Page 345 of Face Off

My mother presses her lips together and nods. She returns to the car without asking whether I am sure.

I stand over my brother’s grave with my shoes hanging from one hand. Every speech I could have prepared disappears.

“Hi.”

The word sounds ridiculous.

I look around the cemetery as though someone might offer instructions. Charlie remains dead, the grass remains damp beneath my bare feet, and sweat begins collecting beneath my hair.

“This fucking sucks.”

I lower myself onto the grass and place my shoes beside me. The polished stone reflects a distorted version of my face.

“You’re a fucking asshole for dying.”

My voice cracks immediately. “Thanks for ruining my life, bro. BTW, our dad’s a dick, but I’m guessing you already know that.”

A sob breaks through the laugh that follows. “Ugh, this sucks.”

I wipe my face angrily. The tears keep coming. “I know you didn’t choose it. I know it isn’t fair to be angry with you for something you didn’t do, but everyone else was allowed to be destroyed when you died. Mom disappeared inside her grief. Lance, I call him that now. Lance turned his into rules, expectations, and enough control to suffocate everyone still breathing.”

My fingers close around the edge of my dress. “I had to be okay because they weren’t. I had to become enough child for both of us, and you had already been perfect long enough that I never had a fucking chance.”

The words leave years of bitterness on my tongue.

“You were funny. Brave. Loud. Everyone loved you, and then you died before you could disappoint anyone. Do you know how impossible it is to compete with a dead person?”

My shoulders shake harder.

“Lance made every choice by asking what you would’ve done. Mom told stories about you whenever I became someone she didn’t recognize. I couldn’t be angry, reckless, afraid, confused, or selfish because you never got the chance to be any of those things.”

I strike my palm against the grass.

“I am alive, Charlie. I am still fucking alive, and nobody knew what to do with me unless I behaved like surviving you was something I needed to earn.”

The anger comes hotter now, carrying every meal I skipped, every panic attack I concealed, and every moment I looked at my body as though taking up less space might make my parents feel safer.

“I hated you.”

The confession tears through me.

“I loved you so much, and I fucking hated you. I hated that you got to leave while I had to stay and become whatever made everyone else hurt less. I hated that they loved me like losing me was already happening. I hated every time Lance used your name to tell me what I should want, and I hated Mom for letting him.”

I lean forward until my forehead rests against the warm stone.

“Then I found someone who loved me without asking me to become anything first.”

Ryan’s face rises inside my mind. His black-framed reading glasses. His backward hat. His hands around mine at the carnival and shaking beneath the castle lights.

“He saw me, Charlie. He saw every annoying, scared, mean, ridiculous part of me and loved all of it. I used that love like proof I was finally safe.”

My tears darken the grass beneath me.

“I needed him to want me enough that nobody else’s opinion could matter. Then I hid him because choosing him threatened the love I had spent my entire life trying not to lose.”

The truth becomes clearer as I say it.

“I thought I was afraid of Lance cutting me off. I thought I was afraid of disappointing Mom, losing my friends, campus gossip, or everyone deciding Ryan was beneath me when he was always too good for me. That was only the surface.”