tw: centered around a sibling's suicide attempt

A funeral march started playing in my head when my mom called me downstairs for dinner. My homework sprawled across my desk, I wondered how long I could pretend I was listening to music, the ever-diligent student, before my dad rapped on my bedroom door. He probably didn’t want to have this nice family dinner any more than I did, but you’d never know from looking.

Sure enough, a few minutes later, I heard the familiar cadence of his heavy footfalls up the stairs and down the hallway to my room. A light knock sounded from the door. Pushing my headphones deeper into my ears, I hunched over my desk. Unsolved math equations swam in front of my eyes. One more year, and family dinners would become a summer-and-holidays thing, and this new and unfamiliar dread wouldn’t hang over my head anymore. Like my brother’s well-being these days, my family always felt primed to shatter. Maybe being home would always feel like that now, no matter how far away I could go. 

With a squeak, my bedroom door swung open. My chest felt tight as I turned around, pretending to look surprised, and pulled a silent earbud back out.

“Cassidy, honey, dinner’s ready,” my dad said. He was leaning against my door frame, doing the dad thing where he kicked one leg up to support his weight. My father looked like a typical suburban dad, if you ignored the bags under his eyes and the defeated slump of his shoulders. He was one of my favorite people; he loved to take me on hikes and talk about world history or politics with unfettered enthusiasm. He was kind, and funny, and a proud, gray-haired member of two different dad-joke groups on Facebook. He didn’t make so many jokes anymore, though. Not since Jamie attempted suicide a month ago.

I nodded. “Be down in a minute.”

“You remember Cecelia’s here, right?” he asked. I nodded again. How could I forget about my brother’s girlfriend, when I heard her and Jamie’s voices through the wall between our bedrooms every afternoon? Each time I heard his laugh, that stupid-loud guffaw from his throat, I wanted to punch him as much as I wanted to cry. Lucky Jamie, doing better now. My brother, the pillar of strength after hardship. Alive, breathing, even laughing. Every time I looked at him, I was in the hospital waiting room again. I was standing outside his hospital room, watching his girlfriend cry on his scratchy sheets while he patted her hair. 

My brother almost died at his own hands, but he didn’t. He lived. We were supposed to be okay now, but how does a family survive that?

I checked my phone in a final effort to procrastinate my attendance to the inevitable family gathering. My best friend, Luke, had texted me a few minutes earlier: Wanna work on the math hw together after dinner, like 8ish?

Sure, I responded, tucking my phone into my back pocket. He was probably just looking for an excuse to talk to me after our fight, which I was still pissed about, but that was a later problem; my dad was waiting for me in the hallway. He offered a soft smile before we made our way downstairs, my sock-feet slipping on the wooden floor. I could smell the tangy sweetness of tomato sauce drifting from downstairs. Jamie’s favorite, probably.

Mom, Jamie, and Cecelia were already sitting around our kitchen table. Jamie held our wooden salad bowl up for Cecelia while his girlfriend used the tongs, concentrating as she picked pieces of spring mix from around the cucumber slices. I raised an eyebrow at my mom. Is she serious?

Be nice, her placid expression warned. 

I shot back an exasperated I know glare, swallowed hard, and dragged out the chair across from Jamie. Cecelia had taken my usual spot next to him for some reason. I liked sitting there, where I could usually avoid eye contact. This across-the-table business meant I had to look at Jamie for the whole meal. Being around him was painful enough as it was—my brother was not the brother I knew anymore. 

Family dinners used to be one of my favorite things, with banter shot back and forth across the table like a Shakespeare scene, all of us engaged and laughing as we debated some silly topic with the intensity of well-researched scientists. Dinner stopped being like that after Jamie went to college. Every time he came home, he was just a little bit less engaged and a little bit more sad. When I asked my mom about him once, late at night, she had said that freshman year of college was hard, and he would be okay.

“Hi, Cecelia,” I said. The pleasantries were as if I hadn’t found her sobbing in my high school hallway a month ago. It had been a few days after Jamie attempted, and she must have just found out; Jamie probably texted her. My mom was going to wait to tell Cecelia until after school ended. What a thoughtless text to send to your girlfriend in the middle of first period—if he was already late in telling her, what difference would a few more hours make?

I saw Cecelia curled on the ground by her locker, rocking back and forth, inconsolable, and I knew what she was crying over. I should have stopped and comforted her, it’s just—she didn’t even see me, and that was my brother she was weeping about. She had no responsibilities, no empty house to go back to because her parents were at the hospital, and most of all, no right to share our private family information. All her friends were fussing over her, a flock of affection, smoothing back her perfect hair and taking turns murmuring comforts. Walking past her, I was all alone.

Luke was still mad that he found out about Jamie through Cecelia’s constant, public devastation on social media and in the hallways, and not from me. He couldn’t understand why I didn’t tell him, or why I walked away when he asked me about it a few days after the news broke. It wasn’t his fault, and he was just trying to be a good friend. It just felt like he was asking me to bleed out all over the lunch table. All of our conversations since had been strained, and I missed him, but I couldn’t fix it.

Breaking me from my reverie, Cecelia handed me the salad and said, “How was your day?” 

I accepted the bowl from her and dropped some leaves onto my plate, pointedly taking extra cucumber. “Good, you?” I asked. She’d come over to see Jamie every night this week. I didn’t blame her, but I wondered if Jamie felt bad for making her be around him all the time. Well, not making her, but… making her feel the need to. 

  “Just a normal day for me,” Cecelia chirped. “How are your classes?” My dad sat next to me, across from Cecelia and adjacent to my mom at the head of the table. Cecelia never seemed to know what to do with my family’s silence—she pushed away the unspoken scream of Jamie’s attempt with her mindless chatter. My home was stiff and tense without her talking, a lackluster exchange of pleasantries undermined by my parents whispering to each other.

I shrugged. “Peters assigned too much reading again, so I have a lot of homework tonight. Have you had him yet?” 

Cecelia was a year below me, a junior, and two years younger than Jamie. It bothered me when I thought about being older than her. “No, but all my senior friends tell me he sucks. I’m hoping they’ll place me in Speer’s class instead. I suck at English.” 

My mom started passing the ziti around the table. “Jamie,” she said, her voice softening into the new, gentle tone she used with him. “You had Peters, right?”

He looked up from his plate. “Yeah.” Jamie’s voice was still a little scratchy. It stopped short, crackling and wavering between each handful of syllables like an old record. Jamie cleared his throat. “I think he only teaches the honors classes, Cece. You don’t want him.” She blushed, and Jamie glanced at me then. I looked away. “Way too much homework,” he agreed.

“Totally,” I whispered. It was the first thing I’d said to him all day—I didn’t know what to say to him anymore. It felt safer to hide in my room, where I couldn’t hurt him by mistake. My cheeks felt hot as I scooped a square of ziti onto my plate and missed, splattering noodles and sauce half onto the tablecloth.

“Nice one,” Jamie said. I could feel the smirk in his voice, and the irritation, even though I still didn’t look up past his green t-shirt. Making fun of me was a normal Jamie thing to do. I used a finger to nudge the food back into place. There was tomato sauce splashed up the arm of my white sweater, a stain in the making. 

“Shut up,” I told him, hesitant as I tilted my head up, almost catching Jamie’s eye. Maybe normal wasn’t as far away as it seemed.

Then, my mom jumped like I’d announced some plan to commit a mortal sin after dinner. “Cassidy Anne! Apologize.” I felt sick to my stomach. Right. There was no such thing as normal anymore. This new normal was a too-tight jacket, constricting everything; something I needed to shrink to fit into.

Shit. “Sorry, Jamie,” I muttered, grabbing a napkin to blot at my sleeve. I should have kept my mouth shut. Under the table, my dad nudged my leg with his. You’re okay, it said. Mom’s just afraid. I blinked hard before the tears prickling in my eyes fell, letting my hair form a shield between us.

Jamie put his fork down with a clatter. “She’s fine, mom.” He snapped. I looked up at him then–it was safe, because he was looking at my mom with irritation written all over his features. His brown hair, curly and in need of washing, spilled over his forehead like usual. Freckles smattered across his nose. Mom’s brown eyes, and unfairly dark lashes. For a moment—for one second—he was just Jamie. 

Then, reality lapsed back in. “It’s fine,” Jamie repeated, as if trying to convince himself. I blinked harder. It wasn’t fair how my parents protected him from me, like I was the villain. If he was a fragile bird, I was a cage holding everything in.

Jamie drummed his fingers on the table, eyes unreadable. Cecelia put a hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged it off, and she tried not to look disappointed. “Jamie, I think—” she started. But he ignored her, looking directly at me. I shrank under his gaze.

“Cassie-O. Pass the green beans?” So much blame in his one, mundane request. I swallowed hard.

“Why Cassie-O? I’ve never heard that one,” Cecelia mused, probably trying to break the tension as I slid the dish across the table, concentrating on the motion of my knuckles and the ceramic heat. I could feel his eyes burning into my forehead. He knew that I couldn’t look at him, that I struggled with being around him as much as I was grateful that he was alive. It was torture, sitting across from him. He almost ruined all of us—how could he even think, for one second, that the world was better off without him? That we would ever recover from his death?

I hated myself for it. And I hated him for it, too. And all he probably knew was that I hadn’t really looked at him since I’d found him slumped over the edge of the tub in a pool of vomit, with a half-empty bottle of bleach nearby. 

“Cassie-O, like the constellation,” Jamie deadpanned, still staring at me. “Right, Cassie?” When we were younger, our family went camping together. My dad always pointed out the stars to us—his favorite constellation was Cassiopeia. He called her the Queen of the Sky, and once Jamie made a joke about Cassiopeia being like me, because my head was always in the clouds. I realized with sudden, deep shame that he hadn’t called me that for months—a warning sign I must have missed.

“Right,” I mumbled, my cheeks aflame.

My mom cleared her throat in anticipation. “Jamie,” she started. “You know Cassidy loves you, and—”

“Jesus,” Jamie smacked his hands against the table's edge so hard he pushed himself away. I started at the noise, my head snapping up. There were his eyes, his face, right across from mine. Furrowed in frustration. My stomach flipped over. “Just look at me, Cassidy. It’s not like I’m gonna go jumping off a bridge.” 

Cecelia gasped, pressing her hand to her mouth, and I wanted to shrivel underneath his accusatory glare. He was right. “I—” 

Jamie snapped, “Don’t apologize. You can’t even look at me.” It was humiliating. He grabbed the tongs from the green bean dish, dumped some onto his plate with unnecessary force, and looked at my parents. Tears were sliding down my mom’s cheeks, and my dad was pale and uncertain; he looked like he was going into shock. I could only imagine what Cecelia was thinking. I saw us in the way that she saw us, in a terrible shift of view: suffocated.

We weren’t talking about what happened, other than my dad’s early attempts at casual comments to Jamie, like how was therapy today and did you take your meds, kiddo? Those had pissed Jamie off, so we landed back in uncomfortable silence. Everyone was a player in our show of the unbroken family, but we were all performing for each other. Burrowing deeper in my shame, I felt a rush of affection for Cecelia. She wasn’t part of the false silence. She acted normal, like herself, and meant it. No wonder Jamie liked her so much.

“Stop walking on eggshells,” Jamie spit, talking to everyone now. “It’s fucking annoying.” The truth of Jamie’s accusation sucked all the air out of the room, the whole table going dead silent. I didn’t want to be there anymore. I wanted to go home, to when I loved sitting next to Jamie and we only argued about things that didn’t matter. 

“I’m sorry, honey,” my mom said, pained. “You—you really scared us. We never want you to feel like you can’t talk to us again.”

Jamie rolled his eyes. My dad added, leaning forward, “What your mother means is, what can we do? How do we help you? We’ve never done this before either, Jamie.” He reached his hand across the table, like he could hold his son and keep him there. My dad was so earnest, it hurt to watch. Jamie pulled his hands away.

“Not like this,” Jamie retorted, running his fingers through his hair instead. My stomach went sour. Then how? I wanted to say. How do we even start?

When my phone buzzed, a saving grace, I practically clawed it out of my back pocket. My hands were shaking. Grateful to have somewhere else to look, I didn’t even think about hiding my cell under the table. I barely heard the chorus of displeasure from my parents at my poor table manners.

Luke. Had dinner early. Come over now? “Um,” I said, hating the tremor in my own voice. I couldn’t bring myself to look up. “I’m sorry. I promised Luke I’d help him with the math.” Everyone at the table knew that was a lie. I was as good at math as a very advanced ten-year-old. “May I be excused?”

My dad started, “Cassidy, you should really stay—”

“Thanks,” I said, getting up, dropping my plate in the sink without clearing it first and running to my room. My body moved faster than my mind could; I shoved papers and pencils into my backpack in a frenzy, fighting my face from contorting. If I started crying, I’d never stop, and then Jamie could never be normal again and our family would be like this forever and I’d have nowhere to go home to. 

Some small, pathetic part of me hoped Jamie would follow me upstairs, stop me, give me a hug or something. But no one did, so I booked it out the back door, already on the street by the time the lock clicked behind me. 

***

Luke only lived a half block away, and I ran the entire distance. By the time I got there, I was sweaty and out of breath, guilt curling in my stomach the way blood mixes into water, tainting everything red. After I rang the bell, panting, it took him a minute to get to the front door—I’d forgotten to text him back.

“Hey,” Luke said, surprised, accompanied by a gust of warm air flooding out from inside. Everything about Luke and his house was familiar—from the smell of his mom’s chicken-and-rice soup to the sound of his two brothers playing a video game in the background. Luke looked confused when he saw me, not irritated like I was expecting. “You okay?” I wiped self-consciously at my damp forehead. 

“Yeah,” I muttered, smearing my hands across my face in case there were any errant tears. “Sorry.”

His brow furrowed, and he motioned me inside. “Are you still mad at me?”

I’d almost forgotten we were fighting. “It’s fine,” I insisted, hearing Jamie’s voice at the dinner table echoed in my words. “I’m not mad at you. It’s—”

“Sure.” My heart was still hammering from the sprint over as Luke led us through the living room to his basement door. Usually, we did our homework upstairs, but I didn’t protest. 

At the sound of the squeaky basement stairs, his ever-omniscient mom shouted, “Three inches!” Luke rolled his eyes at me, and I smiled a little despite myself. He left the door open a smidge.

Unsure of what to do once we were downstairs, I put my backpack on the giant brown couch and sat down next to it. “There’s no table down here,” I observed lamely.

“Look, Cassidy.” Luke dropped onto the couch next to me as he spoke, his arm brushed up against mine. “I just… I don’t get it. Why didn’t you tell me? I could have been there for you.”

His bluntness made me squirm. It always had; it was the classic reoccurring argument of our friendship. Luke would push me on something he wanted to know, and I would pull away because I wasn’t ready to tell him, and then he’d be mad at me. The fights had never been big. It was always over things like who I had a crush on or what I thought about some social drama in our friend group. When we were arguing about what happened to Jamie, though, everything else we’d fought about felt stupid. There’s nothing like your brother’s suicide attempt to slam teenage squabbles into perspective.

I shot Luke a disdainful look at the question. “The math homework was a ploy?”

“Only kind of,” he admitted. “I thought it would be obvious. And I do want to help you.”

The idiot. I’d only half-realized his plan. “Look, I didn’t tell you about Jamie because I don’t want to talk about it,” I said defensively, hugging a throw pillow to my chest. “He’s fine, okay? Can we be done now?”

“But how are you, Cassie?”

“Fine.” I shook my head. “I’m fine, Luke.” 

I could tell he didn’t believe me. “You know you can talk to me, right?” 

“Cecelia told the whole school before I’d even visited him in the hospital.” Irritation leaked into my voice, even though it wasn’t really him I was mad at. “I would have told you when I was ready.” 

He started fiddling with the TV remote, tracing the pad of his finger over each button. “That sucks,” he said. “Not having control.” He just wanted me to tell him what happened, casually, as if talking about it wasn’t humiliating and distressing and shameful. You hear that someone attempted suicide, and isn’t the first question how didn’t their family see it coming? And then the second, how is Jamie doing now? And I didn’t know the answer because I couldn’t stand to witness his recovery without feeling so sick to my stomach with grief that you’d think he had died. 

“You could tell me what really happened, then,” Luke suggested, “if Cecelia was wrong.”

“She wasn't,” I admitted. “She just doesn’t get it. She’s the girlfriend, you know? But we’re his family, and it’s just different. I didn’t want anyone to know.”

“What part doesn’t she get?”

I shook my head. “Like—all of it, Luke. My family’s worst day ever became, like, lunch table gossip because of her.” He flinched, and I was sure he was thinking of our fight. “I don’t even know what to say.”

“You know,” Luke said, “you ranted to me about Hamlet for three hours that one time. You always have something to say.” He shifted away so he could look at me, and I missed the warmth of his arm against mine. I hadn’t really noticed it until it was gone.

“That’s an exaggeration.” I felt a smile pull at the corners of my mouth. “It was only like, an hour.”

“So, c’mon,” he said, putting the TV remote down on the ottoman in front of us. “You always have something to say. Just start.” 

And I realized that I wanted to.

It took me a few tries to find the words. The sentences would form in my head, the story writing itself so easily, but a dam would appear between me and the outside world. I’d open my mouth to say something, and my intuition would swoop in, going Jamie would be so upset if he knew or mom would be so embarrassed if she heard what I was saying. And worst of all, Luke will know that I’m a monster. I kept needing to restart, adding more details about what happened before to make sense of the dinner. I told Luke about hearing Jamie be sick in the bathroom while he screamed for my mom, and me breaking the lock on the door to get to him. We had been home alone, and I was pissed at him because he told me to order pizza for dinner, when he knew I hated calling in for food. The knees of my jeans got soaked with his vomit while I held him, frantic on the phone with 911. I rode with him in the ambulance and sat alone in the waiting room. I had to be the one to call my parents.

Eventually I was crying, but I kept talking anyway. Luke didn’t acknowledge my tears at all, and I liked that. It felt good to be angry and devastated and afraid without someone running over and smoothing my hair, trying to make the pain stop.

When I finally stopped talking, Luke just said, “Jeez, Cass. I’m sorry.” 

“Yeah,” I sniffed, wiping my nose with my wrist. “I’m so mad at him. Isn’t that terrible? I can’t even tease him without getting yelled at, and my parents are so afraid of losing him, that it’s like they’re still losing him. I just want to go back to before.”

“How is any of that terrible?”

“He almost died.” Saying it out loud made me picture it all: the almost-funeral that never happened, the almost becoming an only child who’s not an only child, the almost-silence through the wall between our bedrooms. “I should just be happy he’s alive.” My words were wisps of smoke. “But I feel like he died that day.”

“I think that’s the hard part,” Luke said softly. “Living with it.”

“Yeah,” I whispered, thinking of all the warning signs that only existed in retrospect. Jamie giving me his favorite band t-shirt and struggling in all his classes. Coming home more and more, breaking down when he had to leave again.

“And you’re allowed to be mad,” Luke continued, soft and earnest. He, the place where I couldn’t choose to disappear. “But there’s so much time for things to get better, Cass. He’ll be around to irritate you for a long time. I’m glad I’m not the only one who has to do it.” I elbowed him and wiped under my eyes with my sleeve. In my haste to leave home, I hadn’t changed; pasta sauce was still curving up my arm. 

“Rude.”

He laughed, warm and comforting. It felt wrong to make a joke in the midst of everything, but maybe that was better than not saying anything at all. “Cassidy, none of this is your fault,” Luke continued, more serious now. “Of course you’re mad. I would be, too. You’re not terrible for that.” 

“Thanks,” I whispered. Parts of our family aftermath were still my fault, or at least kind of my fault. Everyone played a role in the suffocating silence we shared. My mom’s protectiveness over Jamie, my dad’s desperate attempts to normalize what just couldn’t be made normal. My desperate avoidance of Jamie, pushing away how he had almost died; my almost-grief for him and for our family and the way things used to be. But it was still nice to hear Luke saying these things and being my friend, always on my side.

Our conversation lapsed into silence, and I rested my head on Luke’s shoulder. We sat there for a while, quiet except for the sound of his brothers playing some game with a lot of explosions upstairs. Breathing in the scent of his detergent, I focused on how his shoulder shifted up and down, steady. It was kind of boney and uncomfortable, but he felt familiar, someplace I already knew.

After a while, we went upstairs to start the homework. The math wasn’t as complicated as I thought, and Luke was good at helping. I felt like I owed him something, a sweeping thank you for listening or a promise to get better. But Luke hadn’t seemed to mind at all. 

No one in his family acted like anything out-of-routine had happened, despite our atypical basement foray. His mother slid bowls of ice cream onto the kitchen table when she came downstairs to say hi and ask me, tentatively, how my parents were doing. I told her they were okay, and that Jamie was doing better, and sometimes things were still really difficult. I thought I’d be mad that Luke told his mom, but it was nice to know that she cared and wasn’t too afraid to ask me.

Eventually, I texted my mom to let her know that I was fine, and I was sorry for leaving. She offered to pick me up so I didn’t have to walk home in the dark. 

It’s fine, I said, feeling guilt wash over me. I don’t mind walking. 

My phone buzzed again around ten. Luke and I were sitting at his dining table, chatting about people from school, when I saw the message. My stomach flipped when Jamie’s name popped up, but the message just said, You coming, Cassie-O?

Weird. I got up and peeked through the curtains covering Luke’s kitchen window. Though I’d suspected him, I was still surprised, and grateful: Jamie was idling outside on the sidewalk, waiting to walk me home.

(Image by FreePik)