Chapter 43 #2
Miguel on the floor with a bunch of screws and instructions for a cheap IKEA dresser, swearing in two languages as he tries to make it not wobble.
Miguel in a parking lot, pointing at a big old tree and saying, “If we ever have a yard, I’m building you a treehouse. You never got one. You’re getting one now.”
Future scenes that feel like they were shot for someone else’s movie.
A bigger bed. A dog. Maybe kids, maybe not, but the idea isn’t immediate nausea anymore. A picture of me coaching some middle-school team, yelling plays from the sidelines while Miguel leans in the doorway with a coffee, watching like he’s already proud of their future report cards.
I can see it.
I can’t feel like I deserve it.
My chest hurts, and I lie down on the carpet, staring at the ceiling. The tiny cracks in the paint look like rivers on a map. I trace them with my eyes, trying to breathe around the pressure in my ribs.
The volume’s at a ten now.
Full scream.
“This is forever,” it says. This noise. This work. This constant almost.
You’re tired.
You’re allowed to be tired.
If you go, they’ll all be sad. For a while. But they’ll get… quieter lives. Less late-night panic. Fewer safety plans on fridges.
Miguel could find someone whose trauma doesn’t require a spreadsheet.
Dad could call a son without bracing for an emotional landmine.
Mom could sleep without worrying that one of her boys is going to disappear.
You’d be doing them a favor.
I know, in some thin, rational part of me, that this is bullshit. Dr. K has said it a thousand times.
Suicide is not a gift to the survivors, Caleb. It’s a wound.
But that part of me is drowned out by the exhaustion. By the grief. The fact that someone who taught me, very early, that leaving was an option… just proved it again.
Maybe this will help you move on.
Maybe it will, I think. Just not in the way he meant.
My body feels very far away. When I stand up, it’s like watching someone else move.
The bathroom cabinet sticks a little when I open it.
It always does. Miguel keeps saying he’s going to plane it down “one of these weekends,” but we both know there’s always something else.
Behind the toothpaste and the cheap cologne is the orange bottle I pretend not to see most days.
Leftover prescription from the last time things got really bad.
We argued about keeping them in the house, but the compromise was only for “in case of emergency” insomnia.
Reaching up, my fingers are steady when they close around the pill bottle. That feels wrong. The rest of me is shaking, but my hands are surgeon-smooth.
I carry it to the sink and set it down. The reflection in the mirror looks like shit. Hollow eyes. Messy hair. A bruise of exhaustion under the skin.
“Are you sure?” I ask him.
He doesn’t answer.
My stomach rolls. There’s still time to stop. To put the bottle back. To flush the pills. To text someone.
Anyone.
I think about Miguel’s hand over mine last night and the way he said, “Whatever it is, we’ll handle it. You don’t have to do it alone.”
I think about how heavy that sounded.
Not what he meant. I know that. But my brain, twisted little translator that it is, turned it into proof. You are work.
“If you call him, he’ll come,” the radio whispers. “He always comes.”
“And then what?” Another voice snaps. “Another cycle. Another safety plan. Another sleepless month. You’re just pushing the inevitable further down the road.”
I unscrew the cap.
The smell of chalk and pharmacy powder hits my nose.
This is a bad idea.
No shit.
It’s also the only one that sounds like rest.
I don’t count them, I don’t want to know the number.
Just tipping some into my palm. For a second, the sight of them, little white circles against my skin, making something crack open in my chest. My throat closes and my vision blurs momentarily.
You could stop.
You could text. Email. Walk your ass to the ER and say, “I’m not safe.”
I close my hand.
“It’ll be quieter,” I whisper. “Just… quiet, for once.”
My mouth is dry. The first swallow catches in my throat and comes with a surge of instinctive panic. Too late to call now, my brain says. You’ve already done it. Dragging someone into this now would just hurt them more.
I take more.
The edges of the world go fuzzy. My heart is beating too fast and too slow at the same time, like it can’t decide which emergency to pick.
I put the bottle down in the sink.
My hands are shaking now.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, the safety plan is screaming.
Call. Tell someone. No negotiating.
I step back into the hallway toward the bedroom, where the box with the blades is where it always is—the bottom drawer of my nightstand, under old jerseys and a sweatshirt I should’ve thrown out years ago.
Backup plan from a darker time.
Miguel’s never known otherwise, he’d have tossed them.
I sit on the edge of the bed and open it, staring at the silver gleaming up at me. The scars on my wrist look pale and raised in the afternoon light. Old white lines over lightly golden, sun-kissed skin. A map of every time I came close and then, somehow, didn’t.
My vision swims and my head feels light.
“This is for insurance,” I tell myself. My voice sounds far away. “In case… the quiet takes too long.”
Morbid.
More like efficient.
I hold the blade with numb fingers. The metal is cold against the old scar tissue.
My hand shakes. I press down, not hard enough to do real damage. Just enough to break the surface. A thin red line beads up, bright and sudden.
It hurts.
Thank God.
Pain I can understand.
My breath stutters. My heart kicks like it’s trying to escape.
You could stop.
You could throw it away. You could walk into the living room and call Miguel and say, “I messed up. I need help. I’m scared.
” I picture his face when he walks through the door and sees…
whatever this would be. The horror. The way he’d replay it for years.
The way he’d blame himself for not leaving work early. For not reading between the texts.
“If I do this halfway,” I whisper, “I put that on him again.”
The logic is warped, I know it is. Somewhere between my brain and my mouth, everything has been flipped. If I don’t survive, he hurts forever, another part of me argues. Maybe just cut your losses—
The room tilts and the noise is doing that thing where the volume jumps up and down like a kid playing with the radio knob. Snatches of Miguel’s voice bleed through the static.
You’re allowed to be here.
We’re not a test.
One day at a time.
I love you.
“I’m sorry,” I say to the empty room and the words burn in my throat.
To my dad, for every time I disappointed him. To Celeste, for every gray hair my existence added, even if she’d never admit it that way. To Dr. K, for every note she’s taken with my name on it.
To Miguel, most of all.
“I’m so sorry, Miggy,” I whisper. “I tried. I swear to God, I tried.”
My hand moves. Not the way it did years ago—no dramatic gesture, no theatrical slice. Just… a clumsy, uncoordinated drag. The skin splits and the pain is sharp and immediate, but my body is already heavy, already slow. Blood wells up, more this time, trickling warmly over my palm.
I watch it for a second, detached.
At least this will make it quiet, I think.
My head lolls to the side, and the blade slips from my fingers, landing silently onto the duvet. It leaves a little streak like punctuation.
The room pulls away from me, like someone’s yanking it down a hallway.
My body tips sideways on the bed. My injured arm flops, smearing red on the sheet. My eyelids are sandbags, I can’t keep them open.
Miguel’s face swims up behind my eyes.
Not crying. Not horrified.
Laughing in the kitchen with a wooden spoon microphone.
Sleepy and soft in bed, murmuring, “Love you more.”
Sunlight on his curls at the beach last summer, grin wide and easy.
“I love you,” I try to say, but my tongue won’t cooperate.
The last thing I feel before everything goes black is the sticky warmth on my wrist and the distant, hollow thud of my heartbeat in my ears.
Then even that goes quiet.