Stay (ARC)

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

  “I do, but I can just walk. Or run it. It’s not even

  two miles.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  The people who’d been milling and smoking brushed

  past us into the room. Through the open doorway I could

  see the clock on the wall at the end of the long tables. It

  was straight up six o’clock.

  “You’d better go in,” I said. “I think it’s starting.”

  He limped in on his crutches, and I closed the door

  behind him.

  I almost went home.

  I walked out to the street. It was absolutely abandoned

  out there. Everybody in town was home for dinner. It

  felt weird, like standing in a ghost town.

  For a minute or two I just stood there and looked

  around. Then I decided I would wait for him. I didn’t

  know how long the meeting was. Maybe an hour. Maybe

  even an hour and a half. But I decided I owed it to my

  brother to be there when he got out.

  I would sit on the curb outside the community room

  door, leaving him alone to do his meeting thing in pri-

  vacy. But when the meeting let out, I would walk him

  to the bus stop and we would ride home together. And

  if he wanted to, he could tell me how it had gone.

  Yeah. That felt right.

  I walked back around the building. Sat on the curb

  where the sidewalk leading to the meeting room door

  met the tarmac of the parking lot. My back to the door,

  I watched the sun through the trees, careful not to stare

  219

  Catherine Ryan Hyde

  long enough to burn out my eyes and go blind. But I

  wanted to see if I could actually watch it go down. Or if

  time moved too slowly for that.

  A couple of minutes later, long before I got the an-

  swer about the sun, I heard the door swing open behind

  me. I didn’t even have time to turn around and see who

  was coming out. Before I could, a knee crashed into my

  back, and the person attached to the knee went flying

  over me.

  “Ow!” I shouted out loud.

  I watched my brother Roy fall onto his crutches on

  the tarmac. It was weird how the moment seemed to play

  out almost in slow motion.

  “Ow!” he shouted.

  So we had that in common, anyway.

  I lurched up and forward to get to him. I tried to

  help him up. But for the moment he seemed to accept

  being down.

  “I didn’t see you there,” he said. “The sun was in my

  eyes.”

  “You okay?”

  “I think I bruised my ribs falling on this damn crutch.”

  “You sure you didn’t break any?”

  “Not positive,” he said. “No.”

  “Did you hurt your foot?”

  “Oddly, no.”

  “Where were you going?”

  He never answered the question. Then again, the long-

  er the silence held, the more the question answered itself.

  “Come on,” I said. “You have to get up.”

  He sighed deeply. Then he let me help him to his feet.

  I handed him back his crutches.

  220

  Stay

  I thought he might challenge me and walk off toward

  the bus stop. He didn’t. I think he might have been too

  humiliated for that.

  He walked back to the door, and I held it open for

  him. And then I followed him in. And sat with him.

  He never offered a word of objection.

  * * *

  It was somewhere near the end of the sharing, when I’m

  pretty sure everybody else had spoken. The leader of the

  meeting—a big guy with a leather vest and tattoos all

  up and down both arms—asked my brother Roy if he

  wanted to say anything.

  He didn’t call him by name.

  He just said, “Maybe our newcomer would like to

  share?”

  Roy pressed his lips into a tight line and shook his head.

  Everybody stood up and closed the meeting by holding

  hands around in a circle and reciting the serenity prayer out loud. I had been sitting next to Roy, so I was holding his

  hand on the left side, which felt weird. Actually weirder

  than holding the hand of a total stranger on my right.

  I didn’t know the prayer, so I just moved my lips a little

  and listened. Soon I would know it backward, forward,

  and upside down.

  221

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  What Might Be Coming Next

  Connor showed up at my house early the next morn-

  ing. Very early. Before my run. Before my parents were

  awake.

  I let him in through the kitchen door and we tiptoed

  upstairs. I had a little bit of churning going on in my

  stomach, because it seemed like he had come to tell me

  something, and I worried it might be something bad.

  I closed us into my room, and we sat on the bed, both

  of us staring down at the spread. We were just fascinated

  by that spread.

  “I came by yesterday afternoon,” he said. “But your

  mom said you were out.”

  “Yeah. I had to take Roy somewhere.”

  “Really? That seems weird.”

  “Why does it seem weird?”

  “I don’t know exactly. Just seems like parents take a guy his age someplace. Not his little brother.”

  “Well, this was a little brother thing.”

  I was hoping he would ask no more about it, and I

  got my wish.

  We sat a minute in silence. Connor was wearing

  jeans with a hole worn in the knee, and he was rolling

  the loose frayed threads between his fingers. Funny how

  222

  Stay

  desperate a person can get for something to focus on. For

  something to do with his hands.

  “I came by to tell you I was sorry,” he said at long last.

  “What for?”

  We were keeping our voices down. Almost to a whis-

  per. Because my brother and my parents were sleeping in

  rooms down the hall.

  “Because I haven’t been talking to you much lately. I

  go out and talk to Zoe, and then I come back and I don’t

  even tell you what we talked about. And the whole thing

  was your idea. I wouldn’t even know her if it wasn’t for

  you. But … it’s kind of hard to explain. Have you ever

  been sitting on a bus bench with some total stranger and

  started thinking that you could tell them your whole

  life—everything you were thinking—even though you

  couldn’t tell your best friend?”

  Unfortunately, the answer to his question was no. I

  hadn’t had that feeling. But I wanted to be encouraging.

  Then I remembered how it was easier to hold the hand

  of a total stranger in an NA meeting than to hold hands

  with my own brother. It was less embarrassing somehow.

  It was confusing, so all I said was, “I’m not sure. Tell

  me more about it.”

  “It’s like you can talk to somebody who’s completely

  outside your life, and it feels safe. Because then when

  you’re done, you just go back to your life and there’s still nobody there who’s heard about all those feelings. It’s

  just feelings, Lucas. It’s nothing you don’t know. I’m not


  keeping any big secrets from you.”

  I was looking out the window at the birds. There

  were some birds—I think they were swallows—that had

  been making nests in the eaves right over my bedroom

  window. I like to watch them swoop and dive.

  223

  Catherine Ryan Hyde

  “I didn’t figure it was any big secret,” I said.

  I mean, I knew his life. And what I knew felt bad

  enough. Then again, it didn’t seem much worse than

  mine. But I guess you never can tell. You know. From

  the outside like that.

  I remembered something Darren Weller had said to

  me. Different people have different reactions to things. That’s all.

  “You seem like you feel better,” I said after a time,

  when I was pretty sure he wasn’t going to answer. “I

  mean, I see you outside your house and everything. Do

  you feel better?”

  “Kind of yes and kind of no,” he said. “You put all

  that stuff out, and then it’s not really very different. But I guess at least it’s out. I’m not entirely sure what that

  does, just getting it on the outside of you like that, but

  it seems like it does something. But I did figure out one

  thing for sure.”

  He fell silent for a minute. I watched him fingering the

  loose threads around the hole in his jeans, and I didn’t ask.

  I didn’t dare ask what was the one thing he’d figured out.

  “It’s like…,” he began. Then he faded, and I thought

  I might never know. “Zoe almost died. Well, you know

  that. You know it better than anybody. I guess she felt like nobody needed her around. But I do. I need her around.

  But she didn’t know it yet because she hadn’t even met

  me. But she was just about to meet me. All those years

  thinking nobody needed her or wanted her around, and

  she was just about to meet me and she didn’t know it.

  You get what I’m driving at?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said.

  “Well … now I’m starting to think … you don’t

  know what might be coming next. And it might even be

  something nice. Something good, even though everything

  224

  Stay

  before it wasn’t good at all. You see where I’m going

  with this?”

  “You’re saying you have to stick around to see what

  happens next.”

  I watched his face light up, and I knew I had hit it.

  “I knew you’d get it,” he said.

  It was a moment the likes of which we hadn’t had in a

  very long time. If we had ever had a moment like that one.

  He seemed satisfied that we had covered that topic,

  so he flew in an entirely new direction.

  “I’m trying to talk my mom into getting me a dog.

  Wouldn’t that be good?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It would be great. Think she’ll do it?”

  “Not sure. She’s trying to talk me into a cat instead.

  She’s really paranoid about a dog doing something nasty

  on the rugs. She figures a cat would be trained to a lit-

  ter box. I guess a cat would be okay, but … you can run

  with a dog.”

  “You’re thinking about taking up running?”

  “Yeah. Maybe. It sure did you a lot of good.”

  I took a deep breath and said something I really wanted

  badly not to say. But here’s the way I looked at it, and I

  still see it the same way now: you’re either a guy’s friend

  or you’re not.

  “You could always try running with Zoe’s dogs.”

  It actually hurt coming out. But I don’t think that

  mattered. I think what mattered is that I said it. No mat-

  ter how it felt.

  “Nah,” he said. “That wouldn’t be right. I couldn’t

  do that to you. It’s enough that you shared Zoe with me.

  Running with those dogs, that’s your thing. I couldn’t

  horn in on that.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and didn’t elaborate. Or need to.

  225

  Catherine Ryan Hyde

  “I’m going to go out there now,” he said. “But I fig-

  ured it was high time I came by and talked.”

  Speaking of talking, I think by then we had forgotten

  to whisper and had begun to talk in our natural voices.

  Because my bedroom door flew open. Suddenly and al-

  most violently. My mother stuck her head into the room

  as if she could catch me in some dastardly act. What act,

  I still don’t know. Did she think I had a girl in there?

  “Oh,” she said. “It’s you, Connor.”

  “I was just leaving,” Connor said.

  “Probably just as well,” she said. “Not that you’re not

  welcome here. But everybody else is asleep.” Of course,

  she said it pretty loudly. That was my mom for you.

  So that was the end of that talk. But it was okay,

  because we’d said enough. Really, we’d said everything

  we needed to say. At least for the moment.

  * * *

  When Wednesday came around, I walked up to my brother

  Roy’s room to ask if he wanted me to go with him on the

  bus to the meeting. It was really a polite way of letting

  him know that I was pushing him to go, whether I was

  welcome in the Wednesday meeting or not.

  “You said you couldn’t go on Wednesdays,” he said.

  “You told me the Wednesday one was a closed meeting.”

  He was lying on his bed, bare chested, on his back.

  Curtains drawn closed. Hands linked behind his head.

  He seemed to be keeping himself busy by staring at the

  ceiling in the strangely dim room.

  “I’d still go with you,” I said. “I just wouldn’t come

  in. I could just sit outside and wait for you.”

  226

  Stay

  Speaking of waiting, I waited for him to tell me all

  about how it was an utterly ridiculous idea. I waited for

  him to say, “Why on earth would I need you to go back

  and forth on the bus with me just to sit outside?”

  He didn’t.

  “Yeah,” he said. “That would be good.”

  I was surprised, of course. But I didn’t argue.

  * * *

  The first time we’d ridden the bus to the meeting together,

  we hadn’t talked much. This time was a slight improve-

  ment, because this time at least I talked.

  I told him about how I’d been running in the woods

  almost every day. And how I’d earned myself a place on

  the track team come fall, if I wanted it. But that I still

  didn’t think I wanted it.

  I told him about the guys on the track team who had

  given me trouble, and even about how Connor had gone

  after them.

  I told him about Libby Weller, though I didn’t state

  the exact reasons for our breakup. I just told him I learned pretty suddenly that she wasn’t a very nice person.

  I was purposely leaving out any mention of Zoe

  Dinsmore, because if it turned out he didn’t approve of

  her either, well … that just felt like more than I could take.

  I talked until I felt weird about doing so much talk-

  ing. About filling the air of the mostly deserted bus with

  so many words. Especially since he was s
aying nothing

  in return.

  I watched him look out at the passing houses. His

  eyes were turned away from me, but I could see a perfect

  227

  Catherine Ryan Hyde

  reflection of them in the bus window. He seemed to be

  focusing intently, but I had no idea on what. Maybe what

  I was saying. Maybe something else entirely. I got the

  sense that he was either listening carefully or not at all.

  I stopped talking. I think I’d run out of things to say.

  I got that feeling again—like I was looking at my

  brother but he wasn’t really my brother. Close, but not

  quite. I thought maybe when his foot was healed and he

  didn’t have to take the pain meds anymore, I would get

  him back.

  Maybe that’s why I’d gotten so wrapped up in the

  idea of his recovery.

  He turned and looked right into my face. Possibly for

  the first time since he’d gotten home.

  “Why didn’t you tell me all this?” he asked.

  “When?”

  “In your letters.”

  “Because it wasn’t important.”

  “Who says it wasn’t?”

  “How could it matter? You were seeing horrible things,

  and you had bullets whizzing by your ears. What dif-

  ference did it make if I got a place on the track team or

  not? It’s stupid. It’s nothing. It wasn’t even worth wasting your time with stuff like that.”

  “But that’s the stuff I wanted to hear about. You

  know. Regular stuff. From home. Normal stuff, like my

  life was before.”

  “Oh,” I said. And then I felt absolutely horrible. “I

  didn’t think of that. I’m sorry.”

  He turned away and looked out the window again.

  “Whatever,” he said. “Don’t worry about it. You

  didn’t know.”

  228

  Stay

  * * *

  I sat on the curb outside the meeting room door, watch-

  ing the sun go down. The more it went down, the more

  I could stare at it without burning out my eyes and go-

  ing blind.

  I couldn’t hear what was being said inside the meet-

  ing room, with one exception. When a person said his

  name, or her name, the whole group said hi back to them.

  I couldn’t hear the first part. I couldn’t hear anybody

  named Joe say his name, but I could hear the group say,

  “Hi, Joe.” And three or four minutes later, “Hi, Evelyn.”

  And five minutes after that, “Hi, Carlo.”

  Once, at what I thought was getting near the end, I