Unravelling. Elizabeth Norris

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СКАЧАТЬ hug them—even Kevin—because I want my brother to be happy more than anything. And he’ll probably be over the moon all week.

      “Yeah, did you know they had English together their freshman year? Nick said Kevin used to lean back in his chair all the time. And every day their teacher would say, ‘Mr. Collins, don’t lean back in your chair, please,’ and he’d say, ‘Okay,’ but then he’d do it anyway.”

      I am not at all surprised by this story.

      “And then one day when Kevin was hitting on this hot girl in his class, he leaned back just a little too far and he fell over. But it didn’t matter because the girl he liked went out with him that weekend anyway.”

      Again, I’m not surprised.

      “And Kevin said they used to jump up and touch the overhang whenever they were coming down the library steps. They’d even run, jump, hit the ledge, and then jump down the rest of the stairs, but near the end of freshman year, they both did it one time, only when they jumped, Nick fell and got a concussion.”

      I can easily picture Kevin and Nick jumping down the library steps and somehow managing to wipe out. “What about the rest of your classes?”

      He shrugs, obviously less interested. “I have ceramics and then English with Sherwood.”

      I wince at the name of his English teacher. Jared will never be able to write an essay if I don’t get him out of there.

      “Yeah, Kevin took one look at my schedule and told me to run for the hills.”

      “He did?” This time I am surprised—in a good way.

      Jared nods. “He and Nick said I should fill out a schedule change request to be bumped into honors. So I did that before Nick drove me home.”

      I’m suddenly not sure whether I should be pleased or worried about the interest Nick is taking in my brother. On the one hand, I can’t believe he convinced him to take an honors class, and I’m undoubtedly in their debt for getting Jared to actually follow directions and get out of Sherwood’s class—anyone who doubts that there’s something wrong with public education in this country just needs to sit in her class for a day to know—but what will happen to Jared if Nick and I break up?

      “All right, J-baby, you ready?” my dad says before I can think of a way to explain that to my brother.

      “I’d really prefer if you didn’t call me that in public,” I say as I slide out of the hospital bed and into the wheelchair they’ve brought for me.

      My dad smiles because he knows I don’t really mean it, and Jared slips in behind me, half pushing, half hopping. My back is stiff and my leg muscles are still sore, but I could feel worse—I could be dead.

      Also, I’ll be back at school this week. So will Ben Michaels. And I plan on figuring out exactly what happened.

      “What’s for dinner tonight?” Jared asks. “Something we can get delivered,” I say at the same time my dad says, “I asked Struz to pick up some Chinese.”

      “Sweet!” Jared says. “You think he’ll get that awesome spicy kung pao chicken? I haven’t had that in forever. Or, oh—call him and tell him to get the special General Tso’s!”

      Ryan Struzinski, aka Struz, has been working with my dad for ten years. He’s in his thirties now, I think, but he’s really an overgrown kid with a superhero complex. It’s why he and my dad get along so well. Knowing Struz, he’ll order the whole left side of the menu. “Don’t worry, Jared. Something tells me we’ll have enough food.”

      “What about egg rolls? And fortune cookies. He’d better get a shitload of them.”

      Jared is still running down the list of Chinese food he’s hoping for—that kid can eat his way through anything—when we get outside. My dad’s car is parked in the fire lane—shocking. Even less shocking is the collection of file boxes that he has to move to squeeze both Jared and my wheelchair into the backseat—no doubt because he’s going to work late into the night. Just like he would any other night. Tonight he’ll just have to work at home.

      “You and Struz planning to Mulder and Scully it after Chinese tonight?” I ask as I slide my seat belt on. My dad has every season of The X-Files on DVD. When we were little, instead of Saturday morning cartoons, Jared and I had Saturday morning X-Files marathons.

      “Dude, have you found the unit that hunts aliens yet?” Jared asks.

      My dad chuckles. “Not yet, but don’t worry. I won’t give up. Hunting aliens is the reason I joined the FBI, after all.” This is actually not a lie. Of course, the truth is that there isn’t a unit that actually hunts aliens. There aren’t enough creepy cases that point to aliens or unsolved paranormal mysteries to assign to even one guy in a basement.

      “The truth is out there,” Jared says with a laugh.

      “I want to believe,” I add, because that’s my line. Yes, I am aware how lame we are.

      “Trust no one,” my dad says, trying to make his voice sound ominous.

      “Believe the lie!” Jared shouts.

      I let the two of them continue to volley taglines back and forth during the ride home. I jump in occasionally when there’s a lull and Jared is trying to remember a good quote, but mostly I think about the same thing I’ve thought about the whole two days I spent lounging around the hospital. I think of Ben Michaels—of the fact that I was dead and now I’m not. Because all that X-Files stuff is only entertaining until it hits too close to home. Right now none of it is as strange as Ben Michaels bringing me back from the dead.

      As my dad turns off the car, I gesture to the wheelchair. “We can just leave that in the car. I’m fine.”

      “J-baby, are you—”

      “Dad. I’m fine.”

      Jared jumps in front of us and unlocks the front door, and my dad is about to say something when the sound of glass breaking makes all three of us freeze.

      or the past nine years, my dad has been the head of the counterintelligence unit at the San Diego office of the FBI. It’s ironic, really. This man who dedicates his life to the pursuit of truth, who works a nineteen-and-a-half-hour work day, who watches repeats of The X-Files and quotes it to his children, lives in a house where Truth always remains Unsaid.

      And for almost as long as I can remember, I’ve learned to do the same.

      My mother is bipolar. And at present, she’s not exactly functioning.

      When I was seven, during one of her manic episodes, she stopped taking her meds, pulled both Jared and me out of school, and drove us up the coast—at least twenty miles over the speed limit, with the windows down—all day and into the night, until we stopped at the Northern California border and got a hotel room. We stayed up late, jumped on the beds, had a popcorn fight, and laughed until our stomachs cramped.

      By the next morning she’d СКАЧАТЬ