by Sara Alva
“Seb? What should I do?”
No answer.
“Seb?”
Panic like I’d never felt before tore at me. It ripped into my heart and stripped all sanity from my mind. My breathing became panting, each inhale more of a struggle than the last. I knew I was hyperventilating, but I had no way of stopping it.
Was it the kick to the mouth, or something else? He looked like he had when I’d first met him…empty. Vacant. Where was my Seb?
“Seb? Seb! What should I do?”
He turned his head away. And in that unfocused stare, I saw the truth.
Oh, God. He was gone. I’d lost him. Because I’d…I’d broken my fucking promise. The most important promise I’d ever made.
You’re safe now, remember? You’re safe. I won’t let anyone hurt you ever again.
I’d failed him. I’d failed a lot of people in my life, but this…this was the worst of all.
“Seb.” I clenched his shirt until my knuckles were white. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please, tell me what to do. Please.”
Still nothing.
I gasped for air as the world started to go black around the edges, and the sudden rush of oxygen pushed me into hysteria.
“Tell me what to do! Please tell me what to do! I can’t…I don’t know what…I…I need you…and I… I can’t fucking do this on my own!”
My last words were a high-pitched scream, and they echoed in the dark alley.
Can’t fucking do this on my own.
I grew quiet. Tears continued to fall, but they were silent now. And a strange calm settled over me, blanketing my fear and letting all my other wild emotions rest beneath that one final realization.
I really couldn’t do this on my own.
When the tears dried up, I looked down at Seb through the daze and gently stroked his cheek. “It’s okay, amor. It’s okay. Don’t worry. I…I know what we have to do.”
Chapter 26: Sixteen
The bus dropped us off a few blocks away. I held Seb’s hand as we walked, but it just hung there limply, like he couldn’t even feel my fingers desperately clutching his.
My chest ached. Nasty bruises had to be budding on the skin, in those pinks and reds that would gradually blossom into purples and blues. Nothing I hadn’t seen before…and it wasn’t that pain that made it so hard to breathe. It wasn’t those wounds that left my skin so raw even the gentle night wind was too much to bear. The daze was wearing off now, and each layer that drifted away left me more exposed to the truth.
We’d reached the end.
Out by the potted ferns, the finality of my decision delivered a sudden blow. My legs turned to rubber and I stumbled toward the apartments, then sank down against the fake-adobe wall.
Seb remained standing, his still face alternately shadowed and lit by a blinking streetlamp. I clasped a piece of his pant leg and rubbed the fabric between my fingers until I felt strong enough to speak.
“I screwed up. I screwed up so fucking badly.”
I wasn’t expecting a response, and I didn’t get one. We were right back at the beginning, to all those evenings I’d used his presence as an excuse to talk out loud to myself. And just like then, I found myself needing to continue.
“You got hurt, and it was all my fault. You have every right not to trust me now. I’m so sorry. I’d do anything to change it.”
Seb folded his legs and sat beside me, but he didn’t look over. His eyes were fixed on a blade of grass.
“But that’s not even why we’re here.”
I would’ve thought the tears had all dried up by now, but I could feel them burning behind my eyes, making my face hot and my world blurred.
“It’s because…I lied to you.”
He twisted the piece of grass and tore it off, not a muscle moving in his face.
I beat back the tears by ripping some grass of my own. It left a bald patch in the ground, and that last bit of control over my environment led me to keep going—to wrench fistfuls of green until I’d cleared an entire circle around me.
I wanted to strip my mind that way, but I could only forget for a second.
“Seb, the money from the cans was never going to be enough. We needed more and I…I was going to do something else. Something I’d regret. Something I swore I wouldn’t.”
I watched him carefully, hoping for a spark of anger. I never thought I’d want to see that, but at the moment I’d have given anything for him to lash out at me in a rage—smack me, beat my chest, kick me in the groin…anything.
He didn’t move.
“You must be so sick of hearing me say I’m sorry.”
I took his hand again, holding the dead weight in my lap and running my thumb over his fingers. He’d missed some scraps of dirt under his nails when we’d washed up earlier, and I carefully picked them out.
“But I want you to know…this doesn’t mean I’m giving up on us. I…I can go back to school, or get my GED or whatever, and then I can get a real job, and I can rent us an apartment and we can live together…”
Crazy dreams. I wondered how I still had the power to dream after all this.
“I mean, if you want. Because I do. Even if you never talk to me again. And not ’cause I’m expecting…anything. I…I just—”
A twenty-something-year-old striding up the walkway in stiletto heels caused me to snap my mouth shut, and I was grateful. There was no point in dragging out my misery. It was all over now, and the sooner I accepted that, the sooner I could…
Could what? Move on? Heal?
Somehow I doubted that would ever happen.
I rose to follow the girl toward the building’s entrance, and she absentmindedly held the door open. By the time I was done scanning the apartment list, Seb was right behind me.
I glanced back one more time, searching his face for a shred of hope. I found nothing.
“Let’s go, Seb. It’s time.
Suzie answered the door dressed in head-to-toe pink. Pink sweatpants and a pink hoodie. The outfit even said the word pink on it, right down her thick thigh. I was so surprised to see her wrapped in a bright color that I just stood there for several seconds with my mouth hanging open.
She was as stunned as I was, and only managed to reach out to me halfway. “Alex? Sebastian? Oh my God, Alex.”
And then I launched myself straight at her, a few more tears unleashing themselves into her unsuspecting arms.
“I’m sorry, Suzie. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Recuperating quickly, she brought a hand up to press my face into her soft chest. It made me feel like a little boy again, but I had no intention of pulling away. She was all I had to cling to.
My backpack slid from my shoulders as she led us into the foyer and shut the door. She gently took it from me.
“Oh, Alex. I know you never meant to hurt anyone. I know you were just trying to be close to your friend. It’s okay. It’s okay.”
“Seb…he…he…and I…” My words dissolved into whimpers.
“Just take deep breaths.” Suzie urged. “Just take deep breaths and try to calm down.”
Seb wandered past us into the small apartment. He sat up on a stool at the kitchen bar for a while, but when I kept crying he eventually moved to the beige couch, where he curled into a tight ball.
“Suzie…I’m so sorry. I tried. I really tried.”
“Did something happen?” Her always-calm voice was right beside my ear, but for once, I didn’t mind it. “Are you both okay?”
“I’m…he’s…I don’t know.”
I wanted to tell her everything. From the very beginning. But the words just weren’t lining up in the right order. When the sniffling finally stopped, I pried myself loose from her pink-clad arms. “Check Seb.”
Suzie’s eyes widened. “Sebastian?” She hurried to his side. “What am I checking for?”
Seb lay staring at her coffee table, which was littered with papers and books. Her whole living room seemed to consist
of those piles—some scholarly, and some less so, like the one topped by a novel cover with a man baring his chest to the wind.
“Alex? He looks like he has a split lip. Did he get hit by something?”
“We got mugged back in Santa Monica. This fucker…he took all our money.”
“And he hit Sebastian?” She dashed to the kitchen and opened a freezer stocked full of diet meals to grab an icepack. She returned to Seb and put the ice in his hand, but when he didn’t move, she forced his arm up to his mouth. “Hold it here, Sebastian, okay? Hold it right here. You understand? Just like this.”
Satisfied he’d gotten the picture, she turned her attention to me. “Are you hurt anywhere?”
“No.”
Lies, my old friends. But I’d already cried my eyes out on her shoulder, and the need to be held and soothed like some helpless little kid seemed to be fulfilled for now. Hopefully forever. Seb was going to be taken care of, and that’s all that really mattered.
“Don’t you need to call the police or something? Report me?” From somewhere in the depths of my weary heart, another more familiar emotion started to gain strength. “Haul me away for kidnapping and endangering a minor…some shit like that.”
Suzie walked back over to me. I thought she might try to hug me again, but she was smarter than that.
“Yes, if you were attacked and mugged then I need to call the police. But Alex…I’m not upset with you. You made the right decision coming back. You couldn’t have lived out there on your own.”
“Yes, I could have!” I snapped. And not purely out of anger.
Suzie took a cautionary step back.
“I could have,” I repeated more calmly. I didn’t really want to fight, as comfortable as the anger was in the middle of all the chaos. “I know how to get by. I know how to live one way…it’s just…that’s not the life I want for Seb.”
Suzie nodded solemnly.
“It’s not the life I want for me, either.”
That surprised me. That I’d said it…and that I meant it.
I looked over at Seb. Curled up like that, he seemed so small and helpless. He was all I had left in the world, but even if he could never be a part of my life the way he’d once been…I knew there were some things I’d never go back to.
I owed him that much.
He shifted, closing his eyes and dropping the ice to the ground as he settled in to sleep. I walked around to the back of the couch and rested my arms there so I could keep watching over him.
“I wanted to be the one,” I whispered. Mostly to myself, but Suzie heard. “I wanted to be the one to take care of him…but I just couldn’t. I couldn’t give him what he deserved.” My throat closed again and I used bitterness to fight through the tears. “Because I’m just a stupid fucking kid.”
Suzie shook her head. Her forehead was all wrinkled and her lips were twitching, and it took me a second to realize she was holding back tears of her own. “No, you’re not, Alex. You’re not stupid. That’s actually a very mature thing for a fifteen-year-old to admit. There are adults who still struggle to understand it.”
I cut off my instinct to argue back. Suzie probably knew what she was talking about, with her line of work.
My eyes drifted past her and landed on a large calendar tacked to the wall. A little old-fashioned, but it matched what I expected of her more than the romance novels and the pink clothing. Dates were circled in red, and some notes were scrawled inside the boxes in sloppy cursive.
It seemed like ages since I’d last thought about what day it was.
“Sixteen,” I mumbled.
“I’m sorry?”
“I’m sixteen. My birthday was a few days ago. I forgot.”
One tear escaped the edge of Suzie’s lashes, but she quickly rubbed it away. “Well, happy birthday, Alex.”
A weak half-smile touched the corner of my mouth, before a sudden swell of exhaustion wiped it away. We hadn’t slept much in the last week. I’d been able to hold back the crash with coffee and pure love-adrenaline, but now that all that had been drained, my body was nearing a complete shut-down.
Suzie made a phone call in another room while I climbed over the back of the couch and sat beside Seb. She joined us after a minute, lowering herself into a recliner and leaning toward me like she was waiting to hear more.
I carefully moved Seb’s head onto my thigh and wove my fingers into the golden strands. “So…what’s going to happen now? Will I have to go to Juvee or something?”
Suzie smiled gently. “I think we can avoid that. I’m not saying there won’t be consequences, but you did make the right decision coming back, and I’m sure that will be taken into consideration.”
I nodded and tucked a lock of Seb’s hair behind his ear. “Suzie…I know I don’t have any right to ask this…but…if there’s any way we could be near each other when we get placed…or just be able to see each other…”
“I’ll work on that, Alex. I really will.”
For some reason, I believed her.
“And are Mimi and Star okay?”
“They have a caseworker assigned to them. I hope that will give them the support they need.”
I rested my eyes, continuing to shuffle through Seb’s hair. The repetitive motion must’ve soothed me—I wouldn’t have thought I could discuss my betrayal so easily.
“Mimi must hate me.”
Suzie sighed. “One day, she may thank you. Or her daughter might. What you did shows how much you really care about them.”
Showed that to Suzie and those like her, maybe. But it would look different from Mimi’s perspective. “Is that why you do this job? So that one day, people might thank you?”
Suzie chuckled sadly. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“So then why?”
She ran her hands over her pink sweatpants. “I do it because…someone has to.”
Someone had to. Someone had to be there to look after Seb and all the other Sebs in the world. Or else they’d wind up right where we’d been…out on the streets, willing to do dangerous things to get by. Some of them still would, even with Suzie’s help.
But Seb and I wouldn’t be among them.
“You care very much for Sebastian, I can tell,” Suzie remarked, watching my hands caress his scalp.
“I love him.” I traced his cheekbone, fingers barely grazing the skin so I wouldn’t disturb him. Then I looked Suzie straight in the eye and added, “Not like a brother.”
She nodded, a few rapid blinks the only thing giving away her concern.
“He’s not special like that, I swear. Do you believe me?”
“I believe you probably know him better than I do.”
That sounded like a no. It didn’t really bother me, though. Seb was gone and there was no point in tearing my hair out trying to show her something that didn’t exist anymore. Just a few hours without him, and I missed him so much it felt as though I’d been hollowed out, like a lonely old abandoned building, too trashed for even junkies to live in.
Would he ever come back? Was there anything I could say or do to get him to forgive me? I’m sorry clearly wasn’t good enough anymore. Was he even gone by choice? Or was it whatever trauma he’d lived through as a kid that had stolen him away again?
“Suzie…” I dropped my hand on his shoulder because it was starting to shake. “Was Seb…abused? Like…physically or…or, um, sexually?”
Suzie closed her eyes for a moment and then shook her head. “I can’t discuss Seb’s case with you. I’m sorry.”
I nodded. “Yeah. It’s okay. I think I already know, anyway. I was just wondering about what made him decide to hide all this time. Maybe it was ’cause of that…or maybe it has to do with him losing his mom when he was so young.”
“His mother?” Suzie edged forward in the recliner, her brow furrowing.
“Yeah. You know. Her dying must’ve been really awful. I could tell he loved her a lot.”
“Alex, what do you know
about Sebastian’s mother?”
I dragged my attention away from Seb to focus on Suzie. Her eyes were narrowed…almost suspiciously.
Had I said something wrong?
“Um, not much. Just what he told me. That she died when he was little…and that she didn’t abandon him.”
“How did Seb tell you this?”
Oh, fuck. Right. And just what was I supposed to say—he drew a picture and I decided I was psychic?
“Uh…”
“Alex”—Suzie reached over to touch my knee—“this is important. Please.”
“Why?”
She bit her lip. Whatever it was, she didn’t want to tell me. “When Seb was found,” she began hesitantly, “the person he was with…was not a blood relative.”
When he was found. A horrible image of him chained up in a dank cellar sprang into my mind, and I gritted my teeth to fight back the nausea.
“And because he couldn’t speak, we weren’t able to find out anything about his family. We don’t even know his real last name. If his mother passed away, that could explain why no one ever reported him missing…and he could have other relatives out there who don’t know what happened to him.”
My pulse fluttered. Seb might have family. Family who wanted him.
“So it’s very important that you’re honest with me, Alex. How did Seb tell you about his mother?”
I let her words sink in to my hollowed-self while I considered how best to be honest. Because the truth was, he hadn’t said a damn thing. But did I actually believe in what Seb and I had shared…enough to report it to Suzie?
Thinking back to every moment we’d spent together…everything I’d read from the twists of his beautiful lips and the gleam in his eyes had felt so real. There’d been no room for doubt then, when we’d been so close I knew the exact rhythm of his heartbeat and pace of his soft breaths.
And even though that was gone now, the memories still refilled some of my emptiness, with a sad sort of love.
Yes, I believed it.
I turned back to Suzie. “He…wrote it.”
Her eyes shot wide. “Sebastian can write?”
“Sure.” I shrugged. “I mean, only a little. And not ’cause he’s slow…just ’cause he didn’t really pay attention in school. But he knows his letters.”
