Page 41 of A Summer to Save Us

“I remember that I often used to wander aimlessly around our house. Sometimes, it felt like a labyrinth where I had to find a treasure. I was always searching for something. My parents were often out and about with their famous friends who were judges, lawyers, and politicians. Even when they were home, they were emotionally miles away. My brother and I had countless nannies, but none stayed longer than a month. Materially, we had everything, Tucks.” He swallows, and my heart flutters with pity because he seems so abandoned and alone.

“I had three playrooms, a movie room, and a bedroom that was bigger than other people’s properties.

We had freshwater and saltwater pools, gyms, and tennis courts, but I was always alone. ”

What about your brother? I ask with a lump in my throat.

River laughs hard. “My parents didn’t want my behavior to rub off on my brother, so I wasn’t allowed to play with him often...Tucks.” His voice lowers and darkens. “I was so angry. As angry as you saw me yesterday but over little things. It scared my controlling, perfect parents.”

He’s silent for a moment, then kicks a lava stone down the hill.

Anger is reflected on his face. “Sometimes, I wish they had hit me. Honestly. At least that would have been a real emotion. Instead, they punished me with silence and coldness.” We exchange a look, and my heart sinks.

Because I’m also silent, but I don’t want to appear cold.

River seems to read my mind, because he shakes his head like I shouldn’t worry about it.

“My father and mother sometimes didn’t talk to me for weeks if I did something wrong.

When I was twelve, I started having tantrums that came out of nowhere.

I broke things, and once, I tore a Picasso off the wall and impaled it on the awful silver-plated antlers in my parents’ bedroom. ” He laughs, but it sounds sad.

I imagine little River wandering around a huge mansion, lonely and adrift, looking for closeness and a hug. Standing lost in front of a mountain of toys, not knowing what to do with them. How he gets angry in his mess of emotions.

I think you were desperate and lonely.

He nods, but it seems to take a lot for him to admit it.

“I fell in with the wrong people, did cocaine, drank too much, and partied too hard. I stole from my parents and threw forbidden parties when they were out of the house.” He shakes his head.

“The drugs helped me keep my balance. If I was feeling bad, they dulled that emptiness. If I felt like I didn’t know where to go because of all the energy, they would bring me down. ”

I see him standing on the line in front of me, Jack Daniel’s in his hand. To come down , my memory whispers.

He looks at me again, but this time, there’s something different in his expression. “For a while, I found solace in music. My friend had a guitar, and it turned out I was... good.”

Your energy vibrates like a damn guitar string , he once said to me. I’m sure you were more than good , I write.

His smile is almost shy, and that just makes me love him even more. “Well, I was okay.”

I giggle, and he punches me on the upper arm. I notice that the worst bruise from Kensington no longer hurts.

River runs his hands through his hair. “Seriously. Music gave me something I never found at home. A home. Do you know that?”

Beautiful words , I write, and he nods as if it were clear as day.

“As my grades continued to slip, my parents banned my music. They even had me monitored at home.”

I shake my head in disbelief.

“They took away the only thing that meant anything to me. They said if I continued making music, I wouldn’t be allowed to see my brother at all.”

How cruel.

“Hey, that was a long time ago.” Again, he interpreted my look correctly.

Regardless, that was terrible. It was extortion.

River glances at his hands. “They said music was a dead-end job and for losers. They wanted me to be a doctor or a lawyer. I don’t know what happened back then; I probably drank too much, did too much coke, and felt abandoned by everyone...Anyway...” He doesn’t continue.

And only now, as he stares at them, do I notice the fine white lines on his arms. They travel up from his wrists and disappear under his shirt.

I feel like I’m under anesthesia while awake. They’re cuts, clearly. Why didn’t I notice them before? Was I too busy letting him save me? How could I be so blind to him and his problems?

“You see, Tucks, your silence? Now it’s a whisper,” he says softly, stroking my cheek with his knuckles. Reflexively, I hold his hand and press it to my face, but actually, this gesture is merely pushing back my unnoticed tears.

“I didn’t want to kill myself, not back then.

” His fingers are cool, and my cheek is hot.

I want so badly to give him what he needs.

I know what it feels like to be abandoned by someone, to be alone with no way out.

As if in a daze, I let go of his hand and trace the scars with two fingers up to the sleeve of his shirt, where they disappear.

“That’s not all of them,” he says, answering the question only my fingers asked.

I let go of him for a moment because I want to write something. How did you do it? With what?

Is that why he asked me for a blade in front of the toilet?

River turns one corner of his mouth up in a mocking smile. “With a sinfully expensive amphora vase that I had hurled against the wall. Damn sharp shards. Belonged to my mother. Estimated to be worth six thousand dollars—pretty expensive fun.”

How can he joke about that? He hurt himself. Intentionally. I mean, I also inflicted wounds on my hand, but it was never out of choice; it was simply a stress reaction. God, how can you voluntarily hurt yourself like that?

“The pain helped, as did the alcohol. Whenever the chaos or emptiness inside me became too great, it kept me in the here and now. It took away the madness, my mind’s restlessness, just as it filled the emptiness.”

It brought you down, I mouth, and River closes his eyes for a second because he understands that I understand.

“My parents put me in St. Benedict after that. It’s a boarding school for troubled young people.

.. My mother almost freaked out when she found me covered in blood.

I even smiled at her. Of course, she thought I was trying to provoke her, but I thought it was so crazy.

.. she finally had a real reaction. I was fourteen at the time. ”

How bad it must have been for him to grow up in such a sterile home. I mean, okay, Mom left and Dad and I never had established a base, but I still had Arizona and James. At least until a year ago. And Dad probably never would have sent me away, either.

Maybe your parents wanted to protect you from yourself.

“Above all, they wanted to protect their good name. They’d always locked me away before when they had parties.

Apparently, I had a ‘migraine that was difficult to control.’ When I went to boarding school, they told their friends that I was going to a gifted school in Europe.

In Switzerland, I think.” River snorts. For the first time, I understand where the anger in him comes from and what the rebelliousness in him means. He is a lost boy.

You said you haven’t seen your parents in years. What happened?

“A lot of things.” He smiles, but his eyes reflect something darker and heavier than anything else before. “A lot of beautiful things, and then a lot of terrible things.... the butterfly effect.”

The butterfly effect—a butterfly flaps its wings and triggers a tsunami on the other side of the world .

“I won everything and lost it again in the blink of an eye.” He stares off into the distance again, and when he looks at me, a black crane is sitting in his hand. He holds it out to me. “I met a girl.”

From one second to the next, I feel ice-cold. Still alive for you .

June . I point toward his shoulder.

“Clever girl.” He nods. “I met her at St. Benedict. She was everything, Tucks. She was my answer to life.”

And you are mine, I think. If there was one question I asked about life at Old Sheriff, it was what it had to offer me other than the everyday pain.

What happened to June and you? I ask, even though I’m afraid of the answer. Because one thing is clear: whatever happened, he loved June more than anything in the world. Maybe loved her too much; I can’t really be jealous if it affects him like that.

River looks intently at the origami bird in his hand. “She left me. I can’t talk about it without wanting to jump. Do you understand?”

Yes and no. How could I, if he hasn’t told me anything?

He tugs on the paper wing. “Short story for what came next: I was kicked out of boarding school and lived on the streets. When I was seventeen and a half, I went to New Orleans and met Zozoo, Sam, and Jasper. We made music. No, we numbed ourselves with music, playing our hearts out at night until dawn. That was my answer to everything that happened.”

I turn my book upside down and write on the last page: Because I can’t sleep, I make music at night .

River reads the sentence aloud and raises his eyebrows.

“Nobody knows Rumi these days, Tucks. And yet his poems are the most beautiful form of art.” He laughs quietly. “I wrote this saying on the wall of my wing as a farewell to my parents. Extra big. An actual provocation... the color was blood red and extremely waterproof.”