Chapter Twenty Six
TWENTY-SIX
“Don’t. Let. This. Die.”
Even through two closed doors, those words made it to your ears.
Sean and Diana were fighting. It had been almost an hour.
They were trying to keep their voices down, but every once in a while, a phrase or two would break through.
You knew you shouldn’t be listening, but you also didn’t know where else to be.
Your parents were downstairs in the only common space, watching a reality show called Naked and Afraid, which sounded too much like your life story to be enjoyable.
And Sean needed the car to go to some kind of weekly bike rally he’d joined called Critical Mass.
From what you could tell, it was a group of activists who rode through city streets to lobby for cyclists’ rights. And in the absence of diving, Sean had thrown himself into it with his usual zeal. Suddenly, he was bathing less and chastising your parents about how they imagined “public space.”
“Do you know what he does there?” you’d asked your dad earlier.
He was eating a fried-egg sandwich, only half paying attention to you.
“Bikes around with the other socialists?” he said.
Your mom shook her head.
“I just think it’s good he’s making new friends,” she said.
She reached out and gave your side a squeeze. Neither of them seemed aware of the argument currently going on in their house. Or maybe they were just giving Sean his space, confident he would figure things out the way he always did.
“You okay, sweetie?” asked your mom.
When you glanced back at her, she was staring at your face. You weren’t sure what it looked like, but it couldn’t have been good. Each word you heard from upstairs felt like a jab to the ribs. And the same phrase played in your head over and over.
Things weren’t supposed to be like this.
For the few weeks after you spilled Sean’s secret at Perkins, things had somehow not imploded.
Sean and Diana were still talking. And they even went out a few times—to a movie and on a nighttime bike ride with Sean’s new fixed gear, which he was constantly modifying in the garage—and when they came back to the house, they usually sat close on the couch, joking and occasionally even kissing, until Diana inevitably stayed the night and sneaked out the window in the morning like old times.
All of this helped to quell the crushing guilt you’d been feeling, but you also noticed that they rarely made time for you, or noticed you much at all.
Until one night when your parents were out.
Sean and Diana decided to make pot brownies, and around nine o’clock, they came upstairs to offer you a half.
You’d never liked drugs that much (at least the ones you weren’t prescribed).
They affected your anxiety in unpredictable ways, and once, after a few hits from a joint, you ate a raw bratwurst from the fridge and fell asleep in the downstairs shower.
But, this time, you were so relieved that you hadn’t ruined your brother’s life after all that you choked down the little chocolate square against your best instincts.
“It’s a super mellow strain,” said Sean. “Great cannabinoid profile.”
You didn’t know what he was talking about.
Some guys he’d met from his biking collective were connoisseurs to say the least, and you had a hunch they’d been educating him.
But he was right about the mellow part. That small cube glued you to the couch for a few hours, where you alternately talked to a stuffed animal and sang old songs from summer camp until eventually you felt Diana sit down next to you.
She had been in a buoyant mood all night, talking more than usual, and laughing hysterically at Sean’s impression of a confused foal being born.
But now she seemed subdued. Drained of something.
“Be honest,” she whispered. “Do you think I’m weak?”
These words made it through the haze and swirled around in your brain. For how long, you didn’t know.
“No,” you said. “Of course not.”
Your high was fading, but the words still vibrated in your chest. Diana reached out and grabbed the stuffed animal you were holding.
It was a pink octopus you’d won at a fall carnival when you were six.
It was frayed and dirty, but you still kept it in your room because it was the only thing you’d ever won.
Sean had tried first to knock over the milk bottles, but he had failed.
Then a lucky shot from your right hand had sent them scattering.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said.
She hung the octopus upside down by its tentacles and spiraled it around.
“You can try all you want, you know? You can do everything in your power. You can talk to yourself about all the rational reasons…”
She seemed lost in her head for a moment. Then she blinked and turned directly to you.
“But you can’t help who you love.”
You couldn’t look into her pink eyes when she said this, so instead you stared into the octopus’s googly ones. You finally managed a glance and tried not to notice how pretty she looked.
“I agree,” you said.
She touched your hand and smiled, and you felt that same charge that went through you on the garage so many months ago.
She kept it there longer than you thought she would.
Maybe it was the high. But then she seemed to notice and got up to get another brownie.
While she was gone, Sean wandered over and sat down across from you on an overstuffed leather chair.
His freckles were prominent from all the riding he was doing, and he wore a T-shirt that read CYCOPATH.
He looked at you, holding on to your stuffed animal, and burst out laughing.
“What?” you said.
“That thing is ragged, dude,” he said.
You looked down at it with fresh eyes and saw just how rough it really was. One of its legs was hanging by a knotted thread, and there was a small rip under its left eye that looked like a prison tattoo.
“You’re hurting Ringo’s feelings,” you said.
“Ringo looks like he made some bad choices in life,” said Sean.
You could hear Diana in the kitchen, clattering the silverware, looking for a knife to cut the brownies. A drawer squeaked open.
“Case, please tell me it wasn’t you,” he said.
Instantly, your whole body stiffened, and you found you couldn’t even blink.
“What wasn’t me?” you said with a mouth dry as an old sponge.
“Who told her.”
His face was as serious as you’d ever seen it.
His brow low, and his mouth a straight line.
You couldn’t remember if you had ever outright lied to Sean.
About anything. Even the Pokémon card you ripped that he never would have known about—you even told him about that, crying out to him in the middle of the night, sick with guilt.
“I…”
Diana yanked opened the dishwasher, humming some imperceptible tune.
“Ugh!” Sean said, sucking in a breath. “Forget I said that! I just don’t know how she…”
In the kitchen Diana dropped the knife and started laughing.
“I was so careful,” he said.
You nodded.
“Guys!” said Diana. “You have to come see this!”
Without sharing a look, you both got up and padded over the carpet onto the cold tile floor of the kitchen.
You couldn’t look at Sean, so you stared at the scene before you: Diana laughing, her mouth stuffed full of brownie, pointing down.
It took you a second to realize what was funny until you saw the knife.
When she’d dropped it, it had fallen inches from her bare right foot, and stuck straight up out of the tile like something from a horror movie.
“Shit, Diana,” said Sean, snapping out of his stoned trance. “You could have been really hurt.”
He reached down and yanked the knife out of the tile like a sword from the stone. Diana’s face changed then, the goofy smile disappearing. She looked at the knife in his hand.
“Since when do you care if I’m hurt?” she said.
Then she walked out of the room, and you heard her going up the stairs and shutting the door to Sean’s room.
This left Sean holding a butcher knife in the middle of the kitchen.
Slowly, he turned to you. For a moment, you wanted him to stab you.
Just in the arm. Nowhere fatal. But enough to make things even.
Instead, he wandered over to the sink and let the knife clatter in the basin. Then he walked out, shouting her name.
Something seemed to change after that night.
Diana still came over sometimes, but the mood was different.
You wouldn’t see her for days; then you’d find her sitting in the living room after everyone else had gone to bed, reading one of your mom’s books from nursing school.
When you entered the room, she might look up just to give you a fact or two.
(“Did you know that every second you produce twenty-five million new cells? Like, who even are you right now, Case?”) And if Sean came down to try to engage her, she often couldn’t be bothered.
One night, desperate and guilty, and looking for any kind of lifeline, you asked if she wanted to go to Perkins. For a second, the suggestion seemed to throw some life in her eyes. But it wasn’t long before they dimmed again, and she shook her head.
“I’m going to miss it here,” she said. “It’s so…”
“What?” you said.
“Even,” she said, and smoothed a hand in front of her.
“Is that the only thing you’re going to miss?” you asked.
She looked up at you then, and for a moment she seemed to see you differently. She looked intently at your face, studying you. You thought about sitting down next to her on the couch, but you were sober this time, and the distance seemed untraversable. Like she was already gone.
She stood up and put a hand on your cheek. Then she smiled slightly and walked out of the room.
“Good night, Case,” she said.
It was the very next night that she went upstairs and said something you couldn’t hear, and Sean started crying.
You were standing in the hallway when it started, so you heard a few other things beyond his plea not to let things die.
He promised to be better. He said she was the only person he had ever loved.
And he quoted something from Ram Dass, which caused Diana to start laughing.
It got too painful to hear at that point, so you left to go sit with your parents.
But when you came back up, you watched her storm out of the room.
She walked past you without even acknowledging you.
Then you turned and saw Sean standing in the doorway sobbing.
He looked devastated, and the full depth of your betrayal made you nauseous.
Had Diana already known about the girl? Maybe.
But the way you were acting around her after Sean told you might have been a part of how she figured it out.
Could you have convinced her that Sean was innocent?
Possibly. But was there also a part of you that wanted them to break up?
If this was ever true, it’s not what you wanted now.
As Diana disappeared from view, and you heard her footfalls on the staircase, you watched Sean again.
He held absolutely still for ten seconds or so, waiting perhaps to see if she would come back.
And then, when it was clear that that wasn’t going to happen, he turned around and looked at his bedroom door, covered in his mantras and quotes—all the instructions for his moral change.
He choked on a sob and then started attacking them like an animal.
He tore them off his door, his face bright red.
You watched as the scraps drifted to the ground like flurries, settling on the dusty wood floor.
Then you watched him sit down among the shards of his former wisdom and slump to the ground.
After a moment or two, he went back into his room and grabbed the keys to the Toyota and sprinted down the stairs.
You finally came back to yourself then.
You said his name. You yelled it.
But he was already gone.