A World Without You(59)

Dr. Franklin nods his head.

“I was just . . .” I struggle to find the right words. “I was really glad that my dad didn’t have any guns in the house, that my mom always insisted on that. But I wondered when he would go to his friend Lee’s house, and if Lee’s dad had a gun, if maybe that’s all it would take for Bo to . . . you know.”

“You think Bo might have shot someone at school?” Dr. Franklin asks, his voice lowering a notch.

“No! No,” I say, shaking my head vigorously. “That would take a lot of planning and, you know, rage, and . . . Bo isn’t really violent,” I say. “I don’t think he’d actually do something. But if the opportunity was there . . .” I swallow, hard. “I don’t know. I mean, he didn’t. I just think . . . maybe he could have. Maybe. And if he ever did, he probably wouldn’t have even meant to do it. There are just times when he’s not himself.” I take a deep breath. “How horrible am I, to think that my own brother might do something like that?”

“How horrible for you to have lived with that fear,” Dr. Franklin says.

He doesn’t understand. It’s not like that. Bo isn’t a bad person. “It’s just that he would . . . flip, so easily, between calm and angry, and there were moments when those two feelings would collide.”

“What do you mean?”

“When the calm and the rage became one thing for him,” I say. “That was when it was scary. When he was both really calm and cold but also full of rage.”

“Did you see that often?”

The doctor’s pen scratches across his notepad. I wish I hadn’t said anything. Bo’s different now; Berkshire Academy has helped him to be different. He had only been so full of anger because he saw the world in such a different way. Most people look at the world in black and white, even if they say they don’t. You like someone or you don’t; you agree with an opinion or you don’t. Bo was never like that, never. He always saw things from a different angle. Like an artist who sees the shapes and colors and shading of an object, but who doesn’t always see the object itself. That’s how Bo looked at the world. He looked at it as a chance, not a done deal. He would get angry when things couldn’t change, when people wouldn’t change, even if they could.

That’s why he butted heads with Dad so much. Dad is an immovable force. He goes in one direction, straight ahead. He can’t handle a kid who doesn’t do that, who sees so many different paths, some of them going sideways or backward. Who doesn’t accept that things are the way they are.

Bo never really liked school—at least not until Berkshire Academy—and that was usually what he and Dad fought about. Bo would stay in bed as long as possible, until Dad started waking him up by dumping ice water on him, something that always ended with shouting.

“I don’t see the point,” Bo would yell at him, sweeping ice cubes from his bed.

“The point,” Dad snarled, “is to get a diploma. And then go to college. And then get a job.” He said this like it was the most obvious thing in the world, just like two and two equals four.

“But I don’t want any of that!” Bo protested.

And Dad never, ever believed him. Because not wanting diploma-college-job was like not wanting to eat, not wanting to breathe, not wanting to live.

“My grandmother understood him,” I say without meaning to actually speak the words aloud. But now that they hang in the air between us, I keep talking. “My grandmother understood Bo better than anyone. She could always calm him.” I’m careful with my words now, careful not to say how jealous that made me.

Adults lie. They lie about how they love children equally. They never do. They love children differently, and the difference is so broad that equality is not even in the picture. My parents, for example, love me for my obedience. They love me for my academics and my ambition and the possibilities of what I could do and be in the future. They love Bo for who he is now, for the quiet, calm moments, and they hold on to that, not sure if it will continue.

Grandma loved Bo in an absolute and whole way. She accepted him entirely, but I grew to distrust her unconditional love. Because my grandmother never loved me that way. She loved me because I never gave her a reason not to. I had been the behaved, well-mannered child who was respectful and kind, but I was very aware that my grandmother’s attitude toward me was based on those actions. Bo, on the other hand, could do or be anything, and Grandma loved him just the same.

Maybe more.

“When she died, that’s when Bo’s problems got worse,” I say now. “That’s how he ended up here.”

“Bo has talked about his grandmother a few times. He considers her home his ‘safe place.’”

He would. I never liked going to that house. It was old and dark and smelled of stale cigarette smoke. But Bo loved it.

“Thank you,” Dr. Franklin says. “You’ve been really helpful. Bo has had some troubles here lately, and I’ve struggled to connect with him. I thought I’d established trust with him, but he seems to be closing himself off from me more and more.”

I raise an eyebrow. It doesn’t seem like using me to rat on him would make Bo trust the doctor more, but I’m not the professional.

“But I also want you to know that I’m here for you too,” Dr. Franklin adds. He slides his card across the desk toward me. “I want you to feel free to talk to me at any time.”