Chapter 43
FORTY-THREE
CALEB
It’s like the day starts in grayscale.
Miguel leaves for work with his usual kiss to my forehead and a dumb joke about the Coast Guard and hot dogs that resemble dicks. The door closes behind him, his truck rumbles away.
Silence pours in like water under a door. I stand in the middle of the living room, keys in one hand, backpack in the other, trying to remember what I’m supposed to do next.
Class.
Study group.
Practice.
Normal shit.
My brain feels like someone’s taken a playlist and hit shuffle on all the worst tracks.
The dream. The lecture. The call. The words “he died” were stitched under everything like a fucked-up backing vocal.
I set my keys on the hook. Put my backpack by the couch.
Pick it back up again because that’s what a functioning person would do.
“Okay,” I tell myself, out loud. My voice sounds wrong in the quiet. “You’re going to campus. You’re going to pretend to be a human. You can fall apart later.”
The safety plan on the fridge catches my eye. It’s held up with a magnet shaped like a basketball. Miguel’s handwriting in the margins where he added jokes and hearts.
When the volume is 8–10:
– Tell someone. Not just in your head. Out loud.
– Get in the same room as a person.
– No alcohol. No driving long distances alone.
– If you’re thinking about not wanting to be alive, call Dr. K, tell Miguel, or call the student crisis line. No negotiating.
I stare at the paper for so long the letters blur.
“I’m not… there,” I say to it, even though I kind of am. “I’m just… tired. That’s all.”
It’s such a small word for how big it feels.
I grab my bag and leave before I can argue with a piece of paper.
The bus ride to campus is a flickering slideshow of things that don’t stick.
I chose not to drive, even though the campus didn’t count as a long drive.
I didn’t want to risk it. The damp smell of other people’s raincoats and someone arguing quietly in Spanish on the phone.
A kid with purple hair is asleep against the window.
Outside, Santa Cruz does its usual half-sun, half-fog performance. Eucalyptus trees, students with headphones, someone skateboarding past like their bones are made of rubber.
Getting off the bus, I walk.
To the psych building, then afterward to the café.
I stand in line for coffee because that’s what I always do, even when my stomach is a fist. When it’s my turn, the barista says, “Hey, Caleb,” like normal, and I laugh at something she says about the line being hell.
I don’t remember the joke thirty seconds later.
The statistics review session is just midterm déjà vu. Numbers on the board. The professor’s voice was bouncing off the walls. My hand moves, writing down formulas, but it feels like somebody else’s.
Every so often, the room tilts and I’m back in that stairwell.
He died.
Maybe this will help you move on.
Move on to where, exactly?
Am I somehow supposed to all of a sudden jump for joy and plan a trip to Disneyland in celebration?
I last, surprisingly, until the break. Other students stream out toward the bathroom, the vending machines, and the corners with their phones. I make it to the end of the aisle before my feet change direction without asking me.
Not the bathroom.
Not the vending machine.
Outside.
The air hits my face, cool and damp, and I keep walking, past the quad, past the library, past the gym. My legs have a destination I don’t recognize until I see the building.
The dorms.
The first time I tried to take myself out, I spent an hour in the locker room beforehand, staring at my wrists.
I don’t go to my room. I just stand outside, looking at the doors.
There’s a group of freshmen heading in with duffel bags, laughing about some game from last night. I picture my younger self, sweating through his shirt, long sleeves in summer. The way I told myself it wasn’t that bad. That if it ever got that bad, I’d… do something about it.
Eight-year-old me thought the threat of leaving was the only leverage I had.
Twenty-year-old me believed it. I remember the day itself in fragments—steel sink, white tiles, the metallic smell.
I also remember waking up in a hospital bed, Miguel asleep in the chair, his hand wrapped around mine like he’d welded us together.
His face when he woke up and realized I was still there.
If you’d seen it earlier.
If you’d known.
If you’d been there.
The echo of his guilt from the other side of the memory stabs through the fog. For one second, it makes me want to turn around, go to whatever job site he’s at, find his truck, sit on the hood until he gets off work and say everything out loud.
I turn away.
Not back toward class. Not toward the gym.
Toward the bus stop.
The condo is wrong in daylight. We’re almost never here at this hour. The sun comes in at a different angle, throwing bars of light across the carpet. The TV is a black mirror. The couch looks abandoned and the plant by the window droops because I forgot to water it this week.
I drop my backpack by the door, kicking off my shoes and my keys miss the hook and hit the floor with a small clatter. My head is buzzing. Not even loud, just… constant. That radio cracking with static underneath everything, a voice threadbare from repeating the same lines.
You’re too much.
You’re exhausting.
Everyone is doing their best with you. You could make it easier.
I walk into the kitchen.
The safety plan is still on the fridge, waiting for me like a pop quiz.
Without really deciding to, I pull it down.
My eyes skim the lines I’ve read a hundred times. The ones Dr. K had me write and the ones Miguel insisted on adding. I lean my forehead against the cool metal door, paper crunching between us.
“I know,” I tell it. “I know, I know. I helped write you.”
I imagine calling Dr. K.
“Hey, so here’s a fun update. The man who spent my childhood deciding if I was worth food and would beat me died and my brain is writing him a eulogy and also planning my exit strategy. Wild, right?”
I imagine her voice, steady and calm and a little strained. Her hint of panic never quite showed, but I’d hear it anyway. I imagine the scramble—the extra sessions, the gentle insistence, the concern.
She has other clients. Other emergencies. Other kids of monsters.
I imagine calling Miguel.
“Miggy, so… You know the piece of shit who helped my mom abuse me? He’s dead. And my brain is sliding around like a car on black ice. Also, I know you almost got electrocuted. Also, I know you’re working and trying really hard not to treat every text like a grenade. Surprise.”
He’d come.
He’d drop everything and show up, probably with his boots still dusty and his hands still smelling like copper. His face would do that thing where it goes tight and soft at the same time. He’d touch my jaw, my shoulders and inspect me like I might be missing pieces.
He shouldn’t have to.
My hand shakes as I pull my phone out.
Caleb
Hey. I came home early. I’m having some really bad thoughts.
I stare at the words.
The letters swim. My thumb hovers over send.
The noise in my head hisses.
You’re doing this again. Needing. Breaking. Asking.
Miguel will answer. He always does. And then he’ll be tired. And you’ll see it. And you’ll say, “I’m sorry,” and he’ll say, “Don’t apologize,” but the apology will hang between you anyway.
I delete the text letter by letter until the bubble is empty.
Coward.
Or maybe merciful.
I don’t know anymore.
I scroll to my email app. Open a draft to Dr. K.
Subject: Update
Dr. K,
Got some news about my mom’s ex/the case. Volume is loud. Nightmares are back. Trying to use the plan but—
I stop.
The words blur on the screen. This feels like standing on the edge of a cliff, yelling for help, and watching the wind snatch the sound away.
My hand drops.
I lock the phone and set it on the counter next to the stove.
Face down. The safety plan crinkles in my other hand.
For one dizzy second, I think about taping it back up, like that’ll undo the last half hour.
Like if I can just get it perfectly straight on the fridge again, everything else will follow.
Instead, I fold it in half. Then in half again. Then I put it in the drawer with the takeout menus and mismatched chopsticks.
Out of sight, out of mind.
Yeah, right.
Time gets weird after that. I make coffee, only drinking half a mug before it goes cold.
I put a frozen burrito in the microwave and watch the plate spin through the foggy glass until the beep makes my chest jump.
I take one bite and it tastes like cardboard and regret.
I throw the rest away and feel guilty because Miguel would tell me that’s still food, you asshole.
I sit on the couch with my laptop open to a stats practice exam. The words might as well be in Russian. I stare at the same question for twenty minutes and can’t remember what it says.
At some point, I end up on the floor in front of the couch, knees pulled up, forehead resting on them. The carpet leaves little imprints in my skin. My hands have that numb, pins-and-needles thing, like my circulation forgot how to circulate.
The thoughts keep looping.
He’s dead.
He got an ending. Ugly, sure. In prison. Alone. But done. Full stop.
I’m stuck in the after.
I promised myself once—I remember now—that I would never be like him. That I would never make a kid feel what I felt.
Another voice slides in, colder.
You already did.
You made Miguel into a parent when he was still a kid. You made your dad into a guilt sponge. You made Dr. K into a lifeguard.
You are the storm everyone else is sandbagging against.
Images flash behind my eyes.
Miguel in the kitchen, dancing badly to some stupid song, using a wooden spoon as a microphone, and making me laugh so hard I almost drop the eggs.