"Isaac?!" She looked bewildered, her glare quickly moving from Isaac to me. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"
"It's one in the afternoon, get out of bed."
"Taylor?" She looked at me, questions all over her face, then worry and fear.
"I'm not going to let you do this Jessica. Tell me where everything's hidden and I won't go to Mom and Dad."
She grew angry, and picked up a stuffed animal and threw it at me. "Get out! Get out of my room!"
"Tell me." I said, moving from my spot against the door toward her, sitting up in bed. "Tell me."
I awoke that morning to soft whispering around me. "Don't wake him, he hasn't slept for days." But the sunspots on my face and the urge to pee forced me awake. I felt still-tired, but refreshed. I came to find out that it was nearly noon, and after lunch Isaac dragged me upstairs to where Jess was still sleeping, and now struggling under my gaze.
"Go the fuck away! You have no... right..." Her head shot over when she heard Isaac opening drawers, and she grew violent. Jumping up and pulling him back, her arms wrapped around his neck. I grabbed her and pulled her off of him, prying her arms from his neck and pinning her back on the bed, wrists in my hands.
"Don't you touch him!" I shouted. She was hurt. Jess. The one I always understood. In her eyes I was turning my back on her, she didn't realize that we were doing just the opposite. She snarled at me and went for Isaac again but I held her down. "Where is it? Where, Jess? Where is it!?"
She thrashed beneath me and I struggled to hold her. "Why are you doing this to me!?"
"Because you should know better!" I shouted. "You live with me."
"I found something." Isaac said, holding a container in his hand. "Weed." He muttered.
She jerked and he continued digging, without even acknowledging her. "No!" I said. "You're not moving until you tell me why you'd do such a stupid thing!"
She muttered something snide then when Isaac came up with a bag and a prescription bottle full of pills she jolted upward. I nearly lost my balance when I let go of her and she moved to grab her medicine. Isaac grabbed her arm when she reached for it, and she bit him, causing him to let go of her, fast. I didn't know it was going to be this hard. I got a hold of her again, and Isaac pocketed the pills.
"Why are you doing this to me!?" She shouted again, in tears.
"Because we care about you!"
"You don't care about me... If you cared you wouldn't be doing this! You wouldn't be stealing my stuff!" I knew exactly what she was feeling, sympathy almost overbearing logical thought patterns. I wanted to back down, but I couldn't. I wouldn't let myself. I, myself had said the exact same words, more than once, and gotten my way. Getting your way doesn't change a situation.
"You don't know how untrue that is." I said. "We care about you, that's why we're taking them from you."
"No one fuckin' cared when you did it! No one took your stuff!"
"Yes, they did." I said. "It took Zac doing exactly what we're doing right now to stop. How could you not know that? I've been through this before, Jess. I know what it's like. It's for the better, trust me. Please, trust me."
"You never stopped." She spat. "You were eating Valium up until five days ago."
"That's true. But do you really want to be like me?" I said, and she hesitated, her features softening. "Look at my life for a second, Jessica. Think about where I've been."
"It's different for me." She said. "I'm not an addict."
"Oh?" I said, eyeing the baggie of pills still in Isaac's hand. "Then it won't hurt to see it go." She screamed and I held her down firm. "Shut up! Just stop it! You know as well as I do that no fucking weekend user has a stash like that. You never know you're addicted until it's too fucking late. They don't lie about that in school, you know. We're saving you a lot of grief and pain, you know, and the least you could do is thank us!"
Suddenly I felt pain in my groin. My stomach ached and my hands went loose as I subconsciously reached to clutch myself. Stop it, stop it, stop it. I closed my eyes and opened them again, counted to ten. "One, two, three, four..." When I looked up Isaac had left the room with Jessica on his tail. I heard a door slamming down the hallway and her outside banging on it. He was hiding her stuff with mine. Just fucking wonderful. I wondered why he didn't just flush it immediately. "...Seven, eight, nine, ten."
"Taylor, what's going on in here?"
I sat down on Jessica's bed, and tried to regain my self-control, I felt sick. "Nothing, it's no big deal, don't worry about it."
"Honey..." My mother was looking at me worriedly from the doorway, and quickly came to sit at my side. "You always say stuff like that, but you don't look well, are you okay? What are you all arguing about in here?"
"Mom, it's nothing. I feel a little bit dizzy, but I'm okay, we're okay. Just bickering." I smiled at her for reassurance. My mother knew me all too well, and she was worried. The look on her face told me that she was refusing my story. She didn't believe me, but wasn't going to try and disprove me. I sighed, softly, "Mom, there will be a time and a place when I'll tell you, but it can't be today."
She nodded slowly. "Just as long as you're okay."
"I'm fine." I said, sucking in a deep breath. "I'm fine."
"I'll go get Alex." She said, slipping out of the room quietly. I lay back on the bed, and continued counting to ten. Calm down, calm down, calm down. Jessica returned to her bedroom, and I had my hands over my face, counting to ten over and over.
"Get out of my room, you freak!" She shouted, and then grabbed me. My heart lurched at the shock of her presence and my mind was thrown into a frenzy all over again. I gripped the bedpost. She shouted at me to leave, but I couldn't move until my panic passed, or I would go into an episode. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"
"Jess, go away." I murmured through my hands. "Please, just go away for a few minutes."
"I don't need to go away! This is my room! You're in my bed! Get out! I could kill you right now!" She yanked me up by my shirt, and I swung around and threw her off of me, then threw myself on top of her. My fist hovered over her face.
"Get off of her." I seethed.
"Taylor!" Someone grabbed me from behind and dragged me to my feet. I screamed, my whole body was in pain. My chest heaved.
"No! No! I'm not leaving you here." I was crying now, and struggling under an invisible force, keeping me from moving. I saw the patterns of bed sheets and curtains, and went into a fit of sobs. Rhythmic words whispered in my ear brought my mind gradually to ease. I realized then that I was standing in the hallway of my own house, my arms locked behind my back by my father. I hung off of him for a second, then I felt nausea sweep me off my feet. I swallowed hard. Please. Go away.
"He's going to be sick, let him go."
I ran to the bathroom and leaned back against the wall. Swallowing, counting to ten. Please no sickness. I knelt down as it seemed to draw nearer and I felt someone's hand on my neck, stroking my shoulders, whispering soft rhythmic sounds into my ear. Soothing. Images were flashing at lightning speed, patterns, faces, and soft words. Her bed sheets, the tiled floor, and the cracks in the walls. Death in a tub, dirty slimy tiles on the shower floor, the water beating on my back. I could feel the bruises on my chest and the tile beneath my hands, I could see the blood coming from my scars. Nausea was coming faster, slamming through my body and giving me chills. Cold sweating, I clutched the toilet seat and leaned over, sure it was going to come... but it didn't. The feeling slowly began to fade and I relaxed.
"Are you okay, baby?" Alex's fingers made circles on my back. I nodded slowly, and wrapped my arms around her shoulders. Tears slid fat and wet down my cheeks. I looked up to see Jessica staring down at me with a scowl on her face. When the shivering stopped and I could finally move my limbs I stood up and pushed past my Dad and put my hands on Jessica's shoulders.
"You make me a promise." I said. "You promise you won't ever be like me, you understand? Never."
"Taylor..."
"Promise! Promise!" I said. "Promise you'll never be like me! Strung out on drugs, can't sleep at night, half-existing! Promise!"
She recoiled from me, as if disgusted. "What's wrong with you?"
I knew she was confused, the Taylor she remembered didn't act erratically or have fits. He didn't shout and panic, if anything, he was withdrawn and that was that. The only thing was, the Taylor she remembered was an entirely different person than the Taylor that stood before her, pleading with her. "Just say you promise. Okay? Promise..."
She nodded slowly. "I... promise." She stepped away from me, and I fell back against my father. I turned to face him and buried my face in his chest. I felt better.
"I love you, Dad."
"You're making me old." He said. He wasn't joking, but he tried.
"I'm sorry... I just panicked. I stopped taking my meds, I'm a little jumpy. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do this to you."
"I wish I could understand." He said, "But I don't."
"You don't have to." I said.
"How can I help you?" He wondered, he sounded so desperate. "How do I stop it? How do I make it better?" My father surprised me. He was warm, he was open, and he was worried. Like when I fell down and scraped my knee as a child, and Mom would bandage it up, he wanted to do like he always had: Pick me up, brush me off, and tell me a joke that would make me laugh and cure the pain. I hadn't felt that from him since Zac's death.
"By telling me it's okay." I wept on his shoulder. "And that you love me, regardless."
"Taylor, I'll always love you, you're my son." He pulled back from me and smiled. I was ten years old again, tears rolling down my dirty cheeks after Isaac and I had been fighting in the yard. "I love you, you know, brain defects and all."
I laughed. "I'm sorry for making you old. Your Grandson probably doesn't make you feel much younger."
"No, he doesn't." He chuckled. "He makes me realize that life's too short."
I nodded, though I realized then, that I felt quite the contrary. As I became more aware of the hallway and everyone standing around me, I became more aware of the amount of time I spend wondering where it ends. My life has been lived. I was burnt out at the age of 23. What more is there to see? What more is there to do? Why am I still here? Why is God giving me a second chance? Everyday, I asked these questions, and everyday I felt hollow with no answer.
The people I love were surrounding me, each on their toes, waiting. Jess, confused and upset; Isaac, worried; and Alex, knowing. My mother stood off to the side, and for a moment we were all frozen in time, just like that. Everyone was still until my mother broke the tension with a warm gesture - an arm around my shoulder. I began crying again, and both of my parents held me until the tears began to slow, and my whimpering became minimal.
"Taylor, what happened to you?" My father had asked. I knew what he had meant. It wasn't demeaning or necessarily indicative of my drawbacks. It wasn't supposed to sound as disheartening as it had come across. He wasn't trying to push me away, but draw me nearer. He wanted to talk about the years I had been away. Eighteen years old and losing myself.
I didn't know how to answer. Memories flashed before my eyes. Drugs and sex and the funeral. I didn't want him to know that I had been touched violently by someone's drunkard father, and I had allowed the contact. I didn't want to tell him I stood in the shower and asked some prick to shove his dick up my ass. He didn't have to hear my horror stories, he didn't have to know about the girl in the bathtub or the cigarette burns on my hands. They didn't have to know about the things I did to myself to solve a problem.
I didn't even look at him when I turned away - wearing a vacant expression that I had only been able to acquire through faltering sanity. I didn't even realize what I had done until I entered my room. I felt like a ghost in my body, but I was still plagued with the weight of flesh and bones. Expressionless, wordless, tired and slow. I was veiled.
I sat by the window. I didn't even think about it, but when I looked out on my snow covered lawn I started to remember those late May afternoons spent sitting in the same chair, staring out the same window. Seasons pass, time passes, but situations never change. She will always be gone, always. And there wasn't anything that I could do to change that. Zac wasn't ever going to walk back into the room and flop down on his bed, and Annissa wasn't ever going to wear my T-shirt because she had no other clothes. These memories floated over me as I thought back further. My mind going in reverse to times I hadn't acknowledged, to a problem I didn't want to see. It wasn't about the burns, it wasn't about the anorexia and the mental disorder, or the drugs. It was me. It was an aspect of my personality that I had let take over. My own yearning for my own self-destruction, because I couldn't work out any other solutions to problems that seem so daunting once. Me, all along and I had to change.
"Taylor?" I didn't like to see Alexis crying, and certainly not for me. I wrapped my arms around her for the first time that day.
"I'm so fucked up." I said. "I need to talk to Jess... but not now, later. I need to think, first."
"Isaac told me what happened." She said. "I think you're doing the right thing, Tay. I love you, you know. Don't forget it."
"I slept last night. Finally."
"Finally is right." She hummed. "You didn't get sick today, either."
"I came close."
"Yes, but you didn't." She said, then kissed me on the lips. "I'm proud of you."
I held her body against mine. We melted, for a moment, against each other's lips, and then sobs in my throat separated us. I cried over her shoulder, hugging her tight. I had no idea why, anymore. I didn't give explanation when everything came to the surface, I just let it be. Alex lay me down, and locked the door.
"Where's Theo?" I asked.
"He's with someone in your family, I'm sure he's okay... the kids are all watching him."
And when she returned to her empty space on my bed, and we were grinding our hips together, lips tearing on flesh, I kept thinking about everything in my life that I wanted to change. I wanted to stop wondering why, and start living again. I wanted a purpose, a happiness, closure. So that afternoon, as Alex slid my boxers over my ankles, I closed my eyes and started over.
"Alex, who am I?"
"You're Taylor. Why do you ask?"
I smiled. "Who am I really?"
Her hands clutched my hair, and our bodies writhed together as she thought of an answer. "You..." She said. "You are everyone's Golden boy. You appreciate art, and architecture, and you love music. You like it when girls suck on your toes, and you love your family, especially your son. You like flowers, even though you'd never admit it. You like the sunrise better than the sunset. You hate the dark. You're strong, even though you don't think so. You're wonderful, even though you're sad. But sadness passes. It all passes."
My heart swelled and I could feel my toes curling as we reached our peak together.
"You're everything I want, and everything I need." She whispered. "Please Taylor, don't forget how much I love you."
She made it sound as if I were leaving. As we lay side by side, I didn't say any more words, but it was as if she could read my mind.
"I know what you have to do. I understand."
Then... it became clear as day.