Even If the Sky Falls (16 page)

As my mind fights back through the gray and fog, there isn't much left, but what is left feels clearer, not lighter, but valid, and that validation feels good.

Miles doesn't say anything; his hand is gently rubbing my back as I lean into him. The words come before I'm sure they're ready. “Everything is messed up, isn't it?”

“Doesn't mean it's not going to get better,” he says.

“I'm not sure I'm there yet.”

Miles pulls me up to face him. “What about this? You and me. Tonight. Damn, Sunshine, it's already better for me.” His hand caresses my face. “Do you have any idea?”

“Of?”

His voice is a whisper. “How bright you shine.”

I shake my head. Such a pretty thought, but I am not bright, not as far as I can feel it.

“Don't you shake your head.” He pulls my face up, the kiss so deep it hurts to stop. “I know what I see. A light so bright everything else disappears. And I'm not looking for a second opinion.”

“We still have to go back. Home, I mean.”

His hand pushes the thought away. “That's later. Later can go screw itself. Now is pretty stellar.”

My hand rests on his cheek, I remind myself he is real and he is here. “Stellar, huh?”

“Yeah. Damn stellar. Everything about it. You.”

I rub my face, wiping away the tears. “I need you to look away because I need to blow my nose and I'm going to use my shirt.”

He laughs but turns. “You do you.”

My body is still shaken from crying. I hiccup and blow my nose as quietly as possible and thankfully there's not a huge glob of snot at the end of my shirt, though I wipe that part on the ground next to me just to be sure. I rub at my eyes, warning any future tears that they too shall be dealt with. And Miles waits beside me, shielding me from the gusts of wind that are getting stronger. His hand in mine keeps me tethered to the now. It stops me from slipping back to the past.

He draws me in, kissing me. It is less urgent this time, gentle, but no less deep and encompassing. We take our time until we feel the wind circle around us, another set of hands closing in. His lips travel to my cheek. “Time to head back.”

For a moment, anxiety creeps in before I realize that our time together is still not at an end.

“I like the way you think,” Miles says.

My eyes narrow, head tilts. “How do you know what I'm thinking?”

“I'm hoping we're thinking the same thing. And I'm pretty sure we are.”

I pull him in, bold, unhindered by bashfulness, for another kiss. One hand wraps around his waist, the other settles on his neck, and his phone buzzes against his hip. I pull away, releasing a loud fake groan as he checks his cell.

“My mom.”

“Of course,” I say, keeping my voice light.

“Mood killer?”

I shake my head. His brow lifts.

“Two minutes?”

The wind whips my hair up, and pieces of paper and debris slap across my legs.

“Two minutes.”

Miles picks up his phone. “Everything okay?” he starts. “Yeah—no damage over here yet. Lost electricity though.”

I drift back toward the water, still agitated, waves now
growing in strength. I mentally run through the route we took to get here and how fast we'll need to move to avoid getting caught in the tail end of the hurricane. It should be no more than five minutes. Water splashes on my face from the waves that crash against the pier, and I am hypnotized by the way they fight against this structure in their way. I want to be off this pier before the river wins. I can hear Miles wrapping it up with his mom as my eyes cut out to the river and down the shoreline.

“Mom? MOM?”

I turn. “What's wrong?”

“The phone cut off.”

“Maybe her battery died?”

“It's a landline—my aunt is old school.” He's fidgeting, dialing the numbers again and again.

“Did she sound okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. I'm just—”

I move toward Miles when the wind pushes me back with a shocking strength. Toto, we are definitely not in Kansas anymore. I regain my balance, shaking off the thought that the air and wind are alive and need me out of their way enough to lift me up and carry me away.

“You okay?” Miles's hand is in mine in an instant.

“I think we need to leave.”

“Right. Right.” He takes one final look at his phone before he puts it away.

“I know you're worried. We'll keep calling her at the
hotel, okay? Once we're safe behind windowless walls.”

“Let's go.” He nods.

A piece of flying newspaper slaps against my leg, then another. I pick it off and the wind snags it from my fingers, a violent tug and the paper snags and rips as it is carried away. As we make our way off the dock, tiny pebbles prick our skin.
Pain,
I think,
like Abuela Julia mentioned.
You know you're in trouble when the wind becomes painful.

When the wind is alive.

We make it off the pier. I should feel safer now, on solid ground, but something is off. Something feels wrong and I can't place it but I drag my feet waiting for my mind to catch up. I feel ludicrous.
Pick up your feet and go, Julie!

“What's wrong?” Miles asks.

I shake my head. “I—I don't know.”

I reach for the now familiar feel of the metal against my wrist. Finally it clicks. It's gone.

Miles's bracelet is gone.

R
EALLY IT WAS ALL MY FAULT THAT
E
MMA AND
I
WEREN'T TALKING
anymore—100 percent. Though tell that to my emotions. As far as their logic is concerned, Emma was just as much to blame as I was. But, really, they can't see what a giant bag of crap I was being to my best friend. And Kara? Well, I guess that's on me too.

And, really, I've been the one giving them the silent treatment like a ten-year-old. There hasn't been a moment when Emma and Kara stopped texting, calling, emailing, dropping by to see how I was doing. I'm the jerk in this, if there was any doubt in anyone's mind.

Days after Adam pinned me to the ground in his sleep, he still wouldn't meet my eye. The nightmares continued,
but I no longer knocked, no longer pushed open the door to see how he was doing; my hand remained permanently hovering over the knob, paralyzed by something I couldn't figure out. I still can't. Was I afraid for Adam or afraid of him? That question, even now, can't encompass all the complicated thoughts and feelings rolling around in my mind. As far as I was concerned there was a door and I was on one side ready to knock. But there was also the memory of the pressure on my neck and a weary walk back to my own room. The echo of rejection.

Emma and Kara pried the truth out of me as only friends can. We were in the park, hanging out on the picnic tables, killing time. I had zoned out for the third time during a conversation about the many things that could kill you in Australia (short answer: everything) and why we should cross it off the list of places to visit when we were rich and famous, when my hand traveled to my neck again, rubbing the skin.

“Stop doing that.” Kara leaned over to pull my hand away. “Your skin is all red and blotchy. Did you fall or something?”

“Are you okay?” Emma asked.

“Fine.” I smiled and waved them off, eager to get back to our usual top-ten- (now twenty-five) places-we-want-to-visit-before-we-die discussion. “What other venomous snakes live in Australia?”

“A quicker question would be what venomous snakes
don't
live in Australia,” Emma said. “Also, don't ‘fine' us. We don't get fine. Fine is for your parents, Facebook friends, and ex-boyfriends. No fine.”

“Seriously, I'm—”

Em shook her head, not having any of it. “Nope. Kara?”

“You've been off.”

“Off?”

Kara nodded. “Off. And to be honest, I'm—
we
are not sure why. I feel like we haven't talked—like,
talked
talked—in forever.”

“I know I'm cuing the cliché dialogue here, but you can tell us anything.” Emma smiled as Kara reached over interlacing my hand with hers. “And if you don't, you know we'll just start jumping to conclusions—which we're really good at.”

“Amazing at,” Kara agreed.

“Practically a superpower,” Emma continued. “Right now I'm jumping to unrequited love, a horrible robotic experiment gone wrong, and something to do with a lost dog.”

“Or all three!” Kara interjected, giving my hand a quick squeeze for dramatic effect.

“All three!” Emma shouted. “See? We're on a one-way train to Conclusionville and we need to be stopped.”

I managed an actual real-life smile. “That makes no sense.”

“Exactly. So . . . ?”

Emma leaned toward me, Kara squeezed my hand again—these girls, my girls, how could I not trust them? Yet it was so hard to get the words out. I felt myself retreat again, tumbling down into a void and not fighting it whatsoever.

“It's Adam.”

I looked up—thinking for a moment that the words had tumbled out of my mouth, but no, it was Emma. Her dark-brown eyes bore into mine and I realized I'd been avoiding her all day for this particular reason. It was impossible to not cave to Emma's stare. A Liu family trait passed through from generations of women; Emma had it in spades.

I spilled everything on that picnic table, emotions, thoughts, tears, not caring what they understood and what they didn't. Kara rubbed my back, which turned out to be a facilitator for more secret spilling. They listened, they asked if I was okay, they asked for more details. What else was happening? What else had Adam done? Did I tell my parents? Why not?

Their questions kept repeating in my mind, a sick echo of fault and guilt. I regretted opening my mouth and felt I'd somehow betrayed Adam by telling Kara and Em about what had happened, so I shut down and they backed off. The bell rang, and we went our separate ways.

Later that night, Em texted me, begging to meet again for a chat at the park the next day; she and Kara came prepared, which wasn't surprising; they were super researchers. They must have spent hours looking things up online and
probably regretted not having days to work on securing secondary sources and expert testimony.

“So,” Kara started, exchanging glances with Em. She sat right next to me while Emma sat across the table. “Emma and I were talking about Adam and the attack last night.”

“It wasn't an attack,” I bit back. “He didn't know what he was doing.”

“Okay, okay.” Emma nodded. “It wasn't an attack, but we looked some stuff up on the internet, starting with medical sites, then went into our little black holes of research. You know how we are.”

Oh I knew; if you searched long enough you could disprove every thought in the universe.

“And we found some information that could be useful. Kara?”

Kara's smile was meant to be reassuring, but it was too late, the walls were built. “So we started by, like, looking up nightmares and violent—um—incidents in veterans and kept coming back to post-traumatic stress disorder.”

Disorder.
The word echoed.

“There doesn't seem to be a consensus on, like, how much time you had to serve to get it or actions related to it.”

“Actions? Like nightmares?”

Emma jumped in. “Meaning if it's connected to the stuff they did during the war or something.”

“Yeah—that,” Kara said.

I shook my head. “I don't know what he did; he won't
talk about it.” This was a lie, I never once outright asked Adam about the things he did in the war. Perhaps in a way I thought I
was
asking every time I said, “Are you okay?”

“What else did you find?”

“Well.” Emma pulled out a pile of papers, highlighted in sections and filled with tiny, handwritten margin notes. “I printed out all the articles I could find with medical references—there's a lot. Different symptoms depending on the person, of course, but there are common ones.”

“Like?” My heart sped up, my hands shook.

She shuffled through the mass of papers. “Disinterest in life and daily activity. The nightmares—with some morning episodes, I think—trouble reintegrating into their lives before military service. Most of it is what you would expect, I feel like, of someone coming back from service. There's this one particular article that I found interesting—it's all about PTSD and how it's related to morality and guilt.” Emma paused, hesitant to continue. Kara picked up where she left off.

“There are also incidents of violence too.”

“He didn't mean to hurt me,” I jumped in. I pulled out Abuela Julia's cross, tugging it down until the metal dug into my neck. “You should've seen his face, he was so lost when he woke up.” I closed my eyes, pushing back the memory of the broken look on Adam's face.

Kara settled closer on the bench, her hand reached for mine, unhooking it from the chain. “We don't think Adam
meant to hurt you, we swear. We just think he needs help.”

“Like professional help,” Emma clarified before I even thought of suggesting that I could help Adam just fine. They knew me too well. “I spoke to my mom about it.”

“Whoa, you what?”

Holy shit, this is not happening. How could she?

“Em, it wasn't your secret to tell! I haven't even told my parents—”

“I didn't tell her it was about Adam.” Her hands reach for me, trying to calm me down. “I just asked her, like, a hypothetical situation.”

“Oh yeah, hypothetical situation? Did you mention the army stuff?”

Em didn't look at me; her hand stopped halfway down the table.

“You shouldn't have said anything. Of course your mom is going to figure it out!”

Next to me Kara jumped in, “Stop yelling at her; she was just trying to help.”

I picked up my bag, shoving the stack of papers inside. “We're done.”

I stormed off, Em and Kara calling after me, begging me to sit and talk. I didn't stop.

A
T HOME
I
took the papers out, dropping them on my bed, unsure of what to do. Should I give them to Adam? Should I give them to my parents? How do I know that
Adam has PTSD? What if—what if I screw everything up by suggesting that he does? Maybe he's just having a hard time adjusting and here I am talking about disorders and seeing doctors.

I glanced through the pages and pages of symptoms, history, where to find help, but my eyes focused on one particular article: “The Incidence of Suicide Among Those Suffering from PTSD.” I rushed through the article, picking up percentages here and there. My heart was racing and I had to stop at one point to stick my head out the window and get air. I felt like ripping the pages in half, but instead I dropped them in a drawer and slammed it shut. The fear that Adam could take his own life now infected every space of my brain, overloading it. My room felt too small. I started to shake, and I couldn't hear my heartbeat, it was going so fast. I ran downstairs, building the walls of the dam that would be the beginning of keeping these thoughts at bay.

I could hear my mom in the kitchen. The smell of store-bought cookie dough, a smell that usually makes me happy, now making me sick. In the kitchen my mom was rinsing out her mug and filling the kettle with water before placing it on the stove. I went straight to her and wrapped my arms around her.

“This is nice.” She leaned back against me. “What's the catch?”

I couldn't respond. I was still pulling myself together,
brick by brick. My stomach settling.

“Julia?”

“I don't know what to do.”

“With what?” She rubbed my arm.

“Adam.”

My mom stilled, releasing a heavy sigh as she pulled my arms from around her belly and turned to face me, her brown eyes taking a good look, just like Abuela Julia used to do. I held on to the ache of missing my abuela, secure in its familiarity.

“You're worried about your brother.”

“Yes.”

“¿Por qué?”

As if on cue my neck twitched and my hand went to scratch at my skin but instead picked up the necklace. “I think he needs help.”

The kettle sounded; she dropped a bag in, poured, and set the cup down to steep.

“What makes you say that?”

I looked up at my mom, her warm brown eyes that now smiled readily and held no hint of a sadness that was there before Adam returned.

She waited, patient as always, ready to listen when I was ready to speak. My abuela would not have been patient. She would have demanded to know what I was trying to say; she would have make me stand there until whatever burdened me was laid out on the table.
Why
aren't you here? I need you here
.

“Just let it go,
niña,”
she'd say.
“
What is the point of holding in such things? They fester inside and rot you from the inside.” And they do. They root down to my core, a pit of ache in my heart growing and spreading through my veins.

“I'm just worried.”

“You said that. Is there a particular reason?”

“Just”—I shrugged—“in general. I mean, I don't really know what active military service is or what it means to come back from it but I think, maybe if he had someone to talk to, he would feel better.”

My mother nodded, sipped at her tea, and carried it over to the table. “You think your brother needs someone to talk to?”

I took another sip of mine, forcing the hot liquid down my throat, using the pain to move forward. “I think everyone needs someone to talk to. Don't you?”

“True.” She reached over for my hand, and I placed mine in hers. “And it sounds like a good idea,
amor
. I'll talk to your father about it, and we'll look into it.”

“¿De veras?”

“Of course.”

Of course! How could I have been so silly? After all the fear, the crying, feeling like I was utterly useless, it was done.

Of course my parents will fix this, I thought. Of course they could see that Adam needed help.

This was the moment.

The change in the tide that shifts everything.

The point in time we would look back on and mark and remember. From here on, everything was different. From here on nothing was the same.

So simple I should've done it earlier.