Deconstructing Dylan (12 page)

“She was found alone in a rooming house. Drug overdose. She never did drugs when I knew her. They say she had track marks on her arms. Needles.”

“There's nothing you can do now. I'm so sorry, Robyn.”

“That's the problem. There
is
nothing I can do now. But I let her leave; I let her run. She told me she had to get away. I even agreed. I should have gone with her. She was my friend.”

“Robyn, you had your own life to live. If you'd gone with her, it would have been unfair to your parents, unfair to you. And I would have lost you.”

“Carla's parents are having the funeral in private. No one is invited. Not even me. They are ashamed of their daughter and how she died. They didn't understand her at all. No one did.”

“You did. You accepted her for who she was.” As I said those words, I felt an upwelling of my own fear and confusion. I had never met Carla. She was a stranger to me but I cared deeply about Robyn and what she was feeling. Yet there was something else. I was wrestling with my new-found knowledge of who I was. It was going to take a long time to adjust. Like Carla, I felt like I was on my own.

No one would understand, if I told them. No one would understand what it felt like to be me. It may just have been my imagination, but I closed my eyes, as I continued to hold Robyn, and I was again in a hospital bed. I felt hot and I felt heavy and very, very tired. I was certain that I somehow carried Kyle's memory with me, even the moments of his dying. There was some inner drive that kept taking me back to that event. And I found myself believing that I was not just remembering but reliving Kyle's experience. With my eyes closed and my arms locked around Robyn, I felt the heaviness and the pain, but soon something began to change. It seemed a great weight was lifted from me. There was lightness, a feeling of freedom. And then it disappeared.

Robyn pulled herself slowly away and then sat back down at the kitchen table. There was a newspaper open and she had been reading the article about Carla's death. She looked angry now, fierce even. She ripped the page out of the paper and shredded it. “They got it all wrong. She's dead and even now they have it all wrong. It's a stupid, ugly world we live in, Dylan.”

“Maybe it is,” I said. It was my time to speak and I didn't know what to say but I gave it my best shot. “I've been reading those books you loaned me,” I began. “I don't really understand much of this, but I remember that in
The Tibetan Book of the Dead
it says that when you die, everything changes. First, there is a
kind of emptying of yourself, a leaving behind of your life and identity.”

“I don't know if any of that makes sense,” she said, now cynical, despite the fact that she was the one who'd introduced me to these rather far out ideas. “Maybe nothing happens when you die. Maybe you cease to exist. It's all over. Maybe we just want to believe that there is something after this life.”

“Yes. We do want to believe that. I still don't know what I believe in. Heaven, maybe. Hell? But it's worth considering all the possibilities. I remember reading in your book the thing about trying to help the dead. It sounded strange but it made a kind of sense to me. I thought about my dead brother and I sent him kind thoughts and it made me feel a little better.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really.” I wanted to bare my soul to Robyn just then — not that I was sure I had a soul. I just wanted to offer her something that might help take her pain away. I had my own fears that she might run, not necessarily run away, but cut herself off, become hardened by the sad truth of her friend's death. “I'm trying to remember the next stage of what the Tibetan book says. It was something about ‘radiance,' a kind of shining colours and light and a wonderful sense of fullness. The next phase comes back to &hellips; I'm trying to remember the words for it &hellips; ‘ceaseless manifestation.' I guess it's about recreating
something from all that light and energy and becoming &hellips; a person, I guess, moving back into this world.”

“I'd like to think that Carla wouldn't have to return to this world.”

“Maybe there is some kind of purpose to the life she lived, some kind of meaning. Like it was a step on a path.”

Robyn balled up the rest of the newspaper and crushed it with her hands. “Where'd you get that from?”

“You,” I said.

She let out a sigh. “I called Carla's parents. I tried talking to them but they said they had nothing to say to me. They never liked me because I was one of the few people who accepted Carla for who she was. I encouraged her to be who she wanted to be. And look where that led.”

I touched her shoulder and realized there was very little I could do to console Robyn. I felt frightened by that fact and sensed she was slipping away from me.

It was then I realized I couldn't keep what I had learned about me to myself. “Robyn,” I began, “this is probably not the best of times to tell you this, but there's more to the story about my brother. My parents told me the truth.”

She didn't look at me until I was halfway through my story. At first I didn't know what to make of her expression. Shock. Amazement. Was it revulsion as well?

“You're not making this up?” “No. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone. There are others out there.”

Now she looked worried. “They're going to crucify you. The same people who hounded Carla. They're waiting for their next victim.”

“I think I know that. I don't know if I'm strong enough to take it. But now I've told one person. Now you know. Does it change the way you feel about me?”

Robyn looked at the news article that she had shredded. “Yes,” she said. “I think I love you.”

I wasn't at all prepared for the way things went over the next few days. It was like somebody had suddenly changed all the rules. If there had ever been rules to begin with.

After calling my parents, I spent the night on Robyn's living room sofa. In the morning, Robyn was very quiet and moody. I knew she was feeling terrible about the death of her friend. I guess she was feeling guilty about not being able to help but it came out as anger. It seemed that she was angry with everyone, including me. The look on her face frightened me.

I tried to hold her but she pulled away. “What I said last night, Dylan &hellips; I think maybe I wasn't thinking straight. I was a little crazy. I
am
a little crazy. I wish I could help you right now but I don't think I can even help me. I'm going to need some space.”

The ground kept shifting under me and now I felt more alone than ever. “You want me to leave?”

“Yes,” she said. “I'm sorry but I really need time alone.”

I picked up my jacket and looked around for my shoes. “I'll see you later today?” I asked. “In school?”

“I'm not going to school today.”

“Will you call me?”

“Maybe.”

I tried to kiss her on the cheek but she pulled away and then walked into the other room.

I called home and asked my dad to pick me up. I told him I would start walking and meet him along the way. When he stopped for me, I got in and explained about Robyn's friend.

“Did you know her? This Carla?”

“No,” I said. “But I wish I had. Maybe I could have helped.”

“You can't always help people. Sometimes they have to fight their own battles. Sometimes it's best not to get involved.”

“Oh, that's a great bit of advice,” I said, feeling like Robyn now. Angry. Really pissed at my father for saying such a stupid thing, pissed at the world for being such a screwed-up, hopeless place. Who exactly was I now that I knew my origins, and how could I ever fit in? If I couldn't depend on Robyn for some support, who in the hell could I depend on?

At home, my mother wrapped her arms around me. She'd been crying. “We've thought about what it would be like for you if you ever found out. Your father and I worried about this but we convinced ourselves you would never know. We thought we could keep it a secret and protect you.”

“I'm glad I know the truth,” I said. There was venom in my voice and sarcasm. I was also lying. I wished I could have gone on never knowing what I was.

“Do you remember Dr. MacKenzie?” she asked.

“No.”

“From Scotland,” my father said. “He examined you when you were sick?”

“Right,” I said. “After Loch Ness. I remember.”

Well, I remembered some of it. Much of the examination was boring and it seemed to take forever. But I remembered MacKenzie's eyes and getting jabbed with a needle. And, just when I had decided I hated his guts, then came the pizza. Pizza and ice cream. But what I had really wanted to do was return to the loch and look for the monster. That familiar dark image appeared in the back of my mind — the Loch Ness monster surfacing in moonlight. I had wanted so much to see it in real life that it haunted my daydreams and dreams for years. It was almost as if I had actually seen the creature, swam with it beneath me when I threw myself into that cold, dark water that time. I had even held my breath as I dove deep in hopes of coming close to the beast.

That's where I wanted to be now — sinking into some watery fantasy world, hiding with the Loch Ness monster at the bottom of the deep lake.

“We called him,” my mother said. “Dr. MacKenzie. He knew about you from the start. We've consulted with him on occasion and he's followed your progress. He knows everything about you.”

I was offended by the way she said it. “Jesus. What am I — some kind of science project? A walking, talking lab experiment?”

My mom started to cry. I didn't apologize.

“Dylan,” my father said, “you have good reason to be mad at us but right now we want to help. Dr. MacKenzie is about the only person we trust. And he's knowledgeable in this area.”

“What area? Is he a shrink?”

“He's studied psychiatry, yes. He would understand what it would be like to be going through what you are going through right now.”

“And I bet he's licking his chops over the prospect of having a real live clone to interview.”

My mother shook her head and wept some more. “I'm so sorry,” she sobbed into her cupped hands.

“Me too,” I said and left the room.

In my room, I started to get ready for school. I don't know why. I didn't want to go to school. I would arrive late and have to come up with some lame excuse. But I
was secretly hoping that Robyn would be there. I sure as hell didn't want to stay home with my parents. And I didn't want to hole up in my room. The last thing I wanted was to be alone right now with my own thoughts. I felt myself sinking into some dark, ungodly place.

While changing my clothes, I accidentally knocked the book Robyn had loaned me off the bedside table. When I picked it up I turned to the page where I had left off. The author now spoke of “four continuously interlinking realities.” He referred to them as “1. The natural bardo of this life, 2. The painful bardo of dying, 3. The luminous bardo of dharmata, and 4. The karmic bardo of becoming.”

I couldn't believe that I had let Robyn lead me into this crap. But then I was just a laboratory rat, a scientific experiment. Maybe that's why I'd be willing to entertain any wacky idea a beautiful girl tossed my way. Maybe that's why I really would have followed her to Tibet if she asked. I thought about Robyn and that made things worse. It was only last night she had said — what? That she loved me? Felt sorry for me was more like it. And today, something had changed. Something big. I was certain we could never go back to being the way we had been. My old familiar world had dissolved around me.

I yelled down and asked my father if he could drive me to school.

“Anytime you're ready,” he shouted back. I figured he'd stay home from work and babysit my mother today. I wanted to feel sorry for her, too, realizing what she was feeling, what they both were feeling. But all I could think about was me. The confusion, the anger, the pain.

I walked into my parents' room and opened the drawer in the night table. I was shocked when I saw that the twin photos were back. Kyle and me. Brothers. I slipped the photo of Kyle out of the hinged frame and put it in my wallet. But that wasn't what I had come in here for. My mother's pills were here. I squeezed open the lid and tapped two and then a third into my hand. I tossed them into my mouth and swallowed hard.

I went back to my room and swallowed a big gulp of water from my water bottle and then headed downstairs. No one said a word. I just walked out the door and sat in the skid, waited for my father to come out, and then we drove in silence to the school.

Robyn was not in school that day, and I had this bad feeling in my gut that I might never see her again. And then, in the middle of math class, the pills started to kick in. I actually started to feel better. I figured they were some kind of antidepressant but it must have been more than that. I found myself swimming up from the bottom of a murky, cold ocean. I felt light-headed and fine. It was almost frightening how good I felt. And it was like I didn't care right then what I had learned about my past or what Robyn had said.

No wonder my mother wanted to blitz herself with whatever this was. No wonder other kids were popping pills. The most I had ever done was smoke some weed, and that had been okay but nothing like this. I wondered how big of a dose three pills were. And then I thought about Robyn's friend, Carla. I don't know what drugs
had killed her but I could see that if life was treating you like crap, you'd take your chances on just about anything that would make you feel better, especially something like this. I started to feel sorry for her but even that emotion settled itself and went away. I knew it was the drug but I was glad that I could let go of all the negative stuff and let it just float away. At that moment, I didn't care about anyone else in the world but me. And I was doing just fine.