Matt's Story

by Lauren Gibaldi

  “OH! I have them at school right now. I used the photography room to take the photos. We can see them tomorrow.”

  “Awesome,” I say, actually looking forward to it.

  “I think it’s perfect,” Kat says, finishing the book. “Don’t change a thing.”

  Cindy grins at Kat, then squeezes her arm.

  “I’m going to go put this in the car so we don’t spill anything on it,” Cindy says, clutching her portfolio in a massive hug. “Be right back.”

  She walks off, and I’m left with Kat. I like her, I do, but I’m more comfortable with Cindy. She’s just . . . nicer.

  “So where are you applying for school?” I ask, thinking of something to say.

  “I want to go to med school eventually, so I’m applying to schools with good science programs,” she explains.

  “You’d be good as a doctor. Very to the point,” I say, grinning.

  “Ha. Cindy would be terrible. A kid would have a splinter and she’d sob.”

  I chuckle, then say, “You should clearly be a pediatrician.”

  “I should clearly not be a pediatrician. Whereas Cindy would sob, I’d scare the kid,” she says, laughing at herself. She sits back and pushes her barely touched drink away.

  “So are you applying to schools close to RISD?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” she says wearily. “I mean, I am, definitely, but there aren’t many extremely close,” she sighs. “I don’t know. Let me ask you—why did you think long distance wouldn’t work when you broke up with Ella?”

  “Huh?” I ask, taken off-guard, but of course she asked that. She’s worried. I just expected it to be Cindy, not her, who was. “Um, I don’t know. It never worked for my brother, so . . .”

  “So you assumed it wouldn’t work for you?”

  “I guess so,” I say, rubbing the cup between my hands.

  “Did you ever think of trying?”

  “No.” I pause. “There was so much going on with Chris, I just didn’t want to. Then, after I got here and saw how bad it was, I was going to try, until my parents said I shouldn’t—because of Chris’s ‘situation’ and all,” I say using air quotes, mostly meaning everything we went through when we were getting harassed by the guy Chris owed. It was scary, and my mom didn’t want Ella involved, so by the time I really wanted to talk to her, I couldn’t. And it sucked even more.

  I used to have a hard time opening up and saying what I’m thinking, and to a point I still do, but the shell has cracked and I’m letting everything out. Because why not? I wish I could have been this honest with Ella.

  “So if it wasn’t for Chris . . .”

  “I never considered that,” I say confidently. “It was always Chris.”

  “But if you could go back and change anything . . . would you?” she asks.

  I’m about to answer “no, not at all,” but I stop myself. Would I? “I don’t know, maybe,” I answer honestly, then find myself continuing. “I never had anyone so close to me, you know? And it was kind of . . . scary. I’m used to it just being me, Chris, and my parents. So including her was . . . a lot for me. Even though I wanted to. I just didn’t know how to. And I was afraid our relationship would just end horribly, so I kind of pulverized it before giving it the opportunity.” I think of Ella, now, looking at me deeply and telling me things will be okay. She would have done that, had I confided in her. She would have taken me in her arms and rubbed my back until I believed her.

  “You’re like a human autoclave. We just learned about them in bio. They’re these machines that sterilize equipment. Nothing alive can survive being inside one,” Kat says.

  “So you’re saying I’m a heartless machine that kills things that get too close.”

  “More or less,” she says with a shrug, and I can’t help but roll my eyes at her. It’s the first time we’ve had any sort of heart-to-heart, and she’s already insulting me. In a way, it feels right.

  She breathes in deep, then says, “I was kind of like you before Cindy, too. I mean, I dated one other girl before her, and she was . . . just experimenting, as it turned out. So I was wary at first, but after, like, a week with Cindy . . . I don’t know, things changed. She has a way of doing that. She’s just so damn optimistic and wonderful. When things got hard, after the last chick outed us to the whole school, she just held on to me tighter. She never gave up. She looked at people dead in the eyes and dared them to fight us. She has so much strength for someone so . . .”

  “Tiny?” I venture.

  “Yeah,” she laughs. “Tiny. And bubbly. She’s my rock, and I don’t want to lose her.”

  “So do you think you’ll try?” I ask.

  “Long distance? Yeah, she wants to. She’s convinced it’ll work. I guess we’ll see. . . .”

  “I think you can do it,” I say, trying to cheer her up. I’m not sure if they can, but who knows. At least they’re trying. At least they’re trying when I didn’t have the guts to.

  “You think?” she asks, tilting her head to the side like Cindy often does. The similar motion makes me smile.

  “Yeah. If anyone can, it’s you guys.”

  She smiles, and stares down at her cup. She takes another sip and cringes again. “For what it’s worth? I think you and Ella could have, too.”

  The next day, I meet Cindy in the art room. It’s empty, save for her running around and setting up her canvases on the tables.

  “Whoa,” I say, taking them in. They’re like the photos she showed me yesterday, but so much more vivid. So much more real. You can get lost in her paintings. “Too bad you can’t send the real thing in.”

  “I know, right?” She sighs. “At least I know everyone else can’t either. So we’re all in the same boat.”

  “These are really, really cool. How’d you get the idea?” I ask, walking from table to table to see them all. There are some that are just lines, some that are swirls upon swirls of every color in the rainbow. And some that just have simple bursts of color.

  “I don’t know,” she says, following me around. “I was working on a painting of a horse. Lame, I know, but that was an assignment for class. I was so frustrated because I can’t draw normal things, like horse’s faces, so I threw paint on the canvas out of anger.”

  I nod, not really picturing her frustrated.

  “I liked the way the paint fell, so I got a fresh canvas and did it again. Then added some lines in different colors, and, I don’t know, I just went from there.”

  “This could be a stupid question, but what do they mean?”

  “Not a stupid question,” she says. “They’re chaos, I guess. I mean, art is usually so precise and perfect, I wanted to show the other side of it. The frustration when things aren’t going your way. The dreams you have when you can’t draw. Or the daydreams that come when you’re planning your next piece. They’re just abstract images, really.”

  “I really like them,” I say again, at the last painting.

  “I’ll make you one!” she says eagerly, and I smile at her.

  “That would be awesome. I’ll hang it in my dorm room.”

  She grins proudly, then starts piling them up. I help her, grabbing a few. “Kat already has a bunch. I give her my screw-ups. She loves them for some reason.”

  “I’m sure even the screw-ups are awesome,” I reassure her.

  “They’re not, but Kat thinks so.” She pauses. “I kind of love that about her.” She pauses again. “Did we ever tell you how we met?”

  “No,” I say, shaking my head.

  “We had class together, but didn’t know the other was, you know, so we pretty much ignored each other. Okay, actually, she ignored me . . . I thought she hated me.”

  “That sounds like her,” I say.

  “Right? So the class ended—like, the school year ended—and I was over her. I passed her in the hallway and said some crazy thing like, ‘I’m not a mean person, you know’ or something, and she just started laughing. And then I started laughing. Because I l
iked her, you know? I thought she was super cute, and it was so frustrating that she ignored me. So then we started talking and, well, yeah. Anyway, she could have made fun of me about that for years, and she never has. She’s just cool like that.”

  I smile, feeling kind of awkward, then pile up the rest of the paintings in silence. There’s a piece of paper on the floor, so I lean down to grab it. It’s nothing much, just a sketch someone made of a flower blooming out of two tangled hands. I guess it was inspiration for one of their drawings.

  “Picking up one of your found-object things?” Cindy asks from the other side of the room. I told them about it a few days earlier, when they saw me picking up a scrap of paper at the bookstore. It was a receipt for a coffee and the book The Giver.

  “Uh, yeah,” I say, putting it in my pocket, feeling kind of self-conscious about my habit. It was okay with Ella—I wanted her to know, to see that part of me. But with them, I just kind of told them factually, like telling them about my shoe size. There was nothing much to it. Maybe because I don’t feel like it’s that much a part of me anymore, after making some amazing real memories of my own.

  “You know, in a way, what you’re doing is art.”

  “How so?” I ask, hopping up onto the table.

  “You’re curating a collection,” she says, sitting on the one opposite me, legs flailing under the table.

  “But it’s not my own work. I didn’t make any of these, like you made your paintings.”

  “True, but think of poem anthologies. The editor didn’t write all of them, just picked his favorites.”

  “So my scraps of papers are like poems now?” I joke.

  “In a way, sure. They’re personal to you.”

  “But what if I don’t want them anymore?” I ask, figuratively.

  She stops moving her legs and looks at me. “Then just stop collecting them and start on something new. Something more you. They’re your horse painting. Make your portfolio pieces.”

  If only it was that easy, I think, but really, why isn’t it? Why can’t I just . . . move on?

  Maybe I can. If I try.

  CHAPTER 7

  Waiting for our acceptance letters proves to be more tedious than school. It’s been three months, and I’m eager to know if I’m going away, but every time I check the mail, part of me wonders if I made the right decision in just applying to Washington. I’m just not sure what’s right anymore.

  I look outside and see Chris jogging around the backyard, kicking a soccer ball between his feet. He’s been doing that a lot lately, since he’s been off the team and out of college. His rehab mentor said it would be good for him to work out his urges with the ball, and I guess it’s working. For once I’m the one busy with friends, and he hasn’t heard from anyone since he’s been home, with the exception of Delilah. So I head out to join him.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey,” he says, looking up when he hears me. He looks surprised, but he tries hard not to show it. Instead, he looks down at the ball and performs some complicated footstep around it.

  “Pass it,” I say, and he nods and kicks it in my direction. I’ve always sucked at sports, something he definitely knows as the ball leaves his foot.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, his deep voice lower than usual. Head still down, he gets the returned ball and kicks it between his feet. When I don’t respond, he looks up. “I said I’m sorry.”

  “I heard you,” I say.

  “Then why are you being such a dick?”

  “Great apology, Chris,” I say, and turn to go again.

  “No, wait, stop,” he says, and I do. “Sorry, I’m just . . . I’m going through a lot right now, and don’t know how to react. To anything.”

  “And you think I’m not? Do you think it’s been easy for me?”

  “No, but at least you don’t have a criminal record, aren’t recovering from an addiction, and weren’t kicked out of college.”

  “And that’s my fault how?” I ask, realizing his apology has turned into an excuse for me to feel sorry for him. And I do, still.

  “It’s not, it’s just—” He stops. “God, you’re my little brother. I thought you’d be on my side.”

  “On your side? This isn’t a game.”

  “No, it’s my life. And I need someone in my corner.”

  “You should have thought of that before you got yourself in trouble. I’m always in your corner.”

  “I know—”

  “I covered for you all the time, I never ratted you out when you came home late or threw parties when Mom and Dad were out. I was always there for you, so don’t say you never had anyone in your corner.”

  I’m breathing hard as I glare at him. I’ve never shown this much emotion, never let myself, but with Chris I can’t hold it back. He’s the only person I’ve ever been truly honest with.

  “I hate that that’s changed,” Chris says in a small voice.

  “Why’d you do it?” I ask.

  He exhales slowly and kicks the ball away, done with the game. “I was stupid?” He answers as a question. “I mean, really stupid, obviously.”

  “Obviously.”

  “Nothing I’m going to say will stop you from judging me, so should I even try?” he asks, so I signal him to continue. “There’s no good reason why I did it. I was bored, everyone on the team was doing it, so why not, you know? It went too far, and I ended up with the blame.”

  “Which is when we came here.”

  “Right. And it sucks because I was off everything by the time we got caught. I gave it all up.”

  He’s being vague, and I don’t care to really make him elaborate. I don’t want to know, honestly, because it’ll only make me think less of him, and I don’t want that. He’s still my brother.

  “And what about now?”

  “Now?” he asks. “You can’t force me to go near that stuff. Or even the people I was friends with back then. To say I learned my lesson would be an understatement. Do you think the whole thing was easy for me?”

  I shrug, because of course it’s not, but he hasn’t really shown otherwise. Like it’s all just an inconvenience, not something permanent.

  “It’s not,” he continues. “At all. Don’t you think I’d rather be where I was before all this? I’ve lost everything. College. My friends. You. Hell, I even almost lost Delilah.”

  The fact that he grouped me in with the things he loved and lost is not lost on me. “What happened with her?” I ask, because I want to know. “Why didn’t Delilah leave you?”

  “She did when she first found out what I was into. I got clean for her, wiped my hands of everything.”

  “You didn’t think to do that for us?”

  “I didn’t think you’d know. What happens in college stays in college and all that. I never thought—” He drops down onto the ground and leans against the fence. I sit down next to him. “Yeah,” he says, and then, “listen. What I did was shitty. It’s killing me. Seriously, probation aside, it kills me that you were forced to move again. I know how much that sucks, of all people, I know. When Mom and Dad found out, the one thing I told them was to not come here for me. That they had to stay there for you.”

  “Really?” I ask, because though he mentioned it in the past, I never quite believed him.

  “Of course. I didn’t want you guys to move again, but you know Mom.” I do know Mom. She would never have listened to him. Which is probably why she never told me. “I hate everything I did, but I especially hate that it affected you.”

  I look at him and see once again how different we look, and not just because of age. He’s gone through something much harder than I could have ever imagined, something that’ll impact the rest of his life. And he regrets it completely. Why didn’t I see it? Why didn’t I let myself see it? I was too wrapped up in my own personal drama, hating everything, to see what he was really going through.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, shaking my head, pulling the grass up with my fingers. “That you’re goin
g through so much. And that I wasn’t there for you.”

  “You shouldn’t be. I deserve everything, and let’s be honest, I probably would have done something stupid to get me into jail at some point anyway,” he says, brushing his hair out of his face, and I chuckle. “But I am glad you’re here. I mean, not that you had to leave, but I’m glad to have my lil’ bro around again.”

  “About that,” I say. “What’s with the lil’ bro? You’ve never called me that before.”

  He shrugs, then says, “I don’t know. I was trying to remind you that you had a brother.”

  “As if I’d forget?”

  “It seemed like you wanted to for a while,” he says, resigned.

  “Okay, maybe I did. But we’re cool, okay?”

  “Yeah,” he says.

  “And if you pull any of this crap again—”

  “Dude,” he says. “More than anything else, you being here is making me realize how stupid I was. I’ll jump into that disease-infected creek down the street before doing anything like that again.”

  “The one that’s brownish green and thicker than oil?”

  “Yeah, what’s in that thing?”

  “Older brothers who torture their little brothers. Their bodies liquefying,” I say with a smile so he knows I’m not insulting him. He shakes his head, then ruffles my hair as he stands up.

  “Come on, I’ll show you how to kick properly.”

  “I can kick properly,” I say, following him up.

  “Yeah, for a girl.”

  “Dude, this girl I was friends with back in Orlando, Meg? She kicked this guy messing with her brother once and, I swear, it was harder than you’ve ever kicked a ball. So, yeah, I’ll take that as a compliment, thank you.”

  “Sounds like a girl I’d like to know,” he says, jogging around the ball before passing to me.

  “She is,” I say, remembering when she asked me about my older brother. I smile, putting the memory back in the box of my mind. It was nice taking it out, at least for a second.

  We’re not perfect, Chris and me, and we probably never will be again, but at least we’re back to being brothers. At least we have that.