Page 66 of Happiness for Beginners

“I’d say fifteen.”

“He’s not elderly, that’s for sure.”

“But he does surprise me sometimes.”

“You know,” Jake said, rolling onto his side to face me, “while we were waiting for you guys tonight, Beckett had us do the most touchy-feely exercise ever. He even apologized for how touchy-feely it was. But he said he’d done this on his first-ever BCSC course, and it had always stuck with him.”

I rolled onto my side to face him, too. I kept my voice low, so as not to wake the others. “What was it?”

“He said, ‘Think of somebody who loved you. Or loves you. Somebody who is rooting for you. Who believes in you. Who would be willing to suffer for you.’”

“Beckett said that?”

Jake nodded. “He said that there will come a day when things are so hopeless that the only way we’ll get through will be to turn to our person, whoever it is, in our heads—so we can draw strength from them to keep going.”

I studied him. “Are you telling me this now because tomorrow is going to be one of those days?”

He nodded. “That, and you seem pretty shaky. You might want to get ahold of your person.”

“Who’s your person?” I asked.

No hesitation. “My mom.”

“Not your dad?”

“My dad’s great,” he said. “But he’s not my mom.” Then he turned to me. “Who’s your person?”

No hesitation, either. “My brother,” I said.

Jake lifted his eyebrows. “Duncan?” he asked. “Really?”

And here was a moment when I could have faked it. I could have just said, “Yes, Duncan,” and no one would have been the wiser but me. But it wasn’t Duncan. It was my other brother, the one I never talked about. And yet suddenly, out of nowhere, with this twenty-two-year-old guy, I’d just brought him up.

It could have been the quiet of the night, with the two of us lying on our sides so close to each other—the only ones awake in the whole crowd—that made it feel like the right time for sharing secrets. Or the fact that we were already whispering. I didn’t know. But I did know this: I could lie to him right now, or I could tell the truth—and for some reason, suddenly, telling the truth didn’t seem so bad.

“No, not Duncan,” I said then, in what felt like slow motion. “My other brother.”

Jake nodded like that’s what he’d expected. “The brother you lost.”

“That’s right. The brother I lost. Nathan.”

I looked over. Jake met my eyes.

“Do you know about him?” I was never sure how much Jake knew about anything.

He gave a little shrug. “Just that you were very close. And he died the year before Duncan was born.”

“That’s right. He’s thereasonDuncan was born, actually.”

“He was killed in an accident, right?”

“He drowned.” As I said the words, that familiar feeling of sorrow filled up my lungs.

I could have stopped there, but for some reason I didn’t understand, I wanted to keep going. I sat up crisscross then, making sure to stay close and keep my voice down. “We were at my parents’ friends’ lake house. The adults were all drinking and having a good time. We were with a big batch of kids, and we were supposed to be watching a movie, but Nathan wanted to go to the marina instead and run around on the docks. He begged me to take him, but I didn’t want to, and so without telling us, he went on his own. I just wanted to watch the movie—and you know what’s funny? I can’t even remember what movie it was. You’d think a detail like that would be seared into your memory, but it’s lost. Sometimes I lie in bed and stare at the fan, trying to remember. Now and again, I think about getting in touch with the other kids who were there that night to ask if anyone else remembers. But then I don’t. How do you call a total stranger after twenty years and ask a question like that? You can’t. So I’ll never know. It will be one of the great unanswered questions of my life.”

Jake took a minute to sit up himself, crossing his legs just like mine so that our knees touched.

“Be quiet,” I whispered, glancing at the blanket of sleeping people around us. “You’ll wake them.”

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