Page 5 of Reclaim Me

Ever since Aaron drove us into New Haven city limits, I’ve been trying my hardest not to think about that other set of DNA, the man who contributed it, and what’s going to happen when we run into each other here, in the very place I left him when his demons came to destroy us both.

3

RAE

Then

Imade a wrong turn.

Actually, I made several. A left when I should have gone right. Taking the fourth exit on the roundabout when it should have been the third.

“I fucking hate roundabouts,” I sigh, making a U-turn in the middle of the street to get back to the counterproductive circle that should have just been a normal intersection.

“You’re going to get yourself killed, Rae,” Dee warns, her voice spilling through the speaker of my phone, which is nestled in between the two large Diet Cokes we slurped down on the last leg of our road trip. “You won’t be much good to Will if you’re laid up in the hospital beside him.”

“I’m not going to be laid up beside him.” The reassuring statement feels like a lie when it’s punctuated by the blaring of a horn belonging to a pickup truck that looks more like a tank. The driver of said tank leans out of his window and flips me off, cursing me for ignoring the yield sign and pulling out in front of him. I don’t make a habit of engaging with men in large trucks that are meant to compensate for their small dicks, so I peel off and pray that he doesn’t follow me.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

“Your driving is going to get you killed one day,” she mutters, echoing a complaint I heard every other minute during our eleven-hour drive from Manhattan back to New Haven.

“My driving got us to New York and back, didn’t it? What did you contribute exactly?”

“Fire playlists,” she tosses back, not missing a beat. “And gas money.”

“We both put in gas, girl.”

And it took almost every dime the two of us had saved from years of babysitting and working odd jobs to cover the trip we’d been planning for half our lives. We’d done everything we said we were going to—walked the streets of Manhattan with slices of greasy pizza in hand, attended an open class at Steps on Broadway, took one of those cheesy tours where you sit on the top of a double-decker bus to see the sights while someone lays facts about the city over a hip-hop beat, and went to every show we could afford to see.

Broadway, off-Broadway, and off-off-Broadway too.

It was the best time. The kind of time I needed after spending eight months watching my mother die a slow, painful death, surrendering every ounce of her life to the hell that is breast cancer.

And now, with every mile I put between myself, Dee, and the goodness we found in the streets of New York, I can feel the happy fading. Shifting. My world turning slowly upside down with thoughts of hospital rooms and IV lines dripping saline into veins of a tired body curled under stark white sheets.

Once upon a time, that was Mommy, and now it might be Will. My brother. My best friend. The only family I have.

“What if he dies?”

“Stop being dramatic, Rae. Will is not gonna die!”

“But he’s in the hospital.”

“Yeah, and he called you himself and told you as much!”

Even through the anxiety and frustration burning a hole in my stomach, I can acknowledge the truth of that statement. Will did call me. He timed it just right, too. My phone started playing the ringtone I designated for him as soon as we pulled up at Dee’s house. Since we’d been updating him on our location every hour on the hour, per his request, I figured he knew I’d made it to Dee’s and just wanted to know how long I was going to stay over.

But what he’d actually called to say was that he wouldn’t be home when I got there. Not understanding the gravity of the admission, I joked about him finally getting a life when I was out of town. He went quiet on me, the way he always does when he needs to say something but doesn’t want me to worry. It took me longer than it should to get him to spit it out, and even then, it was in bits and pieces of reluctant information that I put all the way together when I heard a nurse come in and ask him if he was sure he didn’t want something for the pain.

That’s when my ears tuned in to the noise in the background. The opening and closing of doors. The faint chatter of voices over the intercom, paging doctors, calling codes. The melody of a hospital I’ve spent more time in than I care to admit.

“I’m still scared,” I admit, pushing the words past the lump in my throat. Now that I’m turning into the hospital parking lot, it’s fully formed. Large and imposing as it presses against my windpipe, strangling me with worse-case scenarios and flashes of every Grey’s Anatomy episode I’ve ever seen.

“You can be scared, Rae, but don’t let your feelings stop you from seeing the facts.”

Her dulcet tone reminds me of her recently disclosed plan to pursue a career in psychology. We always planned to chase our dreams of principal roles in acclaimed ballet corps together, but apparently, Dee had a change of heart while she was away at school, completing her freshman year. She came clean on our last night in New York because she didn’t want the trip to end without me knowing the truth. I tried not to be bitter about it—my best friend giving up on our lifelong dream, being left behind by yet another person in yet another facet of my life—but it was a hard pill to swallow. And now life is forcing me to swallow another one that’s all chalk and dust with jagged edges that cut and scrape on their way down.

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