I wandered the halls, pacing back and forth with memories. I stopped in rooms, standing in doorways, listening to the soft breathing of the inhabitants, hoping for their peace to lull me to sleep. My head was alive - voices, and shouting, and memories pulsed through me. In the hallways I saw commotion, people, myself, walking through. Four of us banging on the bathroom door while one takes his time inside, my mother shouting from the downstairs about something that needed to be done - or someone she wished to speak to. Zac tripping over Mackenzie's toys and swearing. Annissa walking up to see me.
I thought it was my mind when I heard the sound of a window opening, and soft sobbing. The sound became clearer, though, as I approached it. I listened through the door of my sister's room, and was sure it was her crying... I opened it a crack, and she shuffled around pulling sheets over her body and face.
"Jess?" I whispered.
"Who is it?"
"It's Taylor." I said. "What are you doing awake?"
"Well, what are you doing wandering the halls?"
"I can't sleep." I said. "Walking around to pass the time. May I turn on the light?"
"Yes." She said, and I flipped the switch. She squinted her eyes in the light. Her mascara was running down her cheeks with tears.
"You having trouble sleeping, too?" I said, and shut the door quietly behind me. I knew something was going on, and with her, I knew the best way to approach it was to act as if you didn't know.
"No." She said, and she got out of bed. She was fully clothed.
"Were you just out, or something?" I asked, surprised. Had she climbed through the window?
"Yes." She admitted freely, and began to undress in front of me.
"Hey, Jess. I'm still here, you know..."
"I don't care." She said, throwing on an old T-shirt over her bra, and pulling on some pajama pants. I shrugged it off. Um. Whatever. Then she was crying again, and she crawled under her covers and didn't face me.
"What's wrong, Jess? Why are you crying?"
"It's a really long story, Taylor."
"I'm listening." I said. "I stopped taking Valium three days ago, and haven't slept since. I have all night."
"You were taking Valium again?" She asked, turning to look me in the eye.
"Yes." I said softly. "I was." I scrutinized her. "So, whatever this is about, you can tell me, you know - I won't tell anyone if you don't want me to."
"I just... I don't think you'd understand." She said, her face to the floor.
"Try me." She looked at me, skeptically, and kept her mouth sealed. "Where were you just now?"
"Out."
"Out where?"
"With my boyfriend."
"You have a boyfriend?"
"Yes." She said. "Mom doesn't like me staying out late on school nights, so I just sneak out."
I paused to ponder the thought - I had never come across this conflict as a teenager. Maybe that's why I found it so easy to drown in illegal drugs. Well, why did she have to be out with him so late, anyway? I didn't recall my mom being particularly strict about curfew, I knew there was something more she wasn't telling me. But I didn't press the issue. I watched her closely, though.
"Were you always this weird?" She said, squirming under my gaze. I hardly realized I was staring and looked at the ceiling, then around the room.
"I'm sorry." I said, softly. "I'm detached. My thoughts don't connect most of the time."
She laughed, and rested her chin on her hand, smiling at me thoughtfully, "What do you suppose that's a result of - drugs or mental fatigue?"
I shrugged. "Could just be lack of sleep."
She got up, swaying a little at first, then reaching into her dresser drawer for something. "You can't sleep?"
"Are you drunk?"
She laughed, fake, shrill, accused. "Drunk?" She pulled a baggie out of her dresser and poured it on her desktop. "Those'll make you sleep."
"Jess, I don't need downers. Tell me what's going on." I was getting serious, now. I scooped the pills into the palm of my hand. Didn't she hear me before? I was trying to get off of the Valium - taking something else to supplement it wasn't going to help things. "Where did you get these? Are you doing drugs?"
She opened my palm and grabbed three pills. "No." She lay down on the bed and tossed the pills into her mouth. "These aren't drugs. They just make me sleep."
I dropped the remainder of the pills in the trash and I ran to her bed and cupped my hand around her mouth. "Spit them out! Spit them out!"
"Tay!" She was trying to push my hand away. "What the fuck's your problem?"
"What's yours? What the fuck is going on with you? Spit them out!" She closed her mouth and started to swallow. My fingers were at her lips, trying to pry her mouth open. "No!"
She pushed me away bitterly, and swallowed the last of her pills, coughing. "Get off of me!"
"Do you have any idea what you're doing?!" I questioned, worry and guilt causing me to be anxious, to almost shout at her.
"I know exactly what I'm doing." She said. "I'm numb. You should know."
I shook my head, "No, no. Jess, no. What happened tonight? Why were you crying?"
"Fight with my boyfriend." She stated simply. "It's nothing. Everyone fights. I was just shaken, that's all."
"Then what hurts so bad that you need to numb the pain?"
"Everything." She spat. "Everything."
"What else do you have?"
"What do you mean?"
"Pills, drugs. What else? Where is it?"
She waved her arm at me and turned over on the bed. "If I knew you were going to be Mom I wouldn't have told you."
I pulled open her drawers and dug through her clothes. "Jess, you can't do this, you don't understand." My vision was getting blurry with tears. "You need to stop before it's too late! Where is it?"
"Taylor! Get out of my stuff!" She shouted, and threw off of her covers. She pushed me away from her drawers, and opened her bedroom door, pushing me into the hallway. "Get out!"
"I'll tell Mom." I said.
"No you won't!" She shouted back. "Get out! Leave me alone!"
She slammed the door in my face, and I was alone. I didn't even bother knocking, or calling to her, or raising any kind of commotion. I walked to the end of the hallway, and opened another door, quietly, and sat down at the end of his bed. Isaac and I didn't speak much since our first day back together. When we did our tones were terse and our words were short - in my head I desperately wanted to talk to him, long talks - a way to sort it all out - but on the outside I didn't know how. We avoided each other instead of facing each other, but now I wanted him to tell me it wasn't my fault.
"Ike..." I whispered, tear-thickened voice, touching his leg to wake him.
He shifted, and sat up slightly, I could vaguely see him trying to make me out in the dark. "Taylor?" He muttered, groggy.
I moved closer to him, squeezing in next to him on the bed. "Ike... I'm sorry." I whispered. He welcomed my presence, and moved over for me. I moved close to him, wishing for affection, understanding. "I'm sorry for everything."
"Are you crying?" He asked me, then, "What time is it? Why are you up? Did you have a nightmare?"
"I can't sleep." I said, softly. "Stopped taking my Valium, you know, withdrawal and insomnia - it's not so bad. I'm used to it, now." One of Isaac's arms wrapped me in a hug, and I sniffed, tears growing more apparent in my voice. "But that's not what I wanted to talk to you about."
"What's going on, Tay?" There was no hostility in Isaac's voice, nothing but sheer concern. For a second we were brothers again, brothers before it had all happened, brothers like we should have been when Zac died.
"It's Jess." I said. "Jess is doing downers. I just heard her come in through the window, I went in and she had the pills. I don't want to rat her out and tell Mom, though - not if this can be handled quietly... I don't want to break her heart. I'm so worried, now."
"Jessica?" He asked, surprised. "Jess is doing drugs?"
"Yes." He said. "I tried to make her spit them out. She has no idea what she's doing, Ike. No fucking clue. It's my own fault, I brought it into the house. Does she know what's under the floorboard, Ike?"
"Tay, I don't know. I doubt it - I mean, how would she know you had a loose floorboard?"
I shrugged. "You said everyone knows."
"Tay..." He sighed.
"I'm so sorry, Isaac... I'm so sorry for what I did... Oh, God I'm so sorry. I love you... please, I love you." I crumbled, begging him. Fix this, please, let's fix this.
"I know, Tay, I know." He said. "I was just angry, you don't have to apologize, my error was worse tenfold. It wasn't your fault."
"You didn't do anything... it was me, understand? Don't humor me Isaac, I may be your baby brother but I'm not a baby. I'm not going to snap if you point it out that I fucked up. I know I fucked up."
"The coin has two sides." He said. "Do you remember when you collapsed in the hospital, and they put you in bed for a few days?"
I nodded. The memories were so vague and selective, but I remembered black, and waking up in a soft bed. "Yes."
"You were unconscious for a day, you know. The doctors called me on the phone - you had barely been there a week and they said you had wound yourself up so much that your body had just given way. They said you couldn't support yourself anymore because you had lost so much weight. I came to see you that first day, you looked awful - you know - thin as a rail, and they had you sitting up in bed, and when you started to gain consciousness you shivered - then screamed. You didn't make another sound for weeks, they said. You couldn't even get out of bed, and I didn't want to be near you. I didn't want to see what you had done to yourself, so I left. I didn't even care if you were okay, I just left you there. I just wanted to get away from you and your sickness. That was all I cared about - I was so selfish. I always walked away."
"I don't remember you." I said. I thought hard. The only thing I could remember was The Stripe's arm around my waist and my numb limbs shuffling with him across the room and down the hallway. I remembered the things in my arms, on my chest, and cold. I was always so fucking cold. "I don't remember much of anything." I thought about the screaming, and the vomit in the basin. I pressed my face to Isaac's chest. "Oh, God."
"You could have died, and I didn't care. That was my problem. That was my fault."
"You cared." I said, "You just didn't know what to do with me."
"I should have been there."
"It's okay." I whispered, hugging him tight. "You're here now."
We hugged each other for a long while, sniffling and weeping until we were uncomfortable. "Are you tired?" Isaac asked me.
"No." I said. "I wish I were. I'm sick of being up all night."
"Want to go downstairs and get a glass of milk?"
I nodded, and silently we crept to the kitchen and poured ourselves glasses of milk. For the first time in a year we had a conversation in which we learned about one another. A real conversation in which two people participate.
"So where have you been these past few months? What's been happening?"
He smiled over his glass. "Been writing a lot. I'm thinking of, in a few years, going back into the studio and trying for a solo career. I'm just testing the waters - that fight turned everything upside down - all the execs are all freaked out."
I laughed. "They don't know anything. Everyone's so stupid. They make such a big deal about issues that don't even affect them. Instead of thinking about our mistakes they should be thinking about their own." I muttered. "All of the bitter housewives, drunk fathers, and trouble kids."
"That's mass media for you." He shrugged. "They want to make a soap opera out of everything. They don't know that we're human or even real."
"Why go back?" I said. "Why go back into their world?"
"I miss it." He said. "I miss playing."
I felt guilty, but there was nothing I could do. I didn't ever want to stand on a stage again, the problem wasn't mine, but it was my undoing that had been the cause of his. I gulped down the rest of my milk. Please, I just want to go to sleep.
"I'm sorry, Isaac." I mumbled.
"I told you to stop apologizing."
I stood up, still wide-eyed and awake. I sighed softly, and sang softly to myself as I paced across the kitchen, mumbling words and thoughts at the same time as Isaac eyed me. He was tired, god I wished I was. I opened up the cabinets and started to take things out. "What are you doing?"
"Reorganizing the food." I said. "I've done this about forty times. I think Mom's started to notice."
"You really haven't slept for three days?" It was almost a statement to himself rather than a question for me.
"I'm so tired." He opened his mouth to respond and before I knew it I was crying again. Insomnia is like those long nights where your mind is swimming so fast and so much that, no matter how much your body lags, you just cannot get to sleep. You lie there, and lie there and toss and turn and squeeze your eyes shut, and you can't get to sleep. And then you cry, and you pace, and still nothing. That's how I felt right then.
"Why haven't you told anyone? I mean, you sit down here fuckin' reorganizing the cabinets because you can't sleep? Take something, I don't know... There's got to be a way."
"I can't take something, Ike. Don't you get it? I'm getting off of the Valium for you. If I take something I'll just become dependant on whatever else it is. I've been through this before, I can get off of it... I'll sleep eventually."
He stared at the table in front of him. "Want to go downstairs and listen to music?"
I looked up at him through my hair and smiled. "Okay."
Down in our rehearsal room, we shut the basement door and Isaac put on an old Jazz compilation he had, soothing music. I spread out on the couch, and he sat in the lazy chair, and we talked for hours. The sun was rising and I could see it through the small cubbyhole windows that basements tend to have.
"Remember the last time we stayed up all night and the sun rose like this?" I murmured, half asleep half awake, unsure of my reality.
"Zac..." Was the last word I remember before I drifted off to sleep.