The Program

CHAPTER EIGHT




MY BROTHER AND I WERE ONLY ELEVEN MONTHS apart, yet oddly enough, we never fought. Brady was my best friend, one of my only friends other than Lacey. And even though he had James, he never shut me out.

In the weeks before my brother died, James and I had been meeting secretly. When he’d stay over, he’d show up in my room at three in the morning, kissing me quietly while everyone slept. He’d leave notes under my pillow when I wasn’t home. We’d become completely infatuated with one another.

We didn’t tell Brady, not because we wanted to keep it secret, but because we didn’t want it to be awkward. And if everyone knew about James and me, they wouldn’t allow us constant access to each other—sleepovers, camping trips.

Brady had been seeing that girl Dana, but they broke up. She told James that Brady was acting strange, that he was cold. James waved her off, but when he confronted my brother, Brady just said it wasn’t a big deal. That she had bad breath anyway.

My brother had made it his personal mission to teach me how to swim, always going to our same place by the river. There isn’t much of a current there, just a deep pool of water. But this one afternoon, he took me and James to a new spot.

“It’s really beautiful there,” he said as he drove. “It’s perfect.”

James snorted in the backseat. “Just so long as I get to see your sister in a bikini.”

Brady smiled, his shadowed eyes glancing in the mirror, but he didn’t tell him to shut up. Instead he kept driving, like he had all the time in the world. I looked back at James, but he just shrugged. I remember thinking that maybe we’d tell my brother that day, that maybe it was time for him to know about me and James. I even thought that maybe he knew about us, but James didn’t think so. He said Brady was just stressed about finals.

We never got the chance to tell him.

I was in my bathing suit as Brady stood at the edge of the drop, looking down at the rushing water. A soft smile was on his lips.

“You can’t swim in that!” James yelled to him as he laid out his towel far back in the grass. “We should have gone to our usual spot.”

Brady looked over, the light reflecting off his black hair. The sun made his pale skin look sallow and shiny. “I didn’t want to ruin it for you,” my brother called.

James pulled his eyebrows together, and then laughed. “Ruin what for me?”

“The usual spot. I figured you’ll still be able to go there after. Maybe you can teach Sloane how to finally swim.” He darted his eyes to mine and smiled. “She might listen to you.”

I paused then, and stared at him. “What are you—” Ice-cold pain ripped through my body when it hit me, when the moment actually became clear. At just about the exact same time, I saw James jump up from his towel.

My brother was poised on the end of a twenty-foot drop, and he bowed his head to me, his eyes glassy. The dark circles under them were navy blue. I hadn’t seen it coming. I hadn’t recognized the signs.

“Take care of each other,” Brady whispered to me like it was a secret. And then he held his arms out at his sides and fell backward off the cliff.

My screams ripped through the afternoon air, and I looked back to see that James was still too far away. I didn’t know how to swim, but I ran full force and dove in after him. The minute I smacked the water, cold rushed up my nose and I choked, flailing wildly. “Brady!” I tried to yell, but gulps of water kept entering my mouth.

There was another loud splash behind me, and I knew it was James. I don’t even think he saw me as he swam past, just as good of a swimmer as Brady. A log was jutting out from the bank and I grabbed onto it, watching.

The current was so fast it was pulling my legs downriver as my body clung to the wood. And then I saw Brady—he was floating, facedown. He wasn’t swimming. I screamed again, pointing toward him as I watched his body slam into a rock, and then another. James’s arms were furiously lapping over and over, but Brady was too far ahead.

I started to cry, sobs curling my body around the branch. When Brady’s body slammed against another rock, it stayed there long enough for James to reach him. James banged against the boulder, crying out as he did, but he pulled Brady to shore and started giving him CPR.

He was frantic, pounding on his chest, breathing into his lungs. But I could see from where I was that even if Brady wasn’t full of water, his neck was broken. His head hung oddly to the side; his eyes stared out at nothing.

My brother—my best friend—was dead.

Comforting numbness seemed to stretch over me then. James was crying, screaming for help. He stood up, his hand shielding the sun as he looked for me. And I let go of the branch, letting the icy water pull me under.

I tried to drown, and really, it wouldn’t have been that hard. The current was strong enough to keep me under, and I hoped I would pass out, blocking the images of my dead brother’s last stare. I knew I couldn’t go on. I couldn’t face my parents. My life.

But then James had his forearm around my neck, pulling me to the bank to lay me on my back. I was choking, vomiting even then. My ears were plugged but I could see James above me, tapping my cheeks to keep me awake. When I could keep my eyes open, he left, running to his towel where his phone was.

James saved me. But he couldn’t save Brady—neither of us could. In the end we did just as my brother asked—we took care of one another. Sometimes the survivor’s guilt was more than we could bear, a secret between us that we never let show. But we were all we had left.

• • •

As I sit in James’s house Monday morning, watching as he slowly pushes his bandaged arm through a shirt I picked out, I think that it’s always been him doing the work. James has been the constant. Now that part of him is broken, finally infected. And just like that day at the river, I want to let go and go under.

“I brought Pop-Tarts,” I say, brushing his hair aside as he sits and stares out the window.

“When’s the funeral?” he asks, his voice so low I can barely hear it.

I swallow hard. After I left James Saturday night, I pushed down every feeling I had, let myself become a machine, doing whatever’s necessary to keep us alive. Together. When I got home, my parents told me that Miller’s mom had called and spoken with them.

“They’re not having a funeral,” I say. “The Program thinks it might instigate more suicide, so just his mom is allowed to bury him.” Miller’s face, his smile, pops into my head, but I quickly lock it away. There is no time to mourn.

James presses his lips tight together as his eyes well up. “It was my fault,” he says. “Just like Brady. I was too late. I should have never left him behind.”

I wrap my arms around James. “Miller was sick, James. There was nothing we could do.” He turns in my arms.

“And Brady? I was there and I couldn’t save him.”

My heart aches, but I can’t let myself think about Brady today, not when we have to go to school. “I couldn’t either. And what’s done is done. You need to pull yourself together.”

James reaches up to put his palm on my cheek, and I turn my face into it. “I can’t,” he murmurs.

I stare into his blue eyes, panicking, but I press my forehead against his. “I will save you this time,” I whisper. “I will save us both.”

James pulls me into a hug, burying his face in my neck, and I run my fingers down his back, trying to calm him. I’ve never felt strong, not when so many things in this world are out of my control. But now I have to be. Because I’m all we have.