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“I’m trying to stay away.”
He looks to Natalie for…approval, maybe? He’s always looked to Mom for that sort of thing. Maybe now that he’s trying to stick to Natalie instead, all of those feelings get transferred to her too. That isn’t his intention. But he can’t control those parts of him. When Mom told him to leave, he listened, but he ended up drifting over to the only other person he knew of who could see him, who he could make see him. He latched onto her, and everything else came with it, and now he’s stuck again. He couldn’t leave her if he tried.
He wasn’t aware this reached past Mom. He thought it was a feeling exclusive to her. Turns out that he’s the constant in this equation, not her—though he didn’t think constants were supposed to change the way he does, but, well, here he stands. Not that he knows much about equations. He’s gleaned mostly surface knowledge from Natalie herself. He supposes in another month, if he’s allowed to stay, he’ll know more. The same happened with Mom. He’ll become less himself, more what Natalie wants him to be.
Natalie doesn’t look at him. He feels a twinge of pain in his stomach. She hasn’t looked at him since the night they ended up on the bathroom floor together, when he thought he was getting somewhere, when he thought she was warming up to him again. Where did the Natalie he remembered go? The Natalie who opened up to him, who said she wouldn’t mind having a brother if he’d been around? Who bickered with him the way he’d always yearned for, tolerating his presence like a younger sibling would?
“You’re trying to stay away,” Natalie repeats. He jumps as he’s brought back to the right moment, then goes cold as he registers the emotion behind her voice. It’s scorn, venomous and biting. “Yeah. That’s going well.”
He senses her resentment. If he’d been around her for more than a week, he would feel the same. As it stands, their connection is still too fragile for that, and his own hurt eclipses all else. He leans away from her and clarifies, “From Mom,” hoping she’ll understand that and let him in.
And knowing as he says it that it’s more selfish than he’d like. That he wants her to let him in so she has someone to rely on, but first and foremost so he can keep existing. Keep taking advantage of every scrap he’s given.
He thinks it works, for a moment. Natalie’s gaze starts to move, forcing him out of her periphery and further into her line of sight. She pauses before she gets there and wrenches her eyes forward again, and he frowns. “So you decided I was the next best option,” she mutters.
He shifts, scooting ever so slightly closer to her. She doesn’t react. “Dad can’t see me, so.” He shrugs and hopes it comes off as casual. As if that will make her forget how much he’s pulling out the huge pleading eyes card. “Yes.”
Natalie stiffens. “You mean, like he’s ignoring you?”
She’s afraid. He knows exactly why. It’s not that, he wants to tell her. It’s me, there’s something wrong with me. Maybe you’re not all the way okay, but this, at least, isn’t your fault.
He levels his gaze at the side of her head and says, his voice even, “I mean he can’t see me. At all.”
The air leaves his lungs, because it leaves hers. His stomach drops at the same time hers does. He winces at the feeling, and it makes him hesitate. There had been some kind of explanation on his lips; empty words, mostly, which she would never accept, but things meant to comfort her and bring her closer to him. What he manages to get out is a lot less eloquent than he likes. “But I thought maybe…I didn’t know if you could—I just—”
Natalie finally looks at him, and he realizes after he’s gotten what he wanted that he doesn’t want it anymore. Or, he doesn’t want her to look at him like this. Her eyes burn with a mix of anger and fear. He stares at the floor and tries to hide in his hoodie. Most of the shame he feels is his. But Natalie wants a punching bag, and that’s what he’ll become. His shoulders bow, and he glances back up at her, giving her exactly what she wants. She can hurt him, and he’ll understand, and he’ll take it.
Natalie’s expression is one of disgust. Maybe even awe, in a twisted way that neither of them understand.
“Sorry,” he says. For once, he means it. He means it more than he’s ever meant anything before. He means even more—not just sorry for this time, but sorry for every other time he should have said it, sorry for how he didn’t just turn away and leave sooner, sorry for changing before her very eyes into something dependable, sorry for existing. Sorry for—
“No, you’re not,” Natalie nearly hisses, rising from her chair. That makes another wave of pain ripple through him, and he has to shut his eyes and brace himself against the counter. Maybe it’s because Natalie is doing the same? He can’t tell anymore.
There’s silence for a moment. His eyes still shut, he says the only thing he can think to say. “Nat.”
“Don’t call me that.”
He can feel her stepping away from him, and he opens his eyes and reaches out instinctively to grab her. When she sees his hand, she takes another step back.
It’s Natalie, he reminds himself. It’s not her. It’s Natalie.
He casts his eyes to the ceiling, wondering what he can say to her to get through. He didn’t have to work this hard with Mom—maybe he needed a little more effort in the beginning, and then again near the end, but he didn’t have the most trouble winning her over. There has to be some way he can demonstrate to Natalie that he cares. Some way to get her attention. To get her attached.
He lands on: “You haven’t been sleeping.”
He’s spent enough time around her to know that. He can’t remember the last time he’s seen her sleep through the night. He’s caught her dozing over homework, catching up in ten-minute spurts through the day, but nothing substantial. This is him holding out an olive branch. See? he thinks to himself. I can do good. I can take care of someone. I can do it.
It’s not because I want her trust. Not entirely.
Natalie looks him up and down skeptically. “Yeah?” she says.
“Yeah.” He keeps staring at the ceiling. If he does that, does it make him look unbothered? Or does it make it look like he’s struggling to meet her eyes because he cares too much? Neither of those things are entirely the truth. “And I’ve noticed and I want you to know I’ve noticed. Because I don’t know if Dad has. If you’ve told him why.”
She’s quiet for a moment. He turns his gaze back on her, and she’s completely still, staring straight back at him. She wants to laugh, he can tell, but he can feel her trepidation curling in his own gut as she says, “And you know why.”
He nods. Because he does. Even after just a week, because something like that was at the forefront of Natalie’s mind, so he received it almost as soon as he shifted over to her.
You can trust me, he says silently. Pleading with his eyes. I’m here. I’ll listen. I promise.
The same way you did with Mom, a voice in his head chimes, and where did that lead? Why did you need her to trust you, anyway?
Shut up, he thinks. It’s not like that. It’s different. I’ll be different.
Is it different? It’s hard for him to keep his face blank, but he manages it, eyes locking with Natalie’s. You do a lot of changing, but it never seems to be for the better.
“Like how you knew with—with her,” Natalie says.
He nods.
She starts taking deep breaths, her head in her hands. He wants to reach out and hold her by the shoulders, give her pointers, but she’ll just push him away again.
Instead, he says, “I want to help.”
Natalie’s shoulders rise. “I don’t need your help,” she snaps, and he flinches. “No one needs your help. No one wants it. No one wants you. How hard is that to understand?”
He winces. She’s right. She’s sticking her fingers into the wound in his chest and prying it further open, but she’s right. She’s angry and she’s lashing out at him because he’s letting her, but she’s right. “I want to help you,” he says again.
Natalie glares at him, and it makes him recoil. “The same way you helped her?”
He wraps his arms around himself, nails digging into his arms. His eyes don’t leave Natalie’s. He can’t make them.
“You weren’t made to help people,” she says. “You just—you hurt everything and you twist things for yourself and you come crawling back when you get caught in the crossfire, and Mom let you do that, and I won’t—”
She cuts off. They both sit in the silence for a while, breathing heavily. His breathing syncs automatically with hers, and he grimaces. Can’t I do one thing on my own? he wonders.
You’ve done a lot on your own. No one made you hurt them like this.
You twist things for yourself and you come crawling back when you get caught in the crossfire, and Mom let you do that, and I won’t—
“I won’t let you do that with me,” Natalie finishes. She hides her hands in the pockets of her cardigan, and he mirrors the motion without thinking. She catches it, and her eyelid twitches almost imperceptibly.
Maybe it’s just his want to be more connected to her—or his want to be connected to something, now that Mom is trying to push him away—but he isn’t expecting Natalie to hate him like this.
Honestly, she should. She has every right to. Almost everything he’s done has ended with Natalie getting the short end of the stick, if she even gets a part of it at all; usually, he doesn’t care to give her that much. He gathers it all up for himself.
He can still find it in him to be hurt when she calls him out for it, somehow. He’s known that he’s not real, that he’s not alive, that he’s not good, for years before the same sentiments have left Natalie’s mouth. It’s different hearing her say it, for some reason. Maybe he’s been convincing himself otherwise, telling himself that even though those things are true, he still cares. Even though he poisons his family, he still wants them to be alright. Even though he keeps digging in his claws to hold onto some semblance of reality, building himself up to become more than memory, more than grief, more than alive near the end—he still loves his mom and dad. He still loves his sister. Because he’s supposed to be a son, a brother, and why wouldn’t he love them?
He didn’t convince himself it cancelled out. Even he isn’t that good of a liar. No amount of love can cancel out how he’s hurt them. How he’s hurt Natalie.
Still.
There’s always a still. Always something he got wrong, because that’s what he is. Intrinsically, he’s wrong. His entire being is built around that wrongness.
I won’t let you do that with me.
He wants to. He wants to be close to her the way he was close to Mom. He wants to be there for her. He wants her affection, he wants her insults, he wants her to rely on him, he wants her to push him away.
What does he want? He never knows how to answer that question.
“I know,” he says quietly, looking away so she won’t see everything going on behind his eyes.
“I’m not Mom,” Natalie says.
He lets her take what she wants from his silence. She hears what she wants to hear, and she stumbles back. He allows it. He’ll win her over, because he always does; it’s what he’s best at. He’s not good, but he’s good at ripping things apart.
You’re not Mom, he thinks to himself. That’s fine.
We’ll get there, one part of him says.
I want you to stay this way, the other part whispers at the same time.