through that doorway together, and maybe the ghosts of who we used to be are still in there.
That night, Grace greeted Adam brightly, all brand-new confidence, walking in ahead of me. I’d wondered if that was what it was like to be the one trailing behind. If the only way one of us could be big was if the other one was small.
I remember thinking, drunkenly, I should check on her and Adam.
And then thinking that I didn’t want to, that she could take care of herself, this once.
I dig my nails into my palms, but pain doesn’t work when you’re numb. I shouldn’t have come here. I turn, but Mom’s gone. I could walk back along the road . . .
But Levi asked for my help and he doesn’t have anyone else.
I climb the steps. It’s just a doorknob. How many doorknobs have I touched in my life? My reflection stares back at me, distorted.
“Joy, are you up front?” Levi’s voice floats over. I grab it, breathe through it like a gas mask. “I’m down by the back porch.”
I circle the house too fast, edging the slash of a shadow it throws on the ground. The porch is built into the hill that goes down toward the trees, toward the quarry. Levi’s halfway up the steps, knees grass-stained, trying to haul a dead-drunk Mr. Gordon up the rest of the way.
“Thank you,” he pants when he sees me.
“I haven’t done anything yet.”
“You came.”
Mr. Gordon’s evil-smelling, barely conscious. His sweatpants look like they haven’t been changed in a week. We hoist him up the steps like we did at the funeral. I’ve got his feet. One’s shoeless and rank. The shoe is on the lawn. I wonder if my shoes are still somewhere in the middle-school field, mangled by the lawn mower.
Levi wrangles open the door with his elbow. I suck in the alcohol fumes, focus on them, blot out the fact that I’m inside, inside, the house. It’s ugly dark, the shades drawn.
I can’t break. I’m carrying a man up a staircase.
If I thought being in this house would jog my memory, I was wrong. The only memories it’s bringing up are— Don’t think about it.
I’m getting good at not thinking. The key’s not giving your brain any fuel or rest, and drowning it in alcohol the rest of the time. Mr. Gordon and I know that.
Adam’s bedroom door—breathe—is blocked by a bedside table, several boxes. Was it Levi or Mr. Gordon who did that? Are they trying to keep something in or out?
We move a few more steps down the hall to the end. Mr. Gordon’s room was designed to let in as much light as possible, a window covering nearly half the left wall, but it’s blocked by a heavy curtain. “On three,” Levi grunts. We swing Mr. Gordon onto the four-poster bed. He rolls over and starts snoring instantly, a rattily choking sound.
I am so terrifyingly dizzy for a second. Don’t pass out, don’t do that to Levi, don’t give him another body to deal with.
I take a deep breath, let it out slowly. Okay. I’m okay.
Levi stares at his dad’s motionless figure. Something builds in him until finally he rips a throw pillow off the edge of the bed and buries his face in it. I want to say something, but the words, the perfect words, they don’t come. The fog in my head doesn’t help. But he drops the pillow after a few seconds, and his expression is clean and normal.
“Screw my lack of musical talent, I’m going to write a one-hit wonder, too, and make a million dollars so I can pay you a million dollars for helping me drag my dad around,” he says.
“I don’t mind,” I say. “Sometimes I lift my dad’s weights.”
“And sometimes you lift my dad.” Levi arranges the blankets, sets out a glass of water, throws the curtain open. “Whenever you need a workout, just come over here. Dad lifting. It’ll be an Olympic event.”
Don’t joke back. It’s his tragedy to make light of, not mine.
“Sorry. You know when stuff’s so real it stops feeling real? And then it gets funny?” He turns and smiles anxiously. “It was like, I got him all the way back up from the quarry and then I couldn’t do the stairs and I sat down and freaked out. And I had your number.”
“Should we maybe tell somebody about . . . him? This?” I say over the snoring.
“There’s nobody. Adam’s mom lives