just need to go.”
She quickly nods, understanding what’s going on inside me,
and she leads me outside. I stop to shut the door, watching the
room slowly disappear, inch by inch by inch until the lock latches
into place and the room vanishes.
We walk back to the truck and climb in. Callie sits on my lap,
and even though everything seems about as shitty as it can get, I
know it’s not. Because I’m not lying on the floor bleeding to death,
giving up my will to live. I’m here, sitting with her, and she’s
amazing and keeps my heart beating. She gives me a reason to
live without pain, without sadness. And she gives me hope that
maybe this will work out somehow.
Chapter 20
One month later…
#6 Take a leap of faith
#38 Finish Get somewhere with a major project
#44 Eat chocolates, have a lot of sex, and enjoy Valentine’s
Day, the day of LOVE!
Kayden
“Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!” Seth comes running
up to me shrieking like a psychopath. The library is pretty empty,
but the librarian, a younger woman with square-framed glasses
and fluffy brown hair, scowls at us from behind the counter. There
are paper hearts all over the shelves and walls and even hanging
from the ceiling. Valentine’s Day is in a few days and I’m still trying to figure out what to get Callie, because I want it to be something
special, something perfect, something that will represent her.
“Seth.” Angling my chin up, I nod my head at the counter.
“Watch the shrieking.”
He’s holding a crinkled paper in his hand. I’ve been searching
the library for about an hour for a book on Darwinism. Usually, I’d
use a computer, by Professor Milany is totally old-school and
always requires one book reference.
“Who gives a shit?” he says and then scrunches his face at
the librarian, who tsks, tsks him in return. He unfolds the paper and shakes it out, trying to get rid of the creases. “I got fantastic
fucking news.”
I put the book I’d been holding back onto the shelf. “No,
there’s no way you’ve found him yet… Fuck. You have… no…” I’m
kind of stuck on words because it’s unbelievable. It can’t be
possible. But the look on his face says otherwise. “Shit.”
Grinning, he hands me the paper. It’s been printed up from
the computer and has an article beneath it. Above the article is a
face that resembles an older version of the brother who left my
house years ago: dark hair that’s thinned a little, the same green
eyes as me, and a nose still crooked from when he broke it from
getting slammed into a wall. I’m stunned beyond words as I stare
down at the picture of him.
I hadn’t expected this to happen so soon. I’d returned from
the therapist only yesterday evening and told Callie that I think I
was ready to start searching. My therapist, Jerry, an older guy who
wears a lot of Hawaiian-print shirts and loafers, suggested it might
be time for me to start searching for Dylan. I put up a pretty good
argument about why I shouldn’t, including the fact that I’d slipped
up the other night and kind of rammed my fist against the door in
a fit of rage when I got a call from my father’s old boss who was
looking for him. No one knows where they are, why they left, and
it’s surprising how little people care. My dad’s boss was only
looking for him because he said my father had something of his. I
don’t even know how he got my number and the call reminded me
of everything wrong outside my Callie-Seth-Luke-school world. I
messed up, but I told the therapist. And Callie. And somehow Jerry
thought it’d be a good idea to start searching for Dylan, even
though I was worried of what he might be, or what he might not
be.
“You’ll be fine,” he said, chewing on an Altoids, which he
always has on him. “It’ll be good to have someone to talk to about
what you’re going through and maybe he can help the
abandonment issues you’re dealing with.”
“What abandonment issues?” I’d played dumb. “I’m glad they
left.”
“Yeah, I know you are,” he replied and scratched down some
notes on a piece of yellow business paper. “But I think you also feel abandoned. Even if they’ve done terrible stuff to you, they’re still
your family and I think you feel connected to them.”
“Or stuck to them,” I muttered in response, slumping back in
the lumpy leather chair I always had to sit in.
He wrote down something else and then shut the manila
folder and shoved it aside with a stack on the corner of his desk.
“How about this?” He overlapped his hands on top of his desk.
“How about we just try to look for your brother? It doesn’t hurt to
try, right?”
I rolled my wrist until it popped and gave a burning
aftershock, something that’s been happening ever since I cut them
open. “And what if we find him?”
He opened the tin of Altoids on his desk and popped one
into his mouth, leaning back in the chair. “Well, that’s really up to you.”
After sitting in silence for about fifteen minutes, listening to
the wall clock tick and the traffic rush outside, I’d agreed. When I
went out to dinner that night with Callie, Seth, and Luke, they
decided to take it upon themselves to look for him.
I just didn’t expect Seth to find him so quickly.
“He kind of looks the same,” I note, taking in his green eyes,
which resemble mine in an eerie, uncomfortable kind of way.
“He’s married,” Seth says, tapping his finger on the top of the
paper. “And he’s a teacher.”
I gape at him. “A teacher? Fuck, really?”
Seth’s eyebrows knit. “Why are you so surprised?”
I shrug and then head for the exit, winding around the book
cart blocking the path. “I don’t know… It just seems so fucking
normal.” I slam my palm against the door and push it open. The
area around and underneath my scars aches a little and I massage
my thumb across it as I walk out into the sunlight with the paper in
my hand. The sun is gleaming and melting the snow off the grass
and the sidewalks. It’s nice to see, but it makes everything a
watery, muddy mess. The gutters near the streets are flooding the
sidewalks and the grass looks like a pond.
“So what are you going to do?” he asks, hopping over a
puddle and then he kicks a rock off the sidewalk.
I shake my head and sidestep a large hole in the sidewalk
filled with murky water. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“I don’t.”