In the Wait: Gabe

The following is an excerpt from the 3rd novel in The Cantos Chronicles called The Bones of Who We Are (2019) . All rights reserved.

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My eyes open to the exposed rafters above my bed. There's a chill in the air, and I burrow deeper under the covers to block it out. I close my eyes to return to the bliss of sleep.

School.

Shit.

You'll see Abby.

Abby!

My eyes fly open as heat spreads across my chest. I smile and my cheeks heat with a new awareness of my body and hers. What we did last night. I remember the feel of her in my arms.

I love her so freaking much.

I'm up and out of bed.

Your father supposedly loved your mother. Look what he did. I shake my head of the thoughts. Nothing is going to steal the golden joy I've got today.

Nothing.

I'm dressed.

My thoughts are a flurry.

I wonder how this is going to go down at school. Should I kiss her? Hold her?

Oh shit! The fight. Will I be suspended?

My phone vibrates. I smile hoping it's from who I want and knowing it probably is.

Abby: You awake?

My heart constricts thinking about her. Good morning. I write and add an emoji with heart eyes. As if she were with me, I feel her lips, her tongue, the way we struggled to say good night in the cab of the truck. "I love you," I'd said unable to stop now that I understood, unable to stop my hands touching her, making sure she was real.

Now, I can't stop smiling.

The three dots come up and stay that way for a long time. I feel the crease between my eyes as my eyebrows draw together. I wonder what she's thinking and have a moment of panic. What if she thinks she's made a mistake? My heart stumbles a moment, careening to a halt before slamming into a wall and sputtering back to life with an erratic pace. What if maybe I'd imagined everything? I type: What's up? You okay?

Abby: No.

I lean against the bathroom counter, my joy trickling down the drain behind me. The phone is in my hands, chest high, and I'm watching those three dots taunt me. It was too good to be true. I was a fool.

Abby: Going to the hospital.

I breathe, unaware I'd been holding my breath. At first there's a moment of relief she hasn't sent me a message which says we've made a mistake because I know last night was not a mistake for me. Within the span of a split second, my relief turns to concern. Why would she need to go to the hospital?

I write: Why? WTF? What's wrong?

Abby: It isn't me.

Me: Who?

Abby: It's Seth. There's been an accident.

My mouth drops open and closes. There's a mistake. I swallow down the doubt as I dial her phone. Maybe it's nothing and there's been a mistake. Abby answers on the first ring. "What the fuck are you talking about?" I ask.

I'm back in the school office last night after the fight. It's like slow motion in my mind. I see his head hung and the way he glances at his father. The fear. The look he gave me as Dale and I walked out. I remember thinking maybe I should do something, but what?

My throat constricts. I think I might be sick.

"Williams called Matt this morning," she says. I hear her tears. "His dad transported Seth to the hospital late last night; it's bad."

There are a million questions going through my mind, but nothing comes out. My throat has closed, and my stomach flips over on itself. I breathe through my mouth fighting the nausea.

"Gabe?" She asks.

"I'll meet you there," I say and hang up, confused and needing to move at the same time as though there's an itch deep inside my legs working its way up through my spine and out my mouth. A strange animalistic sound, part sob, part yell, part warrior cry, comes from inside me. It's deep and guttural, rooted in emotions so visceral I wouldn't have found them if I had been looking. I sink to a crouch on the bathroom floor, curled into myself as though it might protect me from the pain or to hold in my grief.

"Gabe," Martha knocks on the bathroom door, and when I don't answer she opens it. "Gabe!" She sees me, breathing as though my lungs are coming out from my mouth, she's on the floor with me. "What is it? Are you okay?"

"It's Seth," I choke. "Something's happened."

"Oh. Oh," she says and holds me against her. "What is it?"

"I don't know. Abby called. He's been in an accident. She's going to the hospital." The information comes out in short bursts of breath. "It's my fault," I tell her, look at her. "My fault," I say.

"No. No," she says my face in her hands and comforts me.

"I should have known. His dad-"

Martha holds me at arm's length so she can see me. "We don't know anything, yet," she says. "I'll take you down there, okay?"

I nod.

"It may be something minor." She offers hope.

I accept it, but there are no hopeful kites floating in the sky of my mind. It's bad. When we walk into the waiting room of the Intensive Care Unit and I see the grim faces of those inside, I understand this isn't a room of hope.

Abby, who's waiting in the room with her dad, jumps up when she sees me and rushes into my arms.

We wait.

***

"I've been looking for you," I tell Abby later when I find her in the main lobby of the hospital. She'd disappeared, followed Seth's Mom from the waiting room, and I haven't seen her since. I waited. And waited. And waited. Accusing eyes burned holes through me while I did which propelled me from the room when she didn't return. The silent accusation from fake people at school – Seth's friends - aren't any different than what is already scrolling through my mind like a 24-hour news alert: Freak fought Seth. Seth in hospital. Freak's fault.

After wandering the hallways and feeling claustrophobic with the hopelessness of illness and death, I go to the lobby. That's where I find her. She's drawn herself into a tiny space of a functional chair, her knees to her chest and her arms wrapped around them, as if she's trying to disappear. The despondent way she looks I feel in my soul like hundreds of nails pounded into my flesh. Her cheek is resting on her knees, and she stares unseeing, or seeing something that isn't concretely in the hospital lobby with us.

She looks up at the sound of my voice.

She's been crying.

I want to draw her into my arms, to offer comfort. I want to smooth the stray lock of her dark brown hair hanging over her golden cheek behind her ear and allow my hand to rest on her head. I want to lean over her, be a shelter for the pelting pain. I want to return to the cocoon we'd insulated in ourselves the night before, but it has broken open and spilled us out defenseless and unprepared into a painful world.

We can't.

With Seth lying in the hospital bed battling death, how do I deserve that?

She loved him first. She has always said she loves him. She might have told me she loved me last night, and I her. We might have taken comfort in one another's bodies, but, now, I'm not sure it's enough today.

The pain and guilt I feel are like leaden weights tied to my feet and dragging me to the bottom of a very deep sea. I'm the interloper. I've taken. I've betrayed. I gulp nothing, but it's a huge load of pain that feels like swallowing nails.

She looks away and stares out the window. "I saw him," she says. Tears slip from her eyes and create wet spots on the fabric covering her knees.

"And?" I ask but don't want to. No. I don't want to know, because the truth of what has happened isn't something I want to think about. I don't want to think about how I've committed the ultimate betrayal of him with the girl he loves, and now, she's sitting here looking like a wilting flower. I don't want to think about his body lying upstairs in the hospital room. I don't want to think about walking away from him last night, after the fight when my dad picked me up, and the look on his face when he saw his own father – a monster like my own. I don't want to think about the tears climbing up my throat, tears I don't deserve to cry. I don't want to think about it, because I don't want to lose her; I don't want to lose him. It all feels like my fault.

A sob catches in her throat. "Bad," is the only clear word I catch.

I sit down next to her and draw her into my arms anyway. She turns against me and cries big heavy sobs which need the support of an extra set of arms. I give that to her. I love her - my first lover. And I love him - my first friend. This pain can't be born alone.

She's heavy, leaning into me, bunching up my shirt in her hands. I tighten my arms around her warm body and restrain my own tears even if I feel them like razor blades in the back of my throat. The grief is a storm hurled with ferocity, gusty and frightful. Despite the bluster which mirrors the emotion careening through my own spirit, Abby in my arms brings me comfort. I find reprieve to the thoughts swirling around in my mind. As the storm of emotion subsides into a gentler rain until it passes, we continue to hold onto one another. Shelters.

Abby presses her face against my chest, her head under my chin. Eventually she says, "He's hooked up to machines. They are breathing for him."

I close my eyes, regret too heavy to keep them open, and draw her tighter.

"And his mom was trying to be brave. She said, 'he was a good boy, until me.'"

"Did she really say that?" I don't believe it.

"Close enough," she says and begins to cry again, softer this time. "It's my fault. This is my fault," she says.

I shake my head. No. No way. If anyone is to blame, it's me. "No, Abby."

She nods. "I came between you. The fight. The accident."

I pull away from her, just drawing back enough so I can see her face. Her eyes are rimmed with her anguish and regret, red and filled with still unshed tears. I shake my head. "No. You aren't to blame for this." I draw her back into my arms, but she pushes free.

Leaning away from me and no longer touching she says, "You aren't blaming yourself?"

I search her face, memorizing it. "I'm the only one to blame."

Her grief changes. It melts off of her face and reorganizes itself into something more substantive – like rock. Her eyes have hardened while her mouth has thinned out. "That's ridiculous."

"As ridiculous as blaming yourself?"

She turns in her seat, facing forward and her feet on the floor now.

I know she won't hear me – won't understand why this is my fault. She won't hear I knew he loved her. She won't hear Seth loved her first. She won't hear I betrayed him by loving her. While I might have conveniently dismissed all the harm Seth perpetrated against me, in the midst of this cyclone, my own betrayal is the eye of the storm around which everything else swirls.

I shift in my seat next to her, mirroring her body language.

Hearts broken – not by one another – but moving toward it.

We sit like that, saying little to nothing, locked in our own pain and grief, blaming ourselves but incapable of absolving the other.

Her father finds her. I watch her leave the hospital. She doesn't look back.

Martha finds me and takes me home.

Later, when the haunting of my culpability becomes insistent, and I'm unable to sleep, I climb from my bed. I pick up my phone charging in the dock on my desk. Sitting back down, I open up the screen and press the messaging app to text Abby, the blue glow from the screen illuminating the darkness around me. I miss her. I need her to fill the awful space in my chest. She is, after all, the only one I want to talk to.

I press her name and press the bubble to type the text. The keyboard opens and line blinks at me, waiting. But I don't type anything.

I want to say: I love you.

I want to say: I need you.

I want to say: I'm hurting.

I don't. I watch the blinking line.

Then I turn the phone off and the room is submerged in darkness again.

I set the phone back on the desk and lay back in bed staring up at the dark ceiling.

There is a storm swirling in me like a hurricane filled with all the debris of my life. The rejection, the pain, the ugly truth of who I am and where I've come from. Seth lying in that hospital bed is an indication. I didn't help him. I made it worse. As the emotional storm swirls, I drift a million miles from her. I don't deserve to reach out for her. I deserve to trade places with Seth. It was always meant to be that way.

In the Wait: Abby

The atmosphere in the hospital is barren even though the spaces are burgeoning with people. Faces are drawn, serious, lined with focus and concern. Inside the building, as my father, my brother, Matt, and I move through the sterile hallway, there is nothing that communicates growth here, only waiting. The waiting room is a testament to it. The tension presses against my lungs, making it difficult to breathe. A glance around the room and I see faces crumpled with tears, neutral with disbelief, or in the act of rejecting the news. I'm bargaining - if I just open my eyes from this nightmare, then Seth being here won't be real; my being here won't be real.

"What's wrong?" I'd asked entering the kitchen. My family was assembled in the room in clumps. "What's wrong?" I repeated and panic replaced the nausea.

"Matt got a call this morning from one of his teammates," Dad said. His arm was around mom.

Mom wiped her eyes with a tissue. "There was an accident last night."

"A car accident," my dad added.

My stomach rolled. "What? Who?"

I shake my head at them the moment his name is said: "Seth." I barely made it to the bathroom to be sick.

Now, I squeeze my dad's hand with mine reassuring myself he's here with me. He offers a comforting squeeze in return and leads me to a thinly cushioned seat.

I'm not sure what I feel. Numb. Everything came out of me when I got the news earlier which has left me feeling strangely empty. It's as if I've become a shell of myself, cracking across seams and with the slightest pressure I will collapse in on myself. Though, simultaneously, I'm antsy, as if I need to move, need to find purpose, need to fix this. I just can't, and that makes me feel useless. The swirling mess of emotions inside me are a building tornado.

I watch the doorway, waiting for Gabe. He said he was on his way. I watch the doorway, waiting for news about Seth. Waiting.

My knees are pulled up to my chest, feet on the seat in front of me, one arm wrapped around my knees and my hand still drawing on my father's strength. Matt is next to me, but he gets up when one of his teammates - Carter - walks into the room.

My heart has sped up thinking it might be Gabe, but sputters when it isn't.

Seth's friend is a ghost of himself. His blond hair is messy, as if he's rolled from his bed and come straight to the hospital the moment he did. My free hand goes to my own hair pulled into a haphazard bun. Carter's usually flush cheeks - colored with life and good nature - are nearly translucent, his lips drawn into a tense line. Near the doorway he and Matt hug and exchange words. I can't hear anything but the low rumble of their transaction, whatever is said meant to be between them. Matt returns with Carter on his heels.

"This is Carter," Matt tells my father.

Dad has stood and lets go of me so that he can shake the other boy's hand. They talk about something familiar and safe: soccer. It's strange given the situation, but maybe not when all any of us want is to return to what is normal. Dad sits back down in his chair and takes my hand once again. I lean toward his stability.

Carter's dark blue eyes meet mine and he lifts his chin. "Hey," he says and doesn't offer anything else.

I acknowledge him with a nonverbal lift of my eyebrows. There isn't much reason to offer any more, and I'm pretty sure we don't think much about it the circumstances as they are. We've been on opposite sides of the social chasm all year and only united in a common concern for a mutual friend in the now.

He sits on the opposite side of Matt from me, and I listen as they talk about soccer - the subdued tone of their words offer a sort of comfort. They move onto discussion about basketball and then video games to fill the space and time with normalcy. There's something comforting in eavesdropping if only to fill my ears with something real rather than the loop of worry in my brain.

Where is Gabe?

"You need anything?" My dad asks me.

I shake my head and glance down at my phone wishing Gabe would text, or call, or something.

People enter the room.

People I know. Some I don't.

Matt speaks to teammates who build a cell around us.

Some people leave the room.

Sara arrives. She looks perfect, the porcelain doll whose edges are soft and rounded, but breakable. Her green eyes stop at me and narrow. I think about what she did because of Seth, my violent response in the cafeteria, and wonder if she's thinking about it too because she turns on her heal and walks to the opposite side of the room.

More people arrive. The room fills to capacity.

Then - finally - Gabe appears in the doorway - tall, beautiful, and I feel myself finally able to take a breath.

His usually caramel colored skin looks ashy, and the corners of his full mouth pulled down with the worry on his face. His bright blue eyes are dull and rimmed red with unshed tears, or tears that have already fallen that he hasn't shared with me. He's in his black sweatshirt though the hoodie isn't up, hands shoved into the front pocket. As he looks around the room - I assume for me - he runs a hand over his curly hair.

Our eyes collide.

I jump from my seat and walk into his open arms.

Martha, his mom, is with him. She lays a comforting hand on my shoulder and then moves into the room toward my father.

"I'm so glad you're here," I say into this chest.

His arms contract, drawing me closer, and I can feel his body fold up around me, his chin fitting into the space near my ear. "I don't know what to do. What to think," he whispers. "I keep seeing him yesterday, after the fight." His voice sounds different, unbalanced and full of regret. He isn't crying, but I can hear the tears wrapped around his vocal chords.

The night before, when he'd arrived on my doorstep after their fight, he'd had a similar, off-kilter sound. Then we'd found comfort in one another's arms and bodies, and the world seemed to reorient, but now everything has changed as if our time together was a temporary reprieve. I don't want it to be true.

"Together," I tell him to combat the lie in my head, "We'll figure it out together," I say, but I'm not sure in that moment I believe it even if I want to. The only thing moving in my blood is fear for Seth even in spite of what he's done, and guilt for leaving him behind.

I clasp Gabe to me afraid that if I loosen my hold we might both slip away.

A Letter from Gabe (The Bones of Who We Are)

Dear Reader,

There’s a saying - I think it’s by one of those ancient philosophers, but I don’t remember which one - that says something like “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” I think the old white guy was talking about cookies or something, not people, because when I look in the mirror, I can’t stop seeing all of the parts. I think that’s something you should know about me.

I don’t even know why I’m writing this letter to you. I don’t know you. I’m not one to share info even with the people I care about. Doc Miller suggests I open up. Trust, he says. It isn’t easy. Truth is, it’s impossible. Hasn’t been a lot of reasons in my life to extend trust. I suppose that’s why I’ve decided to walk into the woods drunk with a gun.

I can hear your question: Why?

Because there’s no other way to save the people I love from the monster inside me. 

When I was ten, I was brought to Cantos by a social worker - Maura Dunning. She made a mistake but that mistake was probably the best one that ever happened to me in a series of mistakes that has defined my life to now. I’m a mistake. I’ve spent the last seven years trying to forget the awful event that precipitated my arrival here. The truth, though, is that you can’t run from who you are. You can’t forget those parts of you. No matter how much you try to forget the pieces, those snapshots of experience that contribute to the whole of you, they get abscessed. 

Don’t get me wrong - there’s a lot of good stuff. There’s Martha and Dale, Abby, Doc Miller.  It’s hard to see the good clearly though, because the bad is so ugly. What’s that saying? I think Doc Miller told me one time: It’s hard to see the forest through the trees. My whole life has gotten lost among the trees; I’m smart enough to know I’m in a forest, but don’t know how to find my way out anymore. I’m stuck in a loop. And now the infection is finding its way out. The monster.

So, that’s why I’m headed into the forest with what’s left of a bottle of whiskey and a gun in my pocket. 

Can I ask you a favor? I left a letter for Dale and Martha, and one for Abby. Tell them to look in Cardboard Castle. And please tell them all, I love them. And I’m sorry.

Gabe

A Letter from Seth (The Ugly Truth)

Dear Reader:

First thing you should know about me: I can’t be trusted.

Why? I lie. 

I know it’s wrong, and I do it anyway. It’s survival instinct.

For this letter, though, I’ll do my best to tell you the truth (within reason and as long as I can preserve my safety). . . 

My name is Seth Peters. I’ve lived in Cantos, Oregon my whole life, and I’m the only child of Jack and Kate Peters. I’m pretty good at school - I’m a junior; I’m really good at soccer which will probably be how I get to college (if I live that long); I’ve got a lot of friends and a lot of people who want to be my friend. 

That’s all I got. 

As I read what I’ve written back, I note its superficiality. It makes me sad because this is really all I show anyone. No one really wants to dive any deeper anyway because the deeper we go, the darker it gets. Any more and I might scare you away. My story isn’t a glossy narrative in which we hold hands after and sing campfire songs. No one wants the honest truth about what happens in the secret hearts of men. Lies are safer, easier, and allow us to turn our heads so we don’t have to face the ugly truth.

So, I guess the overall message I’m trying to tell you is to enter at your own risk. 

Sincerely,

Seth 

A Letter from Abby (Swimming Sideways)

Aloha e na World - 

My name is Abigail Keānuenueonālani Kaiāulu & Swimming Sideways is my story. Everyone calls me Abby. The rest of my name is Hawaiian which I get from my dad. My middle name means A rainbow from heaven because on the day I was born my Poppa saw a rainbow. He said it was a sign of great things because rainbows are strong signs in Hawaiian culture often associated with chiefs (aliʻi). So far, I think I’m a disappointment to my name but Poppa would tell me to be patient. My last name is a wind - a gentle breeze - that comes in from the ocean to the Westside, my Waiʻanae homeland. 

I have spent all of my life on the island of Oʻahu except for the summers hanging out with my Grandma Bev (my mom’s mom) in Oregon and now, Arizona. I have a lot of fond memories of those Oregon summers: a friend named Seth; the tall trees; Grandma Bev’s laugh; playing in the woods behind her house; building sandcastles at the beach. Visiting Arizona is different and less frequent now that Grandma Bev does a lot of traveling with her group of retired friends. My favorite place to be is home, on Oʻahu in the ocean. I love to surf. Poppa taught me.

Everything changed for me a couple of years ago, when my Poppa died. He raised my twin brothers & me because our parents worked. He taught me everything I know about Hawaiian culture (I wish I’d been a better listener). When he died, my family fell apart. I fell apart, and made some choices I wish I could take back. That’s when the incident occurred, and it impacted my world at school too. Needless to say, the last year or so has been hell on earth.

My mom and dad told us we were moving to Oregon. They’ve been fighting a lot, and I’m pretty confident that this decision was my mom’s. She’s from Oregon, so it’s what she knows. At first, I was upset about it, but the more time I’ve had to consider the opportunity it presents for a fresh start, I don’t find myself as antagonistic toward the idea. Dad said that Hawaiians were explorers: they navigated the stars to find Hawaii, so now we’re going to do some exploring.

Here’s what I think. Explorer or not, it’s my job to make sure no one finds out about The Incident at my new school in Oregon. That means I have to do everything right, because I can’t face my junior year in the same social dump where I’ve spent the last year and a half. I’m also hoping my family will find a way to make it through these rough seas. When my Poppa was teaching me to surf, he said how important it is to watch the ocean before getting into it. Be an observer, he’d said.  He also said that sometimes we all get caught in a rip current. “If that happens, Tita, don’t fight it. Swim sideways out of it.” So, that’s what I’m trying to do: Swim Sideways.

I hope you enjoy my story.

Aloha,

Abby