And there’s nothing else to say.
Chapter 15
Jansen
My brain feels like it’s been electrocuted, both buzzing and limp, spinning with unformed thoughts but unable to settle.
I was up until the sun rose this morning, and while I slept until noon, it wasn’t like it was a full night. I don’t know the last full night of sleep I got. Clara gets dragged awake with nightmares. I can’t even fall asleep.
Running with Trips helped a bit, but it’s not enough. I can tell. I could run for hours and still not be able to rest. Climbing the outside of the witch’s hat ten times without a rope, that might be enough. Maybe.
I’m not sure anymore.
I’m not sure about anything.
Clara almost died. And we were picking outcurtains.
Shouldn’t I have felt something, known that she was in danger? Isn’t that a thing that happens when you love someone? Or is that just twins? I don’t even know.
When my dad died, I was at the park kicking a ball against a fence, pretending I was some famous soccer player. Not that I knew of any. But it was the only ball I had, so it’s what I pretended.
I came home as the sun went down to an empty apartment. And a note on the fridge telling me to go across the hall to Mrs. Erickson. I hated that place—it smelled like rotting potatoes and cat piss. So I turned on the TV, watching shows until I got too hungry to stay put.
When I knocked on her door, that’s when I realized something was wrong.
Not before that. Not an inkling that while I pretended to be a soccer star and laughed at some damn kids’ show, my dad was breathing his last.
Car accident. A daytime drunk and a shitty old car with an ancient, malfunctioning airbag.
That’s all it took.
And everything changed.
I promised myself that the next time someone I loved was in danger, that I’d be there. And I wasn’t.
An impossible promise made by a child, but still. She almost died, and I was stealing decorative hooks for her to put up in her room to organize more of her stuff. She loves organized spaces, and colors and patterns, and I thought it would be a good gift.
Now, the hooks are on the top shelf of my closet next to the goddamn cowboy hat I stole a few months ago.
And the tiara is hidden in the biggest of my book safes, barely fitting, but wrapped in a pair of my boxers so it doesn’t get damaged.
Another something I shouldn’t have done.
Why do I keep doing shit I know I shouldn’t? Why can’t I just be normal? This buzzing under my skin makes it impossible to think, and the only times I feel any kind of clarity are when I’m doing exactly what I shouldn’t.
That and when I’m balls deep in Clara. But it’s not like I can stay like that, as much as I’d like to. It’d make for some pretty awkward moments if I could.
I chuckle at the mental image.
It feels good to laugh, and it builds in me until I’m laughing so hard I’m crying, alone in my room, the lights dark, with nothing but a dumb image to set me off.
Then I’m crying for real, so out of control of my emotions that it scares me.
This isn’t me. It can’t be.
I don’t know how to fix myself. I’ve only been this bad once before, but this feels different. This feels broken. Seriously broken. Not just a little cracked.
Cracked in the head. Like the damn kids teased in that small town we moved to.
