intoâ
âHeâs awake!â a voice said as a burst of intense light blinded him.
âNo!â Zak screamed. âTommy! Tommy, what were you saying! Tommy!â
âPut him back under!â someone shouted. âNow!â
âTommy!â Zak thrashed against the hands that held him down. âTommy!â
And then the world went dark. Which was fine.
But quiet, too.
Which wasnât fine.
Tommy? Tommy, are you there?
And then everythingâeven Zak himselfâwent away.
Â
TEN
He woke and then he slept again, but the sleep was dreamless, voiceless, Tommy-less, and so it felt nothing like sleep. It was, instead, a great blank stamped into him, a void. An abyss.
Being awake took on the character of dreams instead. Sometimes he couldnât open his eyes, his lids too heavy to move. Voices drifted around him, snatches of sound on the air.
La-La.
Mom.
Dad.
Other people.
Just like in a dream where no matter how fast you run, you canât make any headway, the harder Zak tried to focus on the voices around him, the less he heard. And then he would slip again into the void.
Sometimes his eyes fluttered open and he would glimpse a blurred snapshot of the worldâa face, haloed with curls, maybe his grandmother, maybe not. His dad? Who knew? He couldnât tell, and then the weight of his eyelids would win again and back to the void, back to the abyss.
Maybe that was better.
Because when he was awake, he thought of Tommy. In those brief lucid moments before sinking into the quicksand of unconsciousness, he would think of his twin, of the piece of him that had been missing without his realizing, and he wondered how he could not have known. If heâd been missing an arm, he would have known, right? And yet heâd been missing an entire person from his life and he hadnât realized.
Or maybe he had. Maybe thatâs why there was the imaginary friend, the voice, the dreams. The aching sense of solitude when forced to be on his own.
Sometimes when he opened his eyes, there was no one. No voices. No blurry faces peering down at him. He was alone. Again. This time, more alone than heâd ever been, which was a considerable amount. He had thought that the loneliness of an only child of divorced parents was as intense as could be experienced. But a single piece of paper had taught him otherwise. True loneliness proceeded not from being always alone but rather from being partnered ⦠and then losing that partner.
He hadnât even known that Tommy had existed, but now all he wanted was his twin back.
Every time he opened his eyes, they were wet with tears. In the abyss, in the formless void, Zak wept for his dead brother.
That had to mean something.
Â
ELEVEN
He finally opened his eyes for more than a few seconds. Enough time to clear them of sleep gunk.
He was in a hospital room. Clean, but in that shabby way hospital rooms haveâthere are stains even bleach canât completely eradicate, and the walls of Zakâs room bore their dingy ghosts. The smell of antiseptic soap and starch lingered, and the air hung paralyzed.
The bed was too stiff in some places, too soft in others, and no matter how Zak positioned himself, he couldnât find a spot that felt right. Add to that the wires that unspooled from stickers on his chest to a monitor, and the IV tube that kept getting caught on the bed railing, and it was impossible to be comfortable for more than two minutes at a time.
How do they expect people to get better when they canât even relax?
He suffered flickering, choppy memories of doctors and nurses clustered around him, of his parents peering down at him, their faces creased with worry wrinkles, expressions desperate and terrified. Someone had, he believed, tried to explain to him what had happenedâa âcardiac event.â Those words lingered in his recent memory. Cardiac event. That sounded scarily like something that
âHeâs awake!â a voice said as a burst of intense light blinded him.
âNo!â Zak screamed. âTommy! Tommy, what were you saying! Tommy!â
âPut him back under!â someone shouted. âNow!â
âTommy!â Zak thrashed against the hands that held him down. âTommy!â
And then the world went dark. Which was fine.
But quiet, too.
Which wasnât fine.
Tommy? Tommy, are you there?
And then everythingâeven Zak himselfâwent away.
Â
TEN
He woke and then he slept again, but the sleep was dreamless, voiceless, Tommy-less, and so it felt nothing like sleep. It was, instead, a great blank stamped into him, a void. An abyss.
Being awake took on the character of dreams instead. Sometimes he couldnât open his eyes, his lids too heavy to move. Voices drifted around him, snatches of sound on the air.
La-La.
Mom.
Dad.
Other people.
Just like in a dream where no matter how fast you run, you canât make any headway, the harder Zak tried to focus on the voices around him, the less he heard. And then he would slip again into the void.
Sometimes his eyes fluttered open and he would glimpse a blurred snapshot of the worldâa face, haloed with curls, maybe his grandmother, maybe not. His dad? Who knew? He couldnât tell, and then the weight of his eyelids would win again and back to the void, back to the abyss.
Maybe that was better.
Because when he was awake, he thought of Tommy. In those brief lucid moments before sinking into the quicksand of unconsciousness, he would think of his twin, of the piece of him that had been missing without his realizing, and he wondered how he could not have known. If heâd been missing an arm, he would have known, right? And yet heâd been missing an entire person from his life and he hadnât realized.
Or maybe he had. Maybe thatâs why there was the imaginary friend, the voice, the dreams. The aching sense of solitude when forced to be on his own.
Sometimes when he opened his eyes, there was no one. No voices. No blurry faces peering down at him. He was alone. Again. This time, more alone than heâd ever been, which was a considerable amount. He had thought that the loneliness of an only child of divorced parents was as intense as could be experienced. But a single piece of paper had taught him otherwise. True loneliness proceeded not from being always alone but rather from being partnered ⦠and then losing that partner.
He hadnât even known that Tommy had existed, but now all he wanted was his twin back.
Every time he opened his eyes, they were wet with tears. In the abyss, in the formless void, Zak wept for his dead brother.
That had to mean something.
Â
ELEVEN
He finally opened his eyes for more than a few seconds. Enough time to clear them of sleep gunk.
He was in a hospital room. Clean, but in that shabby way hospital rooms haveâthere are stains even bleach canât completely eradicate, and the walls of Zakâs room bore their dingy ghosts. The smell of antiseptic soap and starch lingered, and the air hung paralyzed.
The bed was too stiff in some places, too soft in others, and no matter how Zak positioned himself, he couldnât find a spot that felt right. Add to that the wires that unspooled from stickers on his chest to a monitor, and the IV tube that kept getting caught on the bed railing, and it was impossible to be comfortable for more than two minutes at a time.
How do they expect people to get better when they canât even relax?
He suffered flickering, choppy memories of doctors and nurses clustered around him, of his parents peering down at him, their faces creased with worry wrinkles, expressions desperate and terrified. Someone had, he believed, tried to explain to him what had happenedâa âcardiac event.â Those words lingered in his recent memory. Cardiac event. That sounded scarily like something that
Similar Books
