The Silent Sister(30)

I couldn’t believe he was talking this way. Saying so much.

“You were my best friend,” I said.

He dropped the needles. Rubbed his hands over his denim-covered knees. “I have this nightmare that comes and goes,” he said. “It sucks. It’s the worst one.”

“Do you want to tell—”

“I thought it was about Iraq.” He interrupted me, lost in his own thoughts. “But now I don’t know, because Mom is in it. She’s always in it. Always screaming.”

I watched the muscles around his jaw tighten and release as I waited for him to say more, but he was done talking about his dream.

“Suicide is the coward’s way out.” He picked up a twig, playing with it between his fingers. “I mean, I feel for the vets who do it, and I get it. It becomes too much for them to carry around. Maybe they don’t have a place like this to escape to.”

I wasn’t sure what he meant by “a place like this.” Then I realized he was talking about this small patch of pine forest. His haven. I was touched that he’d allowed me to be there with him.

“So you don’t have to worry about me and suicide, all right?” He glanced at me. “I know you do.”

I was afraid of breaking the spell of warmth that had fallen over us, yet maybe I could take advantage of his mood to delve deeper.

“I do worry,” I admitted. “I know you’re depressed. If you’d stay on your medications, I think you’d be—”

“I’m not depressed.”

Like hell, I thought. “How would you define your feelings, then? What do you—”

“I’m pissed off, is what I am!” He broke the twig in two between his fingers. The sound it made was barely audible, yet it made me jump.

“Who are you pissed off at?” I asked.

“Who am I not pissed off at would be a shorter answer,” he said. “Our f*cking government, for one. The shitty things they made me do over there. Made me…” He gave an angry shake of his head. “You don’t even see people as human beings after a while when you’re there, you know?” he said. “And I’m pissed at our parents. Our lying prick of a father and our ice queen of a mother. And our selfish bitch of a sister!” His face was red and damp with sweat, his breathing loud. “She took up all the air in our family. There was nothing left for anyone else.”

“But,” I said carefully, “did you ever stop to think of what it was like for her, growing up?” I asked. “The pressure on her?”

“Hell, no!” His anger shattered the sacred feel of the woods. “Nobody ever forced her to play the violin. Nobody told her to kill her f*cking teacher. Everything was handed to her on a silver platter and she took it all for herself!”

I ran my fingers through the pine needles. I could hear his hard, fast breathing and I made my voice as calm as I could to counter his rage. “I try to understand why people do what they—”

“Shut up with the counselor voice, okay?” he said. “I hate when you do that!”

I was stunned. “I’m only trying to—”

“You turn into some automaton, like you’re programmed to say all this fake, warm, fuzzy shit that has nothing to do with reality.” He looked at me, his face flushed. “You went to school for what? Five years? Six years? And then you think you’re equipped to pick at people’s heads when you haven’t even lived in the real world yet? Maybe you can manage a thirteen-year-old. Fourteen-year-old. But you are way the hell out of your league when it comes to me, little sister.”

I felt as though he’d picked up his shotgun and smashed the stock of it into my stomach. “Danny.” I wasn’t sure what else to say, the hurt I felt was so intense.

“You don’t get me at all, okay?” He grabbed the shotgun as he jumped to his feet, sending my heartbeat into the stratosphere. He looked down at me, the pale blue of his eyes ice-cold. He leaned over so those angry eyes were no more than two feet away from me. “It’s not my mind that’s sick, Riley,” he said. “It’s my soul. And there aren’t any drugs that are going to fix that.”

He turned and walked back into the woods, his stride long and quick despite the limp, and I let out my breath in relief. I waited a moment, trembling, then got to my feet and followed him at a distance, my legs rubbery. I didn’t want to catch up to him—I couldn’t possibly talk with him right now after that outburst—but I needed to keep him in my line of sight. I would never be able to find my way out of the woods alone. Thank God for his red T-shirt! My eyes burned as I followed it from a distance, and I was crying before I realized it. I ached from the sting of his cutting words. Had he thought that little of me all along? Like I was nothing more than an undereducated charlatan with a “fake counselor voice”? Not only did I feel as though I’d just lost my brother, it seemed I’d never had him to begin with.

I thought about all he’d said as I followed him through the pines from a safe distance. I couldn’t imagine what it was like to be Danny. To grow up with parents who told you your memories were crazy. Then to be commanded to do things—maybe torture people? Maybe kill them?—against your will. Against your values.

Maybe he was right. Maybe I was way out of my league. I’d been a terrific student—I hadn’t wasted a moment of my time in school—and I knew plenty about healing the troubled mind.