normal. Tony slowly loosens his grip and climbs off him, reaching out to help pull Aaron up. They sit on the burning pavement. Tony looks over at me and Callie. Then back to Aaron. The four of us jumbled together in the middle of the street, the calm in the eye of a swirling storm. “You kids,” he says, breathless, “you keep me up at night, you know that?”

  “Tell me,” Aaron demands, able to ask the question I couldn’t. “Did he kill her?”

  Tony shakes his head and points to the patrol car. I follow the direction of his arm to my mom’s face in the window. He puts his hand on Aaron’s shoulder. “She stabbed him. Your mother stabbed him. I don’t know anything else. There must have been some kind of struggle. That’s all I know right now.”

  The words are dull and thick and slow to sink in.

  “That’s impossible.” Aaron’s voice trembles, and he looks at me as if he’s asking whether or not I believe it.

  Callie makes no movement. They have her wrapped in a blanket even though it has to be about 195 degrees out here. They start putting her inside the ambulance. They’re strapping her to a gurney. “It’s okay,” I call out to her. “It’s okay,” I lie.

  The driver turns on the lights and shouts to us through the open window. “Taking her to General!” Then the double doors are slammed shut and the ambulance speeds down the street, sirens wailing.

  “I will do everything I can,” Tony says as he starts jogging toward the police car. “That’s a promise, all right?” Then he climbs into the passenger seat of the police car and it starts to pull away too. My mom keeps mouthing, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” I run alongside, as far as I can, until the car drives too fast for me to keep up.

  “Wait,” I hear myself say, but there’s no volume behind the words. “Wait!” I try again, but it’s barely more than breath escaping my lips. Aaron and I are left in the street all alone, watching the car grow smaller and smaller in the distance, watching our lives slowly slip away. The fire truck rolls past us quietly, as if the truck itself is disappointed there were no fires to extinguish. I look at our building. It seems so normal. I pick my backpack up off the street, along with my sandals, several feet apart from each other.

  Aaron stands still, breathing heavy, then he sprints for the door. “Stay here!” he calls over his shoulder.

  But I don’t. I race inside, though I’m not sure why. I only know that I don’t want to be left alone out here. I start up the stairs behind him; the third step creaks, as it always has. I approach the door to our apartment. It’s open. I hear voices. I take one step inside and Aaron is standing there like his feet are stuck to the floor.

  “Brooke, get out!” he yells. “Don’t look,” he says, throwing his arm out to block me.

  But it’s too late. I already see.

  He’s lying on his back in the middle of the kitchen floor like he’s asleep. Except there’s a small, dark puddle beneath him, almost black, like his shadow is seeping out of his body, the source a giant burgundy stain in the center of his stomach. My eyes focus on his hand, lying there against the linoleum floor, palm facing up, fingers slightly curled. Gentle, somehow. I’ve never seen my father’s hand look so powerless.

  “Hey! You can’t be in here!” someone shouts, just as another cop steps in front of me and Aaron, strong arms pushing us back toward the door. My body moves so easily it doesn’t even resist.

  “That’s our dad,” I say to no one in particular.

  “We have to go,” Aaron tells me. “Let’s go to Carmen’s. Come on, hurry.”

  “Okay,” I hear myself reply as I follow behind him.

  FRESH MEAT

  THE FIRST TIME I MET Carmen was at school in ninth grade. She was older than me, a senior like my brother should’ve been. He had been held back in his freshman year, so he was a year behind. Dad was furious, told him he was stupid, useless, never going to amount to anything. I knew that wasn’t true, though. Aaron was really smart. He just didn’t care about school, not the way that I did. I was actually happy that he’d been held back because that meant we’d be together for an extra year, and then I didn’t care so much about transferring out.

  When I walked into the cafeteria the first day of high school, I was hoping I’d see him. We’d compared our schedules that morning and he’d assured me we were in the same lunch. But, as I would soon learn, he spent so much time in in-school suspension for one thing or another that it hardly felt like we even went to the same school at all. After one lap around the cafeteria I gave up and sat down at a table in the corner by myself. That was when Carmen came over and introduced herself, inviting me to sit with her. “This is Brooke,” she told her table, which was filled with seniors. “It’s her first day, so be nice.”

  “You’re a freshman, right?” one girl asked as she slid over to make room for me.

  Then the guy next to her cupped his hands around his
mouth and megaphoned, “Fresh meat.”

  Before I could answer, Carmen intercepted the conversation and told the guy, “She might be fresh meat, Mark, but she’s already a million times more mature than you.”

  Carmen tried to include me in the table’s conversation, asking about my classes, whether or not I was planning to join any teams or clubs. I was not. I could feel myself blushing, all awkward and plain and boring, the complete opposite of everything she seemed to be: confident, smart, beautiful. I barely spoke. I was too stunned that she had even noticed me in the sea of fresh meat, let alone singled me out to take under her wing. There must have been something about me, something she saw that I couldn’t, I thought. Something special, even.

  For all of five minutes I thought she actually liked me.

  “Dude!” Mark shouted, looking somewhere behind me. “What is up, man? We thought you got busted already.”

  I turned to see my brother leaning over Carmen, wrapping his arms around her like he was going to scoop her up and take her away. She turned her head and smiled through the words “Hey, you,” and then they kissed. A deep, serious one.

  Something inside of me ground to a halt. Of course this wasn’t about me. I was stupid to think otherwise. After they disentangled themselves, Aaron straightened up and grinned, patting me on the back before tumbling into the last open chair. “Thanks for rescuing my kid sister,” he told them. Then he looked at me. “So, how’s the first day so far?”

  I shrugged while I tried to find my voice. “Okay, I guess.”

  “Dude, she’s really chatty,” Mark interjected. “Couldn’t get her to shut up this whole time.”

  “Yeah, maybe you should take a lesson from her,” Carmen said, blowing on the end of her straw so that the wrapper launched across the table, hitting Mark square in the forehead.

  “She’s just a loner, is all,” Aaron said. I gave him my deadliest eyes. “What? Nothing wrong with that.” Then he added, hitching his chin to point in Mark’s direction, “Some people should be loners.” He knocked his shoulder into mine, and then everyone started laughing.

  Mark looked around, taking a second too long to get it. “Fuck you,” he finally said, hesitating before he joined in the laughter at his expense, which, I realized, was for my benefit.

  I was grateful to Aaron, of course. He was only trying to look out for me. But damn, it had felt good to think that I’d made some friends all on my own for once, to think, for even one minute, that someone had actually, voluntarily, wanted me.

  It was weird to see Aaron like this. Part of me wondered if he was only pretending. We never laughed like this at home anymore, never joked around or even spoke too loudly. But when I saw the way that Carmen and Aaron looked at each other, I knew, somehow, this wasn’t pretend. He had friends, and a girlfriend who clearly cared about him enough to gather up a lowly freshman on his behalf. He had a life. He had all the things I never thought I’d have.

  I was envious; I knew that even then. I thought he’d found a way to get out from under the weight of our family, found a way to be happy. It gave me hope that maybe one day I could too.

  But now I know he was never out from under anything, that weight was just building pressure, slowly crushing him, like it was crushing all of us. I just didn’t see it then, didn’t want to see it.

  SHUTTING DOWN

  THE SMELL OF HOSPITAL: a sickening combination of disease, disinfectant, and stale vending machine coffee. Carmen drove us here in her mother’s car.

  After we filled out Callie’s paperwork in the ER, we were directed to the seventh-floor waiting area, the psych unit. Aaron sits across from me, gnawing on his thumbnail like a cannibal, jiggling his leg up and down at warp speed. Neither of us mentions the last time we were here.

  Carmen sits next to Aaron and takes his hand. I wonder if she’s thinking about the last time too. That time when Aaron almost died.

  That time two winters ago when no one had heard from him the entire day and no one else except for me seemed to be worried. When he didn’t show up for dinner that night, a strange sick feeling told me to go to the roof. I knew sometimes he would smoke cigarettes up there, and sometimes, if I managed to be quiet enough, I could sneak up behind him and punch him in the arm as hard as possible, as many times as possible, before he’d spin around and yell, yet we’d both be laughing so hard we couldn’t breathe.

  I found him up there, but he wasn’t smoking. He was lying there, passed out and cold as ice because it was December and he was wearing only a T-shirt and jeans with holes in the knees, and socks without shoes. His lips were purple. He was barely breathing by the time the ambulance got there. Even though it was pretty obvious what he had done, I convinced myself it was some kind of freak accident. But that wasn’t the truth, and as much as I wanted to pretend, deep down I knew it was never that simple.

  They pumped his stomach, and he had to stay here in the psych unit for a week. Then he came home and everyone acted like he was okay. But he wasn’t really okay, I knew. He was simply alive. Things changed after that. I had to be careful with him, like he was made of porcelain. I had to watch what I said and how I looked at him. He moved out a few weeks later. And he’s lived with Carmen’s family ever since. We’ve never talked about it. I don’t know why. It felt off-limits. Still does.

  As I watch Aaron and Carmen sitting here together, I become very aware of this dull, steady pain in my chest, throbbing, aching for something—someone. I’ve never been in a relationship. Never been kissed, either. Not unless you count that time in seventh grade when some random kid ran up and gave me a dry, papery peck on the lips at my locker on a dare, which I don’t. I’ve had infatuations, fantasies, a few crushes, but that’s as far as it ever goes. Maybe I even had a crush on Carmen at one time. I try not to think about it, though. There’s no point anyway. Because how would I have time for that with everything else that’s always going on? How could I ever find the space for another person in my life when I barely even have enough room for myself?

  I check the time on my phone. Another hour has passed. I don’t understand how time keeps doing that. Moving forward when all I need is for it to stop, to give me a chance to work back through all that’s happened today, which is impossible to do when the seconds keep marching ahead, piling new minutes on top of all the old minutes, building a landfill of lost time.

  There’s only one other woman in the waiting area, sitting with her back to us, facing the row of windows that overlook the downtown city buildings, their lights beginning to blink on as the sun finally lies down for the day, the sky darkening slowly, like a long sigh. She’s flipping through a five-month-old copy of Good Housekeeping, her fingers turning the pages too rapidly to be actually reading. She’s probably our parents’ age. Heavy makeup, hair dyed dark red, a little plump, but strong. Tough. Weathered. Still pretty somehow. A no-nonsense person, I’d imagine. I wonder vaguely, for a second, whom she’s here to see.

  She looks up from her magazine and catches me staring. I quickly look down at my lap. When I raise my eyes again, she’s looking at me this time, her mouth held slightly open. I give her my best fake smile and try to act like there are lots of interesting things to be paying attention to in the waiting room.

  Just then, interrupting the quiet vigil of the seventh-floor psych ward waiting room, something slams into one of the windows like a bullet, making each one of us jump in our seat.

  “Oh my God!” the woman gasps, clutching at her chest and nearly dropping the magazine.

  “What the hell was that?” I breathe.

  “Bird,” Aaron answers immediately, as if he’s witnessed a million of these.

  Carmen’s voice is muffled as she buries her face in Aaron’s shoulder. “Oh no, poor thing.”

  The sound—that hollow thud—echoes through my head. It sends a tingle down my spine. I can feel those delicate hollow bird bones crushing somewhere inside of me. I draw my arms around my midsection.

  In the wake of sile
nce that follows I hear the woman say, “Hello?” like that one word was the result of long, hard contemplation. I turn to look at her once more. Her eyes are so wide I can see white all around her dark irises. She has these massive black eyelashes that make her expression even more dramatic.

  “Brooke?” she asks. “And Aaron? Is that you?” Hesitantly, she sets the magazine down and stands, adjusting her shirt and the waist of her pants as she does so. Her smile reveals two rows of perfectly straight extra-white teeth—the kind that make me feel self-conscious about mine being not so straight, not so white.

  Aaron looks at Carmen, then at me. Sitting up straighter, he lets go of her hand. “Who are you?” he says, not particularly nicely, putting on his tough-guy face once again.

  “I can’t believe how grown up you are,” she says, more to herself, as she begins walking toward us. Her gaze alternates between me and Aaron, and her eyes glisten like she might start crying. “I’m here to help,” she says, hand over her chest like she’s making some kind of pledge of allegiance to us.

  Aaron’s squirming, preparing to get all fiery and worked up. “Who. Are. You?” he repeats, not quite raising his voice yet.

  She stops midstep, her face collapsing into a frown as she points a finger at her chest and says, “It’s Aunt Jackie. You—you don’t remember me?”

  Aunt Jackie.

  In my mind I do that age progression thing, like you see in those flyers for missing people, comparing what they looked like when they were last seen with what they would look like today.

  We used to call her Aunt Jackie when we were kids, though she’s not really our aunt at all. We never had any aunts or uncles, no cousins, and all our grandparents are dead—except for our mother’s mother, but they hate each other and we’ve never even met her, so she doesn’t really count either. Jackie was the only “relative” we’d ever known. Our mom’s best friend. Or she used to be, anyway. When we were kids, Mom would walk us up to Jackie’s Coffee and Bakeshop after playtime in the park. Aaron would hold my hand, and then with his other hand he would hold on to the side of the stroller Mom was pushing, with Callie inside. I can remember Jackie reaching across the counter, smiling that toothpaste-commercial smile as she handed me and Aaron little chocolate doughnut holes wrapped in sheets of wax paper.