John jerked awake. He had been falling, falling through space, off the edge of the planet and hurtling into the cosmos, past cartoonish stars and fiery comets and gaseous giants until bang!—he'd hit the black bottom, exploding into a blistering array of fireworks. He sat up, clutching at the heavy duvet before he remembered to breathe, find the familiar, ground himself in the tactile sensation of the fabric, the sigh of the air conditioning system somewhere above him.
A blue nightlight glowed by the door, the strip of LEDs beckoning. He felt slightly ill from the dream. Or the feeling from earlier was back with a vengeance, a reminder of the last few weeks' gross national product: he had burned all his bridges. The impossibility of taking it all back was staggering. All the apologies he owed to people. All the other expressions of regret he'd been working his way through the last few months.
He wanted to remove himself from the equation—become an idea, a philosophy, lose the flesh and bone weighing him down and ascend into the world of theory. A memory of the good person he'd been before. But he'd been told wading through the low-tide of his bad decisions was necessary—feeling awful was necessary, but he couldn't see why. In Dad's office, John had been all the enviable things he'd always admired: cool, calm, calculated. Taking nothing personally, being perpetually above the bedlam of emotions. Dad hadn't been angry either. He was probably angry now though, when the dust had settled and he'd come home to regard the situation with a bit of distance.
What had John done?
He felt diminishingly small, vanishingly stupid. He'd gone to such effort to remind them how he hadn't changed at all, despite everyone's best efforts. He'd given them proof of a future pattern. The appearance of change without the heart to pull it through to the other side. Because he still wanted to win. Winning felt good. Winning poured concrete into the space his heart had vacated. He'd won, hadn't he? He'd shut them all up. Dad, Scott, and Gordon. Only three more left to go. Grandma at Thanksgiving, Virgil at the party—
The party.
John felt his heart shudder in his chest. Brains had been invited. His boss in the penthouse, within close proximity. His boss outside the lab. Incomprehensible. And Alan—he'd expect things to be normal, because that was the lie John had been feeding him. Everything was fine, underwhelmingly normal. A monotonous routine of eat, sleep, work. What did John need to explain? He couldn't tell him. Couldn't disappoint him. How could anyone think this would be the right time to tell Alan?
John got out of bed.
He needed to stop thinking about it.
The thought followed him down the hall.
Alan would never look at him the same way again.
Theoretically, how would John even open the conversation?
Alan, buddy. Have a seat. I have something to tell you.
The lie of omission had been growing in the last six months. There was no good explanation for what had happened, was there? I was tired, Alan. Overworked. Burnt out. I wasn't thinking.
Alan would never believe that.
John headed for the kitchen, following the to-do list for the nights he couldn't sleep.
Drink some water
or
Go to the bathroom
or
Walk it off
What had he done in Harvard in the dead of the night? Listened to music? Rewritten his notes? Rearranged the bookshelf? His thoughts hair-pinned around the corner. Was Dad home? Did he even care? John dwindled, shrinking into himself. Yeah, Dad was probably home, and John would have known that if he hadn't skipped dinner and gone to bed. Dad and Gordon had probably sorted out dinner for themselves. Scott too, if he had made it home in time. Maybe they'd all cooked together and sat at the big table and made easy, unhurried conversation. Like fathers and sons usually do.
John was in the kitchen. The fridge clock read 02.04. His thoughts felt loose, wildly unbound from the usual patterns. The penthouse was too quiet at night, too loud; there was nothing to stop his brain from plummeting over the edge. Nothing. He was dreaming again; he was embraced by the airless vacuum of the universe—the stars were screaming into the void, a supernova exploding in its violent collapse, its dregs renamed the neutron star—and then there was John Tracy, a particle, a speck of a speck in the grand opera of space, zipping heedlessly into the tangle of questions. Should he go back to bed? Why? He'd never sleep now. He'd never sleep again. Wasn't it meaningless to try? Wasn't he wide awake? Why should he follow the usual patterns? Why get water? It would only filter through him at the regular, four-hour intervals, assuming he'd been drinking his recommended eight glasses of water a day—two liters! four pints!—he felt weighed down by how truly useless it was to take a glass out of the kitchen cupboard, but he did it anyway and filled it and drank it down like he was trying to put out a fire.
Was everything different?
Had everything changed?
John put the glass in the sink.
He had changed things, interrupted the natural process of healing. He'd been doing so well, they'd say years from now. Six whole months of being a decent human being.
He felt the cold creep into him. Things could never go back to what they'd been before. Could he even remember what they looked like? Everything beyond today was too much weight to consider.
He stepped into the living room. The balcony door was open, a faint breeze stirring the white curtains. The smell of tobacco lingered in the air. Scott. John didn't know what to say to him either, not without resorting to childish petulance. He could see Scott through the open door, sitting in one of the deck chairs; he looked like Dad, the same stony countenance, the same strong profile, except for the little red glow of the cigarette.
John should go back to bed, ignore the stone colossus contemplating the darkened skyline. They weren't talking anyway. John could see no reason why they should start.
Scott sat still for an eternity before slowly raising the cigarette to his lips, taking a drag and exhaling. "Oh, hey, John." He didn't turn his head, but his voice was awake, casual, as if he'd expected to see him here at two in the morning. "What are you doing up?"
John came over to the doorway. "Couldn't sleep."
Scott nodded, taking another drag on his cigarette, and they were both silent, the universal fact of sleepless nights soaking into their bones.
"Do you remember Landon Turner?" said Scott at last.
"Who?"
"Only you would forget the asshole who threw your backpack into Gower's Pond."
"Was that his name?"
"You really don't remember?"
"I remember vaguely."
"You came home one day with your arms all scratched up. The first thing you said was 'I fell down' and 'Don't tell Dad'." Scott inhaled, the embers of the cigarette glowing, and he breathed out, the smoke curling through his nose. "That guy was a prick."
"It's not like I asked you to do anything about it."
"You wouldn't have. You were just a kid."
"So were you."
"Was I?"
"What did you do to him anyway?"
"We negotiated."
"What does that mean?"
"I think he still whistles when he breathes."
"Right." John waited another moment. "Well, I should go back to bed."
"Yeah. Big day tomorrow."
"Alan's coming." The words climbed out of his mouth before he had a chance to stop them.
"I know."
"I don't know what to say to him." The confession was childish, bare, too simple and too young, and John flushed, feeling like it stabbed him in the side. "I mean..."
Scott let out a heavy sigh. "Me neither."
"You don't?"
"It's been a weird year. I don't know how to make sense of that in a way that's brotherly and affirming."
"Oh."
"I haven't talked to him in a long time."
"But...you talk."
"Do we?" There was something empty about the question.
"Yeah," said John. "You do."
"Sure." Scott squinted and looked purposefully away, turning the cigarette thoughtfully between his fingers. "I shouldn't have yelled at you."
"What?"
"I hadn't slept that much, and then you said you'd told Robin about Harvard—I guess I kinda snapped. It complicated things."
"What things?"
"I hit him, John."
"What?"
"At the party. Pretty hard too. He may be mildly concussed."
"You hit him?"
"It was a stupid thing to do and I know that, but the thought of him running his mouth about you in the press—" Scott slowly reached over to the mug serving as an ashtray and dropped his cigarette in. "You don't need that in your life. But I shouldn't have yelled at you. I just wish you'd told me beforehand. Maybe it would've changed things." He laughed ruefully. "I don't know how, but still..." He sounded different. He wasn't the same granite surface as before, but something farther away, immeasurably distant. "I gave Robin his thumb drive back. I felt like there needed to be closure."
"That wasn't your decision to make."
"No, it wasn't. And yet I made it anyway."
"Why?"
"Because you've been off. And there didn't seem to be anything else I could do." Scott sighed. "I wanted to do something."
"You always do."
"Yeah, I guess I do." Scott didn't look at him. "He was at La Plaisir. You know the hotel bar across from Locke Labs?" As if John would. "Predictably. Because Robin Locke is predictable. Which is maybe why I didn't see it."
"See what?"
Scott leaned back in the deckchair, not answering the question. "Why did you want to help him, that first time? After the shit-show with Branson Davis. It's not like he gave you a reason to care."
John felt himself flush, cheeks burning, and he told himself Scott wouldn't be able to see. "I don't care. It's not my thing."
"I know."
"Dr. Lapin says I have a problem."
"Glad we're paying him for such insightful revelations."
"No, I mean—he says I edit my words. I pretend. I don't say I have an addiction. At least not as often as I'm supposed to anyway, because 'owning what you did' is part of recovery. But, you see," John paused carefully, "I can't say it. Because I'm not an addict. I don't have an addiction. Because that would mean I let it get that far, and then I'd be just like the others. And I'm not. It wasn't the same thing. There was purpose to what I did. It wasn't recreational."
"Nothing about you is recreational, John."
"Right? It's not like I was sharing needles with some smackhead on a dirty mattress." Adderall was clean. "Adderall was medicine. Adderall was the easiest way to get where I wanted to go." John stopped, adding softly, "To where Dad wanted to go."
Scott finally looked at him, eyebrows furrowed. "You can't still think it's like that, John."
"I don't." Not true, was it? "Well, only some days." John shrugged and kept shrugging into eternity. "Old habits, you know?"
"Yeah. Old habits."
The smoke coiled out of the mug, the dying cigarette's last smoke signal.
"But that day with Branson Davis—when Robin walked in..." John stopped. "That was hell. I've never done that. I never would. But I know what that feels like. I've been trying to tell myself I don't. That I'm better than him. Fuck, I want to say that I am. I want to make the distinction between me and the guy who shows up for work hungover."
Scott didn't say anything.
"Because I can't be this." John waved at himself. "This loser who gets coffee for Brains."
Scott nodded, silent for a long time, then, "You make terrible coffee."
It was so off the cuff, John let out a hard laugh, part of the tension breaking inside him, catching in his chest like a sharp piece of glass. "Yeah."
"You may be right about Robin."
"What do you mean?"
"He said he went to rehab. He said he overdosed on his dad's birthday. Or nearly did. It was a bit hard to follow."
"He told you that?"
"I don't know if he meant to. And I don't know that it means anything in the long run." Scott pushed himself off the chair and stood up, reaching down to grab the makeshift ashtray off the table. "Maybe he never talked to the press. Maybe he did. The guy's kinda messed up. But I guess I'm not entirely comfortable holding that against him anymore."
John felt numb. "Okay."
Scott shouldered past him in the doorway. "I'm going to bed." He wasn't stone anymore, not immeasurably distant. "You should too."
"I will."
Scott was looking at him. "John."
"What?"
"About the party tomorrow. About Alan. You'll know what to say when you see him."
"I don't want to tell him, Scott."
"Listen, butthead. I'm not saying you have to tell him anything."
"Oh."
"You'll tell him when you're ready. If that's not tomorrow, then it's not tomorrow." Scott grinned, the last of the strange reverie breaking off and dissipating into the night. "And I know you don't feel like yourself right now, but despite the fact that you have a full-time job and a rudimentary social calendar, you still found the time and energy to fuck with me. So maybe give yourself a little more credit."
The piece that had caught in John's chest unhooked itself, letting go. "Is that the scale for progress these days?"
"Yes," said Scott, brightly, "it is."
.
.
.
Merry Christmas, everyone! This is a very weird Christmas. I haven't been able to spend it with my family, and I'm not sure when I'll get to see them in person again. It's been a tough year for most people, so I'm hoping that this chapter will cheer someone up somewhere in the world. If you like it, please let me know. Reading your comments make me happy. Please stay safe out there, people. Take care of yourselves and each other.