Hate You Still by Lyssa Lemire
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
EMMA
A rapid-fire series of knocks on our front door wakes me out of my sleep. I’m immediately suspicious. It must be way past midnight.
I reach over to the phone on my bedside table and turn on the home screen. 1:17. On a Tuesday night. Who the hell could this be?
I roll out of my bed groggy, still half-asleep. I’m thankfully no longer accustomed to being unceremoniously awakened by loud, intrusive noises: not after the weeknight parties from next door have come to an end.
Standing on my feet, I start to feel more alert and awake. And the more alert and awake I feel, the more worried I am.
Katie and I live on the second floor of a house that’s been turned into a two-apartment duplex. No one can get to our front door on the second floor without getting through the front door on the first floor that serves as an entrance.
I was already a couple steps toward the door to my bedroom, but I backtrack to pick up my phone from the table, the possibility of needing to suddenly call 911 making itself clear to me. With my phone clutched in hand and my guard up, I open my bedroom door. Katie is also peeking out of her bedroom, her face tentative and alert.
I shrug my shoulders. “Who is it?” I call out next to the door to our apartment.
“It’s Mary,” an exasperated voice answers. My tension eases. Our downstairs neighbor – which means at least we’re not dealing with someone who force themselves through the entrance and marched up our stairs with unpredictable intentions.
Though Mary’s intentions for banging on our door past one in the morning are still not exactly apparent.
Thinking it would be rude to continue to talk through a closed and locked door after I know it’s her, I undo the locks and open it up. If Mary’s tone was exasperated, her face is straight up sour. The downstairs neighbor we barely talk to looking at us like we’re ruining her night after banging on our door in the dead of night does little to clear up the mystery of this event.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“There’s some guy downstairs saying he needs to talk to you,” Mary answers.
My jaw hangs open. A guy needing to talk to me in the middle of the night?
Who could it be? Could it be Chris, turning out to be one of those uber-creepers who you go out on one date with, think is a normal guy at first, but then turns into a complete psycho when a second date fails to materialize?
I tell Mary that I’ll be right down. She walks back down the stairs, and I hear her front door slamming shut. I stand in the doorjamb for a moment, too apprehensive to try to look down the stairway – though I know I won’t be able to see anyone at the front door without first walking to the bottom of it, anyway.
If it isn’t Chris … the only other person it could possibly be is Knox.
Knox visiting me in the middle of the night?
It’s a wild idea … but after our conversation in the car today it seems, somehow, possible.
Katie asks if she wants me to come down with her. I know I should take her up on that offer, walking downstair to see an unknown man who demands to see me in the middle of the night isn’t exactly the safest or sanest thing to do at all, much less alone.
But with Knox now being the person I most suspect to be down there, I’d rather go down alone. Katie insists on waiting at the top of the steps for me and tells me to be sure to call out if I need her to come running down.
I thank her and slowly start to descend the stairs. When I get to the bottom, I see that Mary closed – and re-locked – the front door, so I still can’t see how it is. I can only notice a figure in the dark, whose identity is impossible to determine through the three thin, rectangular windows of the main front door.
I unlock the front door and with a deep breath to steel myself, I turn the knob and pull the door open. My heart stops when I see who it is.
It isn’t Chris.
It isn’t Knox.
It’s Kyle. My brother.
He looks terrible. My jaw drops and my open palm rests on my chest. I know what kind of toll addiction can take on a person, and I know how far my brother was starting to get on that path, but, still … I never expected things would get this bad for him.
I always thought he’d be able to steer himself out of the worst of it, or that he’d get his act together before things got too bad.
But from the looks of him, things have already gotten too bad.
The shirt he wears is dirty with several holes. Her wears a pair of oversized jeans with the knees worn out, showing his scraped kneecaps. There’s something that looks like dried blood stained at the bottom hem of the left leg of his jeans.
My gaze follows back up his emaciated frame to his face. He has deep, dark bags under his eyes. It looks like he hasn’t gotten any sleep in a week. His hair is long and dirty.
“Kyle …” his name falls out of my mouth, but I find no further words to address him.
“Hey, sis,” he answers, his voice a strange mixture of the casual confidence I’m familiar with, but with a heavy awkwardness that’s in response to my horrified reaction that I can’t possibly hide.
“What happened to you?” I ask.
He looks down at himself and shrugs, trying to put on a mask of nonchalance. “Oh, this?” He flashes me a smile, a smile that shows there’s still traces of the brother I grew up with underneath everything he’s been through lately. “Just a rough couple days, that’s all.”
I look in his eyes and emotions surge in me. The sparkle, the confident and good sparkle that advertises his sweet, sensitive soul is still present, still unmistakable to anyone who knew him before, who knows what to look for.
But all that is buried beneath something else. Weariness and desperation are more vivid in his eyes, now – I can feel an acute and consuming desire for the thing that’s slowly killing him.
“Do you … do you need somewhere to stay?” I ask. I know it would be asking a lot from Katie to let my brother stay with us for a while, especially in the condition he’s in, but I know that she’s a good enough friend that she wouldn’t turn me down if I asked.
And I know that I’d still take my brother in if he needed a place to stay. If it were part of him trying to kick his habit and recover, that is. There’s no limit to the help I’d give him if that were his goal.
But I’m not sure if that’s what his goal is right now. The desperation in his eyes gives me a creeping, chilling feeling that that isn’t his goal.
“A place to stay?” He puffs out a breath dismissively and waves his hand, as if that’s supposed to make me feel better. “Nah, don’t worry, I’ve got that taken care of.”
“Then …?”
Now his phony confidence starts to falter. I stiffen my back, getting ready for what I’m sure he’s about to ask.
Last time I saw him, four months ago, he asked me for money. I caved in and gave it to him. He looked bad four months ago, but not this bad. He still looked enough like his old self that I was able to, under the pressure of his pleading, convince myself that what he said he needed the money for – his phone bill – was the truth.
I’ve felt bad about it ever since then. I know that indulging him and helping him fund his addiction is the last thing that’s going to help – even if it hurts to turn him down in a time of need.
Since that time, I’ve told myself when – and I’ve had a bad feeling that it would indeed be a when, not an if – he asks for money again, I need to refuse. No matter what kind of stories he peddles, no matter what he tells me it’s “really” for, I need to turn him down – end of story.
“I made a real bad move sis, did something stupid. Got myself in a real fucked up situation,” he says, shaking his head. “Ended up owing some guys money.”
“Money?” I repeat, my heart sinking as my suspicion is confirmed.
“Yeah. A lot of it.”
My breath hitches. I can tell that, whether this is a bullshit story or not, he’s not coming around asking for a spare sixty bucks like he did last time.
“Kyle, I can’t –” I start to summon the will and the courage to stonewall whatever story he’s going to try to use to ply me, but he quickly interrupts.
“Look, Emma, this is no joke. These guys are serious. Dangerous. They want their money.”
The possibility that he’s being serious, and what might happen to him in that case, worries me – but the possibility that he’s lying and would make up a story like this to tug at my heartstrings and exploit my worry for him worries me in equal measure.
“What did you do?” I ask, folding my arms over my chest and putting on the stern, schoolmaster face that I’ve been forced to master lately.
I know it’s a risk asking him to elaborate. If what he explains turns out to actually be a believable situation where his safety is in danger, it might be just that much harder, or even impossible, to turn him down. But I want to try and prod to see if I can even trust him at all anymore.
Lying about needing to pay a phone bill is one thing, but lying about something like this … if that’s what’s going on, then I’ll know that my brother is further gone than I’d feared.
And that’s something I have to know.
“It’s, uh …” he scratches his neck, looking side to side nervously. My time at Marshall has made this posture familiar to me: it’s the look of getting caught in a lie. “Look, it’s too complicated for you to understand. You don’t know what it’s like on the streets, it’s bad shit, okay? I just need the money.”
His voice is harsh and insistent. I know he’s full of shit now, just trying to wring as much money as he can out of me. I have to put my foot down, and I have to put it down hard enough that he knows he can’t come back to me to help subsidize the habit that’s killing him anymore.
“No,” I say, definitively.
“No?” he repeats back to, his face vivid with outrage. “I need the money, Emma!”
I’m taken aback as he raises his voice, feeling a tremor of intimidation. But I steel my resolve. I can’t let him learn that he can get his way by throwing a fit.
“I need it, Emma! These guys are gonna kill me without it!”
I know my brother well enough to know that he’s lying at this point. Knowing that he’s not in the danger he says he’s in is reassuring, on some level, but that reassurance doesn’t last long. In fact, it lasts only a split second, until I realize the extent of his anger. It flashes hot in his eyes.
“The answer is no, Kyle,” I say, trying to maintain the straightness of my back and neck, not wanting to give him any indication that I’m going to give in this time. “Unless you want to talk about getting you help, please leave.”
I have to clench my jaw to hold back sobs after telling him I want him to leave. I never want to abandon my brother. I never want to cast him out. I have to tell myself that, right now, it’s not turning him down that is bad for him: giving him what he’s asking for would be the worst harm for him of all.
“You’re just like mom and dad! You don’t care about me at all! You just can’t wait til I die, to get rid of me!” He’s shouting now, that spark in his eye that reminded me of the Kyle he used to be is now gone. The only thing I see in those eyes now is his addiction speaking.
“That’s not true!” I yell back, so hurt by his words. “I want you to get better!”
“I need this money to get better!”
“No, Kyle, I won’t give it to you.”
He kicks the doorstep, sending a shiver of freight through my body. I’ve never been scared of my brother before. But I am now.
He pleads more, but I remain firm. I cross my hands over my chest and refuse to move, only shaking my head as he persists. I summon all my will not to cry, lest he take it as a sign of weakness.
Finally, spewing profanities, he stomps away.
Once he’s gone, I stay standing in front of the open door. I purse my lips tightly and try to control my breathing, not wanting to succumb to the sobs that yearn to break free from my throat.
I feel Katie’s hand on my shoulder. “Are you okay?”
I nod my head, even though the yes it implies is far from the truth. “I just need a minute alone.”
“Okay,” she says, wrapping her arms around me. “Come to my room when you come back up. We can talk if you want. But I just want to make sure you’re okay before I fall asleep. Promise?”
I sniffle. “Promise.”
Katie walks back upstairs, leaving me alone.
I go back upstairs and tell Katie that I’m okay. I want her to get some sleep, and not to have to stay up worrying about me anymore. But once I’m convinced that I’ve satisfied her and she drifts back to sleep, I walk back downstairs, wanting to be out under the open sky.
I step outside and close the door behind me.
The night is calm outside. Silent and cool, a gentle breeze ruffling the limbs of the trees, limbs that are now much less full than they were when we moved in, and which I know will be practically barren in a couple weeks.
I sit down on the porch and look up and down our sidewalk. No one’s walking by, no cars are rolling past. I’m alone.
I hang my head and surrender to the tears.