“No one you know,” I say quickly, though it’s possible he’d have a vague idea if I mentioned the colorful tattoo that curves up and down and around her arm. He might have still been hanging out with our friends when Alicia and her girls started coming around, and Lionel is observant—he’d have noticed her.
I think of Iris again and consider telling him about her, now that I know he won’t say something hurtful. I could go back to the beginning and tell him where and with whom these new feelings started, but thinking about Iris is painful. I haven’t spoken to her since we left school, and there’s still so much I don’t know: if she’s going back to Dinsmore next year, if I was as important to her as she was to me… if she ever wants to see me again.
Lionel kicks a small stick out of his path and looks at me. “You gonna tell the parents?”
“I don’t know. Not yet. I mean, I don’t even know if anything is going to happen. Seems like a bad idea to get them excited for no reason.”
“Yeah,” he says. “They’d probably throw a party.”
Even if they hadn’t stated it directly, it’s always been obvious that Mom and Saul would be okay with whatever sexuality we claimed, but I never realized how much simpler that made my life until I met Iris. I imagine telling them, how thrilled they’d be that I felt comfortable enough to come out to them at sixteen, how Saul might say he knew from the moment we saw Rafaela in Castillo Flowers. But it’s no small thing, and there will be several talks, and even if I know they’d be the supportive kind, I’m not up for that right now.
We move to the right to let a panting solo runner pass, and I look at Lionel as we position ourselves back on the trail. I don’t know if it’s because he needed to warm up or because of what I told him, but the silence between us seems more comfortable now. Enough for me to ask him directly: “What did you want to talk about?”
“Well, so.” He breathes in deeply, slow and controlled like he’s practicing yoga. “Remember how I said we can’t find the right combination of meds?”
“Yeah,” I reply, unable to ignore the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.
“I’m not taking them anymore,” he says with a lightness I haven’t heard from him in a year. Ironic, considering the weight of his words.
I stare at him, waiting for the punch line. And when it doesn’t arrive, I play dumb.
“I’m sure Mom and Saul will understand if you need to keep trying out new ones. Dr. Tarrasch will help you figure it out, right?”
But I knew exactly what he meant.
“No, I’m not taking any more pills at all.” He removes his hand from his pocket, his freckled fingers wrapped around an orange pill bottle that glows in the light of the sun. Then he reaches down and produces another. “I’m done.” He shakes the bottles for emphasis, one in each hand, like a thousand tiny maracas making music in his palms.
I stop walking, right in the middle of the trail. No one is behind us, at least not for now. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” I have to approach this with care rather than alarm, even if red strobe lights are dancing across my vision. “Didn’t Dr. Tarrasch—”
“I don’t care what she thinks,” he says. “I don’t. Maybe these work for some people, but I don’t want to be on them. Not right now. I’m getting ready to start my senior year of high school. I’m tired of dealing with this shit. If it hasn’t gotten better by now, I don’t think it ever will.”
“I think—”
But before I can finish, a woman with a sleek gray bob walks by, pumping hand weights by her sides. She gives us a smile and I do my best to return it, but it feels a bit like the sky is closing in around us, and I don’t know why no one else sees it.
“I think maybe you should talk to the parents about this,” I say once we’re alone again.
His jaw clenches and he rolls the bottles around in his hands. “I’m not talking to them about anything. I’ll be eighteen in a few months. They can’t keep making decisions for me forever.”
“Lion—”
“You think you know what’s best for me. Everyone does. And I know that’s supposed to feel good, like people care or whatever.” He looks down at the ground while he speaks. “But nobody asks what I want. Sometimes it feels like I’m a science experiment, like my name is Bipolar Two instead of Lionel, and I fucking hate that.”
I think back to when I started noticing the change in his behavior, how the thoughtful and always opinionated Lionel I’d known almost my whole life was hidden inside someone who didn’t want to go anywhere or do anything, not even the things he loved. And how sometimes it seemed hard to believe that the same person could have days-long bursts of energy, or become irritated or angry at the smallest thing.
But the worst part was never knowing for sure how deep his sadness would go. Sometimes I felt it in my bones, and though I only found out he’s at a higher risk of suicide after he was diagnosed, I think a part of me knew that I had to look out for him, even before it was confirmed. That feeling is what made me start sleeping in the guest room without telling our parents. It was across the hall instead of separated by a flight of stairs, and if anything had happened to him while I was up in my tower, I never would have forgiven myself. Him being on his meds has felt like a type of insurance, like it’s okay to have those extra few feet between us again.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he says, his voice softer. “I’ve thought about it a lot. The side effects suck, too. The first combination I was on made me gain weight, and these make me feel tired and sick to my stomach.… This is something I need to do, and I wanted to tell someone. You’re the only one I trust, Little.”
I don’t mean to soften. I mean to stand strong, to become overly stern with him if I must, because what he’s talking about is a bad fucking idea all around.
But he trusts me. Which is something I thought I’d lost forever when I went away.
“I brought them here to throw them out,” he says when I still don’t speak. He pops the childproof top on one of the bottles and shakes a mountain of pills into his hand. “Down in the ravine, so I’ll know they’re really gone.”
I wonder why he didn’t simply flush them, but this is likely more symbolic than anything else. Even with his moods regulated, Lionel has never shied away from the most impactful approach. He starts to tread carefully down the slope along the side of the trail, trying to find the best angle to toss them for the farthest reach—
“Wait!” I call out before he can lift his hand, my objection weaving through the tangle of tree trunks and leaves and overgrown grass. “Give them to me.”
I think of him sleeping all day and his chewed-up thumbs and the way he would look at me with blank eyes, the same way he looked at his books and out the window and at our parents.
His eyebrows knit together at the interruption. “Are you going to try to force them on me?”
I shake my head. “I won’t. I promise. Just… don’t throw them out yet, okay? I’ll hold on to them in case you change your mind.”
“I’m not changing my mind,” he says with a conviction so strong I know it to be true.