He shrugs. “Do I need a reason?”
He doesn’t, but I have to wonder if he could tell there was something different when Rafaela was around. If he felt the need to remind me that I’m with him tonight.
Just then a guy lopes over from the porch and announces to the entire line of people waiting for the keg: “Fight! In the garage!”
Lionel’s face flashes in front of me. I send it away. He was angry with Catie earlier, but they only ever fight with words. And he wouldn’t hit a girl. And maybe there’s a point when you have to stop worrying, when you have to believe everything will turn out okay in the end.
Half of the line disperses and follows him back to the house. Mostly guys, but a few girls scurry off, too. The ones in front of us stand strong for only a few more seconds before one of them looks at the other, shrugs, and they walk away, too. Emil and I have just reached the front of the line, him instructing me to hold my cup while he pumps the keg, when Justin comes tearing toward us.
“You guys should get to the garage.” He’s jogging in place like Emil did the first day I saw him this summer. Like he wants to be here but has somewhere more urgent to go.
“We heard about the fight,” Emil says. “I’ll pass.”
“Yeah.” I hold my cup steady as the tap slowly fills it at an angle. “What’s the point of watching people we don’t know get into it?”
But I know. It’s too early to stop worrying. I know there’s a good chance it’s—
“Guys, it’s Lionel.”
My cup crashes to the ground, soaking my feet in fresh beer.
We race inside. Emil pulls me along after him so fast that I feel like I’m floating. But we’re nearly the last to arrive. The garage is full, the center of the room obscured by a thick wall of backs nearly pressing up to all four corners.
“Let us through!” I shout, loud as I can. “We need to get through! That’s my brother!”
But they can’t hear me over the cheering and yelling. Even if they can, no one parts the crowd for us. Everyone is too invested in what’s going on up front or trying to see what’s going on up front or just getting swept up in the commotion of it all. My heart is thumping so loudly that the voices coming at me from all sides fade into the distance.
We push our way up a millimeter a minute. I feel like I’m going to be sick. Maybe Justin was wrong. Maybe it isn’t Lionel. Maybe there was some other guy with red hair hanging out in the garage. But I can’t ask him; he’s ahead of Emil, who’s ahead of me, still tightly gripping my hand so we don’t get separated.
Lionel isn’t a fighter. And so my stomach turns even more when I think about him getting bruised up by some guy who’s actually had practice. The closer I get, the more I can hear the sounds from the actual fight: grunts, breathless curses, the ripping of clothes.
But by the time we finally make our way to the head of the crowd, it’s over. And it’s not the scene I thought I’d find. A guy with long, dark hair is lying on the floor of the garage, holding his arms around his head like a helmet. He raises his elbows just high enough for me to see that his nose is gushing blood: a thick, dark stream of red that stains the concrete below him.
Lionel is standing above, still raring to go and held back by Rafaela, who looks even tinier than usual. But she doesn’t look scared. I’d be horrified if Emil had just been in a fight, but the look on her face is… not enchantment, but something close to it.
No one is helping the guy on the ground. I don’t know what the story is, but I need to find out why Lionel is covered in this guy’s blood. It’s on his collar, his arm… his fist.
I want to ask him but as I step forward he glances at me, and the look in his eyes is wild. Not really seeing me. Not really in this moment except for his body.
I’ve seen that look before. It was the other time I saw him clenching a bloody fist.
Lionel once told me he didn’t know why doctors bothered with explaining the difference in the types of mania since it all meant people with bipolar were crazy and, eventually, would end up depressed.
When I look at my brother, I see that he’s sick. I see that he needs his meds to properly function.
I see that I have fucked up big-time and I have to fix it.
eighteen.
Emil drives Lionel and me home in Lion’s car, not without protests from my brother.
He insists that he’s fine, that he can get us home himself after God knows how many drinks, that we should totally fucking ignore that he’s moving around like a can of compressed air on the verge of bursting. He’s mad that we left Rafaela at Alicia’s house and mad that we let that guy on the garage floor get away from him.
“What was your problem with that guy?” I ask. He’s in the backseat, and I can’t look at him. It’s my fault that he’s like this right now and yet it’s his fault, too, for involving me. I’m mad at both of us, at what we’ve gotten ourselves into.
“He wouldn’t leave my girlfriend alone,” Lionel responds in a steely voice.
“He goes to school with Rafaela?”
“He’s from the fucking Palisades.”
Oh my God. That was the guy from the Palisades? How does he always know where Rafaela is? They don’t have any friends in common.
Emil looks over at me, sensing that I know exactly who Lionel is talking about, but I shake my head and mouth Later. I don’t want to get into the details now, not with Lion so amped up.
“We should stop at the Brite Spot, Suzette,” Lion says as we drive past, the white sign with the huge orange dot looming behind the diner. “I could really go for some pancakes. And then we could go out again. It’s still early—”
“It’s time to go home, Lionel,” I say in a voice that sounds like I’m his mother. I hate it, but it momentarily shuts him up. And I don’t want to hear him talk right now because he called me by my name instead of Little. Yet another sign that says he’s not okay.
As soon as we pull into the driveway, Lionel jumps out of the car and runs up to the front porch and for a moment, even though I know it would only make tonight even worse, I wish Mom and Saul were still up. Because then, after tonight, all of this would be over. But every floor of the house is dark, save for the lamp they’ve left on for us in the front room.
Emil watches me. “Do you want me to go in with you?”
I start to say no, that I can handle this myself. But I don’t want to handle this by myself anymore. And Emil already knows everything. Justin pulls up to the curb then; he dims his lights but leaves the car idling. He sobered up pretty quickly once the fight started and promised he was okay to drive.
“Can you stay?” I ask, turning to Emil. “Tell your parents you’re spending the night at Justin’s?”