27
WYATT
“What happened?” Ely says immediately, closing the distance between us in three quick strides. “Wyatt.”
I’m not really capable of speaking. I’m strangely aware of my face, the way my skin stretches over bone. I feel like I’m wearing a mask. Ely reaches for both my hands and squeezes tight, like she’s trying to anchor me down in this reality—she doesn’t realize, of course, that it’s impossible. I’m already untethering.
“What happened?” Ely says again.
I look at her, finally, really look at her. Her eyes are big and worried, but right now, in a way, it’s as if I’m watching her on TV instead of in real life. My fingers twitch against the backs of her hands. I taste metal in my mouth, sour and sickening.
“That was my mom,” I manage at last. The words come out dry, cracked. My tongue feels like a slug that’s been doused in salt: shriveled up and dehydrated. Barely functional.
“Your mom,” Ely says, and I can guess what she’s thinking. My mom—the one I haven’t spoken to since shortly after I came out. The one who let my dad kick me out of my childhood home, then may or may not have sent me a Hannah Wilke book in secret—half an apology.
I’m distantly aware that my face is wet. This is all happening to someone else, some other Wyatt. A Wyatt who is crying. Which makes no sense, because the Wyatt that lives in my chest is tight and smooth and unscarred, like a river-weathered stone. Unfeeling.
“Yeah. She. She, uh…” I shake my head, a dog trying to clear water out of its ears. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.”
“It’s my dad,” I manage at last. “He’s…dead.”