Zoe
The walls no longer breathed. The colours were fading. Zoe felt like she was sobering up. It was like that feeling at the end of a party when you walked out of a stuffy room into the night air and your mind cleared.
‘Zach was on medication,’ said Zoe’s mother. ‘For his asthma.’
Why did that matter? Zoe could tell that her mother thought she was sharing something momentous here, but she had learned that what was momentous to your parents was often not that momentous to you, and what was momentous to you was often not that momentous to your parents.
‘I like to call it Zachariah’s Theory of Momentous-ity,’ said Zach, who was still there with them.
‘Don’t tell me your theories. I’m all alone, taking care of the parents,’ said Zoe. ‘And it’s an onerous responsibility, thou fuckwit, because they are both cray-cray.’
‘I know, I’m sorry, thou mangled pox-marked clack dish,’ said Zach.
‘I need you to concentrate, Zoe,’ said her mother.
‘I know he was on medication for his asthma,’ said her dad. ‘A preventative. So what?’
‘One of the side effects can be depression and suicidal thoughts,’ said Heather. ‘I told you the specialist wanted to prescribe it to him and you said, “Are there any side effects?” and I said . . . I said . . . “No.”’
The regret dragged at her face like claw marks.
‘You said no,’ repeated Zoe’s father.
‘I said no,’ said her mother. Her eyes were pleading for forgiveness. ‘I’m so sorry.’
A cliff face of momentous-ity loomed in front of Zoe.
‘I hadn’t even read the leaflet in the box,’ said her mother. ‘I knew Dr Chang was the best, I knew he wouldn’t prescribe anything with dangerous side effects, I trusted him, so I just said, “No. It’s all fine. I’ve checked.” But I lied to you, Napoleon, I lied.’
Zoe’s dad blinked.
After a while, he said slowly, ‘I would have trusted him too.’
‘You would have read the leaflet. You would have gone through it so carefully, reading every word, asking me questions, driving me crazy. I’m the one with the medical training but I didn’t even read it. I thought I was so busy at that time. I don’t know what I thought I was so busy doing.’ Her mother rubbed her hands down her cheeks as if she were trying to smear herself away. ‘I read the leaflet about six months after he died. I found it in his bedroom drawer.’
‘Well, darling, it wouldn’t have made any difference,’ said her dad dully. ‘We needed to get the asthma under control.’
‘But if we’d known depression was a possibility we would have monitored him,’ said Zoe’s mother. She looked desperate to make him understand the full breadth of her guilt. ‘You would have, Napoleon, I know you would have!’
‘There were no signs,’ said her dad. ‘Sometimes there are no signs. No signs at all. He was perfectly happy.’
‘There were signs,’ said Zoe.
Her parents turned to her, and their faces were like those clown faces at an amusement park, turning back and forth, mouths agape, waiting for the ball to drop.
‘I knew he was upset about something.’
She remembered walking by his bedroom and registering the fact that Zach was lying on his bed but he wasn’t looking at his phone or listening to music or reading, he was just lying there, and that was not Zach. Zach didn’t just lie on his bed and stare at the ceiling.
‘I thought something was going on at school,’ she told her parents. ‘But I was angry with him. We weren’t talking. I didn’t want to be the first one to talk.’ Zoe closed her eyes so she could not see the disappointment and pain on her parents’ faces. She whispered, ‘It was a competition to see who would be the first one to talk.’
‘Oh, Zoe, sweetheart,’ said her mother from far, far away. ‘It’s not your fault. You know it’s not your fault.’
‘I was going to talk on our birthday,’ said Zoe. ‘I was going to say, “Happy birthday, loser.”’
‘Oh, Zoe, you stupid-head,’ said Zach.
He put his arm around her. They never hugged. They weren’t that sort of brother and sister. Sometimes when they passed each other in the hallway they randomly shoved each other for no reason at all. Like, hard enough to hurt. But now he was hugging her, and talking in her ear, and it was him, it was Zach, it was absolutely him, he smelled of that stupid Lynx body wash which he said he used ironically but he totally used because he believed the ads about how it made the girls think you were hotter.
Zach pulled her close and whispered in her ear. ‘It was nothing to do with you. I didn’t do it to get at you.’ He gripped her arm to make sure she got his point. ‘I wasn’t me.’