Just Remember to Breathe

by Charles Sheehan-Miles

  If mom wants to stop for lunch or something, pretend you are sick. Tell her u need to come home. Now. Call soon. Luv u.

  Oh, God. What was wrong? Did something happen to Dylan? What was wrong? I blinked back tears, trying to erase it before my mother saw it.

  “Your phone sounds like a car alarm, dear, what’s wrong.”

  “Oh, nothing,” I replied, trying to keep my voice from shaking. “It’s just Kelly, I’m going to give her a call real quick, okay?”

  “Alexandra…” my mom started to interject, but I was already dialing. Jessica gave me an odd look, eyes falling to my hands, which were shaking, but I brushed it off.

  Carrie answered on the second ring.

  “Alex?”

  “Hey, Kelly,” I said a fake cheery voice. “I got your text messages. What’s this about a paper?”

  Carrie immediately understood what I was up to. She asked, “Are you in the car with mom?”

  “I am! On my way home right now, we’ll be there soon.”

  Mom looked over her shoulder at me as I said that and said, “I thought we’d stop for lunch.”

  I frowned. “Hold on, Kelly.” I said to my mom, “Mom, do you mind if we skip lunch? I don’t really feel well, the flight and all.”

  Sarah shook her head and muttered something, then crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Oh, hon, your sisters were so looking forward to it!”

  Oh, God, why wouldn’t they all just shut up and go away!

  “Please, mom? I think I need to lay down for a while.”

  “Of course, dear.”

  “Thanks,” I said, then put the phone back to my ear. “Sorry. What was that you were saying?”

  Carrie’s voice came through loud and clear. “Alex, don’t freak out. All right? Whatever you do, I want you to stay calm.”

  “Of course,” I said, the fake smile still plastered on my face. My cheeks were starting to hurt.

  “Okay. Listen… this morning, Randy Brewer was arrested.”

  I closed my eyes, and felt my knees draw up involuntarily. I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want to hear what she was going to say next.

  “He followed a girl home from a bar last night and raped her.”

  I gasped, and my hand flew to my mouth.

  “Alexandra, are you all right?”

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” I whispered. My stomach was cramping, hard, and I couldn’t stop the tears that started to run down my face.

  “Alexandra, put down the phone. What did you eat on the plane, do you have food poisoning?”

  “Kelly,” I whispered to my sister. “I’ll send you that email. So sorry, I gotta run, not feeling well.”

  She replied right away. “I’ll be here waiting for you, Alex. I’m so sorry.”

  I hung up the phone and lay it on seat next to me, and leaned forward in my seat, arms crossed over my chest, trying to hold in the emotions that were threatening to overpower me.

  “Alexandra, do you need to go to the doctor? I think we need to take you to the doctor.”

  “No!” I shouted.

  The silence following the shout was deafening.

  My mother screeched to a stop a second later, after almost missing a red light. She looked up at me, her mouth open, eyes wide. I’d never yelled at her before.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I just… need to lay down for a little while, okay? Please?”

  I pulled my legs up in my seat and lay my face against them, wrapping my arms around my legs and trying to shut everything out. All I could think about was those minutes last spring, when I’d been unable to get up, unable to defend myself, as he ripped my shirt, before his roommates intervened. And then it happened again, only this time it was Dylan who protected me.

  I hadn’t been able to protect myself. What Randy had done made me feel worthless, less than worthless. Like a piece of meat, to be touched and poked and prodded, pushed into position. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to vomit.

  Because if I had reported it last spring, he’d have been in jail a long time ago. That girl wouldn’t have been raped. Dylan wouldn’t have been arrested.

  It was my fault.

  After a couple minutes of dead silence in the car, I felt a poke in my left side. I looked up, and it was Jessica. She had one eyebrow raised, a suspicious expression on her face.

  She was holding my iPhone, and had the call history up. The last call, of course, was to Carrie’s cell phone. When I’d been pretending to be talking to Kelly. A couple of calls to Kelly below that, and fourth on the list in my call history: Dylan. The contact picture next to his name was a picture, just taken two weeks ago, of the two of us.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Mistakes happen (Dylan)

  I was sitting in my room, writing, when the knock on the door came. I was in limbo: going to trial for aggravated assault in a few weeks, unsure where my future was going, rejected by Alex. For hours, I’d been sitting here in the dark, listening to quiet music, occasionally writing thoughts in a new journal.

  I was trying to make sense of my life. Trying to make sense of what had happened with Alex. Trying to make sense of us.

  The only conclusion I could come to was this: Alex was absolutely right. I’d spent three years avoiding telling her how I really felt. I’d spent three years not opening up, not telling her I loved her, not telling her that I wanted to spend my life with her.

  No wonder she wasn’t willing to take me back.

  I was so deep in thinking that at first I didn’t hear the knocking. I had a pen in the corner of my mouth, chewing on it, a habit I’d tried to break for years, but still came back during times of tension.

  The knock came again, and I looked up, focusing outside myself for the first time in hours.

  I stood up, shouted, “Coming!” and padded across the carpet in my bare feet.

  When I opened the front door, I sighed in frustration.

  It was two police officers, the same two officers who had arrested me.

  “Can we come in?” Alvarez said. It’s funny… looking at her now, I realized she was kind of pretty, even in the severe uniform.

  “Of course,” I said. As if I could stop them.

  I led them into the living room, and said, “What can I do for you? Am I being arrested again? Do I need to call my lawyer?”

  Both of them shook their heads, and Alvarez looked a little sheepish. She got to the point pretty quickly.

  “Last night Randy Brewer followed a girl home from the 1050. A neighborhood girl, not a student. He broke into her apartment and raped her. Her roommate—a cop—walked in on the scene.”

  I closed my eyes, and muttered, “Jesus Christ. Is she okay?”

  “No one is okay after a sexual assault,” Alvarez replied. “How is your girlfriend?”

  “We broke up. But I’m giving her hand to hand combat lessons.”

  Alvarez grinned. “I’m sorry to hear you broke up, but good for her.”

  I nodded.

  “Look,” Alvarez said. “For what it’s worth, we just wanted to say … we’re sorry. The DA’s dropping all charges against you, in light of what happened. I imagine your lawyer will be in touch, they’ll have to have a hearing, and you should be clear.”

  I nodded. “Thank you,” I said.

  “We were just doing our job,” said the other cop. The one who had harangued me about rich kids the night of my arrest.

  “I get it. I was a soldier. Mistakes happen.”

  They stood up, and awkwardly, I shook their hands, and they walked out of my life, hopefully forever. Wow. For the first time in years, I found myself wanting a drink, badly.

  Screw that. Instead, I changed into sweats, and walked out into the early evening to go for a run.

  I took the same route Alex and I always took. But I had to admit, it lost it’s charm without her. Before I reached the end of Central Park, I cut west across West 72nd to Riverside Drive, then started coming ba
ck up the Hudson River Greenway. Something about the crowded evergreens, even in the icy cold night, was calming.

  I was a soldier. Mistakes happen.

  It was interesting how easy it was to forgive the cops for arresting me instead of Randy, but I couldn’t forgive myself. How many times had I blamed myself for Roberts’ death? How many times had I blamed myself for all of the blood and pain and shit that came down on my life after the day I lost my temper and shot up my laptop?

  God, was I that fucking neurotic? It wasn’t even just that? I’d blamed myself for a lot more. After all, I was the kid who blamed himself for dropping the brownie mix that resulted in his mother getting a beating.

  But see, that wasn’t my fault. It was his. I didn’t hit her. My son of a bitch fucking father did that, over and over again, and in the end it didn’t really matter what I did or didn’t do. All I did was my best to protect myself. To protect myself from the hurt. To protect myself from parents who were at best unreliable. And let’s face it… the fact that my mother finally kicked him out, joined AA and cleaned up her life during my freshman year in high school? It meant a lot. But it didn’t change what had happened to me. It didn’t change the defenses I’d set up for myself.

  In the end, it was Alex who suffered because of that.

  Our last night in Israel, she’d pushed me to tell her what I wanted. Were we going to commit? Were we going to stay with each other, despite the distance, despite the pain of separation? Or would we go home, go back to dating other people, slowly forget each other, slowly forget our first loves, and then that would be the end. Maybe think of each other every few years, or run into each other somewhere ten years later and reminisce for a few minutes?

  What she needed from me three years ago was a clear declaration of what I felt. And I knew exactly what I wanted. I wanted her. Nothing else. But to say that? That would make me vulnerable, in a way I’d long since learned wasn’t safe. The one thing I wasn’t about to do was risk losing myself in another person.

  And that’s the reason I lost her. Simple as that. We let it drag on, not one thing and not the other.

  Why can’t you tell me how you feel? she’d cried out.

  Because you might hurt me, was the only answer.

  It was time to jettison that fear. I might not be the perfect guy for her. I was a little crazy, I was a disabled vet with some serious mental problems, a little brain damage and plenty of other issues. But I also loved her. And even if it killed me, even if she shot me down so hard I never approached another human being again in my life, I was going to do whatever it took to let her know exactly how I felt.

  One can always hope (Alex)

  Somehow we made it to the house without me completely falling apart. Jessica handed me the phone, silently, and I wiped my call history on the spot. But I knew that before very long, she’d be coming to me with questions.

  Questions I didn’t really have answers for. My parents were going to be insufferable enough this trip. They always were. They wanted to control every aspect of my life, from the classes I chose to the boys I dated, and they’d never liked Dylan. Worse, for much of high school, they’d unsubtly pushed me toward a series of stuck up boys from families they knew, rich boys, boys with a future. Randy Brewer was one of those boys, and when we ended up going to Columbia together, they’d hinted more than once that Randy would be a good choice for my future.

  If they only knew. I was certain that Randy’s parents, two of the most arrogant, stuck up people I’ve ever met in my life, would do everything they could to bury the charges, to avoid publicity, to scrub their son’s life clean. Oh God. My stomach cramped again.

  Dylan was strong. He was brave. But was this going to be too much for him? Would it be one last thing that would finally push him over the edge?

  And I had just rejected him yesterday!

  I didn’t think it would be possible to hate myself more than I did at that moment.

  Of course, just getting into the house was a production. Jessica and Sarah finally spoke to each other as we got out of the car. They started bickering over some nonsense, and my mother got flustered trying to get them to stop.

  Our house was a four story townhouse, two blocks from Golden Gate Park, overlooking San Francisco. Our garage was on the ground floor, then the living room, kitchen and dining room just above. My bedroom was on the fourth floor. Getting up there meant stopping in the library first to greet my father, who was sitting in front of his computer when I walked in. He was a tall man, with a gaunt face accentuated by a neatly trimmed beard. Even here at home, he dressed formally, in a tie and sweater.

  He stood, held his hands out to me and hugged me.

  Jessica had paused at the door when I walked in, and said, “Alex isn’t feeling well today.”

  “Oh no,” he said. “Do you need to go to the doctor?”

  I shook my head. “Just something I ate. I’m going to go lay down for a bit, I’ll be fine.”

  “Well then. Go get some rest, and we’ll see you at dinner.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  I escaped with no more questioning, then dragged my bags up to the fourth floor.

  Thirty seconds after I entered my room, Carrie joined me, closing the door behind her.

  “Tell me what happened,” I said.

  She sat down on the bed, facing me.

  “Kelly called me. She saw a news report about Randy… apparently last night he met a girl at the 1050, and followed her home. And forcibly raped her. ”

  “Oh, God,” I whispered. “It’s my fault. If I’d reported it last spring…”

  “Alex, stop that. Randy Brewer is to blame. Not you.”

  I put my arms around myself and leaned forward, breathing slowly and carefully, trying to keep myself together. Then I blurted out, “Dylan talked to me yesterday. Told me he’d had second thoughts, and asked me to take him back. Just yesterday.”

  She put her arms around my shoulder, and I whispered, “I told him no, Carrie. I told him he’d have to… somehow prove himself. That he was serious, and wouldn’t leave again.”

  I began to shake with great wrenching muscle spasms, gasping for air as I sobbed on her shoulder.

  “Oh God, I screwed up, Carrie. I told him no, right when he needed me the most.”

  She whispered, “There’s no way you could have known this was going to happen, Alex.”

  “It doesn’t matter what I knew or didn’t know. What matters is he’s all alone, and I’m stuck! I should be there with him, and instead I’m stuck in San Francisco for ten days.”

  She whispered, “You’ve got friends who care about you. We can get a message to him through Kelly or Joel, okay? Just keep it together. You’re going to have a tough enough time with all this, without Mom and Dad getting on your case.”

  “Screw them,” I said.

  Just then my bedroom door opened. No knock. Nothing.

  It was Jessica.

  “You can stop whispering,” she said. “I heard everything.”

  Carrie sat up straight, shock on her face. “How dare you?” she demanded, sounded at that moment exactly like my mother.

  “I knew she was lying to us in the car. And then I saw her call history… she was calling you instead of Kelly.”

  “So you just come and eavesdrop? Is that why you and Sarah have been at each other’s throats? Because you’ve lost all sense of decency?”

  “Jessica,” I gasped. “You can’t say anything to Mom and Dad about this.”

  She closed the door, and pulled the chair out from my desk and sat down. “I won’t. Of course, I won’t. I can’t speak for Sarah, of course. But I want to know what happened. You and Dylan are back together? And Randy Brewer raped someone? What have you been doing in college Alex?”

  I started to laugh and cry at the same time, uncontrollably, and then, before I knew it, I spilled the entire story.

  All three of us heard the creak of the stairs at the same moment. Quickly I wiped my face,
then dived under my covers. Carrie and Jessica were still arranging themselves when there was a knock on the door, and then it opened.

  It was my mom.

  “Alex, I brought you some soup … oh!” she said, surprised to find my sisters in here with me. She recovered quickly, and set the soup on my desk. “This might help you feel a little better. I see your sisters are taking care of you?”

  She phrased it like a question, but what she meant was, I see you and your sisters are gossiping? or something similar.

  Carrie stood, straightened her blouse, and said, “We’ve got her all taken care of, mother. You don’t need to worry about anything.”

  “Well, then,” my mother said, looking a little nonplussed. “I’m so glad to see at least some of you are getting along. Do you think you’ll be up for dinner tonight, Alexandra? Your sister Julia and her horrid boyfriend won’t be in town until tomorrow night, so it’s just the six of us. I can’t imagine why they aren’t staying here, we have plenty of room.”

  Carrie gave our mother a level look. “He’s her husband, mother.”

  Mom gave a quick, insincere smile, as if to dismiss Carrie, and said, “One can always hope.”

  Carrie responded with a sniff, and said, “You’re right, mother. I can’t possibly imagine why they wouldn’t want to stay here with us.”

  My mother stiffened her back and looked at Carrie imperiously. “You are impertinent. If you’re going to take that tone with me, I’ll just go downstairs. Perhaps Sarah would like some company.”

  Jessica rolled her eyes and said, “Like that will happen. Good luck with her, Mom.”

  My mother left in a huff.

  Carrie took a deep breath, as if shaking off something, after mom left. Then she turned to Jessica and said, “All right, spill it. What’s going on between you and Sarah? You two are usually inseparable.”

  Jessica frowned. “She’s gone bipolar I think. Or schizophrenic. Wearing black always, like some goth girl. And … God, I hate her! She kissed Mark Wilson, when she knew I wanted to go out with him. I heard she let him feel her up. At school! I could kill her.”