I feel Carter’s eyes on me. I open my mouth.
“No,” Carter cuts in quickly. “No, it was just me. I texted Dorien first because I wasn’t thinking. So he got here sooner.”
June looks at me for confirmation.
I have one second to decide.
I nod.
She crumples. Her whole body collapses and she drops onto my lap, her arms wrapping around me, her face buried against my neck. The sobs come in waves, shaking through her and into me, and I feel each one as my own.
“Leave,” she says to Carter. Her voice is wrecked, muffled against my shirt. “You were supposed to keep him safe. This is your fault. Yours! Just fucking leave!”
“I’m sorry.” Carter’s voice breaks. His face has collapsed, tears cutting lines down his cheeks, his whole body caved inward. I’ve seen him tired, sad, frustrated. I have never seen Carter like this. Emotion is thick in his voice as every word splinters. “I’m so sorry, June.”
He stands. He walks toward the doors. The automatic glass parts for him and he’s gone.
I hold June. I wrap my arms around her and pull her close, and she sobs into my neck. I want to tell her. I have to tell her I was there. I was at the party. I didn’t check on him. I was a hundred feet away, and I didn’t check on him, and this is my fault too.
But the words are stuck inside me, and they won’t come loose.
So I hold her. And I say nothing.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
JUNE
My brother looks as fragile as a paper doll under the harsh light.
I’ve been sitting in this plastic chair for two hours, watching the monitors turn Aeron’s life into numbers and beeping lines. Mom is on the other side of the bed holding his hand. Dorien is in a chair by the window, staring out into the darkness. I keep replaying Carter’s words from earlier.
“He went to the bathroom, but he was gone really long, and… and then he was in the garden, slumped on a bench. There were bags. Little plastic bags with powder. And empty vodka bottles. Th-the paramedics came… I don’t know… I don’t know why he’d…”
The doctors spoke to us as a group—Mom, me, and Dorien standing in the hallway outside this room—just an hour ago, and I don’t think any of us were breathing. His bloodwork showed dangerous levels of cocaine and alcohol. The combination, they told us, creates a chemical in the body that’s more toxic to the heart than either substance alone. His heart had an arrhythmia by the time they got him to the ER. His breathing had slowedto almost nothing. He’d had a seizure in the ambulance, then another in the ER.
They stabilized his heart rhythm with medication and put him on oxygen. They ran tests on his liver and kidneys for organ damage, but haven’t told us the results yet. My baby brother is in a coma, and the doctor, a woman with tired eyes and a voice trained to stay calm, said the next forty-eight hours would determine everything. Brain function. Organ recovery. Whether he wakes up at all.
I asked her to repeat that part, and she did. Then I asked again, and she gave me a sad, tired look and said they’d be monitoring him here in the ER overnight. In the morning, he’d be admitted to the hospital. All of us can stay by his bedside. The nurses brought in extra chairs, and there’s an empty bed in Aeron’s room they said we could rest in.
I thought he was fine. Right before he left for the party, he was smiling and he gave me another hug, which made me tear up, and he was fine. My brother was fine. I thought the rest was in the past. The weeks of pulling away, retreating into that small, defended version of himself—that was over, and he was feeling better.
Why didn’t I talk to him more? I should’ve sat on his bed and refused to leave until he opened up about whatever was causing so much pain. Even before he withdrew into himself, I should’ve been talking to him more all along. I should’ve pushed past the sarcasm and the shrugs and the “I’m fine” that I always accepted because accepting it was easier than fighting him. I should have fought him. I should have planted myself between him and whatever door he was trying to leave through.
I should’ve said, “I see you, I know you’re not okay. You don’t get to disappear. I love you. I love that you’re my brother.”
There’s so much I needed to say.
Why didn’t I?
Why was I so focused on my own life? With Dorien, with the exhibition, with the rumors. While I was chasing clues about who was spreading gossip, my brother was planning to end his life.
The knowledge is such a pain in my heart that I fold forward, pressing my forehead to my knees.
When this fresh bout of sobbing ends, I glance at Dorien. I told him to let me be for a bit, so he’s watching to see if I need him. I shake my head, and he stays put, but continues watching.
Mom hasn’t moved in over an hour. She’s in the chair on the other side of Aeron’s bed, and the woman sitting there is not my mother. My mother talks. My mother fills silences with warmth and humor. My mother brushes hair out of my face mid-conversation and hums while she works in her office and says “honey” to strangers in grocery stores.
She has advice and answers and is always there for comfort. Tonight, she hasn’t looked at me once.
