around and within
their violet glow,
like dry ice at a rock concert.
Mickey drops the cigarette butt
into his can of Pepsi.
It sizzles as the fire dies.
“He was so heavy.”
He presses the back of his hand
against his mouth,
as if those four words
are the first drops in a flood
that will drown us all.
“Heavy, like a sandbag,
in my arms.
And behind that door.
It took both of us,
me and our sister, Siobhan,
to push it open.
I thought, What idiot got so wasted
they passed out on our bathroom floor?
And probably puked all over
Mom’s favorite guest towels,
and we’ll have to clean it up,
and I swear to God
this is the last party
we’ll ever have.”
He shakes the Pepsi can,
the cigarette butt rattling
staccato.
“So the door finally opens,
and there’s no puke,
no blood,
no nothing.
Just him.
Clean and dead.”
I remember watching Mickey
drag my body into the hall,
start CPR with Siobhan.
No matter how much they pressed
and breathed
and cried
and cursed
and screeeeeeeeamed,
I couldn’t come back.
“I’m sorry.”
Krista repeats my words.
“Who’s sorry?” Mickey asks her. “You or him?”
“When I speak for myself,
I’ll hold up my hand.”
She makes a Boy-Scouty gesture,
then lowers her hand.
“Logan is sorry.”
He flinches at the sound of my name.
“What the hell’s he sorry about?”
“I don’t know,” I tell him.
“But you were really pissed off that night,
so I figured I should apologize.”
Mickey puts his head in his hands
when he hears my answer.
“I didn’t mean to yell at him.”
“You always yelled at me.”
I pause to let Krista translate.
“Why would you stop when I died?”
“I did not always yell at him!”
Krista raises her hand.
“You’re yelling at him right now.”
“Well—he—”
Mickey chokes out six
or seven
incoherent syllables
before lurching to his feet.
He stomps away,
down the boardwalk.
Fast enough for drama
but slow enough to follow.
“Sorry.”
I hunch my shoulders
as Krista stands, sighing.
“Stop saying ‘sorry.’
Mickey should be saying that.”
“He won’t.”
I get up to join her.
“He’s a douche.”
♪
“Your turn to talk,”
Krista tells me
as we catch up to Mickey
down the boardwalk.
The first question is easy.
“Ask him why he hates me.”
She rolls her eyes,
but does as I ask.
“I don’t hate him,” he says,
but too quick,
like a reflex,
like someone,
maybe a therapist,
has asked that question before.
“You think I’m a sellout,” I tell him.
You think I don’t care about the music.”
This he doesn’t deny,
just shoves his hands deeper
into his pockets,
slows his pace,
glares harder at the wooden slats
in front of his feet.
“So if I’m a sellout,”
I continue, slowly enough
that Krista can translate,
“then why did we play
all those songs I wrote?
Why were they good enough,
when I wasn’t?”
Mickey glares at her.
“I never said he wasn’t good enough.”
“Don’t talk to me,” Krista tells Mickey.
“Talk to Logan.”
He stops short and turns to her.
“Okay, L—”
My name catches on his tongue.
“You were good.
You were amazing.
You took my fucking breath away.”
His eyes skewer hers.
“But it wasn’t enough, was it?
No, you had to be famous.
You had to be famous yesterday.
You couldn’t wait until we were older,
when you could handle it.
You were just a kid,
a stupid kid.”
Mickey’s face crumples,
red with rage
and something else.
He clutches his hands
in his thick brown hair,
like he could tear it out.
“And now you’ll never be older.
You’ll never be
anything,
ever,
but a stupid kid.”
As I stare at Mickey,
feeling twelve years old again,
a whimper comes from my right.
I turn,
and Mickey turns,
to see Krista,
her eyes wide and wet,
lower lip trembling—
classic
girl
pre-cry
symptoms.
Mickey’s hands come up,
as if to grasp her shoulders.
“Oh God, I’m sorry.
I was looking at you,
but I swear I was talking to him.
You were just—”
She slaps him,
hard enough
to knock the self-righteous mask
clean off his face.
“Logan’s right,” she hisses.
“You are a douche.”
♪
Jim Morrison died in the bathtub.
They buried him in Paris,
but some people think he’s still alive,
just like Elvis.
That he’d had enough
of this bogus life
and decided to get
a brand-new one.
My brother and I
catch up to Krista
near the entrance to the
Jolly Roger Amusement Park.
She’s wiping away the tears
with her fists,
as if she can pummel her sadness
into submission.
“I’m sorry,” Mickey says
(to her).
“Can we start over?”
“No.”
Sniffle.
“But we can keep going.”
“Your turn,” I say to Krista.
“Tell us why you freaked.
But first, make Mickey buy you
a funnel cake.”
♪
On a bench
by the Ferris wheel
they eat.
I crouch a few feet in front of them,
in the middle of the foot traffic.
Apparently I never sat on that bench
in my whole life.
“My brother died when I was ten.”
Krista tugs off a long string of fried dough
and dangles it into her mouth.
Powdered sugar
showers over the edge of her lips
down to her chin.
I wonder if Mickey wants to lic
k it off.
I would
if I could smell
and taste,
or think of anyone but Aura.
“What happened?” Mickey asks.
“OD’d.”
A strong breeze
sweeps her hair into her mouth
as she speaks and eats.
She tucks it behind her ear.
“Officially an accident.”
“Officially?”
“I think he killed himself.
Otherwise he probably would’ve haunted me.”
Right.
To become a ghost,
your death has to be a surprise.
(Boo.)
People who thought it’d be easier
to be a ghost
than to be alive
found that out the hard way.
“How old was he?” Mickey asks Krista.
“Eighteen.
Like you.”
Another bite,
against the blowing hair.
“You’re thinking of doing it, aren’t you?”
If I had breath,
I would hold it now,
waiting for Mickey’s answer.
“I don’t think of dying,” he says,
“so much as I think of not living.”
It starts to rain,
suddenly,
strenuously,
as if heaven itself
is bawling,
spitting,
pissing
on my brother
and his death wish.
You go, God.
If he doesn’t want his life,
can I have it?
I’d be a miserable,
pretentious
son of a bitch
if it meant living again.
I’d be him.
♪
“Keep most of the lights off,”
Krista tells Mickey
as we enter our cousins’
beachfront condo
where our family has stayed
since I was fourteen.
“That way I can still see Logan.”
“I’ll get you a towel.
And do you want a dry—”
He looks away
from her sodden T-shirt.
He has a girlfriend,
after all,
a girlfriend he’s barely touched
in 233 days.
He heads down the hall,
but she lingers by the front door,
checks that it’s unlocked.
“He won’t hurt you,” I tell her.
“I know,” she whispers.
“But after that Cindy girl died
at spring break,
my parents gave me the Talk.
They said,
‘Just because you graduated a year early
doesn’t mean you can’t be stupid.’”
We go to join Mickey,
passing the open door
of Siobhan’s room
and the closed door
where my younger brother Dylan and I
used to stay.
I’ve been there a hundred times
since I died.
Mickey stands before his bed,
his suitcase open.
“My sister’ll kill me if I steal one of her shirts,
so take this.
Keep it.”
She unfolds the army-green T-shirt,
and the light spilling from the hall
reveals the skull-and-shamrock logo
of the Keeley Brothers.
I blink hard,
memories bathing my brain
like acid.
“He never wears that,” I tell her.
“Why does he have it with him now?”
She asks him.
Mickey slaps shut the suitcase,
but not before I see
the hint of
dull
black
metal
tucked into the corner.
“Don’t leave him alone,” I tell Krista.
“He’s got a gun.”
She steps back,
fear in her eyes.
“Is it loaded?” she asks him.
He stares at her,
making the connection.
“Not yet.”
She snatches the dry towel splayed across the bed.
“Turn around. Both of you.”
I watch him instead of her,
count the ribs showing
through his skin
when he changes his own shirt.
“Now what?”
Krista’s stuffing her wet bra
into the front pocket of her jeans.
Mickey’s shirt is huge on her
but not huge enough
to hide her curves.
I spy the guitar case in the corner.
“Ask him to play.”
We have to get something
into his hands
besides that gun.
Music was always my savior.
Maybe it’ll be his, too.
♪
He tries a few tunes
by candlelight
on the living room sofa,
but his fingers seem numb;
his voice, starved.
Krista looks dubious.
“Mickey’s much better than this,” I tell her.
but don’t bring that up.
He’s not going.”
I answer her quizzical look with,
“Because of the money.”
Mickey stops
at the start
of the third verse.
“I forget the rest.
You should go.”
He looks through her,
toward the hallway,
toward the bedroom,
toward the gun.
“Wait!”
I jump out of my seat.
“Ask him to play my song,
the one he’s writing for me.”
“Play Logan’s song,” she tells him.
He glances in my general direction,
then focuses on her.
“Dylan told him?”
She nods when I nod.
“Brat can’t keep a secret.”
Mickey sets the guitar in his lap again,
tunes.
Tunes some more.
And then some more.
Tunes
tunes
tunes,
but never plays.
Krista shifts in her chair,
stretches her bare feet,
which are probably
falling asleep.
Her movement stops Mickey,
fingers on the guitar’s pegs.
He lowers the head
and lets the instrument
roll forward,
strings facing down
in his lap.
“I haven’t written it yet,” he says.
“Not one note, in all these months.”
Krista holds up her hand,
speaking for herself.
“Why not?”
He traces the curve of the guitar’s body
with his palm,
and I want more than ever to be him
for one moment,
touching the smooth wood.
I would make it sing.
Finally he says,
“Writing his song
would be too much like saying good-bye.”
I can’t believe I’m hearing this.
“That’s bullshit, and you know it!”
Before she can finish translating,
I point straight at his heart.
“You’ve been saying nothing
but goodbye
since the night I died.
All you care about
is me passing on,
getting out of your life.”
Krista speaks my words,
inflecting them just like me,
and I wonder how much anger
is mine
and how much is hers.
Mickey says,
“I just want him to be at peace.”
“No!” I hurl back.
“You want you to be at peace.
And you think dying—
or at least not living—
is the best way to find it.
And I totally don’t get that.”
Krista says what I said,
then turns to me.
“I get that,” she chokes out.
“He thinks he could’ve stopped you.
He thinks he could’ve saved you.”
“I could have.”
Mickey grips the neck of the guitar.
“I could’ve kept the drugs
out of his hands.”
I shake my head.
“You saw me turn it down,
just like you and Siobhan—”
“I should’ve known,”
Mickey says over me.
“I should’ve known
that record company rep
would push him harder
when I wasn’t looking.
He was always so eager to please.
I should’ve asked later.
One question:
‘Did you keep the cocaine?’
But I was too busy
and too annoyed,
thinking, He’s a such a big shot now
he can take care of himself,
and if he can’t,
that’s his fault.”
Mickey closes his eyes.
“One question.
It could’ve saved his life.”
I turn my head
from the sight of the pain
that’s twisted Mickey’s memory
and broken his soul.