I’d made it through the frame and had taken a step into the hallway
when my head shot backward. Shawn had caught me by the hair, and
he yanked me toward him with such force that we both tumbled back
and into the bathtub.
The next thing I remember, Charles was lifting me and I was
laughing—a shrill, demented howl. I thought if I could just laugh
loudly enough, the situation might still be saved, that Charles might
yet be convinced it was all a joke. Tears streamed from my eyes—my
big toe was broken—but I kept cackling. Shawn stood in the doorway
looking awkward.
“Are you okay?” Charles kept saying.
“Of course I am! Shawn is so, so, so—funny.” My voice strangled on
the last word as I put weight on my foot and a wave of pain swept
through me. Charles tried to carry me but I pushed him off and walked
on the break, grinding my teeth to stop myself from crying out, while I
slapped playfully at my brother.
Charles didn’t stay for supper. He fled to his jeep and I didn’t hear
from him for several hours, then he called and asked me to meet him at
the church. He wouldn’t come to Buck’s Peak. We sat in his jeep in the
dark, empty parking lot. He was crying.
“You didn’t see what you thought you saw,” I said.
If someone had asked me, I’d have said Charles was the most
important thing in the world to me. But he wasn’t. And I would prove it
to him. What was important to me wasn’t love or friendship, but my
ability to lie convincingly to myself: to believe I was strong. I could
never forgive Charles for knowing I wasn’t.
I became erratic, demanding, hostile. I devised a bizarre and ever-
evolving rubric by which I measured his love for me, and when he
failed to meet it, I became paranoid. I surrendered to rages, venting all
my savage anger, every fearful resentment I’d ever felt toward Dad or
Shawn, at him, this bewildered bystander who’d only ever helped me.
When we argued, I screamed that I never wanted to see him again, and
I screamed it so many times that one night, when I called to change my
mind, like I always did, he wouldn’t let me.
We met one final time, in a field off the highway. Buck’s Peak
loomed over us. He said he loved me but this was over his head. He
couldn’t save me. Only I could.