Without Merit

I groan and dramatically fall over on the bed. “Can’t it just mean I’ve had a bad month?”

He lays the list on my chest and I grab it and wad it up again, sitting back up.

“It could,” he says. “But you won’t know until you talk to someone about it.”

I roll my eyes. “What if I go to this dumb therapy session and find out I am depressed? What kind of life is that to look forward to, Luck? I don’t want to spend the rest of my life like my mother.”

Luck dips his head and looks at me pointedly. “I haven’t met your mother yet and I’m no psychologist, but I think she suffers from a lot more than just depression. Agoraphobia being the main thing.”

“Yeah, but she didn’t even develop that until a few years ago. She gets worse with time. That’s probably going to happen to me, too.” The thought that there might be something severely wrong with me leaves a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach. I don’t want to think about it. I haven’t wanted to think about it since Luck initially brought it up. “Why can’t I just be normal?”

My question makes Luck laugh. I wasn’t expecting that reaction. “Normal?” he says. “Describe normal to me, Merit.”

“Honor is normal. So is Utah. And Sagan. Most people without a broken brain.”

Luck rolls his head and stands up. He swings my bedroom door open. “Utah! Honor! Sagan! Come here!” He stands by the door, holding it open. I bury my face in my hands. What the hell is he doing?

“Why are you yelling for them? It’s the middle of the night!”

Despite it being as late as it is, Honor, Utah, and Sagan file into my room one by one. Luck motions to the bed. “Have a seat,” he says to all of them. I look up and Sagan is watching me as he closes the bedroom door.

“Everything okay?” Sagan asks, looking directly at me. I shrug because I have no idea what Luck is up to.

“Sagan,” Luck says. “What happens when you drink milk?”

Sagan releases an unsure laugh. “I don’t drink milk. I’m lactose intolerant.”

I didn’t know he was lactose intolerant, but what does that have to do with anything?

“Do you take medication for it?” Luck asks.

Sagan nods. “Sometimes.”

Luck turns his attention to Utah. “What happens if you go out in the sun for a long time without sunscreen?”

Utah rolls his eyes. “I burn. We aren’t all blessed with skin that tans easily,” he says, nodding toward Sagan.

“And you,” he says to Honor. “Why do you wear contacts and Merit doesn’t?”

“Probably because she has better vision than me, Einstein.”

Luck looks back at me. “They aren’t normal,” he says. “Having depression is no more out of your control than Sagan’s intolerance to milk, or Utah’s pale skin, or Honor’s bad vision. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about. But it’s not something you can ignore or correct on your own. And it doesn’t make you abnormal. It makes you just as normal as these idiots,” he says, waving toward everyone else.

I can feel my cheeks flush from a combination of the embarrassment and unwanted attention I’m getting right now. But I also can’t stop from smiling because I really do appreciate my idiot step-uncle. I’m kind of glad he showed up when he did.

“I also have athlete’s foot,” Sagan says. I look up at him and he crinkles his nose. “It’s really bad. Especially in the summer.”

I laugh and Honor says, “Hey, speaking of things wrong with us. Remember when Dad was diagnosed with Tourette’s?”

“No way,” Luck says.

“Not the cussing kind,” Utah clarifies. “That’s mostly embellished on TV. He used to have these tics all the time and he’d make these noises with his throat. The doctor said they were brought on by stress, so he took medication for it for a couple of years. Not sure if he still does.”

“See?” Luck says excitedly. “Your whole family suffers from all kinds of things. You shouldn’t feel so special, Merit. We’re all a degree of fucked-up.”

I laugh, but I don’t even know what to say. It feels nice to have their encouragement, no matter how strange it is.

“Merit,” Honor says. She looks at me with a hint of guilt in her expression. “I’m really sorry. I feel like I should have. . .” She shrugs and looks down. “Seen the signs, I guess?”

I shake my head. “Honor, I’m the one who tried to kill myself and I didn’t even know I was depressed.”

Luck leans his head back against the wall. “Merit’s right,” he says. “A lot of people who suffer from depression don’t even know they have it. It’s a gradual change. Or at least it was for me. I used to feel like I was on top of the world. Then one day, I noticed that it felt like I was no longer on top of the world. I was just floating around inside of it. And then eventually, it felt like the world was on top of me.”

I soak in what Luck just said, because it’s like he summed up my entire past year in just a few sentences. I open my mouth to say something, but my voice is cut off by the sudden sound of my father’s voice coming from the hallway. “Merit, you better not have . . .” As soon as the door swings open, my father clamps his mouth shut. I’m assuming he heard voices and thought something more sinister was going on. He looks around at all of us and it’s obvious he wasn’t prepared for this sight. It’s been a long time since Honor, Utah, and I have hung out in the same room.

He hesitates, nods a little and then smiles before closing my bedroom door. We all start to laugh, but he swings it open again and says, “I’m glad you’re all spending time together. But it’s late. Go to bed.”

“It’s a weekend,” Utah groans.

My father raises an eyebrow at Utah and that one look is enough to lift everyone off the bed. Sagan is the last to leave my room. Right before he closes the door, he smiles and says, “You were really easy to like today, Merit.”

I sigh and lie back on my bed. What a night.

What a week.

I turn off my lamp again and try for a second time tonight to shut off my thoughts. I’m finally almost asleep when I hear a soft knock on my door. It’s pitch-black in my room, but when the door cracks open, the light breaks through. Sagan peeks his head through the door. “You asleep yet?” he whispers.

I sit up and reach over to the lamp. “Nope.” My hands are already shaking at all the possibilities of why he’s back. He closes the door and takes a seat on the bed next to me. He isn’t wearing a shirt now. Only a pair of black sweat pants. I sit up, but keep the covers pulled up to my stomach. After everyone left my room earlier, I took off my pajama bottoms. Now I’m only wearing a T-shirt. Put us together, and we could make a whole naked person.

“I had something else to say but I didn’t want to say it in front of all of them,” he says.

“What is it?”

“You said something the other night about how you felt like an asshole after hearing my story.”

I nod. “I did. And I still do.”

He shakes his head. “It bothers me that you think that. You shouldn’t compare your stress to mine. We all have different baselines.”