All We Can Do Is Wait(58)

And then the world fell apart.

Alexa was startled out of these thoughts by the sound of a voice, calm and quiet as it was. She looked up and there was Morgan, a concerned, nervous look on her face. “Hey. Alexa? You O.K.?”

Alexa’s mouth was dry, her eyes felt itchy. “Yeah. Thanks. I’m fine. How’s . . .” She looked around the room but didn’t see Scott.

“Oh. He went to the bathroom. I think he’s throwing up.”

“I don’t blame him,” Alexa murmured.

Morgan sat down next to her, pulled her sleeves over her hands. “I shouldn’t have said that to him. About not deserving to be here. That was . . .”

“You didn’t know. And I was mad too. He lied to us.”

“Yeah.”

They sat in conflicted silence—guilty, sad, scared, exhausted—for a minute. Morgan kept picking at the safety pins on her sweatshirt.

“He’s hurting, you know,” Morgan finally said.

“Of course he is. His girlfriend—his ex-girlfriend, whatever—just died.”

“Scott, yeah, but I mean your brother. Jason. He’s . . . hurting.”

Alexa was confused. Why was Morgan telling her this? How did she know anything about Jason?

“What?”

Likely hearing the pointedness in Alexa’s voice, Morgan stuttered out an explanation. “I just mean, he’s worried about your parents, obviously. But also . . . I don’t know. You should talk to him. I think he’s pretty messed up.”

The sadness and tiredness Alexa had been feeling suddenly drained and all she felt was an anger, a raging, roiling kind of anger that propelled her out of her seat.

“I’m sorry, what?” she yelped at Morgan, who jumped back in her chair, maybe not expecting this from Alexa, at least not in this moment of grief and shock. “I should talk to him? Do you have any idea—no, of course you don’t. We just met you. I have no idea who you are. What did he tell you? What did he say to you?”

Morgan stammered, “I just meant, I didn’t—”

Alexa wasn’t really listening to her. It didn’t matter what she said, it wasn’t Morgan’s fault. She was just trying to help. But watching Aimee’s parents, and remembering Kyle’s mother, how sad, on a bone-deep level, she’d been at the memorial service, how it was clear her life would never recover, and then to have Morgan say that Alexa should talk to Jason, after he’d essentially gone mute when Kyle died, too scared to deal with Alexa’s emotions, to help her in any way, to be the brother she needed and, fuck it, deserved, was enough to send Alexa over the edge.

She scanned the room for her brother, spotting him by the little water bubbler, handing a cup to Skyler, then taking a sip of his own, slow like he was drugged, face so annoyingly expressionless despite everything happening around him.

Alexa strode toward him, running high on the fuel of her shock at what Morgan had said. When Jason saw her coming, he lowered his water cup. Skyler gave her a small wave, her face falling as she saw that Alexa was clearly in some sort of rage.

“What did you say to Morgan?” Alexa demanded of her brother. He blinked, confused. “What?”

“To Morgan. What have you been telling her about your poor, sad life?”

“Alexa, I—” Jason started. But he stopped himself, frowning in resignation. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“Because she seems to be under the impression that you’re in some great pain that I need to talk to you about. That I need to, like, give you therapy or something. Which is weird, don’t you think? Considering you haven’t really done a single thing to be there for me, to help me, today, or for, I don’t know, the past fucking year.”

Jason gave her the same blank look, the zooming out in his eyes, the unmoored, indifferent detachment that had broken her heart so many times, confused her so much, since Kyle died. But now it was making her furious, desperate to shake her brother awake and make him be her brother again.

“I mean, Jason, do you even understand what is happening here? What happened today? Do you understand that that girl is dead, that Mom and Dad are probably dead? Because I have been walking around with this alone, Jason. Alone. And I am so tired of it. I am so tired of wanting you back, and hating you, and wanting you back, and hating you.”

Her brother was trembling now. He brushed a piece of hair from his eyes. “I’m here. I mean, I’m here, right now.”

“No you’re not!” Alexa screamed. “No you’re not. You haven’t been here in a long, long time, Jason. And I just want to know why. That’s all I want you to tell me. I just want to know why you’ve been ignoring me, why you refuse to acknowledge that something really shitty happened to me last summer. That something really bad is happening to us right now. You’re my older brother. You’re supposed to help me. You’re supposed to . . .”

“I’m supposed to what, Alexa? Magically make you feel better? I can’t do that. How many times do I have to tell you that? I don’t know what you want from me!”

“I want you to be a fucking human being for once! You’re like a robot. Do you feel anything? Aren’t you scared? Aren’t you sad? This stranger,” Alexa yelled, pointing to Morgan and immediately feeling bad for doing it, “tells me that you’re all ‘messed up.’ What does that even mean? Who are you, Jason? Honestly, who are you? You know, Kyle always thought that—”