Chapter twenty:
“What can I do?” I say.
Because she’s been crying for a long time now, as if she’s letting go of the years of pain she’s been holding onto. As if it’s all “coming out in the wash.” That’s what my mom used to say.‘It’ll come out in the wash, Ethan. Just let it all go.’
She cries and I hold her. I shush her. I kiss her hair, her cheek, and her head. I kiss her hand, her neck, and her lips. And the more I kiss, the more she cries, but it’s all I know how to do to make her feel better. But still she cries and she cries, and I hold her against me and will her to feel better soon.
I hate to see her so upset.
“You can let me go,” she says, looking up at me through her thick, damp lashes.
I laugh and smile. “Silly.” And then I kiss her lips again. “I’ve missed you, Carrie. I’ve missed you so, so much. I never stopped thinking about you, and wondering where you were, what you were doing. Thoughts of you kept me awake at night.”
And it’s true, they did.
I would lie awake in my room, listening to people screaming and yelling at each other, and I would close my eyes, put my hand down my pants, and I would think of Carrie. She kept me going all those years. She kept me sane when my mom stopped visiting. She kept me strong when my dad refused to have a son anymore.
And when my parole came up, it was thoughts of her that kept my head clear enough so that they let me out.
I wasn’t a danger anymore, they said.
I never was to begin with,I thought.
I spent a few years in juvie, which was really, really bad. But then they talked with me and it was decided that I wasn’t mentally stable at the time, and because of that I couldn’t be fully accountable for my actions.
A psychotic break, they called it, due to borderline schizophrenia.
I was shocked.
I was confused.
I didn’t think it could get much worse than that. But I wasn’t a boy anymore, and when they sent me to the hospital, things got so much worse.
The people there were crazy.
Much crazier than me.
Carrie starts to cry again, and I press her wet cheek against my chest and I hum to soothe her, because it’s the only thing I can think of to do. The only way I know to make her feel any better. It’s what my mom used to do when I was a kid, and it always made me feel better. But it doesn’t seem to work with her because she cries even harder. And that makes me sad.
“Please stop crying now. We can’t move forward if you don’t let go of the past.” And that makes her stop, and I want to cheer, hurray!
My counselor-slash-therapist-slash-Mr. fucking Jeffrey told me that. He told me that you have to let go if you want to move forward.
And I hate to admit it, but he was right. You can’t be angry at the past; you have to look forward to the future, because what’s happened has happened, and it can happen only once.
My life went to shit, but that’s done now. Things are going to get better now, and all because I’m looking to the future and I’m being positive.
And because I was patient and observant, and I found Carrie.
And now Carrie needs to do the same thing.
She needs to let go, and move forward, with me.
“Move forward?” she asks, and she squirms on my lap to look at me better. I don’t let her go though, because I know she needs me close.
Her cheeks are red and blotchy; her lip is swollen and bloody. The small cut on her forehead is swollen too, and it looks painful. But it’s her eyes that look the sorest. They’re red and puffy. She needs an ice pack to soothe them.
“Yes, move forward.”
