Chapter Eighteen
Hannah always goes straight to fifth period when she gets back after lunch, so I wait for her outside her classroom door. In the middle of the school hallway thirty seconds before class starts isn’t an ideal place for a confrontation, but I’m too worried now to put it off. If the bruises on Hannah’s face represent emotional pain, then she’s in a lot of it, and after my conversation with her dad yesterday, I’m pretty sure no one in her family has a clue.
My stomach twists when I see her. For weeks my eyes have been sliding over her bruises, hanging at the edges of her face. Now I can’t look away.
“Hey,” she says, surprised to see me. “What’s up?”
I take a quick breath. “Look. I know you’re really anxious about your audition. And you should be, it’s a big deal, and I get that. How important it is to you. But I think something else is going on with you, something inside, that you don’t want anyone to know.”
Hannah blinks. “What?”
I wasn’t going to tell her about the bruises. But suddenly it just comes tumbling out.
“I’ve been seeing things since my accident,” I say. “Wounds, on people’s faces. Not everyone, just some people. Most people, I guess. At first I thought it was related to my anxiety — I have a panic disorder, I don’t think I’ve ever told you about it, but I do. Avoidance was always my thing — basically, denial — so the doctors thought that’s what I was doing again. Hallucinating wounds on other people so I wouldn’t have to deal with my own.” I pause for a sec, trying to read her expression.
I can’t.
“But it isn’t that,” I go on. “Or, at least, it’s not that anymore. What I see when I look at you . . . it’s not about my accident or my anxiety. I’m pretty sure it’s not about me at all.”
Hannah stares at me. “Are you seriously doing this right now?”
I shake my head. “I know how crazy it sounds. Believe me. But—”
She cuts me off. “My brother is in the hospital. The biggest audition of my life is in three days. And you’re standing here talking about what you think you see on my face?”
“I see bruises,” I blurt out. “So many bruises. And I get that now is a crappy time for me to be doing this, but I don’t know what else to do. I can’t just ignore it.”
“Because you see bruises.” Her voice is cold.
Doubt sweeps through me. Cold like her voice, and dark.
all you have to go on is your own certainty
“Yes,” I say, my own voice shaking. “And I know they mean something. Whether you admit it to me or not.”
Hannah just looks at me.
“Say something,” I say.
“You should see a doctor,” she says. Then she turns and walks into her classroom.
I stand in the hall, staring at her back, more convinced now than ever, because if it was nothing she wouldn’t have reacted like that.
but what could it be?
In a way, the bruises are comforting, because they’re just bruises. Bruises aren’t permanent. Bruises heal. It’s not like she’s walking around with a gash in her head. Maybe I should leave her alone, let her deal with this on her own, whatever this is. It’s what I would’ve wanted, six months ago. If someone had somehow been able to peek through the facade at the soul underneath, my soul, sad and bruised and ashamed. I would’ve wanted them to put the curtain back down and pretend they hadn’t seen anything. I certainly wouldn’t have wanted them to drag it out into the light.
But I can’t do that. I can’t just ignore the fact that my friend is hurting. If the bruises were on her skin, I wouldn’t just let it go. I’d demand that she tell me who hurt her. I’d rush her to the hospital. I’d get her help.
That’s the thing about the invisible world, I guess. Where souls get battered and minds get muddled and hearts get broken again and again. It’s a war zone, a disaster area, but no one wants to talk about how messed up things are, so we let each other pretend. We play along, we act like we’re all okay. But we’re not okay. All the junk we’re hiding is right there, right in front of us, right within us. The brokenness, and the desolation and the despair. We tell ourselves it’ll get better if we just ignore it. But wounds don’t work that way. Leave them open, and you’ll bleed out.
And yeah, maybe my timing did suck, maybe I should’ve waited until Hannah’s audition was over to say anything. But if I’ve learned anything from the last couple months, it’s that nothing gets better in the dark.
Dad is in a weird mood when he picks me up after school. Quieter than normal, and of course it makes me wonder about his wounds. As he pulls out of the parking lot, I study the scars that twist his stubbly cheeks. They’ve faded a little, since my accident. At least I think they have. Without a mental image it’s hard to be sure. But they haven’t disappeared. Maybe that’s the thing with scars, maybe they never do. I find myself wondering where he got them. If any of them are because of me.
“You okay?” I ask him.
He glances over at me. “Today’s our anniversary. Was our anniversary. Me and your mom.”
“Oh. I didn’t know you still kept track.”
“A wedding date is kind of hard to forget.”
His eyes are back on the road now, but I’m still looking at him, his face in profile. I’m surprised at how sad he looks.
but you left her, I want to say.
“You seem sad,” I say instead, which is totally unlike me, to probe.
“I guess because I am,” he says. “I never wanted my marriage to end. For my family to break apart.”
“So why’d you leave?” I ask softly.
“Your mom asked me to move out. I was a struggling landscape designer. I couldn’t afford to live in L.A. on my own.”
“That’s not the way Mom tells it,” I say.
Dad sighs. “Yeah. Well. Your mom was always very creative.” We stop at a red light and he glances over at me again. “I should’ve fought harder,” he says. “For our family. For you. I wanted you out here with me, full time, but all your mom’s talk of disrupting your life made me wonder if I was being selfish, taking you away from your friends.”
I stare at him. “You wanted me to live with you?”
Dad looks at me with a mixture of sadness and disbelief. “Of course I did, Bear. You were — are — everything to me.”
The light changes and Dad steps on the gas. I’m quiet for a few minutes, staring out the side window, my brain buzzing with about forty different emotions at once.
“I felt so stupid,” I say finally.
“Stupid? Why?”
“Because I didn’t see it coming. You leaving, the divorce, any of it. And when it happened everyone acted like it was no surprise. Mom’s friends, the neighbors, even my teachers at school.” Tears spring to my eyes. I wipe them quickly with my sleeve.
“That might be because they all knew your mother,” Dad says dryly.
“She wasn’t always that bad,” I say. “I remember in elementary school, she used to take me to her studio after school and let me do my homework at her drafting table. Most of the other kids in my class got picked up by nannies, even the ones with moms who didn’t work. But Mom was always there in the pick-up line, no matter what.”
idling in her lexus, the one i totaled on new year’s eve
This thought comes and goes.
“You were her priority,” Dad says. “Always have been.”
“Ha.”
“I’m serious. I know she stinks at showing it sometimes, but she’s always wanted what’s best for you, Bear. The money and the success may have changed her view of me, but not her feelings for you.”
“You weren’t there, Dad. My anxiety made things messy. Mom hates messy.”
“No, your mom hates things she can’t fix,” Dad says. “Your anxiety made her feel like a failure, because she couldn’t control it. Ignoring it was easier, I think.” He glances over at me. “You’re doing better, though, right? You seem better. The last couple weeks?”
This is my chance to tell him what’s going on with me, all of it, to finally fill him in. But starting from the beginning would take too long, and we’re almost home. So I tell him the truth that isn’t the whole truth, but in a way, kind of is.
“I’m getting there,” I say. “I’ve been talking to the school counselor. It’s helping. I think.”
Dad smiles. “I’m glad.”
Marshall calls the landline exactly ten seconds after I walk through the door.
“How’d you know I’d be home already?” I ask.
“I didn’t,” he says. “This is the third time I’ve called.”
“Stalker, much?”
“If you were a normal person with a cell phone, I could just text.” In the background, I hear piano music.
“Wait, are you home already?”
“Yup. Hence the three calls. Want to come over? We’re getting pizza from Beau Jo’s to celebrate my whole heartedness.”
I want to go, because I want to see him, but there’s no way Hannah wants to see me, not after what happened in hall this afternoon.
“I can’t tonight,” I say. “I have a ton of homework.” I should just tell him about my fight with Hannah, about the bruises, the whole thing. It’s weird, suddenly, that I haven’t yet.
“Bummer. I was hoping we might revisit that conversation we were having in my hospital room before my parents came back.”
My cheeks flush. “Maybe we can pick it back up on Saturday,” I say.
“You’re really hyping this date.” I hear him smiling. “Where are you taking me, anyway?”
“A lifeless art show. Then the skate park.”
“Don’t mock! I planned a perfectly respectable first date. It wasn’t my fault I was blindsided two minutes in and had to recalibrate. Admittedly the skate park wasn’t my best idea, but I was wearing skinny khakis. The blood flow to my brain was restricted.”
“I was serious,” I say, giggling. “Well, except about the lifeless part. There’s a Van Gogh exhibit at the Denver Museum of Art that looks really cool. Then, after, I was thinking maybe you’d teach me to skate. Which maybe shouldn’t involve the skate park, actually, since I will definitely require flat surfaces.”
“I accept the itinerary,” Marshall says. “Even though you’ve completely ripped me off. On date eleven I will force you to admit that last Friday was actually our first date and that you had so much fun that you tried desperately to replicate it.”
“Who says we’ll even make it to date eleven?” I ask. My voice is light, joking, but my chest suddenly feels tight. I don’t want to think about the future. I don’t want to think about all the ways this could go wrong.
“A boy can dream. Hey, what time are we going on Saturday? We need to figure out transportation. I can’t drive for another week, and Hannah needs the car for her audition. Should we bus it?”
“Aren’t you going with her to the audition?”
“Can’t,” Marshall says. “Only prospective students are allowed in the building. Plus, Hannah hates an entourage at these kinds of things anyway. Says it throws her off.”’
“Got it. Well I told her I’d come over in the morning to help her with her makeup. My dad’ll bring me. So maybe we could go right after that? What time’s her audition?”
“Eleven forty-five, I think. She said she wants to be there no later than eleven-fifteen. It’s at Boettcher Hall, close to the museum, so maybe we can just ride with her there, walk to the museum, and then take the bus home?”
“That sounds great,” I say. “If she doesn’t mind.”
“Nah, it should be fine. As long as we don’t speak on the ride in. Holy crap, I can’t wait for this audition to be over to I can have my sister back. She’s been a beast this week.”
say something say something say something
“Hey, uh, can we talk about her for a sec?”
“Hannah? Yeah, sure, why?”
“I— I think there’s something going on with her.”
“What do you mean?”
I could tell him about the bruises, but in a way, it’s not about what I’ve been seeing on her face, not anymore. It’s about what I know.
“I don’t know what it is,” I say. “But something’s up with her. She’s been acting weird. Really weird.”
“Yeah, anytime she has a big performance or an audition for something she gets a little crazy,” Marshall says. “I guess it makes sense that she’d get even more stressed after her brother with a heart condition found a blood clot in his leg. I don’t think it’s anything other than that.”
“But it’s not just stress,” I insist. “It’s something else. It’s like she’s—,” hurt wounded broken “—sad.”
Marshall doesn’t say anything.
“You still there?” I ask.
“Yeah. I’m here.”
“Why aren’t you saying anything?”
“I’m not sure what you want me to say,” he says hesitantly. “She doesn’t seem sad to me.”
because you can’t see what i see
because you can’t see the truth
Now I am quiet. What am I supposed to say? I could tell him about the bruises, but then this conversation becomes about me.
“She is sad,” I say finally. “Even if you can’t see it. I can.”
“What does she have to be sad about? If she doesn’t get into Interlochen, then yeah, definitely, she’ll be crushed. But that hasn’t happened yet. And everything is fine with me. Hannah isn’t the type to mope about something, either. It’s not in her DNA.”
“I don’t know what she has to be sad about,” I say, annoyed at him for brushing this off. “But I do know that not everybody wears their issues around like a freaking badge of honor.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Marshall sounds stung.
“Nothing.”
“You mean me,” he says. “You think I do that.”
“It’s just . . . sometimes I think you’re proud of it,” I say finally. “Like you like having a heart defect, so you can go around telling everyone how broken and messed up you are and feeling really good about yourself for being so open about it. But it’s not that simple for the rest of us.”
Marshall makes a sound in his throat. “Yeah, because having a hole in my heart has been a real breeze.”
“I didn’t mean it that way,” I say immediately, feeling like a jerk. “I know it’s been awful for you. It’s just…I dunno. In some ways a heart defect seems less complicated. Because, yeah, it’s this one part of you that’s damaged, but it’s not you that’s damaged.”
“But it is,” Marshall says. “Don’t you get that? Regardless of whether the muscle in my chest has a hole in it or not, my heart is defective, will always be defective, just like everyone else’s. We’re people, we’re flawed. There’s no fancy procedure for that.”
I’m quiet for a moment, thinking about my own defective heart, the one that’s so afraid of getting hurt that it builds walls around itself to keep people out.
“So why doesn’t it apply to her?” I ask eventually. “If everyone is damaged, why can’t you accept that Hannah is, too?”
“I do accept that,” Marshall says. “My sister has her issues like everyone else. It’s not like her stress level is a particularly healthy. All I was saying before is that I don’t think she has some deep sadness she’s hiding.”
“Maybe you’re right,” I say carefully. “You know your sister better than I do. But I know what it’s like to pretend, to do everything you can to convince people that you’re okay. And the longer you do it, the better you get at it, until the act is all you are.”
“It’s not all you are,” Marshall says firmly.
“But it was,” I say. “Really, it was. And I’m not saying that Hannah is the same as me. But of course there’s more going on with her than you can see on the surface. There always is, with everyone.”
“She puts a lot of pressure on herself,” Marshall says finally. “She always has. I guess I thought that getting into Interlochen would change that. Take some of that pressure off.”
“And when she gets there? Seems like a place like that would only make it worse.”
“But it’s what she’s always wanted,” Marshall says. “The one thing. What am I supposed to say, ‘Hannah I know you’ve worked years for this, but I don’t think you should go’?”
“Do you really feel that way? That she shouldn’t go?”
“No. I don’t know. Even if I did. I wouldn’t want to stand in her way, or make her second guess it.”
“You’re a good brother, you know that?”
“Homework!” I hear Dad call from the living room. It’s such a dad move, Dad being a dad finally, my dad, and maybe someday it’ll be annoying, but not yet.
“I gotta go,” I tell Marshall. “My dad’s calling me.” And despite the fact that I have mountains of homework waiting, I’m smiling as I hang up.