36. Dorien
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
DORIEN
The joint rolls between my fingers inside my jacket pocket. Paper against skin, back and forth while Carter’s friend talks about a teacher he hates. This blue and pink neon place is a nightmare. I hate the flatness the colors create. I keep rolling the joint.
There’s a break in the conversation and Carter turns to me. “Thought you couldn’t come, man.”
“I felt like I should.” I shrug. “I still have a mountain of class work to finish.”
“Did June tell you to come? She must’ve changed her mind.”
“What do you mean?”
“She wanted me to take Aeron out. He’s been in a good mood so she wants that to continue.” He grins. “She was talking crazy though.”
I stop twirling the joint. “Like what?”
“She said it was fine if Aeron drank and smoked. I gave him that joint from your stash in the basement.”
I pull my hand from my pocket. “How do you know about my stash?”
“Bro.”
I smirk. Fair enough.
“Anyway.” Carter gestures at me. “You’re here and you took the joint, so it seems like June changed her mind.”
I think about June encouraging Aeron to relax, and my mouth curves.
That must’ve cost her. June’s whole operating system runs on vigilance and gripping the people she loves tightly.
Giving Aeron space to drink at a frat party goes against every protective instinct she has.
I picture her saying the words to Carter, trying to keep her voice casual, and the image makes my face hurt from smiling.
She’s learning to loosen her grip. That’s not a small thing for someone who holds on like she does.
I’m proud of her.
“Nah, she didn’t tell me to come,” I say and settle back against the wall. “I needed a break from studying and I guess I wanted to check up on Aeron myself. Can’t let my girlfriend’s younger brother get in trouble. That wouldn’t be good for our relationship.”
Carter’s palm claps my shoulder. “Bro. You said it out loud.”
“I haven’t quite asked her yet, but I figured I’m her boyfriend, right?”
He laughs and his whole body leans forward from it. One of his Hargrove friends pulls him back into the other conversation but Carter glances back, grinning at me over his shoulder.
I rest against the wall and watch the room. The bass is vibrating through the floor into my shoes. I check my phone. How long has Aeron been gone? I don’t know what time it was when he left, but it feels like a long time.
I wait some more, scanning the room and hoping to see him coming back. He doesn’t so I check the time again. Ten more minutes have passed. I know party bathroom lines can be long, but this feels like too much.
I tap Carter’s arm. “I’m gonna find Aeron.”
“Cool,” Carter says without turning.
The hallway bathroom is occupied. I wait for it to open. A girl comes out adjusting her skirt. Aeron’s not in the line either. I check the line for the second bathroom upstairs. He’s not there.
I find a few more bathrooms, but still no Aeron anywhere. I start checking more places. Bedrooms that are open, hallways, a den. No Aeron.
Back downstairs I check the living room. A game room. Laundry room. An office. The front porch. Pool. I check everywhere I can think of. No Aeron.
My fingers find the joint in my pocket again and I roll it faster.
I text him: Where are you? Let’s smoke.
The message is delivered but unread, so I wait. I lean against the kitchen counter and wait. Two minutes. Five. The party noise filters in from the other rooms. I check my phone again. Still unread.
Ten minutes.
I push off the counter and go back through the house. I’m extra methodical now. Where the hell is he? If he’s hooking up, fine, but he’d be somewhere. Did he leave?
I call his phone. It rings and rings and then goes to voicemail so I disconnect.
I continue checking every room—startling a few people on beds hooking up—every corner, every cluster of people on every piece of furniture.
I ask a guy by the front door if he saw a tall kid in a black jacket leave. He shrugs.
I check the side yard. The driveway. Loop back through the patio. I finally notice that the backyard doesn’t end at the row of bushes. There’s a small path to another section of yard, leading to an area that’s bathed in darkness.
I walk there and my eyes adjust. It seems to be a garden area with some solar lights. I don’t know why he’d be here unless he found some girl to make out with. I smile at the thought. I hope that’s the case. The kid deserves it.
I walk the cobblestone path. Ground solar lights mark the way in small halos. There are bare branches overhead, stretching toward the night sky.
“Aeron,” I call out.
Nothing.
“Aeron, you out here?”
I round the last bend, past the overgrown hedges, and a bench comes into view under a hanging tree lantern.
I see a body slumped over, one arm hanging off the edge, fingers almost touching the ground. I squint and realize the shape looks like Aeron.
I rush forward.
“Aeron.” I grab his shoulders and shake him. His body is limp like a rag doll. “Aeron. Hey. Wake up.”
Lantern light falls over his face. His skin has a bluish tint that doesn’t belong to a living person.
I press my fingers to his neck and find a pulse hammering erratically, too fast for someone who is passed out.
His breathing is so slow I have to put my cheek near his mouth to confirm he’s breathing at all.
I glance at the ground, trying to make sense of the scene, and find two vodka bottles in the dirt, one empty and one nearly empty.
There are also small plastic bags scattered around.
I pick one up and hold it under the lantern.
There’s white residue along the seam. I don’t know what it is.
It could be cocaine or speed or crushed pills. It could be anything.
I shake him harder and his head rolls to the side. His body is here, but he isn’t. The disconnect is so complete it makes my hands go numb.
I pull out my phone. My fingers are shaking so bad I miss the screen twice before I get 911 dialed.
The female operator’s voice is calm. I am not calm.
I give the address. I say he’s barely breathing and not waking up and his pulse is racing faster than it should.
I say I don’t know what he took. The operator tells me to stay on the line, and I do, but I’m already pulling Aeron off the bench, lowering him to the ground, tilting his head back, checking his airway.
I put my phone on speaker and lay it down so I can start CPR because his breathing keeps getting shallower.
I do compressions. Count. Breathe for him.
Count. His body lies there and takes what I give it, but offers nothing back.
My arms are trembling, and my vision is narrowing, and I can hear myself talking to him.
Come on. Stay here. Don’t do this. Aeron wake up. Please wake up.
The operator says the paramedics are almost to the address, and I tell her Aeron’s in the backyard, all the way in the back, in the garden. Then I text Carter: garden emergency
I go back to compressions. The hard ground digs into my knees. The lantern sways in a breeze.
Don’t. Aeron. Don’t.
Carter comes at a sprint, rounding the hedges. He sees Aeron on the ground and the color leaves his face completely. He drops to his knees beside me.
“What… what…” His hands reach for Aeron and freeze, hovering, because he doesn’t know what to do with them. “What happened?” His voice is high, which is the wrong register for Carter.
“He took something. I don’t know what. Paramedics are coming.”
We try together. Carter shaking Aeron, calling his name. Me doing compressions, counting. Aeron’s face stays the same. Blue. Lifeless.
I check his breath. Still breathing. Still has a heartbeat.
You have to wake up.
The paramedics arrive in a blur of radio static and flashlights. They take over and I stumble backward. My knees are wet from the ground. My hands won’t stop shaking so I shove them under my arms. Carter is standing beside me, his face so bloodless I wonder if his pulse has stopped.
They load Aeron onto a gurney and secure an oxygen mask.
They roll him around the crowds that have gathered.
Carter and I follow. I can’t look away from his hand hanging off the gurney.
Limp. The hand that holds a pencil with so much skill, that sketches faces that haunt you long after you’ve looked away, that handed me a joint an hour ago.
Wake up wake up wake up
“We have to follow them,” I say.
Carter nods. He only had one beer tonight, so he can drive.
Minutes later, we’re in the car, racing along behind the ambulance. He’s gripping the wheel so hard the tendons stand out across the backs of his hands.
“June told me to watch him.” His voice is shaking and doesn’t sound like himself at all. “To keep him safe. I was supposed to watch him. Keep him safe. She told me. She told me I should—”
He continues on, and I lean my head against the window.
Me too. I should’ve watched him. I should’ve checked sooner.
My stomach lurches and I bend forward just in time to puke between my feet.
Carter doesn’t even glance over. I roll the window down to fight against the vomit smell. He keeps driving, keeps talking.
“Why didn’t I check on him? Why didn’t I go look for him? I was… I was…”
I want to tell him it wasn’t him. I didn’t check either.
I knew Aeron had been acting down lately.
I knew he must’ve gotten rejected. I knew he had a fight with June and pushed her and was retreating from the world.
I knew, and I didn’t make sure he was truly okay.
Not only at the party. Before. I haven’t been asking how he feels, man to man, or if he wants to talk.
I haven’t been there.
I was standing in a neon room calling myself June’s boyfriend while her brother was overdosing fifty yards away in a garden. Because every time I get close to something good, the universe finds someone I care about and hurts them.
The curse. Stupidly, I thought maybe it’s just trauma making patterns out of coincidence. For a few weeks, I actually believed June and I could be happy without it costing somebody.
Putain d’idiot.
My stomach convulses again and I lean over and retch out the window.
Nothing comes up this time. Carter is pulling into the hospital lot, following the ambulance around to the emergency entrance.
We sit in the car and watch through the windshield as they wheel Aeron inside.
The gurney rolls under the fluorescent overhang and the harsh white light catches his face.
He looks like a sculpture. Marble. Still.
“We have to tell June.” Carter’s voice is barely there. “Y-you have to call June and Melia.”
My abdomen hollows out. “You do it,” I say. “I can’t.”
Fucking coward.
Carter’s hands are shaking but he picks up his phone. I open my door and get out because I can’t listen to this call. I can’t hear June’s voice break through the speaker. I walk toward the emergency entrance, one foot then the next.
Inside, the ER is a blinding white. No depth, no shadow, no contour. I go to the front desk and tell them I’m here for Aeron Belrose, who was just brought in. They hand me a clipboard and a pen. I sit in a chair.
My hands won’t stop shaking. They’re shaking too much for me to fill anything out, and my brain can barely think, so I just sit here. I sit with the clipboard balanced on my knees and my body is numb and cold.
Where are my gloves? I think I left them in the dorm.
Carter sits down beside me eventually. His eyes are red, his face swollen. “They know,” he says with a gravelly voice. “I’ll never get June’s sob out of my head.”
I close my eyes.
Time stops being reliable. The clipboard is still on my lap. The pen is still in my hand. Carter is breathing beside me. The fluorescents buzz overhead.
How much time passes?
The sliding doors open and somehow I know it’s June and her mom.
I open my eyes to find Melia first. She moves straight to the front counter and the employee points at me.
Melia crosses the waiting room and takes the clipboard from my hands without a word.
She doesn’t look at me, just sits far away and starts filling out the forms while tears run down her face and drip onto the paper. She doesn’t wipe them.
June comes through the doors a second later.
She’s standing while Carter and I are sitting, which makes her tall. The two of us are tiny in these chairs. Her eyes are swollen and wild.
She hurries over to us. “What happened? Was it a car crash? Did he fall? What happened?”
Carter must’ve just said “accident” and not “overdose.”
She’s talking so fast the words tumble over each other. Carter opens his mouth and she’s already onto the next question, her hands pulling at the hem of her jacket, her body vibrating. Neither of us can get a word in.
Carter glances at me.
I turn away. I can’t look at him. I can’t look at either of them because the guilt is in every part of me.
Why didn’t I check on him sooner? Why didn’t I stay with him?
Why did I stop believing in the curse?
I only destroy people. Everyone I love, everything I touch.
Carter and June are talking and he’s telling her what the “accident” was. Their voices reach me from a long distance, muffled, like sound filtered through plaster. I come to when I realize June asked me a question. She’s waiting, with tears soaking her collar, for an answer.
“What?” I ask.
Her eyes are wide, pleading. Scared. “Were you at the party too?”
I feel Carter’s eyes on me. I open my mouth.
“No,” Carter cuts in quickly. “No, it was just me. I texted Dorien first because I wasn’t thinking. So he got here sooner.”
June looks at me for confirmation.
I have one second to decide.
I nod.
She crumples. Her whole body collapses and she drops onto my lap, her arms wrapping around me, her face buried against my neck. The sobs come in waves, shaking through her and into me, and I feel each one as my own.
“Leave,” she says to Carter. Her voice is wrecked, muffled against my shirt. “You were supposed to keep him safe. This is your fault. Yours! Just fucking leave!”
“I’m sorry.” Carter’s voice breaks. His face has collapsed, tears cutting lines down his cheeks, his whole body caved inward. I’ve seen him tired, sad, frustrated. I have never seen Carter like this. Emotion is thick in his voice as every word splinters. “I’m so sorry, June.”
He stands. He walks toward the doors. The automatic glass parts for him and he’s gone.
I hold June. I wrap my arms around her and pull her close, and she sobs into my neck. I want to tell her. I have to tell her I was there. I was at the party. I didn’t check on him. I was a hundred feet away, and I didn’t check on him, and this is my fault too.
But the words are stuck inside me, and they won’t come loose.
So I hold her. And I say nothing.