All The Shadows We Made

Chapter 17 - December - Maggie

December

Maggie

I stumble through the front door to my parent's house around 11. Jenny's dad hadn't asked where to drop me, and I'm still too annoyed at Mickey to care.

My mom appears around the corner from the kitchen as I'm hanging up my coat. "Kat texted me looking for you last night. She woke me up. I don't know why we bother paying for your phone if you never have it on."

Kat texted my mom? What the hell? "Sorry, Mom. I'll tell her."

I flop on my bed and plug my phone into the charger. After a minute it vibrates. I watch the notifications from missed calls and texts mount up second by second. Kat. Kat. Kat. Eddie. Eddie? And a text from Kat?

Panic rises in my chest. Just a little. What did I miss?

Kat answers on the first ring. "Maggie? Oh my god, Maggie, where the fuck have you been?"

Kat just swore. Something's really wrong, that little voice in my head whispers. Really, really wrong. "Jenny's. I just got home. Kat, what's going on?"

Kat takes a deep breath. "Um...Well..." Kat being at a loss for words worries me more than how many times she's called. Kat always knows what to say. Always. My stomach hits my throat and then ricochets down to my toes as I get up and shut the door to my room. "Kat, what?!"

"Mickey, he-" Everything stops as I wait for her to go on. I swear even the second hand on my old wall clock isn't moving. "Maggie, he-" And then Kat starts to cry.

"He what, Kat? He what?" I shouldn't have left him. I should never have left him. I should have stayed home from school. I shouldn't have gone to Jen's. I should have been there.

"He tried to kill himself, Maggie." Only five years of knowing Kat makes her intelligible through her tears. I'm pretty sure not another soul could have understood her. "He took a bunch of pills and drank something and they had to pump his stomach."

The carpet comes closer and closer, and I have just enough time to think how weird that is before I realize I'm sliding down towards the floor with my back against the bedroom door. My stomach leaps up from my toes and lodges itself back in my throat.

"He's alive," Kat continues, making an ugly snort sound full of snot and tears and then becoming a little clearer. "Mickey's dad found him and called the ambulance in time."

Stay home with me today, baby. It'll be just me and you all day, snug and warm. Did he know? Did he have it planned already? Was that his last ditch effort to have someone change his mind?

"Maggie? Maggie, are you there?"

"Yeah, I'm here." My voice strangles in my throat. There's no room left for my voice with my heart already stuck there.

"Eddie called me and then I called Jamie and he went to the hospital to try to find things out and his mom told him last night, but he went home and got drunk again so I didn't know until right now, and you didn't answer and Jenny didn't answer and Jules didn't answer and... fuck, Maggie, just..." And she dissolves again. It's the first time I've ever heard her cry out loud. Kat always cries so silently you'd never know she was doing it if you can't see the tears streaming down her cheeks.

I need to see him. I have to see him. Now. "Where is he, Kat?"

She sniffs again. "He's at Saint Mary's, but Maggie, he's there for three days. No one is allowed to see him. He's under psychiatric evaluation, according to Jamie."