cheeks felt a little warm. “You never said.”
“Well, you’ve said before that talking about old projects embarrasses you,” he said, shrugging. “So I never wanted to bring it up.”
“This is what I was worried about, you know,” I said softly. “About the medication. That it would mean I couldn’t do this—art—anymore. I mean, feeling things—feeling intense things, sometimes—is part of what drives me to make things.”
“You think you can’t feel better and do great work at the same time?”
“I don’t know.” I chewed on my lip. “I’m used to being this way. Volatile. Like a walking ball of nerves. I’m worried that if I get rid of the highs, and even the lows—especially the lows—there won’t be anything about me that’s interesting anymore.”
“Claire.” He stood, weaving through the chairs, and crouched in front of me, putting his hands on my knees. “That nerve ball isn’t you. It’s just this thing that lives in your head, telling you lies. If you get rid of it … think of what you could do. Think of what you could be.”
“But what if … what if I go on medication and it makes me into this flat, dull person?” I said, choking a little.
“It’s not supposed to do that. But if it does, you’ll try something else.” His hands squeezed my knees. “And can you really tell me ‘flat’ is that much different from how you feel now?”
I didn’t say anything. Most of the time I was so close to falling into the darkest, emptiest place inside me that I just tried to feel nothing at all. So the only difference between this and some kind of flat, medicated state was that I knew I could still go there if I needed to, even if I wouldn’t. And that place, I had told myself, was where the real me was. Where the art was, too.
But maybe—maybe that wasn’t where it was. I was so convinced that changing my brain would take away my art, but maybe it would give me new art. Maybe without the little monster in my mind, I could actually do more, not less. It was probably equally likely. But I believed more in my possible doom than my possible healing.
“It’s okay to want to feel better.” He touched my hand.
I didn’t know why—they were such simple words, but they pierced me the way music did these days. Like a needle in my sternum, penetrating to my heart. I didn’t bother to blink away my tears. Instead of pulling myself back from them, back from sensation entirely, I let myself sink into it. I let the pain in.
“But how can I feel better now?” I covered my eyes. “How can I ever … ever feel better if you die?”
I was sobbing the way he had sobbed in the car with me, holding on to his hands, which were still on top of my legs. He slipped his fingers between mine and squeezed.
“Because,” he said. “You just have to.”
“Who says?” I demanded, scowling at him. “Who says I have to feel anything?”
“I do. I chose you for one of my last visitors because … I wanted one last chance to tell you that you’re worth so much more than your pain.” He ran his fingers over my bent knuckles. “You can carry all these memories around. They’ll last longer than your grief, I promise, and someday you’ll be able to think of them and feel like I’m right there with you again.”
“You might not be correctly estimating my capacity for grief,” I said, laughing through a sob. “Pro-level moper right here.”
“Some people might leave you,” he said, for once ignoring a joke in favor of something real. “But it doesn’t mean you’re worth leaving. It doesn’t mean that at all.”
I didn’t quite believe him. But I almost did.
“Don’t go,” I whispered.
After that, I carried him back to the ocean, the ripples reflecting the moon, where we had treaded water after jumping off the cliff. The water had filled my shoes, which were now heavy on my feet, making it harder to stay afloat.
“You have makeup all over your face,” he said, laughing a little. “You look like you got punched in both eyes.”
“Yeah, well, your nipples are totally showing through that shirt.”
“Claire Lowell, are you checking out my nipples?”
“Always.”
We laughed together, the laughs echoing over the water. Then I dove at him, not to dunk him—though he flinched like that’s what he expected—but to wrap my arms around his neck. He clutched at me, holding me, arms looped around my back, fingers tight in the bend of my waist.
“I’ll miss you,” I said, looking down at him. Pressed against him like this, I was paper again, eggshell and sugar glass and autumn leaf. How had I not noticed this feeling the first time through?
It was the most powerful thing I had felt in days, weeks, months.
“It was a good story, right?” he said. “Our story, I mean.”
“The best.”
He pressed a kiss to my jaw, and with his cheek still against mine he whispered, “You know I love you, right?”
And then he stopped treading water, pulling us down into the waves together.
When I woke in the hospital room, an unfamiliar nurse took the IV needle from my arm and pressed a strip of tape to a cotton ball in the crook of my elbow. Dr. Albertson came in to make sure I had come out of the procedure with my faculties intact. I stared at her blue fingernails to steady myself as she talked, as I talked, another little dance.
The second she said I could go, I did, leaving my useless sweatshirt behind, like Cinderella with her glass slipper. And maybe, I thought, she hadn’t left it so the prince would find her … but because she was in such a hurry to escape the pain of never getting what she wanted that she didn’t care what she lost in the process.
It was almost sunrise when I escaped the hospital, out of a side exit so I wouldn’t run into any of Matt’s family. I couldn’t stand the thought of going home, so instead I drove to the beach and parked in the lot where I had once brought Matt to see the storm. This time, though, I was alone, and I had that strange, breathless feeling in my chest, like I was about to pass out.
My mind had a refrain for moments like these. Feel nothing, it said. Feel nothing and it will be easier that way.
Burrow down, it said, and cover yourself in earth. Curl into yourself to stay warm, it said, and pretend the rest of the world is not moving. Pretend you are alone, underground, where pain can’t reach you.
Sightless eyes staring into the dark. Heartbeat slowing. A living corpse is better than a dying heart.
The problem with that refrain was that once I had burrowed, I often couldn’t find my way out, except on the edge of a razor, which reached into my numbness and brought back sensation.
But
