Page 127 of My Debacle with De Lorenzo

I cup her face so our eyes can meet. “Dana, look at me. It’s Dylan, okay? I’m not him. I don’t have any drugs. It’s Dylan.”

She nods, still looking wary and confused. We reach her bed and I lift the duvet so she can climb in. She sits down, her body becoming more rigid and tense, and then it comes out of nowhere.

“Don’t touch me!”

She grabs the new snow globe from the nightstand, and it crashes into the right side of my face the next second, the edge of it slicing my eyebrow. My vision blurs and it takes a moment to recover from the dizzying impact. I can take open palms. I can take closed fists. I’ve even taken kicks on many occasions, but a fucking snow globe to the face leaves me defenseless for a minute.

“Get off me!” she yells. “Get away from me!”

Hands and feet come at me with fury. I can barely see to protect myself from the assault. She’s wild, out of control, and I just take the beating like I always do because I can’t bring myself to use the amount of force it would take to restrain her.

“Dana, stop! Stop...look at me.” I use my forearm as a shield against her flying hands as blood runs from my eyebrow. “Stop...please stop and...look at me. It’s me. It’s Dylan.” Her hands slow down and I catch both of them, clasping them together in mine. I kneel in front of her so that we’re at eye level with each other. “It’s Dylan, okay? I’m not going to hurt you.”

She looks at me, really looks at me, and relief spreads over her face. “Dylan...where were you? I was calling you...for so long. You didn’t come.”

If there’s anything that hurts more than a snow globe to the face, it’s hearing that. It totally and utterly shatters me. I know the rules. I know we don’t cry because we need to be strong for her, but I can’t do it. Not after hearing that. I drop my forehead against our clasped hands, and I just break.

“I’m sorry.” It comes out as a shaky whisper as I try to swallow the guilt because now I have to pretend as if tonight was the night she was calling me. It doesn’t matter how many times I apologize, it’s never enough. “I’m so sorry...I-I didn’t hear you.”

“Giorgio!” My mother’s shrill scream makes my head snap up. “Oh, my God, Dylan!” She rushes in, leaving the hot chocolate on the dresser before racing to the bed. She drops to her knees beside me, grabbing my face to examine the cut on my eyebrow. “Giorgio!”

I pull out of her grasp. “I’m fine, mom.”

“You’re not. Let’s go get this cleaned up.”

My father comes running into the room then and it takes one second for him to assess the situation. “Go,” he tells my mother. It’s a well-practiced game of tag-team that they play.

He takes the hot chocolate from the dresser and walks to Dana to coax her back into bed while my mother and I walk to the bathroom. I sit down on the closed toilet seat, and she takes out disinfectant and cotton balls from the cabinet. She gently cleans the cut on my eyebrow, tilting my face toward the light so she can get a better look at it.

“It doesn’t look deep,” she says. “But the swelling is gonna take a few days to go down.”

I don’t say one word. I just stare blankly in front of me as she wipes the blood off my cheek. She doesn’t say anything about the tears running down my face. She just swipes them away and carries on doing what she’s doing until she can’t take it anymore.

“Dana told you she was calling you again.”

It’s a statement, not a question because she knows that’s the only thing that gets me to this point. My torso drops forward, my head falling into my hands because my body can’t take the weight of those words. The fear and the pain and the panic – I live through it all again in that one moment. It fuses with my rage and helplessness, and I can’t contain it all. It comes out in violent shudders, ceaseless tears and I find myself choking on my own guilt, desperately gasping for air because my chest is so tight, I can’t even breathe.

My mother kneels in front of me, pulling my head onto her shoulder and holding me tight. “Dylan, what happened to Dana...it’s not your fault.”

I shake my head, rejecting the thought. “It is...it is my fault. She was calling for help and I wasn’t there...I wasn’t there when she needed me most.”

“Sweetie?”

“I’m her big brother. I’m supposed to protect her. I never should’ve left her alone. I had one job...and I failed. That asshole hurt her...so bad, and he got her hooked on drugs. Look at where we are now. We lie to everyone, telling them she’s at boarding school when really she’s bouncing between rehab and psychiatric facilities. We keep saying she’ll come home when she’s better, but what if that never happens? What if she gets worse, and she gets stuck in that place in her mind where he keeps on hurting her? You didn’t see the way she fought me tonight, mom.” The words catch in my throat, and my entire body freezes inside. I’m trapped on a ship, sinking deeper into nothingness. The water is below zero, and I can’t get out because I’m so cold. I can’t feel my arms or my legs. My lungs are collapsing, and I feel like I’m drowning in the guilt. “And it fucking rips me apart to know she was calling me to save her from that, to save her fromhim...and I wasn’t there. All that’s on me.”

“It’s not,” she says quickly. Cupping my face, she kisses my cheek, then forehead, and I feel her tears on my skin. She shifts back to look at me. “Listen to me. It’s not your fault. There’s no way you could’ve stopped it. You take on all this blame and it’s not warranted because you did nothing wrong. You can’t keep doing this to yourself, Dylan, because this blame game you’re playing is making you overcompensate in other ways. You’ve made it some kind of mission to protect all girls from all assholes. It just takes one comment, and you snap. You get into fights all the time because you’re misdirecting your anger, unleashing it on anyone who disrespects a girl. What you’re trying to do is an impossible task, and it only makes you angrier when you don’t get the satisfaction you want from beating up...some random guy. You have to stop. It’s killing you inside.”

I rake unsteady fingers through my hair, trying to ease the pounding in my head. “I just...I just wanna hurt him,” I bite out through gritted teeth. “I want to feel his bones break beneath my fists. I want his screams of pain to be loud enough to drown out hers. I want to keep punching until he stops moving.”

“I know. You’re angry. We’re all angry.” She touches my cheek and, honestly, she looks more worried than angry. “But we can’t let it consume us. Your sister needs us to get better. We have to be strong for her. We need to let it go so we can help her let it go.”

I nod and she pulls me closer, holding me until my breathing slows and the rage inside me ebbs a fraction.

My dad walks into the bathroom then. “She’s asleep.” His eyes move from my mother to me. “How’re you doing over there?”

“I’m okay.” I stand up and walk to the door, stopping in front of him.

“Tonight was rough for you. There’s some alpha juice in the fridge if you need some.”

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