by J P Barnaby
They went up an open stairwell to the second floor and then down almost to the end of the hall, where a door stood open on their right. Aaron’s mother peeked around the frame and smiled.
“Aaron! Come and see Allen’s loft. It’s just like the bunk beds you and Allen had when you were little,” she said, and finally the excitement seemed to replace her sadness, even if just for a little while. Aaron loved the way it sounded and picked up his pace down the otherwise deserted hall. Other students may have been moving in right then—he’d seen lots of people moving in and out of the building from his automotive hideout—but the traffic seemed to have lagged.
Allen’s dorm was pretty much the same size as his bedroom at home, only now they had to fit two people in it. On the left, presumably Allen’s side since that was where the loft bed was, his father sat on the floor constructing the television stand. It would house the small TV from Allen’s room and his PS3, where he could listen to music, watch DVDs, or play games—a truly versatile little machine and every college student’s dream.
“Wow, how many roommates did I get?” a voice asked from the doorway, and the room fell quiet. It took just a few seconds of stunned silence, in which Aaron wanted to move to the back of the room and avoid the stranger’s gaze, for Allen to step forward.
“Just one, hey, I’m Allen. This is my family. They’re just helping me get something put together,” Allen said, putting a hand out. The other boy, a nondescript kid of medium height and average blond jock looks, put his hand out in return.
“Chad. Yeah, my mom and dad will be here in a few. I kind of got a little excited and may have broken the speed limit in a few places,” he said sheepishly. “We were gonna go to lunch after we got all my crap up here, but we can go now and give you a bit to finish up.”
“That’s very thoughtful,” Aaron’s mother said as she held out another generic piece of wood to their father as he screwed one in place. “Looks like you got assigned a pretty good guy, Allen.”
“Yeah, thanks, man,” Allen said. “Maybe after we get all this crap put away, we can go a few rounds on the PlayStation, or I think I saw air hockey downstairs.”
“Dude, I love PlayStation. The one we have at home is my brother’s, and he wouldn’t let me bring it. Got the new Call of Duty?” Chad asked excitedly.
“Yep.”
“Sweet, let me text my mom, and then I’ll be back in a bit. This year is gonna rock!” He turned and bolted from the door with all the enthusiasm of a kid in a candy store. They heard him hit the door for the stairwell at a run and stomp down the first few, but his footsteps melted away in the murmur of voices in the hall. The herd was on the move.
“I think someone forgot to take his Ritalin this morning,” Anthony observed wryly. Their mother tried to cover a smirk but failed rather miserably.
“Anthony, that isn’t nice. He’s just… excited.”
“Sure,” he said and climbed up onto Chad’s unmade plastic-covered bed to wait. Their father secured the last piece in place, declaring it done after an impressive fifteen minutes of assembly time. Aaron helped Allen hook up the television and gaming system. When they attached it to the Wi-Fi, they saw that the Internet worked and logged into Netflix just to test.
“What do you think, Mom? Animal House?” Allen asked with a fake innocence that made Aaron laugh.
“You behave yourself, young man. Not that I’m very worried about that. You’ve always been a good kid. Please, just keep yourself safe, honey. Promise me?” their mother asked, a tear resting in the corner of her eye, poised to fall at a moment’s notice and turn their happy occasion into a sad one.
“I will carry the Mace with me. I’ll be fine, Mom. You know Purdue is a safe place or you wouldn’t have let me come here.”
“Yeah, he’s not Aaron, Mom, can we go?” Anthony rolled off the bed, looking bored. Hurt laced itself into every corner of Aaron’s heart at his brother’s ridicule. “God, are there no bathrooms here?”
“We passed it on the way in, first door off the stairs,” his father said, and Anthony pushed past Aaron with some force, nearly taking his brother down in the effort to get out of the room. Aaron rubbed his arm, trying not to let the unexpected slam against his body take him to places he didn’t need to go surrounded by excitable freshmen.
The silence lengthened and grew in Anthony’s absence, and Allen busied himself by putting his games in the stand. Their mother grabbed some clothes out of the trunk and took it upon herself to hang them in the closet. Aaron and their father merely stood by and watched, helpless to bridge the growing tension. Allen ripped the tape off the bottom of the box he’d just emptied, flattening it and dropping it on the floor near Aaron’s feet.
“I’ll go,” he said suddenly, as Aaron noticed his mother slowly creeping toward the door, watching for her youngest son. Allen hopped over a box full of clothes and disappeared through the doorway, and then it was just Aaron, his parents, and that heavy, awkward silence he associated with their need to talk about one of their wayward children.
“I’ll go too,” he said suddenly and bolted from the room after his brothers. Whether they wanted to talk about Anthony, or Allen, or even him, he didn’t want to hear. Instead, he walked back up the hallway toward the main stairway and heard voices, yelling actually, behind a propped door ahead.
“Why do you have to stay here? Can’t you go to school in DeKalb? That’s like ten minutes away!” Anthony yelled, unseen, at Allen behind the door.
“Anthony, Purdue has the best engineering program in the country. Don’t you want me to get a good education? I’m only four hours away,” Allen retorted.
“You’re the only one in that house that gives a fuck about me!”
“That’s not true. Mom and Dad love you. Aaron loves you.” Allen stopped midsentence when Anthony started to laugh. It was a harsh and bitter sound, like clock hands scraping the passage of their youth. Aaron’s hand rested on the door, ready to push it open when Anthony spoke again.
“Mom and Dad aren’t interested in me or you. We stopped being visible when Aaron got hurt. And Aaron, I don’t think he sees anything except what’s in his head. I understand why you want to get away. I want to get away too, but I can’t. I’m trapped there.” The pain in his voice scored a jagged hole in Aaron’s soul. He couldn’t stand being the cause of it. The metal door, cold under his fingers, never seemed to warm as he stood waiting for the next blow to fall.
“And don’t drink anymore. We talked about this.” Allen’s stern voice was muffled, and Aaron peeked around the door to see him holding Anthony in his arms. Though Anthony stood nearly a head taller than Allen, he still rested his head on Allen’s shoulder. Allen kept a hand on the back of Anthony’s neck.
“I won’t.”
Allen must have been giving him that big brother look, the one Aaron spent years trying to perfect before he lost his status as big brother, because Anthony squeaked out a quieter, “I promise.”
“And try to do better in school; you can’t get out if no college will take you. We can Skype, we can FaceTime, whenever you want after school. Just don’t… don’t give up, okay?”
“Don’t leave.” Anthony’s voice was but a whisper then, a frightened child in the dark. His fourteen-year-old ego wouldn’t allow the tears to fall, but his voice teemed with them.
“I have to.” The room fell silent, and Aaron finally pushed open the door to reveal his younger brothers, broken by the fate that had befallen their family with his survival. They stood near the sinks, still in the same position, only Anthony had turned to bury his face in Allen’s shoulder, probably to hide his welling tears. Allen looked up when the door opened.
“Mom and Dad want us back?” he asked and started to pull away from Anthony, who clung to him, drowning in his own sea of sadness.
“No, I think they wanted to talk with me out of the room, so I wanted to come and check on Anthony.”
“’M fine,” Anthony said with a sniffle and pulled
the front of his T-shirt up to rub his face. To give himself something to do, it seemed, he went over to the sink and splashed water on his face.
“I’m going to miss Allen too,” Aaron said and raised a hand to put on Anthony’s shoulder, but his youngest brother backed away.
“Yeah, right.”
“I will. Just like I miss Spencer right now. It seems like everyone is leaving, and things are changing, but they’re not leaving forever.” Aaron wasn’t able to meet Anthony’s eyes. He was placating his little brother, and they all knew it.
“That’s nice. Very pretty. I’ll be by the car.” He turned toward the door but stopped before he reached it. Anthony turned and launched himself at Allen, holding tight for several long minutes before he strode out the door and didn’t look back.
“You have to understand,” Allen said quietly, watching the door through which their brother had just disappeared. “After that night, Anthony had no idea what had happened to our family. One day everything was fine, and the next, it was total chaos. And then he got put down in the basement with no real explanation. He was just a little kid. It took me a long time to get him to understand he hadn’t done anything wrong. All of a sudden, Mom and Dad stopped going to his games, stopped volunteering at school, stopped doing anything that had to do with either of us, and focused solely on you. As I got older, I went to his games and helped him with his homework. It was just us for a long time, and now I’m leaving him.”
“You’re getting on with your life, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Don’t feel guilty. He won’t be alone. I’ll take care of him,” Aaron promised without any earthly idea how he would keep that promise, only that he couldn’t stand the look of sadness on Allen’s face, the one who had been by his side in everything, even the fight to be able to choose his own therapist. And now he was leaving too.
“I know you will. Take care of Mom too. She’s been so tired lately, trying to keep everything together.”
“I will, Allen.”
“I’ll miss you, man,” Allen gave up all pretense of being a big, strong adult and threw his arms around Aaron, who stiffened for just a second before returning the hug.
“I’ll miss you too.”
The moment went on a little too long, and Aaron pulled away, wiping his face on his long sleeve. A suffocating weight pressed on his chest as he turned to leave the little too-hot bathroom at the edge of Allen’s life.
“Go check on Anthony. I’ll send Mom and Dad down,” Allen called after him. A tiny blond girl, who looked about twelve but had to be more like seventeen or eighteen, passed him as he went down the stairs. Her hair was up in a long ponytail which just touched the back of her Purdue tank top.
“Hi,” she said quietly as he passed.
“Hi,” he replied, surprised that such a pretty girl would talk to the scarred freak at all. Maybe Spencer had a point about him imagining people’s reactions. When Aaron reached the ground floor, he happened to glance into the brightly colored lounge to see Anthony hanging out on one of the chairs as he stared out of the window. Aaron caught himself just as he reached for the front door and changed course toward the lounge. Anthony didn’t even look up. He just kept watching all the pretty coeds and prettier college boys passing in front of the building on their way to their lives.
“Hey,” Aaron said, dropping down onto the chair next to Anthony.
“Too hot to stand out by the car,” he said and scooted lower in the chair to rest his knees on the windowsill in front of him.
“I’m good with this,” Aaron replied as he pulled out his phone and shot a text to their mother letting her know they’d said good-bye to Allen and were waiting in the lounge. No one else came into their sanctuary to disturb them, so they sat quietly, not talking, just watching the world go by.
It took their parents about ten minutes more to say good-bye to Allen and get his mother out of the room. Aaron could see her in his head as she tried to help Allen arrange it just right, but Allen was an adult. It was his turn to decide where his underwear would go. Their parents picked them up in the lounge, and after a brief trip to the vending machines for pop and chips, they climbed back in the Durango. No one spoke of the empty space between Aaron and Anthony in the backseat, the one that felt like a chasm neither would be able to cross.
About an hour outside of Lafayette when things started to settle in on the ride, Aaron popped open his Sprite. He checked his phone and saw that Spencer hadn’t sent another text, but that he had e-mail.
MissingTwin wants to be your friend.
It took Aaron several minutes to remember why the name sounded familiar. He’d answered a comment on MissingTwin’s PTSD therapy post. Well, that was why Dr. Thomas wanted him to go on these boards, right, to make friends? He clicked the link in the e-mail which took him to the PTSD therapy group site. There, he logged in, which seemed like an awful lot of work just to accept a friend request, but after a few minutes he clicked the button to accept. It looked like Aaron had a new friend.
And thank God, because he needed one.
He needed one so fucking desperately.
Eight
SPENCER PACED the length of the rec room again. Aaron prided himself for being on time—every therapy appointment, every date, even just hanging out and watching a movie, he either showed up on time or he called. The texts Spencer had sent over the last forty-five minutes were all coming back green, going over SMS instead of iMessage. Something was very wrong; he could feel it. Like sandpaper on the back of his teeth or biting into tinfoil, the sensation grated against his sanity. It was the first time he’d been back in weeks. They’d been talking over IM every day, and Aaron seemed okay, but maybe he wanted to punish Spencer for leaving by not seeing him.
“Have you heard from him?” his father asked for the third time as he checked the expensive watch on his wrist. “It is not like him to miss a session. Maybe I should call his mother.” In nearly three years of psychotherapy sessions with his father, Aaron had not missed one. Aaron dedicated himself to the therapy because he wanted to live life without flashbacks or nightmares or constant pain. Only in the last year had they made significant headway, to the point where sometimes Spencer thought maybe he saw glimpses of the boy Aaron might have been.
“Give him fifteen more—” Spencer stopped signing midsentence when a text came through on his phone.
Doorbell
Without another word to his father, Spencer vaulted over the low table and ran for the door. It had to be Aaron, it just had to be. The rug that covered the entryway near their front door slid beneath his bare feet, and Spencer had to catch himself on the doorframe to keep from falling on his ass. When he found his footing, he flung the front door open to find a shell-shocked looking Aaron next to his equally distraught mother.
“Hi, Spencer,” Michelle said after a moment, and Spencer nearly missed it because he couldn’t take his eyes off Aaron. The angry scar made a sharp contrast to his gray-tinged pallor.
“Hello. Mrs. Downing.,” Spencer said as he tried to form a question other than “What the fuck?” Why had his mother shown up for a therapy appointment? She never came to therapy with Aaron. After a moment, the words came to him, and he reached for Aaron, who pulled away.
“What happened? Are you okay? Please talk to me,” Spencer signed even as he forced himself to slow down. Aaron hadn’t been signing as long as he had, so he needed to be careful. He considered leading Aaron to the bathroom off the main hall because his skin, which had been almost mottled gray, started to have a tinge of green to it.
“We need to talk to your dad. Is he in the rec room?” The absolute lack of emotion in Aaron’s face, the bleak darkness in his eyes scared Spencer. Without another word, he led them to the room where his father waited.
“Aaron, are you okay?” his father asked, but Aaron simply turned to Spencer.
“I will come and find you when we are done,” he signed, and Spencer felt his heart crack. For the first six months, Aaron i
nsisted Spencer be there for his therapy sessions. It helped calm him. But after that it had been just him and Spencer’s father because Aaron couldn’t talk about the details of the rape in front of Spencer. He couldn’t understand why Aaron wanted his mother there but not him. Maybe he would tell Spencer later. Maybe he wouldn’t tell Spencer at all.
When Aaron turned purposefully so that Spencer couldn’t see his face and started talking to his father, who nodded, he found he couldn’t stand it. Without another word, Spencer retreated and left the room. It was one of the few times in his life he wished he could eavesdrop. Instead, he shuffled to the kitchen, not paying much attention to anything but the hurt in his heart. When he reached the light wood-paneled room, he stood for ten minutes in front of the open refrigerator door before deciding he didn’t want anything—not the leftover pizza from the night before, not even a pop. All he wanted was Aaron.
After twenty minutes, when Spencer thought maybe he would actually lose his mind from the wait, he sent a text to his father asking if Aaron was okay. He received nothing in return.
After thirty minutes, he went upstairs to get a book just to keep all of the different awful scenarios out of his head but wandered back down to the kitchen empty-handed anyway.
After forty-five minutes, he slid down the cabinet below the sink and sat on the floor, bouncing a super ball against the refrigerator across from him. He’d gotten the ball on one of the very few days he and Aaron had gone to get pizza—one of the few times they’d been out of the house.
