I swallow hard on that bit of insanity and shake my head. Before she can pry any further, I get up and limp down the hall toward the basement.
“Kyle.” Her feet gently pad after me, but I close the door just as she gets there. I’m not in the mood to be questioned about something I sure as hell can’t even begin to explain to myself. I only know what I saw. At least I think I do.
I slide down onto the top step as I wait for her to go. My head rests against the wood and my eyes slowly begin to close, but a whisper pulls me back to consciousness, her voice coming from the other side of the door.
Mom.
“I lost your father like this,” she says softly as I listen. “Watched him waste away.”
I stand slowly, my hand reaching out to lie flat against the door as she keeps talking. Soft hallway light creeps under the door. “Oh, Kyle.” She sounds so sad.
Sighing, I twist the handle. She’s sitting on the floor, her back pressed against the wall, eyes closed. She looks so sad. Instantly I feel terrible.
“Your old bones okay?” I ask with a small smile. “Sitting on the floor like that?”
She looks up at me and rolls her eyes, clearly not amused by my jab. “Ha ha.”
I reach down and pull her up, her hands wrapping gently around my forearm.
“Okay, you win. I’ll go to bed…,” I say, nudging her toward the stairs. “If you will.”
“I love you. You’re going to be okay,” she says as she studies my face, deciding, before finally giving my arm a squeeze and heading off in the direction of the stairs.
I pull the door closed behind me and sit silently at the top of the basement steps, holding my breath, waiting for what feels like an hour, until I’m certain she won’t be straining to hear the creak of the door opening or my feet on the hardwood floor. I check my cell phone, and the screen lights up to show it’s only 3:30 a.m., a few hours still left before the sun rises.
I creep quietly into the living room, ready to take my spot in the armchair, but a shape on the couch stops me dead in my tracks.
It’s my mom, curled up into a ball, fast asleep. Her light snores are the only sound in the room. I take the quilt off the back of the couch and cover her with it, something about the image making all of this worse.
You’re going to be okay.
The thought of her words makes my heart rate spike. Turning to head back downstairs to my room in defeat, I touch the bandage on my forehead, worried that what lies underneath is way more broken than the doctors initially thought. Worried that I’m not going to be okay.
Worried that I could’ve stayed up for a hundred nights and that spot on the couch would have been empty for every single one of them.
Because she was never there in the first place.
6
Days all start running together. Texts are left unread; food wrappers litter the floor. A week blurs into two, and then a month, and soon almost the entire summer drifts by, the sun slowly setting earlier just outside my small basement window.
I don’t get out of bed in the morning. I don’t do anything.
I just lie around, refusing all of Mom’s attempts to get me out of my room. I’m not interested in torturing myself. I know what waits for me out there.
In the basement, on the other side of my bedroom door, are the French doors that lead to the backyard, the same doors Kimberly would use to sneak in after my mom fell asleep. I could go upstairs, but I would see the front lawn she used to cartwheel across in middle school or the kitchen where we made that monstrous-looking, but insanely delicious, chocolate cake for Sam’s birthday.
But, mostly, I don’t want to give my brain anything to twist and trick me with. I don’t want to think I see her.
My mom’s knocks on my door become more and more frequent, just like the clicking sound of her feet pacing outside my door as she pleads with me. “You’re in there. I know you are.” Today she tries the doorknob. Once. Twice. But I’ve locked it now.
I can feel her on the other side, willing me to let her in. Instead, I let daylight melt into evening once more. I fight to keep my eyes open as long as possible, because when I do sleep, my dreams are filled with images of sparkling disco balls, fluorescent hospital bulbs, a truck’s headlights getting closer and closer.
At least when I’m awake, I can suspend myself in nothing.
I’m not sure how much time has passed, but however much it is, it doesn’t matter.
“Get up. Right now.”
I struggle to open my eyes and squint to see my mom standing over me, shaking me awake. I look past her to see my bedroom door against the wall, taken completely off the hinges, a gaping hole now leading to the rest of the basement. How did I sleep through that?
“You get out of bed and get yourself together,” she says, throwing my blankets off of me. “We need to have a talk.”
I groan and grab the blankets right back, pulling them up to burrow underneath them.
“About what?” I grumble as she sits down at the edge of my bed, her eyebrows forming a V.
Uh-oh.
Serious Mom.
I peer at her over the top of my covers, worried about what she’s going to say.
“Kyle, it’s almost September. Your friends are all starting to leave for college. Sam is enrolled in classes at the community college,” she says, taking a deep breath. “So, UCLA.”
I sit up and push my mess of hair out of my eyes, my fingertips grazing the raised scar on my forehead. She can’t possibly think I’m actually going. “What about it?”
“I know UCLA was supposed to be you and Kimberly. I know how much that plan meant to you,” she says, reaching out to grab my hand. “But you need to accept that the exact future you had planned isn’t possible anymore.”
My eyes find the UCLA pennant Kimberly bought me hanging on my wall, the blue and yellow taunting me. The future I had planned wouldn’t have been possible anyway. Kimberly would’ve been packing her bags to start a new adventure at Berkeley.
Without me.