Until I Collapse • @vscomultii

Chapter 5 // Ethan

He's so bipolar. He wants my attention, but when he gets it, he suddenly changes his mind and decides that he'd be better off without it.

Now he doesn't get to make the decisions.

I tell myself that I don't understand why I get so scared of Grayson. He's the one that would be destroyed if something were to happen. But I know deep down it's not the physical pain I'm scared of, just the emptiness I'd feel if something bad were to happen to him.

When he sat up in his bed, he was wearing a t-shirt and shorts, so I got a good chance to look at him. It was my first time seeing him without huge, baggy clothes on in weeks, maybe even months.

When I first saw him, it took every tiny effort I had not to gasp with surprise. But even though it was quiet, I'm positive I still sucked in air. Grayson pulled back a little and squeezed the covers, like he wanted to crawl back under them and stay there forever. As if he forgot he wasn't wearing the thing that keeps him from me. He covered his wrists, but I still saw them in time, too.

He's gotten way too small. He looks nothing like the old Grayson, the one who'd force me to have a couple more slices or lift a few more weights back when we lived in LA. It's as if he forgot the motion of cutting pancakes and bringing the fork to his lips.

His wrists were not only extremely tiny, but red cuts were running horizontally across both. You could tell they were recent, and they looked pretty deep. He may have forgotten how to use a fork, but a knife? Not so much.

I knew that he was cutting himself, this was just confirmation. The constant tugging of his sleeves wasn't for nothing. The bathroom has become his safe place. I can come home a few hours after school and be sure to find Grayson still in the bathroom, most likely there since the time he got home. I'll knock, and he'll just angrily respond "I'm busy."

Whenever he leaves the bathroom, he looks spaced out. Distant, like whatever happened in there removed him from the world we are living in.

If I go in the bathroom after him, it's always a mess. Cabinets open and medicine bottles on the counter, towels piled on the floor, toilet paper scatter in various places. I always clean it up, and every now and again I'll find a little bit of blood. I never ask him what he does in there, and he never mentions me cleaning up after him. We both secretly know what the other does, but we're both too scared to admit it.