In the time it took for me to leave and Mrs. O’Donnell to get home from the hospital, Roger awoke and attempted suicide.

He took every pill in the bathroom cabinet and washed it down with several slugs of his father’s vodka.

Then he slit his wrists with a kitchen knife.

The alcohol was what saved him, really. Even a drinker as he was, the hard vodka was too much for his stomach, and he threw it up quickly—and he also emptied his stomach of almost all the pills he’d taken. Then he passed out from the blood loss.

His mother found him unconscious and bleeding to death on the bathroom floor. It was an act of God that she got to him in time to bandage his wrists and call an ambulance before his suicide could be fulfilled.

He was in the hospital, and he was very weak and very sick, but he was alive.

That was how the man I loved most tried to end his life.

After last night, my parents had let me sleep in, but returning to school now was out of the question. I locked myself in my room all day and cried relentlessly. I didn’t want to eat, didn’t want to sleep, didn’t want to budge from where I’d curled up on my bed.

My mind whirled with horrendous images, both real and conjured, that haunted me both when my eyes were open and closed. I kept seeing his mangled flesh and his terrified eyes. I kept seeing blood, pools of it on the floor, in rivers down his arms—everything in my mind’s vision was a horrid, horrid red.

I couldn’t keep the imagined image out of my mind—Roger, unconscious on the cold floor, red all around him, his life draining from his wrists, his mother screaming when she found him—I saw it all so easily, and it would not leave my mind as much as I clawed at my eyes and tore at my temples.

I wanted this all to go away—I didn’t want it to be like this. I wanted my Roger to be healthy and happy—I wanted this to not have happened.

How could you, Roger?

How could you be so hopeless that you’d give up forever? You wanted to die so badly, you used two methods of suicide, just to be sure. How could someone who was so full of life—who was MY entire life—want more than anything to end his own? After everything we went through, all the crying and yelling and screaming, how could you still give up so easily? After everything I said to you, every time I told you I loved you, every time I held you in my arms and vowed never to let you go, how could you give up on me and on any help I wanted to offer?

How could you leave me?

Why did it have to be Roger?

Late in the afternoon, Mrs. O’Donnell came to our house. She had no husband and no family on the East Coast and her son, her entire purpose in life, had tried to kill himself. As much as I dreaded seeing her, I understood why she needed to be with us right now. Roger’s parents and mine had been good friends ever since I’d met Roger. And I had been there, I understood what was going on—my parents had found out the same time she had. There was a connection there. Who else could she turn to?

Her visit did not bring happy news.

My blood ran cold the instant I heard the doorbell ring. I was sitting in the living room, on the couch, staring at nothing, because I couldn’t stand to be in my room any longer. My eyes burned cruelly, and I felt as if I weighed no more than Harry, as if my entire body was composed of nothing more than a smoldering, aching skeleton. I didn’t get up when she rang, didn’t have the energy.

My mother opened the door and welcomed her in, taking both of her tiny hands in hers. She looked like a phantom at our door, so tiny and white-skinned, in a long gray pea coat dusted with snow; in comparison my mother was round and brightly peach-colored. Mrs. O’Donnell stepped in on tiny, unsure feet, and stood sullenly while my mother fussed around her. She took the heavy coat off Mrs. O’Donnell’s shoulders, reducing her weight to little more than a rag doll. I stared, for she looked so horrendous that, unless I had known, I would not have guessed it to be her. Her skin was white and cheeks gray, as were her normally bright blue eyes. A haze had come into her face, and she blinked blearily. Even her pretty orange hair seemed to have lost its vibrancy, and indeed the only color in her face at all was in the red rings around her eyes.

She seemed to have aged ten years in a night. I wondered if she saw worse images behind those bleary eyes than even I did. I imagined that she did.

“Sit down, Julie, let me get you some tea…” my mother crooned, leading the ghost of Roger’s mother to our kitchen.

I summoned energy, and in a few moments, rose and padded on stiff, cold-toed legs to the doorway.

“Arik,” Mrs. O’Donnell murmured when she saw me, and her tired face gave me a gentle smile.

“How is he?” I asked softly.

Her forehead creased, and any weariness that had lifted with her smile returned to her eyes now. “He’s going to live,” she said, and it was of little comfort to me that that was the best news she had to offer.

My mother placed a cup of steaming tea in front of her, and she stroked it with fingers far bonier than I could ever remember them being. “Whether he’ll choose to is another matter.”

My mother and I traded glances, for we were both surprised to hear her speak so frankly. My mother gently patted her head and shoulder and sat down beside her at the table.

“I should have kept a better eye on him,” she continued. “I feel so neglectful—I’ve been so busy with my new shifts that I haven’t been able to spend much time with him since Howard died. But I should have! Knowing his condition, his history, I should have watched him closely especially since Howard’s death.”

“You tried as best you could, Julie,” Mum assured her softly, touching her wrist.

“I should have seen it—I know when he’s not right, God knows I’ve seen it before. But until Arik called me, I had no idea, no idea whatsoever. I should have known! How on earth could I have missed all the signs, all the clues, when my son was suffering so horribly? Why didn’t I know?”

“Arik,” Mum said, looking up to where I stood silent in the doorway, “had Roger been acting strangely at all before yesterday? Did he seem at all unusual to you?”

Jesus Christ, what a question. “Yes,” I replied. “I-I didn’t know what was wrong with him—I’d never seen him like that before. He was so upset all the time, a-and he never came to school anymore and he was always so tired and dirty…”

Mrs. O’Donnell put her forehead in her hand.

“How long was he like that?”

An eternity, it seemed. “I don’t know…a long time. Weeks,” I said.

“My God, Arik, why didn’t you ever tell us?”

My head snapped up, and I saw both Mum and Mrs. O’Donnell’s wide, sad eyes on me. I stared back, stunned, mouth open but no reply imminent. Why hadn’t I told anyone? I’d been legitimately worried, so why hadn’t I confided in someone who needed to know?

…I’d never told my parents any of my dark secrets before, and I wasn’t going to start now.

I felt sick. I should have told someone, it seemed so obvious now. Could this have been prevented?

“I-I didn’t know what was wrong—I didn’t know what to do,” I stammered.

“Didn’t you realize he was depressed?” Mum pressed.

My heart began to race. I felt cornered. Please don’t tell me it’s my fault, please don’t.

“I-I didn’t know—I’d never seen anyone who was really depressed—I didn’t know—!”

“With his history, you should have known, Arik,” Mum said gravely, sadly, and I felt my face burning with new tears.

“What do you mean, his history? Why do you keep saying that?”

Mrs. O’Donnell’s gaze had drooped back to her tea, but now she looked up, puzzled. “Don’t you know, Arik?”

“Know what?!” I gasped.

“He never told you?” Mrs. O’Donnell sighed. “Honey… Roger has been suffering from depression for nearly his entire life.”

I felt as if I’d been kicked in the chest. I gawked, stunned.

“Along with other psychological problems as well…” she added softly, her voice trailing off. “He’s been on medication for years and years. I-I thought you knew? I thought he’d told you?”

My Roger had been sick for years and I’d never known?

I shook my head, tears in my eyes. “I-I didn’t know…”

Her eyes went sad. “I thought he had. Surely if he told anyone, it would be you. We all know how much he loved you.”

I covered my mouth with my hand and leaned against the doorway, my body trembling. All the time I’d known him he’d been mentally ill—and medicated? The best friend I’d known and loved since ninth grade had been on anti-depressants the whole time and I’d never noticed?

“NO!” he screamed, startling me. “No more fucking medications! I’m so sick of fucking pills, so fucking sick of them!”

Oh, hell. Now I understood.

“I think he’d stopped taking them,” Mrs. O’Donnell continued, pulling me from my mental spiral. “The bottles always seemed too full—and he was always ‘forgetting’ to take them. I-I’d send them in for him with his lunch, or through the school nurse, but…”

“He threw them away,” I said, memories flooding back.

“Are you sick?” I asked, spotting a small Ziploc bag of pills his mother had put into his lunch. ROGER was written on a piece of paper inside of it, and it was underlined three times, apparently important. I figured they were antibiotics. If he had a bug or cold, that would explain why he felt so miserable.

I hadn’t meant to be nosy, but he bristled. “I’m fine,” he murmured defensively. He tossed the bag of pills into the trash.

Mrs. O’Donnell closed her eyes and didn’t speak for several minutes. “He always hated the medications,” she breathed after a while. “But he needed them. He absolutely needed them...”

He’d been that messed up that he couldn’t function unless he was heavily medicated? My thoughts jumped back to happier days, times of soccer practices and long car rides—of camping in New Hampshire—and then to the dark days of late and the bloody self-destruction they’d shown. Was that the difference between when he was on meds and when he wasn’t?

“I had no idea,” I whispered. And I sat down at the end of the table opposite of Mrs. O’Donnell, for I was feeling faint and didn’t trust my legs to support me any longer. “Has he…has he ever done this before?”

“He’s never…hurt himself before. Once before, years ago, he came close, but I’d thought we’d helped him away from that. He-he had episodes every now and then, when he’d get very upset and lose control, and sometimes he’d become very violent—I know he hit you more than once—and then he would feel horribly guilty and worthless.” Her voice was slow and grave, and she spoke with as little emotion as she could. “But I thought he was happy, overall. I believed he was okay, and for a few years his episodes were few and far between. I thought he was getting better. He always seemed so happy when he was with you—even when he talked about you. I don’t know if you realize how much your friendship meant to him.”

My head was spinning. “What was wrong with him?”

Mrs. O’Donnell sighed for a long time. “He’s had a lot of emotional trauma in his life, Arik, far more pain than anyone deserves. And a lot of it is hereditary, as well. His biological mother was mentally ill.”

“Is that why they took him away from her when he was a baby?” I asked.

Mrs. O’Donnell and my mother exchanged glances, and then Mrs. O’Donnell looked at me, the strangest expression painted across her face. “W-what did you say?”

“I asked if Roger was put up for adoption when he was a baby because his mother was mentally ill,” I repeated, confused.

Mrs. O’Donnell’s face went tragic, her eyes glassy. “Is that what he told you? That we adopted him when he was a baby?” she whispered.

Nervous, I nodded.

Her wet red eyes left my face, and she looked down into her tea again. “Honey, the police took Roger away from his mother when he was six and a half. We adopted him a few days after his seventh birthday.”

Six and a half?! I distinctly remembered him telling me that he was adopted when he was a baby! Why would he have lied about that?

“Why was he taken away by the police? What happened to him?!” I asked, dreading the answer.

She closed her eyes and breathed in several long breaths through her nose. It was a long time before she opened her eyes again and was able to answer. My mother reached out and covered her hand with her own.

“Roger was brutally abused by his mother,” she said at last.

I put my head down on the table and clutched at my skull with shaking fingers. Oh, no, oh, Jesus Christ, no. Not Roger, not Roger…

“His mother was extremely disturbed. She…” her voice trailed off, and she swallowed, trying to regain her composure. When she spoke again, though, her voice was tight. “She tried to kill him. Their neighbors had been suspicious for a long time, and they finally called the police, just in time. They took Roger from her and put her in jail.”

His eyes distant, he replied softly, “Sometimes I wish my mother had aborted me.”

“You don’t mean that, Roger.”

He didn’t reply. His eyes stared, unfocused, out the window, looking so sad.

I was shaking violently. I’d started crying again, fiercely, and I couldn’t stop—I thought I might be sick.

Why did that have to happen to Roger? Of all the people in the entire world, why my Roger? Why had he had to suffer so much?

Mrs. O’Donnell was speaking again, and when I glanced up, I saw glistening tears trailing softly from both of her eyes. “What his mother did to him was horrendous—I-I can’t understand how anyone could do that to a child, to a poor little child! I’m so thankful he was rescued from her before she could do any more damage than she already had. I’m so thankful that I was able to take care of him, and to love him. God knows he needed it, and deserved it.” Her ghostly face had gone pink now, and screwed up with tears. “I love him so much—he’s MY son, MY child! Why couldn’t I help him? Why couldn’t I make him happy?”

She burst into cruel sobs and buried her face in her hands. My mother got up out of her chair and embraced Mrs. O’Donnell’s tiny shoulders, holding her as she wailed uncontrollably.

I got up from the table and ran from the room.

I dragged myself to my bedroom and collapsed on top of my bed once more, my face buried in my pillow as I wept.

Why Roger? Why did someone I loved so much have to suffer so horribly? Why couldn’t it have been anyone else—why couldn’t it have been me? Why, why, why?!

…There was a long, sniffling pause before he would answer. "You have no idea," he replied cryptically, hopelessly. "You don't know anything."

He had been so right. So many things he’d never told me! So many pains he’d hidden! He’d been so right; I’d had no idea what he was going through. Why hadn’t he told me that he was so sick? That he was on medications? That he’d been abused? Had he been afraid to? I’d thought he was able to talk about everything with me. And for God’s sake, my mother had obviously known his whole life story—so why the fuck hadn’t I?!

This hurt so badly, so badly. Is there any greater pain than knowing someone you love is suffering?

Oh, Roger, Roger…I wish you were here, I wish you were with me now so I could hold you and tell you how much I love you. I wish I could take away all the pain you’re feeling—I would do anything, anything in the world, to make you happy again.

—If you’ve ever really been happy at all.

I don’t know how long I lay there, but at some point, a tiny figure appeared around the side of the doorway.

“Rikky, what’s wrong?” Harry asked, his one eye huge. “Why are you crying?”

“Please leave me alone, Harry.”

He frowned sadly. “What’s going on downstairs? Why is everybody crying?”

I rubbed my eyes. “My friend, Roger…He’s in the hospital. He’s very sick.”

“Ohh,” Harry said. “Is he gonna die?”

My chest burned. “I-I don’t know—Please, Harry, leave me alone.”

He nodded sullenly and slunk off.

Seeing him, so tiny, put me in mind of a boy his age, with dark hair and sad dark eyes. And I wondered if he’d been covered in bruises then, the way he was covered with glaring red slits now. As much as I loathed my brother sometimes, I couldn’t bear to think of anyone hurting him—I couldn’t bear to think of him being beaten for his whole short life—of his own mother wanting to kill him.

Oh, Roger, no wonder you’re so fucked up—but I don’t blame you at all.

So much had happened to him—so much I never knew!

So much he never told me.

Why didn’t you tell me?

Chapter Thirty...