It is a funny thing to sit alone in a room of people but feel so completely isolated. To be surrounded by friends and family but feel so completely abandoned.
Scott can only sit here, surrounded by supposedly loving talk that sounds to him like nothing but white noise while he chews his fingers down to the bone, cursing his brother for this.
How could he? How could Virgil try and leave him?
It was an unfair thought, he knew, unfounded and purely built on his own darkening mood, but that clawing darkness demanded to know why. Why would his brother do this to him?
It's unfair. It's all so unfair.
He wants to go to bed. He is tired of this, all of this breathing and thinking and remembering. It's too much.
He goes to bed these days and dreams of flying his 'bird, being about to see. There Virgil will be laughing and playing the piano and everyone is happy. None of this has happened. He wonders if Virgil has the same dreams. Perhaps that is why he tried to stay asleep, and Scott begins to think that perhaps his brother has the right idea, just go to sleep and try your best not to wake up again.
He can hear his grandmother crying, and he knows he should want to comfort her, to wrap her in a hug and tell her that Virg'll be okay because he always is, but Scott doesn't want to. He wants her to go away and leave him alone so he can think. So he can demand to know why Virgil is doing this to him.
They promised. They promised each other they would stay together, that they would work through this together, and instead he is alone.
He digs his fingertips into the arm of his chair, biting his tongue to stop himself from screaming at the top of his lungs, 'How is this fair Virgil?!'