Page 178 of Vile Boys

In the bed lies a woman with skin so pale it nearly turns translucent, her thin, brittle hair lying on top of her shoulders as her hands rest beside her lifeless body. Tubes go in her veins, and another one is connected to her mouth, pushing oxygen in and out to her lungs.

“Who … who is that?” I mutter.

My breathing falters as Caleb sits on the bed and grabs her hand. “My mom.”

CALEB

I squeeze my mom’s hand tightly even though it’s cold to the touch. Some part of me feels like maybe if I squeeze hard enough, she might feel it.

I stare at her lifeless body in the bed. Every day, her skin sheds more and more, like the bark on a tree flaking off as it’s slowly deprived of nutrients. A shell of a once magnificent tree that crowned the forest and gave so much to so many.

A tear wells up in my eyes, but I push it away.

I’ve already given up on the idea that she’ll ever remember me.

That time has long since passed.

All that remains now is a wake. Day in, day out. Until she slowly withers away.

I lift my head and look at the girl standing in the door opening. The girl who forced her way into my life … the girl who invaded every corner of my mind until there was no escaping her.

Her eyes are filled with so much compassion it’s sickening, and it makes me want to scream.

But that would only push her further away from me.

And the thought of losing her too would drive me insane.

All this time, I’ve been hanging on by a thread.

And her seeing my world for what it truly is … will unravel me.

Crystal

I stare at him,heart struck with so many emotions I can’t utter a single syllable.

Tears well up in my eyes, but I push them away.

It wouldn’t be right to cry, but damn, it has never been harder to keep them at bay.

“This is why I didn’t want your mother to be with my dad,” he says, his voice fluctuating in tone from all the pent-up emotions. “Somewhere in there, inside that fainting husk, is a living, breathing human being.” He pauses, the weight of his emotions sinking into each word like a stone in the pond of my soul, leaving ripples in its wake. “Waiting for her family that no longer exists.”

I swallow.

What words would do justice to this kind of pain? There are none.

This is the visceral suffering of those who have experienced grief. And even though his mother is still alive by a hair, she’s more a ghost than a person. Death has already claimed her just like it claimed my father—whether it’s yesterday, today, or tomorrow, a future for them in our lives no longer exists.

No wonder Caleb broke the second I told him about my father.

This is what he’s been hiding. This is the secret that’s torn him apart at the seam.

And even though I once believed I hated him, the idea that I ever could seems so cruel right now.

All of his anger, all of the revulsions, the fights … all of it was because of this.

His mother, lying motionless in a bed, more dead than living, the last remnant he has of the woman who once called him her baby.

How could my heart not ache for him?

---