After I Wake (19 page)

My mother follows me in, hunting down Mr. Lewis to talk with him, staying close to me and trying to help as much as she can.

When I step back into his room, it is unchanged from yesterday. I toss the box onto his bed and pull out a garbage bag, but I can't open it one-handed so I flail it about wildly and end up stepping on it to unfold the bag. They're unwieldy and definitely not user-friendly, at least not to those who are short a hand. Maybe that's why my mom always takes out the garbage. I also tend to refuse to go near it because garbage is gross, but I digress.

The bag finally billows open and I circle the room, picking up paper and various fragments that are clearly garbage, avoiding glass because I don't want to hurt myself. Emmett doesn't move from where he leans against the door, absentmindedly scratching at his ear.

I turn a little in order to look at him over my shoulder. There are more lines on his wrist. None are deep enough to put his life in danger, but they will scar. We both look at the lines at the same time, and he hurriedly puts his arm behind his back and hunches his shoulders, trying to protect himself from a flurry of rage and slaps that's not coming today. I bottle the anger, saving it for later. Emmett's being an insufferable jerk, and I cannot stand that he's not doing anything.

“Did you sleep?” Emmett flinches at the sound of my voice. We haven't exchanged any words yet, and Emmett is twitchy and haggard, the lack of food and sleep and everything hanging over him in his own personalized cloud of despair.

“Did you sleep?” I ask again and Emmett shrugs.

“I don't know, not really,” he mumbles.

“You're being an insufferable jerk,” I inform him, and he shrugs again. “Go do something productive. Get me a broom or something.” I'm really not sure if sweeping carpet will work out, but I need to get the glass out of this pigsty and force Emmett to clean up a little.

While Emmett is gone, I angrily think about gravity and how she brings things down because it would be much more convenient if the glass pieces were floating in the air for me to put in the garbage bag but unfortunately, gravity works, and there are shreds entwined in the carpet.

Emmett comes back and hands me the broom wordlessly, but I cross my arms.

“Sweeping is a two-hand job. Last time I counted, that was not the case with me. You clean up the glass.”

“Why are you even here? I thought you were done with me,” he grumbles, going to the corner and sweeping up, much to my surprise.

“Well, I'm pissed off to all hell, but I still care, I mean, you were there for me for literally all the time when I was going through all my personal shit.”

“You needed it.” He won't look at me.

“And you don't?” I fire back.

“Well, you were there, but you weren't there. Your eyes were all dead and stuff, and it scared me. I had to be there.”

“Have you looked in a mirror recently?” He shakes his head. “Exactly,” I finish.

“You're a better person than you were. You're all changed.”

“It's called character development,” I growl. “Or, at least it is in the books and stuff. And I'll acknowledge I was among the shittier of people, but do you really think this is the way to do it? Take everything you're feeling and take it out on yourself, on your skin? And you have no excuse to get this way this fast. Look at me.” He doesn't, but that doesn't stop me.

“In February, I did a stupid thing. I let myself get peer-pressured into drinking and got drunk. I punched a frozen river. That river.” I gesture wildly over my shoulder, pointing in the general vicinity of the forest.

“My hand got all bloody and cut up from the ice, but it's like glass, it was going to happen. I left my hand in there, passed out, and woke up in the hospital with hypothermia. You know what the worst part is, though? I don't remember any of it. Everything I'm saying now is stuff I was told. I don't remember the last time I ever used my hand. That fucking sucks. Then I had to recover from a hangover while suffering hypothermia and then have surgery to remove my hand. I'm right-handed now. I couldn't even write.” My voice has been slowly rising in volume, and the little bottle of rage inside me is breaking as the cracks on the glass of the imaginary bottle spiders across the surface and the fragile bottle may burst soon.

“You know how hard it is? I could write a whole damn book on this, but I'm not going to because why would I? I'm the slowest typist ever now, and it takes forever to write because it's so unnatural. So of course I got depressed. I'd be shocked if the same thing happened to someone and they didn't. Imagine, Emmett, just imagine this for me; imagine that your entire livelihood got taken away. It shouldn't be hard. You're just imagining what's real.

“I get it, I do. You're struggling. But you're using me as an example. You're basing your sadness off of me, and that is literally the shittiest thing to do, because all you have to do is look at me without long sleeves. I wrote my depression on my skin with sharp objects, and now it's there forever. It seemed right. It felt good. Hell, when I relapsed and cut again, I felt amazing. But the entire time I knew it was wrong. So stop and do something, anything, to distract yourself, because unless your entire lifestyle and way of being is at risk, don't do what I did, and even if it is, don't fucking do what I did. Please Emmett. There are better ways of doing things. Get help. Get professional help. Please, Emmett, for the fucking love of God, get some help because you have no idea how effective it is.” I sit down on Emmett's unpacked suitcase, completely out of breath from talking that much in so little time.

“That's an Oscar-winning speech right there, that's what that is.” I sigh. “Though I doubt my life will ever be captured in film. It'd probably be boring anyways. The only good thing that's happened to me was meeting you. And probably the Poetry Accolades. Those were sweet.”

“Why was meeting me so special?” Emmett sits on his haunches, or whatever they are, and raises an eyebrow. At least there's a glimmer of him in that void somewhere.

“Well, you're easily one of the most popular kids in school, and everyone hated me, so you should have hated me on principle and been done with it.”

“Well, Carter, I read your poems. I liked them.”

“That's why you sat next to me at lunch that day?”

“I suppose. I wanted to ask you about them. I needed a friend, and you looked like you were in pretty desperate need. But you kept complaining about something or other, and it was hard to draw you into conversation.”

“At the time, it probably would have been science.” He nods a little.

“Ah, yes, science. You were complaining about freezing temperatures and converting them to Celsius. It was some foreshadowing of epic proportions, now that I think about it.”

I shudder at the abrupt and unwelcome subject change. “I still haven't forgiven that river.”

“The river's moved on, you know, flowing with the tide and stuff. It doesn't remember you. I think it's entirely different water, actually. But don't blame the river anyway. Blame the people. Who was there that night?”

“Brittany,” I growl. He knows this, why is he bringing up the worst of my memories?

“Uh-huh. She peer-pressured you and shit. It was technically bullying, you could have sued. Why didn't you?” I tilt my head.

“Never occurred to me. It was never about getting even. She wouldn't have changed if I sued her anyways. And it was kind of my choice to get drunk after I took a sip of beer. And I was more than a little distracted, you know, adapting, being depressed, generally not caring about anything at all, you get the point. I wasn't me anymore. I was hiding inside of myself.”

“Have you made your peace and all that stuff?” I say nothing. Emmett repeats himself, and then again. I refuse to answer. I'm retreating back into myself. I'm like a turtle, I have a shell. I'm building layers upon layers and making myself safe so nothing can hurt me. I am safe in my carapace. Oh god, that rhymed.
Ew
.

Emmett's voice grows distant as his voice recedes, and finally he gives up, continuing cleaning his room and opening fresh garbage bags as needed.

“You know,” he says after a little bit of forever, snapping me to attention, “you're not over it, and maybe you need help as much as I do.”

“Emmett, don't go there. I already go to a shrink once a week. And I'm telling you to get one because I care.”

“My dear Carter, is this love?”

“Only in the most brotherly of fashions. You're gay, and I'm asexual, it could never happen. Besides, love seems a little far-fetched for me. I wouldn't be any good at it. I never have been.”

“Well, I'm not sure about that, but I wondered vaguely for a moment if you had forgotten about the fact that, you know, I like boys.” He smirks.

“I don't know if I'd forget that. I'm certainly not focusing on it 24-7, though. You're more than sexuality and stuff. You're a person with feelings and shit.”

“That's good,” he says as his voice softens. “Because my mom forgot.”

“Excuse me?”

“My mom. She'd conveniently forget. I mean, I think she knew. She probably always knew. I've never been subtle about anything, but she didn't like it when I finally came out. And then she'd make herself forget. I'd bring up a boy or something, and she'd act all surprised and then stop listening, and it made me feel a little bad, but my dad, he'd always listen and be supportive and stuff, and then they started arguing, so I stayed out of the house.

“And you were there, with your poems, and I know we got really close really fast, and I'm sorry I never really invited you here, but I couldn't stand being here because my parents were always arguing and then you got hypothermia, and it was easier to be there for you and not totally be there for me. You weren't at school to see it, but I wasn't myself and nobody noticed, and I always expected you to notice, but like you just said, you weren't you anymore, and so it was easy to not be me, and then everything exploded, and I thought I lost you, and it killed me a little because it looked like things were falling apart, and I felt like I could be me around you because you always listened. I don't know if you remember it or processed it and you probably didn't, which you're forgiven for, but you were hearing the things I was saying and that was such a relief to know someone cared a little. Really anything was better than being here.

“And then I'd go home at night, and my parents just kind of stopped talking and it became normal and I got used to it. It was okay because it felt like we were a family again, in the barest and sickest sense of the word. What's awful, though, the absolute worst, is that I still love my mom, and I'm here because of her, but now she's gone because of me, and we're not sure where she is, probably holed up in a hotel somewhere, not answering any of my calls.”

I am forced into a shocked silence. I have nothing to say. Instead I get up, silently picking up the glass shards bare-handed and putting them into the garbage bags that Emmett holds open for me.

We quietly fix Emmett's room and line the garbage bags up next to the door. Emmett unpacks his suitcase and finally puts a shirt on. We awkwardly sit next to each other on the bed, and Emmett hugs me. I can feel the bones of his arms digging into me. He's painfully skinny. I try to make a light conversation to do something about the heavy atmosphere we've created.

“I don't think your mom forgot. I think she was distracted. I mean, from what I saw of her, she loves you a lot,” I try.

“Yeah,” he mumbles.

“I'm sorry I hit you. I got angry.”

“It's okay, little hulk. You kind of packed a wallop.” He pats me on the head.

“Wallop is such an interesting word.” I make a mental note to use it later.

“Yeah, it is, a little bit.”

“Where's your phone?”

“It died and the screen's shattered, so it's a little useless.”

“Not if you charge it.” He gets up and plugs the phone in. It immediately begins to buzz as messages come flooding in.

“Want a cookie? I didn't really eat any of the ones you gave me yesterday.” I nod and he brings back the untouched plate.

“That's practically all of them, why didn't you eat any?”

“Haven't been hungry.”

“Oh. Have you been eating?” He doesn't reply. “Emmett, have you been eating?” He shrugs.

“Enough,” he mutters.

“When was the last time you ate a solid meal?” He scratches his head.

“Monday. In New York. And a cookie yesterday. Your mom makes good cookies. I eat when I'm hungry, but I'm not really hungry for very long right now.”

“Please eat, Emmett,” I say quietly.

I watch him eat a cookie, and I feel guilty because he acts like I'm torturing him, but he does look painfully thin, and his shirt hangs off of him. He's always been thin, but six days and he looks almost skeletal.