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His parents took away his phone and computer. Since he was grounded.
Not that it mattered since there was nobody who would contact him anyway.
He spent Saturday afternoon in his bedroom, miserable, his face still aching, his mom still hovering.
He wondered about Jared’s glasses. Did he have a spare pair? Was he going to have a black eye in his bar mitzvah photos? Had Connor ruined that too?
His head was a mess. A massive mess. A collection of scratched out doodles. He felt the way he had on vacation last year, when they flown to California and their flight left at six in the morning so they had to get up at like three in the morning only Connor hadn’t gone to bed at all, so he felt sort of microwaved, sort of strange all day. He told his dad about it and his dad bought him a Coke and when that didn’t do it he got him another one and then he was just so spaced out all day, his brain dragging on the ground behind him, barely catching things, tired and wired and a mess.
Connor’s head was a mess.
He couldn’t quite swallow the lump in his throat.
His mom just kept looking at him and sighing.
His dad wouldn’t look at him at all. Zoe wouldn’t either. He felt like he was trapped behind thick soundproof glass, screaming and shouting and waving his arms and nobody would even look up.
Sometime around six thirty, after dinner, when Connor had retreated to his bedroom again, not even bothering to pick up a book, his dad came to the door.
“Jesus, Connor, go outside or something.”
Connor blinked. Frowned. “I’m grounded.”
“Just… go in the backyard or something then, I’m sick of seeing you moping around.”
Connor got to his feet slowly and trudged down the stairs and out the back door. He sighed, crossing the backyard and sitting on a swing hanging from the swing set that hadn’t been used in a long time. He sighed, sort of kicking at the grass.
He and Zoe used to play out here when they were super little. Some time before they started fighting constantly. He didn’t know when exactly they stopped. Probably around nine or ten. Something weird happened then. He didn’t know what it was.
Connor used to push Zoe sometimes, on the swing. So she could go higher.
Or they’d compete to see how high they could get. Or how high they could jump off from. Until Zoe sprained an ankle that way. Then they weren’t allowed to jump off anymore.
He was running out of space in his head for all the things he wasn’t allowed to do anymore. Things were getting cluttered and he just couldn’t keep track. He wished he could delete the useless stuff from his mind: old passwords, memories with friends who hated him now like Brian, the way that Jared always gripped the straps of his backpack when he was excited or nervous, all of the words to the original Pokemon theme song.
He wanted to clear out space.
Though if he could start deleting things, he’d probably just delete himself.
And if he couldn’t delete himself, then he’d want to delete everything about himself. Maybe if he was a blank slate he wouldn’t be so much of a loser. Maybe if he was a blank slate he could muddle through the eighth grade next year and start fresh in high school.
...Maybe if he hadn’t screwed around and actually did his homework he could have actually skipped a grade and started high school early like he and his parents had briefly talked about before he started at the middle school. When he still talked to Brian. When he still had friends.
At the start of the year he just kept thinking things would be better once he got older. Things would straighten themselves out next year. That would be the year that he got it together.
Connor didn’t think that anymore.
He was starting to think it would never get better.
He was starting to run out of ideas about how not to feel like this all of the time. He tried keeping his head down, he tried being normal, he tried fighting back… each with even more disaster to report back.
He wondered, stupidly, if his dad really hated him.
Which.
Obviously he did.
It hurt though. That he hated Connor so much.
There wasn’t a single safe place he could be anymore.
He wondered if he could hang himself off of the swing set.
But it was too low to the ground, he thought.
Connor got off of the swing. Laid out in the grass. Stared at the sky.
Wished it would just come crashing down and crush him. Or suck him up into it for no real reason.
Connor pulled up a fistful of grass. Then another. He pulled and yanked until he wasn’t tempted to cry anymore.
Jared’s fucking bar mitzvah was that day.
And he wasn’t invited.
And Connor felt like he could fit the Grand Canyon into the hole ripped open in his chest.
He’d thought…
He liked Jared.
He thought…
Jared had been nice. And funny. He’d thought…
He knew Jared didn’t like him back, not that way, not the weird and wrong way that he carried inside of him… but Connor thought...
But Jared participated in the stupid note. He wrote down the kind of thing that Connor was always worried about. He wasn’t… he wasn’t dangerous. He tried to be good, be better, it was just harder for him.
But maybe he was dangerous. Maybe it was so obvious. Maybe Jared always knew.
Knew Connor was a bad person.
Knew that throwing printers was the least he could do.
A monster.
He’d proved it too, yesterday. Breaking glasses, dislocating jaws.
Fuck.
He kind of wished he had a cigarette. Which was dumb because he couldn’t smoke one here in his parents’ yard… But he thought it might solve the burning inside of him with a literal burning.
“Connor? Are you still outside?”
It was dark then. He must have fallen asleep. He sat up. “Yeah mom.”
“Come inside sweetie, it’s getting late.”
He got to his feet slowly.
Something wasn’t quite right.
It didn’t really… feel… real.
Connor blinked slowly. Things were sort of… weird. Not right. Sort of like swimming through syrup. He felt like he’d maybe seen this movie before. Or something. Things didn’t quite make sense.
His mom kept looking at him from across the lawn.
The world felt like it might tip over at any moment, break free from its strings and tilt.
He felt tired. Or something. Like he’d fallen asleep watching a movie and now he was dreaming about the movie. Or like when he stayed up too late reading and the next day he sort of felt like he was in the book.
“Connor?”
It took him a full minute to realize his mom was talking to him.
Something wasn’t right.
She was just staring at him. Just staring. Staring.
“Honey?”
“Sorry…”
“Why don’t you try to get some sleep? You look exhausted,” She said, touching the side of his face gently. Like a mom in a movie or something, like the mom in Speak when Melinda was little.
Connor tried to nod, but his head felt like a bobble head that couldn’t stop bobbing.
“I talked to your dad,” She said, and Connor realized he wasn’t looking at her so he tried to look like he had been looking at her. It was hard. His head felt like it wasn’t really in the room. “I think… since you’re out of school this week, you and I are going to go to…” She sighed. “We’re going to go to the doctor, alright?”
“Why?”
“I’m… I’m worried about you honey. I just want to make sure everything’s okay.”
Connor had no idea what that meant. He sort of felt like he was having this conversation underwater, playing mermaids in the kitchen. “The only thing wrong with me is my hair,” he said, stupidly, and his mom smiled like he was making a joke and she touched the soft hair that was starting to creep back into place on his scalp.
“At least I can see your pretty eyes again.”
He didn’t like his eyes, but he didn’t roll them for once.
He thought they were just… weird.
He didn’t say anything.
Connor looked down. He looked at his feet in the shoes he had drawn all over and… that wasn’t right.
He could see them kind of turning in and the toe of the shoe was kind of moving but he wasn’t doing that was he?
Connor blinked because… well he was awake but it was kind of like he was dreaming. He didn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to be anywhere.
He wasn’t sure he had ever been anywhere.
Maybe he was slowly drifting away or something. Maybe he had wished hard enough to die and it was happening slowly.
Maybe he was just fucking crazy.
“Go on up to bed, honey.”
He nodded as best he could, then kind of… Just. He knew he must have walked up the stairs but his head just kind of floated above it all.
He felt like he was in a book.
He felt like.
Wrong.
Connor went to his bedroom. He could hear Zoe on the phone with someone, and she sounded upset. He tried to think of ways to make her feel better. When they were little kids he would always apologize first. He would do stupid things like crack jokes and draw pictures and one time he even let Zoe paint his fingernails until she relented and said she forgave him.
He didn’t apologize first anymore.
Sometimes he didn’t even apologize at all.
Connor concluded that suddenly disappearing would probably be the best for Zoe. That would be the thing that would make her feel better.
Except he was exhausted and too keyed up and had no way out.
So, instead he closed the door and just laid down, his face in the pillows until he couldn’t stand it anymore.
Rolled over.
Kept picking at the scab on his wrist until it oozed out a little bit of blood. It wasn’t bleeding as much anymore. Healing, or something. He’d have to make another one if it he wanted to keep bleeding.
The little flashes of pain helped though. He felt less spaced out.
Just a little.
Eventually he rolled out of bed, realizing that the scab just wasn’t going to cut it anymore (no pun intended), and went into his top drawer.
Years and years ago, when he was still a boy scout, his grandpa had passed away and Connor had the same initials as him so he got this old pocket knife.
It wasn’t sharp. He could tell when he opened it and pressed it to his thumb. Connor thought he could have pressed as hard as he could and not draw blood.
He wished he had the internet…
He checked the clock.
It was after one in the morning… When had that happened?
He sighed.
And realized Zoe’s phone was in the other room. And she was almost certainly asleep.
He walked quietly as he could to her room. Tested the lock. Peeked inside and saw she was totally passed out, lights still on. Her phone was sitting on the bedside table.
He picked it up, and unlocked it fast because Zoe’s passcode was her birthday and had always been her birthday.
He typed fast, quickly, “how to sharpen a pocket knife.”
His eyes flashed when he realized that his mom definitely had a honing rod in the kitchen. He closed the tab on Zoe’s phone, locked it and put it back on the nightstand.
She frowned in her sleep.
Connor reached over and pulled the covers up around her shoulders.
He thought of the way she had written about Brian Harris in her diary. His brain flickered through all of the handwriting on the note he had gotten in school suddenly. Had Zoe written on it? Had she known about it? He wished he hadn’t torn up her diary so he could have found out.
She probably had known about the note, even if she hadn’t written on it.
She’d been so busy crying in her room because of Sabrina Patel that she didn’t seem to notice that he literally had the worst day of his life.
It made Connor so angry.
He almost wanted to scream at her until she woke up and then scream at her more.
For a second, a crazy second, he thought about putting a pillow over Zoe’s face and pressing down. About plunging the dull knife into her neck.
He didn’t know why he thought that.
Why had he thought that?
That was a little bit scary.
More than a little bit scary.
He was such a psycho, such a freak. He pressed his hands into tighter fists, closed hard until they shook.
He couldn’t breathe right.
He didn’t really want to kill his sister, right?
Right?
He was fucking crazy.
He needed to get out of there.
On his way out turned out the light.
And decided that he needed to stay far away from Zoe.
Connor had to take a little time to catch his breath on the stairs after he left Zoe’s room. He didn’t what was wrong with him but his breathing was ragged and his chest hurt.
He half wondered if he might die.
Half hoped.
He just curled up into a ball and waited for it to stop because he didn’t know what else he could even do. This hadn’t happened before.
His brain just sort of repeated itself over and over and over like a CD skipping.
He’d wanted to kill Zoe.
He’d wanted to kill Zoe.
He wanted to kill Zoe.
He was crazy.
He was insane.
He was a psycho.
He wanted to kill his little sister.
He was crazy.
Psycho killer.
He was a psycho killer.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Eventually, after minutes or hours or several weeks in total darkness, the knives in his chest disappeared and his breathing slowed. He was absolutely drenched in sweat. He felt sick to his stomach. Connor stayed huddled at the top of the stairs until he was sure he could move his arms and legs again.
As he laid there at the top of the stairs, Connor thought inexplicably of Evan Hansen’s weird freak out that day when Brian jumped him in gym.
Was that what had happened to Evan too?
Connor couldn’t quite move for a while.
Once he could move again, Connor got up.
Went into the kitchen.
And sharpened the knife the way that the article he read in Zoe’s room had said to do it. It took a little bit of time, but eventually he got it so sharp that even the gentlest pressure against the pad of his thumb raised a drop of blood.
He got a little carried away that night, after he sharpened the knife. He got too mesmerized by how easily he bled and ended up making three new marks on his arms. He got to excited to feel something that nobody had done to him, to make himself hurt, not make someone else hurt, not be on the receiving end of it.
Connor swallowed as he went to the bathroom to clean up the blood.
He had wanted to hurt Zoe.
That was not right.
That wasn’t.
He didn’t really want to hurt her.
Did he?
He couldn’t really…
An image of her, bleeding everywhere, her eyes big and scared flashed into his mind and he suddenly was gagging, leaning over the toilet, getting sick at the idea.
Connor didn’t really want to hurt Zoe. He didn’t. He was just crazy, he was just stupid, he didn’t really want to hurt her did he?
But.
Just in case, he made sure he paid for it.
He needed to be more careful.
Or he needed to start cutting deeper.
On Sunday morning his dad woke him up by shouting.
Apparently the Kleinmans had called and said that thought it was appropriate for Connor’s parents to pay for Jared’s replacement glasses since it was Connor’s fault that Jared needed them.
Admittedly, Connor thought that was fairly reasonable. He had snapped their kid’s glasses.
“Can’t fucking believe this Connor, do you have any idea how much you’re costing us?”
He said nothing.
He didn’t say that his dad probably could afford to buy Jared Kleinman fifty pairs of glasses with the amount he paid for useless crap like golf and the country club membership.
“So you have nothing to say, is that it?” His dad said, and Connor could see his mom and Zoe both watching in pajamas from near the door. “Aren’t you even sorry?”
“They were making fun of me!” He heard his voice protesting. “You said that they wouldn’t leave me alone if I let them kick me around so I didn’t let them and now I’m in trouble! It’s not fair!”
“Not fair?” His dad said, shaking his head. “Not fair? Seriously, you didn’t think for even a minute that you shouldn’t hit them that hard? Are you stupid ?”
“That’s what you told me to do!” Connor said, desperately, his eyes flicking toward his mother who stood there, staring. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…. That’s what you told me…”
His dad scoffed. “That is not what I meant and you know it,” He said, shaking his head. He turned to Connor’s mom, looking disgusted. “He knows better than this Cynthia. He doesn’t listen.”
“I’m right here!” Connor said, getting to his feet, hands clenched tightly into fists.
“I don’t know what to do with with him anymore, Cynthia!” His dad said, throwing his hands up, ignoring him. “I can’t deal with this.”
His dad stormed out of the room.
Connor looked at his mom helplessly. “I’ll… I’ll pay for the glasses, you can… take away my allowance or take it from my communion money… I…”
His mom sighed, then came over and patted his cheek. “Don’t worry about it. We can take care of some glasses.”
Connor nodded.
He didn’t really feel any better.
His mom left the room, and Zoe stayed in the door for a minute before hurrying away.
Connor swallowed, his hands still balled up tightly.
He kicked out at his desk chair, knocking it over with a crash. He knocked the lamp on his desk to the floor, picked up some books and chucked them. He was just so angry. He threw his shoes, threw all of the pencils he had in a cup against the wall, and just… Kept going. He wrenched the desk open, throwing all of the contents in the drawers to the floor. Then he reached over the desk and pulled and pulled until the desk overturned and landed with a loud crash.
“Connor what the hell?”
Zoe was standing in the door, and Connor shouted “LEAVE ME ALONE!” throwing a stapler from his floor at her. She ducked out of the way screaming for their parents.
He didn’t care, he didn’t care, he wanted them all to just stop.
His dad was back upstairs in a flash, grabbing Connor by his upper arm and dragging him out of the room which was utterly trashed, several things were broken, there was a dent in the wall. He grabbed Connor’s shoulders and shook him, shouting, “What is the matter with you?” Then he grabbed his arm again, tighter, more painfully, and started dragging him down the steps.
And then he mom was there at the bottom of the steps shouting, “Larry, what are you doing?” But his dad kept dragging him until they got into the car. His dad practically threw him into the passenger seat and that’s when his mom chased them outside, shouting again.
“Just where do you think you are going?” She shouted.
“He can’t stay here,” His dad said. “He’s going to hurt someone for real next time Cynthia. I’m taking him to my mom’s, she’s already made a call to get him started at the bootcamp this summer-”
“Larry, don’t you dare!” His mother was shouting now, and Connor could tell that neighbors were staring. She went around to the passenger side of the car. “Come on Connor, get out of the car.”
He glanced nervously at his father but did as he was told.
“I already told you Cynthia, this is just for attention… Taking him to some quack shrink who’ll just tell us everything we screwed up isn’t going to change that.”
“Maybe he needs attention, Larry, something is clearly wrong!”
His dad shook his head.
Got in the car.
Sped off, out of the driveway and down the street.
His mom pulled him into a tight hug. “It’ll be okay, honey, we’re going to figure this out.”
The next day, once Zoe got home from school, his mom knocked on his door.
“Come on, Connor, we’re going to the Kleinmans’.”
“Why?” he asked, barely lifting his head from his pillow.
“Because I’m going to pay them for the glasses, and you’re going to apologize to Jared.”
“I don’t want to.”
“I know, honey, but sometimes you have to do things you don’t want.”
She said it like he was stupid, like he was a little kid who didn’t know you needed to say you were sorry.
“He… we were hanging out all of the time and he…” Connor trailed off. He realized he was still too embarrassed to admit that he had gotten his hopes up about Jared’s stupid bar mitzvah. So instead he said, “He was making fun of me. He helped to write that note.”
His mom frowned. “Do you know what he said?”
“He’s the one who said I was going to blow up the school.”
His mom frowned. “That wasn’t very nice. But you still need to apologize.”
“I know.”
“Go put your shoes on.”
The Kleinmans must have known that they were coming because Mrs. Kleinman and Jared both walked outside the moment they pulled into the driveway.
Connor was relieved to see that Jared’s face wasn’t all bruised or anything. He clearly had new glasses on, but other than a little scratch on the bridge of his nose he looked okay.
When they got out of the car, Connor’s mom put an arm on the back of his neck. So he couldn’t run away.
“Hi Rebecca.”
“Hi Cynthia,” Jared’s mom said with a tight, unfriendly smile.
Connor looked at Jared uneasily. Jared wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“Connor, don’t you have something to say?” His mom said as she pulled out her checkbook.
“I’m sorry for hitting you and breaking your glasses,” Connor mumbled, staring at his shoes.
“It’s okay,” Jared said, eyes fixed on the concrete.
Connor’s mom looked a little bit expectantly at Jared. She was waiting for him to apologize back.
He didn’t.
She looked at Mrs. Kleinman, smiling. “I’m so sorry the boys had a fight,” She said, not sounding especially sorry. “But considering that Jared was the one who started it, it might be appropriate for him to apologize as well.”
Mrs. Kleinman’s face flushed. “Considering that your son can’t seem to control his temper, perhaps it would be for the best if you didn’t comment on my choices as a parent.”
Connor’s mom looked offended. “Come on, Connor,” she said, sighing. “We need to be going.”
She rushed him off of the Kleinmans’ lawn. Connor looked back at Jared, whose face was all red, whose mother was speaking to him sternly. They got into the car, and Connor’s mom sped off. Connor just stared out the window. “I can’t believe that woman,” She said, shaking her head. “Horrible.”
Connor just leaned his head against the glass and sighed.
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His parents took away his phone and computer. Since he was grounded.
Not that it mattered since there was nobody who would contact him anyway.
He spent Saturday afternoon in his bedroom, miserable, his face still aching, his mom still hovering.
He wondered about Jared’s glasses. Did he have a spare pair? Was he going to have a black eye in his bar mitzvah photos? Had Connor ruined that too?
His head was a mess. A massive mess. A collection of scratched out doodles. He felt the way he had on vacation last year, when they flown to California and their flight left at six in the morning so they had to get up at like three in the morning only Connor hadn’t gone to bed at all, so he felt sort of microwaved, sort of strange all day. He told his dad about it and his dad bought him a Coke and when that didn’t do it he got him another one and then he was just so spaced out all day, his brain dragging on the ground behind him, barely catching things, tired and wired and a mess.
Connor’s head was a mess.
He couldn’t quite swallow the lump in his throat.
His mom just kept looking at him and sighing.
His dad wouldn’t look at him at all. Zoe wouldn’t either. He felt like he was trapped behind thick soundproof glass, screaming and shouting and waving his arms and nobody would even look up.
Sometime around six thirty, after dinner, when Connor had retreated to his bedroom again, not even bothering to pick up a book, his dad came to the door.
“Jesus, Connor, go outside or something.”
Connor blinked. Frowned. “I’m grounded.”
“Just… go in the backyard or something then, I’m sick of seeing you moping around.”
Connor got to his feet slowly and trudged down the stairs and out the back door. He sighed, crossing the backyard and sitting on a swing hanging from the swing set that hadn’t been used in a long time. He sighed, sort of kicking at the grass.
He and Zoe used to play out here when they were super little. Some time before they started fighting constantly. He didn’t know when exactly they stopped. Probably around nine or ten. Something weird happened then. He didn’t know what it was.
Connor used to push Zoe sometimes, on the swing. So she could go higher.
Or they’d compete to see how high they could get. Or how high they could jump off from. Until Zoe sprained an ankle that way. Then they weren’t allowed to jump off anymore.
He was running out of space in his head for all the things he wasn’t allowed to do anymore. Things were getting cluttered and he just couldn’t keep track. He wished he could delete the useless stuff from his mind: old passwords, memories with friends who hated him now like Brian, the way that Jared always gripped the straps of his backpack when he was excited or nervous, all of the words to the original Pokemon theme song.
He wanted to clear out space.
Though if he could start deleting things, he’d probably just delete himself.
And if he couldn’t delete himself, then he’d want to delete everything about himself. Maybe if he was a blank slate he wouldn’t be so much of a loser. Maybe if he was a blank slate he could muddle through the eighth grade next year and start fresh in high school.
...Maybe if he hadn’t screwed around and actually did his homework he could have actually skipped a grade and started high school early like he and his parents had briefly talked about before he started at the middle school. When he still talked to Brian. When he still had friends.
At the start of the year he just kept thinking things would be better once he got older. Things would straighten themselves out next year. That would be the year that he got it together.
Connor didn’t think that anymore.
He was starting to think it would never get better.
He was starting to run out of ideas about how not to feel like this all of the time. He tried keeping his head down, he tried being normal, he tried fighting back… each with even more disaster to report back.
He wondered, stupidly, if his dad really hated him.
Which.
Obviously he did.
It hurt though. That he hated Connor so much.
There wasn’t a single safe place he could be anymore.
He wondered if he could hang himself off of the swing set.
But it was too low to the ground, he thought.
Connor got off of the swing. Laid out in the grass. Stared at the sky.
Wished it would just come crashing down and crush him. Or suck him up into it for no real reason.
Connor pulled up a fistful of grass. Then another. He pulled and yanked until he wasn’t tempted to cry anymore.
Jared’s fucking bar mitzvah was that day.
And he wasn’t invited.
And Connor felt like he could fit the Grand Canyon into the hole ripped open in his chest.
He’d thought…
He liked Jared.
He thought…
Jared had been nice. And funny. He’d thought…
He knew Jared didn’t like him back, not that way, not the weird and wrong way that he carried inside of him… but Connor thought...
But Jared participated in the stupid note. He wrote down the kind of thing that Connor was always worried about. He wasn’t… he wasn’t dangerous. He tried to be good, be better, it was just harder for him.
But maybe he was dangerous. Maybe it was so obvious. Maybe Jared always knew.
Knew Connor was a bad person.
Knew that throwing printers was the least he could do.
A monster.
He’d proved it too, yesterday. Breaking glasses, dislocating jaws.
Fuck.
He kind of wished he had a cigarette. Which was dumb because he couldn’t smoke one here in his parents’ yard… But he thought it might solve the burning inside of him with a literal burning.
“Connor? Are you still outside?”
It was dark then. He must have fallen asleep. He sat up. “Yeah mom.”
“Come inside sweetie, it’s getting late.”
He got to his feet slowly.
Something wasn’t quite right.
It didn’t really… feel… real.
Connor blinked slowly. Things were sort of… weird. Not right. Sort of like swimming through syrup. He felt like he’d maybe seen this movie before. Or something. Things didn’t quite make sense.
His mom kept looking at him from across the lawn.
The world felt like it might tip over at any moment, break free from its strings and tilt.
He felt tired. Or something. Like he’d fallen asleep watching a movie and now he was dreaming about the movie. Or like when he stayed up too late reading and the next day he sort of felt like he was in the book.
“Connor?”
It took him a full minute to realize his mom was talking to him.
Something wasn’t right.
She was just staring at him. Just staring. Staring.
“Honey?”
“Sorry…”
“Why don’t you try to get some sleep? You look exhausted,” She said, touching the side of his face gently. Like a mom in a movie or something, like the mom in Speak when Melinda was little.
Connor tried to nod, but his head felt like a bobble head that couldn’t stop bobbing.
“I talked to your dad,” She said, and Connor realized he wasn’t looking at her so he tried to look like he had been looking at her. It was hard. His head felt like it wasn’t really in the room. “I think… since you’re out of school this week, you and I are going to go to…” She sighed. “We’re going to go to the doctor, alright?”
“Why?”
“I’m… I’m worried about you honey. I just want to make sure everything’s okay.”
Connor had no idea what that meant. He sort of felt like he was having this conversation underwater, playing mermaids in the kitchen. “The only thing wrong with me is my hair,” he said, stupidly, and his mom smiled like he was making a joke and she touched the soft hair that was starting to creep back into place on his scalp.
“At least I can see your pretty eyes again.”
He didn’t like his eyes, but he didn’t roll them for once.
He thought they were just… weird.
He didn’t say anything.
Connor looked down. He looked at his feet in the shoes he had drawn all over and… that wasn’t right.
He could see them kind of turning in and the toe of the shoe was kind of moving but he wasn’t doing that was he?
Connor blinked because… well he was awake but it was kind of like he was dreaming. He didn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to be anywhere.
He wasn’t sure he had ever been anywhere.
Maybe he was slowly drifting away or something. Maybe he had wished hard enough to die and it was happening slowly.
Maybe he was just fucking crazy.
“Go on up to bed, honey.”
He nodded as best he could, then kind of… Just. He knew he must have walked up the stairs but his head just kind of floated above it all.
He felt like he was in a book.
He felt like.
Wrong.
Connor went to his bedroom. He could hear Zoe on the phone with someone, and she sounded upset. He tried to think of ways to make her feel better. When they were little kids he would always apologize first. He would do stupid things like crack jokes and draw pictures and one time he even let Zoe paint his fingernails until she relented and said she forgave him.
He didn’t apologize first anymore.
Sometimes he didn’t even apologize at all.
Connor concluded that suddenly disappearing would probably be the best for Zoe. That would be the thing that would make her feel better.
Except he was exhausted and too keyed up and had no way out.
So, instead he closed the door and just laid down, his face in the pillows until he couldn’t stand it anymore.
Rolled over.
Kept picking at the scab on his wrist until it oozed out a little bit of blood. It wasn’t bleeding as much anymore. Healing, or something. He’d have to make another one if it he wanted to keep bleeding.
The little flashes of pain helped though. He felt less spaced out.
Just a little.
Eventually he rolled out of bed, realizing that the scab just wasn’t going to cut it anymore (no pun intended), and went into his top drawer.
Years and years ago, when he was still a boy scout, his grandpa had passed away and Connor had the same initials as him so he got this old pocket knife.
It wasn’t sharp. He could tell when he opened it and pressed it to his thumb. Connor thought he could have pressed as hard as he could and not draw blood.
He wished he had the internet…
He checked the clock.
It was after one in the morning… When had that happened?
He sighed.
And realized Zoe’s phone was in the other room. And she was almost certainly asleep.
He walked quietly as he could to her room. Tested the lock. Peeked inside and saw she was totally passed out, lights still on. Her phone was sitting on the bedside table.
He picked it up, and unlocked it fast because Zoe’s passcode was her birthday and had always been her birthday.
He typed fast, quickly, “how to sharpen a pocket knife.”
His eyes flashed when he realized that his mom definitely had a honing rod in the kitchen. He closed the tab on Zoe’s phone, locked it and put it back on the nightstand.
She frowned in her sleep.
Connor reached over and pulled the covers up around her shoulders.
He thought of the way she had written about Brian Harris in her diary. His brain flickered through all of the handwriting on the note he had gotten in school suddenly. Had Zoe written on it? Had she known about it? He wished he hadn’t torn up her diary so he could have found out.
She probably had known about the note, even if she hadn’t written on it.
She’d been so busy crying in her room because of Sabrina Patel that she didn’t seem to notice that he literally had the worst day of his life.
It made Connor so angry.
He almost wanted to scream at her until she woke up and then scream at her more.
For a second, a crazy second, he thought about putting a pillow over Zoe’s face and pressing down. About plunging the dull knife into her neck.
He didn’t know why he thought that.
Why had he thought that?
That was a little bit scary.
More than a little bit scary.
He was such a psycho, such a freak. He pressed his hands into tighter fists, closed hard until they shook.
He couldn’t breathe right.
He didn’t really want to kill his sister, right?
Right?
He was fucking crazy.
He needed to get out of there.
On his way out turned out the light.
And decided that he needed to stay far away from Zoe.
Connor had to take a little time to catch his breath on the stairs after he left Zoe’s room. He didn’t what was wrong with him but his breathing was ragged and his chest hurt.
He half wondered if he might die.
Half hoped.
He just curled up into a ball and waited for it to stop because he didn’t know what else he could even do. This hadn’t happened before.
His brain just sort of repeated itself over and over and over like a CD skipping.
He’d wanted to kill Zoe.
He’d wanted to kill Zoe.
He wanted to kill Zoe.
He was crazy.
He was insane.
He was a psycho.
He wanted to kill his little sister.
He was crazy.
Psycho killer.
He was a psycho killer.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Eventually, after minutes or hours or several weeks in total darkness, the knives in his chest disappeared and his breathing slowed. He was absolutely drenched in sweat. He felt sick to his stomach. Connor stayed huddled at the top of the stairs until he was sure he could move his arms and legs again.
As he laid there at the top of the stairs, Connor thought inexplicably of Evan Hansen’s weird freak out that day when Brian jumped him in gym.
Was that what had happened to Evan too?
Connor couldn’t quite move for a while.
Once he could move again, Connor got up.
Went into the kitchen.
And sharpened the knife the way that the article he read in Zoe’s room had said to do it. It took a little bit of time, but eventually he got it so sharp that even the gentlest pressure against the pad of his thumb raised a drop of blood.
He got a little carried away that night, after he sharpened the knife. He got too mesmerized by how easily he bled and ended up making three new marks on his arms. He got to excited to feel something that nobody had done to him, to make himself hurt, not make someone else hurt, not be on the receiving end of it.
Connor swallowed as he went to the bathroom to clean up the blood.
He had wanted to hurt Zoe.
That was not right.
That wasn’t.
He didn’t really want to hurt her.
Did he?
He couldn’t really…
An image of her, bleeding everywhere, her eyes big and scared flashed into his mind and he suddenly was gagging, leaning over the toilet, getting sick at the idea.
Connor didn’t really want to hurt Zoe. He didn’t. He was just crazy, he was just stupid, he didn’t really want to hurt her did he?
But.
Just in case, he made sure he paid for it.
He needed to be more careful.
Or he needed to start cutting deeper.
On Sunday morning his dad woke him up by shouting.
Apparently the Kleinmans had called and said that thought it was appropriate for Connor’s parents to pay for Jared’s replacement glasses since it was Connor’s fault that Jared needed them.
Admittedly, Connor thought that was fairly reasonable. He had snapped their kid’s glasses.
“Can’t fucking believe this Connor, do you have any idea how much you’re costing us?”
He said nothing.
He didn’t say that his dad probably could afford to buy Jared Kleinman fifty pairs of glasses with the amount he paid for useless crap like golf and the country club membership.
“So you have nothing to say, is that it?” His dad said, and Connor could see his mom and Zoe both watching in pajamas from near the door. “Aren’t you even sorry?”
“They were making fun of me!” He heard his voice protesting. “You said that they wouldn’t leave me alone if I let them kick me around so I didn’t let them and now I’m in trouble! It’s not fair!”
“Not fair?” His dad said, shaking his head. “Not fair? Seriously, you didn’t think for even a minute that you shouldn’t hit them that hard? Are you stupid ?”
“That’s what you told me to do!” Connor said, desperately, his eyes flicking toward his mother who stood there, staring. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…. That’s what you told me…”
His dad scoffed. “That is not what I meant and you know it,” He said, shaking his head. He turned to Connor’s mom, looking disgusted. “He knows better than this Cynthia. He doesn’t listen.”
“I’m right here!” Connor said, getting to his feet, hands clenched tightly into fists.
“I don’t know what to do with with him anymore, Cynthia!” His dad said, throwing his hands up, ignoring him. “I can’t deal with this.”
His dad stormed out of the room.
Connor looked at his mom helplessly. “I’ll… I’ll pay for the glasses, you can… take away my allowance or take it from my communion money… I…”
His mom sighed, then came over and patted his cheek. “Don’t worry about it. We can take care of some glasses.”
Connor nodded.
He didn’t really feel any better.
His mom left the room, and Zoe stayed in the door for a minute before hurrying away.
Connor swallowed, his hands still balled up tightly.
He kicked out at his desk chair, knocking it over with a crash. He knocked the lamp on his desk to the floor, picked up some books and chucked them. He was just so angry. He threw his shoes, threw all of the pencils he had in a cup against the wall, and just… Kept going. He wrenched the desk open, throwing all of the contents in the drawers to the floor. Then he reached over the desk and pulled and pulled until the desk overturned and landed with a loud crash.
“Connor what the hell?”
Zoe was standing in the door, and Connor shouted “LEAVE ME ALONE!” throwing a stapler from his floor at her. She ducked out of the way screaming for their parents.
He didn’t care, he didn’t care, he wanted them all to just stop.
His dad was back upstairs in a flash, grabbing Connor by his upper arm and dragging him out of the room which was utterly trashed, several things were broken, there was a dent in the wall. He grabbed Connor’s shoulders and shook him, shouting, “What is the matter with you?” Then he grabbed his arm again, tighter, more painfully, and started dragging him down the steps.
And then he mom was there at the bottom of the steps shouting, “Larry, what are you doing?” But his dad kept dragging him until they got into the car. His dad practically threw him into the passenger seat and that’s when his mom chased them outside, shouting again.
“Just where do you think you are going?” She shouted.
“He can’t stay here,” His dad said. “He’s going to hurt someone for real next time Cynthia. I’m taking him to my mom’s, she’s already made a call to get him started at the bootcamp this summer-”
“Larry, don’t you dare!” His mother was shouting now, and Connor could tell that neighbors were staring. She went around to the passenger side of the car. “Come on Connor, get out of the car.”
He glanced nervously at his father but did as he was told.
“I already told you Cynthia, this is just for attention… Taking him to some quack shrink who’ll just tell us everything we screwed up isn’t going to change that.”
“Maybe he needs attention, Larry, something is clearly wrong!”
His dad shook his head.
Got in the car.
Sped off, out of the driveway and down the street.
His mom pulled him into a tight hug. “It’ll be okay, honey, we’re going to figure this out.”
The next day, once Zoe got home from school, his mom knocked on his door.
“Come on, Connor, we’re going to the Kleinmans’.”
“Why?” he asked, barely lifting his head from his pillow.
“Because I’m going to pay them for the glasses, and you’re going to apologize to Jared.”
“I don’t want to.”
“I know, honey, but sometimes you have to do things you don’t want.”
She said it like he was stupid, like he was a little kid who didn’t know you needed to say you were sorry.
“He… we were hanging out all of the time and he…” Connor trailed off. He realized he was still too embarrassed to admit that he had gotten his hopes up about Jared’s stupid bar mitzvah. So instead he said, “He was making fun of me. He helped to write that note.”
His mom frowned. “Do you know what he said?”
“He’s the one who said I was going to blow up the school.”
His mom frowned. “That wasn’t very nice. But you still need to apologize.”
“I know.”
“Go put your shoes on.”
The Kleinmans must have known that they were coming because Mrs. Kleinman and Jared both walked outside the moment they pulled into the driveway.
Connor was relieved to see that Jared’s face wasn’t all bruised or anything. He clearly had new glasses on, but other than a little scratch on the bridge of his nose he looked okay.
When they got out of the car, Connor’s mom put an arm on the back of his neck. So he couldn’t run away.
“Hi Rebecca.”
“Hi Cynthia,” Jared’s mom said with a tight, unfriendly smile.
Connor looked at Jared uneasily. Jared wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“Connor, don’t you have something to say?” His mom said as she pulled out her checkbook.
“I’m sorry for hitting you and breaking your glasses,” Connor mumbled, staring at his shoes.
“It’s okay,” Jared said, eyes fixed on the concrete.
Connor’s mom looked a little bit expectantly at Jared. She was waiting for him to apologize back.
He didn’t.
She looked at Mrs. Kleinman, smiling. “I’m so sorry the boys had a fight,” She said, not sounding especially sorry. “But considering that Jared was the one who started it, it might be appropriate for him to apologize as well.”
Mrs. Kleinman’s face flushed. “Considering that your son can’t seem to control his temper, perhaps it would be for the best if you didn’t comment on my choices as a parent.”
Connor’s mom looked offended. “Come on, Connor,” she said, sighing. “We need to be going.”
She rushed him off of the Kleinmans’ lawn. Connor looked back at Jared, whose face was all red, whose mother was speaking to him sternly. They got into the car, and Connor’s mom sped off. Connor just stared out the window. “I can’t believe that woman,” She said, shaking her head. “Horrible.”
Connor just leaned his head against the glass and sighed.
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