Page 42 of Damnation
“The torment was eating me up more each day, and I only found one way to soothe it: alcohol and drugs. They gave me the relief I needed. My pain and my rage toward that bastard faded, and the sense of impotence that ran in my veins, constantly reminding me of how useless I was, how I couldn’t do anything to change things…it disappeared. Life was still shit, but it hurt less. It was more bearable.”
I can sense the shame he feels as he tells me this truth, and my heart aches for him.
“I can’t remember a single day in the next four years when I didn’t get high or blind drunk. Nothing mattered to me anymore. Not my mother or my father or even Leila. Not even myself. In fact, I’d had it with all of them. I was mad at my mother for giving us such a shitty father and for not being able to get rid of him. I was mad at my sister for continuing to believe that, sooner or later, it was all going to stop, that he was going to repent his ways and get his head on straight. And I was angry at myself because, out of all of us, I was the most like him. So much that it scared me. And then, instead of staying with my momand protecting her, I did nothing but add to her worries. As if living with my father every day wasn’t enough to earn her a break. No…she had to deal with me too. My fuckups, the constant fights that broke out between my father and me. And with every day that passed, each time I’d come home so high I could hardly stand up straight, I would see a little more pain and disappointment fill her eyes. She had tears in her eyes and hatred in her voice, and all she would say to me was, ‘You’re just like him.’ Likehim, the animal that had ruined her life; ruined all of our lives. And do you know what the worst part was? Deep down, there was a part of me that knew she was right.”
I scowl, feeling his pain.
“You haven’t heard the worst part yet. Maybe you’ll think differently once you do,” he says with a bitterness that I’ve never heard in his voice before. “One night four years ago…everything changed,” he continues. “There’d been yet another fight at home that night. I got physical with my father in a way I hadn’t before. The neighbors called the police about the screams. My mother had completely given up, Leila was horrified by our bloody, swollen faces.
“So before I did something that I would have regretted probably for the rest of my life, I ran out of the house. I was headed for the only place where I could go to vent the way I wanted.” He pauses and I look at him, urging him to continue, grasping his hands tightly.
“I knew this guy who organized underground fights. I was so out of my mind that night that I managed to beat three huge guys in a row. I didn’t escape unscathed—I was actually in really bad shape—but I felt euphoric. I was riding high on adrenaline, but the anger was still there too. It never gave me a moment’s peace. The only way to truly stifle it was to…”
“Drink,” I finish for him, and he nods.
“I chugged whatever shit was being passed around in the back room before I left…then I got on my bike and headed home. It was on my way back…when the accident happened.”
I flinch. “The accident where you got the scar on your side?”
He nods. “The road was dark and empty. It had been raining allnight, and the asphalt was wet. By the time I saw it coming, it was too late. This truck came out of nowhere, or maybe it was there the whole time, and I was just too drunk to see it. I remember that he was going fast, but I wasn’t fucking around either. The truck swerved into my lane just for a split second, and when I tried to dodge him, the wheels went out from under my motorcycle, and I crashed right into the guardrail. It happened in a snap. When I opened my eyes up again, there he was, lying on the road a few feet away from me, dying.”
I flinch again. “He?”
“That’s what I didn’t tell you before: I wasn’t alone that night. It wasn’t just me on that bike.”
A chill runs down my spine. “Who else was there?”
Thomas doesn’t answer me. His stare is fixed on our entangled legs. Absent. Gone.
“Thomas.” I touch his fingers to his cheek, shaking him. “Tell me: Who was with you?”
It seems like an eternity, the seconds that pass before he gathers the strength to look me in the eye and speak again. But, when he finally does, I’m frozen.
“My brother.”
Eleven
I remain motionless. Paralyzed. “What…?”
Thomas is breathing deeply. He moves me off his legs, as if to reject any sort of human contact in this moment. As if he cannot stand it.
I sit on the end of the bed staring down at the floor, while around me, it feels like the room is spinning. Thomas stands up and starts pacing, running his hands over his throat and the back of his neck. His breathing becomes increasingly labored. He’s moving like an animal in a cage.
He grabs his pack of cigarettes from his pocket and puts one in his mouth, lighting it. Then he goes to the window and opens it, leaning his forearm on the frame above his head and inhaling deeply from the cigarette. “That’s the first time I’ve ever said it out loud,” he murmurs a few seconds later, and I jump a little bit at the sound of his voice.
“His name was Nathan…” I can see Thomas’s back rising and falling in an irregular rhythm, as though speaking right now is costing him a great deal of effort. “And he was thirteen.”
My heart aches for him. He was just a little boy. Another moment flashes into my mind:“I’m grieving, Ness. And it’s my fault.”He was drunk when he told me that just a few weeks ago, and I thought it was the liquor talking. But in reality…
“He…he never should have been with me that night. I knew where I was going and what I was going to do there. I knew it was no placefor him, and I knew my mother would slit my throat if she knew I was taking him out in the middle of the night with me when I was in that state. I didn’t want him to come, but arguing with him was pointless. When he got an idea into his head, there was no changing his mind, and I was too pissed to even try,” he continues in a voice shot through with anguish while clouds of his smoke rise skyward.
“He wanted to come with me because he was afraid that, with the headspace I was in, I was going to get into some kind of shit. And I don’t know…I really don’t know what was going through my mind when I let him. I just wanted to get out of that goddamn house as fast as I could. So I took him with me, not realizing that neither of us would be coming back that night.”
My tears are really flowing now, and this time, I don’t try to stop them.
“He died alone, on an empty wet road in the dark, just a few feet away from me. He was screaming my name, begging for me to help him, and I couldn’t so much as lift a fucking finger to get to him.”
It feels like the world is collapsing in on me. My head spins as blood pounds in my ears. I instinctively press a hand to my chest, feeling the rapid, convulsive beat of my heart.
