Chapter 13
Ash
I couldn’t stop thinking about Karla, which was nice because if I was thinking about her, then I wasn’t thinking about sad stuff as much.
We started hanging out a lot more. During our lunchtime, we’d eat and read.
I read five books because of her. Before her, I didn’t read at all.
I didn’t know the power of books, really.
The only books I’d been used to were textbooks and books for English class, and those blew.
But having Karla bring me into her favorite fictional worlds felt like a secret way to learn about who she was.
She loved thrillers and mysteries. Horror was her favorite, though.
Some of them gave me nightmares, while others didn’t even give me a chance to sleep, seeing as how they kept me up all night.
She told me the love stories were the ones that scared her the most.
I didn’t blame her. I’d never been in love, but it seemed like something that would be terrifying.
My parents used to be in love. They used to dance and sing and laugh.
I didn’t know the last time I’d heard them laugh together.
Maybe that was why I was afraid of love—because one day, it could just .
. . stop. I wondered if their love stopped the day Rian’s heart stopped beating.
Like a switch was shut off in both of their systems and love no longer lived there.
Now I lived with two people who hardly looked at each other, which made me realize just how terrifying love could be. One day it’s there; the next, gone.
The other day, I heard Maa mention divorce to Dad.
They didn’t know I was upstairs eavesdropping as knots in my stomach formed.
Dad stared at her with his hands on his hips looking completely defeated.
His silence felt like indifference, which felt like the opposite of love.
Some might’ve said hate was the opposite, but indifference felt even worse to me.
Hate was passionate at times, in the same way that love could be. Indifference was . . . numb.
Sometimes I thought about how Rian would never fall in love.
I struggled with those kinds of thoughts—the things that my brother would never experience.
I hated that I’d achieve things he’d never have a chance to try.
I also hated that I thought about those kinds of things, because it made my mind feel heavy.
I was exhausted by my thoughts every single day.
Anyway, more thinking about Karla, less about Rian . . .
Karla was still grumpy most of the time.
I was fine with her grumpiness because if anyone deserved the right to be in a bad mood, it was her.
I saw how other people treated her at school.
Even people who didn’t know her would laugh at her.
The only person who sometimes looked guilt-ridden by the bullying was Missy, but she never stood up for Karla.
If anything, Missy’s boyfriend was Karla’s biggest bully.
Brian and his girlfriend Rosie weren’t any better.
She even seemed jealous of Karla, which made me wonder what their friendship was like before the accident.
Brian pretended to be nice to Karla’s face when people weren’t around, but I’d overheard him and Rosie making jokes about her limp once.
That made my hatred for Brian grow even more. I hated fake people.
The kinds of comments some of our classmates made when they passed us in the hallway made me want to snap at every single one of them. But Karla wouldn’t let me be the devil on her shoulder. Each time I almost snapped, she’d shake her head and tell me it was fine. It wasn’t, though.
She told me she used to be friends with those jerks, too, which made it even more shocking. I guessed they turned on her after her accident.
Sometimes, I’d catch her gazing at her old friends with a look of defeat in her eyes.
Or maybe longing? I didn’t get it. They acted like she chose to go through one of the hardest things in her life.
Did they think she wanted the mental and physical trauma that came with losing her mother and losing the ability to freely move her body?
I knew people like them, because I used to be just like them. Idiotic and cruel without any thought.
They were dicks.
There was no better way of saying it, and each day that passed, each time they mocked her, my annoyance grew. I hated them. I hated the way they snickered. I hated the way they laughed. I hated the way they looked so happy to belittle Karla.
The girls were annoying, but the person I hated the most?
Brian.
He was so fake with the way he interacted with Karla. He only did it in private and never stood up for her when his closest friends were being assholes. He’d just give her a half-assed apologetic smile, which ticked me off.
The worst part of it all with Brian? Karla ate it up.
She didn’t realize he was just as bad as—if not worse than—the others.
Karla didn’t deserve a friendship that was only in secret.
I had no shame being friends with her out loud.
I just wished she didn’t get so starry-eyed from the few drops and crumbs that Brian delivered her way every now and then.
I couldn’t tell her who to like and who to despise.
It wasn’t my place, plus Karla just began to not hate the idea of me being around.
I wasn’t going to push the envelope and make her pissed at me because I hated her old friend group.
But if it had been my place? Brian would’ve been at the top of the list of people I’d tell to piss off. After Colton, at least.
Karla and I started hanging out at her house once a week.
I liked it over there. Even though there were moments of dark energy in the house, it felt familiar to me, too.
You could feel in the space that a person, Karla’s mom, was missing.
I felt that same way every time I walked past my family room—the missing pieces of Rian.
I felt the heaviness of Karla’s life the most when I crossed paths with Mr. East. Karla’s father was a mystery of his own.
I didn’t want to say he scared me, but, well, he scared me.
He was like his daughter in many ways, though.
I could see how they were related. They closed themselves off to the world in the same kinds of ways.
Their grumpy personalities mirrored each other.
And also—they had the same eyes.
Blue eyes filled with all the sadness they never expressed out loud.
It was like two sets of ocean waves that kept painfully crashing against the shore.
I wondered what would happen if the two of them actually spoke to each other.
I wondered if it would cause more hurt or more healing.
I wondered the same thing about my parents.
I wondered if they wondered the same thing about me.
* * *
On a Saturday, Karla turned fifteen. I made her brownies, and we found eggshells in them. She laughed about it and said they were her favorite brownies. I thought about telling her she was becoming my favorite person.
I didn’t, though.
* * *
On a Thursday, Karla sewed up my hoodie, fixing all the holes in it.
As she stitched me back together, I thought about what it would be like to kiss her.
I didn’t, though.
* * *
On a Tuesday night, Dad came home earlier than expected. When he walked into the house, he had a stack of trim pieces for the latest project he was working on in the basement.
I was sitting at the dining room table doing my homework when he walked in. I gave him a half-smile, and he gave me the other half, but it fell pretty quick. My dad used to smile all the time. He had the kind of smirk that made others grin, too.
Now it was mostly half-assed smiles.
“Hey, son. Homework?”
“Yes.”
He moved to the coffee table, where Maa had left the stack of his mail.
He set down the trim pieces in his hand before grabbing the mail.
He flipped through it, murmuring about bills before tossing the mail back onto the table.
He stood straight, not looking in my direction, and then released a sigh.
His back was to me still. I couldn’t stop staring at him.
“You eat?” he asked.
“Leftover pizza.”
He still didn’t look at me.
“Good, good.” He scratched at his beard, and I watched as he noticed the image of our family above the fireplace.
His already-heavy eyes grew heavier. I knew his stare was locked on Rian.
Mine always got lost in that photograph, too.
My little brother was cracking up in the picture, his head tossed back in a fit of laughter.
His pure soul was captured in a photograph.
It was my favorite picture. I wanted to remember my brother in that way. Filled with joy.
I hated that some stupid bullies stole away his light. I hated that the bullies were friends that I let into our world. I hated that I didn’t stand up for him. Rian deserved to live for decades more, and instead all we had were snapshots of our yesterdays.
Dad’s head dropped.
I saw a tear roll down his face.
He wiped it fast.
He always wiped the tears fast.
With a clearing of his throat, he turned around to face me. He scratched at his beard again. “Well, I’m gonna get the trim up downstairs. It’s shaping up nicely. Have you been down there since I did the wallpaper in the hallways?” he asked.
“No.”
He picked up the trim and nodded his head in the direction of the basement. “Want to give it a look?”
“Sure.”
I said yes because I knew that the best chance of getting any kind of interaction with my father was by allowing him to talk about his work projects or sports.
I didn’t mind. He’d talk about shelves, paint colors, and the Chicago Bulls.
I’d listen to every single word, too. I liked that for a few minutes every now and again, we’d pretend that life was normal.
We headed downstairs, and he showed me where he was putting the new trim up against the walls.
“The color is called jojoba, which is like a sage,” he explained. “You know how your mom loves sage.”
I nodded. You couldn’t walk into one room in our house and not see sage.
He pulled out a measuring tape and placed it against the wall. “I’m gonna add shelves here to toss some things up, too. I think it will look good.”
“It looks great, Dad.”
He hesitated for a minute, and his eyes grew somber.
They did that pretty often. He cleared his throat.
“So yeah. I think I’m going to switch out the sink in the bathroom down here, too.
It’s too narrow. Water has been splashing all over and making a mess.
So I think I’m going to take that out this weekend. ”
This would be the second time he was swapping out the sink.
Maa said Dad kept putting things in and taking them out to keep himself busy.
I didn’t disagree. They’d been arguing even more lately about Dad and his renovations or him picking up more and more work shifts.
Maa said Dad wasn’t sleeping enough, so I didn’t think she was really mad at him.
I figured she was worried about his well-being and her fear came out as anger.
Sometimes I thought I was angry when I was really just scared or sad.
I didn’t blame Dad for working so much. Maybe his work and renovations to him were his Karla—the things that kept the dark thoughts at bay. In one of the books I’d been reading during lunch period, a character said that grief showed up differently for every person who met it.
When Dad asked me to help him, I grabbed the hammer.
I considered asking him about the divorce comment I overheard.
I didn’t, though.