Because Nate’s pain was as real as mine, and maybe he could be saved. Maybe he’d never get to the place where I had been.
“It was wicked hot in the city, like record heat, and he wanted to go to the park. He’d bugged me about it all morning until I snapped. I thought he was doing it just because he knew I wanted to stay home. God, there was a Walking Dead marathon on, and I hadn’t seen the show yet. I just wanted to chill and watch it with my best friend, who was in the Hamptons with her family.”
I thought of my friend Kate. We would spend hours texting each other when we weren’t together. Boys. Songs. Gossip.
But that day it was gonna be about zombies, and I hadn’t seen her since the week before, so I was looking forward to painting my toenails, watching the zombies, and sharing all of it with her.
“Malcolm knew I didn’t want to go, but he didn’t care. I guess most seven-year-olds are kind of selfish that way.”
I could have said no. I could have told Malcolm that the smog and humidity wasn’t good for his asthma. But I didn’t. At the time I thought, “Okay, you little twerp. We’ll see how much you like it when you have trouble breathing.”
It was mid-July, and there were weeks ahead of us. With Mom and Dad working until vacation in August, weeks where I was in charge. I wanted to teach him a lesson. I just didn’t know it would all go so wrong.
“I remember Mick, the guy who sold sausages on the corner near the park, telling us we were crazy to be out.” I paused. “He was right.”
I had marched by, glaring at the back of Malcolm’s golden head, and I had thought, “You little shit. Just wait, buddy. You should have listened to me.”
“The funny thing was, when we got to the park, there were a lot of kids out. It was like a switch had been turned on or something. Malcolm gave me the biggest hug. His arms were thin—God, they looked like spaghetti noodles—but he was strong. He whispered in my ear, ‘I love you, Roe,’ and just like that, he made me feel like a total bitch for not wanting to bring him. I roughed up his hair a bit and told him he had an hour, tops.”
I paused, overwhelmed, and then whispered. “He was fine with an hour. After all that, an hour at the park was enough for him.”
Malcolm had run to the swings while I found a grassy spot under a tree and sat down. It was maybe a few degrees cooler but still so hot. I’d brought a book and lay down on my stomach to read. I didn’t mean to fall asleep; it just kind of happened. I read a few pages. Texted with Kate and then closed my eyes.
“I would give anything,” my voice broke, “anything to have not fallen asleep. I remember waking up and not knowing where I was at first. I felt the breeze, smelled the grass, and heard the kids shrieking and giggling as they ran through the water pad on the other side of the swings. I don’t know when I realized that something was wrong.”
I shrugged and burrowed deeper into Nate’s arms.
“Maybe it’s why I woke up in the first place. Some weird sense that something was wrong.”
I paused again, remembering how my stomach fell all the way to the ground and took me with it.
“I looked everywhere for Malcolm…but he was gone. I was frantic, yelling his name and shouting at the kids like a lunatic. This mother came over to me and asked me what was wrong. When I told her that my brother was missing, she looked around and then she shook my shoulders. She asked me when I’d seen him last and I told her…I told her that I’d fallen asleep and then I couldn’t speak anymore. The look in her eyes…I’ll never forget. She knew I had let it happen.”
I thought that I was all cried out, but hot tears burned my itchy, blotchy skin.
“I screamed in her face. I yelled, ‘It’s not my fault,’ but it was. And then when I found his inhaler in my bag, I just knew that something bad had happened. It was too hot. He needed his inhaler. By this time, the place was crawling with cops. I don’t know who called them. It wasn’t me. But they were there and they were asking me questions, and every time they did, I saw that woman’s face. I saw her accusation.”
My voice broke.
“I saw the truth.”
“Oh God, Monroe. You don’t have to do this,” Nate breathed into me, his nose near mine, his dark eyes shiny.
But I did.
“They found him almost immediately, in the trees that cut through the park. I think he was trying to get back to me because he was in trouble, but I was asleep and totally unaware. I bet he yelled for me. He had to have, and sometimes I hear him, you know? I hear him screaming, ‘Roe, where are you? Come get me!’
“He was already gone when they found him, and by then my mother had made it to the park.” I shook violently at the memory. At the sound of my mother wailing. At the image of her pounding her fists into the police officer’s chest. Her nails were scarlet. Blood red and pointy.
Funny the details you remember.
“The coroner told my parents later that he died because of a severe asthma attack, and I remember my mom asking about his inhaler. ‘Where was his inhaler?’ she kept asking, saying it over and over. I could never answer, but I think that she knows. I’ve never told her or my dad that I had his inhaler. That I still have his inhaler. I never told them that…”
I clung to Nathan, trying to block out the sounds of Malcolm’s cries and the images of his face. My chest was so tight I could barely breathe, but eventually it fell away and I was nothing but a limp bag of bones and flesh.
“Jesus, Monroe. I’m so, so sorry.”
I was hollow. Spent.
“Yeah,” I answered slowly. “Me too.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Nathan
I woke up because the sun was in my eyes. It wavered for a bit and then disappeared again.
Shit. It was morning, and we were still in the maze. My hair was damp from the dew, but with Monroe still in my arms, burrowed beneath the blanket I’d brought, I was warm and dry.
It felt right somehow to be here with her, and I realized that for the first time in a long time, I was exactly where I wanted to be.
I don’t think I slept much, but then how could I? I was still so angry for Monroe. I wanted to punch something. I wanted to smash and destroy and get rid of the anger inside me. It had festered and pulled real hard, just like it had the night after my accident when I’d woken up in the hospital, and Trevor didn’t.
But I did none of that. I held Monroe until she’d fallen asleep, and then with no one but the lonesome owl nearby to hear me, I cried like a baby.
I cried for a little boy I’d never met and his sister who had come to mean everything to me in the space of a few weeks. I cried for Trevor. For his mom and dad. I cried like I hadn’t cried since I was a kid in fourth grade and my collie, Abram, died. The bus had pulled up to my driveway, and there he was, lying in the middle of the road, killed by a car or truck.
I had to pull Abram out of the way for the bus driver, and I remember dragging his big body all the way to the porch, where I sat and cried until my dad came home.
We never got another dog after that, because me and my parents couldn’t deal with the dying thing. Still couldn’t. Here I was, nearly eighteen and still having trouble.
Everything fell out of me, and no one witnessed it except whoever the hell was up there, looking down on us. I wasn’t sure if I liked him or not. I mean, what kind of God lets shit like this happen to little boys?
What kind of God lets someone like me get behind the wheel and destroy his best friend?
“Shit,” I muttered, wincing as a ray of light fell into the center of the maze again, hitting me in the face like a big F U.