Me, Myself, and I

the strike changes fronts

The image of Alex repeating those words stayed in my brain a mere five minutes after he left my house.

"You need to calm down and focus on yourself for a bit."

Seemed counterintuitive. The whole point of crap like this is to bring people together, isn't it? I started with the coffee, seeing Alex's face in the liquid, so many secrets lying behind his pale eyes. They teased me, melted into my core. His face would transform. I'd see Ben, watch him walk away again. Watch Max on the floor again.

The images on our walls were abstract. Shapes, polka dots, Gandhi quotes. Never any photographs. Certainly no videos. I knew where to find them. Like pictures, information is usually hiding just behind a frame.

I sat at the kitchen table first, downed an entire pot of black coffee before the front door swung open. Dad held another bag of bagels he tossed towards me, sitting down gently. I brewed another and sipped.

"You're back," I said. Another sip. The stuff just wasn't bitter enough today.

"Just checking in."

His voice had a charredness to it. He poured himself a cup, staring absentmindedly at the expired eggs in the fridge. I rose and snatched a spoon from the drawer, stirring the contents of the cup. Completely unnecessary. I tried to imagine bitterness swirling around in there.

"They tell you anything else about what happened?" I asked.

"As a matter a fact, they did. But that's confidential information."

I swirled the cup. "Which part? The tumor getting yanked out or the fact that Ben hasn't woken from surgery yet?" He flinched. I grabbed the eggs he was staring at, tapped on the edge of a glass bowl and watched the yolk dance. Somehow I'd managed to sneak an eggshell in there already. Had to be some sort of record.

"You've been talking to Kyle," he said.

"Kyle doesn't talk to me. Thank God." Flour. I needed flour. "His family's just waiting in there, then?"

"Not right now, actually. His parents are meeting with Peterson and Dr. Conner to settle the Nancy Clemmings 'news' situation." I still didn't understand how Kyle had even found the thing. "Micah's left with them and sent his family back home, no one knows where Nick's off to, and Kyle..."

"Still there, isn't he?"

"Hasn't left the chair."

The silence swallowed us, and I measured out some sugar, sprinkled. The texture was all wrong, clunky. I whisked as fast as I could, frowning at the specks of the substance burying the countertop.

"How do you know Kyle?" I said.

He sipped. "He's Ben's brother."

"I know that." Dad lowered the coffee mug and started to handwash it. I dropped the whisk and faced him. "He looked at you like he knew you."

"He probably just recognizes me from the news."

"You were never on the news. Not recent enough. He would've known Ben was in your program," I paused. "He looked like he was seeing a ghost."

He grabbed a hand towel with a dolphin on it, swiping away at the drops of water on the handle. His shoulders were hunched slightly.

I held out my hand and grabbed the mug, hanging it next to the others. I gave in to this cold-shoulder tactic, said what we were both thinking, "I know I should've told you. About Ben. I just...I promised him. We had a deal. He comes to the program, I don't tell."

He stood in silence. It sounded like a deal between children. I guess, in a way, it was.

I tried again, "He was never going to do it, Dad."

"Oh?"

"He had started to put the knife down before I walked up to him. I just happened to be there."

Dad pulled out a stool from the kitchen island, hunched over it. I sat at the chair across from him as he said, "Secrets are a dangerous things. Like knives. When pressed, they do their damage, and they'll leave behind scars that never heal. Regardless of intentions."

"I know."

We didn't say what I knew we were thinking. That a knife and a secret is what led to my brother becoming a corpse on his own bed. He didn't ask, and I wouldn't listen. Analogies and metaphors were a lot easier to take. I eyed my abandoned baking project, then stared at my chipped fingernails. "I really need to see him."

"I haven't known Ben long, but I'm sure he wouldn't want you abandoning your life to sit in a hospital chair."

How wrong he was. "You're right." My baking project was in crumbles. "How long was I in there?"

He frowned. "You don't remember?"

I turned back to my project. I trusted his opinions, but the last thing I needed was more psychoanalysis. "It's Monday. Just the weekend, then."

"Yes. You and Kyle were statues in there." Three days. He held one of the kitchen chairs. "Are you going to see Alex later? He misses you. Seemed torn up."

"I know."

He pulled on another layer. "Now's not the time to push your friends away."

"I know."

"I should head back. I'm sure Ben's parents would have no problem letting you see him eventually. I just think you should wait." He checked his watch. "I'll be back around lunch."

My grip hardened on my cup. I turned back to the baking project. "That's okay. I'll probably run by Stacks." He nodded, I hugged him, thanked him. I waited until the truck pulled out, emptying the glass bowl into the garbage can, spritzing soap inside and letting it rinse.

Then I started my search, couch cushions, bedroom drawers, every cabinet I could get a hold of. Lots of recipes. So many recipes. But I'd known about those, what I needed was far more concrete than a baking project. There was a guilty pleasure to it all. This eary feeling I was being watched. Which didn't make sense. My thoughts were mine right now. I'd made no hand gestures.

A couple of hours passed before I found it, sitting inside an unlocked fireproof safe inside Dad's closet. I knew it. He handwrote everything. Helped him think, he always said. Mom used to hate it, said we were murdering the trees and would be the death of the world as we know it. I ignored the goosebumps upon feeling all the files. Transcripts of phonecalls, every phonecall, case files...every muscle and tendon was wincing, yelling at me to put them all back. I sprawled out on his bed, a king size, and peered at his scratchy handwriting. Chicken scratch. My phone alarm went off. Half an hour until lunch. So I started taking pictures, felt like hundreds of them, of every shred of paper in the thing. Some letters rang too familiar, the ones I could decipher. His cursive got messier in some drafts, some in tables, others complete paragraphs, or at least some version of a paragraph.

For what I was looking for, I needed help. I needed someone overly devoted, someone who wouldn't question any of my actions, who'd obey my request in blind devotion and ignore all logic. I didn't have any of those. I had individuals with critical eyes, people who overanalyzed and psychoanalyzed and took control of everything around them. Still, devotion wasn't in question.

Alex's question. Why do you care so much?

I think selfishness had a lot to do with it. Runs in the family.

I pulled on my cleanest shirt and a pair of leggings, grabbing my coat. I dialed Alex's number and told him to meet in my dorm room in half an hour.