All This Time(15)

“Our brains are magnificent machines,” Dr. Benefield adds, closing the iPad. “They’ll do whatever it takes to protect us from pain, whether that’s physical or emotional. There’s nothing wrong with yours that time won’t heal. Okay?”

To protect us from pain? How is seeing my dead girlfriend protecting me from pain?

She looks at me until I comply with a nod, then pulls out a prescription pad and a pen and scribbles on a page before ripping it off and holding it out to me.

I take it from her, looking down at her handwriting. I expect to see a gibberish prescription name, but instead it says: Chill out. It’s not really happening.

Great.

“Kyle,” she says, and I look back up, meeting her no-nonsense gaze. “The visions you’re having, they’re not real, okay? They’ll fade when you’re ready. I promise. But for now, when they happen, you take out that prescription. Read it, remember it, believe it.”

I nod, but her words don’t reassure me. Fade? What happens when even this last trace of Kim fades? When I see her, I feel crazy, which sucks, but I also see her. And I’m not ready to lose that.



* * *




After we get back home, my mom heads to work. I pour myself a bowl of Lucky Charms and slide into a spot at the kitchen table. For a while it’s just the sound of my noisy crunching, but then I swear I hear a muffled voice, the words difficult to make out. I pause, the spoon halfway to my mouth, my ears straining.

“Mom?” I call out, my voice echoing around the empty house. Did she forget something? I listen harder and realize the sound seems to come from below. My pocket.

When I pull my phone out, noise is crackling through the speaker. Oh man. Who did I butt dial?

“… Sam,” the voice says as I lift the phone to my ear, the words finally becoming clear enough to hear. I open my mouth to respond, but he keeps going. It’s a voice mail. “I don’t even know if you’re going to hear this, but I gotta tell you, I’m scared. And before you laugh, asswipe, I’m serious. You’re scaring us.”

The voice mail cuts off and the screen lights up, showing the string of other unheard messages.

I stare at my phone in the palm of my hand. My thumb lingers over the green call button so long that the screen goes dark. I swallow hard, then shove the phone back into my pocket.

It isn’t until after I’ve finished my cereal, cleaned off the couch in the basement, filled an entire trash bag with food wrappers, cleared out all the dishes and glasses from next to my bed, and done every conceivable chore I can think of that I have the balls to call him back.

The phone rings for so long I’m not even sure he’ll pick up, rightfully pissed at me after my months of ignoring him.

But he’s Sam, so even though I don’t deserve it, he answers.



* * *




Sam drains his whiskey, then picks up the flask to peer at it, his face curious. I watch him, taking in the tired look around his dark eyes, the patchy five-o’clock shadow that I’ve literally never seen on his face.

Normally, I’d tease him about it, but he’s been all one-word answers since he got here fifteen minutes ago, no matter what I say.

My conversational skills are clearly tanking hard after an entire summer alone.

“What, uh, made you decide to stick around here?” I ask, nodding to the blue-and-gray T-shirt he’s wearing, from the local community college. I know he got into a few state schools, so I’m not sure what exactly changed his mind.

He raises one of his eyebrows at me, and I see something I’ve only rarely seen in our lifetime of being friends.

Mad Sam.

“Things haven’t exactly been rainbows and sunshine for me, dude. One of my best friends died and the other dropped off the face of the earth,” he says. After a beat, his expression softens. “I had no idea what was going on with you. I had to keep checking with your mom.”

I take a long sip of the whiskey, my throat burning, but it helps the words come easier. “I’m sorry, Sam,” I say.

And I am. But I owe it to him to be honest.

“I know I was a shitty friend, but I just… couldn’t. I couldn’t be around you. I couldn’t be around anybody. Sometimes I think maybe I still can’t.”

I feel his eyes appraising me. “You look like shit,” he says finally, gesturing to my wrinkled shirt, overgrown hair, weirdly curly beard.

I shrug, not particularly caring what I look like. Kimberly isn’t here to see me. She was always the one who’d tell me that I looked like an animal if I wore sweats to school. That maybe there were clothes other than gym shorts. What does it matter now if I shave or brush my hair or wear a clean shirt? What did it matter then, if my ass was always going to end up here?

“Well.” Sam sighs, and the last of his anger seems to roll off his shoulders. “I’m glad we didn’t lose you, too, even if you do look like shit,” he says as he tips the flask in his hand and pours more into his glass.

He grins and nods to the flask. “How’d this make it through customs?”

“Found it in the bags from the hospital,” I say, nodding to the closet where my mom moved everything after disposing of my bloody and tattered suit. “Mom must’ve missed it.”

I know I could take the out. Keep the conversation here on whiskey and bullshit. But his words are still in my ears. Something about them feels wrong.