I wonder if for the rest of my life, I’ll be haunted by beautiful days. I wonder if I’ll look out on a cloudless sky splashed with sunshine, hear the roar of the ocean, feel wind tickling my face—then just when I start to fill up with happiness, stop short on a single moment. I’ll remember the blood and the gore and the sadness and the death that the nice day might be hiding just underneath its sparkling surface, waiting to spiral and spread like a drop of red in water before it taints the whole glass. And almost everything will look like a mirage, wavering and waiting to disappear the second I get too close.
From the breakfast table I stare out over an uneaten bowl of oatmeal at the beachfront behind our house. Splashes of water turn to foam between the jetty rocks. I’m trying to cling to snapshot images of Will and Penny, alive and happy, but each time I try, they keep dancing away, as fleeting as the whitecaps that dot the sea.
“Lake?”
My elbow hurts. My back hurts. My neck hurts. My heart hurts. And not in that order. I stir the congealed oats before letting the spoon clatter into the bowl. “Lake?” I’ve been hearing Will’s words as an echo since the accident: Your wish is my command. How many days has it been, anyway? Three, four, maybe five? I wish for you to be alive, Will. That’s what I wish for. Your wish is my command. That’s the only thing that I wish for. I pick up the spoon from the bowl and watch the oatmeal fall plop, plop, plop.
“What do you think he meant?” I murmur out loud.
My mom clears her throat. “What do I think who meant by what?”
I blink. My vision adjusts from the faraway plane to the one two feet in front of me where my parents stare from a couple of seats away at the table. Have they been hovering this whole time?
I exhale. “Will. Just…something he said.” Because I can’t expect them to have the answer. “Something to do with my birthday.” I glance between them and wrinkle my forehead. “What’s today?” I ask, trying to remember. “Is it a weekend? Shouldn’t you be biking or at work or something?” I say to my dad.
Dad stopped golfing with his friends after Matt’s accident, but he found an old road bike in the garage and he started riding that—obsessively, it seemed—for hours on end. But when he’d get back from his routes, he’d be calmer, friendlier, and so Mom kept taking care of Matt during those hours too, even though she had to do it all week as well. That’s why her clothes are always several years out of style and she never updates her haircut.
It sounds bad to say this, but I understand my dad more for his bike outings than my mom for her unflagging ability to care for my brother.
“It’s Tuesday,” he says.
Then my dad touches Mom’s elbow and it seems to give her the courage to speak. “Honey.” She’s using her Matt voice on me. “Maybe those questions can wait. Your father and I want to talk to you.”
I blink again. I can’t seem to focus on these two. I return to staring out the window. I imagine Penny and me out on the stretch of private beach doing cartwheels until we get dizzy.
“Sweetie, we need you to try to focus.” I can tell Dad’s trying to strike a balance between gentle and stern.
“Sorry,” I say.
My mom puts her hand over mine and pulls it into her chest. “Lake, please, we know this is an extremely sensitive time, but there were some things you said in the hospital about resurrecting Will and Penny and we just want to make sure that…well, that you know that’s not possible.”
This. It would be easier to swallow shards of glass. But of course they’re right. One. I’m going to have to make a choice.
“I know,” I mumble and glance down at the table and then at our clasped hands. I can’t have them both, I add silently. This is my new reality.
Her smile is small and weak, but there’s a hint of pride there too. “We don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea.”
I shift to the edge of my seat. My mother’s eyes are gray this morning, and sad. It’s early and I know she’ll have already changed Matt’s catheter bag and given him a sponge bath in bed.
“Who do you mean by ‘anyone’?”
She grips my fingers more tightly. “Lake, we love you so, so much. We’re here for you.” She looks up at my dad and he wraps his arm around her shoulder and squeezes her arm before returning the full weight of his attention to me. Meanwhile, a coldness spreads underneath my ribs. “What we mean to say is, while we know Will and Penny were your best friends, Matt is your brother.”
My gaze hardens. The chill turns icy and begins creeping out into my limbs.
Dad must decide that it’s finally time to take his turn, because he starts talking. “In the hospital, you mentioned resurrecting Will or Penny.” Calm, methodical, laying out the facts for me. “We know the news was a shock to you, but we also know that you know”—he tilts his head toward me—“that you’ve already promised your resurrection choice. Isn’t that right?”
My mouth is numb. “To Matt?”
The right answer. Dad nods. Pleased. “Yes, to Matt.” But then he must catch my expression—honestly, it’s a mystery to me what my face looks like, but I’m guessing it’s not good. “We’ve had this agreement.” His voice goes down an octave.
Matt. Dead. Me. Alive. The thought of my brother killing himself on purpose because I said he could has always made me feel sweaty under my arms. But now it’s making me downright nauseated.
“But…but…that was before, though.”
His Adam’s apple bobs in his throat. “Yes, that was before Penny and Will died, we know.”
I shake my head. “No, that was before Matt told me my two best friends died, the same way—the same way he might have told me my goldfish had gone belly up.” My pitch is rising. I feel my cheeks turning hot. I set my cast on the table and it bangs loudly.
I know in the depths of my soul that these are the words that have been brewing, but I am surprised to be able to say them out loud so easily. The truth is, I’m not even sure I love Matt. Not after everything.
“But—” Mom curls her now empty hands into her lap.
I bolt from my chair. I would bolt from my skin if I could, but I’m stuck in it, so I make do. It feels good to tower over them. “Matt’s alive. There’s a big difference. If he wants to live his life as a complete ass-face, well then that’s his business, but at least he’s breathing. At least he has a chance.”
Mom takes a sharp breath. “You don’t understand—”
“You don’t understand. Lots of people are disabled, Mom. And they have perfectly happy lives.”
“Yes, and lots of people are—”
“Don’t.” Dad cuts over her. I’m breathing hard, but I let him speak. “Lake, I know these are tough choices.” His reasonableness makes me want to punch him in the nose.
“Yeah. Yeah. They’re tough choices.” I jab my thumb into my sternum. “They’re my tough choices. I should never have let you try to make them for me in the first place.” My face is wet now.
Mom covers her mouth. She’s shaking her head slowly and I’m watching her face break open like an egg. “Lake, Lake, honey.” She opens her arms like she’s ready to wrap me up and pet my hair the way that she used to, and now I’m just wishing she had never stopped reading magazines on my bed while I got ready in the morning. “We’re sorry. We—we’re sorry.”