A World Without You

  It’s still a little too cold to be outside today, even though the season is starting to change. Everyone’s wearing coats, and Gwen’s hopping around from foot to foot, trying to keep warm. Despite this, the whole place smells like a cookout. The staff associates “family” with “cheap food.” Last Family Day was a build-your-own-sandwich bar.

  “Hey,” I say in the general direction of my family. Harold’s all excited to see his family, but I see mine every weekend. I don’t know why they bother to come, honestly. Phoebe never has before.

  Dr. Franklin greets everyone as they enter the big open foyer at the base of the ornate stairs of Berkshire. A laminated banner hangs over the first-floor landing—WELCOME, FAMILIES—and the staff has added festive paper table covers to the buffet, where they’re piling up mounds of grilled hot dogs, ruffled potato chips, and dip, but it all feels . . . forced. Everyone’s smile is plastered on, but hardly anyone looks happy to be here, especially after Dr. Franklin introduces the officials, saying that they’re here as consultants “during our tragedy.” Nothing like reminding everyone about a missing student to bring up the cheer factor.

  “Well, let me go get my thirteen-hundred-dollar hot dog,” my father says. He smiles like it’s a joke, but I can tell he doesn’t think it’s funny at all. Mom squeezes my arm, like she’s trying to say everything’s okay.

  “Dr. Franklin,” she says, turning to him. He greets her with a too-broad smile, all his teeth showing. “May I speak with you?”

  She draws him aside, and they start speaking quietly. I glance at my sister, who’s just standing there, texting on her phone, ignoring us all.

  Ryan sidles up beside me, four hot dogs on his plate. “This blows. Let’s leave.”

  I shake my head.

  “Come on,” Ryan whines.

  I watch as Mom nods emphatically at whatever Dr. Franklin is saying. I wait for them to look at me—obviously they’re talking about me—but instead, Mom looks past where I’m standing.

  To Phoebe.

  “Would you look at them?” Ryan says, pointing to Harold’s family—two dads, a younger sister, and an older brother. They’re so loud it feels like they’re taking up the whole foyer. Except Harold, of course. He’s always quiet, even around his family. But he’s smiling, at least—that’s something. His little sister came from Haiti, and his older brother is from Cambodia. They’re among the few living people Harold ever bothers to talk about.

  “They’re like a window display for diversity,” Ryan says, not caring if anyone overhears him. The little sister is wearing a neon yellow sundress and has her hair up in two twisted pigtails. She’s bouncing around like she’s eaten nothing in her life but pure sugar.

  “They look like a nice family,” I say. I watch Harold’s whole face come alive with happiness in a way I’ve never really seen before.

  “They look like a bunch of freaks.”

  I’d really like to tell Ryan to shove off, but my mother’s coming toward us. No . . . she’s heading toward my sister. She steers Phoebe over to the Doctor, saying something to her in a low voice. Phoebe shakes her head no, but then they’re in front of the Doctor, and Mom pokes Pheebs in the back until she smiles politely at him.

  Ryan stuffs a hot dog in his mouth. “Come on, I’m leaving,” he says. He reaches for me, but I sidestep away. I want to know what the Doctor is saying to Phoebe. She glares at him, resentment in her eyes, and I can tell she wants to say something to him but can’t because Mom is right there. What are they talking about that’s making her so angry?

  And then Phoebe’s eyes shoot to mine. So. They’re talking about me. But Phoebe’s whole demeanor changes as she looks quickly away, focusing again on what the Doctor is telling her. She shifts visibly from angry to . . . afraid?

  I’m just out of earshot; I can’t make anything out. My focus zeroes in on the Doctor with such intensity that the rest of the world fades away. Phoebe’s a smart girl, but I don’t want her believing whatever lies Dr. Franklin is telling her.

  A sound like a roaring ocean wave washes over me, and I stagger from the impact of it. I look around quickly—Ryan’s still beside me, chewing in slow motion. Everyone in the foyer is milling around but barely moving. I see Harold’s little sister’s neon yellow dress fluttering; she’s paused mid-jump, her feet above the ground, but it’s like gravity quit working for her and she’s almost floating, sinking by millimeters.

  “Hello?” I say, but all the sound around me is low, almost subsonic.

  I haven’t stopped time—I’ve just slowed it to a crawl.

  This is my chance. The timestream is working for me for once, helping me to get closer to Dr. Franklin and Phoebe without them noticing. I must be moving like a hummingbird from their perspective, barely visible as I scoot around the slow-motion bodies of the people between my sister and me. Even so, I try to avoid their direct line of sight, moving quickly to the shadows at the edge of the room and creeping forward in bursts.

  When I’m close enough, I close my eyes and release my grip on time. A sound like all the air in the room being sucked away fills my ears, but everyone around me acts and moves and talks normally again. Ryan looks around, surprised at my disappearance, but he shrugs and makes his way to the stairs on his own.

  “I know I’m here at Berkshire Academy, and I work with your brother, but in situations like these . . .” Dr. Franklin’s voice trails off. “I don’t just help Bo. I’m here for you too.”

  Phoebe sort of shrugs, flipping her phone over and over in her hand. “I don’t need help,” she says.

  “It’s not easy living with someone who has special needs, like your brother. Sometimes it can feel as if you’re overshadowed,” Dr. Franklin says.

  Well, that’s entirely untrue. I may have powers, but Phoebe’s the special one to my parents. A total daddy’s girl, with straight As and a mile-long list of extracurriculars. Phoebe has designed her whole life to make people love her, from our parents to college admissions officers. Nothing I ever do comes close to competing with the perfection of Phoebe.

  “I’ve been speaking with your mother on the phone, and she wanted us to have a moment to sit down and talk,” the Doctor continues.

  She puts her phone in her pocket. “I don’t really know what to talk about.”

  “Let’s go to my office,” Dr. Franklin says. He turns a little, just enough to make eye contact with me, to let me know that he knows I’m there. “Where it’s more private.”

  He touches her elbow and leads her up the stairs, beyond my reach.

  CHAPTER 38

  Phoebe

  Dr. Franklin sits behind his desk, his dark face slightly illuminated by the glow of the computer screen in front of him.

  “So, Phoebe, your mom wanted me to talk to you for a bit.” He leans forward, holding his palms together and pressing his lips against his index fingers.

  “About Bo?” Even I’m surprised by the antagonism in my voice. Of course he wants to talk about Bo.

  “About whatever you feel like talking about.”

  I try not to roll my eyes. I don’t know how Bo can stand it here. I hate the mere concept of therapy. What’s with people who think you can talk your way out of any problem? Some problems are bigger than words. And some problems don’t need to be discussed at all.

  “Why don’t you tell me about school?” Dr. Franklin suggests.

  I shrug. “It’s school.”

  “What are your best subjects? You’re a junior, right? Do you have your eye on any colleges?”

  I force a smile on my face. I hate that everyone asks me this. “I don’t care where I go, as long as they have a good study-abroad program.”

  “So you want to travel?”

  “I want to escape.” I cringe as soon as the words leave my mouth.

  Thankfully, Dr. Franklin doesn’t say anything more about it. Instea
d, he moves on to a new subject. “How is school different for you now than when Bo was at James Jefferson High?”

  I shrug again. “It’s not, really. We had different classes. We were in different grades. Most people didn’t even know we were related.” The most time we spent together was when he’d drive me to school when I was a freshman—a condition of his having his own car. After he wrecked the car and I got my own driver’s license, we didn’t even have that connection.

  “You two are very different,” Dr. Franklin concedes. “But I think, in some ways, you’re pretty similar. You’re both very guarded, for example.”

  I keep my face from scowling. I hate that Mom set me up for this awkward conversation, and I wish Dr. Franklin would just get to the point, whatever that may be.

  “How about at home?” Dr. Franklin presses. “Are things good there?”

  “They’re quieter,” I concede. Except when they’re not. Like when Dad takes away Bo’s door.

  “Quieter?”

  “Since Bo’s been gone.”

  Dr. Franklin, sensing potential, leans in. “In what ways?”

  I let my eyes drift from Dr. Franklin. It’s easier to talk when I look above him, at the burgundy-and-cream valances draped over the windows that overlook the ocean.

  “Bo was a lot angrier before he came here,” I say. “I don’t know if even he realized it. He always seems like two people to me; most of the time he’s really chill, but if one little thing goes wrong, it’s like he loses control.”

  “Control is something we talk a lot about here at Berkshire,” Dr. Franklin adds gently, trying not to break the flow of my words.

  “Yeah, well, he definitely didn’t have it before. When we were kids, he broke my arm.” I don’t know why I’ve been thinking about that moment so much. Probably because of Bo’s texts.

  When we were little, we used to pretend that we were on the Titanic. It was a silly game, born of my obsession with the movie after I dug it out of Mom’s collection, but Bo never minded playing with me because he liked the inevitable fate of the ship. We used the tire swing out in the front yard. I’d climb on top of it, and Bo would push me around, pretending the swing was the ship. When I fell off, the ship “sank.” It was fun, until the time I broke my arm after landing funny. I laid there on the ground, crying and screaming for help, but Bo just stood over me with a dead look in his eyes as the tire swing rocked back and forth, empty. He didn’t show any emotion at all. It was like he wasn’t even there.

  That was the first time I knew something was wrong with him.

  Dr. Franklin sits up straighter, and the movement forces my gaze from the window back to him. “I wasn’t aware he hurt you,” he says.

  “It was an accident. We were playing on the tire swing, and he spun me too hard, and I fell funny.”

  “I don’t think Bo ever means to hurt anyone.”

  I don’t answer.

  Dr. Franklin notices. “Phoebe?” he says. “Do you think Bo would intentionally hurt someone?”

  I don’t meet his eyes. “I don’t think so, not now.”

  “But before he came to the academy?”

  I twist my fingers together. “Maybe.” When Dr. Franklin doesn’t speak, I find my words filling the silence, almost unwillingly. “Like, okay, I don’t think he’d be, like, a serial killer or anything. Nothing like that. But . . . I remember when he was a freshman, and he had so much trouble fitting in. There were these jerks in school, right, because there are always jerks in school, the kind who pick on you if you’re even a tiny bit different. And Bo was more than a tiny bit different, you know?”

  Dr. Franklin nods his head.

  “I was just . . .” I struggle to find the right words. “I was really glad that my dad didn’t have any guns in the house, that my mom always insisted on that. But I wondered when he would go to his friend Lee’s house, and if Lee’s dad had a gun, if maybe that’s all it would take for Bo to . . . you know.”

  “You think Bo might have shot someone at school?” Dr. Franklin asks, his voice lowering a notch.

  “No! No,” I say, shaking my head vigorously. “That would take a lot of planning and, you know, rage, and . . . Bo isn’t really violent,” I say. “I don’t think he’d actually do something. But if the opportunity was there . . .” I swallow, hard. “I don’t know. I mean, he didn’t. I just think . . . maybe he could have. Maybe. And if he ever did, he probably wouldn’t have even meant to do it. There are just times when he’s not himself.” I take a deep breath. “How horrible am I, to think that my own brother might do something like that?”

  “How horrible for you to have lived with that fear,” Dr. Franklin says.

  He doesn’t understand. It’s not like that. Bo isn’t a bad person. “It’s just that he would . . . flip, so easily, between calm and angry, and there were moments when those two feelings would collide.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When the calm and the rage became one thing for him,” I say. “That was when it was scary. When he was both really calm and cold but also full of rage.”

  “Did you see that often?”

  The doctor’s pen scratches across his notepad. I wish I hadn’t said anything. Bo’s different now; Berkshire Academy has helped him to be different. He had only been so full of anger because he saw the world in such a different way. Most people look at the world in black and white, even if they say they don’t. You like someone or you don’t; you agree with an opinion or you don’t. Bo was never like that, never. He always saw things from a different angle. Like an artist who sees the shapes and colors and shading of an object, but who doesn’t always see the object itself. That’s how Bo looked at the world. He looked at it as a chance, not a done deal. He would get angry when things couldn’t change, when people wouldn’t change, even if they could.

  That’s why he butted heads with Dad so much. Dad is an immovable force. He goes in one direction, straight ahead. He can’t handle a kid who doesn’t do that, who sees so many different paths, some of them going sideways or backward. Who doesn’t accept that things are the way they are.

  Bo never really liked school—at least not until Berkshire Academy—and that was usually what he and Dad fought about. Bo would stay in bed as long as possible, until Dad started waking him up by dumping ice water on him, something that always ended with shouting.

  “I don’t see the point,” Bo would yell at him, sweeping ice cubes from his bed.

  “The point,” Dad snarled, “is to get a diploma. And then go to college. And then get a job.” He said this like it was the most obvious thing in the world, just like two and two equals four.

  “But I don’t want any of that!” Bo protested.

  And Dad never, ever believed him. Because not wanting diploma-college-job was like not wanting to eat, not wanting to breathe, not wanting to live.

  “My grandmother understood him,” I say without meaning to actually speak the words aloud. But now that they hang in the air between us, I keep talking. “My grandmother understood Bo better than anyone. She could always calm him.” I’m careful with my words now, careful not to say how jealous that made me.

  Adults lie. They lie about how they love children equally. They never do. They love children differently, and the difference is so broad that equality is not even in the picture. My parents, for example, love me for my obedience. They love me for my academics and my ambition and the possibilities of what I could do and be in the future. They love Bo for who he is now, for the quiet, calm moments, and they hold on to that, not sure if it will continue.

  Grandma loved Bo in an absolute and whole way. She accepted him entirely, but I grew to distrust her unconditional love. Because my grandmother never loved me that way. She loved me because I never gave her a reason not to. I had been the behaved, well-mannered child who was respectful and kind, but I was very aware that my g
randmother’s attitude toward me was based on those actions. Bo, on the other hand, could do or be anything, and Grandma loved him just the same.

  Maybe more.

  “When she died, that’s when Bo’s problems got worse,” I say now. “That’s how he ended up here.”

  “Bo has talked about his grandmother a few times. He considers her home his ‘safe place.’”

  He would. I never liked going to that house. It was old and dark and smelled of stale cigarette smoke. But Bo loved it.

  “Thank you,” Dr. Franklin says. “You’ve been really helpful. Bo has had some troubles here lately, and I’ve struggled to connect with him. I thought I’d established trust with him, but he seems to be closing himself off from me more and more.”

  I raise an eyebrow. It doesn’t seem like using me to rat on him would make Bo trust the doctor more, but I’m not the professional.

  “But I also want you to know that I’m here for you too,” Dr. Franklin adds. He slides his card across the desk toward me. “I want you to feel free to talk to me at any time.”

  “I’m not like Bo,” I say immediately. “I don’t have his same problem.”

  Dr. Franklin hesitates.

  “Do I?” I ask. “Is it genetic or something? Is there a chance that I’ll—”

  “No, no, I didn’t mean to imply that,” Dr. Franklin says quickly. “I mean, there is a prevalence for this sort of thing to happen in families, but not necessarily. I’ve worked with your mother, and we can’t confirm that any of your relatives have had similar issues to Bo’s.”

  “But it’s possible.”

  “It’s . . . possible,” he concedes.

  I shift in my seat. I’ve never had any of the same symptoms as Bo, so maybe I’m safe. Or maybe his same set of gifts and curses lies inside me, even now, curled like a snake in winter, ready to rise. If not me, perhaps my children will be like Bo, slinking from mood to mood, time to time, leaving me behind just as Bo has done.