Page 13

Chapter Twelve

Dylan

N o idea how long I’ve been in the shower. I bet I could stay here for days and the water would never turn cold. It’s the only place in this house that feels totally private. Only place I can breathe normally, most times.

The water’s been running clear for a while now, so I’m guessing I’ve been in here for a long time. Not even a tinge of pink in the water that trails down my forearm when I lift it up to check. I’ll wrap it after and it’ll be fine. Just something to keep it from opening up and seeping through my shirt.

“Dylan?” There’s a loud rap on the door that makes me jolt. “You alright in there?”

I let out a long sigh.

They can’t say they want me to feel comfortable here but also check on me every twenty minutes. Those two things can’t happen at the same time. Seems like that isn’t exactly rocket science, either. But Phil knows about the cutting—from the doctors at Clive. They told him everything—about my physical health, my mental health, my entire life —stuff I probably don’t even know about myself. Wasn’t cutting while I was at Clive, though. Twenty-four-fucking-seven supervision in that place. Couldn’t have any personal belongings in your room except maybe a book.

Think Phil suspects now, though. I see him throwing glances at my arms anytime I have a T-shirt on. Pretty sure if I wear long sleeves too many days in a row, he’ll ask to check. He’s paranoid about everything with me. Only me, as far as I can tell. Seems chill as fuck about everything else in his life. Also smart as hell—which is the other reason I think he suspects about me not really being done with the cutting. Either way, I know he suspects. Flat out told me I’m not allowed sharp objects in my room or my bathroom. Never leaves me alone in the kitchen. Never leaves me alone anywhere, really, if he can help it.

Wonder if he’ll check me back into a place like Clive, if he finds out. If he doesn’t, Diane sure as hell will.

Irony here, though, is that the cutting is the one thing that keeps me sane. From losing it completely and tipping right off the deep end. Not sure they’d get that, though.

Scarlett was right this morning when she said she’s the only one who doesn’t have some kind of expectation from me. Still, I hate thinking she’s right about anything. Don’t hate thinking about her, though, and I should.

Shouldn’t think about how pretty she is. Or how I never know what she’s gonna say. Sure as hell shouldn’t be curious about her.

“Dylan?” Phil calls more loudly. Knocking with his fist, it sounds like, instead of just his knuckles this time. “You’ve been in there for a while… Everything okay?”

I squeeze my eyes shut, tipping my head back. Let the water run down my face as I drag my hands through my hair. “Yeah. I’m good.”

“Come on out, alright?”

Yeah, he suspects something.

“Sure.”

It’s almost as bad as Clive. Fancier, but still feels like I’m an in-patient most of the time. Better meals. Better digs. But higher expectations.

I turn off the shower, run my hands through my hair again, and ring the water out. Grab a towel from the closest rack and wrap it around my hips.

“I’ll give you a few minutes,” Phil calls from the other side of the door. “I wanted to talk to you… I left something on your bed. Something I thought you might want.” He pauses. “I’ll come back up in a bit, alright?”

I look up and notice a flash of red in the mirror. I lift my arm.

Shit. It’s bleeding again. And there’s blood on the white towel. I glance around, my gaze halting at the pile of clothes on the marble tiles by the tub. I grab the T-shirt and rip a strip off along the hem.

“Dylan?”

“Uh, yeah…” I wrap the fabric around my forearm, using my teeth to tie it off. Lean down and pick up the ruined T-shirt and toss it in the garbage, then pull on my sweatpants. “I was kinda planning on going to bed now.”

There’s a brief silence on the other side of the door. Then, “It won’t take long… I just want to check in. After you… Once you’ve looked through what I put on the bed for you.”

What the hell did he leave on my bed?

“Sure.”

“Alright, I’ll be back in a bit then.”

I wait until I hear him close the bedroom door behind him before coming out of the bathroom. Last thing I need is him seeing the makeshift bandage around my forearm.

I go over to my dresser and grab a long sleeve tee and pull it on. Tie my hair up as I walk over to the bed. And then halt in my tracks.

It’s a photo album.

My gut twists, and I stand here, frozen. Staring. Not sure what to make of this. Because I know what’s in that album. Photos from my life… before . Of my mother… Me. My dad. Images that might make me remember something. Maybe? Or maybe not. Still, though. It’s… This feels huge.

Glad Phil isn’t here to see me right now. The way I’m practically trembling as I sit on the bed, running my fingers across the worn leather.

I pick it up and it feels heavier than I thought it would. Like there’s actual weight to the memories inside. I glance over towards the closed bedroom door. Make sure I don’t hear sounds of anyone coming up or anything. I want to be totally alone for this.

Shit, I feel almost sick to my stomach.

I open the book to the first page, spread across my lap.

It’s a photo of my mother in a hospital bed holding a baby, and my dad with his arm around her. And the way she’s looking down at that baby—the way she’s smiling… I can tell—my mother loved me. She’s looking at me like I’m her whole entire world. And my dad is looking at me like I’m his world, too. It’s a smile I’ve never seen on him before.

Any time he smiles at me now, there’s sadness in it. When he first came down to California, a couple weeks after I was arrested and they figured out who I was, seems like all he could do was cry. He said he was happy. He smiled through the tears sometimes. Laughed, sometimes. But a lot of the time, it was just tears. Full on bawling even. He’d just wrap his arms around me and wail. Hold me against him so tight I had to push him away, tell him to back off. Because a grown man I didn’t even know was breathing against my neck, stroking my back and fucking bawling. Whispering into my skin, “I’m sorry… I’m so, so sorry,” over and over, and honestly, it creeped me out. Think he knew it, too… and that made him even sadder.

But the guy in these photos? The younger version of Philip Braun, with the farmer’s tan and windswept hair, he looks like all he ever did was smile.

I flip through the pages, poring over every photo. Pictures of me and my parents like the ones on the wall downstairs and lining the hallways upstairs of Phil and Diane and the girls. A dump truck birthday cake with a candle shaped like the number “one”. Me in a highchair, smearing that same cake all over my face. Photos of us with grandparents, with friends, at some country fair… swimming in a pool, in the ocean, me in a ball pit, jumping in a puddle, eating ice-cream, sitting on a plane, going to freaking Italy.

Holy crap… I’ve been to Italy.

Seeing all this makes me so goddamn happy. I am honest-to-God smiling. Because I was worried there was nothing. That there were no photos to look through, that those three years were just some PostScript in my dad’s life that I tagged along for and would have to take his word for that they really happened. But it was real. I was there. I had a family, and we went on vacations and visited the aquarium and went on horse-drawn sleigh rides at Christmas.

I’ve done all these things I never even knew about. There’s a piece of my life that was normal.

And I don’t remember one goddamn thing about it.

I don’t even remember my mother’s face.

It makes me suddenly so mad I want to hurl the book at the wall. Throw it out the window and watch the photos wrinkle and curl and float out to sea. Because maybe it’s worse, seeing this perfect life—knowing it was mine… and then suddenly, it wasn’t.

I have all these photos now, full of memories—and yet it also feels like I still have nothing. Because none of them mean anything to me. Not one thing about them is familiar, and the only memories I do have are of a life that was a goddamn lie. A fucking joke.

I push the album off my lap and stand, rake my hands through my wet hair as I stare at it. Then stuff my hands in my pockets, trying so hard to get that feeling of happiness back. Because this is what I wanted. Photos. Proof of this happy life from before. So what the hell is wrong with me—that I’m angry for having the proof right in front of me that those three years, at least, weren’t a lie?

I turn and stalk across the rug to the bathroom, push the door closed with my fist until it clicks quietly shut… turn the lock. Take three steps until I’m right in front of the wall beside the full-length mirror, with the painting on it of a couple of colorful sailboats in the Sandy Haven harbor. I lift the painting off the hook and prop it against the shower, then tap my knuckles lightly against the blue wall, side to side… feeling where the studs are. None right behind the space where the painting was just hanging. Good.

I curl my hand into a fist and rest it against the wall, right where the hook was. Lean my weight into it, drop my forehead so it’s resting right beside my fist, and try to breathe normally. Because my heart’s doing that thing again, where it feels like it’s beating right out of my chest in a way that can’t be normal. There’s no way. Feels like I’m having a heart attack or something, only I’m seventeen freakin’ years old. So guess I’m just messed up. Only we all knew that already, right?

I’m so fucking messed up.

I lean back onto the balls of my feet, pull my right arm back and slam my fist into the spot where my head was just leaning a second ago. I don’t feel a thing—just hear the loud thunk of bone against sheetrock and pray to God no one heard it downstairs.

My breaths echo in my ears, louder now but also steadier, as I pull back and punch the wall even harder. And this time I do feel it. A sharp pain I know throbs nothing like it will later. Because right now, it’s tampered by the rush that shoots from my gut to my chest, my cheeks… the ends of my extremities. Like I’m a goddamn live wire.

I do it again, leaving behind a rough dent this time, and blood on my knuckles.

Then again.

Then again.

And again.

Then, during the next pause, I hear a knocking sound.

Someone at my bedroom door. Probably Phil.

Shit.

I glance over my shoulder at the locked bathroom door, then down at my fist, which is busted all to hell now. Bruised and scraped and bloody. I flex my fingers, curl them back into a fist… flex again. Nothing broken.

And my heartbeat feels like it’s back to normal. Which makes no sense. But that’s how messed up I am, that punching a goddamn wall slows my heart rate. It’s like I have all the same parts as a regular person, but none of them work like normal people’s do.

I take a few deep breaths. Phil knocks on the bedroom door again.

“Just a sec!” I yell, scrambling to grab the picture hook from the vanity, which I push into the wall with the pad of my thumb, just a few inches above the blood-smeared fist-sized hole in the sheetrock. I pick up the painting and hang it back on the hook. Brush the dust and bits of sheetrock into the corner with my bare foot.

Good enough.

“Dylan?” I hear the bedroom door open.

“In the bathroom!” I turn on the tap, all the way to cold, and run my right hand under the water, palm down, until the water runs clear. Flex and clench again. Run it under water for another three seconds.

“Everything okay, Dyl?” He’s knocking on the bathroom door now.

“Yeah.”

A brief silence, and then, “Can you open the door, Dylan?” He sounds worried. Suspicious.

I grab the torn T-shirt from the garbage and use it to pat my hand dry, then ball it up and toss it back in the bin. Glance around one more time, then walk over to the door and twist the lock up… pull the door open and slip into the bedroom just as Phil steps aside to let me pass. I shove both hands in my pockets as soon as I cross the threshold.

My gaze meets his, which is part concern and part skeptical. He looks me up and down, then steps forward to glance over my shoulder into the bathroom.

I hold my breath…

His eyes slide back to meet mine, and they narrow slightly. “You sure everything’s okay?” They shift lower, to my left forearm… then my right. He wants to check them.

He also doesn’t want to piss me off.

“Everything’s fine.”

He looks back at my face. “You look kind of pale.”

“I’m fine.”

I feel a little dizzy.

He nods slowly, then twists his torso and looks over towards the bed. “You saw the album?”

“Yeah…” I avert my eyes. “Thanks.”

Phil swallows. Looks back at me, like he’s waiting for me to say something more.

I don’t.

“It occurred to me,” he starts, then pauses and tries again. “I didn’t want you to think there weren’t any photos… from back then. Since there aren’t any around the house. I was worried you might think it’s because I didn’t keep any or that I didn’t—”

“I took the photo from your desk,” I interrupt, meeting his gaze again.

“Yes. I know.” He studies me for a second. “You’re welcome to keep it. It’s yours as much as it’s mine… and I can always make a copy.”

“Thanks.” My hand is throbbing like crazy. The kind of pain that pulses with your heartbeat. It’s gonna be hard to fall asleep tonight.

“The reason I don’t have any photos around the house…” He shifts his stare to a spot just over my shoulder. Out the window towards the lawn, then the ocean beyond that. “It’s because I just—I couldn’t.” He swallows again. “I mean, I used to. For a couple of years after I lost you and Elise, there were photos everywhere. I had them piled on my desk. I was scared I would forget what you looked like.” He pushes his hands in his pockets now. “It was too hard, though. Seeing your faces every day. Being surrounded by the memories… I couldn’t keep going that way. I ached for you, Dyl… every day.” His pleading eyes meet mine. “Every second of every day… Even after I put away the photos, it made it easier to go through the motions, to go back to living… but I never forgot. What you both looked like. You or your mom.”

I swallow back the lump in my throat, not letting his words fully sink in, because I just can’t. I’m so fucking drained. I’m done with all of this for today. For a lifetime, it feels like.

Maybe I will fall asleep okay tonight, after all. I’m suddenly exhausted.

“Do you have any questions… about the photos? Or about your mother, or about—”

“Nah, I’m good.”

He blinks… Nods. Gets that sad look again. That special brand of misery only I seem to put on his face. “Alright, then.” He pats my shoulder, but then winces when I flinch.

I hate how I always do that.

So does he. “Goodnight Dylan. I love you, son.”

“Yeah, goodnight.”

“You need anything?”

“I’m good.”

He heads towards the door then pauses halfway there, motioning towards the bed. “You can keep the album in here.”

I clench my fists and the throb it releases makes me dizzy again for a second. I blink. “It’s fine. You take it.”

His brow pinches in the middle. He wasn’t expecting me to say that. Doesn’t say anything for a couple of beats. Then he nods once. “Alright.” He walks over to the bed and picks up the photo album. Runs his thumb along the spine, then walks to the door.

He gets to the threshold.

“Hang on.” I take a step towards him, pull my left hand out of my pocket and reach towards the book. “Maybe I’ll keep it in here.”

His eyes light up. “Sure thing.” He walks over and hands me the album. “Keep it as long as you want. Like I said, it’s yours too.”

I nod.

“Amazing memories in there, kid” he says as he makes his way back over to the door, “Some of my favourite memories.” He turns and pauses. Smiles. Then pulls the door closed behind him.