“And right now?”
“The real Luke is awake. He isn’t usually. Ian and the Luke that thinks Ian is still alive are both asleep. Sometimes I know what’s going on. I was completely me the first time we met, at the hospital. But most days I’m not. It’s like a limb that’s been amputated. I know it’s gone, but sometimes it still itches, and I convince myself it’s still there. I don’t know how else to explain it.”
I leaned back against the post and stared up at the sky. The answers weren’t there.
“My dad thought I was lying,” I said, “that Ian was, really, because he thought I was Ian. He thought I pretended to be Luke just to hurt them. But my mom believed Ian. She’s a nurse. She took him to a doctor. They diagnosed him, me, with a dissociative disorder. They said the trauma caused a break. It happens, though usually with younger kids and different kinds of trauma. But our connection, my guilt, it was enough.”
In the tiny spaces when I’d remembered, I’d tried to learn what I could. But until Jenna, I hadn’t wanted to get better. The three months after the accident had been a soul-sucking black hole. I never wanted to be that alone again.
“Of course, they didn’t know Ian was the alter ego, not me. Lots of people don’t believe in that sort of thing. My dad’s one of them. That’s why my parents split up. Because of me. Because of how screwed up I am.”
I turned to Jenna, my eyes finding hers in the dark. “But whoever that is, he’s not Ian, not really. Ian was so much better than that. So strong. I’m not a good Ian. Hell, I’m not even a good Luke.”
The world came crashing in, rolling me, waves over my head. I didn’t know where the surface was—I was swimming in the wrong direction, caught in the current. And then Luke was there to grab me. I could breathe again. And I believed him. I knew I shouldn’t, since I couldn’t be sure Luke even knew the truth. But he was here, and it felt like the truth. I knew this version was easier to believe because I wanted it to be true more than anything. No, that wasn’t right. What I wanted more than anything was for all of this to be a bad dream. I wanted to wake up and realize that none of it was true, that Luke was still Luke and not so damaged. It was almost impossible to absorb everything all at once. It was too much. Instead, I focused on Luke and tugged tight to my chest the realization that he was alive. And warm. And here. I shouldn’t have still wanted him, but I did.
I knew about sadness and regret. I was angry with myself for not saying goodbye to Pops. I missed him and felt as if I left a part of me behind, trapped somewhere in that October. But Luke’s grief had caused his brain to shut down, caging him in the darkness—a fugue state, his mom had called it. Luke didn’t just lose his brother; he lost himself as well.
Tragedy had drawn us together, and it was tragedy that was going to keep us apart.
“What do you want from me?” I whispered. I couldn’t fix it. But I didn’t know if I could walk away.
Luke stood up and sat on the edge of the swing. My heart pounded in my throat. He reached out and ran his finger along my jaw. I had to focus on breathing. “You’ve already given me everything.” He leaned in and stared hard into my eyes, his hand cupping my face. “Until I met you, I was hoping I’d disappear completely and forget everything. But you.” He gave me a crooked smile. “You brought me back to life.”
His lips were warm and careful. I felt the kiss in my toes and in my lungs and as a burning in the back of my brain. I curled my fingers in his hair and pulled him tighter to me, and I knew he was telling me the truth. Ian couldn’t kiss like that.
Luke held me close, a hug that was more like a grip. I buried my face in his neck. His hands were tangled in my hair, his lips close to my ear. “I love you,” he whispered. “God forgive me, but I love you. I’m sorry.”
I pulled back and looked at him. “That’s not something to apologize for.”
He looked down. “But I’m so screwed up.”
I’d give him that. It changed everything. But he was here now, and tomorrow was going to have to take care of itself. I put my head on Luke’s chest, and he stroked my hair. I tried to forget about the shadow lurking inside him. He was just Luke. I tried not to be sad. No matter what happened, I was going to lose him, one way or another. So I memorized him. The way he smelled, the sound of his breathing, the strength of his heartbeat. His skin under my fingers. I examined the way the veins crisscrossed the back of his hands. The callouses on his palms. The way my head fit perfectly against his neck.
“I might not be myself tomorrow,” he said.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. I sat up and rested my forehead on his, our noses touching. “Then I guess all we have is today.”
His eyes were intense. “It’s all anyone ever has,” he whispered.
I knew it couldn’t last—eventually Jenna would realize how impossible it was. But I was selfish enough not to care.
I had her for the moment, and only that moment mattered. Ian was silent—just a locked door where the illusion lived. I shouldn’t have been trying to find him, but it hurt less when he was there. When I couldn’t remember, he was really gone. Missing him was like drowning. My lungs felt flooded and my heart pounded like it wanted to wear itself down, beat twice as much, twice as hard, beat his heartbeats, too. It wasn’t like losing him all over again. It was like waking up from a nightmare and realizing that reality was even worse.
“You have to tell your mom.” Jenna’s pronouncement came out of nowhere.
“She wouldn’t believe me.” She didn’t want to. And maybe I didn’t want her to, either. Living Ian’s life was easier than living Luke’s. No. I didn’t really believe that anymore. The lie was getting harder to hold onto.
“You’re her son. Of course she’ll believe you,” Jenna argued. “She believed you enough to move here, to try and fix you.”
I sighed. Jenna couldn’t understand my family. “She moved here to save Ian, not Luke.”
She took my hand. “She loves you, too.”
I stood up and stepped off the porch. The stars seemed to mock me. “Not the same way she loves Ian. She’ll never forgive me for killing him.”
“It was an accident.” She sounded angry.
“Maybe I wanted him dead,” I whispered.
Jenna came up behind me and wrapped her arms around my waist, resting her head in the middle of my back. “You didn’t.” She sounded so sure. Even I wasn’t sure.
Because hadn’t I resented him? Hadn’t I wished I didn’t have a brother whose perfection made me look more flawed, more inadequate? When Ian died, I got a new start. I didn’t have to be me anymore—I could step out of myself, shed my problems and become the brother everyone always wanted me to be. The new me had scholarship possibilities and an unblemished reputation, while the old me was buried, flaws and all. At least that had been the plan. I’d watched myself being lowered into the ground. I remembered standing there and staring down into that dark hole, forgetting who I really was. Thinking I really was watching the old version of me being put to rest.
I turned around and rested my chin on Jenna’s head. “Haven’t you ever wished you could erase your mistakes and start all over?”
“Yes,” she murmured, her lips against my throat.
“Well, I did,” I said.
“But you didn’t,” she argued, pulling back and glaring at me. “Luke is still there, still struggling to get out, and you’re still carrying that guilt around your neck like some huge stone. You can’t bring Ian back by becoming him.”
“I tried to be him for three months,” I said. “And then I didn’t have to, because he was there. It was like I’d been given a second chance to make it right. I don’t know if I want to lose that.”
“Your mother deserves the truth. It’s up to her whether or not she believes it. But she’s your mother. You have to tell her before you forget again.”
I was afraid to let him go. What if I told the truth and Ian disappeared for good? I didn’t know if I was strong enough for that. Maybe I wanted the delusion.
But I had to try. For my mom. Maybe for me. But more than anything, for Jenna. She made me crave freedom and then believe it was actually possible.
I didn’t know why Jenna was going with me. I wasn’t even sure why she was still willing to be around me. She should have run screaming when she found out the truth. When she learned how completely crazy I was. Delusional. Insane. Clinging to a life that no longer existed. Creating my own reality.
But it didn’t really feel like that. Ian had been a part of me for so long that it made perfect sense to still have him here. I couldn’t lose him completely—he was an extension of me. I’d always had Ian in my head. Having him there now wasn’t strange to me at all. It would have been stranger for him not to be. I didn’t know if I could survive if he were completely gone. Our lives, our minds, were too intertwined.
In the beginning, Ian was around so much because I wanted him to be. I’d locked myself in my room and refused to come out. I’d let him take over. And then I lost control over it. My grip weakened.
Holding onto this reality was hard, like trying to keep up with a moving train. It hurtled toward the locked door, and I could feel Ian trying to wake up. I wanted to stay, but it was like fighting gravity. I was going to lose eventually. Pain gripped my head.
Jenna shut the back door softly behind her. “Sorry,” she said, “I had to steal the keys. Help me push the Bronco down the driveway. If I start it here, Mom will wake up.”
I was going to get her in trouble. Again. But I knew I wouldn’t be able to tell the truth if Jenna wasn’t there. She made me hate the lie.
Jenna climbed in the driver’s seat and put the Bronco in neutral. I pushed it down the driveway while she steered. I was sweating and my legs were burning by the time I’d pushed it far enough down the road for it to be safe. Jenna started the engine as I climbed into the passenger seat. I wanted to drive forever. But running from the truth was what had gotten me into this mess, and even though telling my mom was going to be the hardest thing I’d ever done, I had to do it. It was going to hurt everyone, my mother especially. I hated myself for being unable to do anything but cause pain.
Jenna held my hand, grounding me in reality. Holding onto Luke was getting harder. There were spots in my vision, in my memory, and I felt everything sliding away. The backs of my eyes throbbed.
It was late when Jenna turned into our driveway, but Mom wasn’t home yet. Jenna pulled up next to my truck and killed the engine. We were silent as we sat in the dark, fingers intertwined.
I wanted to take everything back. I wanted a do-over, a cosmic rewind. There were so many things I would do differently.
“I’m right here,” Jenna said. “It’s going to be okay.”
I loved her for lying. There was no way anything about this was going to be okay. Mom was going to hate me for not being Ian. “You can’t take back a lie that big,” I said. “It can’t be fixed. With that one lie, I destroyed everything. And nothing I ever do will make that okay.” But I was going to try anyway.
The house was dark. I flipped on lights and walked into the kitchen, surrounding myself with Luke. Maybe the cabinets would help me hold on a little longer. They were something I had been able to fix. Now the kitchen I’d torn to pieces looked even better than it had before. I wished life worked that way.
Jenna hadn’t followed. I found her in the living room, looking at a framed picture on the coffee table. It was a close-up of Ian and me in the tree house. Our arms were slung around one another, and we were grinning, the kind of smile only children could have—absolutely no shadows.
“Ian?” Jenna asked, pointing at the boy on the right.
“Nope. Me. That’s Ian,” I told her.
She shook her head. “You two really did look alike.” She was whispering, like she was afraid she’d wake the dead. I was afraid of that too.
There had never been a Luke without an Ian. Hell, at one point we’d been the same person. One cluster of cells became two clusters of cells, which became us. It was always we, never just me or I or mine. Ours. Us. Even when things started to sour, when we started going in different directions, we’d still been connected. It had never been any other way. I didn’t know if it could be.
“Here.” I walked to the other side of the room and opened the trunk in the corner. Mom kept the photo albums tucked away. Remembering was hard for her, too. I thought sometimes she even pretended it was true, that we were both still here.
“Do you want to look at some pictures?” I asked, pulling out a couple of albums.
Jenna looked a little unsure. “I don’t want to upset you.”
“It’s okay,” I told her. “I probably won’t remember it later.”
Jenna flinched.
“Sorry,” I said. And I was. About so many things.
She sat on the sofa, and I settled in close beside her. I could feel her all along the left side of my body—her arm against my arm, her leg against my leg. I etched her in my mind.
Mom had them organized perfectly. The first picture in the album was a side shot of my mom, pregnant. She couldn’t get her arms around her belly. Next was a picture of both of my parents, my dad’s hand resting affectionately on her stomach. They didn’t really look like my parents. My parents were resentful and sad. Which was mostly my fault.
Ian and me as babies. I couldn’t even tell us apart then. I wondered how Mom and Dad had. Maybe I really was Ian. They could have gotten us mixed up when we were three or four months old and I really was Ian and Luke really was dead.
Our first day of kindergarten. Little League. Boy Scouts and school plays. There were tons of pictures of us in front of waterfalls and monuments, the Grand Canyon and German castles. Jenna was fascinated by all the places we’d been.
“I’ve been everywhere, but I’m from nowhere,” I told her. “I don’t have a home to return to.”
“Of course you do.” Jenna kissed me lightly on the side of the mouth and tucked her head into my shoulder. Maybe she was right—maybe I was home.
There was never a picture of just Ian or just me. Birthday parties found us standing right next to each other, identical stacks of presents, identical grins. On Christmas morning, we wore matching pajamas and opened matching presents.