“I’ll change. I’ll stop drinking,” she pleads desperately.
I halt. “What?”
She has never in my life attempted to stop drinking.Ever.
“You’re just going to stop? Cold turkey?” I accuse.
“For Sean, I will.”
But not me?I want to spit back bitterly.
“You know if he goes away, we’ll lose him one way or another.” She’s imploring me. And begrudgingly, I agree. Drugs are easy to come by on the inside, and I have no doubt my smart, fast-talking twin would get his hands on some in record time. But, even above that, it’s the possibility that one of his episodes would hit him so hard, he’d choose to end it all.
And that thought is unbearable, devastating, and incomprehensible.
I shake my head furiously in my hands. “I can’t believe you’re asking me to do this.” My voice is barely a whisper.
“Ryan, it’s his life we’re talking about.” Her voice cracks.
“What about my life?”I explode, throwing myself against the bars. My mother instinctually jumps back. She’s lucky there is impenetrable steel between us.
“Do you understand I have a chance to actually be something? To have a future with someone?”
Someone who means more to me than my own life.
My mother blatantly scowls. “Honey,” she says in that condescending Brooklyn accent of hers. “Do you sincerely believe that? That a girl like her would ever end up with a boy like you?”
“Why can’t she?” I demand.
“Ryan,” she mutters my name like I’m stupid. “You’re nothing more than a good time. The story she’ll tell about the guy and the summer she spent slumming.”
I actually feel fucking tears sting my eyes. I don’t believe that. I don’t want to believe it, but a very deep, very dark part of me knows it might be true.
I may want to keep you for a very long time.Alana’s words rattle me like chains. Shackles that will encumber me for the rest of my life.
I drop my head against the bars. I can’t look at her. My whole existence feels like it’s being crushed in a vice.
“Ryan, think about Sean,” my mother whispers somberly.
I am thinking about him. And about Alana, and myself.
I want to be selfish.
I want to say no.
I’m still and silent for a very long time. Clutching onto the steel bars for dear life. Getting used to the way they feel. They’re not warm or loving or embracing. They’re nothing like what I’m walking away from.
They’re the exact thing I’ve always known.
“Fine.” I pull the trigger and commit emotional suicide.
* * *
The last threeweeks have been a blur. A gray, steel-barred blur.
I shuffle into the visiting area along with the other inmates clad in dark blue. I see Mac sitting behind a piece of glass. He looks the same. Blond, curly hair, alert, green eyes, and a stupid shirt that readsThis is what awesome looks like.
I sit down in front of him. I haven’t slept in days. I feel withdrawn. Alone. Abandoned. And I have no one to blame but myself.