“They’re right,” Marcus mutters, eyes downcast. “This ain’t anything to celebrate.”
“Aren’t you happy to be home?” My mom’s voice is small, small, small.
“I’m not happy” – Marcus grunts as he starts to wheel himself down the hallway toward his bedroom – “about anything.”
The women he leaves in the living room, all the women in his life, stare at one another. Each one of us daring the other ones to go after him. Monica sighs and puts her determined face on. “I’ll go,” she says. She hasn’t even stepped into his room when we hear his roar.
“Get out! Leave me alone!”
I’ve never heard Marcus shout at Monica before. It makes me angry.
Monica returns to the living room, cheeks pink with shame. She tugs down one of the streamers. “I think I better get going.”
“No,” I say, touching her arm to stop her from taking down any more decorations. “You stay. Please. Just a little longer.”
Monica nods but doesn’t meet my eye. A timer goes off in the kitchen and my mom jolts up as if she just sat on a tack.
“The casserole!” she says.
“I’ll help,” says Monica, and the two of them disappear into the kitchen, leaving me with my silent grandmothers.
A crash and a dull thud come from the direction of Marcus’s room.
“You should talk to your brother,” says Granny Dee.
“What?” I scoff. “You heard him. He said he wanted to be left alone. I’m not going in there.”
“Dee Dee is right,” says LaoLao. I’m surprised that Granny Dee doesn’t have a heart attack right then and there – I’ve never heard LaoLao say Granny Dee was right about anything in my whole life.
But Granny Dee just nods. “You are who he should talk to.”
I approach his room slowly, cautiously, not knowing what I’ll find inside.
Marcus is sitting in his wheelchair, his head in his hands. Scattered on the floor are almost all his trophies. Only the ones too high for him to reach still sit on their perches, looking down on him.
“Marcus.”
“Go away,” he says without looking up. “I don’t want to talk to anyone.”
“I don’t care what you want.”
“Wing. Leave me alone.”
“You don’t get to be left alone right now,” I say. “You’re being a big baby! Mom planned this little welcome home celebration for you and you are being so ungrateful. Come on.”
“I already told you, there’s nothing to celebrate.”
“Um, what about the fact that you’re alive? What about that?”
He mumbles something under his breath.
“What?”
“I said, I don’t deserve to be alive. I wish I hadn’t woken up. My life is ruined. I’d rather be dead.”
His words take all my air.
“Don’t say that.” I’m so angry that my voice is shaking. “You know that two people are dead, right? That a little boy doesn’t have a mother anymore? And you’re going to sit here and tell me that you wish you hadn’t woken up?”
“What do you want me to do? Go to their house and apologize? What is that going to do?”
“That would be a start! You’re just being so selfish! Yours isn’t the only life that was ruined that night, Marcus!” I’m shouting at my brother. I haven’t shouted at him since we were little, fighting over toys. And even then, I always gave him what he wanted. “And you’re lucky” – I fling the word at him like a weapon – “lucky to have a life at all!” I take a deep breath. “You haven’t even thought about what these past few months have been like for the rest of us.”
How hard I’ve been training. How hard Mom and LaoLao have been working. How hard it’s been for all of us. How running has turned into something else because I have to, have to, have to win that contract because otherwise I don’t know what’s gonna happen to our family. And how it’s all for him. Because of him. His fault.
“Maybe if you stopped thinking about yourself for one goddamn second and looked around you, you’d realize that we’ve all been suffering, we’re all still suffering! Haven’t you seen how stressed-out Mom is when we visit? How tired LaoLao is? Do you have any idea how hard I’m working, how much I’m pushing myself to win this stupid Riveo thing? For you? Don’t you realize that everything everyone in this family is doing, everything we’ve given up, is for you? Because of what you did?” My shouting has gotten so loud I think it might blow the roof off our house.
“I’m sorry that my coma was such an inconvenience for you all,” he says, voice harsh and strange. “It sure as hell wasn’t easy for me either.”