Her dark hair is a tangled mess, and black makeup runs down her face, as she tries to swallow down her cries.
Mr. Tomlinson looks at us with a sad expression on his face. Killian grabs my hand and squeezes it tight.
“There’s no easy way to say this. So I’ll just say it,” he says, before swallowing hard.
“Your brother has been found. He’s in the hospital, and it doesn’t look good. You need to be strong and go with your mother to say goodbye.”
Killian looks between our mother and the principal and sniffles loudly.
“He’s going to die?”
My mother nods. “We have to go. I don’t know how long he has.”
We follow her outside the school, where a taxi waits for us.
“What happened to him?” I ask, as we both rush into the backseat with her.
She shakes her head. “I don’t know. He’s been beaten badly. You’re too damn young to see him like this. You’re just little kids, but it may be your only chance to say goodbye. And I won’t take that from you.”
Kill straightens his back and squeezes her hand.
“We’ll be strong, Mama. I promise, we can be good.”
When we get to the hospital, Mama pays the taxi and we rush inside. I walk in the middle with her holding one hand, and Kill holding the other. He’s trying to be grown-up, but I know he’s as scared as I am.
The elevator ride is so quiet, and the only thing I hear besides the beeps are Mama’s quiet cries. We rush through the hallways until she stops at room 412. A police officer is standing outside.Are we in trouble?He nods to my mother and tells her we can go in.
Killian squeezes my hand a little tighter.
We move slowly to the bed where Carter lays hooked up to machines, and he looks so small. A lot smaller than me and Kill. It’s confusing, because we’ve always been just alike. ‘Identical’ Mama calls it. We stare at him as he sleeps, his body is so still.
“He is sleeping, right?” I ask, and Kill nods.
There’s a machine on the right side of the bed that beeps, with a squiggly line that keeps moving. And another machine that makes a sound like it has air in it. It’s all strange and scary, and our mother is falling apart. The time Carter has been gone has been hard on her. I think this is what she was afraid of. That we’d finally find him and he’d die.
“We’re supposed to say goodbye,” I say, as I stare at the little boy that looks more like a stranger than my brother.
“We aren’t doing that. Brothers don’t say goodbye,” Killian says.
I’m trying to be like Kill, and stay strong. I want to agree with him, but I can’t.
“Look at him. Listen to Mama. Things will never be the same. He’s dying, Kill. Not saying goodbye won’t make him live.”
Killian lets go of my hand and steps up to Carter’s head.
“Carter, you are going to live. I don’t care what they say. You can do whatever you want when you wake up, but you have to live.”
I walk over beside Killian, and straighten my back like he does.
“If you live, you can have all my toys. I got this really cool RC monster truck for our last birthday. It’s called the Grave Digger. Mama said it’s a 1:6 scale. I don’t know what that means, but it’s really big. Kill has one too, but mine is bigger. You can have them both if you open your eyes.”
One Year Later…
“He wokeup from the coma ten months ago. Why isn’t he speaking?” I ask Killian and Mama, as they work on a stupid kitten puzzle. It’s the same puzzle they’ve done a hundred times.
Kill shrugs and Mama says, “The doctors say he went through something so traumatic, and that’s why he won’t talk. They don’t know the reason for sure since he won’t tell us. It could be because he’s afraid, or it could be his way of having some control over his life. We have to be patient with him.”
I get up from the kitchen table to go to find Carter. He’s in his room, lying in bed, cuddling his stuffed dog that was left here when he was taken. One of the first things he did when he got home from the hospital was silently search for it.
