Free Some of the Parts by Hannah Barnaby Page A

he comes upstairs when he hears me in the kitchen. It is one of my unspoken tasks, making sure my parents don’t have to see my brother’s name in print.
    There is a note on the kitchen table, something about Mom going to her office in the morning and bagels in the freezer, which I crumple up and toss into the recycling bin along with all of the mail except the manila envelope. That comes with me to my room and waits patiently on my bed while I wash my face and brush my teeth. And it is still waiting after I jam my clothes into the hamper and put on my favorite black T-shirt and a clean pair of underpants.
    My desk drawer is full of mail addressed to him that I can’t read but won’t throw away. I opened the first thing that came for him after the accident, and it turned out to be a bill for the ambulance ride. As if he could have paid it. As if anyone should have to.
You didn’t save him,
I thought. I couldn’t bear to give it to my parents, so I stuck it in the drawer. Now it’s under a pile of other envelopes: college brochures, magazine subscription notices, offers he can’t accept or reject anymore.
    I lay the Life Choice envelope across the top of the pile, like a blanket, and close the drawer slowly. I retrieve Matty from his hiding place, hoping the music will do something for me, but this time I go to the playlists. I need something more than shuffle, more than Matty’s random selections. I need a design. I need my brother’s thought process.
    Most of the lists aren’t titled, they’re just numbered with dates, but there’s one that’s different: FOR AMY.
    It’s a family of songs, all sad and sweet. I’ve heard them all before but not together, not this way—I’ve been listening to them on their own, separate links of a chain I didn’t know existed.
    FOR AMY.
    No wonder she won’t come near me. All this time I thought she just didn’t know what to say to me. I thought if I got normal again, we’d be okay. But it wasn’t about me at all.
    He really liked her. He might have even loved her.
    And I took him away.
    I fall asleep stroking my river scar.
    If I dream, I don’t know it.

thursday 9/25
    M om is already gone when I wake up. She has an interior-design company with her friends Susan and Michelle—the three of them always liked to shop together, and while my father maintains that their business is just an excuse to flash their business cards at fabric stores, my mother insists that there’s “more to it than that.” Of course, she never actually explains what the “more” is. Maybe she can’t remember now. She stopped going for a while after the accident, and I had started to wonder if she felt the same way about Susan and Michelle that I did about Amy. But a month ago, on the first day of school, I came into the kitchen and found Mom showered, dressed, and ready to go. She’s been working two or three days a week since then.
    Dad leaves while I’m eating breakfast. I still have some time before I need to get ready for school, so I walk into Dad’s study and wake up his computer. He never totally shuts it down—no matter how many times my brother lectured him about backing up his files and program updates and all that, Dad just can’t be bothered. So all it takes is a shake of the mouse, and the screen lights up. It’s not even password-protected.
    Poor Dad. Does he really trust everyone so much?
    The browser history, of course, has never been cleared. There’s the usual list of sites and links to videos about electrical wiring and shower tile installation, and I’m just about to quit out when something new catches my eye. A search.
    COMPASSIONATE COMPANIONS
    A little bell rings inside my head. I know a grief-group name when I see one. If there’s anything I’ve learned from Bridges, it’s that talking endlessly about how sad you are, how much you miss the person who’s gone, doesn’t change anything. It might give you a good feeling for a little while, like you’re