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Not for the first time in his life, Kel thinks about suicide.
The first time he heard about it, he didn't know what it was. It was a foreign thing, hearing that Mari went through with it. But he does remember the way his mother talked about it, the words rolling off her tongue like it physically hurt just to hold them in her mouth, so he knew it wasn't good.
“Suicide, Kel. She took her own life, honey,” his mother had said softly, her own voice wobbly with tears. Kel didn’t quite get it, but he knew it wasn’t good. Taking a life, that’s gotta be something that equates to death.
So Mari was dead.
He knew that, so he spent the night crying with his mom while Hero locked the door to their bedroom and hid away in their room.
When Kel went back the next morning, it was unlocked.
Hero was nothing more than a pile of duvet and blanket. A tuft of his hair poked out of his cocoon. He was breathing. Kel knew that much. He stood for a second to watch the blankets rise and fall with ragged breaths.
(Eventually, it would grow to be part of his morning routine; the simple act of making sure his brother was still inhaling oxygen at a steady pace.)
That day, maybe a few days after Mari died, maybe right after, Kel can’t remember- he went to the library, and he looked up the word ‘suicide’ in the dictionary. He read it at least ten times, over and over again.
The act or an instance of taking one's own life voluntarily and intentionally.
Then he looked up ‘voluntary’ and ‘intentionally,’ and he spent another hour crying in the last stall of the library’s bathroom, wondering if the girl the police and the hospital people found in Sunny’s backyard was really Mari. He got rid of the thought quickly.
He knows what suicide is, now; thinks about it often. He mulls over every definition of it he’s ever read about. The one the computer gives, the one the dictionary gave, the one his mom told.
Why would anyone want to end their life? Kel had wondered back then. Why Mari?
Nothing came to mind. No amount of nights spent staring at the ceiling gave him an answer.
Those first few weeks, Kel used to stay at home as often as possible just in case Hero got up, but he never did. Not once did he get up while Kel was home. Kel didn’t know how he lived. He would leave candy by his night stand and it would rot on the table until Kel threw it away a week later.
“Mom,” he asked, once, on his thirteenth birthday, about two weeks after Mari died, “is Hero committing suicide?”
Suicide: the act or an instance of taking one's own life voluntarily and intentionally.
His mom was shell-shocked for a moment, and then she told him to never ask such a horrible thing ever again.
Was this not Hero taking his life? Was he not voluntarily letting himself go? Was he not intentionally losing months off of his life?
God, Kel just wanted him to cook again. He wanted him to get up. He wanted him to stop staring at him with those cold, dead, eyes that sometimes peeked through the covers.
His mother didn’t wish him happy birthday that day. Hero stared at his brother through the covers that night, irises heavy with darkness. Kel didn’t meet his gaze.
One day, maybe a month after Mari had died, Hero took one of the Smarties Kel left on the nightstand. The entire thing, every piece of candy in it. Kel wanted to talk to him, ask him if he should get more, steal the money from their mom's purse and get Hero all the candy he wanted.
Instead, he silently placed a new pack of Smarties on Hero’s nightstand and climbed into bed.
The first time Kel saw Hero out of bed, it was definitely a month after Mari had died. His bed had been stripped of all its covers.
Kel almost thought he died.
He was sitting out in the hallway while their mom did the laundry.
Kel pretended to sleep for another hour. When he did wake up again, Hero was back in bed.
Another month after that, Hero started eating the meals Kel would bring up after dinner. Another month after that, he would mumble ‘good morning’ to Kel maybe twice a week while he was leaving for school, and Kel grasped at everything he could, held on for dear life to the reassuring thought that Hero was alive, that he could live again, really live again, even though this was suicide. Even though he was dying.
This, these weeks, this month, might as well have been his own prolonged suicide.
Maybe Kel thinks about suicide more often than he should.
He’s willing to bet Hero thinks about it more than anyone else in the entire world.
When Kel was a kid, he used to wonder what it’d be like if, when he started high school, his older brother would be there, too. Different schools made it boring, but he had to get used to it, with a three year age gap between the two of them. He always wanted to race Hero across the big basketball court they had in front of Hero’s high school.
High school is overrated, anyway, Kel thinks on the first day, shoving his books inside his locker numbly.
He nearly lost his composure just asking Hero to consider attending school that day.
“Just today,” Kel had begged. Hero shook his head. “Please?” Hero shook his head again. Kel left. Kel didn’t push. He doesn’t push anymore.
(Maybe I should, he thinks, still on his first day of high school, watching Aubrey with her bleach-blonde hair from across the cafeteria. She’s wearing a cropped T-Shirt with a jean skirt. She catches his eye and doesn’t waste a second before shooting him an ice-cold glare. Kel hesitates, then looks away. He can feel her staring at him the entire lunch period.)
It’s not all bad. Kel tries telling himself that. He signs up for basketball on the third day of school, a Wednesday.
“I’m gonna start playing basketball,” Kel tells Hero after school that day. Hero’s staring at the wall, back turned away from Kel. “Officially playing for a real team. It’s gonna be really fun! If I make the team that is, but, uh…” he trails off.
Just once, he wants his brother to try. He wants it more than he’s ever wanted something in the world. He wants Hero to roll over and ask when his first real game is so he can be there.
Instead, Hero pulls the covers over his head, harshly, like it’s imperative that Kel shut the fuck up right in that moment.
Kel does shut the fuck up. He shuts up at home. He talks like a damn random word generator at school to anyone who will listen and doesn’t allow a single unplanned word to spill out at home.
(Tries not to, at least, but every time he tells himself he’ll give Hero peace, he never goes through with it. He’s always telling him about his day.)
“Aubrey’s gone blonde,” he tells Hero in March. “She keeps glaring at me. I think she’s been bullying Basil.”
Hero is asleep. For real, this time.
“I think I’m gonna try out for the NBA one day!” he says another day in April, five, almost six months after Mari dies. Hero nods. They make eye contact sometimes, now. It’s a welcome upgrade.
Sometimes, weekly, when Hero’s mom actually washes his sheets, Kel will try to talk to him when Hero’s waiting out in the hallway.
“I haven’t seen Sunny in forever,” Kel says one day, still in April. “And studying for finals is so hard! I know you used to always tell me I have to do it, but I hate it.”
Hero’s face is on his knees. Kel doesn’t care. He talks until their mom tells Kel to leave Hero alone. She makes a face, the face that says, “are you crazy? Leave the poor boy alone.”
Maybe that’s exactly part of the problem, that Kel doesn’t feel like Hero is a ‘poor kid.’ He’s his brother, going through what might be the roughest patch of his life, but that doesn’t mean he should be ignored.
Kel feels bad for him. It’s a constant feeling that weighs heavy on his psyche and his shoulders and his entire body.
“You need to jump higher,” one of his teammates tells Kel one day after he keeps missing his throws. Kel doesn’t think he can get any higher, not with how heavy his unknown emotions weigh on him.
When Mari died, he cried. He cried that day in October. He hasn’t cried since.
In late May, Kel stays up late just staring at the ceiling, and wonders if he could have done something to help her. He spends the next day reading and looking stuff up. One passage of a book takes him an hour and a half to get through; Kel takes notes the entire time.
It’s important to support a suicidal person. Tell them to reach out for help.
“I’m here for you, if you ever want to talk,” he says to Hero at least three times a day. Not that he’s counting.
Let them know they aren’t alone.
“Everyone misses you,” he reminds Hero, perhaps a bit too often.
Sometimes, Hero will just mumble back, “sorry.” Kel never knows what to say to that.
Don’t guilt-trip a depressed or suicidal person, or try to downplay how they’re feeling. Let them know their feelings are real and important.
“Nobody blames you,” Kel said once. Hero didn’t seem to appreciate that. He didn’t say it again.
Most of all, let them know they are loved, and that their happiness and recovery is a priority to those who love them.
That last one makes Kel think of Mari.
She wouldn’t have wanted this. He never says that, though; her name is like a curse in the house, hanging heavy in the air and setting Hero back twenty years in healing.
He never says her name to him. To anyone. Sometimes, he sees Aubrey, and he feels like she knows he wants to say it.
It’s stupid.
It’s all so stupid, that he lost Mari, and that after that, like dominoes, everything else fell apart, too, cascaded down into a bottomless pit of nothingness. Sunny doesn’t leave the house. Hero doesn’t leave his bed. Aubrey’s hair is as hot-pink as her temper. Basil comes to school maybe five times a month total.
And Kel plays basketball and hangs out with his friends on the weekends.
It’s all just so unfair. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Could I have helped Mari? The question pops into his mind again. It appears almost as often as the topic of suicide. Can I help Hero?
It’s late that night, but early November. Hero is in bed. His back is turned away from Kel. Always away.
“Hero?” Kel asks, his voice a harsh contrast when put up against the quietness of the night. “Are you awake?”
“I’m asleep,” is Hero’s brilliant response. There’s not a hint of levity in his tone.
Kel slides out of bed, walking to his brother's side.
Think about this, he tells himself. Think carefully about what to say.
He doesn’t think.
Words escape with no meaning behind them, no thought, no preventative measures put into place, just words, words he should never be saying.
“Hero, look… I know I tell you all the time, but we miss you so much. It’s not the same without you. We all just want you to get better. Why won’t you talk to someone? Me, or mom, or dad, or- or the people they keep trying to send you to who can help you?” Kel pauses. He’s not getting anything out of Hero except a rigid body, tense with growing anger, but he can’t see that through the dark night and the blind haze of his idea of helping.
“Mari would hate to see you like this,” Kel settles to end with, wringing his hands.
Hero moves. He rustles underneath the covers. When he talks, he doesn’t even sound like himself.
“Mari?” he asks, sitting up in bed, and it’s his cold tone that throws Kel off.
He’s angry, Kel notes. Good god, is he angry. He doesn’t even look like himself, face contorted with pure hatred, fully visible even in the darkness.
“What would you know about what Mari wants?” Hero asks, but it’s not a question, it’s a statement, a promise that Hero already knows everything Kel thinks he doesn’t, and it is angry.
Kel is quiet. Hero gets out of the bed. He gets closer. His voice rises. Kel didn’t think it could get any louder, but it does, it keeps getting louder, and louder, and louder.
“Every day, you come home telling me about some new thing that happened at school, or with your friends, and I listen. I don’t even say anything. I stay quiet while you talk about how easy it’s been for you to move on!”
Kel wants to tell him he’s memorized the number for the suicide hotline, just incase.
He wants to tell Hero the hotline was created on his sixteenth birthday, the same age he was when Mari died. He wants to tell him he’s carrying it all, the knowledge, with nowhere to put it down.
Instead, he just blinks at Hero.
“Don’t tell me about your basketball games. Don’t tell me about your new hobbies. I’m never gonna come to your stupid games. I’m never gonna look at the things you’re drawing and the games you’re playing,” Hero says, tone full of venom, choking on a laugh, or maybe it’s a sob. Kel can’t tell; this is so foreign, so unlike his brother. “You don’t know what Mari wanted, so don’t talk about her! You never loved her!”
That’s the last straw. “I did!” Kel finally blurts out, desperate, and Hero recoils like it’s a slap in the face. “I loved her, too, Hero!”
Hero bounces back with a vengeance. “You never cared about her! Never! If you did, you wouldn’t have moved on! You wouldn’t be doing this right now! Admit it!”
Hero practically corners him. He’s taller, but maybe only by an inch, because even at the age of thirteen, almost fourteen, Kel is getting up there.
“Hero- I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to-“
“Shut up! God, shut up for once in your life, Kel! All you ever do is talk! You never listen!”
I would have listened to Mari, Kel thinks with misplaced bitterness. I’d listen to you. I’m listening. I’m listening.
Kel goes quiet. Hero looks smaller than he’s ever looked, towering over Kel. His eyes look fuller than they have in months, red-rimmed and filled with tears. It’s terrifying, to see how little life he really has left in him in real time.
“You’re the worst,” Hero continues, cold, choking, the antithesis of the image Kel has of him in his head. “You’re the worst brother I could’ve asked for. All you ever think about is yourself. How could you move on? How can you come in here everyday talking about how great life has been?!”
He means it. Kel thinks he does, at least. He commits the words to memory, then promptly wants to filter them out, but it’s too late.
Maybe if I weren’t always distracting him, she would have talked to him.
Hero doesn’t say it, because maybe Kel is wrong, maybe Hero isn’t saying things he means, and then Kel is crying, too, and they really are brothers.
A light flicks on, suddenly, pulling both of them out of the darkness. Hero’s mom says something, and then his mom and dad are enveloping the eldest son in a hug.
Ten seconds. Fifteen. Twenty. Kel sinks down a wall and sits and watches.
Thirty-two seconds after their parents come in, Hero escapes from his parents and goes to Kel, sobbing sorry’s in his shoulder, arms wrapped around him like his younger brother might disintegrate if he doesn’t apologize. “I didn’t mean it,” he keeps saying, and Kel can barely breathe.
“It’s okay,” he responds. “It’s okay, Hero, it’s okay.”
Minutes pass. Hero steps into the hall with his parents.
Kel gets back into bed. Hero comes in an hour later. It takes Kel another hour to actually fall asleep.
When he wakes up the next morning, Hero is gone.
His bed is made. There are no Smarties sitting on his nightstand. Kel sits up right away, his eyes stinging and his throat scratchy.
It’s desolate downstairs, save for Hector, whose exuberant barks and kind displays of affection toward Kel light up the place ever-so-slightly. He spots his mom in the kitchen cleaning a plate. She seems to sense her son's presence, looking up toward Kel.
“Oh… Good morning, Kel,” she says, sounding tired. Kel doesn’t blame her. “I called your school. I told them you weren’t feeling well, but that’s the one and only time I call you out okay?” She pauses and sighs, concerned. But there’s a hint of relief. Kel gets the sense she’s just saying things, not really thinking. He waits until she says what she really wants to say.
“Hero is talking to a counselor.”
There it is. Kel nods.
“Well, he isn’t,” she contradicts herself. “But we told him we think he really should. He said he wants to talk to a tutor instead to get back on track for school.”
It’s like a dream come true.
Kel has never simultaneously loved and hated something more.
“I told him to take it slow.” His mom turns the sink on again and starts cleaning a plate. “We both did. But- he seems really determined to move forward. And we’re very happy about that.”
Well, Kel would be lying if he said he wasn’t, too.
“When will he be back?” Kel asks. His mother glances at the clock.
“Maybe an hour?” she readjusts the pearls wrapped around her neck. “Oh! He made you breakfast.”
That takes Kel aback, far, far, aback.
“He made me breakfast?” he repeats.
“Yes! French toast! It’s in the fridge. I’ll grab you some.”
So he sits at the table and he eats Hero’s french toast.
He takes seconds, eating like he hasn’t been fed in thirty years. He sits on the couch watching TV with Hector until the front door opens an hour and a half later.
Hero walks in, with his dad right behind him. He meets Kel’s eyes from across the room.
Their dad walks into the kitchen right away, leaving them be, making quiet small talk with his wife. Hero walks over to the couch and leans back against the cushions.
It’s so, so, so, quiet.
“I think I’m gonna come back to school next semester,” Hero says.
That’s in a month, just about. Kel wants to ask him how he came to decide that so fast. He wants to ask him if he aided in his decision at all. He wants to ask if Hero will start coming to his basketball games.
He wants to ask if missing Mari feels like a thousand-pound weight on his chest, like it does for Kel. Maybe he already knows the answer is no, it’s heavier than that.
All in due time.
“Will you make dinner tonight?” Kel asks, staring at the TV. The detective in the show gasps dramatically when she solves the crime.
Hero’s eyes widen, then soften. “Maybe.” Then, with certainty: “Yeah. I can make dinner.”
It’s enough, Kel thinks, even if it is just for the evening.