Free Life From Scratch by Sasha Martin Page A

anymore. His once boyish humor became scathing. Looking back, I can see that the split from our old life wasn’t as clean as he’d made it look. The girlfriends, the bands of buddies—they weren’t enough. A shadow floated over the peace this new life offered. We never spoke about his sadness: Whenever I tried, he shut me out.
    I knew he was hurting, but I never guessed how much.

CHAPTER 7

    White Flag of Surr e nder
    O NE F RIDAY MORNING IN A PRIL , almost two years to the day after we moved in with the Dumonts, my brother succumbed. He was 14.
    Pierre was on a business trip in Paris. The only other people at home were me, Patricia, and Heather, who was still living at home as a first-year medical student. It was time for school, but Michael didn’t come down for breakfast. We waited in the car, the engine idling. After checking the clock on the dash for the third time, Patricia sent me up to his room, where I knocked and knocked without an answer. My heart was in my mouth when I told Patricia.
    “Did you try his door?” she asked.
    “Yes,” I whispered, my eyes staring down at a crease in my sneakers, “It was locked.”
    She went into the kitchen and fished a paper clip out of the junk drawer. “Here, wiggle this around until the lock pops out.”

    As the door peeled back, I saw my brother leaning awkwardly up against the top rail of his bunk bed, legs curled and feet pointed behind him. A line of spit had bubbled out of his mouth and down his chin. I couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing, but I knew it wasn’t right.
    I ran to the stair railing and shouted down, “There’s something wrong with my brother.”
    Patricia came running. After a horrified “Oh, my God,” I heard, “Sasha, get some scissors.”
    I didn’t yet understand why she needed scissors, but my gut told me I’d better do exactly as she said. The kitchen was so far away compared to the one in Mom’s little apartment, where it had been just a half step from Michael’s bed to the stove. I banged open drawer after drawer, finding towels, knives, forks, and tinfoil—but no scissors. By this time, Heather had heard the commotion from her basement apartment and came running.
    “Where are the scissors?” I asked.
    Without a word, she pulled open the junk drawer that held the paper clips and pointed. I followed as she sprinted up the stairs.
    When I gave Patricia the scissors, she was propping up Michael’s body. I thought I saw something threading between his neck and the bunk bed. Patricia took the scissors without turning around. “Call 911,” she said, her voice high and thin.
    There was a phone on a little wooden table in the hall right outside Michael’s room. I dialed the number, but when the operator asked, “What’s your emergency?” I didn’t know what to say. When the question was repeated, I hung up.
    As though in a trance, I hovered near Michael’s doorway just as Patricia pressed the scissors together and his body fell to the floor. His face and neck were ash-gray. A deep red line divided the grayness from the rest of his body. His skin was dull and waxy, like one of my dolls. Heather tried mouth-to-mouth. Patricia knelt on the floor and pounded Michael’s chest. It sounded hollow. I stood there staring at the cut edges of the thick, hay-colored rope on the floor. It looked like a dead snake.
    That’s when I realized he’d hanged himself. I hadn’t been able to tell at first because he was too tall for the bunk bed. His back had been arched in a failed swan dive, face pressed against the bed, feet stretched behind him toward the wall, still touching the floor. His head had hidden the rope.
    Patricia yelled again, “Where’s 911?”
    Silently I pressed myself closer to the wall. Someone must have called them back, because a few minutes later, lights and sirens clamored up the steep drive. EMTs swarmed around Michael with plastic tubes and beeping devices. They were able to get him breathing again, but he’d