Late November, 2010
Leann told me to stay in her room, and I could tell that she was trying her best to keep me and Cole distracted from the noise downstairs.
I played along, pretending not to notice the sound of yelling and glass breaking and the sound of my mom crying, for Cole's sake. He was too young to understand anyway, and he was happily playing with the Lego pieces Mom just bought him last week. Leann and I taught him what to do with the pieces, and he focused on that instead of asking what the noise downstairs was.
I heard the sound of the door slamming shut with force, and both Leann and I jumped where we were sitting while our brother remained unfazed. When a long silence immediately followed, she swallowed her dry throat and told me to go to my room, and I obediently did as told.
I locked the door behind me and lay down on my bed with a sigh. I wondered when these loud nights would stop. Nobody would tell me and Cole what was wrong, and while Cole was too young to understand anyway, it was slowly driving me crazy not knowing anything that was happening.
I eventually fell asleep to the sound of my own breathing, but it wasn't too long until I was rudely woken up by the sound of my phone ringing. With a grunt, I sat up and answered the call.
"Hello?" I groggily said.
"Han-nnnah!" a familiar voice slurred over the phone. "'Sup?" I sighed as I heard him hiccup a few times. "It's a daaang good night to be out!"
"Tony, where the hell are you?"
"Don't know, don't care," he waved it off. "But youuu should be hereee! Everyone is here and we're—" hiccup "—having a loooot of fuuuuun! Wooo! Yeah, that's sick!" he laughed to himself. "That girl just jumped into the pool!" Hiccup. "Can you belie—" hiccup "—ve it? It's cold as fuck! That girl is fucking nuts!"
"I'm telling Mom," I threatened.
He giggled into the phone. "Don't you fucking—" hiccup, "—dare. "I already ruined Thanksgiving and broke her favorite china set today. She'd murder me."
"Why don't you go find someone who can drive you home?" I told him patiently. "It's two a.m. You shouldn't be out this late."
"But I don't know aaanyone, Hannah," he said in a tone that made me imagine him pouting as he spoke. "I need you to come and—and get me," he said.
"I'll call a cab for you?"
"No, no. I don't want—I'll throw up, I think. Is there even a cab around here at this hour? Please. I just need you." He sighed. "I'm so sleepy and so drunk and I want to sleep."
I sighed. "But I can't drive."
"Yesss you can!" he argued. "I taught you how! I've thought everything I know about driving a car and you're so good at it."
"I can't, Tony. You know I don't have a permit. What if I get stopped by a cop? Then mom will murder me.""
"But you know how to drive," he whined. "Please come here. I nee—I need you."
My voice softened. "I'll go get Leann, alright? She'll pick you up—"
"No! No! No!" he whined again, and I ran a hand down my face. "Please, Hannah. I need you. You. Not Leann. She's gunna talk a lot and her voice will hurt my head. You won't do that to me. I know you won't. You love me. Nobody else in the fucking house does. I only have you."
That's not true. I bit my lip and thought it over as Tony kept on rambling drunkenly over the phone. I closed my eyes and stood up, hating myself for what I was about to do. But he needed me, and he had always been there for me when I needed him, and this was the least I could do.
"Alright, I'll be there," I told him. "Just tell me where you are. The name of the street, or whatever. If you don't know where you are, I don't know where to go to get you."
"Mmm-kay," he replied. "Well the house is very huuuge and there's this pool. No one has a pool this big in their house. It's fucking sick!"
"Who's party is it?" I asked as I slipped into my hoodie.
"Dunno. Something like... San, Sav... Sebastian? No, not Sebastian. Sam? I don't know. The guy's fucking rich, that's all I know."
"Xavier Smith?" I offered.
"Yeah! Yeah, I think that's the name."
Because of course only that guy would throw a party on the night of Thanksgiving. That was good enough, though, because my best friend Gina actually lived just a few blocks away from the Smith's huge mansion. We always passed by that house whenever Mom would drop me off at Gina's. "Okay. I know where it is. Give me fifteen minutes, okay? Don't go anywhere."
I hung up the call and snuck downstairs, stealing my dad's car keys from the counter where he always left it. My heartbeat thumped with guilt when I started the car, hoping that everyone in the house was too deep in the dreamland to hear the noise.
I was doing this for Tony, and after everything he had always done for me, sneaking out of the house to help him felt like a small price to pay. Maybe I'd get yelled at, a little. But then I'd just have to grovel and my parents would forgive me. I hoped.
I drove through the darkness, very carefully, trying not to wimp out and turn around to get back home. I kept reminding myself that he needed me right now, and I didn't know what was wrong, but I knew I had to be there for him, even if he was stupid enough to get drunk. I loved him, but I always hated this habit he had. In the past few months, he had been partying and drinking harder than before, and I wished he would stop because I was afraid that something bad would happen because of it someday.
He was always my best friend, the closest family that I had. He understood me in ways that I didn't even understand myself, yet I never quite got him. Sometimes I wished he would tell me what was wrong, because I felt like it was unfair that he got to hear my sob stories about the guys who broke my heart while I didn't even get to know the slightest thing that went wrong in his life. He would say I was too young to understand his problems, even though we weren't that much far apart in age.
The blaring sound of the music could be heard from yards away, and I knew that I was at the right place. I immediately spotted Tony's familiar brown hair at the front porch of the house. He was slumped down against the wall, his head slightly bobbing up and down to the music, and I rushed out of the car to get him.
He looked up when he noticed me coming, and his eyes glazed drunkenly. "Han-nnnah!" he said, emphasizing on the "n" in my name. "You're heeere!"
I nodded and took a deep breath. "Yeah, I'm here." I bit my lip as I realized that he was completely wasted, and a part of me broke to know that he had to drown into alcohol to get away from whatever it was that was bugging his mind. "Let's go home."
He nodded obediently and tried to stand up, but failed as his legs wobbled. I crouched down to support half of his weight, grunting as I basically dragged him out of the party. "I'm so—" he sighed, "—tired." He immediately snuggled into the passenger's seat after throwing up on the ground, and I buckled the seatbelt for him after wiping his mouth with a tissue. "Thank you for being here."
"Anytime, Tony," I whispered to him, kissing him on the cheek. "Go to sleep. I'll drive carefully."
He nodded sleepily. "Okay." He opened his eyes again before I could close his door. "You're the bestest sister I ever have, Hannah. I love you"
I smiled. "Don't tell Leann," I sang, and he rolled his eyes before completely falling asleep almost in seconds. "I love you too," I told his sleeping figure, and then went into the driver's side of the car. I was calmer, now that he was with me, and that he was okay. Well, as okay as he could be, in this state.
I couldn't ignore the exhaustion I was feeling as I drove home. My eyes would get blurry at times, and I had to keep blinking to make sure that I wasn't falling asleep. It was so late. I wasn't used to staying up after bedtime.
I didn't want to think about what Mom and Dad would do once I got home—if they ever did notice that I was gone. But I looked at the guy who was sleeping soundly on the passenger's seat, and I told myself that being grounded would be worth it as long as he was safe with me.
I shook my head and slapped my face to wake myself up. It was only a fifteen-minute drive. I couldn't be falling asleep right now. We were almost there.
Suddenly, everything went wrong. My eyes went completely blurry as the sleep fought to pull me in, and I shook my head in attempt to regain my sight. I blinked. And—and then—
Everything that happened after that was hazy whenever I tried to remember. The only thing I remembered was knowing that I was about to crash into something, and that I didn't have much time to avoid the inevitable.
Then my hands were off the steering wheel, and I heard the loud, deafening sound of the crash at the exact time my body jerked forward from the impact of the hit. I remembered hearing a high-pitched scream—I think it was my own voice—and the warm blood running down my face, but the only thing I could think of was if Tony was alright, and there was an unbearable pain coursing through my body.
And then I felt nothing.
[]
I cried when I woke up two weeks later and realized that I couldn't feel half of my body.
They never fully told me what had happened, not until I started to remember bits of pieces, and even then, I couldn't completely remember everything. When I finally remembered what had happened two days after I woke up, and realized that Tony was never in the room, I went ballistic.
I asked them where he'd gone, everyday. Mom and Dad wouldn't tell me anything more than vague answers, and I couldn't stop crying until they told me where he was. My head was filled with the thought of me being a murderer, and that I had killed him, and I didn't even think about the fact that I could have gone paralyzed for the rest of my life.
I was mad, I was upset, and I was hurt when I realized that he wasn't coming and that nobody would explain why. Dark thoughts kept filling into my head, and nothing could describe what I was feeling when I realized that he was gone. Leann eventually gave in and whispered to me that Tony was alright, and that he was going away for a while until I get better. But months and later, even after I finally completed the therapy in success and started walking again, he still hadn't come back to see me.
He was gone, and he had left me alone.
I was angry at him for leaving me, but at the same time, I was angrier with myself for driving him away. I knew why he had left me—I had gotten us into a car accident, and he probably hated me for it. I felt guilty for the pain I had put him through while he had never did anything to hurt me before—I knew he was alive, but how badly injured was he when he left me? Was he paralyzed too? Did he go blind? Was he fine at all? Did he leave me, out of his free will? Or did something happen, and he couldn't get to me? I kept asking and asking, begging for anybody to explain. But I never got my answer.
I should've been more careful while driving. Better yet, I shouldn't have gone and driven by myself. I could've just told Leann or even Dad. I shouldn't have been driving.
I blamed everything I could've blame. I blamed myself for driving, I blamed Leann for not being the one Tony had called, I blamed my parents for making him upset, and I blamed everyone for keeping me in the dark about everything. They didn't understand how it felt for me. They just threw me into therapy sessions, hoping that the nightmares I was having would disappear and that I would forget about everything.
Tony was my best friend, my brother, and I felt lost without him by my side. I couldn't live with the thought of him hating me for what I had done that night.
But all my parents did was wave off all the questions I would ask, so I stopped asking at all. I played along, pretending that we had always been a family of five, ignoring the sixth chair that suddenly went missing from the dining table. I would bring it up occasionally, only to have them wave it off like they always did, and I tried not to let the thoughts of him consume me.
Until last night, when I finally found the address he had secretly wrote down for me all those years before, and right now, when all I could feel was the familiarity of his embrace, all I could hear was the voice I hadn't heard in forever, and all I could smell was him.