Page 241 of Disarm
“I’m not… there,” I say to it, even though I kind of am. “I’m just… tired. That’s all.”
It’s such a small word for how big it feels.
I grab my bag and leave before I can argue with a piece of paper.
The bus rideto campus is a flickering slideshow of things that don’t stick. I chose not to drive, even though the campusdidn’t count as a long drive. I didn’t want to risk it. The damp smell of other people’s raincoats and someone arguing quietly in Spanish on the phone. A kid with purple hair is asleep against the window.
Outside, Santa Cruz does its usual half-sun, half-fog performance. Eucalyptus trees, students with headphones, someone skateboarding past like their bones are made of rubber.
Getting off the bus, I walk.
To the psych building, then afterward to the café.
I stand in line for coffee because that’s what I always do, even when my stomach is a fist. When it’s my turn, the barista says, “Hey, Caleb,” like normal, and I laugh at something she says about the line being hell.
I don’t remember the joke thirty seconds later.
The statistics review session is just midterm déjà vu. Numbers on the board. The professor’s voice was bouncing off the walls. My hand moves, writing down formulas, but it feels like somebody else’s.
Every so often, the room tilts and I’m back in that stairwell.
He died.
Maybe this will help you move on.
Move on to where, exactly?
Am I somehow supposed to all of a sudden jump for joy and plan a trip to Disneyland in celebration?
I last, surprisingly, until the break. Other students stream out toward the bathroom, the vending machines, and the corners with their phones. I make it to the end of the aisle before my feet change direction without asking me.
Not the bathroom.
Not the vending machine.
Outside.
The air hits my face, cool and damp, and I keep walking, past the quad, past the library, past the gym. My legs have a destination I don’t recognize until I see the building.
The dorms.
The first time I tried to take myself out, I spent an hour in the locker room beforehand, staring at my wrists.
I don’t go to my room. I just stand outside, looking at the doors.
There’s a group of freshmen heading in with duffel bags, laughing about some game from last night. I picture my younger self, sweating through his shirt, long sleeves in summer. The way I told myself it wasn’t that bad. That if it ever got that bad, I’d… do something about it.
Eight-year-old me thought the threat of leaving was the only leverage I had. Twenty-year-old me believed it. I remember the day itself in fragments—steel sink, white tiles, the metallic smell. I also remember waking up in a hospital bed, Miguel asleep in the chair, his hand wrapped around mine like he’d welded us together. His face when he woke up and realized I was still there.
If you’d seen it earlier.
If you’d known.
If you’d been there.
The echo of his guilt from the other side of the memory stabs through the fog. For one second, it makes me want to turn around, go to whatever job site he’s at, find his truck, sit on the hood until he gets off work and say everything out loud.
I turn away.
