5.
Where Tyson Gets the Mail
THE HOUSE is empty when I get home. Fridays are my short days, and Bear and Otter are still at work. The house is cold. New Hampshire in December is cold. This isn’t something I ever really thought about when we decided to come here. I’ve learned rather quickly that I hate the snow with an unbridled passion. It seeps into my bones. It gets my feet wet, even through my boots. I hate it. I hate every part of it.
I’m flipping through the mail in the hall, unwinding my scarf from around my neck, thinking I might just go up to my bed and curl under the covers and not worry about a damn thing for the next couple of hours. It’s been a rough day. School isn’t like I thought it’d be. The people aren’t like I thought they’d be. Apparently being a sixteen-year-old freshman in college is something of an anomaly. People here don’t know what to make of me any more than they did in high school. Apparently being a genius of sorts has a social stigma to it that I didn’t expect. People are ruthless and don’t care who they step on to get what they want.
Fuck it. The semester is almost over and then we’ll go home and I’ll get to see Dom and I’ll feel right as rain. Only a couple of more weeks. That’s it. I can make it. I have to make it. Maybe I’ll call him when I get upstairs. He doesn’t have to work today, I don’t think. And even if he does, I’ll still get to hear his voice mail message. His voice is all I need.
A white envelope catches my eye, feminine handwriting in a letter addressed to Bear, Otter, and me. Curious, I pick it up. It’s heavy and stiff. The return address is for Stacey Warner and… Dom? Wait. Why do they have the same address? It’s for Dom’s house, right down the road from the Green Monstrosity. They don’t live together. Dom would have told me. He would have told me she moved in.
I tear the envelope and my phone rings. I think about ignoring it, but it’s him. I know it’s him by the ringtone I’ve got set. I can’t ignore him. I’ve never been able to.
“Hey,” I say when I answer the phone, a grin coming unbidden to my face.
“Where are you?” he asks quickly. He doesn’t sound like himself. He sounds panicked.
“Home. Why? What’s wrong?” I tear the envelope.
“Shit,” he whispers. “Ty, I need you to listen to me, okay?”
“What?” I ask, pulling at a piece of cardboard in the envelope. I pinch the edges and pull.
“I need you to trust me right now. Don’t open the mail. Don’t go near it. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. Stacey fucked up, and I’m trying to catch a flight out to you right now.”
“You’re coming here?” I ask, not caring about the rest of what he’s said. It doesn’t matter. He’s coming to me. He’s coming to see me. “Dude, that’s—” I look down at what’s in my hand and everything changes.
The envelope falls to the floor.
“Ty? Tyson!”
I can’t breathe.
“Tyson! Dammit, I can hear you!”
“You bastard,” I finally say.
“No,” he says, sounding distressed. “No, Ty, listen to me.”
“Is this true?”
“I… it’s not….”
“Is this true?” I shout at him, enraged. My chest is heaving, my skin slick with sweat. My throat is starting to close and my eyes are burning. This has to be a joke. This can’t be real. He wouldn’t do this to me. He would have told me if it was getting this far. He would have warned me. No. He wouldn’t have even done any of this to begin with. This isn’t real.
“It doesn’t matter, Ty,” he says desperately. “Listen to me, you need to breathe, okay? You need to breathe for me. In, okay? You know how to do this. Breathe in and hold it for three seconds. Please. Please do this.”
But I can’t. I won’t. I don’t know now that this will be the last time I hear his voice for almost four years. I don’t know now that I won’t see his face for almost four years. I don’t know now that this, for all that has come before, for all that we are and would become, for every single tie that binds us together, this is our ending. This is our good-bye. This is what will break us apart.
And it will be my choice.
“Bathtub,” I say numbly. “I need….”
“No,” he moans. “Oh, Ty. Please don’t. Please breathe. Just breathe.”
But I can’t because there are earthquakes. I can’t because the ground is shaking. I can’t because I am in the thrall of a full-blown panic attack, something that hasn’t happened in months. I can hear him above the roar in my ears, but he’s so far away. He’s so far away and he hasn’t answered my question. He hasn’t denied what I hold in my hand.
“I gotta go,” I tell him, unable to stop my voice from cracking. “Gotta go get safe. Gotta go ’cause everything is shaking, D-Dom. Everything is s-shaking and I can’t… I….”
“Tyson James Thompson, you listen to me,” he demands, breaking through the whirlwind in my head. “Are you listening?”
“D-Don’t come here.”
He’s stunned. “What?”
“You didn’t d-deny it. You didn’t t-tell me it’s a j-j-joke. Stay away. Dom. Stay away. I can’t. I can’t b-b-breathe.” I start moving down the hall toward the bathroom.
“He’s having an attack,” he snaps at someone in the background. “Call Bear and Otter. Do it now!” To me: “Ty? Tyson!”
“I d-don’t want to see you.”
“I’m coming.”
“No.” I reach the bathroom door, and it takes so much energy to push the door open
“Ty, please. I need to see you. I need—”
“You don’t n-need. You don’t.” I stumble toward the bathtub. My teeth chatter together. It hurts. Everything hurts.
You knew this was coming, it whispers. You knew. Some part of you knew.
No. No. I didn’t. This isn’t real.
Poor Tyson! Poor Kid! You need structure. You need organization. You need routine and every little thing in its place so you can categorize, so you can compartmentalize. And when something disrupts that order? You crumble. You collapse. Did you really think this wouldn’t happen? You’re sixteen years old. You can’t even handle this. How could you ever hope to have him?
“I’m coming,” Dom says again. “Tyson, I’m coming for you.”
“I d-don’t want to see you,” I gasp out. I drop the phone… and slide over the edge into the bathtub. The invitation slips from my hand and flutters near my face. And for all that is inevitable, for every word of our day, for every moment it has been for me to be able to just breathe, all I can see are the first four lines of blackened script set against eggshell white.
Mrs. And Mrs. Harold Warner cordially invite you
to celebrate the wedding of their daughter
Stacey Ann Warner to Dominic Miller,
in faith, in joy, and in love.
Breathe! I scream at myself. Breathe, oh fuck, breathe!
“Tyson!” I hear him shout from the phone. It sounds so far away, like it’s buried.
No, it whispers. That’s not right. It’s not buried. It’s drowning. Tyson, it’s drowning.
In an ocean.
Breathe, I think. Breathe.
It’s inevitable, he’d said once to me.
We’re inevitable, I’d said once to him.
And all I can do is breathe.
Just breathe.