One

The last thing I saw before the car hit the water was an eagle pasted against the sky.

And what I remember is this: his tapered wings filled the width of the dirty window; the air held him up with the promise of magic; he looked free.

I used to dream about that bird.

But I don’t have dreams anymore.

All I have are memories.

My arms are pinned. Water rushes past my ears, and the kids cry in the backseat as they start to wake up. My mom’s hands are wrapped around the steering wheel as she prays, saying words that make no sense but sound something like poetry.

I’ve left the car window cracked open and the river takes that as an invitation to pour in. At first it feels good against my hot skin. Cool. Cleansing. The sound it makes is music to Mom’s words.

But suddenly there’s only water. I throw my shoulder against the window, trying to break the glass. I hold my head up to catch the little bit of air left in the car and gasp for as much as my lungs can hold.

“Gordie,” I hear. “Ice. Hey, Ice.”

The sound belongs to my brother, Kevin. My brain wraps around it like a kid around a security blanket. His voice climbs into my head and replaces the crying, the praying, the water.

“I didn’t die.” My mouth forms the words easily enough. It’s harder to get my mind to accept them.

One part of me knows I didn’t drown, but another part of my fucked-up brain thinks I did. Just like the kids in the back. Just like Mom meant me to.

My brother holds my arms down on the bed, thinking he’s keeping me safe now like he couldn’t before. My jaw is sore from clenching my teeth to stop myself from repeating the words. But part of me is still in the river, and Kevin knows that.

“You’re okay,” he says. It isn’t a question.

He doesn’t trust me enough to release my arms immediately. But once he does, they automatically fold up around me, stiff and sore like the broken wings of a gull. It hurts worse than after a hockey game where I’ve fended off a ton of shots on goal. Worse than it did on That Day, when it actually happened.

My eyes take a minute to focus, but when they do, it’s on the bashed-up wall next to my bed. The blue paint is chipped. The edges of the holes in the plaster are tinged with blood stains that we’ve given up trying to wash away or paint over.

That’s what happens when Kevin isn’t around. I try to claw my way out of the car and to the surface. The wall, the lamp, my own skin: all of them have been bruised at some point from the dream that is really a memory.

Without either of us saying anything, Kevin pulls the sweat-damp blankets off me and replaces them with fresh, dry ones from the closet, just like he’s done hundreds of times. And just like I’ve done hundreds of times, I wrap up in them and try, unsuccessfully, to stop shivering.

“Sleep,” he says. “You have practice tomorrow.”

Tomorrow. School. Hockey. It seems a million years away, but I nod. We both know it’ll be hours before I’ll begin to trust my brain not to do this all over again.

Kevin sits down at my desk and pretends to read. He’ll sit there until I fall asleep, however long that takes. I watch him and remind myself that because he’s here, I’m safe.

You’d never know we’re only half brothers from how close we are or from looking at us. If it weren’t for the fact he’s sixteen months older, with the inches to prove it, and that my eyes are green and his are brown, you might think we’re twins.

But it wasn’t our eye color or height that was the really important difference between us. See, though Kevin and I had the same mother, the fact that we have different fathers is what mattered. Having different fathers meant that Mom planned for Kevin to live. And planned for me to die when she drove the car into the river.