Simon
I'm not in the mood for a long car ride, especially a long car ride no one will give me a concrete reason for. Every time I ask, Noah, Val, and Larry all look away. Out the window or at their laps or wherever my face isn't. There's something they're not telling me, but in retrospect it doesn't matter, because I'm pretty sure I already know.
Hours pass. We leave Boston and the roads get emptier and longer and wider. A headache starts at the back of my head and spreads like a cancer through my entire skull. When I start to shake again, Noah stops the car and lets the seizure run its course. It's not a seizure, not really, but I don't have another name for it and my head hurts too much to think of one. My vision blurs, and for a second I forget where the hell we're even going. I ask Val, beside me, "Wait, when did we get in the car?"
"Two hours ago," Val says, questioning. "We're another sixty or so miles from Marwick, remember? I just told you that a few minutes ago."
"Oh."
Out of the corner of my eye I notice Larry watching us in the rearview. When he catches my gaze he looks away instantly, and though I want to scream at him, just yell at him to spit it out, I can't find the strength to.
The gas stations start to grow worryingly sparse, so Noah makes a quick pit stop. He hops out to fill the tank. Larry gets out to go the bathroom, practically stomping into the convenience store. Val is asleep on my shoulder; it's two o'clock in the afternoon, I realize, which is when she always hits her energy slump. I sigh and guide her down to my lap, resting her head on my thigh. She stirs and blinks up at me, opening her mouth to speak.
"It's okay," I say, stroking her cheek. She smiles and closes her eyes again. "Go ahead. Go to sleep."
"Mhm," she murmurs, rolling onto her side and pressing her face into my stomach. "Don't mind if I do."
A moment later her face is slack with unconsciousness, and I chuckle softly. I have always been impressed by her ability to fall asleep literally anywhere. Even in the cramped backseat of Noah's jalopy.
Outside, I hear a voice, emphatic but quiet, like it's trying not to be heard. A second later, I realize it's Noah's. He's leaning against the window, so I can only see the front of his Chuck Norris T-shirt, but just from the way he sounds, I can see the frown on his face.
"No, I—Dad, calm down. Please? I promise that Larry and I have got this under control. Don't you trust me?"
Silence.
"I know," he says then. "I know. Me too. Everything's going to be fine. We'll be there in half an hour, probably—can you just do me a favor? Yeah. Don't tell Abbie."
Don't tell Abbie?
Don't tell Abbie what?
"Okay. I'll see you soon. Love you, Dad."
Noah's hand lowers as he slides his phone back into his pocket. He turns to finish up with the gas and I swivel my head around, trying not to look like I was eavesdropping when I was very obviously eavesdropping.
The car door clicks open, letting in a wave of cool air. It's not as frigid as it was this morning back in Boston, but it's certainly not warm, either. Noah pokes his head in; he's chewing on a toothpick I don't remember him retrieving. His gold eyes land on Val. "Aw," he says, smiling, toothpick and all. "The princess sleeps."
I move one of her locs out of her face; she curls further against me, grasping at my shirt. "I would be tired, too," I whisper. "If the roles were flipped."
"Hm," Noah says, then rustles around in his pocket for something. He recovers a small tin and pops the lid off with his thumb, revealing the origin of the toothpick between his teeth. "Mint-flavored toothpick, brother mine?"
"I'll pass."
Noah shrugs and slips the tin back into his pocket. He looks up toward the convenient store's doors, which Larry is just now tossing open. Seemingly prepared enough for the short remainder of our trip, Noah slides back behind the wheel, pulling the door shut beside him as he does. "By the way."
"By the way...?"
"I showed Val your journal collection."
"You—" A cold feeling spreads through me that I can only really describe as the physical sensation of oh shit. "You did what now?"
"Shh! Don't yell!" Noah says. He jabs his thumb in Val's direction. "You'll wake Sleeping Beauty."
I am not done with this subject; I, in fact, am far from done with this subject, but I don't get to say anything else about it before Larry jumps back into the passenger seat and thumps the ceiling above him with his fingers. "Step on it, cousin," he orders. Noah gladly puts the car back in drive. "I really want to get this homecoming over with."
Noah has barely stopped the car when the front doors fly open and my parents and Rose come spilling out onto the circular drive. It's almost like it was the last time we saw them, when it was Great Granny Etta's birthday, except they're a lot more frantic. If they're trying to hide their concern, they are doing a monstrously bad job of it.
Larry climbs slowly from the passenger seat, his mouth pressed into a firm line. I notice Dad eyeing him with a frown, his eyebrows pulled low over his eyes. "Larry," Dad says, cautiously.
"Hank," Larry says, just as cautiously. He's never called my parents Uncle Hank or Aunt Mary, probably because the age difference between his mother and my dad is so great that Larry is, in fact, about the same age as my parents. "It's been a while since I've been here. Your home is lovely as ever."
Dad's eyes grow narrower. "Thank you."
Everything seems to happen at once. Mom crashes into Noah and shakes his shoulders and though I can't exactly hear her, she seems to be interrogating him about something. Val leans to look out the window, turns back to me, and says, "You didn't tell me you were rich." I start to tell her that I'm not, exactly, but then Rose comes around and throws open the back door. "Can you stand?" she asks, holding out her arm.
"What? Of course I can. Just—" I'm stunned, however, when I stand to step out of the car and stars explode in front of my eyes and my balance falters. The ground seems closer than it was a second ago. A headache surges at my temples again; I stagger forward into Rose's arms. "Oh."
She pats my head gently. "Oh, precious. Oh, it's alright. Let's get you inside, okay?"
I want to tell her to stop calling me that—precious—like I'm still the little boy she snuck extra hot chocolate to in the winter ("All the whip on top, just like you like it!"), like I'm still the kid who hugged her fiercely whenever she brought home classic book collections for me. I want to tell Noah and Mom and Larry and Dad and even Val to stop looking at me like that. Eyes round and shiny, mouths parted.
They're looking at me like I'm about to die.
For a second, it feels like someone else's story. I'm an old man, maybe, or perhaps just a sick young man—weathered after years of battle with an illness no one could name, let alone cure. My body's heavy, my mind is fading. I've come to the place where I was raised to say goodbye to it all, finally. To say my last words. To close my eyes. To take that wavering, final breath. It feels like it's happening to someone else. This makes the sudden realization that it isn't all the more terrifying.
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.