You’re going to be okay.
The thought of her words makes my heart rate spike. Turning to head back downstairs to my room in defeat, I touch the bandage on my forehead, worried that what lies underneath is way more broken than the doctors initially thought. Worried that I’m not going to be okay.
Worried that I could’ve stayed up for a hundred nights and that spot on the couch would have been empty for every single one of them.
Because she was never there in the first place.
6
Days all start running together. Texts are left unread; food wrappers litter the floor. A week blurs into two, and then a month, and soon almost the entire summer drifts by, the sun slowly setting earlier just outside my small basement window.
I don’t get out of bed in the morning. I don’t do anything.
I just lie around, refusing all of Mom’s attempts to get me out of my room. I’m not interested in torturing myself. I know what waits for me out there.
In the basement, on the other side of my bedroom door, are the French doors that lead to the backyard, the same doors Kimberly would use to sneak in after my mom fell asleep. I could go upstairs, but I would see the front lawn she used to cartwheel across in middle school or the kitchen where we made that monstrous-looking, but insanely delicious, chocolate cake for Sam’s birthday.
But, mostly, I don’t want to give my brain anything to twist and trick me with. I don’t want to think I see her.
My mom’s knocks on my door become more and more frequent, just like the clicking sound of her feet pacing outside my door as she pleads with me. “You’re in there. I know you are.” Today she tries the doorknob. Once. Twice. But I’ve locked it now.
I can feel her on the other side, willing me to let her in. Instead, I let daylight melt into evening once more. I fight to keep my eyes open as long as possible, because when I do sleep, my dreams are filled with images of sparkling disco balls, fluorescent hospital bulbs, a truck’s headlights getting closer and closer.
At least when I’m awake, I can suspend myself in nothing.
I’m not sure how much time has passed, but however much it is, it doesn’t matter.
“Get up. Right now.”
I struggle to open my eyes and squint to see my mom standing over me, shaking me awake. I look past her to see my bedroom door against the wall, taken completely off the hinges, a gaping hole now leading to the rest of the basement. How did I sleep through that?
“You get out of bed and get yourself together,” she says, throwing my blankets off of me. “We need to have a talk.”
I groan and grab the blankets right back, pulling them up to burrow underneath them.
“About what?” I grumble as she sits down at the edge of my bed, her eyebrows forming a V.
Uh-oh.
Serious Mom.
I peer at her over the top of my covers, worried about what she’s going to say.
“Kyle, it’s almost September. Your friends are all starting to leave for college. Sam is enrolled in classes at the community college,” she says, taking a deep breath. “So, UCLA.”
I sit up and push my mess of hair out of my eyes, my fingertips grazing the raised scar on my forehead. She can’t possibly think I’m actually going. “What about it?”
“I know UCLA was supposed to be you and Kimberly. I know how much that plan meant to you,” she says, reaching out to grab my hand. “But you need to accept that the exact future you had planned isn’t possible anymore.”
My eyes find the UCLA pennant Kimberly bought me hanging on my wall, the blue and yellow taunting me. The future I had planned wouldn’t have been possible anyway. Kimberly would’ve been packing her bags to start a new adventure at Berkeley.
Without me.
I feel the tiniest twinge of anger and then a familiar wave of guilt. Kim would give anything to be going anywhere. Just to be here.
“But that doesn’t mean you don’t have a future,” she continues. “You’re supposed to leave in a week and a half, and maybe that would be—”
“I’m going to defer,” I say, making a decision. The only decision that will get Mom off my back, at least for a few more months. “For the first two quarters. It’s too soon.”
She doesn’t have to know yet that I’m never setting foot on that campus.
She blinks. This was not at all what she expected. I can tell from the set of her shoulders she was ready for a fight, but this is logic she can’t ignore, which is what I counted on. So she nods, satisfied, I guess, that I’ve made any sort of decision about my life.