said I was the only one who could calm him, and I persuaded myself
that that was true. Who better? I thought. He doesn’t affect me.
Reflecting on it now, I’m not sure the injury changed him that much,
but I convinced myself that it had, and that any cruelty on his part was
entirely new. I can read my journals from this period and trace the
evolution—of a young girl rewriting her history. In the reality she
constructed for herself nothing had been wrong before her brother fell
off that pallet. I wish I had my best friend back, she wrote. Before his
injury, I never got hurt at all.
- My account of Shawn’s fall is based on the story as it was told to me at the time. Tyler was
told the same story; in fact, many of the details in this account come from his memory. Asked
fifteen years later, others remember it differently. Mother says Shawn was not standing on a
pallet, only on forklift tines. Luke remembers the pallet, but substitutes a metal drain, with
the grating removed, in place of the rebar. He says the fall was twelve feet, and that Shawn
began acting strangely as soon as he regained consciousness. Luke has no memory of who
dialed 911, but says there were men working in a nearby mill, and he suspects that one of
them called immediately after Shawn fell.