Her Hidden Ghost

Sadie

One years ago

The score flashes on the board, and the gym erupts.

I don't move. Not for a full second. I just stand in the middle of the floor, chest heaving, and staring at those numbers like they might change if I look away.

They don't change. They stay exactly where they are, and my coach is already running toward me, and my teammates are screaming somewhere behind me.

The noise of the whole arena is pressing in from every direction.

I won.

I actually fucking won.

Coach Davis hits me like a freight train, lifting me off the floor entirely, and that's when it breaks open in my chest, that wild, disbelieving thing that I've been holding back for four years of five a.m. training sessions, torn hands and competitions where I came close but not close enough.

I laugh into her shoulder, and I might also be crying, but I don't care because I won and I'm going to college on a full gymnastic scholarship and everything I worked for just became real.

The medal is heavier than I expected when they put it around my neck.

I touch it once, then reach for my phone.

Dan's name is at the top of my recent calls. It's always at the top of my recent calls.

I hit dial and press the phone to my ear, turning away from the noise, the cameras, and the girls still celebrating behind me.

It rings out.

I tell myself he's probably in the shower. Or he fell asleep; he does that sleeps at weird hours, always has. I fire off a text.

I won, can you believe it? Call me.

I wait for the three dots to appear. They don't. They never do unless he wants something, but I still hope. I hope for my brother to be just that, my brother again.

***

The drive home takes forty minutes. I change out of my competition leotard in the back of Coach Davis's car, pulling on sweats while she talks about what this means for next year, for the college program, and for my future. This is what I’ve worked for, and nothing is going to fuck it up for me.

My phone stays quiet the whole drive, but I keep checking it, hoping he’ll call me.

By the time she drops me at the corner of our street, I've already moved from he's sleeping to something's wrong without stopping anywhere in between.

That's the thing about growing up with Dan. I skipped the middle part a long time ago. I go straight from fine to the other thing, because experience taught me that the middle part is just time I waste hoping everything’s going to be fine.

The apartment door is unlocked. Why is the door unlocked? Now I know something’s wrong.

The television is on, some channel with the news I think, casting blue light across the living room.

Dan’s on the couch. At first glance, he looks asleep.

He does, genuinely. He just looks like my brother sleeping, I know I shouldn't always think the worst when it comes to him, and he is really sleeping, and for one full second I let myself believe it.

Then I see his color.

I'm across the room before I've decided to move.

I'm on my knees next to him, my hands on his face, and his name coming out of me in a voice I don't recognize as my own.

His chest is moving. Barely, but it's moving.

I grab my phone and call 911, and when the operator answers, I give her the address and what I'm looking at in a voice that is completely calm and completely steady, because falling apart right now does not help my brother.

"Is there anyone else in the home with you?"

"No," I say. "It's just us."

It's always just us. Our parents made sure of that a long time ago, not with any dramatic exit, there was no goodbye, and no explanation that made sense.

They just slowly stopped being people who showed up.

First for the small things, then for the bigger ones, until one day Dan and I looked at each other and understood, without saying it, that we were basically on our own.

I stay on the line until the ambulance arrives.

I ride with him to the hospital and sit in a plastic chair in a waiting room that smells of bleach and old coffee. I don't call anyone because there’s no one to call. It’s always just me and him. He’s my only family.

I'm still holding my medal.

I close my fingers around it, the metal cool against my palm, the earlier excitement has worn off now. I sit in my sweats in a hospital waiting room on both the best and worst night of my life. I wait for someone to come and tell me my brother’s going to be okay.

He will be, because I’m going to do everything I can to make sure there’s no next time.

I don't know yet what that promise is going to cost me, but I don’t care.