Bruiser (20 page)

I ran from him.

It was callous of me; it was cowardly; it was worse than the time he ran from me when I was most vulnerable. But, like Brew, I'm human. All I knew was that I had to get to a place far enough away for me to truly know my own feelings and grapple with them. I couldn't let Brew make peace for me. I had to make peace for myself.
With
myself. Only after I was out in the street and off of our block did worry, doubt, and anger begin to filter back in. Not enough to overwhelm me, but certainly enough to give some depth of field to my vision.

My feet were on autopilot—I didn't even know where I was going until I got there.

The pool.

It was getting toward nine o'clock. The pool closed to the
public at eight, but the underwater lights came on at dusk and didn't turn off until sunrise. The gate was locked, but I knew the pool as well as I knew my own home. There were half a dozen ways to get in that didn't involve the gate; and although I had no bathing suit, I knew the storeroom door was never locked. Neither was the lost-and-found bin, which was always full of suits.

Diving into a pool as smooth as glass and creating the first ripples has always been magic to me. Like taking the first steps into virgin snow. This is what I needed—just me and my own liquid universe. I hit the water, feeling the chill. I set out to do twenty warm-up laps but quickly lost count as my head went into defragment mode, trying to put together the events of the past weeks in some meaningful way.

I wanted my frustration and my anger to align in a single direction—like a beam I could aim at someone, fry them in blame, and be done with it. But who? Not Brew—he didn't choose his gift. Not Tennyson—he didn't start this. Not my parents—they were unwitting victims with no idea where their sunny, distorted dispositions had come from.

And then there was me.

Was I to blame for bringing Brew out of his shell and exposing him to all the toxic things the rest of us carry in our souls? And as our family rose out of our own gloom, how could I not have known the cause? Me! The girl who always prided herself on her ability to see to the heart of things—to pull the
truth from the tiniest bit of emotional evidence.

There could be only one answer.

I
did
know.

Maybe not consciously, but somewhere deep down I must have known that Brew was filtering out all those wounds we couldn't see. I let it happen because I
wanted
it to happen. I wanted my world to be safe and whole at all costs. I used Brew—just as Tennyson used him, just as Cody used him, just as his uncle had used him. In the end, blame didn't shine on an individual. It was a floodlight cast on all of us.

And all because we longed for healing and happiness—as if happiness is a state of being. But it's not. Happiness is a vector. It's
movement
. Like my own momentum across the pool, joy can only be defined by the speed at which you're moving away from pain.

Certainly our family could reach a place of absolute, unchangeable bliss at Brew's expense; but the moment we arrived, the moment we stopped moving, joy would become as stagnant and hopeless as perpetual despair. Happily ever after? What a curse to have to endure!

Time doesn't move at the same pace when I'm swimming, so there was no telling how long I swam. More than half an hour, less than two. Maybe. By the time I was done, I had found a sense of balance to all my emotions. I knew there had to be a way to hold on to them even in Brew's presence. There had to be. Uncle Hoyt had done it. I'd never seen a
man so angry, and he held his anger even with Brew around him every day.

As I climbed out of the pool, my inner balance didn't do much for my outer balance. All those laps had tired my legs and made me just a little bit dizzy. I found myself leaning a bit too far back; I overcompensated, and then my feet slipped off the ladder rungs.

I fell into the pool, but never felt myself hit the water.

Instead, I felt my head hit the concrete edge, knocking me unconscious. And in that instant, everything—happiness, sorrow, peace, and anger—were all snuffed silent in the implosion.

(I)

I did not choose this gift.

I cannot help what I am, what I do,

I do not choose to rob others of their pain.

At best I can mold it, and even direct it,

Use it myself, before others use me.

I have made that my secret aim,

But confessing to Brontë,

Scars me like acid rain,

Leaving me to drown.

In its rising waters,

As she leaves.

And in that moment,

I see my own glaring truth,

Her gift to me, there in her eyes.

You brought us a new light,

But that light is false.

So is darkness better

Than a heartfelt lie?

There's a rift,

Deep in my soul,

Between what I wish

And what I've become,

The anger begins to swell,

All my own and no one else's,

At the stark, undeniable truth,

That my brand of healing

Brings only misery.

I am defeated,

I am lost.

She leaves,

The door slams,

Mobilizing Tennyson.

He comes down to my room,

To find out what he has missed.

He sees my ruined back, chest, and arms.

“Put on your shirt,”
he says, and tosses it to me.

“Sorry,”
I tell him,
“I know I look horrible.”

“No,”
he says,
“it's cold, that's all.”

I slip the shirt back on.

“Thanks.”

I have to admit

Tennyson has changed

Since the first time I met him,

For the better, but also for the worse.

He's much kinder, more honorable somehow,

But humbled by an addiction to painkillers.

We both know that painkiller is me.

“She hates me now,”
I tell him.

“She'll get over it,”
he says,

“I'll go after her—”

“No!”
he says,

And in his eyes

A certain disquiet

A distinct desperation

At the thought of me leaving,

Clear evidence of the addiction.

And he looks away, hiding his shame,

But I'm more ashamed than him,

Because I made him this way.

I am not what he needs.

Not what
they
need.

“So,”
he asks,

“Will you stay?”

Meaning much more

Than just tonight or tomorrow,

Or this week or next.

“Should I?”

He looks away again.

“Yes…,”
he says, then adds,

“But I don't know if it's really me talking.”

I nod, an understanding reached.

“I'm going out to find her,

To make things right,”

Or at least

Properly wrong.

(II)

Alone with my own thoughts,

Searching through a chilly night,

Full of memories….

Where would Brontë go,

To be alone with her thoughts?

One more place to look…

I approach the pool,

There's something in the water,

And it's not moving….

Brontë's in the pool,

Facedown in the cold water.

I can't stop screaming.

(III)

Pulling you from the water won't be enough, but I can defy your fate,

I have one last gift for you, Brontë, and it's one you can't refuse.

Inches from you now, I stop kicking, let my arms relax.

They drift down to my side and the sword falls free,

Because the only way to win is not to fight.

And I'm ready for victory's embrace.

She starts to revive, I start to let go,

Giving myself to the waters,

Sinking deeper, deeper,

Faceup, eyes open,

Eyes on her.

Then she stirs the shimmering interface between life and death,

and she finally climbs out of the pool far, far above.

She doesn't see me; she doesn't know,

And it can be no other way.

I feel no wounds now,

Or any stolen pain.

All that remains

Is gratitude

And pure

Perfect

Joy.

If he dies, I swear I'll never forgive him. I'll never forgive myself.

He's heavy as granite at the bottom of the pool, his mass so dense he doesn't float. Brontë and I struggle with every ounce of our strength to raise him to the surface.

My choice to follow him from our house wasn't out of the purest of motives. I was too much of a wimp to face the emotional wreckage that was sure to come once Brew left and the effect of his presence wore off. I wanted to stay in range—even if only at the edge of it, trailing a block behind him as he searched for my sister. Tonight I was his personal stalker.

When I got to the pool, Brontë was just climbing out. She was dazed, unsure of what had happened. I climbed the fence. I would have moved faster if I'd known. We didn't see him for at least another ten seconds. Ten seconds can make the difference between living and dying.

Our first attempt to bring him up fails. We come to the surface, gasp a breath of air, and go down again. I get beneath him, pushing him up, while Brontë grabs him in a cross-chest carry, kicking for all she's worth.

We pull him to the surface at last, somehow getting him over to the side. Standing at the edge, it takes both Brontë and me pulling on his lifeless hands to get him out of the pool.

“You learned CPR in lifesaving, right?” I ask her.

Brontë nods and begins CPR right away, frantically working on him.

“You're going too fast!”

“I never had to do it for real!”

She slows down. Two rescue breaths, thirty chest compressions.

“I'll call for help!” But when I pull out my phone, its screen is a jumble of flickering garbage. It traveled with me to the bottom of the pool, and now it's useless.

Two breaths, thirty compressions, over and over. Brontë's tears are explosive without Brew to take them away, and I'm terrified that it might mean he's already gone.

“Get out the heart paddles!” Brontë shouts. “There's a defibrillation kit somewhere in the storeroom. I saw it once, but I don't know where.”

I race to the storeroom while Brontë keeps counting out chest compressions. “…nine, ten, eleven—damn it, Brew, breathe!”

I ransack the room—hurling things to the ground, dumping out cabinets until I find the kit—and race back to the pool deck.

“…twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven…”

I kneel beside her and get the thing open. The lid is filled with too many instructions to read. “What do I do?”

“They never showed us!” But then she reaches over and flips the On switch. Simple enough so far. A red light comes on. I can hear it charging up as I grab the heart paddles. Then a green ready light comes on. I press the metallic surface of the paddles to his chest. Brontë leaps back an instant before I press the red buttons on the paddles, and Brew's back stiffens in a violent arch.

“You're supposed to yell ‘
CLEAR!
'” she shouts.

“I forgot!”

I wait for it to recharge, watching for the green light, trying to relive every medical TV show I've ever seen to make sure I do this right.

Brontë puts two fingers against his neck and shakes her head: no pulse.

Brew has got to fight his way back—but he won't. He can't. He's not a fighter; it's not in his nature.

But it is in mine! If Brewster won't fight, then I'll have to fight for him.

“CLEAR!”

A second jolt. His back arches. Still no pulse.

“It's not working,” wails Brontë. “It's no use.”

But today failure is not an option.

As I wait for the machine to recharge, I look into his half open, unseeing eyes, and I realize that CPR and heart paddles are not enough. He needs something more from us.

“We have to take it back!” I tell Brontë. I don't even know what I mean yet. It's not a thought; it's a feeling—something I'm trying to put into words, knowing I don't have much time to do it.

“Take what back?” Brontë asks

Then the understanding hits me. What Brew needs—what WE need. The only way to save him. It's simple, and yet it's impossible. But no more impossible than the things Brew has already done.

“We have to take all of it back! Everything we let him take away! We have to steal it back from him.”

I see in her eyes the moment she gets it. “How?”

And suddenly I flash to Uncle Hoyt. “How did his uncle stay angry? Because he
wanted
to. The things we gave to Brew—we have to want them. We have to OWN them!”

Brontë nods. The light turns green. “One last time,” she says.

I press the paddles to his chest, but my thoughts aren't on those paddles. Instead they're on the body bruises I gave away, the head trips I refused to take, the pangs of sorrow I so easily handed over. Against my own self-preservation instinct, I fight
to feel those things I refused to feel before.

“CLEAR!”

I pump him full of electricity while trying to steal back a fraction of what I never should have given him in the first place. The battering he stole for me on the field. The heartache he spared me at home. Once I started to give just a little bit of it to him, it was easy to give it all away. But no matter how hard it is, I'm ready to take it all back if it will save him. All of it and more. So I silently pray that I might feel the hurt again somewhere, anywhere,
everywhere
.

Brontë checks his pulse again. “Nothing.”

But
I
feel something. There's a tiny ache on my upper arm. It's the spot where Brontë had punched me so angrily that day of my lacrosse game. When I raise my arm, I see the faintest bit of a yellow bruise that wasn't there a moment ago. All I was able to reclaim from Brewster was a single bruise…

…and that's all it takes.

“Wait!” says Brontë. “I think I have a pulse!”

Suddenly he coughs, water gushing out of his mouth. Brontë and I both scream in grateful surprise. We roll him to one side, water still spilling out of him. He coughs again. His eyes flutter open, and then they close.

We saved you, Brew! We saved you! And right now at this moment nothing else in the world matters to Brontë, or to me. We saved you!

But he's not waking up.

With no phone, my feet are the only means of communication with the outside world. Brontë holds his head in her lap as I race to the nearest house, pounding on the door, refusing to leave until they let me in.

Brew still hasn't woken when I come back with help. He's still unconscious when the ambulance comes to take him away—and the sense of urgency on the faces of the paramedics says everything they won't say out loud. Something isn't right.

We saved you, Brew. We brought you back. So why won't you wake up?