A really sad idiot.
18
JONAS
Hey. Jonas, I’m really sorry.
Jonas read Brennan’s message over several times. Then he turned off his phone and rolled over in bed, turning off his lamp and plunging the room into darkness punctuated by the weak light of the glow-in-the-dark stars.
He felt humiliated. He wasn’t good at this stuff, whatever this was. Trying to be a friend. Trying to help someone. For the past year he’d spent his time withdrawing further and further from everyone he might have considered his friend before. Did he even know how to be a friend anymore? Why couldn’t Brennan just let him help her? Why did he want to help her? He hadn’t wanted to do anything in a long time. Wanting hurt. Walking hurt. Hurting hurt.
He closed his eyes, trying to make sense of everything.
His face got hot when he relived the events of earlier in his mind. He couldn’t believe he’d run after her (or half limped, half run; whatever it was, it was more effort than he usually put into using his own two feet). He couldn’t believe he’d fallen in front of her. Again. That was embarrassing.
He called her words to mind, replaying them over and over. I’m not trying to fix you, because there’s nothing to fix. You’re not broken.
Nothing to fix. Not broken.
Was she right? Jonas felt broken. He felt like something had changed in him since The Accident, like something had snapped and he’d been falling apart ever since. But had it? Or had he changed because he felt that that was the only right way to respond to such a traumatic event? Had he only changed because he expected himself to? You expect something so it happens? Maybe it was like homeostasis, and his life had just tried to find a new set point in response to the change.
The worst part was that he’d gotten his hopes up, and he hadn’t even realized it until they crashed down again with his third fall in the past month. What if it works this time? What if you walk again? he’d asked himself in the mirror on his closet door as he’d stood in front of it the other night (the one he’d fallen in the kitchen). His self responded with What if it doesn’t?
Jonas squeezed his eyes more tightly shut, trying to block everything out. He didn’t want to think about Brennan anymore. Because when he did, he only thought of a hundred things he wished he’d said differently. He just wanted to sleep. He just wanted to escape. He begged for it. Sleep. Sleep.
When he did sleep, he dreamed that he was in the passenger seat of the semi with the driver. The man who’d hit him. Paul Whitford. From the semi, he watched The Accident. When Rhys’s car turned, he saw, for a split second, himself, completely unaware of what he was about to lose. Jonas wanted to yell something—a warning of some kind. But when he opened his mouth, nothing came out. When the two vehicles collided, pain shot up Jonas’s left leg and he woke up, a cry in his throat and real-life pain gripping like a vise—toes, shin, knee—what wasn’t there anymore.
He heard his mom’s startled Vietnamese from the room next door, and then she was waking his father up—“Elliot. Elliot.”
Then footsteps and his door cracked open. His dad, in rumpled pajama shorts and an old Wash U T-shirt. “Jonas?” he whispered hoarsely. “Are you okay?”
Jonas didn’t sit up. He just tried not to grit his teeth too much when he answered. “Yeah.”
Elliot Avery ran a hand through his hair, nervous energy dissipating through his hands like always (there was something comforting in that like always). “You—you cried out. Are you—are you sure you’re okay?”
“Bad dream,” Jonas breathed. “Fine. Really.”
When his dad was gone, Jonas sat up and whipped the covers off his left leg, looking at it—just the stump: no prosthesis, no liner, no sock—for the first time in a long time. He forced himself to stare at it. Stop it! he yelled at his brain, willing the pain to stop. There’s nothing there! See! THERE’S NOTHING THERE.
FALL SEMESTER 2014
* * *
19
brennan
Brennan swallowed and tried to keep from throwing up. Her stomach was tied in knots. In one hand, she clenched an envelope containing two keys: one for her mailbox and one for her room. (The keys to the rest of your life, her dad had joked, which hadn’t helped the ball of sick that sat like lead in her stomach.) In her other hand, she clenched the handles of a duffel bag.
She swallowed again. Her mouth was dry. Her throat felt like something was caught there. She felt like hyperventilating. She wanted to run, although she didn’t know where to. They were currently stuck in the tight maze of the dorm hallway, other students and their families crowding the corridor with carts full of plastic bins—it was like everyone had tried to pack their life up and take it with them. Brennan’s mom came to her side.
“Well?” she said. “Are you going to open the door?” Brennan nodded, forcing her feet to move forward. She set down the duffel bag and removed the key from the envelope, unlocking the door.
The room smelled weird. That was the first thing she noticed. It didn’t smell like home. In fact, it was distinctly not-home. Like cleaner and all these other scents layered on top of one another until Brennan couldn’t separate and identify them.
Her roommate had already chosen the bed by the window and had already moved in her things. She’d texted Brennan twice earlier: the first asking if Brennan minded if she took the window bed (Brennan said she didn’t mind because either bed brought the same level of anxiety to the table) and the second letting her know that she’d finished moving in and was going to be out at the welcome events. Ambreen’s wall was filled with pictures—Ambreen smiling with friends. Ambreen in Europe. Ambreen being a lot more exciting than Brennan.
Brennan was glad her roommate wasn’t here to watch her have a panic attack. She nervously took a few more steps into the room, displacing some of the weird air. She almost wished she had taken the window bed so that she could at least open the window—let the fresh air in—and pretend she felt less claustrophobic than she actually did.
“It looks nice!” said her mom cheerfully, carrying in a box and setting it down to survey the room.
“Yeah,” Brennan said halfheartedly. “Nice.” Like prison was nice. Like any number of not-nice things were nice.
One desk. One dresser, with three drawers. One lofted mattress on a squeaky metal bed frame. One half of a closet that was smaller than her one at home.
Her mom left the room to help her dad carry in the rest of Brennan’s things.
Brennan just stood there, staring.
She briefly wondered if Jonas was moving in today also, down at Washington University. He really wasn’t that far from her. Somehow, the thought made her even more nervous. Jonas hadn’t texted her back since the day they’d had their falling out. She’d sent him messages but he hadn’t responded. She kept going to the library, like maybe he’d come to get the next Harry Potter after all. She’d eventually given up.
She had decided that maybe she just wasn’t built for having friends. Brennan, solo, was the only way she was manageable.
“Do you want to start unpacking?” her mom asked her.