The Other Side(66)
You’re worth fighting for.
She doesn’t even know you.
You’re worth fighting for.
You’re incapable of being loved.
You’re worth fighting for.
You’re incapable of love.
You’re worth fight—
The world will be a better place when you’re not in it.
You’re wor—
You should kill yourself now and get it over with. You know your mom won’t show tomorrow. Stop lying to yourself.
You—
I knew you’d see things my way.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Present, June 1987
Toby
I’ve been awake for twenty-five hours. I couldn’t sleep. It seems when you know that years have turned into months, then days, and finally hours, your body refuses to shut down and forces you to face mortality head on. To dwell on it at length in the darkness, hyperawareness dawning that my life is now a series of final moments and events. I am a dead man walking. At six o’clock, I decide to get up and let the finality commence.
I thought there would be relief in knowing it’s almost over and that all I need to do is survive a few more hours, but the hopelessness and helplessness I’ve felt for two years has transformed. It’s gone from crushing to an entirely new level of pain.
I shower for the last time.
I shave for the last time.
I dress for the last time.
I brush my teeth for the last time.
Each task is done with a perpetual knot in my throat and tears streaming unchecked like the bullies they are. My traitorous face displays the telltale signs of sleeplessness, hours of unhinged crying. All-time high self-loathing reflects in my pathetic swollen, red eyes and blotchy cheeks like a pitiful billboard for all to see.
Slipping on my shoes, I grab the plastic bag with my cap and gown off the hook on the back of my bedroom door, toss a Sharpie in with them, and exit, unnecessarily padlocking my door. Thankful Johnny and Cliff are still sleeping. I cross the small space of the kitchen to the front door before backtracking three steps to snatch Johnny’s sunglasses off the counter. They don’t cover up the tears intermittently trailing down my cheeks, but they do conceal the train wreck in my eyes.
When I exit the Victorian on Clarkson, it’s only six thirty. Graduation doesn’t begin until noon. So, in a fog, I start walking. My feet are heavy, exhaustion adding what feels like fifty pounds to my frame. Progression of everything is slow: thoughts, movement, hindsight, foresight. I’m not sure where I’m going until my feet slow to a stop an hour later, and I’m standing outside the tiny house of horrors that takes a starring role in my nightmares. It looks different, like an old leather shoe that’s worn and cracked, but that someone’s taken a liking to and tried to polish with the hope of resurrection without actual repair. There’s a fresh coat of pale yellow paint glossed over the battered siding hiding the decades-old dirty, white paint that lives underneath. The eaves, shutters, and downspouts, though functionally and aesthetically worse for wear, are cloaked in bright white. The house looks optimistic, like the guise of a cheery fa?ade negates its history of sadness.
The longer I stare, the more the glamour of the makeover wilts. My vision blurs and memories emerge, drifting out from beneath the front door and drafty windows. They surround me—specters with swelling mass, hardened weight, and blame so sharp I would swear it’s piercing my skin. They’re crowding me, smothering. The sensation of claustrophobia peaking. My lungs constrict. It’s hard to breathe.
“I’m so sorry, Nina. I’m so sorry,” I whisper.
When the voices inside my head respond with a barrage of monstrous memories and truths, I drop to my knees and cover my ears to ward off the invasion. It doesn’t work. Each voice is distinct and loud, so very loud, one competing to be heard over the other. They’re the soundtrack to a macabre slideshow of Nina’s life leaking out in a river of red from the hole in her head.
Either you leave with me or you take this.
It’s all your fault, Toby!
My mom’s blame: He fucking killed my Nina!
If you weren’t such an asshole, maybe your mom could’ve loved you.
He’s hitting you.
Ken hit her. He. Hit. Her. And you let him, you little pussy. You’re worse than him.
Nina’s pleas: No, he’s not. I fell taking the trash out a few days ago.
You should’ve fought for her, not armed her.
My mom’s declaration: If you thought a gun was such a goddamn good idea, you should’ve just used it on yourself!
You should’ve never been born. Think of all the devastation that could’ve been avoided if you’d never been born.
My mom’s wish: It should’ve been you, Toby!
It should’ve been you, Toby!
It should’ve been me. It should’ve been me. It should’ve been me. It should’ve been me. It should’ve been me, until everything else is a cacophony of blended angry white noise beneath the incessant bloodcurdling scream of my own persecution. With each iteration, something I already believed to be true morphs into a desperate need to make it reality immediately. Solutions to end this flash interlaced between the nonstop visions of Nina lying on the floor bleeding out: stepping out in front of a bus, jumping off an overpass into highway traffic, hanging myself in the basement of the Victorian on Clarkson.