Page 53 of The Last to Let Go
And then the worst part.
He threw a glance over his shoulder as he walked away, and mumbled “Loser” under his breath, like Aaron wasn’t even worth enough for him to bother saying it to his face.
My legs trembled as I walked over to where Mom knelt on the carpet next to Aaron. The coffee table had been knocked over, and with it, Callie’s entire glass of grape juice, which was now sinking into the carpet fibers. Mom touched Aaron’s hair, saying, “Why did you do that? Why?” She looked back and forth, frantically, between Aaron and the growing purple stain, like she couldn’t choose which one to save. She said something to me, but all I could hear was that word echoing in my head:Loser, loser, loser. All I could see was Aaron lying there on the living room floor.
“Brooke!” she yelled at me. “Get something!”
“What?” I stood there, not knowing what she wanted me to do. “Get what?”
“A towel, something. Anything! Go, now.”
I ran into the kitchen, slipping in the spilled milk from Aaron’s cereal bowl, and grabbed the dish towel that was hanging from the handle of the refrigerator door. When I returned, Mom had Aaron sitting up, her hand on his back. I knelt down next to them and brought the towel to Aaron’s face, trying to decide how best to approach the blood coming from his nose, his mouth. But Mom snatched the towel from my hand before it touched his skin.
“Help him up!” she snapped at me. Then she grabbed my wrist, replacing her hand on his back with mine. She turned away from us, on her hands and knees, and folded the towel in half, pressing it down against the carpet, sopping up the grape juice. “Get him to his room”—she was crying hard now—“before he comes back.”
Aaron was out of it. I was glad. Because maybe that meant he hadn’t heard what Dad called him, maybe he hadn’t noticed that Mom seemed more concerned about the stain setting than his bloody nose and split lip.
“Come on,” I told him, struggling to pull him up. He wobbled as he got to his feet. We took a million shuffled steps to get to his bedroom. When we finally did, he fell onto his bed and bounced with the mattress, gasping like he hurt everywhere. His left cheekbone was already bruising up, his eyelid swelling fast.
Ice.
I ran back out to the kitchen, this time sidestepping the puddle of milk. I grabbed a bag of frozen peas from the freezer and wet a bunch of paper towels in the sink. I wanted to say something to Mom, but she didn’t look up; she just cried, and scrubbed and sprayed the spot with carpet cleaner. I closed Aaron’s door behind me and sat next to him on his bed. I tried to wipe the blood off his face with the paper towels, but he kept pulling away.
“Are you okay?” I asked, but that was a stupid question.
“My fucking hand,” he moaned as he sat up slowly, raising it, wincing as he tried to move his fingers. It was so swollen and bruised all over I was sure he’d shattered every bone.
“Does it hurt?” Another stupid question.
But as he inspected the damage, I watched his mouth twisting upward slowly. He was smiling as he said, “It feels like someone strapped a firecracker onto my fist and it exploded.”
“Here,” I whispered, handing him the bag of peas. “Your face—it looks really bad.”
“Good,” he said, his voice tight.
“What?”
He laughed, struggling to focus his one nonswollen eye on me. “He did exactly what I wanted.”
“But, Aaron—” I began, but he cut me off.
“I can take it, all right? What I can’t take is just standing by, doing nothing, trying to stay out of his way. There’s no staying out of his way—he won’t let that happen.” He paused, gingerly cradling his hand in the nest of frozen peas. “I can’t pretend anymore.”
I understood. Sort of. He’d never thought he could win. That wasn’t the point. I tried to think of anything I could say to try to plead some sense into him. “He’ll kill you.”
“He’ll killherif I don’t—it’s only a matter of time. You know that.”
I shook my head, my eyes getting hot, stinging with tears. No, no, no—we weren’t allowed to think those kinds of things. Aaron was breaking all the rules.
“You don’t have to be scared,” he told me. “I don’t wantanybodyto be scared anymore. I got this. I promise,” he added, holding out the pinkie of his good hand.
I couldn’t decide if I thought he was really brave or really, really stupid. Reluctantly I reached out and wrapped my own pinkie finger around his.
Something pulls me back through time, abruptly, tearing me away from Aaron and his bedroom and his promise. It takes me back to the day in the hospital—that bird smashing into that glass window. I hear the sound of it—that horrible thud over and over again. The crack and crash of it. My mind reverses, then fast-forwards. Now it’s Dad’s footsteps on the stairs as he leaves. Mom crying somewhere, muffled. Then a key in the door.
My eyes fly open. And it’s now. I’m still slouched on the couch. My things still sit in a pile next to the door. My neck aches, my head kills. I sit up straight. I reach for the remote and quickly turn the TV on.
When Aaron opens the door, I’m almost expecting to see a small thirteen-year-old version of him. He looks down at my stuff sitting in the doorway but doesn’t say anything. He closes the door behind him, pulls his arms out of his coat, and drops it on the floor next to mine, another silent nod to our solidarity, I guess.
