Shallow

by Yessi Smith

  “How are you feeling?” she asked.

  “Better.” I ran a hand over my throat when I swallowed again. “Thanks for getting me yesterday. For bringing me here and taking care of me.”

  “You took care of me too.”

  “Because you’re my girl.” My hand trembled, but I forced back the fear. I was tired of being scared, of being alone, of waiting for the earth to split apart and take me, the way it forgot to take me when my parents died. I wanted to be happy. I wanted this life with this girl.

  I clenched my jaw, fought back the tears that threatened to spill.

  “You’re my girl in this ugly world. You make everything better.” I ran my hands over her waist, brushed the sides of her breasts and snaked my hands around her neck. “You make the hurt worth going through. You make me feel whole, which is something I haven’t felt in years, so I’m gonna hold on tight to you, take care of you.”

  She tilted her head to the side. “Because I’m your girl?”

  “Yeah.”

  She smiled. It wasn’t one of the fake ones, but a real smile that touched her eyes and somehow made them look greener. My insides clenched, but when she rested a hand to my forehead she stepped back. Too far for me to touch her.

  “You’re still warm.” She grabbed two more pills from her dresser and gave them to me.

  “Thought you said I was hot?” I corrected her, loving the way her cheeks flushed at my words.

  She rolled her eyes to the ceiling and shook her head. A knock came from her door and she covered her mouth as her eyes darted from the door to me.

  “Brinley?” A gruff voice said from behind the door.

  “It’s my dad.” She pushed me from the bed and to the bathroom. “Coming,” she called.

  Leaving me sitting on the toilet, she went back to her room, leaving the door slightly open.

  “How you feeling, kid?”

  She murmured something, probably pressed against him for a hug.

  “Bridgette said you were coughing all night.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I was able to get some sleep though.”

  “You’re staying home from school today. Why don’t you sit on the bed for me?”

  “Really?” I imagined her crossing her arms over her chest. “Why?”

  “Just want to listen to my daughter’s lungs. Not sure if you’ve heard, but I’m a doctor of sorts.”

  She snorted and then coughed. It sounded forced, and I shook my head at her. She was an awful actress, I wondered why I couldn’t see through her façade before. Why I hadn’t noticed she needed me as much as I needed her. Why I hadn’t seen our shared fear.

  “Your lungs sound clear. I’ll let Bridgette know. She was worried about you. Keep taking the antibiotics. How’s the fever?”

  “Comes and goes,” she said.

  “And you were able to eat the soup Lindsey made?”

  “Yeah, tell her thank you for me.”

  “I will.” He paused, drew in a sharp breath. “How come you locked your door last night?”

  Silence followed and all I could hear was the hammering in my head.

  “Mom came to my door.”

  “Oh baby.” He murmured something I couldn’t hear. “Come live with me, Brinley. Get away from all of this,” he pleaded. “It’s what Mom wants. It’s what I want.”

  “Dad,” she warned.

  I heard him kiss her. “Think about it. Please. Can you do that for me?”

  “Sure.”

  “Love you, kid.”

  “Love you too. Why don’t you crash at Lindsey’s, so you can get some rest before going back to work tonight?”

  “What about you?” he asked.

  “You said it yourself, my lungs are clear. I have soup, medicine and a bed. Now I need my dad to get some sleep before he throws on his cape, so I don’t have to worry about him.”

  Again silence.

  “I’ll ask Bridgette to stay, so she can be with your mom and you can rest.” His voice sounded pained, like he wanted to do anything but what she was asking of him. And I hated him for listening to her, for turning away from her when she was supposedly so sick, but was also relieved he was leaving.

  “She helped a lot last night,” Brinley said. “I’m glad you hired her.”

  “Yeah.” Heavy footsteps sounded on the wood floor, away from the bathroom and toward her bedroom door.

  I waited for her to come get me, to let me know it was safe to come out, when I heard the door click shut. When she didn’t, I went to her. Her shoulders slumped forward. Her face torn in agony, but damn she made broken look beautiful.

  Sitting next to her, I put my arms around her and eased her on my lap. She went willingly, wrapping her arms around my neck while she rested her head on my shoulder. Her fingers traced over the back of my neck to my head where she started playing with my hair.

  “I like your hair,” she said.

  “I like you playing with my hair.”

  We stayed like that for a good while. Eventually her tense body relaxed on top of mine, molded against me, and I knew this was it. Where she belonged. Where I belonged.

  She eased off of me when I started to cough again. Rubbing my chest, I leaned against one of her pillows that smelled like her. Like the pillow she’d left me in the cave. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t figured out she was the one writing with me when she was written all over the cave.

  The sandwiches she made, the scent she left behind, the pretty handwriting and the sadness I was beginning to see.

  Needing to touch her, I took her hand when she sat on the bed beside me. She rested her head on my shoulder and I ran my fingers through her hair.

  She felt like peace, like happiness.

  She felt as if she’d been created just for me. Mine.

  “What’s wrong with your mom?” I asked.

  She straightened, shot up from the bed quickly and rushed the few steps to the door. Although my body protested, I followed her.

  With her hand on the knob, she looked back at me and asked, “What do you want for breakfast?”

  I placed my hand over hers, not letting her open the door. “Talk to me.”

  Her face fell, her head bowed. I tucked her in my arms, held onto her when her body started to shake. Tears fell, wetting my shirt where she rested her head. She clung to me, her fingers wrapped against the back of my shirt, and I held onto her. Held her upright. Held her together.

  “She’s sick,” she whispered against my throat. “Her brain is sick and I think mine is too.”

  There, I said it. The words that I feared most.

  My mom was sick, and there was a good chance I would be too. She’d told me herself countless times. The disease in her brain was genetic. It was relentless in its pursuit to take away my mom. To take away all the good she once was.

  One day, it might come after me, and there was nothing I could do to fend myself from it.

  “She was fine when I was younger. There were no signs that her brain was sick and getting worse.” I nestled to his chest. He rubbed my back with long strokes as if he were creating some sort of masterpiece on my back. As if he could paint over the ugly and make me pretty. It felt good to be held, felt good to finally say the little bit I had, so I continued. “It was like a light switch went off. We went to bed a happy, normal family and when I woke up, my parents were missing.” I heaved in a sigh. “During the night my mom had her first of many episodes. I hadn’t heard her screaming that night, and my dad played it down so he wouldn’t worry me, but you heard her last night. She screams, she hurts herself, she throws things. It’s like something inside her is broken, so she lashes out at us to lessen it. It doesn’t help, nothing does.”

  He brushed his lips over my ear, kissed the tip. “Is she taking anything for it? Talking to someone?”

  I pushed away from him, splayed my hands on my hips and stared. What did he think? That my dad hadn’t tried everything to bring back the woman he married?

  He held
his palms out to me. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m just trying to understand.”

  “Understand what?” I spit out.

  “Brinley,” he sighed out my name, his eyes red and tired. “I don’t want to fight you. I want to fight with you. Remember? Desperately together.”

  I wanted that, for us to be in this together. But words on a cave’s wall were different when you tried to actually bring them to fruition. I could try though. At least I could say I tried, even if Roderick didn’t end up sticking by me when he knew everything.

  “She takes pills, goes to doctors, and I dunno… maybe it helps. Maybe things would be worse if she wasn’t doing those things. But there’s really nothing they can do for her except maybe hospitalize her.” I looked at my unpainted toe nails. “My dad doesn’t want to do that yet. It’ll eventually come, but she still has good days, and they both want her to enjoy those good days freely, not stuck in a hospital.” When I looked up at him, it wasn’t fear or disgust that marred his features, but sorrow and worry.

  “She’s up all night screaming and crying and banging on your door.” He sounded angry. “You’re terrified of her. What happens if she gets in?”

  I steadied myself, took in a deep breath. “When I don’t lock my door, which I’d never done before last night, she comes in. Sometimes she yells at me.” It came out defiant. “Sometimes she throws things at me.” My tone lowered. “Sometimes she hits me.” My voice wobbled.

  Horror streaked across his face. There it was, the blow that would drive him away.

  “What about you?” he asked.

  I blinked back the tears, but still a few fell. “I take it. Whatever she does, I take it.”

  “What?” His lips pressed together, his fists trembled by his sides. “Why? Why doesn’t your dad stop it?”

  “He can’t stop it!” I yelled, my own anger taking over. “He works and…”

  “…And he leaves you by yourself to defend yourself?” His voice rose with mine, both of us battling each other.

  Not together. Never together. We were still enemies, unable to form the truce we said we wanted, so we could fight together.

  “What else is he supposed to do?” I pushed passed him to sit on my bed. Hugging my pillow to my stomach, I said, “Tell me, Roderick. What else is my dad supposed to do?”

  “Protect you,” he whispered.

  Protect me. From the woman who once told me she loved me more than anyone else in the world. The woman who said the day she was chosen to be my mom was the best day of her life.

  “He doesn’t know she hits me. Besides, I protect myself.”

  “No,” he countered, “you don’t. You just said you take whatever she does to you.”

  He sat beside me, brushed his thigh against mine. I turned from him, not much but he noticed and edged away from me.

  “Why do you take it?” he asked. “Lock your door like you did last night, or better yet, go live with your dad when he moves out.”

  “I can’t defend myself when she can’t defend herself, and I can’t fight her when she’s fighting herself. I won’t leave her, at least not until I go to college in L.A.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m her daughter.”

  He stared at me, waited for me to continue.

  “Don’t you get it? That could be me one day, completely lost in my own mind. That could be me, Roderick. I need to know what I’m up against.”

  That terror I saw before? It was nothing compared to his expression now.

  “It’s genetic,” I pressed. “My mom can pass it down to me the way my dad gave me his green eyes.”

  His mouth hung up, the pulse on his neck quickened. He’d leave soon, run from the real freak. The one who hid from the world. I pushed harder.

  “I get tested every year,” I said. “My dad and the doctors talk alone in the office, but he’d tell me if anything was wrong. So for now, it’s safe to say everything looks normal, but my mom told me they don’t really know what they’re looking for. It could come without warning, just like it did to my mom.”

  “It could.” He took my limp hand in his. “It doesn’t mean it will.”

  I gave him half a smile. “You gonna take a gamble and find out?”

  “Yeah.”

  I jerked my hand from his grip, but it only made him hold on tighter.

  “I told you, you’re my girl, and we’re in this together.”

  “There is no together in this.” I looked at our joined hands. It was crazy how well our broken pieces fit. “It’s just me. Not you, not my dad, or my mom. When…”

  “If,” he corrected. “There’s no when, only if. It might not happen.”

  “And I’ll live the rest of my life in fear, thinking it might.”

  He scowled. “You can’t live like that, baby.” He kissed my hand. “You have to live, just live. Whatever’s gonna happen will happen whether or not you spend your life worrying about it.”

  I scoffed. “Live, huh? You’ve done a lot of that since your parents died?”

  He flinched.

  “No,” I continued, ignoring the pained expression he wore. “You isolated yourself, so no one else could reach you and hurt you. That’s why you like being alone, isn’t it?”

  “You said I didn’t have to be alone anymore.”

  Hurt. Pain. That was what I was good at. What I knew how to deliver.

  “You lost your parents and it sucks. There’s no coming back from that but maybe you like that kind of pain. So now you’re gonna chase after a girl that’ll leave you too? That’s what I’ll do, Roderick.” This time he let me take my hand from his hold. “When my brain takes over, when I get sick too, there’ll only be short flashes where I’m better, where I’m me again. Between those times, I’ll be gone to you. To everyone.”

  “That’s why you did it, then?” He rubbed his hands over his knees. “That’s why you pushed your friends away? Why you made new ones with people you don’t like?”

  “I didn’t want anyone to know anything that was going on,” I replied.

  “So, that’s it. You’re just going to wait for something that might not come? You’re gonna give up before you even try to fight?”

  I grunted. Didn’t he get it? I couldn’t fight something I couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t sense.

  “What is there left to fight for?” I asked.

  “Me. Us.”

  He stood from the bed on a cough and walked around to the other side of the bed. After pushing back the comforter, he got in and rested his head on the pillow. He patted the empty space next to him.

  I shouldn’t have gone to him. I knew it even as I lay down facing him.

  His cheeks were red and his lips were cracking. After putting his hand on my waist, he closed his lids where dark lashes kissed his skin.

  I traced a finger over the sharp planes on his face.

  He hadn’t given up on me.

  Inching his body closer to mine, he wrapped an arm over my waist, and rested his palm against my back.

  “Let me fight with you,” he whispered.

  He wanted to fight with me. For me. For us. Desperately together.

  I pressed a kiss against the side of his lips. His eyes fluttered open.

  “I’m not ready to give up,” I whispered back. “I’ll fight with you, but if I lose, you have to promise me…”

  “I’ll never leave you,” he interrupted.

  “That’s not what I was going to say.”

  He chuckled when I narrowed my eyes at him and then turned his face to cough. “I know,” he said, when he faced me again. “But leaving you isn’t an option.”

  “What if I leave you first?”

  Fear gripped my heart, twisted it until it hurt.

  “I’ll find you and bring you back.”

  Roderick’s fever had finally broke, but his cough only seemed to get worse. By Thursday, I was worried, but he wouldn’t listen to reason and outright refused to call his aunt so she could take
him to a doctor.

  She knew he was sick because he texted her on Tuesday to let her know he had to miss school. She’d messaged him back right away and then called him. He ignored both.

  I pressed him for answers. When I wouldn’t relent, he closed his eyes, drew himself close to me and fell asleep with my fingers in his hair. I hated that he wouldn’t talk to me, hated that he didn’t trust me, but for now I let him go until he was feeling better. Then, I’d make him talk to me, tell me why he no longer lived with his aunt.

  He could stay with me for as long as he needed, that wasn’t why I asked the questions he didn’t want to answer, I just wanted him to know I was there for him the same way he showed me I could trust him.

  On my bed, which now smelled like him, I rested my head on his chest while he looked at our group assignment. We’d worked on it throughout the week and finally had our poem that I would turn in when I returned to school tomorrow.

  I wasn’t crazy about going back without him. Wasn’t crazy about leaving him here by himself.

  But he wanted me to go, so I could go to the Fall Ball on Saturday without any of the teachers asking why I’d missed school but was able to go to the dance. He didn’t get that I no longer had any desire to go to the dance. Not without him.

  Danny could find someone else. I’d already warned him he would probably have to.

  Although Roderick said we were in this together, he had a way of hiding where I couldn’t reach him. I tried and would continue to try, but he made it difficult. Nearly impossible.

  Turning the paper around, he showed me his artwork on our assignment.

  Instead of blacking out the words we didn’t use, Roderick drew swirls across the page. Thick purple designs that looked like waves crashing onto the beach’s shore. Together, we had circled the words to make out our poem, but the words didn’t relate to him. They were mine, another gift from Roderick to help me.

  Afraid to show my depth

  I use my shallow

  as a shield

  I was scared to turn in something so honest, but I knew I would since it was one of the things that brought Roderick and me back together. It was special, something I would keep and treasure forever.