Page 130 of Burn Bright
I rest my forearms on my knees, more hunched, and I glance over at Xander. He takes a sharper swig of beer.
“I guess not.” Harriet widens her eyes.
“You want to tell her?” I ask him.
“Why not?” Xander turns to her. “Ben, here, thinks I’m a porcelain doll. One crack away from shattering.”
“That’s not?—”
“It is true,” Xander retorts. “Look, we can blame the total annihilation of our friendship on your shitty friends, on you feeling like I couldn’t stand up for myself, whatever, but when we were kids, younevertreated me like I was this fragile, broken thing. You don’t even get how much I fucking loved you for that.” His nose flares. He’s avoiding Harriet and rises to his feet.
I stand up too.
He stops in place.
Pain envelops me, just seeing his and knowing I’m the origin. “I just wanted to protect you,” I tell him.
“I am not one step away from self-destruction.” He points at himself with the beer bottle. When he sees me glancing at the alcohol, he lets out a dying laugh. “Jesus Christ.”
“Xander—”
“You look at me, Ben, like I’mstillthat thirteen-year-old that you found…” His voice tapers out. He’s unblinking.
I’m unblinking.
It hurts to breathe as we both see the memory in front of us. Christmas at the lake house. The night of his thirteenth birthday. One or two a.m. I needed to piss, and I slipped off the top bunk, not realizing Xander wasn’t on the bottom.
I went into our bathroom. Flicked on the lights. I saw blood, him, the bathtub, and a razor in his fingers. He was cutting the top of his thighs.
I was only thirteen too, and I got the blade out of his hand, watched him slump down into the tub in anguish I wished I could take away, and he just kept crying and pleading, “Don’t tell anyone. Don’t.Please, Ben.”
When Xander was around eleven, twelve his depression had taken an all-time low. It wasn’t a secret to our families that he wasn’t doing well.
I helped him out of the tub. “We can just sit for a sec. I’ll get bandages.” I got him to calm down, and we sat on the floor while I peeled off Band-Aids and he stuck them on his cuts.
He was blinking through streaming tears. “You can go. I’m making your night worse, maybe your life…I don’t know.”
“It’s not worse.” I caught his drifting gaze. “Honestly, I’d rather sit on this bathroom floor with you for a billion years than not have you in this world at all.” His chin quaked, and I added, “I bet it’d get pretty crammed in here because all our families would feel the same too.”
Xander nodded a bunch.
I nodded back and asked, “You think Eliot would stand on the sink?”
He choked out a weak laugh. “And recite some weird soliloquy.” Then he wiped his runny nose. It took him a while to speak again, but he whispered out, “Thanks, Ben.”
I didn’t tell anyone what happened. In a way, I thought he’d trust me more. I thought we’d grow closer. I thought if he hit another low, I’d be someone he’d go to, but he’s right that I started treating him like he was always in harm’s reach.
Gone were the simple times of penis Etch A Sketch drawings. Things got real. I did not want to lose my cousin to anything.
I’m still naturally searching for the bubble-wrap when he’s around.
Harriet casts tense glances between us. “Ben found you where…?”
I’m floored when Xander admits, “Cutting. I was cutting myself in the bathroom.” He’s only looking at me.
“Oh,” she murmurs.
I take a breath. “Maybe I should’ve told someone what happened.”
