Unraveling

  I roll my head to the side to look at Jared. “What’s up, dude? You gonna tell me what happened to your hand?”

  His right hand looks slightly bruised. I reach out, touching his knuckles. He winces. “What happened?” I whisper.

  “I tried to punch Alex,” Jared says with a shrug. But he at least has the decency to drop his eyes and look embarrassed. “He’s fine, though.”

  I made Alex take self-defense classes with me the summer before sophomore year. We always joked that if a guy attacked us, Alex would duck and I would knee the guy in the balls. (There’s a rumor I’m the reason Dave Kotlar only has one testicle now, but it’s a total lie. I have no idea what he did to himself, but since he hasn’t made any big attempts to dispel the rumors, it must be way more embarrassing than getting beat up by a girl.)

  So I know if my brother—who’s never been in a fight in his life—tried to throw a punch at Alex, my best friend would do what he’s best at. He would duck.

  “You were in the hospital, dying for all he knew, and Alex took me to polo.”

  “Um, because I asked him to. Alex is well trained.”

  Jared doesn’t smile like I want him to.

  “Jared—”

  “Whatever, it doesn’t matter,” he huffs. “I missed anyway.”

  I open my mouth to try to explain, but I realize that would mean explaining my friendship with Alex, and I don’t know how to explain something that’s just always existed. He’s lived two doors down from me my whole life. Once upon a time, our moms took us to playgroups together, swimming lessons, even dance classes.

  But Jared knows that. What he doesn’t know is that Alex has been helping me deal with our mother’s illness and cover up her drinking since Jared was too young to know there was a problem. Or that our friendship has survived because Alex listens to me. Because Alex knows that supporting me means tackling obstacles my way—head-on. And I don’t know how to explain that Alex is the only reason I’ve been able to stay sane while Dad worked and I had to be a parent—the only reason Jared has been able to do things like play water polo.

  Which is why Alex, despite how much he would have been freaking out on the inside, would have taken Jared to polo like it was just another normal day.

  But by the time I have all that sorted out in my head, Jared has started telling me about his first (half) day of school—freshman orientation.

  “After the assembly and the tour, I went to my first two classes—”

  “What do you have?”

  He frowns at me. “Biology and ENS. But the cool part was, after I came out of ENS, Nick and Kevin were waiting for me.”

  Exercise Nutritional Science is a glorified gym class all freshmen have to take, but more importantly… “Nick and Kevin were on campus?”

  Jared nods. “They brought three pizzas from Uncle Vinnie’s for me and my friends, and we all sat and ate, and they told stories about their freshman year. It was awesome.”

  “Awesome?” I ask, even though I don’t need to. Anyone getting attention from the two most popular seniors at Eastview would be glowing a little. If Nick and Kevin were here, I would hug them—even Kevin—because I want my brother to be happy more than anything. And he’ll probably be over the moon all week.

  “Yeah, did you know they had English together their freshman year? Nick said Kevin used to lean back in his chair all the time. And every day their teacher would say, ‘Mr. Collins, don’t lean back in your chair, please,’ and he’d say, ‘Okay,’ but then he’d do it anyway.”

  I am not at all surprised by this story.

  “And then one day when Kevin was hitting on this hot girl in his class, he leaned back just a little too far and he fell over. But it didn’t matter because the girl he liked went out with him that weekend anyway.”

  Again, I’m not surprised.

  “And Kevin said they used to jump up and touch the overhang whenever they were coming down the library steps. They’d even run, jump, hit the ledge, and then jump down the rest of the stairs, but near the end of freshman year, they both did it one time, only when they jumped, Nick fell and got a concussion.”

  I can easily picture Kevin and Nick jumping down the library steps and somehow managing to wipe out. “What about the rest of your classes?”

  He shrugs, obviously less interested. “I have ceramics and then English with Sherwood.”

  I wince at the name of his English teacher. Jared will never be able to write an essay if I don’t get him out of there.

  “Yeah, Kevin took one look at my schedule and told me to run for the hills.”

  “He did?” This time I am surprised—in a good way.

  Jared nods. “He and Nick said I should fill out a schedule change request to be bumped into honors. So I did that before Nick drove me home.”

  I’m suddenly not sure whether I should be pleased or worried about the interest Nick is taking in my brother. On the one hand, I can’t believe he convinced him to take an honors class, and I’m undoubtedly in their debt for getting Jared to actually follow directions and get out of Sherwood’s class—anyone who doubts that there’s something wrong with public education in this country just needs to sit in her class for a day to know—but what will happen to Jared if Nick and I break up?

  “All right, J-baby, you ready?” my dad says before I can think of a way to explain that to my brother.

  “I’d really prefer if you didn’t call me that in public,” I say as I slide out of the hospital bed and into the wheelchair they’ve brought for me.

  My dad smiles because he knows I don’t really mean it, and Jared slips in behind me, half pushing, half hopping. My back is stiff and my leg muscles are still sore, but I could feel worse—I could be dead.

  Also, I’ll be back at school this week. So will Ben Michaels. And I plan on figuring out exactly what happened.

  “What’s for dinner tonight?” Jared asks.

  “Something we can get delivered,” I say at the same time my dad says, “I asked Struz to pick up some Chinese.”

  “Sweet!” Jared says. “You think he’ll get that awesome spicy kung pao chicken? I haven’t had that in forever. Or, oh—call him and tell him to get the special General Tso’s!”

  Ryan Struzinski, aka Struz, has been working with my dad for ten years. He’s in his thirties now, I think, but he’s really an overgrown kid with a superhero complex. It’s why he and my dad get along so well. Knowing Struz, he’ll order the whole left side of the menu. “Don’t worry, Jared. Something tells me we’ll have enough food.”

  “What about egg rolls? And fortune cookies. He’d better get a shitload of them.”

  Jared is still running down the list of Chinese food he’s hoping for—that kid can eat his way through anything—when we get outside. My dad’s car is parked in the fire lane—shocking. Even less shocking is the collection of file boxes that he has to move to squeeze both Jared and my wheelchair into the backseat—no doubt because he’s going to work late into the night. Just like he would any other night. Tonight he’ll just have to work at home.

  “You and Struz planning to Mulder and Scully it after Chinese tonight?” I ask as I slide my seat belt on. My dad has every season of The X-Files on DVD. When we were little, instead of Saturday morning cartoons, Jared and I had Saturday morning X-Files marathons.

  “Dude, have you found the unit that hunts aliens yet?” Jared asks.

  My dad chuckles. “Not yet, but don’t worry. I won’t give up. Hunting aliens is the reason I joined the FBI, after all.” This is actually not a lie. Of course, the truth is that there isn’t a unit that actually hunts aliens. There aren’t enough creepy cases that point to aliens or unsolved paranormal mysteries to assign to even one guy in a basement.

  “The truth is out there,” Jared says with a laugh.

  “I want to believe,” I add, because that’s my line. Yes, I am aware how lame we are.

  “Trust no one,” my dad says, trying to make his voice sound ominous.
br />   “Believe the lie!” Jared shouts.

  I let the two of them continue to volley taglines back and forth during the ride home. I jump in occasionally when there’s a lull and Jared is trying to remember a good quote, but mostly I think about the same thing I’ve thought about the whole two days I spent lounging around the hospital. I think of Ben Michaels—of the fact that I was dead and now I’m not. Because all that X-Files stuff is only entertaining until it hits too close to home. Right now none of it is as strange as Ben Michaels bringing me back from the dead.

  As my dad turns off the car, I gesture to the wheelchair. “We can just leave that in the car. I’m fine.”

  “J-baby, are you—”

  “Dad. I’m fine.”

  Jared jumps in front of us and unlocks the front door, and my dad is about to say something when the sound of glass breaking makes all three of us freeze.

  21:22:07:29

  For the past nine years, my dad has been the head of the counterintelligence unit at the San Diego office of the FBI. It’s ironic, really. This man who dedicates his life to the pursuit of truth, who works a nineteen-and-a-half-hour work day, who watches repeats of The X-Files and quotes it to his children, lives in a house where Truth always remains Unsaid.

  And for almost as long as I can remember, I’ve learned to do the same.

  My mother is bipolar. And at present, she’s not exactly functioning.

  When I was seven, during one of her manic episodes, she stopped taking her meds, pulled both Jared and me out of school, and drove us up the coast—at least twenty miles over the speed limit, with the windows down—all day and into the night, until we stopped at the Northern California border and got a hotel room. We stayed up late, jumped on the beds, had a popcorn fight, and laughed until our stomachs cramped.

  By the next morning she’d come down and wouldn’t get out of bed. We were holed up in our room at the Anchor Beach Inn in Crescent City, California, with the curtains drawn and the lights turned off, while she slept it off for two days before my dad found us and brought us home.

  After that, my mom and dad fought—about her medicine, about Jared and me, about how much she slept and how much he worked, about her medication and his inability to express his feelings, about her spontaneity and his rigid schedule, about everything. They fought all the time—days, weeks, months, years. Until at some point—and I can’t remember when—the fighting stopped, she started drinking herself into a self-medicating coma, and our house just fell … silent.

  And Jared and I were on our own.

  21:22:07:28

  “I’ll go check on her,” I say, ignoring the wave of anxiety rolling through my stomach.

  My dad shakes his head. “I can do it. You just—”

  “I’m okay—promise,” I say, giving him my best I’m fine! smile. “She’ll want to see me anyway, and you have to bring in the boxes.” I don’t wait for a response. Both Jared and my dad are secretly happy to let me do the honors, even if they won’t tell themselves that.

  I slip into her bedroom and pull the door shut behind me, carefully enough so it doesn’t make a sound as it latches. Her bedroom is cloaked in darkness. The combination of the thick shade and the heavy velour drapes pulled tightly over the picture window blocks out every speck of light, and I have to pause and let my eyes adjust. If I didn’t know it was summer and the sun hadn’t yet set outside, I’d think it was the middle of the night. More disturbing is the stale smell of the air—like old, wet newspaper and mold. The recorded sound of rain plays softly on repeat, and I hear her grunt as soft light floods the bathroom.

  I ignore the clothes and bedsheets strewn all over the room and breathe through my mouth as I move to the bathroom.

  “Mom?” I ask. I hesitate before I open the door, like I always do. Because I’m afraid of what I might see on the other side. “Are you okay?”

  “Oh, fine, just fine,” she answers as the faucet turns on. I let go of a breath I didn’t know I was holding and push open the door.

  Her wild hair is standing on end, black against the paleness of her skin. Under her T-shirt and shorts, I can see the bones sticking out at her joints in all the wrong places, and when her eyes meet mine in the mirror, I’m struck with the image of her I remembered when I was dying—and how it should be some sort of crime for God to let a woman like that turn into someone like this.

  “Janelle?” she asks, fumbling with a foil packet of Advil. All the medication in our house now comes in single-serving packets. “Are you feeling better? Your father said you were sick.”

  I nod. “I’m fine.” It’s possible he told her what happened with the truck and she forgot, or it’s possible he didn’t tell her at all. I’m not sure which is worse, but it doesn’t matter because the result is the same.

  A quick glance at the broken glass in the sink—not on the floor and no blood—tells me she’s fine. The thin layer of dust covering the whole bathroom tells me I need to stop avoiding this room and get in here to clean this weekend.

  “My head just hurts so much.” She throws a hand over her eyes to shield them from the light.

  “Here, let me help you.” I’ve barely torn open the packet when she snatches the pills from my hand and swallows them dry. “Have you eaten anything today? Struz is bringing over Chinese food.”

  “Great, the whole house will smell awful,” she says with a snort. “It’s like your father does this to me on purpose. He knows how terrible my headaches are and he knows how much strong smells bother me. And loud noises. I just need peace and quiet. I need to rest.”

  I flick off the bathroom light and help her back to bed.

  “I just need to rest,” she repeats as she gets under the covers. She looks small and fragile, like a sick child instead of my mother. “Can you get me a cold compress?”

  Part of me wants to say, Get your own compress, but instead I nod.

  Just because I died and had a moment of reflection doesn’t mean anything’s going to change around here.

  It’ll take a lot more to wake this hollow heart.

  21:20:59:31

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Struz says, his six-foot-seven-inch wingspan flailing around the dining room table, almost knocking into both me and Jared.

  I make eye contact with Alex, who’s been eating his second dinner with us every night since he was old enough to think up a good excuse to walk over to our house by himself—his mom cooks only organic, vegan, and gluten-free meals. He grins at me as he goes to take a sip of his Coke, but thinks better of it. Probably because he knows what’s coming. Struz has made us laugh until soda comes out of our noses many times.

  Struz continues, “Jim! You gotta be kidding me. You mean you haven’t done a background check or a fingerprint analysis or anything on this Nick character?”

  Jared laughs so hard he spits some of his Chinese food back onto his plate. Alex throws his napkin at Struz’s face. Dad and I shush them.

  Struz dramatically wipes a hand through his hair and turns back to his captive audience. “That’s just not okay. I mean, seriously!” he continues, his voice quieter now, as he gestures to the flowers Nick brought earlier. “Jared! This guy brought J-baby roses! Pink ones! And we don’t even know who he is. What is wrong with your father?”

  “Nick could be a terrorist,” Alex says. He finds that way too funny.

  “He could be an alien!” Jared laughs.

  I roll my eyes.

  “No, seriously,” Dad says. “Let’s hear something about this guy. How did he win you over?”

  Batting his eyes like a cartoon character, Alex says, “He’s dreamy,” with a dramatic sigh.

  “That better not be an imitation of me,” I say.

  Alex just laughs.

  I look at Struz, who does his “give it to me” hand gesture, and then Dad, who also appears to be waiting for some kind of response. “Nick’s smart; he works hard.”

  “At sports,” Alex coughs.

  “Don’t be such an
intellectual snob.”

  “Seriously, Alex,” Struz says. “Professional athletes get a lot of play.”

  I ignore that comment, since Dad and I haven’t really ever had the “who are you dating” conversation, and I’d prefer not to have it right now. And I’d really prefer not to talk about any of the guys in my life and how much “play” they are or aren’t getting. Struz included. “Nick wants to play football at USC next year,” I add, because something needs to be said.

  “I suppose if he goes to USC, he’s good enough for me,” Struz says—not surprising, since that’s where he went to college. “But if he goes to UCLA, you have to break up.”

  Jared laughs and announces that his lifelong dream is to go to UCLA, and I break open a fortune cookie. Stuffing the cookie into my mouth, I unroll the fortune and can’t help snorting a laugh.

  Everyone pauses. “What’s it say?” Jared asks, reaching across the table.

  Instead of answering, I flick the fortune to Alex before getting up. I grab my plate and a couple of empty cartons and head into the kitchen. Just before I turn the water on, I hear Alex’s voice reading my fortune. “Soon life will become more interesting.”

  Jared’s unrestrained laughter drowns out what anyone else might be saying, and I’m glad.

  I see those images of myself playing out again, watching my life pass me by. As if dying and then being resurrected weren’t enough—as if anything could become more interesting than that.

  “Just not sure if interesting will be a good or a bad thing, huh?” Alex asks when he comes through the kitchen. He hands me the dirty dishes and opens the cabinet to grab some Tupperware. Struz did order the left side of the menu, and we’ll be eating Chinese for the next few days.

  “I was dead, Alex,” I repeat, because we’ve had this conversation already. At least six times. In the hospital. Whenever Alex made it into my room without Jared or Nick.