Underwater(29)

My dad still isn’t the same. And neither am I. He is in a psychiatric lockdown facility against his own will. I stay locked up in an apartment.

I have pathetic DNA.

So when Evan knocks on my door a little after four p.m.—I know it’s him because he calls my name through the wood—I can’t let him in.

He keeps knocking.

He calls my name once more.

I sit perfectly still.

I stay that way until he leaves.





chapter twenty

Evan knocks at the door every fifteen minutes. He calls my name and jiggles the metal knob. He texts me messages I don’t read. I’ve turned the sound off on my phone, but I can hear the vibration against the countertop as his texts come through. When the evening comes, he’s outside my door again. He sounds panicked by now. I haven’t turned any lights on. I haven’t turned on the TV. The curtains are closed. I haven’t made a single sound. I’ve just lain still on the floor in the living room for two hours. Shadows slip silently, hitting my feet and then my ankles. Next my calves and my knees. My stomach. My chest. My eyes.

I can hear Evan outside when my mom and Ben come home just after six p.m. He calls to my mom and she comes bounding up the stairs. I can hear the boom boom of her feet skipping steps. I can hear her keys in the lock. She bursts through the door and drops the mail in front of her feet. She looks everywhere and finally at the floor.

She finds me.

She rushes over.

She hovers above me, squinting.

She whispers my name.

She kneels down at my side.

I don’t have words for her. I don’t have explanations. But when she puts her hands on my cheeks, I know she thinks I might be dead. She lifts me up into her arms, holding me to her chest when she sees I’m still as here as I can be.

Ben is watching us. He’s fidgeting. I can tell he’s scared. I feel guilty for letting him see me this way.

“Evan,” my mom says gently, “can you take Ben next door for a little bit?”

Evan doesn’t move at first. He only stares down at me, and I know he’s trying to figure out what he thinks about this other side of me. And that makes me wish I’d never told him anything. I wish I’d never opened the door and let him in. Because what I can see right now is the thing I never wanted: he pities me.

“Evan, please,” my mom says.

“Yeah, sure. Right. Come on, buddy.” Evan nudges Ben’s shoulder and pulls him through the front door.

“What happened?” my mom asks me, reaching over to turn on the light.

I lie down again, flat against the floor. I run my hands across the carpet. I tell her about the phone call. I tell her where my dad is. I tell her what I realized.

“I’m going to be exactly like him.”

“No. You’re not.” She says the words like they’re nonnegotiable, like brushing my teeth or eating leafy green vegetables. “That’s why we have Brenda. I won’t let that happen to you.”

“But I’m trying. I’m trying so hard. And I can barely get out the front door.”

“Don’t you see? You’ve taken the first step forward. Your dad is only taking steps backward. Everyone, all of us, we want to help him. He doesn’t want it. You can’t help someone who doesn’t want help. I tried to tell that to your grandma when she called the other night. She’s just a mom who wants her son to be okay. I get it. But he doesn’t want help.” My mom pushes my hair off my face. “You want help, right? You want to get better.” She asks me like she needs me to say it. Like she needs me to confirm it for her own peace of mind.

“Yeah,” I say.

And I do want to get better. I want it in a way that makes it feel like a necessity. I just don’t know how to get there. What I’m doing doesn’t seem like enough.

*

Later that night, my mom plunks Ben into the bath and scrubs his head clean with his apple-scented shampoo.

I hear him through the wall.

“Morgan’s gonna come to my play, right, Mom? She’s coming, right?”

I can tell my mom is scooping water into a big cup and pouring it over Ben’s head because I can hear him sputtering against the bubbles. He does that when they run down his face, too close to his mouth.

“She’ll try her best, Benjamin.”

“She better come.”

I sink into my pillow and scrub my fists against my eyelids. I try to picture myself at Ben’s play in six weeks. I want to go, but the idea seems absurd. It really does. He can never know that.

“Why was Morgan on the floor?” Ben asks.

“She had a long day.”

“I think she was tired.”

“Yeah, she probably was.”

“She should’ve gone to bed.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you think she’s sick?”

“She’s fine. She’ll be fine.”

*

The screen on my cell phone lights up after Ben is asleep and our room is dark.

Evan: What’s going on? Talk to me.

Me: Not now.

Evan: Seriously? What the hell, Morgan?

His annoyance shouts at me in the dark.

I delete his message.

I shut off the phone.

I shove it into the drawer of my nightstand.