Chapter 72
Katie
September, Nine Years Ago
Long Island
February turned to March, turned to April, and then Memorial Day turned to the start of sophomore year. My life continued:
a new homeroom, a new boyfriend, a new musical in the fall. Mikey hadn’t picked up a baseball since the crash, and I knew—from
the whispers in the hallway and the newspaper articles that covered the accident since day one—that he never would. Maybe
that was why when he began to push Ingrid away, when he began to shout and scream and use his size to do whatever he wanted,
get whatever he wanted, and go wherever he wanted, my parents never intervened.
Maybe that was why—when Mikey started falling asleep at school and Tyler’s absences piled so high the principal started calling
my mom instead of his—nobody did a goddamn thing. Denial, I was learning, was a hell of a drug.
And still, the months rolled by. And then, the spring I turned sixteen, Mikey and Tyler overdosed, and everything changed.
Mikey went to rehab immediately. He was still seventeen, so it was an adolescent treatment center he could not check himself out of.
Tyler, thanks to his October birthday, was already eighteen and, unlike Mikey, didn’t put up much of a fight.
He went to detox voluntarily and then did some hybrid school-outpatient thing in Nassau County for the rest of the year.
Not that any of this mattered to me. I couldn’t let it. I had my own life, my own friends, my own future to worry about. And
it was a big job, thinking about me. After all, someone had to do it.
And so I hardened. I watched my brother go in and out of rehab and in and out of rehab, and I never cared, and I never hoped,
and I never wrote, and I never visited, and nobody ever asked me why. Nobody, really, outside of a California-bound Ingrid,
who sent the occasional text, asked me much of anything. My theater friends had tried at the very beginning, but I pushed
their questions away. We were kids, after all, and nobody knew what to say.
It was the night before the start of my junior year when there was a knock on my window. My parents weren’t home. They rarely
were. My mom had joined a zillion support groups and usually dragged my father along. Not that it made a difference where
they were. I had no curfew. No rules. No ride to school. No groceries in the fridge.
It was fine, though. I was a really tough kid.
I walked over to the window and slowly opened the blinds. Tyler was standing there, shoulders hunched.
“Can we talk?” he said.
I frowned, shrugging as he watched on through the glass. The sun was still setting.
“Please, Katie,” he said. “I need a friend.”
I stood there for a minute, examining him. The tremble in his lips, but the steadiness of his hands. The color in his face.
The fifteen or twenty pounds of life he’d put back onto his body since the spring.
I opened the window. He did not smile—not with his mouth, not anywhere, but I saw something flash across his face. A softness that overrode everything else I knew.
“You can come in if you want,” I said. “My parents are in Westbury.”
Tyler nodded, crawling through the frame as I sat at the foot of my bed. He spent a few minutes just looking around, tracing
things. My Playbills. My sketches. Pictures from cast parties.
“I like your art,” he said.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Have you, uh, have you been writing?”
“A little. I don’t know. Not like we used to.”
He blew out a breath and then turned to me. “I know you probably hate me. And that’s okay. I deserve that. I really do.”
“I could never hate you, Tyler.”
He gulped, then twisted his watch around his wrist. “I, uh . . . I have this sponsor,” he said. “He’s been helping me a lot
since I got clean. He’s pretty adamant that I should leave you alone forever. Which is what I’ve been trying to do, really,
since I went to detox and everything. It’s just that tomorrow is going to be a disaster for me. It’s humiliating, going back
there, repeating my senior year, applying to colleges, everyone knowing what happened with Mikey, and everyone realizing it
was all my fault, and . . .”
I stared at him. He frowned.
“Fuck,” he said. “I’m so sorry. I’m so selfish. I’m working on it, I swear.”
I covered my mouth and tried not to cry. He walked over to me very slowly and put his hands on mine. A few tears fell down my face. He got on his knees and wrapped his arms around me. I closed my eyes and began to weep.
“Are you okay?” he whispered.
“I don’t think so, no.”
“Do you want to get some dinner? Have you eaten anything? The diner’s open. Can I take you for a milkshake? Maybe a grilled
cheese?”
I let out a squeak. I was crumbling now. The last two years, leaving me—and in fits, in gushes.
“Katie, I’m here, okay? You’re okay. It’s okay. I’m right here.”
I opened my eyes. Tyler was still on his knees, holding me tight. His eyes were wet, and his face was folded in a frown.
“I am so sorry,” he said, “that I left you all alone.”