Chasing Ellie

44. Do's & Dont's

Darren Hannigan

I've thought about how to talk to Peter all day. I've researched it too. I have a list of ways to maximize my efforts without pushing Peter farther away, as if he could get any farther away.

It consists mostly of being patient and calm. Two things I think I can handle pretty well. And then the ones that should be obvious like don't demand him to stop cutting, don't tell him he's messed up and the alike.

They don't make me feel anymore prepared though and as I sit in my room, I stare at a picture of my dad, Peter and I. It was taken shortly before he died.

He stands there with his light blond hair and orange beard, light eyes twinkling full of life like I remember him to be. His arms draped around our shoulders as he grins at the camera. I look like a younger scrawnier version of him, already towering over him by a few inches, awkward and shy in my body. And Peter stands poised and stoic, meticulously perfect on his other side.

It was like someone took him and split him down the middle and gave Peter his personality and me all of his physical attributes. We possess nothing similar.

But what I wouldn't give for some of my dad's personality. To be able to so easily connect with people. Maybe then I'd be better equipped at helping Peter.

I don't know what to do dad.

But I know I have to do something so after a deep breath that does nothing, I force myself out of my room. Peter was on the couch with Tot sleeping when I got home and if the stillness of the house is any indicator he's still there.

My feet feel like lead as I trudged down the hallway, the bathroom door wide open, his clothes in a pile on the floor from when he must have showered at some point today, his bedroom door cracked, the tv still playing in the distance.

I'm not exactly sure what propels me to do it, but as I pass by his room, I push the door farther open and step in. It's a mess, nothing has changed there, the air stale and muggy from the his countless hours spent holed up within its four walls.

I'm positive that if Peter has cutting paraphernalia he'd keep it hidden in his room. Mom cleans the bathroom and he's too smart to keep it somewhere where she'd find it. I mean that's how he kept it from us for so long.

But his room. Mom doesn't clean it. I don't go in it. It's the safest place in the house.

I can't believe I'm snooping but I don't stop myself, pulling at drawers, rifling through his clothes, his socks, his boxers, the junk that's overtaken his nightstand. I stuff my hand between the mattresses, running my arm through only to come up empty. I'm on my hands and knees, pushing aside lost dishes to the depths of the black hole that lives beneath his bed. My chest is heaving, a jittery feeling that leaves my limbs shaking and breath shallow.

"What are you doing?" Peter's voice bites at me.

I drop to my butt, leaning my back against his bed as I catch my breath now that I've been caught. Staring at him, taking him all in. He's thinner then he's ever been, even when he was going at it in sports trying to beat me, working out like crazy. He's not a fit thin, he's a sick thin. Dark shadows envelope his light eyes, all the precision and perfection he practiced his entire life is replaced with purposeful ignorance and disorder.

"What are you doing?" He repeats just as angry.

What am I doing? I'm trying to help. I just don't know how.