CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
TWENTY-ONE YEARS OLD
· · ·
Junior year.
I’m better at performing okay by now.
I have a whole system.
Get up.
Shower.
Go to class.
Eat something so Mara doesn’t make the face.
Go to the library.
Study.
Come back.
Take the pills.
Sleep.
Repeat.
It works.
In the way that things work when you define working as simply continuing to exist without alarming anyone.
Mara knows something is wrong.
She’s always known.
She doesn’t push.
She just appears — at my door, at my table, in the library two seats down — and exists near me in the specific way that means I see you and I’m not going anywhere.
And I’m so grateful for her.
Even if I can’t bring myself to show it right now.
· · ·
My dad calls on Sundays.
I call him back.
We talk about the garden.
The cooking class.
The neighbor.
Normal things.
He asks about Cassian once.
Just once.
“We’re figuring it out,” I say.
He doesn’t push.
But I hear what he doesn’t say.
I’ve always been able to hear what the people I love don’t say.
It’s a gift.
It’s a curse.
Mostly it’s exhausting.
· · ·
Cassian and I talk maybe once a week now.
Sometimes less.
When we do it’s — fine.
That’s the word.
Fine.
Not warm the way it was.
Not the FaceTime at midnight and the rare smile and hi / hi.
Just — fine.
Like we’re two people who used to know each other very well and are carefully maintaining the outline of that.
I hate fine.
I have always hated fine.
But I take it.
I take whatever he gives me.
I have always taken whatever he gives me.
· · ·
February bleeds into March.
The texts from my side get fewer.
Not because I care less.
Because I’ve learned — finally, after twelve years — that reaching gets exhausting when nothing reaches back.
I’m just chasing someone that doesn’t want to be chased.
Or doesn’t think I’m worth a text.
I’m not angry.
That’s the thing I can’t explain to Mara when she finally, gently, asks.
“I’m not angry,” I say. “I don’t have the energy to be angry. I just feel like I’m watching something happen from very far away and I can’t get there in time.”
She looks at me.
She sees what I’m not saying.
That I’m drowning slowly, in real time, but can’t find the energy to kick myself back up to the surface anymore.
“Ro,” she says. “Have you been sleeping?”
“Yes.”
“How many pills does sleeping take now.”
I don’t answer.
Because it’s not a question. She knows.
She puts her hand over mine.
Doesn’t say anything else.
She’s learning.
· · ·
March.
He goes quiet.
Not the pulling-back kind of quiet.
The other kind.
The total kind.
The kind that landed me in the hospital that one time.
Days pass with nothing.
I send a text.
Hey .
Read.
No response.
· · ·
Two days later.
Cassian. Please.
Read.
No response.
I leave a voice memo.
I don’t remember everything I said.
I remember the end of it.
I don't know what I did. I don't know whats happening. I just — please. Please just tell me we’re okay. Tell me I didn't imagine all of it. Please, I love you. Please.
· · ·
He doesn’t respond.
I spend a Saturday in my room.
Curtains closed.
Pills on the desk.
Phone in my hand checking for a notification that doesn’t come.
· · ·
This is how it happens.
That’s what I know now.
Not all at once.
Just — days like this.
One and then another and then another until the space between them disappears and it’s just one long day with no light in it.
Mara knocks.
I don’t answer.
She sits outside my door for an hour.
I can see the shadow of her feet under it.
She doesn’t leave.
Eventually I open the door.
She’s on the floor with her back against the wall and her laptop and two cups of coffee.
She looks up at me.
Doesn’t make it a thing.
Just hands me a coffee.
I sit down on the floor next to her.
We stay there for a long time.
· · ·
I don’t tell her about the pill and how I’m taking more than I’ve ever taken before—even during the grey year.
I don’t tell her how I can’t remember the last time I slept.
I don’t tell her how bad it is.
I just sit with her on the floor and drink the coffee and let her be there.
It’s enough.
Just barely.
But enough.
· · ·
April.
He posts something.
I see it the way I always see things.
Middle of the night.
Phone in hand.
Looking for something to confirm what I already know.
He’s out somewhere.
A bar maybe.
Standing with people I don’t recognize.
He looks —
fine.
That word again.
He looks completely fine.
He looks like a person whose life is happening.
Who is out in the world being twenty-one.
Who is not lying in a dorm room watching a door that’s closing with no way to stop it.
Who’s spiraling losing themselves while lost in the ceiling.
I put the phone down.
Pick it up.
Put it down.
The pills are on my desk.
I take more than I should.
Don’t even count how much I took.
Just to get through the night.
Just to stop the loop.
· · ·
In the morning I feel nothing.
I eat breakfast.
Go to class.
Come back.
I send one more text.
I need you. I’m not okay. Please.
He reads it at 11am.
At 9pm —
I know. I’m so sorry Ro. I’ll call tomorrow.
He doesn’t call tomorrow.
Of course he doesn’t.
I know he won’t before I even go to sleep.
· · ·
I know him.
Knowing him is the thing that saves me and destroys me in equal measure and I cannot figure out how to make it just one of those things.
· · ·
May.
The last text I send him is on a Tuesday.
Midnight.
Pills already taken.
Edges already soft.
Cassian. I love you. That’s all. I just needed to say it one more time. I love you. I’m sorry.
· · ·
He reads it.
Nothing.
I put the phone face down.
Close my eyes.
And somewhere in the soft dark that the pills make —
I think about being eight years old.
About blue eyes through a fence.
About something being decided before either of us had a say.
I think about the roof.
His hand finding mine in the dark.
Like it was the simplest thing.
I think about my mom.
Her hands on my face.
It is absolutely not you .
I think about the blue daisy he once gave me.
Before.
When things were different.
When I still thought love was enough to hold something together.
I think —
I’m so tired.
I’m so tired of holding on.
I reach for the bottle.
And this time —
I stop counting.
I lose track of what I've taken and I tell myself that's fine, that's just sleep, just the soft dark I need to get through to morning.
My phone is still in my hand when I stop being able to feel my hands.
The last thing I see is his name on the screen.
The last thing I think is that I didn't mean for it to go this far.
I don't wake up on my own.
Mara does it. I find this out later — that she came back from the library at two in the morning and saw the light under my door and knocked, and when I didn't answer she tried the handle, and when she found me she called 911 and then called my dad and then sat on the floor next to me until they came.
She never told me what that looked like.
I never asked.