Chapter Ten
I listen for a car to start, but it never does. Sagan left, but he didn’t leave in a vehicle, which means he’s either walking or just lingering outside until he cools off. I want to run after him and beg him to forgive me, but I’m not sure I want his forgiveness right now. I’m not sure I deserve it.
I’m hugging my knees, wondering how I’ve been so blind. I just assumed he was in love with Honor. They do so much together. They talk like they’re a couple. And almost every time I’ve referred to him as her boyfriend, no one has corrected me. It’s as if they wanted me to believe that.
Or maybe it was just Honor who wanted me to believe that.
I use the blanket on the back of the couch to wipe away my tears. Jesus is staring down at me, judging me. I roll my eyes. “Oh, shut up,” I say to Him. “Aren’t you up there so people like me can be forgiven for doing terrible things like this?”
I fall back on the couch and feel like I want to scream. I grab a pillow and cover my face and do just that. I’m frustrated, embarrassed, angry, disappointed. It’s a far fall from what I was feeling while Sagan was kissing me just a few moments ago. It’s like I plunged from the warmth of the tropics straight into the ice-cold waters of Antarctica.
I don’t want to feel anything anymore. These past two days have supplied me enough emotional turmoil for a lifetime. I’m done. Done, done, done.
“Done, done, done,” I reaffirm as I roll off the couch. I walk to the kitchen and grab a red Solo cup. I open the cabinet above the refrigerator and pull out a bottle of liquor. I don’t even know what it is. I’ve never had alcohol before, but what better time to try it than in the same week I almost lose my virginity and piss off the one person I actually feel something for in this house?
I don’t know how much it takes to get a person drunk, but I fill my glass halfway to the top. Or maybe it’s halfway to the bottom. Am I an optimist or a pessimist? I glance down into the cup.
Pessimist.
I down as much as I can before I feel like I’m gagging on a fireball. I sputter and cough and even spit a little bit of it into the sink.
“This is disgusting!” I wipe my mouth with a paper towel. I can feel the burn as it slides down my chest. I can also still feel the frustration, the anger, the sadness.
I somehow manage to get down the rest of what’s in the cup. I take the bottle and the cup with me as I exit the kitchen. I don’t want to be in here when Sagan gets back from his walk. I open the door to my bedroom, but it’s lonely. Empty. Depressing. It reminds me of me. I set the bottle of alcohol on my dresser, but the cup falls to the floor. Whatever. It’s empty.
The first thing I do is change out of Honor’s nightgown and into my own pajamas. I also undo the braid and pull my hair up. I don’t want to be her anymore. It’s not as fun as I thought it would be. I also don’t want to be alone right now. The only person who might feel bad and sympathize with me is Luck.
I’m not sure if he’s asleep, so when I open his door I do it as quietly as possible. I slip inside and then face the door as I close it with both hands, not wanting to make a noise. When I turn around, I’m relieved to see there’s a tiny sliver of light coming from my father’s computer on the other side of the office. Enough light for me to be able to make it to the sofa bed.
I hear Luck groan as I tiptoe further into the room. The mattress squeaks and it sounds like he’s rolling over.
“Luck?” The mattress squeaks again and it sounds like he’s making room for me. “Are you awake?” I whisper, taking a seat on the edge of the bed.
All of a sudden, I hear the word, “Shit!” but it isn’t out of Luck’s mouth. It’s not out of mine, either.
“Merit?” That’s Luck’s voice.
“Luck?”
“What the hell?!” That’s Utah’s voice.
Utah? I jump up.
“Shit!” Luck says. “Merit, get out!”
Something crashes to the floor. The lamp, maybe?
“Get out!” Utah yells.
“Shit!” Luck says again. There’s so much commotion going on, it takes me several seconds to regain my bearings and turn around for the door. When I open it, I make the mistake of glancing back into the room. There’s enough light now that I can see both of them as they struggle back into their clothes. Utah freezes when he locks eyes with me. Only one of his legs has made it into his pants. He’s not wearing any underwear.
“Oh my God.” I’m scarred for life. Luck is on the other side of the sofa bed, struggling to pull on his boxer shorts.
I slap my hand over my eyes when Utah yells, “Get the hell out, Merit!”
I slam the door shut.
Please be a nightmare.
I go to my room and grab the bottle of liquor and don’t even bother with the cup this time. I need these feelings to stop. I need to forget, forget, forget. What in the hell did I just see?
I squeeze my eyes shut. I can’t be that oblivious. Then why were they naked? Together? In bed?
Luck almost had sex with me yesterday. He said he couldn’t finish because I looked like Moby, but Utah looks more like Moby than any of us! Now he’s having sex with my brother? If this isn’t the ultimate form of rejection, I don’t know what is.
What’s wrong with me? Luck would rather have sex with my brother than me. Sagan called me an asshole right after we made out on the couch. Drew Waldrup broke up with me with his hand on my boob. WHY AM I SO REPULSIVE?
“Merit!”
Utah is knocking on my door as I pace my bedroom floor. What in the hell did I just interrupt?
I swing open the door and Utah pushes himself into my room and closes the door behind him. He looks angry and a little bit worried when he points at me. “Keep your mouth shut,” he says. “What I do is none of your business.”
I stop pacing and step closer to him. “Have I ever spilled your secrets before this?”
His anger fades with the mention of his past indiscretions.
“You think I forgot about that, Utah? Well, guess what? I didn’t. And I never will.”
He winces and I can see the guilt in his expression. I want to punch him, but I’m not a violent person. I don’t think. I’m not sure, because my hand balls into a fist right before he slips out of my bedroom and shuts the door.
I hate him. And I hate myself for never telling anyone the truth about him.
I sit down on my bed and squeeze my eyes shut. I feel like I might puke and I’m not even sure why, exactly. I think it’s everything. It’s Luck, Sagan, Utah, Honor, my father, Victoria, my mother.
This family is just as terrible as everyone in this town believes it to be. Maybe even worse. I’m sick of it. I’m sick of the secrets and I’m sick of the lies. And I’m tired of being the one person in this house who has to hold on to all of them!
I have Utah’s secret.
I have my father’s secret.
My mother’s secret.
Honor’s secret.
Luck’s secret.
I don’t want any of them anymore!
Maybe if I let all the secrets out, they wouldn’t make me feel like drowning anymore.
Yes. Maybe that would help. Maybe getting it all out will help me feel like I’m not about to implode.
I reach to my nightstand and grab a pen, then open the drawer and sift through it until I find a notebook with enough empty pages to hold all these secrets.
It still hurts. All of it. The entire past few days. I grab the bottle of . . . what the hell am I even drinking? I read the label. Tequila. I grab the bottle of tequila and slide to the floor because I’m starting to feel dizzy. I grab my pen and notebook and open to the first blank page I can find. I squeeze my eyes shut until my vision feels sturdier. I feel wobbly. My hand feels wobbly when I start writing.
Dear inhabitants of Dollar Voss. Every last one of you. Except Moby. He’s the only one I like and still have respect for at this point.
I have so much anger building inside of me, and it has nothing to do with me. It’s anger at almost every single person in this house. Anger due to all the secrets you’ve been keeping from each other, from the outside world. I refuse to hold on to any of it for one more second. Every day, there are more and more secrets and I’m tired of looking like the bad guy. You all hate me. You all think every argument in this house is my fault. You all wonder why I’m so damn BRASH all the time. IT’S BECAUSE OF ALL OF YOU!
Where do I even begin?
How about I begin with the oldest secret? Did you think I would forget, Utah? Did you think, because I was only twelve, that I wouldn’t remember the night you forced me to kiss you?
It’s hard to forget something like that, Utah. If you knew how much I worshipped you as my big brother, you would understand why it’s so hard to forget when you did what you did.
“It’s not a big deal, Merit.”
That’s what you said to me when I shoved you away. You tried to make it seem like I was overreacting to what had just happened. One minute I was in my brother’s room watching a movie, the next minute my brother was trying to kiss me.
I ran out of your room that night and never looked back. Not once. I’ve never been to your bedroom since then. I’ve never allowed myself to be alone with you since then. And it’s like you don’t even care. You never even apologized. Do you even feel guilty?
Is that why you find it so difficult to look me in the eye? Because the few times you do look at me, you look at me with contempt and disgust. The same way I look at you.
All of you think I’m rude to Utah. You’re all telling me, “Calm down, Merit.” Think about how you would feel if your family tried to force you to be nice to the brother who stole your first kiss from you.
You disgust me, Utah. You disgust me and I’ll never forget and I’ll never forgive you.
But at least you have Honor. She worships you because she didn’t endure the side of you I endured. She thinks you’re sweet and innocent and the best thing to ever happen to her. She looks at me the same way you do, but only because she can’t understand how I can treat you so terribly when you do nothing to deserve it.
I know you probably find all of this hard to believe, Dad. Yes, I’m speaking to you now, Barnaby Voss. I’ve said all I need to say to Utah.
You’ve set the perfect example for us on how to treat each other, haven’t you? You created this beautiful family, but as soon as your wife became ill and couldn’t satisfy your needs anymore, you slept with her nurse. You couldn’t even be discreet about it. Couldn’t you have slept with her and then pretended it never happened once Mom got better? No. You had to take it a step further on the selfish scale and screw Victoria without a condom. Now we’re stuck with a woman who hates us. A woman who hates our mother.
I wonder how Victoria would react if she knew you were still sleeping with Mom?
Yeah, that sentence probably shocked ALL of you.
Sorry, Victoria, but it’s true. I saw it with my own two eyes. At least we have an explanation now for why our mother still dresses up every day. She lives in your basement, hoping her ex-husband will sneak down and pay her a visit, so she keeps her makeup pretty and her hair perfect and her legs nice and smooth.
Your husband is probably why our mother still lives here in the basement. He’s doing so much damage to her mentally that she’s under his complete control. He gets you in the bedroom and my mother in the basement. And you’re both Victoria, so he doesn’t even have to worry about screaming out the wrong name! He’s living every man’s fantasy. He doesn’t even have to worry about the two of you overlapping because he’s got my mother so doped on medication, she’s too scared to even leave the basement.
And don’t think you’re getting off easy, Mother, simply because I feel sorry for you. I liked you more before I knew you were still sleeping with Dad. At least then I could excuse why you’re still here, living in a dungeon, wasting away your life. I thought it was because of your social phobia, but now I know it’s because you’re playing some kind of sick game, trying to win Dad back. Well guess what, Mom? He’s not taking you back! Why would he? You open your legs to him any time he wants it.
You’re probably more pathetic than he is. At least he’s raising his children. At least he’s working to put food on the table and a roof over our heads. He’s damn shitty at the whole father thing, but he’s a much better parent than you’ve ever been to us. So yeah, consider this my goodbye. I won’t be visiting you in the basement anymore. If you care about any of us, you’ll suck it up, get a job, move out, and get a life!
Who else?
Oh! Let’s not forget the newest addition to Dollar Voss. Luck Finney! He seems great, doesn’t he? Shows up this week, makes up with his sister and then almost fucks his step-niece.
Granted, it was my idea to lose my virginity to him. Not like it would have made a difference to him since he’s had sex over three hundred times! But now that I know he’s making his way through ALL the Voss siblings, I feel even cheaper than I felt after what I’m sure would have been the worst sexual experience in history . . . had he been able to go through with it.
Maybe he couldn’t finish with me because he prefers dick. Utah’s dick, at least.
Oh! Did no one know Utah was gay? Not that I have anything against anyone being gay. Love is love, right? But I just didn’t know that about Utah. But yes, Utah is gay and he’s sleeping with Luck. I know because I walked in on them. I can’t get the image of them out of my head no matter how hard I try. It’s embedded there, just like the image of Sagan when he called me an asshole.
He was right, though. I am an asshole. What kind of person betrays their own twin sister in the worst possible way? Of course, the fact that I pretended to be Honor so I could kiss Sagan wasn’t really a betrayal, considering Honor and Sagan aren’t even a thing. But how was I supposed to know that? Honor doesn’t tell me anything! A sister should know who her own twin sister is dating! But I still somehow get stuck with everyone’s secrets, and then you all beg me to keep them from everyone else!
Kind of like the one I’m keeping for Honor right now. She’s off with some guy tonight, probably naked with him on his death bed.
Can we please address this?
Can we please discuss how disturbing it is that Honor is obsessed with the terminally ill?
Why is this okay?
Why have you not put her in therapy, Dad?
WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND SEEKS OUT LOVE FROM PEOPLE WHO ARE DYING?
Honor, from one sister to another, please get help. You need it. Desperately.
Who am I forgetting? Moby? I won’t even go there. Just someone please save this kid from this family before it’s too late.
Sagan, I really don’t have anything negative to say about you. You’re quite possibly the only sane one living in this house. I guess in a way that’s your flaw. You actually have the option to leave, yet for some reason, you stay with the most screwed-up family in Texas. Your family must really suck. Is that why you’ve never met your own sibling? Because you were smart enough to get as far away as you could?
Well, that was fun. I think I feel better now that all your secrets are no longer my responsibility. In the future, keep your shit to yourself because I don’t care.
I’ll say it again in case none of you are getting it.
I.
Don’t.
Care.
Sincerely,
Merit
I slap the pen to the page.
That felt good. Too good. I feel like a weight has been lifted and it’s now evenly disbursed among every person in this family. Or at least it will be once I make copies for everyone.
If it felt that good just writing it, I can’t imagine how good it will feel delivering it. I tear the pages out and stand up, but I have to grab my dresser to steady myself. I laugh because I think I finally drank enough to make all my feelings go away. Or maybe it was the letter I just wrote. Either way, I think I like tequila. I feel freaking great. I like it so much; I drink the rest of it before I head to my father’s office to make copies.
I don’t bother knocking. I heard Utah’s door slam earlier, so I know he’s not in here with Luck anymore. When I open the door, Luck is messing with his phone. He doesn’t look happy to see me. “What do you want?”
“Not you,” I say, walking to the other side of the room. “I need to use the copier.”
Luck sighs and leans against the back of the sofa bed. I place the first page on the copier and hit the number 7. There are nine people in this house, but Moby can’t read and I’ve got the original. I press the Copy button and then turn to face Luck.
“So,” I say. “Is there anyone you won’t have sex with on this earth besides me?”
“Are you drunk?”
I open the copier and put the second page facedown. I hit the copy button again. “Yes. It’s the only way I can deal with this family, Luck. The family you chose to move in with.” I turn around and look at him again, this time with confusion. “Why would you willingly choose to live here?”
Luck doesn’t answer me. He looks back down at his phone and starts texting again. “Are you almost done?”
I put the final page on the copier. “Yep. Nearly there.” I glance to the other side of the copier and see Luck’s worn notebook with all his conquests in it. I glance back at him and he isn’t looking at me. I flip to the last page and sure enough, he has my name written down. It says, 332.5 M.V., her bed, DNF.
I got DNF’d. A big, fat DID NOT FINISH.
“Do I at least get a participation trophy for this?” Luck sees the notebook in my hands. He jumps off the sofa bed and snatches it out of my hands. He walks back to the bed. I chuck a pen at him. “Here. Don’t forget to write Utah’s initials down. Lucky 333.”
When the copier is finished, I gather all the pages and take the original off the copier.
“Go to bed, already,” he says, agitated.
I grab the stapler. I shake it at him as I walk out of his room. “I liked you better before I met you.”
I close the door and make my way back to my room. I lay all the pages out on the floor but I’m forced to take a moment for my vision to settle before I can put them in the right piles. All the pages are starting to run together. I have almost all of them stapled when someone knocks on my door.
“Go away!” I crawl to the door and lock it before whoever it is can open it.
“Merit.”
It’s Sagan. The sound of his voice makes me wince. There wasn’t enough tequila to dull this feeling, apparently.
“I’m sleeping,” I call out.
“Your light is on.”
“Your light is on!”
He doesn’t respond to that. I’m glad, because I’m not even sure what it meant. A few seconds later I hear the door to his bedroom close.
I squeeze my eyes shut to keep the room from spinning. I lay my head down on the floor. I’m too dizzy to keep sitting up like this. As soon as I close my eyes, I hear a text message come through on my phone. I reach my hand to my bed and search around until I find it.
Honor: What happened?
So much has happened in the last two hours, I don’t even know which part she’s referring to.
Merit: What do you mean?
Honor: Sagan just texted me and told me to be careful coming home. WHY does he know I’m not home?
Merit: Well . . . he’s very hard to lie to. Besides, what’s it matter? He’s not even your boyfriend.
Honor: It matters because I lied to him and thanks to you, he’s now aware of that. Remind me not to ask you to cover for me in the future!
Merit: Okay. Don’t ask me to cover for you in the future.
Is it normal for a person to hate their own family this much?
I find the bottle of tequila but it’s still empty. That doesn’t help me much because I still feel things. I stumble my way into the kitchen and open every single cabinet, but I can’t find more alcohol. I open the refrigerator and the only thing that might help me numb what’s happening in my chest right now are three beers. I grab all of the cans and take them to my bedroom. I slide back to the floor and pop open one of the beers. I stare at the letter I wrote.
Should I give it to them?
Probably not. It would only give them more reason to hate me. They wouldn’t feel sorry for me after reading it, they’d be mad at me for telling all their secrets.
I down the first beer and my stomach already hurts, but it still doesn’t help the pressure in my chest. You know what this feels like? It feels just like the day I decided to stop going to school. I was walking into the cafeteria when Melissa Cassidy grabbed my arm and said, “Honor, come here. You won’t believe what I found out!” She dragged me about five feet to her table, where Honor was already sitting. She glanced back at me and then at Honor and she said, “Oh. Sorry. I thought you were Honor.” She let go of my arm and walked back to the table and started whispering in Honor’s ear.
I just stood there, staring at Honor. Everyone liked her, despite the fact that she was a Voss. Everyone wanted to hang out with her and be her friend and I was simply a by-product. The identical twin sister with less to offer. There wasn’t a single girl at that table who would rather be friends with me than Honor.
Nothing terrible happened that made me want to drop out that day. I was never bullied at school, despite everyone having their unsavory opinions about our family. I was just . . . there. When I kept to myself, everyone was okay with that. No one bothered me. When I decided to join in on conversations with Honor and her friends, everyone was okay with that, too. I was Honor’s twin sister, they weren’t going to be rude to me. What they were was indifferent. And I think their indifference bothered me more than if they would have hated me.
It was like seventeen years of denial smacked me in the face right there in the cafeteria. The whole school would notice if Honor stopped showing up. But if I stopped showing up, life would go on. With or without Merit.
In fact, I’ve had two texts from friends in my class, asking why I haven’t been at school for two weeks.
Two.
That’s it.
And that’s another reason why I’ve stayed home. But for some reason I thought I would like staying at the house more than going to a school where I didn’t matter, but I don’t. I hate it here, too. I don’t matter here, either. If I dropped out of life, just like I dropped out of school, everyone’s lives would go on.
With or without Merit.
I down the second beer and as soon as it’s empty, I toss the can at my bedroom door. “Without Merit,” I whisper to no one. “That’ll show ’em.”
And then I do what I do best. I react without thinking. My spontaneity will be the only thing I miss about myself. I crawl to the closet and grab the black boot. I pull out the bottle of stolen pills and I open the lid. I reach for the third beer and my hands are shaking so bad, it takes me three tries to pop it open.
I look down at the beer in my left hand and the bottle of pills in my right. I don’t even give it a second thought. I pour some of the pills in my mouth and then try to swallow. I pour a few too many so I end up spitting them back out in my hand. I relax my throat and then try it again. They go down this time, so I pour a few more and then swallow. I can’t get but about three or four down at a time, so it takes me the entire beer to wash them all down.
I toss the empty beer can aside and then grab all seven stacks of pages. I grab a pen and go through each stack and add the word Without to my name. Sincerely, Without Merit. That’s more like it. I start with Sagan’s room, since his is closest. I slide one set of the stapled pages beneath his door. Then I continue down the hallway until Utah, Luck, and Honor have been covered. I don’t even bother sliding the pages beneath the basement door. I open the door and throw my mother’s stack down the stairs. If they stayed at the top of the stairs, she’d never see them. I make my way to Quarter Three and shove the last set of pages beneath my father and Victoria’s bedroom door.
On my way back through Quarter One, I notice a sheet of paper on the couch that wasn’t there earlier. Between pretending to be Honor and kissing Sagan, I would have noticed I was sitting on a sheet of paper.
It’s upside down but I can already tell it’s a sketch. I snatch it up and walk to my bedroom. I close the door and sit down on my bed. I don’t know what he drew, but on the bottom of the back page he wrote,
“Heart < Carcass.”
I cover my mouth as I flip over the sketch. My fingers are trembling against my lips as I work up the courage to look at what he’s drawn.
I shudder when I see it. I wrap my arm tightly around my stomach. Two hearts on either end of a couch. One of them whole, one of them cut in half.
Which one is mine?
I feel sick. I drop the drawing and watch it float to my bedroom floor. It lands on top of the empty bottle of pills. I stare at the word carcass.
Carcass. Death. Dead.
I roll over and bring my knees to my chest and hug them. I squeeze my eyes shut and try not to let it all sink in.
Don’t let it sink in.
The tears begin to slip out of my eyes, no matter how tightly I have them closed. My bottom lip begins to tremble worse than my hands.
I don’t want to die.
I grip myself even tighter.
I don’t know what happens next. What if it’s worse than this?
My fearful cry turns into a sob. I clamp my hand over my mouth.
“No, no, no, no, no.” My voice is full of panic when the reality of what I’ve done begins to hit. If I lie here one second longer, I might not be able to do anything about it. I pull myself up into a sitting position. I grip my mattress and try to stop the room from spinning long enough to make it to my bedroom door.
What have I done?
I fall to my knees as soon as my bedroom door is open. I’m not sure I can stand up again, so I crawl. I crawl to the bathroom. I reach up and open the door and I crawl to the toilet. I shove my fingers down my throat.
Nothing.
I don’t know that I’ve ever cried this hard. I can’t make a sound, I can’t scream, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe. I try to make myself vomit again, but it doesn’t work. Every time I reach the back of my throat, my fingers recoil and it won’t work, it won’t work, it won’t work!
“Help.”
It’s pathetic. My voice is pathetic through my tears and this is how I’m going to die. On my bathroom floor, leaving behind what is about to become the most despicable suicide letter anyone has ever written.
This is not happening. This is a dream. I’m dreaming. Please let me wake up. “Please, God,” I whisper. “I’ll never drink again, I’ll never steal again, I’ll never even write another letter again, just please, please, please.” I’ve managed to crawl to the bathroom door. Utah’s room is the closest. I try to open his door but it’s locked. I start beating on it. “Utah!” I beat on it again. I know my voice isn’t loud enough, but I’m hoping he can hear me knocking. I’m on my hands and knees now, too dizzy to make it to someone else’s door. I don’t know how long it takes for pills to dissolve, but it hasn’t been that long since I took them. Five minutes?
Utah’s door swings open. He’s standing on the letter I wrote. He doesn’t even notice it because he bends down and says, “Merit?” He’s on his knees now, grabbing my jaw, lifting my face up to his. I can feel the tears and snot and slobber all over my face, but he doesn’t care about any of that because he reaches for the hem of his shirt and wipes it away. “What’s wrong? Are you sick?”
I shake my head and grab his arms, looking at him desperately. “Utah, I messed up.”
“Are you drunk?”
“Her pills,” I say, choking back more tears. “I took them, I wasn’t thinking, Utah I wasn’t thinking.” I hear another door open and seconds later, Sagan is right next to Utah. I’m too scared to be mortified at this point.
“Whose pills?” Utah asks. “Merit, what are you saying?”
I fall back against the wall, panicking, shaking my hands out because they’re numb. “Mom’s! I took her pain pills!” Utah looks at Sagan and I know they’re trying to figure out what’s happening, but they aren’t getting it! “I swallowed them!”
Sagan pushes Utah out of the way. “Go call 911!” He grabs the back of my neck and pushes me forward, then shoves two fingers in my mouth. My body tries to reject them but he doesn’t care because he holds them there and now I’m vomiting. All over the floor, all over him. I can’t keep my eyes open anymore. “How many pills, Merit?”
I shake my head. I don’t know.
“How many did you swallow?” His voice is panicked, just like my pulse.
He keeps asking me how many pills I swallowed. I can’t remember. How many did I have? I stole eight the other night. I added them to the twenty I had already stolen. “Twenty-eight,” I whisper.
“Christ, Merit.” His fingers are back in my mouth, assaulting the back of my throat. The pressure coming from within me lurches me forward and I vomit again. I can hear Utah yelling into the phone, Luck is now in the hallway, Moby is crying, my father is saying, “What’s going on? What in the hell is going on?”
I open my eyes and Sagan is counting in a fast and frantic whisper. “Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four . . .” He’s focused on the floor, sifting through what just came out of me, his voice trembling. “Twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, TWENTY-EIGHT!” he yells.
And then he scoops me up after my dad says, “Take her to the couch.”
I’m on the couch, still dizzy, still feeling like I want to throw up again.
“What did you take?” Utah asks. He’s kneeling down in front of me, still on the phone. Victoria brings me a wet rag.
Sagan takes it from her and wipes my face. “Merit, they need to know what kind of pills you took.”
“She took pills?” my father says. He’s pacing back and forth behind them. Luck is behind him with his hand over his mouth.
“What were they?” Sagan asks. He’s brushing back my hair and he looks just as panicked as my father. As Utah. As Victoria. As Luck. Even Moby looks panicked with his arms locked around Victoria’s neck.
“What’s going on?”
Everyone looks at the front door when it closes behind her. Honor’s here.
“Where have you been?” My father is walking toward Honor. He stops and shakes his head. “I’ll deal with you later,” he says, changing his mind as he walks back toward me. “Merit, what did you take?” He’s hovering over me now. They’re all hovering over me.
“She threw them all up.” —Sagan.
“But what were they?” —My father.
“Probably aspirin.” —Victoria.
“She said she stole them.” —Utah.
“What’s going on?” —Honor.
“Merit swallowed pills.” —Luck.
“Did you see this, Barnaby?” —Victoria.
“Not right now, Victoria.” —My father.
“What did you take, Merit?” —Sagan.
“You need to read this, Barnaby!” —Victoria.
“Victoria, please!” —My father.
“Merit, what were they?” —Utah.
“They were Mom’s.” —Me.
“You took your mother’s pills?” My father is asking me this as he leans over the couch from behind my head. He’s upside down and I’m looking up at him and I never noticed how much Moby looks like him. “Your mother’s prescription pills?” he asks again. I nod. My father exhales. “It’s fine,” he says. “It’s fine, they can’t hurt her.” He grabs the phone from Utah and walks into the kitchen to talk to the 911 operator. “Hello? Hey, hey, Marie. Yeah, it’s Barnaby. Yeah, it’s fine. She’s fine.”
It’s fine. She’s fine.
I’m fine.
How does he know if I’m fine? He doesn’t even know which pills I took. I guess it doesn’t matter at this point since they’re sitting in a pile of vomit on the hallway floor.
“You feeling okay?” Sagan asks. I nod. “I’ll get you some water.”
I close my eyes. Everything is calming down now. My heart is calming down. The commotion is calming down. I blow out a steady breath. It’s fine. She’s fine.
I’m fine.
“Is this true?” It’s Victoria’s voice. I open my eyes and she’s holding the pages I stapled together. She’s looking down at them. Her expression is anything but fine.
It’s not fine anymore.
I clench my stomach, feeling like I want to puke again.
“Merit. Did you write this?”
I nod. Maybe she’ll be so embarrassed about my father cheating on her, she’ll gather all the other letters before anyone else reads them. She takes a step toward me. But she doesn’t look at all angry, even though I put in the letter that my father was cheating on her. She looks . . . sad.
She looks at Utah. “You did this to her?”
Utah looks at me and then back at Victoria. “Did I do what to who?”
Victoria walks toward Utah and slaps the letter against his chest. She keeps walking past him until she’s in the kitchen with my father. I look back at Utah and he’s staring down at the first page of the letter. Sagan is back with the water. “Here, drink this.” He helps me sit up and tries to get me to take a drink, but I can’t take my eyes off Utah. I push the glass away and shake my head.
That’s when I see it.
A tear.
Utah looks up from the first page of the letter, just as a tear rolls down his cheek. I can’t help but wonder if it’s a tear of guilt or a tear of fear over me finally spilling the truth. He drops the pages and runs his hands through his hair. Of course he’s not making eye contact with me.
I hear sirens in the distance. My father says, “Thanks, Marie,” into the phone. He ends the call and Victoria is right there, whispering something to him. She points at Utah. She points at me. She points at the pages that are now at Utah’s feet. My father looks at Utah. He marches to the living room just as the ambulance pulls onto our road. He grabs the pages from the floor and begins reading. One minute. Two minutes. Utah is frozen in place. There’s a knock on the door but my father ignores it.
“Dad,” Utah whispers.
My father looks up from the letter. His eyes meet Utah’s and then mine.
There’s another knock at the door.
“Dad, please,” Utah says. “I can explain.”
Another knock.
A punch.
Honor screams.
Utah is on the floor now. My father is standing over him. He points to the door and says one word to him.
“Leave.”
Honor is helping Utah up, glaring at our father. “What the hell is wrong with you!?”
Once Utah is standing, he turns and heads toward his bedroom. Honor and Luck follow him. Sagan opens the front door and lets in the paramedics.
“She’s fine,” my father says to them, pointing toward me. “Check her out, but they were only placebo pills.”
Placebo pills.
Why were they placebo pills?
The next ten minutes go by in a blur as the paramedics bombard me with questions, check my blood pressure, my oxygen, my eyes, my mouth. “It probably wouldn’t hurt to let us take her overnight,” I hear one of the paramedics whisper to my father. “Otherwise, we’ll have to let the social worker know what happened. They’ll have to follow up.”
My father nods and walks over to me. He kneels down, but before he even says anything I force out an “I’m fine. I don’t want to go to the hospital.”
“Merit,” he says. “I think you should . . .”
“I don’t want to go,” I say with finality. He nods. I don’t hear what he says when he returns to the paramedic, but the guy squeezes my father’s shoulder. They must know each other. Of course, they do. It’s a small town. And since they know my father, they’ll tell their wives and then their wives will tell their friends and then their friends will tell all their daughters and then the entire town will know I tried to kill myself.
With placebo pills.
Why is she taking placebo pills?
As soon as that thought crosses my mind, my mother appears at the top of the basement steps. The door is open and she’s looking at me from across the room. “Are you okay?” She starts to take a step toward me, but she looks down at her foot as it meets the wood floor and she quickly returns to the top step of the basement.
“Everything is fine, Vicky,” my father says to my mother. I glance over at Victoria and she’s walking toward her bedroom with Moby. She can’t even be in the same room with her. I wonder if she’s even read the entire letter yet. Does she know they’re still sleeping together?
“What happened?” my mother asks.
I’d give anything for her to walk over here and hug me. Anything. She knows something bad has happened or she wouldn’t have opened the basement door. Yet she’s more concerned about not leaving the basement than she is about me. I look down at my hands. I’m shaking, and I feel like I’m about to be sick again.
“I’ll explain everything in a little while,” my father says to her. “Try to get some sleep, okay?” I hear the basement door close. I don’t get a hug from my mother.
“Dad,” I whisper, looking up at him pleadingly. “I threw a letter in the basement. Can you please go get it before she reads it?”
He nods and heads to the basement without question.
“Merit!” Honor yells. I look up just in time to see her marching down the hallway, letter in hand. She crosses Quarter One and looks like she’s ready to attack me, but Sagan steps in front of her and grabs her arms. She struggles to get out of his grip, but when she realizes he won’t let her past, she just chucks the pages at me. “You’re a liar!” She’s crying and I suddenly realize we’re not at all attractive when we cry. I hate that I’ve been doing it for the past two hours.
I feel like I’m watching a movie. I don’t feel like I’m in it, living it, taking the brunt of her anger right now. I don’t even respond to her anger because I feel so disconnected from it.
“Not now, Honor,” Sagan says, walking her away from me.
“It’s not true!” Honor yells. “Tell them it’s not true! Utah would never do something like that!”
I watch everything unfold as I remain curled up on the couch, wrapped in a blanket. Victoria is back, but Moby isn’t with her anymore. Honor runs up to her and my father. “You can’t make him leave, she’s lying!”
Victoria looks at my father. “You can’t let this slide, Barnaby.”
“Mind your own business!” —Honor.
“Honor,” —My father.
“Oh, shut up!” —Honor.
“Go to your room!” —My father. “Everyone! To your rooms!” —Still my father.
“What about me? Can I go back to my room?” —Utah.
“No. You leave. Everyone else to their rooms.” —My father.
“If he’s going, I’m going.” —Honor.
“No. You’re staying.” —My father.
“I’ll go with Utah.” —Luck.
“You aren’t going with him, either.” —Victoria.
“You’re seriously going to tell me what I can do? I’m twenty!” —Luck.
“Everyone just stay. It’s fine. I’m fine. I’ll go.” —Utah.
“Why are you leaving? You didn’t do anything!” —Honor.
And here it is. The moment of truth. The climax.
Utah’s shoulders rise with his heavy intake of breath. Then they fall, like all great empires eventually do. He looks across the room at me. He stares at me, but doesn’t use the opportunity to admit his guilt. Or even apologize. Instead, Utah walks to the door after it’s clear my dad isn’t going to relent. The slam the front door makes when it closes makes me jump.
Sagan slowly takes a seat on the couch next to me. He’s popping his knuckles like he’s angry, but I have no idea which person in this family he’s angry at. More than likely me. Everyone is quiet until my father says, “It’s late. We’ll discuss everything tomorrow. Everyone go to bed.” He looks at Luck and points at him. “You stay in your room. If I see you anywhere near my daughters, you’re gone.” He must have read the rest of the letter.
Luck nods and retreats to his room. Honor is staring at my father, her hands in fists at her sides. “This is your fault,” she says to him. “You and your pathetic choices and your pathetic parenting. You’re the reason this family is so screwed up!” Honor walks to her room and slams the door.
It’s just me and Sagan now. And my father. A moment passes as my father gathers himself. He finally walks toward me, squatting down in front of me so that we’re eye to eye. “You okay?”
I nod, even though this feels far from okay.
He looks at Sagan. “Do you mind keeping an eye on her tonight?”
“Not at all.”
“I don’t need a babysitter.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” my father says. “I need to go deal with Victoria.”
He stands up, but before he’s able to walk away, I say, “Why is Mom taking placebo pills?”
He stares down at me, the imprints of all his secrets gathering in the corners of his eyes. “I’m just thankful that’s all they were, Merit.”
He turns and makes his way into the kitchen, toward his bedroom. But when he passes by the kitchen table, he pauses. He grips the back of one of the chairs and drops his head between his shoulders. He stays like this for about ten seconds, but then he lifts the chair off the floor and throws it against the wall, smashing it to pieces. When he makes it to his bedroom, he slams the door.
Sagan releases a breath at the same time I do. He runs his hands down his face and we’re both quiet. Speechless. An entire minute goes by and we’re just staring at the floor until he says, “Take a shower. You’ll feel better.”
I nod. When I stand up, Sagan stands up with me. I think he can tell I’m still dizzy, because he grabs my arm and helps me to the bathroom. Once we’re inside, he pulls back the shower curtain and picks up the razor. He slides it into his back pocket.
“Really, Sagan? You think I’ll nick my wrist to pieces with a disposable BIC?”
He doesn’t say anything. But he also doesn’t give me back the razor. “I’ll clean up in the hallway while you’re in the shower. You want to stay in my room tonight or yours?”
I think about that for a moment. I’m not so sure I want him in my room, on my bed, where I tried to end my life. “Yours,” I whisper.
He closes the door and leaves me alone to shower. But then he opens the door and walks back inside. He swings open the medicine cabinet and takes the two bottles of medicine off the shelves.
“Seriously? What could I even do with any of that? Swallow eighty gummy vitamins?”
He leaves without responding.
I spend at least thirty minutes in the shower. I don’t do anything other than stare at the wall while the hot water beats down on my neck. I think I’m in shock. I still feel disconnected to everything that happened tonight. I feel like it happened to someone else.
Sagan has checked on me twice in the last thirty minutes. I don’t know how long it’s going to take me to convince him that tonight was a fluke. I’m not suicidal—I was drunk. I did a really stupid thing and now he thinks I’m in this shower trying to plot ways to off myself.
I don’t want to die. If I wanted to die, I wouldn’t have gone to Utah for help. What teenager doesn’t think about what it would be like to die every now and then? The only problem when I thought of it was that my thought was coupled with my spontaneity. And alcohol. Most people think things like this through. Not me. I just do them.
I’m going to need a really big trophy after tonight. Maybe I can find an unwanted Academy Award statuette on eBay.
“Merit?” Sagan’s voice is muffled from the other side of the bathroom door.
I roll my eyes and turn off the water. “I’m alive,” I mutter. I grab a towel and dry off. Once I’m dressed in my pajamas, I enter his bedroom. The door is open, so I shut it. I want to block myself off from the outside world.
Sagan is making a pallet on the floor.
“You can take the bed,” he says.
I look at the bed and notice he brought my pillows in here. I sigh with relief. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to go to sleep more than I do right now. I glance at his clock and it’s after three in the morning. “Do you have to be up early?” I ask him. I feel bad. It’s so late and everyone still has to wake up and go to work and school in a few hours. And I don’t even know where Sagan goes every day, whether it’s work or school. I know very little about the guy who has been put in charge of my life tonight. Thanks for that, Dad.
He shakes his head. “I’m off tomorrow.”
I wonder if that’s true or if he’s just too scared to leave me alone. As bad as I feel for making him worry like he is, it feels kind of nice to be worried about.
I lie down on the bed and pull the covers up over me. His pallet is on the floor on the other side of the bed. I want to be as far away from him as possible tonight. I know myself all too well and as soon as those lights go out, I’m going to be trying to muffle my tears. The more distance between us, the better.
“You need anything before I turn off the light?” He’s standing by the door with his hand on the switch. I shake my head, and right before the lights go out, my eyes catch a glimpse of the letter I wrote. It’s sitting on his dresser, flipped to the back page.
He read the whole thing. I close my eyes as he walks back to his pallet on the floor. I wonder if anyone else read it. I pull the covers up tighter over my mouth. Of course they read it. I pull my knees up and curl into the fetal position. Why did I write it? I can’t even remember everything I wrote.
It slowly comes back to me, paragraph by paragraph. By the time my mind recollects every single page, the tears are falling. I wad the blanket up and bite it, trying to stifle my sobs.
I still don’t even know what I’m feeling, or if I even regret writing it. But this feels like regret. Maybe I regret swallowing the pills, but not writing the letter.
Maybe I regret everything.
The only feeling I’m certain about is that I am completely and utterly mortified. Which should be a feeling I’m growing accustomed to, but it isn’t. I don’t think it’s something anyone could get used to.
I can’t believe I did what I did tonight. Or even yesterday. I wish I could go back and not drop out of school and none of this would have happened. Hell, I wish I could go back several years and never have that moment with Utah. Or maybe I should have gone back ten years ago to the day Wolfgang showed up in our backyard. If I’d have just killed that damn dog, then we never would have moved into this church. Dad would have never met Victoria. Mom would have never gone crazy and felt the need to hide in the basement.
I bury my face in the pillow and try as hard as I can to prevent Sagan from hearing how sad I am.
But it doesn’t work. I feel him lift the covers and slide into the bed beside me. He wraps his arm around me and pulls my back against his chest. He finds my hands still knotted in the covers and he squeezes them. And then he curls himself around me until his legs are wrapped over mine and his chin is pressed to the top of my head. His whole body is hugging mine and I can’t even remember the last time someone in this house hugged me. Moby’s hugs don’t count because he’s only four. My father hasn’t hugged me in years. I can’t remember the last time Utah hugged me. Honor and I haven’t hugged since we were kids. My mother doesn’t like physical contact, so a hug from her has been out of the question since her phobia reached its peak several years ago. Acknowledging that this is the first hug I’ve had in years makes me cry even harder.
I feel his lips press against the top of my head. “You want me to tell you a story?” he whispers.
I somehow laugh between my pitiful tears. “Your stories are too morbid for a moment like this.”
He moves his head a little until his cheek is pressed against mine. It feels nice. I close my eyes and he says, “Okay, then. I’ll sing you to sleep.”
I laugh again, but I stop laughing when he actually starts to sing. Or . . . rap, rather.
“Y’all know me, still the same OG . . .”
“Sagan,” I say, laughing.
“But I been low key . . .”
“Stop.”
He doesn’t stop. He spends the next few minutes rapping every single line to “Forgot About Dre.” By the time I fall asleep, the tears have dried on my cheeks.