Page 116

Find her.

Fix it.

Don’t leave her alone again.

“I need her to be okay,” I admitted finally, the truth splitting me open right there in the middle of the paddock. “I need to know she’s okay, or I’m going to lose my fucking mind.” For a second, nobody spoke.

Then Sebastian stepped closer slowly. And quieter this time, he said, “Theo…people are staring. Get it together.”

The words hit me like a slap, because they were words I had heard before from my father. It was always racing that came first: the perceptions, the show, the deals, and the money. Everything had been chosen for me, had been decided without me. But it was different now; I was in control of my own life. I had given everything and done everything to get here, and I made it. I did the impossible thing. But none of that fucking mattered now. Nothing but Maisey mattered. And I would not fail her again. So I turned and walked out, ignoring the shouts and people calling my name, ignoring the fact that I might not have a career after this, because I couldn’t care less.

32

MAISEY | 20 YEARS OLD

“Imagine what it’s like to be loved the way you love everything around you. You put every piece of yourself into everyone around you. It is a privilege to be around you, let alone loved by you. Do not, for even one moment, let anyone change how soft you are to the world. It is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” — T

The letter sat in my hands, water stains smudging parts of the handwritten words, but nothing could make me forget this letter. I had committed it to memory. It had seen me through many of the nights feeling like I was at the bottom of the ocean. Tonight was yet another of them, one of the endless nights where my mind was lost at sea, swirling in a storm, waves crashing in on me, no light in sight, not even the moon. I took a deep breath, tried to center myself like Dr. Williams had taught me. But therapy meant fuck all when I was here, when everything was too heavy and too much and too dark. Tears were flooding my eyes as the letter became blurry. The ocean began to swallow me, taking me down to the depths.

A knock on the wooden door jolted me back to reality, a burst of light bringing me back to the world.

“Maise? You want some dinner? I made extra!” my sister called from the other side of the door. Suddenly, I felt my body react to the words before my brain could catch up. My stomach screamed in anger. I tried to wrack my brain for the last time I had eaten. It was dark. Time sometimes slowed and took forever, or an entire day passed in one blink. Today was the latter. I tried to start the day off well: I got up, changed my clothes, tried to read for a little, but eventually fell into a state of not being able to do anything, like I was paralyzed. I wasn’t, a fact that many doctors had practically cheered about. I swung my legs off the bed, making to move off my bed for the first time in hours. I wasn’t sure how long I slept today. The stiffness in my leg told me it was much too long. I was supposed to be moving, stretching, working on healing and strengthening my body. When I took a step, my full weight on my bad leg, I winced in pain. It shot up my body, zinging through me in anger, in lack of blood flow, in lack of movement for a whole day. I didn’t do enough, I wasn’t doing enough. It rattled in my head over and over again. I needed to snap out of it. I needed to work on strengthening my leg, to get back to any semblance of normal.

“Maisey?” my sister called out again. I took another step, losing my balance a bit and reaching to center myself on the wooden dresser. Instead, my hand hit a knick-knack, which hit something else and tumbled some books over. The door swung open, and my sister stood there, looking startled, worry creasing her brow. “What happened? Are you okay?” she rushed out.

“I’m fine,” I snapped out before I could soften my voice. I sighed, hating to take out any of my anger at her. It wasn’t for her; it was for me. It was all for me. I could have done more today. But I didn’t, and now it would set me back. It didn’t matter how many good days I had, one bad one set me back too much for the good ones to even count anymore.

“Hey, hey.” Lacy’s voice was soft as she walked over to me. “It’s okay, it happens to me all the time! Standing up too fast and all, right?” she asked, brushing off the worry that seemed permanently etched into her. Lacy was good at that, at smoothing over things, at spinning bad into good, at being positive. I was too, before it all. I looked at her, her matching blue eyes watching mine carefully. I rolled my eyes, trying to match her brush off.

“Totally. The worst.” But when the words came out, they were stiff instead of sarcastic and silly like hers had been.

“I made the mac and cheese shells you love,” she said, holding out an arm. I took it, wishing I didn’t have to, and hobbled my way through the room. My crutches laid against the wall by the door, mocking me silently. Lacy kept talking as she grabbed them and slid them under my arms. “I was thinking we could watch that awful reality show you’re obsessed with.”

“Lovers’ Jungle?” I rushed out, joy overtaking me for a moment. I had been trying to convince her to watch it forever, it was a survival dating show.. Also the only show that felt light and stupid enough to take my mind off the fact of being bedbound when I was recovering from the crash and was relearning how to walk.

“Yeah, I saw something online about that Jessika girl. She seems super badass.” Lacy waved a hand around, motioning me toward the couch while she broke off in the other direction toward the kitchen. Our apartment was small, but it was better than being at our parents’ house, which had felt downright suffocating in the weeks post-surgery.

“She really is. Last week, she won this insane trial course and won a date with that hot British guy!” I said back, making my way over to the couch and my supportive pillows. One for my back and another for under my knee were already set up. My heart squeezed at the sight. Lacy was a godsend. She made life feel normal again while still being a kickass caretaker. Unlike our mother, who kept bursting into tears every time the topic came anywhere close to racing, or my leg, or the burns on my neck, or the fact that my entire future was derailed. Everyone danced around the racing bit now, and I was perfectly fine with that. Avoidance was my preferred method of coping, much to Dr. Williams’s dismay.

“They have trial courses to win dates? You’re sure this isn’t Survivor?” Lacy’s laugh filled the room with warmth. The ocean of my mind was calmer now.

“We have to start from the beginning though, or it won’t make sense. You have to learn everyone’s lore and trauma,” I explained. By the time I queued up the first episode, Lacy had plopped down two hand-painted ceramic bowls on the lift-top coffee table and had raised it to us like a TV tray. It was rather ingenious. There were a bunch of little things that Lacy furnished the apartment with that made the place more mobility friendly—or just pain friendly. There were plenty of days I was confined to the couch or my bed. The coffee table was so simple, but it meant a lot, not hunching over on the couch to eat. The wooden dining table now had cushioned chairs instead of the matching wooden ones, which was also a sweet thought, although the dining table was more of a glorified catch-all table. We had not eaten at it once. Occasionally, Lacy would clear space or make some piles to have some room to craft. She would work on her projects while I would be on the couch reading, or we would watch reruns together of our favorite sitcoms.

I pointed out my favorite characters while we watched the dating show. We laughed so hard my belly hurt, and the throbbing in my leg was drowned out by the night. It was the first night in a long time that felt somewhere near normal.

Some days felt light and full of easy brightness, more now than before. But other days felt heavy and gloomy. When phantom pain would rip up my hand or leg. When I was sure I would wake up somewhere else. When I dreamed of nights on a grassy hill with him and woke up with dried tears. Depression had made recovery a thousand times harder, according to my therapist. I wouldn’t know any different though; this was just how my brain worked. Lacy would cheerily bring me my medication in the mornings with a piece of buttered toast dusted in cinnamon sugar. She would remind me to drink water, to not be in the sun too long, and she would encourage me to leave the house, walk around a park, or sit on the grass and read in our neighborhood’s shared courtyard. I honestly didn’t know what I would do without her. But I also wished I could do it all myself.

“You will, it just takes time,” Serena had reminded me the other day when she was over. We were secretly conspiring to find a new apartment for me. Lacy deserved to have her own life, move in with her boyfriend of a million years, and not have to take care of her sister whose dopamine receptors refused to work. I wanted that, wanted her to live a full life. Not this half one that had everyone walking on eggshells around me, worried the bad days would take over the good ones. They had for a long time. There were months where I didn’t want to do anything, couldn’t do much anyways.

Depression never looked the way people thought it did, at least not for me. People imagined tears. They imagined staying in bed for days, dark rooms, dramatic breakdowns. Sometimes it was those things. Sometimes it wasn’t. Most of the time, it looked like standing in the cereal aisle of a grocery store staring at the boxes because choosing between two brands suddenly felt impossible. It looked like ignoring text messages from people I loved because answering felt like lifting a car off my chest. It looked like sitting in my apartment while the city buzzed outside my window, knowing I should go meet friends or answer emails or wash the dishes piling up in my sink, but feeling like there was an invisible wall between me and the rest of the world. The hardest part was that I could remember what normal felt like. I remembered being excited. I remembered waking up with plans. I remembered feeling connected to my own life. Depression stole those things so quietly sometimes I wouldn’t even notice it happening.

One day I would be fine. The next, everything felt muted. Like someone had turned the saturation down on the entire world.

The sky was still blue.

Coffee still tasted like coffee.

People still laughed.