I would sit on the curb outside the community room door, leaving him alone to do his meeting thing in privacy. But when the meeting let out, I would walk him to the bus stop and we would ride home together. And if he wanted to, he could tell me how it had gone.
Yeah. That felt right.
I walked back around the building. Sat on the curb where the sidewalk leading to the meeting room door met the tarmac of the parking lot. My back to the door, I watched the sun through the trees, careful not to stare long enough to burn out my eyes and go blind. But I wanted to see if I could actually watch it go down. Or if time moved too slowly for that.
A couple of minutes later, long before I got the answer about the sun, I heard the door swing open behind me. I didn’t even have time to turn around and see who was coming out. Before I could, a knee crashed into my back, and the person attached to the knee went flying over me.
“Ow!” I shouted out loud.
I watched my brother Roy fall onto his crutches on the tarmac. It was weird how the moment seemed to play out almost in slow motion.
“Ow!” he shouted.
So we had that in common, anyway.
I lurched up and forward to get to him. I tried to help him up. But for the moment he seemed to accept being down.
“I didn’t see you there,” he said. “The sun was in my eyes.”
“You okay?”
“I think I bruised my ribs falling on this damn crutch.”
“You sure you didn’t break any?”
“Not positive,” he said. “No.”
“Did you hurt your foot?”
“Oddly, no.”
“Where were you going?”
He never answered the question. Then again, the longer the silence held, the more the question answered itself.
“Come on,” I said. “You have to get up.”
He sighed deeply. Then he let me help him to his feet. I handed him back his crutches.
I thought he might challenge me and walk off toward the bus stop. He didn’t. I think he might have been too humiliated for that.
He walked back to the door, and I held it open for him. And then I followed him in. And sat with him.
He never offered a word of objection.
It was somewhere near the end of the sharing, when I’m pretty sure everybody else had spoken. The leader of the meeting—a big guy with a leather vest and tattoos all up and down both arms—asked my brother Roy if he wanted to say anything.
He didn’t call him by name.
He just said, “Maybe our newcomer would like to share?”
Roy pressed his lips into a tight line and shook his head.
Everybody stood up and closed the meeting by holding hands around in a circle and reciting the serenity prayer out loud. I had been sitting next to Roy, so I was holding his hand on the left side, which felt weird. Actually weirder than holding the hand of a total stranger on my right.
I didn’t know the prayer, so I just moved my lips a little and listened. Soon I would know it backward, forward, and upside down.
Chapter Fifteen
What Might Be Coming Next
Connor showed up at my house early the next morning. Very early. Before my run. Before my parents were awake.
I let him in through the kitchen door and we tiptoed upstairs. I had a little bit of churning going on in my stomach, because it seemed like he had come to tell me something, and I worried it might be something bad.
I closed us into my room, and we sat on the bed, both of us staring down at the spread. We were just fascinated by that spread.
“I came by yesterday afternoon,” he said. “But your mom said you were out.”
“Yeah. I had to take Roy somewhere.”
“Really? That seems weird.”
“Why does it seem weird?”
“I don’t know exactly. Just seems like parents take a guy his age someplace. Not his little brother.”
“Well, this was a little-brother thing.”
I was hoping he would ask no more about it, and I got my wish.
We sat a minute in silence. Connor was wearing jeans with a hole worn in the knee, and he was rolling the loose frayed threads between his fingers. Funny how desperate a person can get for something to focus on. For something to do with his hands.
“I came by to tell you I was sorry,” he said at long last.
“What for?”
We were keeping our voices down. Almost to a whisper. Because my brother and my parents were sleeping in rooms down the hall.
“Because I haven’t been talking to you much lately. I go out and talk to Zoe, and then I come back and I don’t even tell you what we talked about. And the whole thing was your idea. I wouldn’t even know her if it wasn’t for you. But . . . it’s kind of hard to explain. Have you ever been sitting on a bus bench with some total stranger and started thinking that you could tell them your whole life—everything you were thinking—even though you couldn’t tell your best friend?”
Unfortunately, the answer to his question was no. I hadn’t had that feeling. But I wanted to be encouraging.
Then I remembered how it was easier to hold the hand of a total stranger in an NA meeting than to hold hands with my own brother. It was less embarrassing somehow.
It was confusing, so all I said was, “I’m not sure. Tell me more about it.”
“It’s like you can talk to somebody who’s completely outside your life, and it feels safe. Because then when you’re done, you just go back to your life and there’s still nobody there who’s heard about all those feelings. It’s just feelings, Lucas. It’s nothing you don’t know. I’m not keeping any big
