September Rain by A.R. Rivera
40
-Angel
Mister Brandon is leaning in and mumbling.
While he blathers, I am wishing, for the millionth time, that an artery had burst-a peaceful and massive brain hemorrhage-and I never would have woken up that night.
But then, I note the smooth of his murmuring and know that my lawyer's actually trying to get my attention. He's probably been trying for a while because he tempers his tone when he's frustrated. The more upset he looks, the more relaxed he sounds and right now he sounds like he's fighting sleep.
I should probably care about what he's saying, but I just don't. My eyes are blinded to the room I'm in: as if my mind is still there on that dark bathroom floor and my body is miles away, stretched beyond the abyss of time and space. I am here and there. Divided and singular. Two different entities: a bird and the wind-soaring together, yet remaining separate. The memory is a whirlwind breaking across my feathers, making me falter, making me remember that I never had wings. I was never free.
My fall concluded with an earth-shattering smack. I'm already dead, skimming over my autopsy photos, scanning the wounded memories from that box inside my head.
Cobwebbed. Dusty. Though the blood is still fresh.
Blinking, I force myself to focus on the table in front of me. I have been completely lost inside the past and realize that I'm not sure which parts I have shared and which I've kept to myself.
On the opposite side of the table are two empty chairs. The small lights on the cameras that have been steadily glowing through every session are now black. A hand belonging to my lawyer snaps the small button on the base of the microphone that sits in front of me, shutting it off.
His overcoat is shiny charcoal gray and noisy. The material has a large weave to it, reminding me of the hospital gown, the fabric scrapes together as he turns to me. "Miss Patel."
I keep my eyes on my left hand, forcing my fingers to relax, though I feel like punching something. "Yes."
"I'd like to talk about how you're feeling."
I shake my head, letting my overlong hair fall forward and block my peripheral vision.
"I'm fine, Mister Brandon-" I hate his name. I knew a kid in fourth grade named Brandon. I think he might have been nice, but having a lawyer with that name ruins the vague taste of the memory-turns it bitter. "I'm splendid, actually. Just trying to talk about the most painful night of my life."
"Miss Patel, I think you've misunderstood the purpose of these interviews. It is not, and I repeat, not to relive the events of the night that led you here. The purpose is to allow you space to reflect on your actions, which help us determine the proper course and security level for further treatment. While doing so, you may recall the finer details of that time, but this session is not for that purpose."
There are parts of that night I don't remember and if I have any say, I never will. But I'm not telling him that. "I can remember simple instructions. I'm not incompetent."
His shoulders seem to relax. "Whether you believe me or not, whether you like me or not, I'd like you to remember that I am here to help you, Miss Patel. If you need anything, all you have to do is ask and I will do my best to satisfy your request."
I'm not falling into that trap. The last six years has taught me this: nothing is free. And the only one that can help me is me.
"I've been thinking about what I saw when I woke up."
His face softens. "Have you recalled anything new?"
I shake my head.
"Well, don't strain yourself. We're all aware of your diagnoses and want to make this process as simple, as relaxing as possible."
I drop my eyes back to my useless hands. I don't even know what that fucking word means-relaxing.
While I stare at the slightly frayed material on the cuff of my short sleeve jumpsuit, the door opens and the slapping sound of feet hit the worn floor in time. I keep quiet while the two agents of the court reenter to talk with my lawyer. Funny thing is I didn't even notice they were gone. When each side of the table seems satisfied with whatever the hell details they're trying work out, I am prompted to delve back into that night.
My guts begin their crawl back into frigid knots.
I'm a dumb fish, gasping on the bank beside violent river waters; cast out when I tried to swim upstream. I can't take in the air, coated in dry dirt. My hands clutch the arms of the chair. Hot tears prick at the backs of my eyes as I dive back into that terrible torrent: the place I'm dying to get away from and the only place I can breathe.
"It's all fragments-snapshots of the larger picture. A dark shape on the floor." I take a deep, slow breath, forcing my eyes to stay open. If I blink, I'll see. "I thought it was a pile of laundry . . ."
+++
In the cool dark on the bathroom floor I found myself wide awake and sweating, wondering how I had managed to sleep. Cautious fingers groped my head and the knotted muscles of my neck. My migraine had receded for the most part. My head still hurt, but I could think.
There was a stretch of light creeping in from under the door and a . . . a staggered sound-almost like a whimper-coming from beyond on the wall. It was low, but still a shrill sound. A howl. Like a dying animal. I banged on the nearest wall-no, the front of a cabinet-and called out for Avery.
What's going on? I wondered, making my way onto my hands and knees, cautiously probing the cool tile as I approached the door, because even though I was crawling without irritation, I was sure my headache would come back if I got up too quickly. Carefully, slowly, I stood and reached for the knob.
The room was darker than I expected. From inside my hole the light that streamed in seemed so bright, but the room was actually very dark. The strange howl had stopped, but I made out the echo of breath, a grunting or hoarse gasping like a runner makes when they've just finished a sprint. My eyes went to the carpet, where I caught sight of a pile of laundry that had been tossed in the corner, between my bed and the wall.
+++
Shaking my head, I look across the table at the blocky framed, emotionless eyes of Tight Bun Tara. "There's a black spot right here." This memory photo is blank.
"That's alright. Just move along to the next thing you recall." Tight Bun nods her head, waving a hand towards me.
My eyes lose focus, letting go of what's in front of me once again.
"It was a feeling like . . . I literally left my body."
+++
I was floating in a vat of black. There was a burning-it felt like a light switching on. First there was nothing and then it was everywhere, strong and solid, but it was more than that-it was like light was breaking. There was pain everywhere; I didn't feel it as much as sensed it. What I felt was dread; as if a giant fissure had opened up, wanting to drag me down. I was yanked out and away from the center of my universe, into something strange and unknown, where the sun had exploded or died or blew a hole in the fabric of space and it was sucking every particle of good from the cosmos.
That's what the black felt like.
I couldn't see anything. I could feel the floor under my feet, the air moving through my lungs, but that was all there was. Besides the dread that held on like a poisonous whirlpool.
A cry came ripping from my throat like a rush of red pouring from a gaping wound. I didn't know why I needed to weep aside from the thick sense dread at what I couldn't see.
Something was very wrong.
I blinked several times and kept at it; counting to ten, telling my eyes to start working. I took lots of deep breaths until the motel room came back into focus.
Then all I saw was Avery. She was standing beside me, saying, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. So sorry," repeating it, like a mantra.
+++
"She kept saying it over and over and over. Slow at first, and then faster and faster, until it stopped making sense."
The soft blue walls take in my words as my mind skips to the next thing I remember. As I try-and fail-to simply deliver the words and not to picture it, the interview room s
hrinks.
"I don't know how, but I was . . . on the floor."
+++
Everything was a puzzle. I was lost, just like that time in the corridor at school. I was in my motel room, but there was no more room, or carpet, or bed, or light. There were only my fingers, curled around someone else's. I followed the length of them up to a wrist and an arm. I studied the pale skin, utterly confused by each detail. I was just trying to breathe, waiting for what I was seeing to make sense. The palms of the exposed hands were marked with thin slashes.
Red marker lines.
I knew whose hands they were, I knew it, but there was something blotting out my understanding so I kept staring. Familiar fingers and those forearms were crumpled awkwardly across the chest. I remember thinking, he. It's a he. And even in that vulnerable state he looked like he was trying to protect himself. When I straightened his fingers, the cuts on his palms relaxed apart. A long, deep gash that stretched the length of his forearm made my stomach wretch.
The synapses of my brain were not firing. I couldn't find words to identify what I was seeing or think of what I was supposed to do about it. I knew there was something, some kind of instruction for moments of holy terror, times when you find limp hands. But I couldn't find the answer; like it was trapped behind a brick wall. Everything I saw was a question picking at individual bricks, but my mind stayed blank. There were only my feet stuck to the floor and my stunted brain, my hands grasping relaxed palms, and my eyes stuck on a sleeping face my mind couldn't comprehend. I couldn't find the language to process my situation or what needed to happen next.
The only thing I could put together was this: the motel room was a dank, dark place where terrible things happened. Whatever those things were, Avery was responsible. Why else would she apologize? Thinking her name triggered another and then the pieces of what I was seeing started falling together. Not all of them, but enough to start hating her.
His name came into my mouth. "Jake?" I fell on him, pulling at his hands-the hands that had spent hundreds of hours holding me-and pressed them to my lips, feeling how cold they were.
All the strength was drained from my body. I let go of the room, willingly this time. I had to disappear and made myself shrink, keeping my grip firmly on him. If he was no more, I wouldn't be, either. I would take him with me into my tight, tiny ball, where neither of us would exist. Together.
+++
I'm shrugging, trying to disconnect myself from the picture in my head. "I had no practical experience. I mean, I'd left dozens of people, but I had never said goodbye to any of them. I never said hello, either."
My voice quavers. "I said hello to Jake every time I saw him and there was so much after those hellos. So many moments that changed me."
Can they understand? Do they know now that I would never hurt him?
Tight Bun Tara's eyebrows are drawn together as she studies my every word.
"Before Jake, I didn't know what love was beyond the songs and lyrics I had heard. It was this phantasmal thing: intangible and unreachable, a poetic dream of something higher that died with Romeo and Juliet."
I didn't know.
"Then, I met him and heard his music. I was afraid I would forget what it felt like, that I would never find it again.
"How was I supposed to know the 'hello's' were over? That it was time for goodbye?"
The blue interview room seems to flicker red while I ponder the limp word. Goodbye. It's insufficient. One word formed from two meant to imply that leaving someone is a good thing.
"Before I knew losing him was possible, he was gone. And I was . . . crushed."
+++
When I found myself again, I was holding his head in my lap. Tears were falling down my face, landing on his and he wasn't flinching or complaining, or trying to wipe them away and comfort me, the way he always did. He was just laying there with his eyes closed and the sight was so painful, I couldn't get past it to even think his name. Recognition was enough.
I caressed the stubble on his cheeks. My memory flooded with images of us; giggling at something stupid I did-the way he would cover his mouth when he tried not to laugh at me. The way he'd sometimes dance with me in the crowd while the other bands played. His pouty lips; the way they always twisted when he was really concentrating. The way they molded around my name.
He was just laying there in my lap. So still.
Too still.
He was supposed to be waking up in a few hours and packing his bags, heading for his future; a record deal, a recording studio. We were supposed to move to California and work and make our dreams come true. Jake had often told me that I had an eye for talent, so I planned to use that instinct to help him. I was gonna go to business school and learn how to be the bands' manager.
But none of that would happen now.
He was stuck. Still and cold in my lap. His eyelids weren't twitching as he dreamed.
His dreams were dead.
"I'll die. I'll die, too." I rocked him in my arms, feeling warmth run through me at the thought. I had to be wherever he was.
"If we start a fire, there'll be sprinklers and alarms." Her voice broke through my concentration.
The image of those words threw horrible pictures into my head. "What?"
Avery walked over and knelt down. She was in shorts and a t-shirt. No shoes. She set a hand over mine, both of us touching his chest. "I was only thinking out loud. We need to leave, though. We can't stay here."
"What?"
Acid burbled in my stomach. The idea of moving, talking, breathing, or having to do anything was absurd. It was over. Nothing came next. There was nothing left. There was no reason, just plain nothing.
Utterly lost, watching Avery's long hair as she wrapped it into a neat bun, I noted that her moves were kind of jerky, halting in a strange rhythm that matched the beat pumping from the radio on the nightstand. Was she dancing?
"Angel, you're just along for the ride. I'm taking care of this." She offered what I think was supposed to be an encouraging smile that ignited me.
My arms wrapped tighter over him. I looked down at his sallow face and offered the only thing I could: my word. "I'll fix this, I swear." I didn't have anything left, but there was something I had to do. For him. It was a stupid promise and impossible to keep and I had no idea how I would even try, but then . . . something happened.
There was noise. A loud banging. Thump, thump, thump. Then, Avery was talking. I couldn't understand anything she was saying. Once my ears caught the beat coming from the radio, I couldn't hear anything else. I wanted to stop her from saying whatever the hell it was, stop the irritating music, stop the world-but couldn't think of what to do to make that happen.
Another impatient thump, coupled with a familiar bellow. "I know you're in there!" It was coming from the door.
The voice of Deanna. Her name was security. Deanna!
She would know what to do. She would help. I wanted to jump and scream, and shout at her to look around, to explain to me what was happening, but none of that made it to the surface.
I could only hold him.
Avery must have opened the door, because suddenly Deanna was inside the room and they were talking-rambling actually-but it all sounded like mumbling over the blood pumping in my ears and the music on the radio.
After Deanna's arm dropped from my shoulder, I realized she had been touching me. Avery was saying something again. It sounded like a cough. I threw up on Deanna's feet.
Through whatever was going on: the noise and voices, the indifferent rap music, the cruel light that showed how green he'd become, how still and lifeless . . . something else happened.
It was only my mind playing tricks on me, but it felt so real-it anchored me in the moment. My magician, my Houdini-the man who could take any broken thing I gave him and make it right-opened his eyes!
It wasn't real.
It was just my mind trying to comfort me by making me see the thing
I wanted most, but the relief of that lie helped me focus. So when his lips seemed to move, I knew to lean in and pressed my ear to his mouth.
He magically whispered a single word-the word that had been evading me in my search for what to do. The one I couldn't find before or after I realized it was him on the floor of my room and not just a pile of dirty laundry. My chest burst open. I think I screamed, because suddenly my voice was the only sound to be heard.
I don't know how I got to my feet. I don't remember seeing Avery or Deanna as I opened the door. I wasn't consciously moving. I just flew. I might have been screaming the whole time, I don't know, but I remember the hot, predawn air grazing my skin as I hammered on every door I saw on my way out to the road. It was early-only a hint of pink was on the horizon. I scrambled to the roadside, thorns and pebbles digging into my feet, but it didn't matter.
Waving my arms, frantic, I kept screaming-begging for someone to come. Demanding help. It was like the second I heard the word, I couldn't stop repeating it.
Help, help, help, help, help, HELP!!!
A brown station wagon was on the road. I thought I saw it slow down, but it didn't stop. Then, a motorcycle, too. And another car-a tan one-I flew over the yellow line into the far lane, still screaming Jakes' plea.
"HELP!" It was my mantra. The one thing I needed, the only thing I could try to give Jake, even though it was too late.
The car screeched and swerved. And then my hands were on the hood, and then I was flying. Floating. The sky became the ground. Cacti sprouted from brown plumes.
And I was burning.
Still screaming.
+++
My default state in this interview room: my face, coated in snot and tears.
"Miss Patel, did you say you saw your former guardian, Deanna Midler that night?" Tight Bun Tara's face holds a strange expression beyond her squared spectacles.
My throat is too clogged with emotion to clarify, so I nod.
"And you clearly recall leaving the motel room?" Tara continues.
"That's enough for now." Mister Brandon murmurs. "Take a deep breath. Breathe in the blue calm . . . exhale. In with the good, out with the bad."
While I work to calm this most recent emotional upheaval, my unhelpful lawyer announces the obvious to the room: "She's too worked up."
I believe he uses the word hysterical in his next sentence. Says I should be sent back to my bunk where I can take the remainder of the day to rest and recover from the terrible stress of this conversation. Hearing the lame excuses has me rolling my eyes. Yes, it's difficult-but I don't want to stop.
I don't point out that there's no amount of distance that can take me away from what's buried inside. I have to keep my mouth shut. Defiance has only ever left me sedated to a stupor.
Obedience means a measured walk back to my unit-slow because the guards at each elbow are watching me snivel and shake.
Tonight it's easy to flush my dinner down the toilet, sitting on my bunk afterward though-not so effortless. My mind is still stuck in that dark part. When I'm there in the moments after, I can't function.
Jake crumpled and lifeless on a bloody carpet. The nearby wall smeared. A single pristine handprint-a wide palm and five long fingers-etched into the eggshell paint. I was down on the floor when I saw it; my gaze passing over as I looked to the ceiling, praying for the world to end. I somehow know the height of the print matched the level of Jakes' shoulder and knowing that makes me shudder each time I blink because I can see him standing there in the small space between the bed and the wall. He's leaning against it, trying to stay on his feet. The images are burned into my eyelids so I can't close them.
Instead, I tell myself lies: it never happened, I am not in jail. There is no such thing as a new millennium. I am not a murderer.
I fold myself into the comforting lies my mind conjures: me, standing inside Jakes garage. There is no tour to prepare for, no search for a second guitarist. No lingering echoes of "not yet." He never packed and moved. It's quiet. Jake is visiting his mom and Henry. Max is probably at work and Andrew, the tattling asshole, is going to be replaced.
I am alone and at peace, staring at the blown out half-stack I always sat on. Max's drum set quietly sits with the sticks lying in X formation on top of a tom. Jakes favorite sunburst guitar is upright, on a stand beside the bass. I'm seeing the numerous band posters and stickers tacked up on the walls, but I am looking at the one poster that was different from the rest.
My poet used to wax philosophical sometimes. He once said, "Through the ages there have been millions of quotable things said. Phrases that seem to fit every situation." Jake liked to collect words like that-the kind that stuck with you. He had this cheesy poster in the bands practice space with hundreds of quotes on it.
His favorite one was a quote by Thomas Edison: "Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is to always try one more time."
Jake never actually used it, but he told me once that one line was why he bought the poster.
I used to read it when the guys were trying to work out a kink in a riff or transition. Some of the quotes contradicted each other; like this one about how the greatest gift you can get in life is friendship, but another said health was the greatest gift. I wouldn't know about either of those.
I liked the one from Mother Teresa. It went something like: poverty is more than being naked and hungry. That being unwanted, unloved, or uncared for is the real poverty. In that sense, I've been poverty-stricken from birth. Rejected by the only family I had and passed around from house to house, barely tolerated by most of the Fosters that took me in.
I think, if I had just one parent that would have been enough. But my dad was a ghost. And my crazy-ass mother never wanted me-not because she had anything better, but because of her disease. I wonder, in her schizophrenic mind, if she was trying to show me that she did love me by taking me with her in the car that morning. Maybe she didn't want to separate from me, even in death. I could understand that.
There was another quote on that poster about how there is more power is in rising after you fall than in never falling. I like that one. But how can you get up when you're locked in freefall?
Another quote said something like, Freedom is something you have to win-and maybe it is. For the ones who still have hope.
I think being remembered is the greatest gift. It is the only thing I can give to Jake. I can burn my candle and think of him. I can sing his songs. I can remember him. I can never make up for what happened, but I can keep vigil until I find him again in the next life.
+ + +
41
-Avery
If I had met Angel at any other moment in her life, I would not have felt a need to protect her. It's a no-brainer. But I first saw her at a pivotal point: the moment of her breaking.
Literally, one second I was watching a group of cranes drink from a puddle between the trees, and the next I was watching her bones fracture. That boxy car rolled down the road: a little bump before it took a short flight from the pavement, then flipped. Something small and white burst from the space where the windshield had splintered into a million tiny shards and landed in the crook of two unsure tree branches.
A small tree, planted several years before was growing beside the roadway, and by pure chance, it caught her.
I've seen some shit in my life but that was, by far, the most terrible one. Something inside me burst as I took it all in, and I knew that I had been put there for a reason-that I was supposed to take care of her. That I was meant to keep her from ever having to go through anything like that ever again.
Okay, so I didn't always make the best choices, but none of this shit has been painless on my side. If anything, I have suffered more. I realize it wasn't easy on her, but she needs to understand that I have always only ever took what she gave me and dealt with situations as they came up.
There's no prep course for this shit. No one's ever
written a guide on how to be second-best. And let's face it; that is all I have ever been.
I was just trying to protect us. How can she not get that?
Angel and me are different types of particles-maybe even opposites-but we're made to cling to one another to achieve balance. Or we could be like what my high school science teacher said. He said that outer space is black because light particles need other particles to grab onto. Since space is basically empty, there is nothing for the light to hold. So it just keeps traveling, never touching anything until it enters earths' atmosphere and finds something to cling to.
Angel is the light.
I am the one hurdling through the outer nothingness. Searching. Grasping.
Space and I have a lot in common. If only I could have known sooner, maybe I would have studied harder. I could have become an astronaut. I could have landed on the moon or docked in a space station with a Russian dude named Vlad. He might have held my tether when I went on a space walk.
I would've cut that tether, joining my emptiness with the great vacuum of the beyond. I might have found some peace.
I can't believe my shit for luck. I should be the one the review board is talking to. Angel's just gonna tell them whatever she wants and I'll have to live with it.
Being powerless is a feeling I will never be comfortable with. I just won't. I've tried. I've been taking the backseat through this whole damned process.
Maybe I haven't pressed hard enough.
+ + +
42
-Angel
Hopefully, today is the last I'll have to suffer through. When I'm done serving up my guts on a platter, I can go back to Canyon View to rot and wait for death to take me.
Guards escort me back into the small blue room. I'm put into my seat at the vinyl-wood table. Today, I'm anxious to vomit the words. I have no intention of waiting for anyone to prompt me. But my plan is interrupted by Darren, the quiet man whose name reminds me of the guy on that old TV show about the genie.
"What happened when you woke up in the hospital?" He asks.
This throws me. "I don't remember exactly what was wrong with me."
"We have the hospital records right here, if you'd like to go over them." Quiet Darren sets his thin hand over one of the many manila folders on the table in front of him.
Tara and her tight bun are sitting beside him. She looks a little pale.
I shake my head, refusing. I don't need to see the records. My own memories are enough for now. I'll check theirs out if or when the time comes.
"I was in a lot of pain. My left shoulder was sprained, my left wrist, too. My arm was in a sling, but I'm right handed, so . . ."
My lawyer lightly shakes his head. Tara looks down. Darren sits back in his chair.
They must think I'm so stupid, that I don't realize the magnitude of what's not being said. I know I can't always trust my own mind, that's why I made the point that this proclamation is all my perception. Mine. What I saw. When I saw it.
What they don't understand is how it feels to be me.
Living with my problems is like trying to negotiate a one-way maze. I can only go forward and every passage, every choice, looks the same. All I see is the path I think I should take. Nothing is certain-there is no logic, only guess work. So what seems like the right place to turn can end up a dead-end. If I could've only gotten some distance, some height, I could've seen where I was going wrong. But I'll never get to go back, never start over. I look back now and see the wall of problems for what they were. I have accepted that I made wrong turns and am living with the dead ends.
At seventeen, I was working inside a complex problem with limited information. I didn't know I was afraid of Avery's choices. I still am. She has always tried to push things, push people and their situations. IN her mind, she needs to test every boundary, every person. She needs to know when they'll break.
When she twisted Rosa's arm behind her back that day in the girls' bathroom, I knew she wanted to break it.
Once, when she was taking a shower, her mind just went off on some tangent, wondering 'what would happen if I just stayed in here?' Because she was curious how people might react. But mere wondering is never, ever enough. She has to know the answers. Avery stayed inside that shower until the hot water was gone, until she got all pruney, until she was freezing, until someone came pounding on the door, until someone broke it down, until they physically dragged her out of the shower and made her get dressed.
Pushing, pushing, and pushing just to see what might happen when a person is faced with the unexpected.
I know Darren asked me about when I woke up in the hospital, but that doesn't seem so important at the moment. "I first saw Avery on the day of my accident. Did I ever tell you that?"
My mouth is all watery and my throat feels a mile wide. "Her mean-streak was showing the first time I talked to her. That was after my accident, after I got out of the hospital."
I have to shake my head at my own unbelievable idiocy, the same stupidity that kept me blindly comforted from the first. "It wasn't like I saw what she was doing and thought, 'Oh, she is violent!' It was more like I couldn't understand and made no judgment. I was a stupid kid."
+++
I was placed with my first foster family after they released me from the hospital, after the second surgery to repair my skull. Avery happened to live in the same apartment complex. I was upstairs and she was down.
On days when my head was hurting too much to go to school, I would lie in my room and look out the window at the playground behind the complex. Some days, Avery was there. Most times, other kids in the complex were out there, too. I thought, at first, that she was playing with them, but as I watched I saw that she was only playing near them. It was interesting how she didn't seem to care that the other kids weren't talking to her or inviting her to play.
I have no memory of the accident itself, only some parts that I dreamed about, but I always remembered Avery being there. I saw her on the ground, calling to me after I hit that tree.
One day, when Avery was out there alone on the playground, I snuck outside.
As I walked along the path that led to the swing set, Avery's back was to me. She was standing in a patch of tall grass at the end of the path, staring down at something I couldn't see. Then she turned aside, walked to a large planter and removed a decorative rock. I watched her carry it back into the grass. Once she reached her previous spot, she stopped, raised the rock over her head, and slammed it down.
There was this odd noise and I thought maybe she was laughing.
I inched closer.
She picked up the rock again and slammed it back into the grass.
I didn't identify the high-pitched cry until it cut-off.
It was a mercy killing, she'd said. She couldn't find anyone to take the starving kitten and it had no mother. She was helping it.
-Angel
Mister Brandon is leaning in and mumbling.
While he blathers, I am wishing, for the millionth time, that an artery had burst-a peaceful and massive brain hemorrhage-and I never would have woken up that night.
But then, I note the smooth of his murmuring and know that my lawyer's actually trying to get my attention. He's probably been trying for a while because he tempers his tone when he's frustrated. The more upset he looks, the more relaxed he sounds and right now he sounds like he's fighting sleep.
I should probably care about what he's saying, but I just don't. My eyes are blinded to the room I'm in: as if my mind is still there on that dark bathroom floor and my body is miles away, stretched beyond the abyss of time and space. I am here and there. Divided and singular. Two different entities: a bird and the wind-soaring together, yet remaining separate. The memory is a whirlwind breaking across my feathers, making me falter, making me remember that I never had wings. I was never free.
My fall concluded with an earth-shattering smack. I'm already dead, skimming over my autopsy photos, scanning the wounded memories from that box inside my head.
Cobwebbed. Dusty. Though the blood is still fresh.
Blinking, I force myself to focus on the table in front of me. I have been completely lost inside the past and realize that I'm not sure which parts I have shared and which I've kept to myself.
On the opposite side of the table are two empty chairs. The small lights on the cameras that have been steadily glowing through every session are now black. A hand belonging to my lawyer snaps the small button on the base of the microphone that sits in front of me, shutting it off.
His overcoat is shiny charcoal gray and noisy. The material has a large weave to it, reminding me of the hospital gown, the fabric scrapes together as he turns to me. "Miss Patel."
I keep my eyes on my left hand, forcing my fingers to relax, though I feel like punching something. "Yes."
"I'd like to talk about how you're feeling."
I shake my head, letting my overlong hair fall forward and block my peripheral vision.
"I'm fine, Mister Brandon-" I hate his name. I knew a kid in fourth grade named Brandon. I think he might have been nice, but having a lawyer with that name ruins the vague taste of the memory-turns it bitter. "I'm splendid, actually. Just trying to talk about the most painful night of my life."
"Miss Patel, I think you've misunderstood the purpose of these interviews. It is not, and I repeat, not to relive the events of the night that led you here. The purpose is to allow you space to reflect on your actions, which help us determine the proper course and security level for further treatment. While doing so, you may recall the finer details of that time, but this session is not for that purpose."
There are parts of that night I don't remember and if I have any say, I never will. But I'm not telling him that. "I can remember simple instructions. I'm not incompetent."
His shoulders seem to relax. "Whether you believe me or not, whether you like me or not, I'd like you to remember that I am here to help you, Miss Patel. If you need anything, all you have to do is ask and I will do my best to satisfy your request."
I'm not falling into that trap. The last six years has taught me this: nothing is free. And the only one that can help me is me.
"I've been thinking about what I saw when I woke up."
His face softens. "Have you recalled anything new?"
I shake my head.
"Well, don't strain yourself. We're all aware of your diagnoses and want to make this process as simple, as relaxing as possible."
I drop my eyes back to my useless hands. I don't even know what that fucking word means-relaxing.
While I stare at the slightly frayed material on the cuff of my short sleeve jumpsuit, the door opens and the slapping sound of feet hit the worn floor in time. I keep quiet while the two agents of the court reenter to talk with my lawyer. Funny thing is I didn't even notice they were gone. When each side of the table seems satisfied with whatever the hell details they're trying work out, I am prompted to delve back into that night.
My guts begin their crawl back into frigid knots.
I'm a dumb fish, gasping on the bank beside violent river waters; cast out when I tried to swim upstream. I can't take in the air, coated in dry dirt. My hands clutch the arms of the chair. Hot tears prick at the backs of my eyes as I dive back into that terrible torrent: the place I'm dying to get away from and the only place I can breathe.
"It's all fragments-snapshots of the larger picture. A dark shape on the floor." I take a deep, slow breath, forcing my eyes to stay open. If I blink, I'll see. "I thought it was a pile of laundry . . ."
+++
In the cool dark on the bathroom floor I found myself wide awake and sweating, wondering how I had managed to sleep. Cautious fingers groped my head and the knotted muscles of my neck. My migraine had receded for the most part. My head still hurt, but I could think.
There was a stretch of light creeping in from under the door and a . . . a staggered sound-almost like a whimper-coming from beyond on the wall. It was low, but still a shrill sound. A howl. Like a dying animal. I banged on the nearest wall-no, the front of a cabinet-and called out for Avery.
What's going on? I wondered, making my way onto my hands and knees, cautiously probing the cool tile as I approached the door, because even though I was crawling without irritation, I was sure my headache would come back if I got up too quickly. Carefully, slowly, I stood and reached for the knob.
The room was darker than I expected. From inside my hole the light that streamed in seemed so bright, but the room was actually very dark. The strange howl had stopped, but I made out the echo of breath, a grunting or hoarse gasping like a runner makes when they've just finished a sprint. My eyes went to the carpet, where I caught sight of a pile of laundry that had been tossed in the corner, between my bed and the wall.
+++
Shaking my head, I look across the table at the blocky framed, emotionless eyes of Tight Bun Tara. "There's a black spot right here." This memory photo is blank.
"That's alright. Just move along to the next thing you recall." Tight Bun nods her head, waving a hand towards me.
My eyes lose focus, letting go of what's in front of me once again.
"It was a feeling like . . . I literally left my body."
+++
I was floating in a vat of black. There was a burning-it felt like a light switching on. First there was nothing and then it was everywhere, strong and solid, but it was more than that-it was like light was breaking. There was pain everywhere; I didn't feel it as much as sensed it. What I felt was dread; as if a giant fissure had opened up, wanting to drag me down. I was yanked out and away from the center of my universe, into something strange and unknown, where the sun had exploded or died or blew a hole in the fabric of space and it was sucking every particle of good from the cosmos.
That's what the black felt like.
I couldn't see anything. I could feel the floor under my feet, the air moving through my lungs, but that was all there was. Besides the dread that held on like a poisonous whirlpool.
A cry came ripping from my throat like a rush of red pouring from a gaping wound. I didn't know why I needed to weep aside from the thick sense dread at what I couldn't see.
Something was very wrong.
I blinked several times and kept at it; counting to ten, telling my eyes to start working. I took lots of deep breaths until the motel room came back into focus.
Then all I saw was Avery. She was standing beside me, saying, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. So sorry," repeating it, like a mantra.
+++
"She kept saying it over and over and over. Slow at first, and then faster and faster, until it stopped making sense."
The soft blue walls take in my words as my mind skips to the next thing I remember. As I try-and fail-to simply deliver the words and not to picture it, the interview room s
"I don't know how, but I was . . . on the floor."
+++
Everything was a puzzle. I was lost, just like that time in the corridor at school. I was in my motel room, but there was no more room, or carpet, or bed, or light. There were only my fingers, curled around someone else's. I followed the length of them up to a wrist and an arm. I studied the pale skin, utterly confused by each detail. I was just trying to breathe, waiting for what I was seeing to make sense. The palms of the exposed hands were marked with thin slashes.
Red marker lines.
I knew whose hands they were, I knew it, but there was something blotting out my understanding so I kept staring. Familiar fingers and those forearms were crumpled awkwardly across the chest. I remember thinking, he. It's a he. And even in that vulnerable state he looked like he was trying to protect himself. When I straightened his fingers, the cuts on his palms relaxed apart. A long, deep gash that stretched the length of his forearm made my stomach wretch.
The synapses of my brain were not firing. I couldn't find words to identify what I was seeing or think of what I was supposed to do about it. I knew there was something, some kind of instruction for moments of holy terror, times when you find limp hands. But I couldn't find the answer; like it was trapped behind a brick wall. Everything I saw was a question picking at individual bricks, but my mind stayed blank. There were only my feet stuck to the floor and my stunted brain, my hands grasping relaxed palms, and my eyes stuck on a sleeping face my mind couldn't comprehend. I couldn't find the language to process my situation or what needed to happen next.
The only thing I could put together was this: the motel room was a dank, dark place where terrible things happened. Whatever those things were, Avery was responsible. Why else would she apologize? Thinking her name triggered another and then the pieces of what I was seeing started falling together. Not all of them, but enough to start hating her.
His name came into my mouth. "Jake?" I fell on him, pulling at his hands-the hands that had spent hundreds of hours holding me-and pressed them to my lips, feeling how cold they were.
All the strength was drained from my body. I let go of the room, willingly this time. I had to disappear and made myself shrink, keeping my grip firmly on him. If he was no more, I wouldn't be, either. I would take him with me into my tight, tiny ball, where neither of us would exist. Together.
+++
I'm shrugging, trying to disconnect myself from the picture in my head. "I had no practical experience. I mean, I'd left dozens of people, but I had never said goodbye to any of them. I never said hello, either."
My voice quavers. "I said hello to Jake every time I saw him and there was so much after those hellos. So many moments that changed me."
Can they understand? Do they know now that I would never hurt him?
Tight Bun Tara's eyebrows are drawn together as she studies my every word.
"Before Jake, I didn't know what love was beyond the songs and lyrics I had heard. It was this phantasmal thing: intangible and unreachable, a poetic dream of something higher that died with Romeo and Juliet."
I didn't know.
"Then, I met him and heard his music. I was afraid I would forget what it felt like, that I would never find it again.
"How was I supposed to know the 'hello's' were over? That it was time for goodbye?"
The blue interview room seems to flicker red while I ponder the limp word. Goodbye. It's insufficient. One word formed from two meant to imply that leaving someone is a good thing.
"Before I knew losing him was possible, he was gone. And I was . . . crushed."
+++
When I found myself again, I was holding his head in my lap. Tears were falling down my face, landing on his and he wasn't flinching or complaining, or trying to wipe them away and comfort me, the way he always did. He was just laying there with his eyes closed and the sight was so painful, I couldn't get past it to even think his name. Recognition was enough.
I caressed the stubble on his cheeks. My memory flooded with images of us; giggling at something stupid I did-the way he would cover his mouth when he tried not to laugh at me. The way he'd sometimes dance with me in the crowd while the other bands played. His pouty lips; the way they always twisted when he was really concentrating. The way they molded around my name.
He was just laying there in my lap. So still.
Too still.
He was supposed to be waking up in a few hours and packing his bags, heading for his future; a record deal, a recording studio. We were supposed to move to California and work and make our dreams come true. Jake had often told me that I had an eye for talent, so I planned to use that instinct to help him. I was gonna go to business school and learn how to be the bands' manager.
But none of that would happen now.
He was stuck. Still and cold in my lap. His eyelids weren't twitching as he dreamed.
His dreams were dead.
"I'll die. I'll die, too." I rocked him in my arms, feeling warmth run through me at the thought. I had to be wherever he was.
"If we start a fire, there'll be sprinklers and alarms." Her voice broke through my concentration.
The image of those words threw horrible pictures into my head. "What?"
Avery walked over and knelt down. She was in shorts and a t-shirt. No shoes. She set a hand over mine, both of us touching his chest. "I was only thinking out loud. We need to leave, though. We can't stay here."
"What?"
Acid burbled in my stomach. The idea of moving, talking, breathing, or having to do anything was absurd. It was over. Nothing came next. There was nothing left. There was no reason, just plain nothing.
Utterly lost, watching Avery's long hair as she wrapped it into a neat bun, I noted that her moves were kind of jerky, halting in a strange rhythm that matched the beat pumping from the radio on the nightstand. Was she dancing?
"Angel, you're just along for the ride. I'm taking care of this." She offered what I think was supposed to be an encouraging smile that ignited me.
My arms wrapped tighter over him. I looked down at his sallow face and offered the only thing I could: my word. "I'll fix this, I swear." I didn't have anything left, but there was something I had to do. For him. It was a stupid promise and impossible to keep and I had no idea how I would even try, but then . . . something happened.
There was noise. A loud banging. Thump, thump, thump. Then, Avery was talking. I couldn't understand anything she was saying. Once my ears caught the beat coming from the radio, I couldn't hear anything else. I wanted to stop her from saying whatever the hell it was, stop the irritating music, stop the world-but couldn't think of what to do to make that happen.
Another impatient thump, coupled with a familiar bellow. "I know you're in there!" It was coming from the door.
The voice of Deanna. Her name was security. Deanna!
She would know what to do. She would help. I wanted to jump and scream, and shout at her to look around, to explain to me what was happening, but none of that made it to the surface.
I could only hold him.
Avery must have opened the door, because suddenly Deanna was inside the room and they were talking-rambling actually-but it all sounded like mumbling over the blood pumping in my ears and the music on the radio.
After Deanna's arm dropped from my shoulder, I realized she had been touching me. Avery was saying something again. It sounded like a cough. I threw up on Deanna's feet.
Through whatever was going on: the noise and voices, the indifferent rap music, the cruel light that showed how green he'd become, how still and lifeless . . . something else happened.
It was only my mind playing tricks on me, but it felt so real-it anchored me in the moment. My magician, my Houdini-the man who could take any broken thing I gave him and make it right-opened his eyes!
It wasn't real.
It was just my mind trying to comfort me by making me see the thing
He magically whispered a single word-the word that had been evading me in my search for what to do. The one I couldn't find before or after I realized it was him on the floor of my room and not just a pile of dirty laundry. My chest burst open. I think I screamed, because suddenly my voice was the only sound to be heard.
I don't know how I got to my feet. I don't remember seeing Avery or Deanna as I opened the door. I wasn't consciously moving. I just flew. I might have been screaming the whole time, I don't know, but I remember the hot, predawn air grazing my skin as I hammered on every door I saw on my way out to the road. It was early-only a hint of pink was on the horizon. I scrambled to the roadside, thorns and pebbles digging into my feet, but it didn't matter.
Waving my arms, frantic, I kept screaming-begging for someone to come. Demanding help. It was like the second I heard the word, I couldn't stop repeating it.
Help, help, help, help, help, HELP!!!
A brown station wagon was on the road. I thought I saw it slow down, but it didn't stop. Then, a motorcycle, too. And another car-a tan one-I flew over the yellow line into the far lane, still screaming Jakes' plea.
"HELP!" It was my mantra. The one thing I needed, the only thing I could try to give Jake, even though it was too late.
The car screeched and swerved. And then my hands were on the hood, and then I was flying. Floating. The sky became the ground. Cacti sprouted from brown plumes.
And I was burning.
Still screaming.
+++
My default state in this interview room: my face, coated in snot and tears.
"Miss Patel, did you say you saw your former guardian, Deanna Midler that night?" Tight Bun Tara's face holds a strange expression beyond her squared spectacles.
My throat is too clogged with emotion to clarify, so I nod.
"And you clearly recall leaving the motel room?" Tara continues.
"That's enough for now." Mister Brandon murmurs. "Take a deep breath. Breathe in the blue calm . . . exhale. In with the good, out with the bad."
While I work to calm this most recent emotional upheaval, my unhelpful lawyer announces the obvious to the room: "She's too worked up."
I believe he uses the word hysterical in his next sentence. Says I should be sent back to my bunk where I can take the remainder of the day to rest and recover from the terrible stress of this conversation. Hearing the lame excuses has me rolling my eyes. Yes, it's difficult-but I don't want to stop.
I don't point out that there's no amount of distance that can take me away from what's buried inside. I have to keep my mouth shut. Defiance has only ever left me sedated to a stupor.
Obedience means a measured walk back to my unit-slow because the guards at each elbow are watching me snivel and shake.
Tonight it's easy to flush my dinner down the toilet, sitting on my bunk afterward though-not so effortless. My mind is still stuck in that dark part. When I'm there in the moments after, I can't function.
Jake crumpled and lifeless on a bloody carpet. The nearby wall smeared. A single pristine handprint-a wide palm and five long fingers-etched into the eggshell paint. I was down on the floor when I saw it; my gaze passing over as I looked to the ceiling, praying for the world to end. I somehow know the height of the print matched the level of Jakes' shoulder and knowing that makes me shudder each time I blink because I can see him standing there in the small space between the bed and the wall. He's leaning against it, trying to stay on his feet. The images are burned into my eyelids so I can't close them.
Instead, I tell myself lies: it never happened, I am not in jail. There is no such thing as a new millennium. I am not a murderer.
I fold myself into the comforting lies my mind conjures: me, standing inside Jakes garage. There is no tour to prepare for, no search for a second guitarist. No lingering echoes of "not yet." He never packed and moved. It's quiet. Jake is visiting his mom and Henry. Max is probably at work and Andrew, the tattling asshole, is going to be replaced.
I am alone and at peace, staring at the blown out half-stack I always sat on. Max's drum set quietly sits with the sticks lying in X formation on top of a tom. Jakes favorite sunburst guitar is upright, on a stand beside the bass. I'm seeing the numerous band posters and stickers tacked up on the walls, but I am looking at the one poster that was different from the rest.
My poet used to wax philosophical sometimes. He once said, "Through the ages there have been millions of quotable things said. Phrases that seem to fit every situation." Jake liked to collect words like that-the kind that stuck with you. He had this cheesy poster in the bands practice space with hundreds of quotes on it.
His favorite one was a quote by Thomas Edison: "Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is to always try one more time."
Jake never actually used it, but he told me once that one line was why he bought the poster.
I used to read it when the guys were trying to work out a kink in a riff or transition. Some of the quotes contradicted each other; like this one about how the greatest gift you can get in life is friendship, but another said health was the greatest gift. I wouldn't know about either of those.
I liked the one from Mother Teresa. It went something like: poverty is more than being naked and hungry. That being unwanted, unloved, or uncared for is the real poverty. In that sense, I've been poverty-stricken from birth. Rejected by the only family I had and passed around from house to house, barely tolerated by most of the Fosters that took me in.
I think, if I had just one parent that would have been enough. But my dad was a ghost. And my crazy-ass mother never wanted me-not because she had anything better, but because of her disease. I wonder, in her schizophrenic mind, if she was trying to show me that she did love me by taking me with her in the car that morning. Maybe she didn't want to separate from me, even in death. I could understand that.
There was another quote on that poster about how there is more power is in rising after you fall than in never falling. I like that one. But how can you get up when you're locked in freefall?
Another quote said something like, Freedom is something you have to win-and maybe it is. For the ones who still have hope.
I think being remembered is the greatest gift. It is the only thing I can give to Jake. I can burn my candle and think of him. I can sing his songs. I can remember him. I can never make up for what happened, but I can keep vigil until I find him again in the next life.
+ + +
41
-Avery
If I had met Angel at any other moment in her life, I would not have felt a need to protect her. It's a no-brainer. But I first saw her at a pivotal point: the moment of her breaking.
Literally, one second I was watching a group of cranes drink from a puddle between the trees, and the next I was watching her bones fracture. That boxy car rolled down the road: a little bump before it took a short flight from the pavement, then flipped. Something small and white burst from the space where the windshield had splintered into a million tiny shards and landed in the crook of two unsure tree branches.
A small tree, planted several years before was growing beside the roadway, and by pure chance, it caught her.
I've seen some shit in my life but that was, by far, the most terrible one. Something inside me burst as I took it all in, and I knew that I had been put there for a reason-that I was supposed to take care of her. That I was meant to keep her from ever having to go through anything like that ever again.
Okay, so I didn't always make the best choices, but none of this shit has been painless on my side. If anything, I have suffered more. I realize it wasn't easy on her, but she needs to understand that I have always only ever took what she gave me and dealt with situations as they came up.
There's no prep course for this shit. No one's ever
I was just trying to protect us. How can she not get that?
Angel and me are different types of particles-maybe even opposites-but we're made to cling to one another to achieve balance. Or we could be like what my high school science teacher said. He said that outer space is black because light particles need other particles to grab onto. Since space is basically empty, there is nothing for the light to hold. So it just keeps traveling, never touching anything until it enters earths' atmosphere and finds something to cling to.
Angel is the light.
I am the one hurdling through the outer nothingness. Searching. Grasping.
Space and I have a lot in common. If only I could have known sooner, maybe I would have studied harder. I could have become an astronaut. I could have landed on the moon or docked in a space station with a Russian dude named Vlad. He might have held my tether when I went on a space walk.
I would've cut that tether, joining my emptiness with the great vacuum of the beyond. I might have found some peace.
I can't believe my shit for luck. I should be the one the review board is talking to. Angel's just gonna tell them whatever she wants and I'll have to live with it.
Being powerless is a feeling I will never be comfortable with. I just won't. I've tried. I've been taking the backseat through this whole damned process.
Maybe I haven't pressed hard enough.
+ + +
42
-Angel
Hopefully, today is the last I'll have to suffer through. When I'm done serving up my guts on a platter, I can go back to Canyon View to rot and wait for death to take me.
Guards escort me back into the small blue room. I'm put into my seat at the vinyl-wood table. Today, I'm anxious to vomit the words. I have no intention of waiting for anyone to prompt me. But my plan is interrupted by Darren, the quiet man whose name reminds me of the guy on that old TV show about the genie.
"What happened when you woke up in the hospital?" He asks.
This throws me. "I don't remember exactly what was wrong with me."
"We have the hospital records right here, if you'd like to go over them." Quiet Darren sets his thin hand over one of the many manila folders on the table in front of him.
Tara and her tight bun are sitting beside him. She looks a little pale.
I shake my head, refusing. I don't need to see the records. My own memories are enough for now. I'll check theirs out if or when the time comes.
"I was in a lot of pain. My left shoulder was sprained, my left wrist, too. My arm was in a sling, but I'm right handed, so . . ."
My lawyer lightly shakes his head. Tara looks down. Darren sits back in his chair.
They must think I'm so stupid, that I don't realize the magnitude of what's not being said. I know I can't always trust my own mind, that's why I made the point that this proclamation is all my perception. Mine. What I saw. When I saw it.
What they don't understand is how it feels to be me.
Living with my problems is like trying to negotiate a one-way maze. I can only go forward and every passage, every choice, looks the same. All I see is the path I think I should take. Nothing is certain-there is no logic, only guess work. So what seems like the right place to turn can end up a dead-end. If I could've only gotten some distance, some height, I could've seen where I was going wrong. But I'll never get to go back, never start over. I look back now and see the wall of problems for what they were. I have accepted that I made wrong turns and am living with the dead ends.
At seventeen, I was working inside a complex problem with limited information. I didn't know I was afraid of Avery's choices. I still am. She has always tried to push things, push people and their situations. IN her mind, she needs to test every boundary, every person. She needs to know when they'll break.
When she twisted Rosa's arm behind her back that day in the girls' bathroom, I knew she wanted to break it.
Once, when she was taking a shower, her mind just went off on some tangent, wondering 'what would happen if I just stayed in here?' Because she was curious how people might react. But mere wondering is never, ever enough. She has to know the answers. Avery stayed inside that shower until the hot water was gone, until she got all pruney, until she was freezing, until someone came pounding on the door, until someone broke it down, until they physically dragged her out of the shower and made her get dressed.
Pushing, pushing, and pushing just to see what might happen when a person is faced with the unexpected.
I know Darren asked me about when I woke up in the hospital, but that doesn't seem so important at the moment. "I first saw Avery on the day of my accident. Did I ever tell you that?"
My mouth is all watery and my throat feels a mile wide. "Her mean-streak was showing the first time I talked to her. That was after my accident, after I got out of the hospital."
I have to shake my head at my own unbelievable idiocy, the same stupidity that kept me blindly comforted from the first. "It wasn't like I saw what she was doing and thought, 'Oh, she is violent!' It was more like I couldn't understand and made no judgment. I was a stupid kid."
+++
I was placed with my first foster family after they released me from the hospital, after the second surgery to repair my skull. Avery happened to live in the same apartment complex. I was upstairs and she was down.
On days when my head was hurting too much to go to school, I would lie in my room and look out the window at the playground behind the complex. Some days, Avery was there. Most times, other kids in the complex were out there, too. I thought, at first, that she was playing with them, but as I watched I saw that she was only playing near them. It was interesting how she didn't seem to care that the other kids weren't talking to her or inviting her to play.
I have no memory of the accident itself, only some parts that I dreamed about, but I always remembered Avery being there. I saw her on the ground, calling to me after I hit that tree.
One day, when Avery was out there alone on the playground, I snuck outside.
As I walked along the path that led to the swing set, Avery's back was to me. She was standing in a patch of tall grass at the end of the path, staring down at something I couldn't see. Then she turned aside, walked to a large planter and removed a decorative rock. I watched her carry it back into the grass. Once she reached her previous spot, she stopped, raised the rock over her head, and slammed it down.
There was this odd noise and I thought maybe she was laughing.
I inched closer.
She picked up the rock again and slammed it back into the grass.
I didn't identify the high-pitched cry until it cut-off.
It was a mercy killing, she'd said. She couldn't find anyone to take the starving kitten and it had no mother. She was helping it.