Solitaire

OLIVER TROTS SLEEPILY down the stairs. Thomas the Tank Engine pajamas. Teddy in his arm. I’m glad that he’s never understood what’s wrong with Charlie.

“You all right, Oliver?”

“Mmmyeah.”

“You gonna go to bed?”

“What about Charlie?”

“He’ll be fine. Leave it all to me.”

Oliver nods and ambles back up the stairs, rubbing his eyes. I rush toward the kitchen door, which is closed.

I feel sick. I’m not even fully awake.

“Charlie.” I knock on the door.

Total silence. I attempt to get in, but he’s blocked it with something.

“Open the door, Charles. I’m not joking. I’ll break the door.”

“No, you won’t.” His voice is dead. Empty. But I’m relieved, because he’s alive.

I turn the handle down and push with my whole body.

“Don’t come in!” He sounds panicked, which makes me panicked because Charlie is never panicked and that is what makes him Charlie. “Don’t come in here! Please!” There’s a clattering of things being frantically moved around.

I keep heaving my body onto the door, and whatever is blocking it begins to move away. I make a gap large enough for me to slip inside, and I do.

“No, go away! Leave me alone!”

I look at him.

“Get out!”

He’s been crying. His eyes are dark red and purple and the darkness of the room drowns him in a haze. There is a plate of lasagna on the kitchen table, cold, untouched. All of our food has been removed from the cupboards and the fridge and the freezer and set out in order of size and color in various piles around the room. There are a couple of bloodstained tissues in his hands.

He’s not

better.

“I’m sorry,” he croaks, slumped in a chair, head rolled backward, eyes vacant. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.”

I can’t do anything. It’s hard not to throw up.

“I’m sorry,” he keeps saying. “I’m so sorry.”

“Where’s Nick?” I say. “Why is he not with you?”

He goes deep red, and then mumbles something inaudible.

“What?”

“We argued. He left.”

I start shaking my head. It goes from left to right to left to right in an uncontrollable act of defiance. “That bastard. That stupid bastard.”

“No, Victoria, it was my fault.”

My phone is in my hand, and I’m punching in Nick’s number.

“Hello?”

“Do you understand the severity of what you have done, you absolute prick?”

“Tori? What are you—”

“If Oliver hadn’t called me, Charlie might have—” I can’t even say it. “This is entirely your fault.”

“I’m not— Wait, what the hell’s happened?”

“What the hell do you think has happened? You left Charlie during a mealtime. You can’t do that. You can’t do that. You can’t leave him while he’s eating, let alone upset him. Didn’t you learn that last year?”

“I didn’t—”

“I trusted you. You were supposed to look after him, and now I’ve walked into the kitchen and he’s— I shouldn’t have gone out. I should have been here. We’re—I’m the person who is supposed to be there when this happens.”

“Wait, wh—”

I’m holding the phone so tight, I’m shaking. Charlie is looking at me, silent tears falling from his eyes. He is so old now. He’s not a little kid. In a couple of months he’ll be sixteen, like me. He looks older than me, for God’s sake. He could pass for eighteen, easy.

I drop the phone, draw up a chair next to my brother, and put my arms around him.

Nick gets here, and with Charlie we clear up the kitchen. Charlie keeps wincing and clutching his head as I upset all his precious piles of tins and packets, but I do it anyway because his psychiatrist told us that you have to be brutal. He used to shout at me when I moved his food around. Sometimes he’d try to physically stop me. He doesn’t do that anymore.

I get rid of the lasagna. I find the first-aid kit and put plasters on Charlie’s arm. Luckily, the cuts aren’t deep enough to need stitches this time. I set the table and I make three rounds of beans on toast and the three of us sit down. It’s a difficult meal. Charlie doesn’t want to eat anything. His knees keep bobbing up and down and his fork keeps reaching his mouth and stopping, unwilling to go any farther. Sometimes, in the hospital, they’d let him drink this extremely high-calorie drink instead of eating a meal. We don’t have any of that in our house. I try not to shout at Charlie because that will make everything worse.

Eventually Nick and I escort him to bed.

“I’m sorry,” says Charlie, lying in bed with his arm across his forehead.

I’m standing at the doorway. Nick is on the floor in Charlie’s spare pajamas, which are much too small for him, with a spare duvet and pillow. He is staring at Charlie with an expression somehow simultaneously encompassing fear and love. I haven’t forgiven him yet, but I know that he will redeem himself. I know that he cares about Charlie. A lot.

“I know,” I say. “But I’m going to have to tell Mum and Dad.”

“I know.”

“I’ll come back and check on you in a bit.”

“Okay.”

I stand there. After a while, he says, “Are . . . you okay?”

An odd question, in my opinion. He is the one who just . . . “I’m completely fine.”

I turn out the light and go downstairs and call Dad. He stays calm. Too calm. I don’t like it. I want him to freak out and shout and panic, but he doesn’t. He tells me that they’ll come home right away. I put the phone down, pour a glass of diet lemonade, and sit in the living room for a while. It’s the middle of the night. The curtains are all open.

You do not find many people like Charlie Spring in the world. I suppose I have implied this already. You especially do not find many people like Charlie Spring at all-boys schools. If you want my opinion, all-boys schools sound like hell. Maybe it’s because I don’t know many boys. Maybe it’s because I get a pretty bad impression of the guys I see coming out of the Truham gates, pouring fizzy drinks into one another’s hair, calling one another gay, and bullying gingers. I don’t know.

I don’t know anything about Charlie’s life at that school.

I head back upstairs and peer into Charlie’s room. He and Nick are now both fast asleep in Charlie’s bed, Charlie curled into Nick’s chest. I shut the door.

I go to my room. I start shaking again, and I look at myself in the mirror for a long time and begin to wonder if I really am Wednesday Addams. I remember finding Charlie in the bathroom that time. There was a lot more blood then. It’s very dark in my room, but my open laptop screen acts as a dim blue lamp. I pace around in circles; around and around until my feet hurt. I put on some Bon Iver and then some Muse and then some Noah and the Whale, you know, really dumb angsty stuff. I cry and then I don’t. There’s a text on my phone, but I don’t read it. I listen to the dark. They’re all coming to get you. Your heartbeats are footsteps. Your brother is psychotic. You don’t have any friends. Nobody feels bad for you. Beauty and the Beast isn’t real. It’s funny because it’s true. Don’t be sad anymore. Don’t be sad anymore.