Chapter Sixty-Five

Then

Ty jumped that first time.

He jumped when I told him to.

Maybe he was going to jump anyway, whether I was there or not, but of course I piled so much of it onto myself I didn’t know the answer anymore.

The train still hit him.

It knocked him in the legs as he was jumping off the tracks, which fractured his left leg in three places, and left him with a serious concussion. When he was stable enough medically, they checked him into the psychiatric unit.

“I’m not suicidal,” Ty said when I visited him, standing a few feet back from his bed, limply holding a yellow round balloon with a painted black smile.

“You were standing on the tracks, body full of pills and booze, a train hit you, and you wonder why they’d think you were suicidal?”

“Ever the comedian,” he said with a wry smile, though his eyes were still that distant, zombie-green they were that night on the tracks that made me feel sick.

“I have to tell you something.” I cleared my throat. “I need to go visit my dad. He’s sick and my mom says I need to go, so before I leave for college I’m going to go see him.”

I avoided his zombie eyes.

“Ty, did you hear me? I’m leaving.”

“Oh,” he said, nonplussed.

“Oh?” I was pissed. “That’s what you have to say? Never mind then. Maybe I shouldn’t have come.”

“I don’t care either way. You don’t matter to me anymore.”

“You know what? I hope you get help in here and you’re able to deal with your disappointment in me in a healthier way from now on.”

A slow mocking smile appeared. “A healthy way? Jesus, they’ve gotten to you, too, huh, sis?”

“Who?” I asked, irritated with his tone. His behavior was killing me, slaying his poor father, and my mom was a wreck. Yet he was smiling?

“All the shrinks, of course. Listen to yourself. Listen to what you just said to me—how you said it to me—like you don’t know me. Like we’re strangers.”

“I did not,” I said. The smell of this room was making me sick. “I’m just saying you tried to kill yourself, your behavior is psycho, and this is exactly where you should be. A psych ward.”

“Boy, did you turn into a bitch.”

“A bitch that saved your life,” I snapped. “Maybe I should’ve just left you to die on those tracks, you asshole.”

My chest tightened in disgust. I was disgusted with myself. With my hateful words. But I was beyond disgusted with Ty. Did he not want to be saved?

I wanted out of this room. Out of this stink of day-old sheets and drippy medicine.

He saluted me. “Okay, Captain Ahab, school counselor.”

“You know what, Ty? You were once a pretty cool guy. Somebody I was stupid enough to actually care about. I don’t know what happened to you, but this is all on you.”

“Have a great life. Have fun in BFE or wherever the hell you’re going,” he said flippantly, picking up a skateboarding magazine and stuffing his face into it. “Don’t forget to write.”

Oh, hell no. He wasn’t dismissing me. Not after everything we’d been through together. “You’re an asshole, you know that?”

He didn’t bother looking up. “Yep.”

“You could’ve died.”

He shrugged. “You could get hit by a car in the parking lot.”

I put my hands on my hips. “If you meant to kill yourself, you wouldn’t have called me. You would’ve just done it.”

“So?”

“You wanted me to come find you. Wanted me to beg you not to do something you weren’t ever going to do.”

His silence was his confession. Even though I’d guessed it all along, it still pissed me off.

“So what was that all about then?” I asked. “Was it a game? A manipulative stunt to make me stay? To make me sleep with you again? Do you know what this is doing to your dad? I heard him crying the other night in the den. You have no business being in this ward, tying up this bed when someone else out there, someone who really is suicidal, could be getting help.”

I glanced at the call button dangling from his hospital bed, wondering if I should report him to the nurse, to his doctor. But they already knew how sick he was. The psychiatrist told mom that just because someone who makes a suicidal gesture doesn’t necessarily want to die, it doesn’t mean they won’t accidentally fuck it up and die anyway. We needed to take this seriously.

But that didn’t mean I understood Ty.

I didn’t understand if it was the pain of his mother leaving and his dad remarrying mine, if it was something about the present or the past. But I did know, in retrospect, that it wasn’t about me. I was just who he centered all of this pain on, dumping it all over me so he didn’t have to deal with it himself. Being in California, being in this hospital room, was probably just as bad for his recovery as it was for mine.

I handed him the string of the balloon. He clutched it in his fist.

I couldn’t be responsible for whether or not he was happy or sad. His mind games, making me feel like sex was keeping him on or off the tracks? I couldn’t fall for it anymore, or soon, I’d be as sick as he was.

“See you, Ty.”