There are still days when I look up at the door hoping and expecting to see Taylor walk in. I know it won’t happen. It’s not like I’m delusional and I don’t know he’s dead. I can finally say the word dead now, when I talk about him. That took me a while. I always knew it but the letters seemed to get stuck in my mouth and I just couldn’t force them out. Anyway, it’s not like I don’t know he’s dead. I know he isn’t walking through that door any time soon. That doesn’t mean I have to stop wishing he would.

I still miss him, that’s for sure. It’s not just that I miss him being here, though. These days it’s more like I want him to be here so he can see me. He was the one who always believed I was alright and now he isn’t even here to see it. That’s the part that hurts even though I know it’s a little selfish.

I guess I ought to believe that he’s up in heaven looking down on us, but I just don’t know about that. All this religion stuff never made much sense to me anyway, and especially not now. I can’t watch all this stuff go wrong and believe that there’s someone up there who is supposed to be taking care of us. I’d rather not believe in God at all than believe that he’s turning a blind eye to everything bad in the world.

So maybe Taylor is watching us and maybe he isn’t. And I’m kind of okay with not knowing. I don’t think knowing that he is would be any more comforting.

I don’t think he would even recognize his bedroom now. I moved in for good, officially and everything, the day I turned eighteen. I had been gradually bringing all my stuff over for about a week, and I finally made it real by setting my drum set up in the living room after school on my birthday.

When Ike came home from work that day, he had a chocolate cake and a gallon of blue paint to cover that stupid yellow Taylor had insisted on. Isaac and I were never that close, not the way that me and Taylor were. I still hate that this is what it took to bring us together. A lot of good has come out of the past year, somehow, and it’s bittersweet because I don’t want to be so glad that Taylor’s death has been the catalyst for it all.

At first I didn’t even want to paint the room. I just sat in the floor eating the cake and staring at the walls. Finally Ike came in armed with paintbrushes and started for me, with a big sloppy blue smiley face in the middle of one wall. Before I knew it, we were both covered in blue paint and all the cake was gone. And the room was mine.

This new life was mine, really mine.

I’m still trying to figure out where everything is going and where it’s been. I guess Isaac is too, and I’m glad we can be together for it. Mom and dad have mostly left us alone. By the time I moved out, they weren’t really even speaking to me anymore. Even worse than before. I walked out the house that last day, on the way to my van, and I heard the door open behind me. Mom came out, looking like someone had had to push her through the doorway and down the steps, and gave me a short, cold hug. She didn’t say anything.

I guess that was better than I expected. Maybe in the future they’ll see that things are okay. That I’m okay. That Isaac is okay. That maybe our family is going to be okay. But I’m not going to push things. If it happens, it will happen. Until then, I won’t sit by waiting for an apology, or even a normal parental conversation.

I’m not saying things are perfect now. That just isn’t possible. Ike is a lot quieter than he used to be. I can’t really blame him for that. Sometimes I’m not sure if he’s really lost in thought or if he’s just trying to keep himself from talking. I know why he thinks he shouldn’t talk. It’s like he has to stop and reconsider every word before it leaves his mouth, as though it might somehow destroy the whole world. But there aren’t any more secrets he could tell and he shouldn’t blame himself anyway.

Then again, what do I know? I was dumb enough to not even really see the truth about Taylor and Alex until it didn’t matter anymore. I don’t know how I missed it now, how I could have missed all the little clues and hints. Even if I had known, I wouldn’t have cared. Maybe that’s why I didn’t see it. Because he was my brother and I loved him regardless of who he loved. But I guess our parents didn’t feel the same way.

As for Alex, he comes over with Portia sometimes. I think she’s forgiven Ike for leaving her. It wasn’t really like he left her, anyway. He left all of us so he could get himself back. So she forgave him and they are okay now. Alex comes over because I guess he’s still lonely and our company is the closest he can come to having Taylor back. I always did like hanging out with him, though, so it’s okay.

I don’t know if he really loved Taylor. Sometimes I want to ask. I never saw him cry or anything. But it wouldn’t really be right to ask him and it’s none of my business anyway. So I don’t ask. I think it would just open up the wounds again if I did ask him and if his answer was yes. I like to assume it is, even though I know that means this probably hurt him as much, if not the same way, that it did me and Ike.

I like to imagine Taylor loved Alex too, and that Taylor stood up for himself to our mom on that last night. In my mind, Taylor was his usual defiant self and told our mom that her disapproval didn’t matter because he knew who he was and how he felt. I’d never have the guts to ask her what he said, and I doubt she would tell me anyway. I know now that when he left, he went to Alex. Alex hasn’t told any of us what they talked about then. I don’t think it was good. Maybe they argued. I don’t know. That’s another thing I won’t ask him, even though I think I’d like to know the last words Tay said to anyone. But that’s between him and Alex and maybe it’s more personal than I want to know.

And what do I really know about love, anyway? I guess I’m an adult now but sometimes I don’t feel like it. Then again, sometimes I feel like everyone made me grow up too fast. It’s like I’m stuck, suspended in this weird place where I’m not really an adult or a kid. Whatever I am, all I know about love is what I’ve seen of it, which hasn’t been all that much. It’s nothing I’ve really experienced for myself. Shelby wasn’t love. It’s hard to say what she really was. She was just there, and I couldn’t think of any good reasons not be with her. Now I can think of several, but they didn’t stop me then.

She started coming to the gas station almost every day. Sometimes she would get gas and sometimes she would just hang out, taking way too long to get a soda from the machine out in front of the garage. It was always obvious why she was there. At first I tried to ignore her and hope one of the other guys would wait on her. But they figured out soon enough that she was there for me and wouldn’t stop with their sneers and little comments until I walked over to her car.

I let her come over to the apartment a few more times, but it was always awkward. I didn’t really see what I had ever seen in her, other than the danger of it all. I didn’t want danger anymore. I didn’t want her drinking my beer and crawling into my lap. Which she did, the last time she came over. That was when I knew for sure it was the end for me and her. There might have been a time that I wouldn’t have turned her away. I don’t know.

For a while, I ignored her in the hallway at school and didn’t answer her phone calls. I had to stop doing that, though, because I didn’t like being that much of a coward. One day, right when I walked into the apartment after work, the phone rang. I knew before I even saw the caller id that it was her. I think it surprised her that I picked up. Before she had time to say anything, I told her it all had to stop. If I had given her even the tiniest chance, I’m afraid she might have won me over again. So I didn’t give her that chance. I told her we were a phase. A phase that had passed. That she wasn’t what I needed in my life anymore.

I don’t think she wanted to, but she accepted it. She could see well enough that I’m not the same anymore. We might have worked at one point, but now that I’m finally feeling like… well, like a person, our relationship just doesn’t work. She hasn’t called since then, and her visits to the gas station are usually just for gas these days.

I’m quitting that job soon anyway, and I won’t miss it one bit. Alex promised he could get me a job at the record store, working with him. He offered me the job for weeks before I accepted it. It felt too much like trying to replace Taylor. First I took his bedroom. Then his job? It didn’t feel right. But Alex wouldn’t leave me alone about it. He promised me it wasn’t as weird as I thought it was, and finally he won me over. I always did like to hang out there after school, when Taylor was still alive. I know that record store inside and out, just about as well as any of the guys who work there. So I guess it just makes sense.

I don’t know what I’m going to do once I graduate. Isaac says he is going to start taking classes again next fall. He just has to save up some money for it this spring and then he’s going to take the last few classes he needs to get his degree. He wants to teach music to little kids. He keeps telling me I need to apply to college, but I don’t know. Maybe I won’t get in anyway. But he says I will, and I could do really well in the music program he’s in. Maybe I’ll be like Taylor, though, and just work at the record store.

Either way, it feels like I’ll just be following in one of their footsteps. I don’t want to do that. I want to be me, and I’m finally starting to figure out who that is. I’m finally starting to like who that is. I don’t remember the last time I could say that. I guess the last time I really felt okay with me, I was too young to really be thinking about that kind of stuff anyway.

Maybe I will go to college. The school guidance counselor came into one of my classes last week and talked for a long time about our choices for after graduation. At the end, she handed out applications for some colleges around Oklahoma. They’ve been sitting on the coffee table ever since then, taunting me – University of Oklahoma, Oral Roberts, Oklahoma State.

But as much as I do want to be my own person and have my own life, a bigger part of me wants to stay here in Tulsa with Isaac. I’d never say it to him, but I feel like he kind of needs me now. If he stayed by himself, I think he would go crazy again. Just because he’d never talk, unless he had to. It’s not that I think he’s really crazy. He just needs a little more support until he’s totally back on his feet. That’s what his doctors said too, so it’s not just me being overprotective. Going back to college will really help him, I think.

I never thought it would end up with me being overprotective of Ike. Somehow it should be the other way around, but that’s okay. It’s nothing we could change now if we wanted to. And it’s not like I don’t need him sometimes, too. Everything wasn’t magically okay after the first time I cried. I think I cried at least a little bit every day for a month after that. I still cry a lot, but I’m learning to be okay with that. I like feeling anything, even if it isn’t a good feeling.

So I let myself cry. There were even nights that I noticed Ike was crying, too. I think he tries to hide it from me, so I don’t pressure him about it. We’ve only talked about Taylor a few times, and we’ve never really talked about the accident. Ike won’t admit how guilty he still feels about it, but I can tell. One day I told him it was okay, that I didn’t blame him. I don’t really even blame Taylor or mom or anyone. If I blame anyone, it’s this whole stupid world and how it tells us it isn’t okay to just be who we are.

But if I spent all my time placing blame, it would kill me. It would eat away at me until I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t eat, couldn’t live. I don’t want that life. So I choose to just not think about it as something that was anyone’s fault or something that could have been prevented.

Jessica called here a few days ago and I talked to her for a while. I don’t think our parents knew she was calling me, though, and I don’t want to know what they would have had to say about it. We didn’t really talk much. Not about anything that really matters. But it was good to hear her voice and know that she’s okay. I think she felt the same way. Maybe someday I’ll be able to go visit her, and the rest of them too. But for now I don’t know.

So everything isn’t okay, for as much time as I spend telling myself that it is. But it’s as good as it can be, I think. Nothing can ever be perfect. It’s just about doing the best I can with what I have. I always felt like I would be depending on everyone else to get me through, but I guess I’m stronger than I thought. It sounds like I think I have all the answers now, but I know I don’t. I just know enough to keep the pieces from falling apart. Maybe that’s all anyone ever knows.

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