Within/Without

chapter forty-seven.

    Noah slings my other arm around his shoulders, and together he and Rose help me up the front stoop and into the foyer. The chandelier's gleaming, gold, blinding. There are footsteps echoing everywhere, lights being flicked on as we enter rooms and flicked off as we exit them.

    Someone says, "Abbie—" Abbie? Where are you, Abbie? "He's fine—go back to your room—I said he's fine—"

    I realize there's a set of footsteps, a voice, that I can't hear anymore. I turn to Noah. "Where's Val?" I ask him. "Wait. Where's Val?"

    Noah is clearly grimacing, but he tries to smile anyway. We're halfway up the staircase; long, burgundy halls stretch in front of us. "She's getting you a glass of water. She'll be right up, okay?"

    I wanted to bring her home, of course. I always wanted to bring her home. I just never wanted it to be under these circumstances. I imagined an extravagant welcome of outstretched arms and air kisses and We've heard so much about you's. I imagined Rose cooking an elegant dinner of roast beef and toasted brioche and maybe a fancy salad with even fancier vinaigrettes and dressings. I imagined Val wearing her best dress, red—no, yellow—and me catching her eye across the table and thinking, This is the woman I'm going to marry.

    I did not imagine this.

    A few moments and a considerable amount of elbow grease later, we're in my old bedroom. Nothing's been touched or moved. Not the threadbare quilt I've had practically since I was three years old. Not the bookshelf beside the window, now sporting more framed pictures than books. Not my old middle school journal, overflowing with poems I thought were fantastic but actually get worse and worse every time I read them. Not the tiny paw print pressed into a blob of cement I have leaned up the window, my memorial to the cat who knew me when no one else did.

    Even the air feels unused in my lungs. Stale, awkward.

    "Down you go," says Noah, easing me down onto the bed. Larry yells his name from somewhere out in the hall; Noah exhales, turning on the lamp beside me. He frowns at me, then at Rose. "We're right outside if you need us, Ginger Snap. Rose?"

    Rose raises her eyebrows sharply, but follows Noah out into the hall.

    I'm not sure what they're doing, what they're talking about. I lay atop my quilt, eyes watching the ceiling, basking in the wondrous, likely temporary experience of my head actually not spinning. My body feels so heavy, so strange, that I wouldn't be surprised if I sank right down into the mattress, through the floors, into the Earth. There are several voices outside, overlapping and then going silent and then all babbling up again, like the flow of a river. A voice rises—I think it's Dad's. He doesn't sound angry. Just extremely frustrated. Underneath his voice, someone is weeping. Mom, probably. I sigh. I hate it when she cries. I hate it most when she cries about me.

    Because I know it's about me.

    I still don't know where Val is. I want her so much it's a physical ache.

    "Abbie!"

    Abbie?

    A door slams, and clicks. I prop myself up on my elbows. My fifteen-year-old sister is standing in front of my bedroom door, which wasn't shut a few seconds ago. Her Naruto T-shirt is long enough to make me question if she's wearing pants; she stands there with a mug of something hot in her hands and a gleam of dying mischief in her eyes.

    I am struck by the sudden quiet. "You locked that door, didn't you?"

    Abbie shrugs. "It's a necessary evil."

    "Oh, Tabitha."

    The mischief in her eyes has found its final resting place. Replacing that mischief is a gentle, questioning sorrow, like she very well understands what's going on but isn't sure she wants to face it yet. "They wouldn't let me see you. They don't think I can handle it."

    I swallow. "Handle what?"

    She approaches the bedside, setting her mug on top of a 2015 issue of Reader's Digest that's sitting on my nightstand. Her eye makeup is dark and smudged. It almost looks like she's been crying.

    She says it like it's fact.

    No. She says it, really, like it's happening to someone else.

    "Watching my brother die," she says.

    I want to say, I'm not dying, but I've learned recently that I'm a terrible liar. Not that it would work, anyway. Abbie and Noah are alike in that they both have an extremely low tolerance for bullshit. Especially mine.

    Abbie's voice is the softest I've heard it in a long, long time. "Are you dying, Simon?" she says, raking a worried hand through her hair—a perfect gradient of brown and blonde, like our mother's. "Am I going...am I going to lose you?"

    I don't answer, because I don't need to. There's no use answering a question we both already know the answer to.

    Then, as I watch, Abbie starts to cry.

    Whatever hope was left in me snaps in half. I feel it. It hurts. More than anything else that's going on. More than the headaches, more than the seizures, more than the grit of my teeth on my tongue. It hurts watching her cry and knowing there's nothing I can do about it.

    "Abbie?" I say. "Come here."

    She hesitates, sniffles. "I don't want to hurt you."

    "You won't. Come here."

    I open my arms and she falls easily into them, hiding her face in my shoulder. Tears fall from her cheek and down onto my shirt, again and again. It hurts. Oh, it hurts. I want to be here. For her. I want to kick all the asses of the boys who break her heart. I want to watch her walk across the stage at her graduation. I want to make more random concoctions in the kitchen like we did when we were younger. I want to make her smile more, laugh more. I want her to drag me to more of her anime and gaming conventions because she can't talk anyone else into going.

    I want to be here.

    Her sobs taper off into sniffles, but her shoulders are still shaking. I comb a hand through her hair as she says, "Please don't go, Ginger Snap. Please?"

    "I wish I could tell you I'm not going to," I say, and shake my head. "But I'm not going to make you a promise I can't keep."

    "God. Why didn't you come home more? I miss you. I miss you all the damn time, Simon. You and Noah. I miss you both."

    The door begins to rattle; there's more yelling on the other side.

    "Abbie," I say. "You will be okay. That, I can promise. You'll be okay without me."

    "Don't say that."

    "It's true."

    She starts crying again, softly. Larry has finally picked the lock—the door swings open, and he's standing there, Val beside him, the rest of my family crowding around behind him. They start to barge in but notice Abbie, slumped against my chest, blubbering.

    Abbie whispers, "I'm not ready for you to leave me yet."

    I think, And I'm not ready to go.