Chapter Sixteen
Pastor Brian’s newer church is much bigger than his old one—the one we live in. I don’t feel so bad that my dad bought it all those years ago. Pastor Brian seems to have upgraded.
Well . . . until he died.
“Hurry up,” Honor says. Sagan is digging the fresh dirt off Wolfgang’s grave. Utah is at the end of the driveway keeping watch. Luck is . . . oh my, God.
“Are you picking your nose?”
Luck wipes his fingers on his shirt and shrugs.
“You’re so gross,” Honor says. She glances at me and mutters under her breath, “I can’t believe you almost had sex with him.”
I ignore her insult. I don’t feel like getting into another fight with her when three out of the five of us are holding the brand-new shovels we bought on the way here. That wouldn’t end well. I also don’t argue with her because . . . well . . . I can’t believe I almost had sex with him, either.
“Got it,” Sagan says. He bends down and starts moving the dirt away from the sheet that Wolfgang is wrapped in. “Luck, give me a hand.”
Luck shakes his head. “No way, man. There’s got to be some bad karma attached to what you’re doing. I want no part in it.”
“Oh, for crying out loud.” I bend down and help Sagan dig Wolfgang the rest of the way out of the dirt. Sagan is able to lift and carry him to the van on his own. I open the back door and he puts him inside the van.
“I need to put the dirt back on his grave so no one is suspicious,” Sagan says.
“You’re getting really good at this criminal life,” I tease.
Sagan grins and closes the back door to the van. “Do you find hardened criminals attractive?” He raises his brow, and the obvious flirtation has my heart spinning in my chest.
I hear Honor groan as she passes us. “I hate this already.”
Sagan rolls his eyes and then walks back to the side of the church to refill the grave. When we’re all finally back inside the van, Honor says, “What’s the purpose of this, anyway? Dad hated that dog. I don’t think he really cares where he’s buried.”
Sagan disagrees with a shake of his head. “No, he cares. I don’t know why he was so adamant about burying the dog with Pastor Brian, but for whatever reason, he wants them together.”
Utah pulls out of the church parking lot and flips on the headlights. “I think Dad has always felt a little guilty for buying Dollar Voss out from under Pastor Brian. Maybe this is his repentance.”
“He’s an atheist,” Luck says. “I think remorse is a more fitting word.”
Honor has her hand over her nose and mouth. “Someone please roll down a window. That dog smells so bad, I’m about to puke.”
He really does smell. Utah rolls down both front windows but it doesn’t help. I cover my nose with my shirt and keep it there until we make it to the cemetery.
“Which way is Pastor Brian’s grave?” Utah asks. Sagan points to a grave not too far from the front gate. Utah follows the circle drive until the van is pointed toward the entryway of the cemetery. When he parks, he tells me and Honor to take the front seats and keep watch for them.
“I don’t want to keep watch,” I say as I close the side door to the van. “I want to help you guys bury him.”
Honor walks around to the driver’s seat. “I’ll keep watch.” Utah and Luck walk to the back of the van to get Wolfgang.
Sagan grabs my hand and squeezes it, looking down at me. “Stay in the van,” he says. “It won’t take long.”
I shake my head. “I’m not staying alone in that van with Honor. She hates me.”
Sagan looks at me pointedly. “That’s exactly why you should stay in the van, Merit. You’re the only one who can fix that.”
I huff and fold my arms over my chest. “Fine,” I say, agitated. “I’ll talk to her but I’m not happy about it.”
He mouths, “Thank you,” right before he turns around. I watch the three of them walk across the cemetery to the freshly dug grave. And then I get in the damn van.
When I close the door, Honor turns up the radio, drowning out any possibility of her hearing me if I tried to speak to her. I lean forward and turn the radio back down.
She leans forward and turns it up.
I turn it down.
She turns it up.
I reach over and turn off the van. I pull the keys out and the radio cuts off for good.
“Bitch you,” she mutters.
We both start laughing. Bitch you used to be one of our favorite things to say to each other. She hasn’t said it to me in years.
Utah used to have a friend named Douglas when we were kids. He lived about a mile down the road, so he used to come over all the time when we lived in our old house behind Dollar Voss. The last time Douglas ever came over was the day he accused me of cheating at hopscotch. Who cheats at hopscotch?
I remember Utah getting so mad at him for accusing me of cheating, he told Douglas to go home. Douglas shot back and yelled, “Bitch you!”
The insult might have been more damaging to Utah’s ego had Douglas used the curse word correctly. I was only eight or nine, but even I knew that bitch you was funny enough to laugh at. That made Douglas even angrier, so he balled up his fists and threatened to hit me.
What Douglas didn’t realize was that our father was standing right behind him.
“Douglas?” my father said, causing him to jump three feet off the ground. “I think it’s best you go home now.” Douglas didn’t even turn around. He just started walking as fast as he could toward the road. When he was about fifteen feet away, my father called out, “And for future reference, it’s fuck you! Not bitch you!”
Douglas never came back, but bitch you became our new favorite insult. It’s been so long since I’ve heard it, I almost forgot it used to be our thing.
Honor slides both her hands down the stereo and sighs. “I heard what you said to Dad yesterday.” She begins picking at the steering wheel with her fingernail, pulling tiny pieces of leather off.
“I said a lot of things to Dad yesterday. Which part are you referring to specifically?”
She leans back in her seat and stares out her window. “You told him I was one heartbeat away from being a necrophiliac.”
I close my eyes and feel a pang of regret that’s become all too familiar this week. I didn’t know Honor was still there when I said that to my father yesterday.
“You make it sound like my entire life revolves around death, Merit. It’s not an obsession. There have been two guys since Kirk died. Two.”
“Are you counting Colby?”
Honor rolls her eyes. “No, he’s still alive.”
“And Kirk,” I point out. “That’s actually four. You’ve been averaging two dead boyfriends a year.”
“Okay,” she says, exasperated. “I get your point. But it doesn’t make you better than me.”
“I never said it did.”
“You don’t have to. I see the way you look at me. You’re always judging me.”
I open my mouth to protest, but then I close it because she might be right. I have very strong opinions about my sister. Is that judging? I get so angry when people judge me, but maybe I’m no better.
I suddenly wish I hadn’t turned off the radio. I’m not liking this conversation so far.
“Do you think you’re in love with Sagan?” she asks.
“That’s random.”
“Just humor me. I have a point to make.”
I look out the window and watch as Sagan digs up the same hole he dug up earlier today. “I barely know him,” I say to Honor. “But there are things I love about him. I love the way he makes me feel. I love being around him. I love his quiet laugh and his morbid art and how he seems to think in a different way than most people our age. But I haven’t known him long enough to be in love with him.”
“Forget about time, Merit. Look at him and tell me you haven’t fallen in love with him.”
I sigh. Fallen is an understatement. It was more like collapsed. Plummeted. Crumpled at his feet. Anything but fallen.
I pull my legs up and turn in my seat to face her. “I feel so stupid saying this because I barely know him, but I felt like I loved him the first moment I laid eyes on him. That’s why I’ve been so cranky lately, because I thought you were dating him, so I did everything I could to stay away from both of you. And now, the more I get to know him, I care about him so much I can’t stand it. He’s all I think about. All I want to think about. It’s so hard to breathe when he’s near me, but it’s also hard to breathe when he isn’t. He makes me want to learn and change and grow and be everything he believes I can be.”
I take a breath after that verbal vomit. Honor laughs and says, “Wow. Okay, then.”
I close my eyes, embarrassed all of that just came out of me. When I open them, Honor is turned toward me in her seat. Her head is resting against the head rest and her eyes are downcast.
“That’s exactly how I felt about Kirk,” she says quietly. “I mean, I know I was a kid, but I felt those same things for him. I thought he was my soul mate. I thought we would be together for the rest of our lives.” She lifts her eyes to mine. “And then . . . he died. But all the feelings I had for him were still there, with nowhere to go and no one to latch on to. And I worried about him constantly because I couldn’t see him or touch him. And I thought maybe, wherever he was, he was just as devastated as me.” There’s a hint of embarrassment in her voice as she tells me all of this. She shrugs and says, “That’s when I started talking to the guys in support groups online. Talking to other kids like Kirk who were dying. And I would tell them all about Kirk. I would make sure they knew how much I loved him so when they got to Heaven and they found him they could say to Kirk, ‘Hey, I know your girlfriend. She sure does love you.’ ”
She falls back against her seat and kicks her feet up on the dash. “I don’t think any of that anymore, but that’s what started all this. A few months after Kirk died, Trevor, one of the guys from the Dallas support group, was put in a hospice. I didn’t love him like I loved Kirk, but I cared about him. And I knew when Kirk was dying that my presence brought him peace. So when Trevor needed that, I gave it to him. And it was nice. It made me feel good to know that I made his death a little more bearable for him. And then after Trevor, there was Micha. And now . . . Colby. And I know you think it’s this terrible thing, like I’m taking advantage of people, or I’m somehow oddly attracted to guys with terminal illnesses.” She looks at me pointedly. “You’re wrong, Merit. I do it because I know that in some small way, I help them through the hardest thing anyone should ever have to go through. That’s all I’m doing. It makes me feel good to make them feel a little more at peace with their death. But you make it seem so terrible and you constantly talk about how I need therapy. It’s . . . mean. You can be really mean sometimes.”
I haven’t said a single word the entire time she’s been talking. I’ve just been listening . . . processing. I’m looking at my sister . . . my identical twin sister . . . and she’s completely unrecognizable to me in this moment. For the first time in my life, I feel like I’m looking at a complete stranger. Like maybe all the opinions I’ve held about her all these years have actually been severe misjudgments.
I look away from her and glance out the window, watching the guys as they work to fill the grave with dirt. I try to imagine how I’d feel if something happened to Sagan. How would I feel if I had to sit by his side and watch him die?
Not once when Honor was grieving Kirk’s death did I ever empathize with that. I didn’t understand that kind of love. We were so much younger then and I honestly thought she was being dramatic.
All these years I’ve hated Utah for not making an effort to be closer to me, and here I am treating my own twin sister the exact same way.
I turn and reach across the seat and pull her to me. As soon as I do, I feel her sigh, like all she’s needed from me was a simple hug. For so long I’ve been resenting my family for not hugging me when maybe they’ve been resenting me for the same thing.
“I’m sorry, Honor.” I sooth my hand over her hair and say the same thing to her that Utah said to me. “I’ll be a better sibling. I promise.”
She lets out a quiet sigh of relief, but she doesn’t let go of me. We hug for a long time, and it makes me wonder why everyone in this family has been so opposed to honesty and hugging for the past several years. It’s actually not so bad. I think we all just got to a point where we were waiting for someone else to initiate it, but no one ever did. Maybe that’s the root of a lot of family issues. It isn’t actually the issues people are hung up about for so long. It’s that no one has the courage to take the first step in talking about the issues.
Honor eventually pulls away from me and flips the visor down. She wipes beneath her eyes with her fingers, clearing away her mascara. She falls back against her seat and reaches over for my hand. She squeezes it. “I’m really sorry about everything I said to you in the last couple of days. About what happened with Utah. I just . . . I think I was angry at you. For never telling me. Why wouldn’t you tell me something like that, Merit? I’m your sister.”
“I don’t know. I was scared. And the more I kept it a secret, the more my fear eventually just turned into resentment. Especially seeing how close you and Utah were. I wanted that, too.”
“We’re both too stubborn for our own good.”
I agree with her. We both inhale the silence while we stare out the window for a while. The guys are still working, but Sagan has pulled off his shirt. I can’t tear my eyes away as he repeatedly bends over and refills the hole. “Is there anything wrong with him? He’s so damn perfect.”
“Meh,” she says. “Too healthy for me. I like ’em a little more fragile.”
“Oh, you can make jokes about it but I can’t?”
She laughs and then her laughter turns into a smile. “He’s really good, Merit,” she says with a sigh. “Be good to him, okay?”
I would if he’d give me the chance. “I’m so glad I was wrong about you two. I don’t know if we would have been able to make up as sisters if you were in love with him.”
She laughs. “Bitch you.”
I smile. God, I’ve missed that.
After a moment, she says, “Do you think he can tell us apart?”
I shrug.
Honor straightens in her seat. Her eyes are full of mischief. “Let’s test him.”
We both start grinning. We climb into the back of the van and start swapping clothes. I pull my hair out of my bun and hand her the hair tie. I smooth my fingers through my hair while she pulls hers up.
“I have to pee,” she says, laughing. “Do you ever notice how being sneaky makes you have to pee?”
“I didn’t until now.”
As soon as our clothes are successfully swapped, we climb back up front, this time with me in the driver’s seat and her in the passenger seat. Right when we get settled, the guys throw their shovels over their shoulders and start heading our way. My heart starts to beat wildly in my chest because now I’m nervous he won’t notice. What would that mean? That everything he said about the first time he saw me was a lie? That he really can’t tell a difference between us? He figured it out pretty quick on the couch the other night.
I’m starting to regret this prank.
Utah reaches the van first. “I’m driving,” he says, motioning for me to get in the backseat. Honor and I climb to the back. I sit in the very backseat and Honor takes one of the middle seats. Sagan is talking to Luck when he climbs inside the van, so he doesn’t even look at either of us. He takes the other middle seat and closes the door, just as Utah cranks the van. Sagan slaps the back of Utah’s seat. “Hurry,” he says, urging Utah on. “I don’t want to be arrested twice for the same thing in one day.”
Sagan falls back against his seat and looks over at Honor with a sweet smile. “You hungry?” He looks back at me and says, “What about you?” He faces forward. “Anyone hungry? I’m starving.”
Honor nods, but she doesn’t say anything. I don’t either. I know we sound alike, but I’m sure if we start talking, it’ll be easier for him to figure it out.
“Let’s go to Taco Bell,” Luck says.
“Honor hates Taco Bell,” Utah says. “Let’s do Arby’s.”
Good thing I’m pretending to be Honor because Taco Bell is my favorite. “Taco Bell sounds good, actually. I don’t mind if we go there.”
Honor turns around and glares at me.
“You know what?” Sagan says, turning in his seat to face Honor. He reaches out to her and grabs her hand. Oh, God. What if he finally decides to kiss me again and I’m not even her? He lifts his other hand and touches Honor’s cheek. “You look really weird in Merit’s clothes.”
“Dammit,” Honor mutters. “We thought we had you.”
Oh, hallelujah.
He immediately releases Honor’s face and turns around and climbs over the backseat. He sits next to me and wraps an arm around my shoulders. He presses a quick kiss to the side of my head and whispers, “Thank you.”
I look up at him and he’s smiling. I can see in that smile that he’s glad Honor and I are pulling pranks on him. It means we made up, which is what he was hoping for.
“You smell like a dead dog,” I say.
“No, I smell like a hardened criminal.”
“No,” Honor says. “All of you smell like death. Roll down the windows!”
The smell is overwhelming. I pull my shirt up over my mouth and keep my nose covered until we get to Taco Bell.
By the time we get back, it’s after midnight. But despite the time, as soon as we walk in the front door, Honor, Utah, and I all get a group text from our mother. I guess she heard us walking in.
Can one of you please come down here? I hear something.
I look up from my phone and Utah and Honor are both looking at me.
“Whose turn is it?” Utah asks.
Honor shrugs. “Mine, I guess. I haven’t been down in a couple of days.”
“Neither have I,” Utah says.
“Me, neither.”
All three of us head toward the basement. We file down the stairs and our mother is standing on the other side of the room, below the basement window. It looks like she’s been asleep. She’s wearing pajamas and her hair is a mess. “Do you hear that?” she says, stepping toward us, wide-eyed. “I’ve been hearing it off and on all day.”
Utah walks to the window, but he glances at Honor and me. We all try to hide what we’re feeling, but things are different now. After knowing what our father has known all these years, I don’t know that we will ever look at our mother the same way. I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. It’s good, actually. I feel more sympathetic toward her right now than I ever have. And there’s zero resentment there, now that I’m fully aware of her situation.
There’s suspicion, though. I’m already questioning whether or not she’s actually hearing things now that I know what a big role her mental health has on her daily life. We’ve always known she has issues, but now that our father has finally enlightened us to just how deeply rooted those issues are, we’re probably all going to be more suspicious of her erratic behavior. Utah stands beneath the basement window for a moment. We all remain quiet, but we don’t hear anything.
“What is it you’re hearing exactly?” Utah asks her.
She waves toward the window. “It sounds like something is wrong with that dog. It’s been crying all day and night and I can’t sleep.”
Honor looks at me with a sad expression. Our mother doesn’t even realize that Wolfgang has died and has been buried. More than once, actually.
“Mom,” I say. “The dog isn’t here anymore.” I try to say it in the sincerest way possible, but in my head I’m thinking, You poor thing.
“No, I’m telling you, there’s something near that window.” She’s so adamant about it, she begins to pace.
Utah nods and walks toward the stairs. “I’ll go check it out,” he says, running up the steps.
Our mother walks over to her bed and sits on the edge of it. Honor sits down next to her and runs her hand soothingly down our mother’s hair.
“Are you hungry?” Honor asks her.
As soon as she says it, I remember that none of us took her dinner tonight. We got the call that our father was arrested and we immediately left to go deal with that. I didn’t even think to grab her anything at Taco Bell.
“No, Victoria brought me a plate of food. And you girls forget that I have my own refrigerator down here. I won’t starve if I don’t get a meal.”
Honor and I both look at each other in surprise. “Victoria brought you food?”
My mother casually stands again like she didn’t just throw out there that Victoria was in this basement. I didn’t think Victoria had been in this basement since the day my mother moved down here.
But if I’ve learned anything this week, it’s that I don’t know people as well as I think I do.
There’s a knock at the basement window. “Merit,” Utah says, his voice muffled from behind the glass. “Come out here.”
I run up the stairs and go outside, around to the basement window where Utah is kneeling on the ground. “You aren’t going to believe this,” he says. He lifts something up and motions for me to come closer.
“What is that?”
“A puppy,” he says. “Two of them.”
I immediately fall to my knees next to him. “You’re kidding. Where in the world did they come from?” I grab one of the puppies from Utah. It’s black and tiny and can’t be more than a day or two old. I glance around. “Where do you think their mom is?”
Utah pulls the other puppy to his chest. “I suspect she’s buried near Pastor Brian.”
Wait.
Wait.
“Wolfgang was a girl?”
“Looks like it,” Utah says, laughing.
“But . . .” I look down at the puppy in my hands. “They’re probably starving. How are we supposed to keep them alive now?”
Utah hands me the other puppy and stands up. “I’ll see if I can get in touch with an emergency vet. You take them down to Mom so she can see what’s been keeping her awake.”
I gather both the puppies in my arms and carry them inside the house and down to the basement.
“What the heck?” Honor says, immediately grabbing one from me. “Where did these come from?”
Surprisingly, my mother grabs the other puppy. “Oh, my goodness,” she says. “So you’re the culprit, huh?” She nuzzles the puppy with her nose. “Oh, you’re so cute.”
“Turns out Wolfgang was actually a girl. Utah is calling the vet to see what we can do for them.”
“I want to keep one,” my mother says. “Do you think I can keep one?”
I reach over and pet the puppy in her arms. “I don’t know, Mom. It’ll be kind of hard to raise a dog in a basement.”
“Yeah,” Honor says, giving me a knowing look before looking at Mom. “But I bet Utah would let you keep one if you moved back to the old house with him. It should be ready in a few weeks.”
My mother doesn’t say anything for a moment. She just stares down at the puppy while she smooths her hand down its back. “You think he would?” she says quietly.
Honor looks at me and smiles.
I have no idea if she’ll actually move back to our old house, but this is the closest she’s come to entertaining the idea of leaving the basement in a long time. That’s progress.
Utah comes back down the stairs. “I found a vet who wants me to bring them in. He says there’s a formula we can syringe feed them, but we’ll have to do it every couple of hours for the first week.”
“I can help,” my mother says with eagerness. “Will you bring them back down here when you get back?”
Utah nods as he takes the puppies from her and Honor. “Sure. It might be a while, though. I’ll wake you up when I get home.”
“I’ll go with you,” Honor says, running up the stairs after him. Once they’re gone, I look over at my mother. She’s walking around her small basement apartment, tidying things up, preparing for the return of the puppies. It makes me smile, seeing her this excited about something.
“Did Utah say Wolfgang is their mother? Is that the same dog your father used to hate so much?”
“One and only.”
She laughs. “I don’t know why, but that makes me like those puppies even more.” She drops down onto her couch and yawns. I watch her for a moment, until she notices me staring. “What is it?”
I shrug. “Nothing.”
“You look upset.”
I sigh and then take a seat next to her. “Dad thinks I need to start therapy on Monday.”
She pats my knee. An unusual gesture coming from her. “Your dad thinks a doctor can fix anything. But my doctor never fixed me.” She glances at me. “You want me to talk to him?”
I think about that question for a moment. But I also think about the crumpled sheet of paper sitting on my bedroom floor. “Do you think maybe you just never had the right doctor?”
My mother regards me quietly for a moment. She starts fidgeting with her hands and I can see the anxiety starting to set in. She breaks eye contact and says, “It’s late. I think I’m going to sleep.”
Her words disappoint me, but not as much as they sadden me. “Okay,” I say. “Good night, Mom.”
She’s already off the couch and walking toward her bed. I head toward the stairs, but she calls my name.
“Yeah?” I say, pausing at the bottom.
She shrugs her left shoulder and says, “Let me know if you like the doctor.”
I smile at her. Another step closer. Even if it’s just a baby step.
When I make it upstairs, my father is staring out the window. I haven’t seen him since he walked here earlier this evening. I hesitate a moment, wondering if I should just go to my room or if I should say something to him. I eventually walk to where he’s standing and glance out the window. Utah, Honor, and Luck are walking toward the van. Honor is holding both of the puppies inside a box.
“He was a girl?” my dad asks, shaking his head. “That damn bastard dog was a girl,” he repeats. We watch out the window as Honor takes a seat in the passenger seat of the van, but before Luck or Utah get inside, Utah grabs Luck’s hand and they kiss briefly. It’s kind of sweet if you can overlook the whole related-by-marriage thing.
My father groans after seeing their display of affection. “I hope that doesn’t last.”
I chuckle. “I’m pretty sure Utah will be gay forever. It’s not really something that fades.”
My father turns away from the window, shaking his head. “I know that, Merit. I don’t care if he’s gay. I’m referring to whatever is happening between him and Luck. How am I supposed to explain to Moby that his uncle and his half brother are . . . a thing?”
“There are worse things he could find out about us.”
“Like what?”
“You were arrested today for exhuming a corpse. That’s pretty bad.”
My dad laughs. “Moby would probably like that.” He stares out the window again, long enough for them to pull out of the driveway.
I shove my hands in the back pockets of my jeans. “Dad?” I don’t know what I plan to say to him. He’s put up with so much in his life and I can’t help but feel like I’ve been adding to that weight all these years, rather than trying to take some of the weight off his shoulders. Do I apologize? Tell him thank you?
My dad nods, just a little, and then he takes a step toward me and pulls me in for a hug. The first hug he’s probably felt like I would allow him to give me in a very long time. “I know, Merit,” he whispers, relieving me from the awkwardness of not knowing what to say to him. “Me too.”
I pull my hands from my pockets and return the hug. My father presses his cheek to the top of my head and I can’t help but smile because it’s probably the best hug I’ve ever been given. It’s the one hug I’ve needed the most. We stay like this for a while, almost as if he’s making up for lost time. And maybe I am, too.
If someone had told me last week that we’d be having this moment tonight, I’d have laughed at them and said it would be a miracle.
Maybe it is.
I’m facing the living room with my head pressed against my father’s chest. I look up at Jesus and wonder if maybe He answered my prayer, after all. It was just a few days ago that I got down on my knees in my bedroom and prayed for a new focus.
I’d say the events that transpired after that have definitely given me a new focus.
I loosen my grip on my father and look up at him. “Why don’t you believe in God?”
He glances over at Jesus and contemplates my question for a moment. And then he says, “I’m just a pragmatic person.” He smiles down at me and tugs at my hair as he releases me. “That doesn’t mean you can’t believe in Him, though. We aren’t put on this earth to be carbon copies of our parents. Peace doesn’t come to everyone in the same form.”
He tells me good night and walks to his bedroom. I glance at the hallway and Sagan is leaning against the wall, watching me. There’s a faint smile on his face.
“It’s after midnight,” he says.
I look up at the clock on the wall and it’s almost one in the morning. Which means . . . it’s Saturday. “It’s Saturday! My tattoo!”
Sagan laughs. “Let’s go to the bathroom so you can see it in the mirror.”
I follow him to the bathroom, my heart pounding anxiously in my chest. I search for a handheld mirror so I can see it closer. “It better be pretty. If you gave me a poop emoji, I’ll kill you.”
He laughs quietly as he pulls down my shirt sleeve and works to remove the bandage. “You seriously haven’t peeked at it?”
I shake my head. “I promised you I wouldn’t.”
He takes the mirror from me and holds it up behind me. “Okay. Open your eyes.”
When I see it, I suck in a quiet rush of air. In small font are the words, “With Merit.” I stare at it for several seconds before the meaning really hits me.
In the letter I wrote to everyone, I signed off, “Without Merit.”
Sagan wrote the opposite.
“With Merit.”
Tears immediately cloud my vision as I run my fingers over it. It almost feels like a badge of maturity.
“Sagan,” I whisper. “It’s perfect.”
He smiles at me in the mirror. “I think it’ll look cool as a watercolor tattoo. I’ll add some colors to it once I get more experience.” He touches it and my skin feels like it ignites. “I’m glad you like it.”
“I love it,” I whisper.
I turn around to face him. He’s extremely close still, but he doesn’t back away. He’s looking down at me like he has something else to say. I wait with air stuck in my lungs, but he just clears his throat and takes a step back. My lungs deflate like balloons when he widens the gap between us.
“Good night, Merit.” He walks out of the bathroom, and I sigh.
I walk to my bedroom and sit down on my bed. I reach behind me and touch my fingers to my tattoo again. With Merit. I should have asked Sagan why he chose this tattoo. Did he do it to make me feel better? I’ve been wondering lately why he even seems interested in a friendship with me. Sure, we had an unusual connection the first time we met, but he thought I was Honor. And after that day, I was nothing but rude to him. He even said himself that the more he got to know me, the less he liked me. But despite all of that, he still invests in me. I don’t know why I automatically assume he must have an ulterior motive. Maybe he actually does find something appealing about my personality.
I glance across the room at the wadded-up piece of paper still on my bedroom floor. I walk over and pick it up, unfolding the paper as I sit down on my bed. I look at all the check marks and it makes me wonder if this list is in any way accurate. I don’t know a lot about mental health, but knowing that I might have inherited my mother’s instability fills me with an unknown fear. Am I going to end up like her?
I shudder at the thought.
I fold the paper in half and set it aside, pulling my covers over me. I leave my lamp on and stare at Sagan’s drawings for a while. I think about his family. I think about my family. I try to fall asleep despite all the thinking, but my mind has different plans. I lie wide-awake until I hear the front door open as everyone returns from the vet with the puppies.
I still can’t believe Wolfgang was a girl.
At least another half hour goes by while I stare at the ceiling. The wall. I listen to showers running and doors closing. The house finally settles, but then I’m startled by a knock on my own door. I reach over and find the list Luck gave me and shove it under my blanket. “It’s open.”
Luck walks in and I shouldn’t be surprised by his choice of clothing at this point, but I still laugh. He’s wearing a pair of Victoria’s pink scrubs.
“Do you need to go shopping?” I ask, scooting over on my bed.
He plops down next to me. “Nah. I keep finding plenty of stuff in the laundry room.”
He only allowed an accent slip on the last word of that whole sentence. He’s acclimating. I reach under the covers and grab the folded-up sheet of paper. I hand it to him. “So what does this mean?”
Luck opens the list and looks it over. I watch his expression carefully, but he gives none of his thoughts away. “It means you might be depressed,” he says nonchalantly.
I groan and dramatically fall over on the bed. “Can’t it just mean I’ve had a bad month?”
He lays the list on my chest and I grab it and wad it up again, sitting back up.
“It could,” he says. “But you won’t know until you talk to someone about it.”
I roll my eyes. “What if I go to this dumb therapy session and find out I am depressed? What kind of life is that to look forward to, Luck? I don’t want to spend the rest of my life like my mother.”
Luck dips his head and looks at me pointedly. “I haven’t met your mother yet and I’m no psychologist, but I think she suffers from a lot more than just depression. Agoraphobia being the main thing.”
“Yeah, but she didn’t even develop that until a few years ago. She gets worse with time. That’s probably going to happen to me, too.” The thought that there might be something severely wrong with me leaves a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach. I don’t want to think about it. I haven’t wanted to think about it since Luck initially brought it up. “Why can’t I just be normal?”
My question makes Luck laugh. I wasn’t expecting that reaction. “Normal?” he says. “Describe normal to me, Merit.”
“Honor is normal. So is Utah. And Sagan. Most people without a broken brain.”
Luck rolls his head and stands up. He swings my bedroom door open. “Utah! Honor! Sagan! Come here!” He stands by the door, holding it open. I bury my face in my hands. What the hell is he doing?
“Why are you yelling for them? It’s the middle of the night!”
Despite it being as late as it is, Honor, Utah, and Sagan file into my room one by one. Luck motions to the bed. “Have a seat,” he says to all of them. I look up and Sagan is watching me as he closes the bedroom door.
“Everything okay?” Sagan asks, looking directly at me. I shrug because I have no idea what Luck is up to.
“Sagan,” Luck says. “What happens when you drink milk?”
Sagan releases an unsure laugh. “I don’t drink milk. I’m lactose intolerant.”
I didn’t know he was lactose intolerant, but what does that have to do with anything?
“Do you take medication for it?” Luck asks.
Sagan nods. “Sometimes.”
Luck turns his attention to Utah. “What happens if you go out in the sun for a long time without sunscreen?”
Utah rolls his eyes. “I burn. We aren’t all blessed with skin that tans easily,” he says, nodding toward Sagan.
“And you,” he says to Honor. “Why do you wear contacts and Merit doesn’t?”
“Probably because she has better vision than me, Einstein.”
Luck looks back at me. “They aren’t normal,” he says. “Having depression is no more out of your control than Sagan’s intolerance to milk, or Utah’s pale skin, or Honor’s bad vision. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about. But it’s not something you can ignore or correct on your own. And it doesn’t make you abnormal. It makes you just as normal as these idiots,” he says, waving toward everyone else.
I can feel my cheeks flush from a combination of the embarrassment and unwanted attention I’m getting right now. But I also can’t stop from smiling because I really do appreciate my idiot step-uncle. I’m kind of glad he showed up when he did.
“I also have athlete’s foot,” Sagan says. I look up at him and he crinkles his nose. “It’s really bad. Especially in the summer.”
I laugh and Honor says, “Hey, speaking of things wrong with us. Remember when Dad was diagnosed with Tourette’s?”
“No way,” Luck says.
“Not the cussing kind,” Utah clarifies. “That’s mostly embellished on TV. He used to have these tics all the time and he’d make these noises with his throat. The doctor said they were brought on by stress, so he took medication for it for a couple of years. Not sure if he still does.”
“See?” Luck says excitedly. “Your whole family suffers from all kinds of things. You shouldn’t feel so special, Merit. We’re all a degree of fucked-up.”
I laugh, but I don’t even know what to say. It feels nice to have their encouragement, no matter how strange it is.
“Merit,” Honor says. She looks at me with a hint of guilt in her expression. “I’m really sorry. I feel like I should have. . .” She shrugs and looks down. “Seen the signs, I guess?”
I shake my head. “Honor, I’m the one who tried to kill myself and I didn’t even know I was depressed.”
Luck leans his head back against the wall. “Merit’s right,” he says. “A lot of people who suffer from depression don’t even know they have it. It’s a gradual change. Or at least it was for me. I used to feel like I was on top of the world. Then one day, I noticed that it felt like I was no longer on top of the world. I was just floating around inside of it. And then eventually, it felt like the world was on top of me.”
I soak in what Luck just said, because it’s like he summed up my entire past year in just a few sentences. I open my mouth to say something, but my voice is cut off by the sudden sound of my father’s voice coming from the hallway. “Merit, you better not have . . .” As soon as the door swings open, my father clamps his mouth shut. I’m assuming he heard voices and thought something more sinister was going on. He looks around at all of us and it’s obvious he wasn’t prepared for this sight. It’s been a long time since Honor, Utah, and I have hung out in the same room.
He hesitates, nods a little and then smiles before closing my bedroom door. We all start to laugh, but he swings it open again and says, “I’m glad you’re all spending time together. But it’s late. Go to bed.”
“It’s a weekend,” Utah groans.
My father raises an eyebrow at Utah and that one look is enough to lift everyone off the bed. Sagan is the last to leave my room. Right before he closes the door, he smiles and says, “You were really easy to like today, Merit.”
I sigh and lie back on my bed. What a night.
What a week.
I turn off my lamp again and try for a second time tonight to shut off my thoughts. I’m finally almost asleep when I hear a soft knock on my door. It’s pitch-black in my room, but when the door cracks open, the light breaks through. Sagan peeks his head through the door. “You asleep yet?” he whispers.
I sit up and reach over to the lamp. “Nope.” My hands are already shaking at all the possibilities of why he’s back. He closes the door and takes a seat on the bed next to me. He isn’t wearing a shirt now. Only a pair of black sweat pants. I sit up, but keep the covers pulled up to my stomach. After everyone left my room earlier, I took off my pajama bottoms. Now I’m only wearing a T-shirt. Put us together, and we could make a whole naked person.
“I had something else to say but I didn’t want to say it in front of all of them,” he says.
“What is it?”
“You said something the other night about how you felt like an asshole after hearing my story.”
I nod. “I did. And I still do.”
He shakes his head. “It bothers me that you think that. You shouldn’t compare your stress to mine. We all have different baselines.”
I stare at him blankly. “What’s that?”
He reaches to me and takes my hand, pulling it to his lap. He turns it palm-up and touches my wrist, drawing an imaginary line across it. “Let’s pretend this is a normal stress level. Your baseline.” He drags his finger up my palm until he reaches the tip of my middle finger. “And let’s pretend this is your max stress level.” He moves his fingers down and touches my wrist again. “Your baseline is where you are on a normal day. Not too much stress, everything is flowing smoothly. But say you break your leg.” He runs his finger from the baseline at my wrist to the middle of my palm. “Your stress level would go up to like fifty percent because you’ve never broken your leg before.”
He releases my hand and flips his own hand over. He looks up at me. “You know how many times I’ve broken a bone?”
I shrug. “Twice?”
“Six times,” he says, smiling. “I was a rambunctious kid.” He touches his wrist and makes an imaginary line across it. “So if I were to break my leg, it would be stressful, but I’ve been through it before. So it would only raise my stress level to like ten percent. Not fifty.” He pauses. “You understand what I’m saying?”
I’m honestly not sure what point he’s trying to make. “Are you saying you’re tougher than me?”
He laughs. “No, Merit. That was only an example. What I’m saying is, the same two things could happen to two people, but that doesn’t mean they would experience the exact same stress over it. We all have different levels of stress that we’re accustomed to. You probably felt the same amount of stress over your family situation as I sometimes do about mine, even though they’re on completely different levels. But that doesn’t make you weaker. It doesn’t make you an asshole. We’re just two different people with two different sets of experiences.” He takes my hand again, but it’s not to prove a point. He just threads his fingers through mine and holds my hand. “It annoys me when people try to convince other people that their anger or stress isn’t warranted if someone else in the world is worse off than them. It’s bullshit. Your emotions and reactions are valid, Merit. Don’t let anyone tell you any different. You’re the only one who feels them.”
He squeezes my hand, and I’m not sure at which point during this conversation I fell for him, but it happened. I may look like I’m casually sitting on a bed next to him, but metaphorically, I’ve melted at his feet.
Between Luck and Sagan, the last couple of hours have been eye-opening.
I don’t even attempt to respond to all he just said to me. Instead, I rest my head on his shoulder as he wraps his arm around me. I think about what he said earlier when he told me I was really easy to like today. I find some comfort in that, because in the past twenty-four hours, he’s probably seen the most authentic side of me he’s ever seen. I close my eyes and readjust myself against him.
“You’re easy to like every day,” I whisper, right before I finally fall asleep.