I go to school, and I go home, and I don’t really know what happens in between, but in class I pay attention like my life depends on it. Like two lives depend on it: the one I’m living and the one my brother should have had. Mom and Dad expected two graduations, two college tuitions, two senior proms, too much, maybe, of both of us. But now all my accomplishments mean more because they’ll be the only ones, and less because his absence will always take something away.
Mom wants me to stay here for college now. She hasn’t said it, but I can tell by the way she looks at the school brochures that are still showing up like clockwork. But I can’t stay in this town where every single thing is tied to Andrew. I’d almost rather die, if I didn’t know so goddamn well what I’d leave behind me.
So I focus on that: Mom will be sad, but she’d rather miss me from a few hours away than for forever. I can nearly convince myself I’m doing her a favor, focusing on nothing but applications and grades. I study more than I’ve ever studied before, so much that I end up screwing myself because I read ahead and then I’m bored in class.
Then my mind wanders, and I can’t let that happen. Not with other people around.
They think I don’t hear them, but I do. They think I pushed my brother. I don’t tell them I might as well have. I don’t tell them how much I wanted to kill him, not knowing what “dead” really means. I don’t tell them how it happened, or why, but that much, the worst of them have guessed. The rumor slips around the school with a whisper like a belt through loops.
I don’t correct them. It’s not that I lack the energy, or the strength, or the give-a-damn. It’s that I have too much of the latter: I don’t want anyone to know the truth, because they’ll know that Raychel picked him, not me.
I want to protect her. They’ll pick her apart and relish the meal.
But I’m also protecting myself. I can’t stand to let her go, but I can’t stand myself for keeping her. I can’t stand being with her, but I can’t stand being away.
By the end of each day, I can barely stand up at all.
RAYCHEL
A week goes by, then two, but Matt and I still don’t discuss anything. Not the accident, not the aftermath, and certainly not the other things that day revealed. I’ve tried to approach it in a roundabout way, but Matt shuts me down every time.
“Just give him a little time,” Keri says in chemistry. She’s been a godsend at school—fending off questions I don’t want to answer and listening when I need to vent, though I haven’t told her any of the worst details. I haven’t told anyone. “We learned in psych that there are … here, wait.” She gets out a textbook and looks in the index, then flips to a page with a flowchart. “There’re all these steps to trauma recovery. Right now, it’s like he’s the soda bottle and his feelings are the Coke,” she says, pointing to a picture of a spewing bottle. “He’s all shaken up, and unless he takes the cap off slowly, he’ll just blow his top.”
“That’ll be fun.” I read over her shoulder. It says the first stage is shock, and describes trauma as causing “circuit overload,” which is more how I feel—like all of my fuses have blown and my wires aren’t reconnected yet.
“I guess you just have to be there for him and hope he’ll open up a little,” she says.
“Yeah.” For once, Matt needs me for support. I feel indebted, and almost relieved to have a chance to pay him back. But I also haven’t forgotten that Matt always expected a refund of some kind. If being his friend wasn’t enough before, maybe I’m crazy to hope it can be enough now.
But there’s no other option. Losing him and Andrew both is too much to contemplate.
MATT
Dad’s taken a leave of absence, but Raychel keeps working for him because my parents want her around. She makes the void less glaring, for them.
I’ve been trying to keep my distance when she’s here, but today my brain has Eagle Point on instant replay, so I hang out, pretending to read, as Raychel types up records that are decades old.
But it doesn’t help. Nothing helps.
I keep seeing Andrew disappear from view. I stretched my hand out. I tried to catch him. I knew it was too little too late. For the rest of my life, some part of me is going to be on that rock, trying to undo what I’ve done.
What I haven’t done is tell my parents the truth. I’m not sure I ever can.
I should have told them that day, but nothing made sense at the time. Andrew fell, and Raychel dragged me back from the edge. Other hikers heard her screaming and immediately ran to the top of the mountain, trying to find a signal so they could call 911, but the helicopter still took over an hour to reach us.
Not that it mattered. Andrew was dead on impact.
Even when I saw his crumpled body on the stretcher, I tried to convince myself there was still a chance. They flew him to the closest trauma center, here in Big Springs, but we had to hike back to the parking lot. Nathan drove my car home, with me in the passenger seat, Raychel collapsed in the back, and Eliza trailing in his Jeep. It was almost three hours before we reached the hospital, and I managed to believe that Andrew was still alive until the minute I saw my parents.
Then I knew.
And that’s when I should have told them.
But Mom was sobbing. Dad was shaking. Even Raychel’s mom hugged me, patting us both like she couldn’t believe we were real. Everyone asked, “What happened? What happened?” Raychel glanced at me. She waited for my lead.
And I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t tell them the truth.
So I just said, “He fell.” And she nodded.
Weeks later, Raychel’s still following my lead, or lack thereof. I haven’t said a word about what happened, and neither has she, not even to each other. We’ve barely spoken at all. We couldn’t even comfort each other at Andrew’s sham of a funeral.
He never wanted a funeral. He didn’t want a coffin. “He wanted to be thrown off Eagle Point,” I blurt, voice rough from disuse.
Raychel’s hand jerks, knocking a cup of water off the desk onto the floor.
“He wanted his ashes thrown off the cliff.” There’s a laugh, and with dull horror, I realize it’s mine. “That’s ironic.”
Raychel stares. Right when I think she’s going to ignore me, her mouth opens, closes, and opens again. “That’s what you wanted,” she says. “He just agreed.”
I laugh that horrible laugh again. “It’s the only thing we ever agreed on, then.”
She slowly closes the laptop. “You guys are more alike than you realize.”
“Well, I guess you’d know,” I snap, annoyed by her present tense.
She looks up slowly, more sad than angry. “Yeah,” she says. “I guess I would.” And she walks out of the room, leaving me with yet another mess to clean up.
RAYCHEL
After hiding in the bathroom to cry, thanks to Matt, I decide I’ve done enough work for today. But instead of a break at home, I get Mom waiting at the kitchen table. She has two Dr. Thunders sitting out, and a snack—crackers, string cheese, and grapes she’s cut in half like she did when I was little and my windpipe was just their size. I’ve been expecting this talk, but every time Mom tries to have a heart-to-heart, I’ve managed to turn on the waterworks and slide out of the room.