Wrong in All the Right Ways

by Tiffany Brownlee

  “Well, I’m here for you. Whatever you need me to do, I’m here.”

  “I know.” The gentle trust in his voice makes my insides heat up, and I almost burst into tears right there. I’ve missed him. But I can’t make this about me; this is about him. “I appreciate it.” He takes a minute to find a classic rock station, and then turns to me and says, “Now, this is what I call music.” He keeps jiggling his legs, letting on that he really is nervous, and so I don’t try to change it back. If it calms him down, I’m fine with it.

  * * *

  Dylan and his dad don’t look alike, but I can tell that they are father and son based solely on their eyes. I’ve only ever seen those extravagant honey specks in their irises; never anyone else’s. When his father appears in a white T-shirt and tan cargo shorts, I hear Dylan’s breath shorten, his nerves setting in.

  “It’s been a while,” the man says as he sits across the table from us. I notice that the strings on his dad’s shorts have been cut off, probably to comply with the institute’s regulations. “You’re looking pretty good. Just like your old man.”

  Dylan doesn’t acknowledge his father’s compliment. He gets straight to the point. “I heard that you just got moved here, and I wanted to come see you.”

  “Yeah. The other place was starting to get a little crowded. More people equals more fights, and well…” He looks at his right hand, his knuckles glowing red, maybe from a recent clash with another patient there. “I mean, I’m happy to be here—the food’s better and the nurses are a little nicer—but it’s not home.”

  I see Dylan’s eyebrows draw together, sympathetically. “Dad, you can’t go home. You know that.”

  “But I’m better now. I really feel like myself.”

  Dylan swallows hard. “You killed Mom, Dad, and you almost killed me. You do know that, right?”

  Mr. McAndrews doesn’t say a word, and I think maybe it’s because he has wiped that memory from his mind. Maybe he is sick. No lucid person could sit before their son and pretend not to remember that they almost killed him. I wiggle my fingers between Dylan’s and squeeze his hand as hard as I can, letting him know that I’m still here for him.

  “You were horrible to Mom and me, but you weren’t always that way. You used to take us on family vacations and plan surprise birthday parties and take care of us when we were sick. You did all of that, and I know you loved us,” Dylan goes on. “But then one day, you just … stopped. Like, you woke up and decided that you didn’t want us anymore.” He loosens his grip on my hand, giving me the chance to wipe the sweat off on the leg of my jeans. Though his hands say otherwise, Dylan looks awfully comfortable right now. “At first it was Mom. You started accusing her of cheating on you, hiding your things around the house. Then it was me. You thought I was stealing from you and lying to you. Every argument spiraled into a fight, and you were violent.” Involuntarily, Dylan rubs the scar above his left eyebrow. He must have gotten that from his dad.

  “I came home from school one day, and the door was open, which was really weird. Mom never left our door open. She was adamant about that. ‘Don’t leave the door open unless you’re okay inviting a killer into our home,’ she would say. Little did she know she was sleeping next to the killer every night.” Dylan isn’t looking at his father or me when he speaks. His eyes are focused on the line where the wall meets the floor behind Mr. McAndrews.

  “Anyways, I set my backpack down and went to the kitchen to look for a snack. And that’s when I saw it. The blood. I tried to scream, but nothing came out.” He focuses his eyes on his father’s and stares for a minute, the tears sitting on the edge of his lids, waiting to be released. “You killed Mom. And when you saw me, you pointed the gun directly at my chest.”

  Dylan’s dad looks up with empty eyes; he’s muddled and scared, unable to recognize himself in Dylan’s chilling words. After a minute, he nervously looks my way. “I’m sorry. How rude of me,” he says, his eyes dancing all over my face. “I’m Aaron McAndrews. And you are…?”

  I open my mouth to speak, but Dylan answers for me. “This is Emma. She’s my foster sister.”

  I’m thankful that he took over; I had no clue which title to take.

  “You’re gorgeous,” he says with a smirk. “Are you sure you’re only his foster sibling? The way you’ve been holding on to his hand so tightly, I would imagine that you guys are … maybe more than that?” I retract my earlier statement; there’s no way that this man is clinically insane. He is too observant for that.

  “This isn’t about her. This is about you, Dad. You tore our family apart when you ignored your mental illness. This is all because of you.”

  “I’m not sure what you want me to do now,” Mr. McAndrews whispers after a while. The blank look on his face is too much for me to take. I have to say something, but what? “Look, son—”

  “You don’t get to call me that,” Dylan snaps almost before his dad can even get the word out.

  “Okay, Dylan. What do you want from me?”

  I sense Dylan’s breathing pick up in pace and before I know it, a warm pink tint crawls up his neck and settles onto his face. “Just one thing. In the next couple of weeks, some nice-looking people in suits are going to come and hand a pen and a set of papers with the words Termination of Parental Rights across the top. After reading over them to the best of your ability, I want you to sign and date at the bottom, confirming that you understand that your rights have been released. You haven’t been anything to me in a long time anyway. This is just to make it official.” The words come out hoarse and rough, as if Dylan is losing his voice. I imagine that it’s because he’s holding back tears he’s wanted to cry for a long time now.

  “Why would I do that? You think these people are going to adopt you? You think her family is going to want you to burden their lives like you did mine?” I flash back to the two boys who used to taunt Dylan at school, and how I stepped in to protect him. Now’s your chance, Emma. Save him.

  “Because that’s what a father would do. He would realize his mistake, and try his best to make it right. And seeing as you haven’t been a father to him since you took his mom’s life, this is your last chance to do something for your only son, who almost died because of you. Do the right thing for once in your life and sign the papers, asshole.” I rise from my seat, rage building up inside of me. I want so badly to slap Dylan’s father, but I repress the urge when Dylan pulls me back down.

  “I don’t want to hate you,” he says to his father through clenched teeth, “but I do. You’re so selfish. You only think of yourself, and you always have. It was never about me or Mom. Only you. Always you. But not anymore.”

  “Dylan, you’re all I have left … I can’t lose you, too.”

  “Lose me?” Dylan shouts into his father’s eyes. “You pushed me away. You never took your mood disorder seriously, and you let it break us. And now that I’ve found a family that wants me, you want to exert your parental claim to me? That’s a load of crap and you know it.”

  It’s at that moment that I realize that nothing we say will convince him to sign those papers, so I hop up again. “You ready, Dylan?”

  Dylan hesitates, his eyes still focused on his father’s and his breathing more frantic with each passing second. I imagine him cursing him out inside his head. I hate you, I can almost hear him say. “Yeah.”

  “Do the right thing,” I say again before signaling to the guard that we are finished here.

  After we exit the gray building, I pull him to the side. “You okay?”

  “Yeah. Did you really just call him an asshole?” he asks, his mouth hanging open in an I-can’t-believe-you-just-did-that kind of way.

  “Sorry. I just got mad. I don’t think he thinks he did anything wrong.”

  “He hasn’t been able to make sense of the way he acts in a long time.… Hence the mental institution,” Dylan says grimly.

  “I’m so proud of you. That took a lot of courage, and I just want to let you
know how proud I am to call you my boyfriend, and future brother.” I don’t have enough time to stop the tears from welling in my eyes; before I know it, they’re forming salty trails down my cheeks and falling to the ground. I’m sorry, I want to say. He brought me here to be strong for him and with him, and I can’t seem to hold it together. I have to wrap my hands around his waist and bury my face in his chest to conceal my breakdown. If anything, he should be the one crying, not me.

  I feel his fingers run through my hair as he holds me close. “This meant so much to me, and having you by my side today … Words can’t describe how grateful I am to have you in my life, Emma.” With two hands, he grabs hold of my face and lifts it until our lips meet.

  I try to think of something cooler and more meaningful to say in return, but when our lips disconnect, all I can come up with is “Me too.”

  chapter 15

  I’M NOT SURE what to say to Dylan when we leave the dingy gray mental institute; he looks like Death. The guy sitting in the passenger seat of my car doesn’t resemble the guy he was when we walked out of the building hand in hand. Everything, from his dark and glazed-over eyes to his trembling lips, screams Boy, Interrupted. It breaks my heart to see him like this, and what’s even more painful is the fact that I can’t do anything to help him. Not as his sister. Not as his girlfriend. Nothing.

  “You okay?” I finally work up the courage to ask after riding in silence for a few miles. I know he said that he was grateful to have me by his side today, but that feels like forever ago. Now it’s like someone flipped a switch and he turned into this sleepwalking being; he’s not saying much, not breathing much, and his eyes have got to be drying out because he’s barely blinking either. It’s like he’s crossed over into full-on zombie mode. When he doesn’t answer my question, I focus my attention back onto the dashboard. The red needle on my fuel gauge is hovering over the E. If I don’t stop now, we’ll run out of gas in the middle of nowhere, and I’m not trying to star in the next based-on-a-true-story made-for-TV thriller. We’re not that far away from the asylum—or the prison. There are weirdos out there.

  “I’m stopping for gas,” I say as I pull up to pump number one at the nearest Circle K.

  That’s his cue to volunteer to pump, but instead of getting out, he squirms around in his seat before settling even deeper into it, ignoring me completely. I have to contain my annoyance because I know his fit has nothing to do with me, but it’s getting harder to tolerate his mood swings as he brushes off my efforts to make him feel better.

  A thousand thoughts overload my mind as I wait in line to pay, none of them helping at all. Why isn’t he hungry? I mean, I’m starving! Oh, God … what if he’s depressed? But don’t depressed people eat a lot … to make up for them feeling so crappy? Maybe I should cook him something when we get back. Depressed people eat casseroles, right? But I don’t know how to cook a casserole. Oh my God … he’s going to break up with me after I poison him with bad casserole.

  “Sweetheart!” the man behind the counter half screams at me to get my attention. “You buying something, or what?”

  “Twenty on pump one, and this candy bar, please.” As I hand him a fifty-dollar bill, I glance out the glass doors to see Dylan walking around the car and opening up the driver’s side door. I don’t take my eyes off of him as I hold my hand out for what feels like forever, waiting for my change. I hear the man mutter the number of bills and coins he’s giving me, and when he places them into my hand, I sprint back to the car so fast, any bystander would have probably assumed that I’d stolen the chocolate candy bar I’m shoving in my pocket.

  “Not trying to take off without me, are you?” I inquire as I watch him reach down and pull the lever to pop the trunk.

  “Wouldn’t think of it.” His words are short and sharp, and I fear that I might get cut if I ask another question, so I let him continue with whatever he’s doing as I pump the gas myself. It’s hard to see with the trunk door in the way, but I think I see him grab a black bag and walk back to his seat. I’m not sure if I should attribute his weird behavior to the shock of seeing his father for the first time in so long or to the pain he felt from opening up about the day his mother died, but either way, I wish it would stop. This trip was supposed to make things better, not worse. I want my Dylan back, my honey-eyed Dylan.

  I keep the radio on the rock station he set it to on the way up here, hoping that eventually he’ll turn to me and say something—anything—to end the taciturnity between us, but he doesn’t. It makes no sense, I think to myself as he lets out a deep sigh. Doesn’t he want to talk about this? I mean, that’s what couples do … they talk about things like this. It’s supposed to bring us closer … or something. I glance at him out of the corner of my eye and see that his eyes are closed and his chest is moving up and down at a steady rate. I’ve never seen Dylan sleep; he’s always up painting, working, or playing with Matthew.

  As I don’t think I’ll be able to stand another minute of his music, I press the play button on the CD player. A familiar female voice comes on the radio, picking up where I last left off in my audiobook.

  It’s been a while since I’ve listened to this in the car, but after the first few lines, I pinpoint our location to chapter nine. Catherine’s famous “I am Heathcliff” speech—which I had to memorize as one of my AP English projects—is approaching rapidly, and as it does, I reach an epiphany.

  Is Dylan my Heathcliff? Am I his Catherine? And is Keegan the Edgar wedge being driven between us? Dylan seems to know more about me than I do myself, just like Heathcliff. But Keegan is the more appropriate suitor for me, as Edgar was for Catherine. And on top of that, I have to stand by and pretend I can’t see the jealousy that I put Dylan through every day, just to protect my own image. I am Catherine. I am Catherine!

  I have to pull over to the side of the road to steady my thoughts and regain control, but the blood pounding in my ears makes it difficult to shake the spine-tingling feeling inside of me. I shift the car into park, and reach behind me to grab the frozen bottle of water I stashed behind my seat before we left the house, with hopes that it’s not still rock solid. The crunch of the plastic bottle and the cool condensation dampening my fingertips are a hopeful sign.

  With the cool liquid surging through my body, I look over at Dylan. Set against my frenetic self, he’s never looked calmer; the slight smile on his face says it all. I imagine that he’s entered a world where his mother hasn’t been murdered, his dad isn’t a killer, and he can have me all to himself. If I were in his shoes and I was having a dream like that, I’d grin in my sleep, too. As I place the cap back on my bottle of icy water, I spot the black bag that he grabbed out of the trunk earlier.

  I know that I’m about to lose my nomination for the Best Girlfriend of the Year Award (who am I kidding; with all of the Keegan stuff going on, I was definitely kicked out of the running weeks ago), but I can’t help myself. I have to know what he’s hiding from me. Boyfriends and girlfriends don’t hide things, but maybe he’s keeping me in the dark for a reason. It’s hard to think straight with my girlfriend label on, so I switch into sister mode and reach down to get the bag.

  I silently thank God for knocking Dylan out so hard, because it makes it easier to grab the bag at his feet without waking him up. I pull on the drawstrings and open up the bag to find two transparent orange bottles of pills, both white and oval-shaped. They’re so similar-looking that if I’d only glanced at them, I would have thought they were the same pill. The only difference, to me, is the size of the pills. In one bottle—the one with his name on it—is a set of thick capsules, and in the other—the one that has the label ripped off—is a set of thin ones.

  I turn the bottle with the big pills over in my hands so I can read the label. Ambien. The prescription date says that these were issued to him back in September, when he first arrived at our house, so he’s either not taking his pills or hoarding them. Or both. Or—I always feel the need to give him the benefit of the doubt
—he’s just using an old bottle for some strange reason. I don’t know.

  I continue to turn the bottle over to read the label. It sounds like a bunch of gibberish until I come across the word insomnia. Out of the corner of my eyes, I see him wiggle around in his seat—trying to find a comfortable position, I guess—and, out of fear of getting caught, I shove the bottles back into his bag and place it at his feet where I found it. When I turn my attention back to the road and shift the car into drive, I realize that Wuthering Heights is still playing; I was so focused on snooping without getting caught that I think my ears turned off.

  At first, I want to get upset at the fact that Dylan’s been keeping this from me, but then the idea that he might be embarrassed to tell me settles in. Maybe he doesn’t want me to think he’s crazy or something? He did say that he hardly ever gets a full night’s rest.

  “Cheyenne,” he breathes, so low that I almost don’t hear him. I didn’t know he talked in his sleep. And who is Cheyenne? His mom? Or maybe he lived there? I try to think back to the conversations we’ve had, but I don’t remember him ever mentioning a Cheyenne—person or place. Or maybe he did, and I was too busy with other things to listen intently enough to remember.

  The dizzy spell I experienced back in September tries its best to reemerge, so I turn off the radio and drive in silence for the next hour and a half, listening to Dylan whisper pieces of his dreams while he tosses and turns in his seat. It isn’t until I get into the lane for the off-ramp that he wakes, looking even more dead than when he went to sleep.

  “Did I sleep the whole ride back?” he asks, smoothing down his hair.

  “Sure did. But that’s okay. The silence was good. Gave me time to sit back and reflect on a few things.”