Chapter 59
Tyler
December, Eleven Years Ago
Long Island
I sat at the foot of Mikey’s bed, staring at our untouched meatball subs, our undrunk sodas, my trembling hands, my tapping
feet. Two weeks had passed since the accident, and Mikey had just gotten home that morning. His million-dollar arm, elevated
on a few pillows and held together by seven titanium screws and a custom-fitted brace with more dials and knobs than I had
the balls to count. It ran all the way from his shoulder to his fingertips.
“You look like shit,” I said, finally.
It was easier, I guess, to say that than I’m sorry. Than I got a news alert on my phone when you were in surgery. They don’t think you’ll ever throw a baseball again. Than The cops only did a blood alcohol test. Katie’s the only other person who knows. She won’t even look at me. She won’t even
open her blinds. Your mom—she’s in denial. Your dad can barely speak. Every time I visited you in the hospital, I wished it
were me instead.
“Fuck off,” he said. “Put a meatball in my mouth.”
I laughed, pressing my hands to my eyes.
And then, because I fucking loved him, because he was my brother or the closest thing I’d ever have to one, I did.
And then, after that, we watched an hour of some superhero movie, and then he talk-to-texted Ingrid love sonnets for a good twenty minutes, and then, all of a sudden, he tipped his head back against his headboard and winced.
“Are—Are you okay?” I said.
He glared at me.
“Do you want me to ask Ingrid to come suck your dick?”
He glared at me again and then nodded toward his dresser. Toward a slew of bottles, orange and opaque. He was grimacing now.
His face was a little gray. “Will you just hand me a few of those? The Oxys? It’s all that works.”
I nodded. I pulled the bottle off his dresser, tilted the label, and studied it for a second too long.
“Want one?” he said. “I’ve got, like, a thousand.”
My tongue caught the back of my teeth, and for a moment, it all flashed before me—my father, drunk; my father, gone; my car,
flying across the ice; Mikey’s future, shattered; Katie’s face, crushed—and I knew it, I knew it, I knew it. This was when
I was supposed to say No. This was when I was supposed to say, Man, this shit’s dangerous. This was when I was supposed to say, Mikey, listen, do you maybe want to talk?
But instead, I said, “Yeah, why not?”
I spent the next fifteen months chasing that high.
And Mikey never, ever stopped.