sometimes, he cannot tell the difference between his cowardice and his courage. leaving had felt like a betrayal of the worst kind, packed boxes and smiles that were much too strained, much too fake. you should have stayed, a voice had repeated again and again, whispering in his mind all throughout the flight to new york, poisoning what brief, bittersweet joy his acceptance into brown had brought until it turned black and rotten. he had boarded with his mother’s blessing ( and her insistence ) wrapped around his heart, and still every mile south had tasted of abandonment. of spineless escape. upon arrival he had received his room key, his polite greetings, his schedules — hollow things that were, supposedly, meant to evoke excitement for the future, his future, in which susannah fisher would be long gone and buried, unable to see who her sons were meant to become. conrad had, of course, followed through as he said he would. spent his time in between lectures, papers, people laughing loudly, life advancing around him while his world refused to slow down. while he spent those quiet afters, suffocating in the guilt that rested, that to this day rests, on the bed beside him every night and every morning. yes, many things have lately turned black and rotten.
perhaps, being brave merely meant doing what tore at you the most, just because someone you love asked it of you. or maybe he has continued to use university as an excuse not to come home. a pause lingers: he is figuring out what to say, how to say it, how not to fuck up things with his brother more than he already has. how to offer a comfort that might not be wholly welcomed. when his voice finally comes through, it sounds exhausted. ❝ you’re right, ❞ fingers tighten around his phone, so much that his knuckles pale, even begin to ache. if he were to close his eyes, he would be able to picture jeremiah back at their home, alone with all this weight, forced to witness a decline no child should have to experience, stuck with the smell of hospitals and medicine and fear. he has to swallow to dispel the knot that forms in his throat. ❝ i know mom wants me to stay here, to act … normal, or something. ❞ outside his window, a girl shouts happily across the campus courtyard. once more he feels horribly alien. ❝ but if you need me, i’m there. seriously. say the word and i’ll fly home tonight, jere. ❞
