Just Remember to Breathe (Thompson Sisters)

the world.
    It was my fault.
    Alex wrote to me, again and again. Every day for the first week and a half or so, eleven daily emails that she sent to me while I was getting in trouble, getting my best friend killed, then being transported to Baghram and later Germany in a mostly unconscious haze with a torn-up leg.
    By the tenth day she’d lost whatever patience she might have had.
    February 20, 2012; 04:20 AM
    TO: [email protected]
    FROM: [email protected]
    Dylan,
    I’ve been up all night crying, and Kelly has told me it’s time to let you go. You’re breaking my heart. Of all the things I’ve ever believed about you, I never believed cruelty was part of who you are. But I was wrong. You are cruel and heartless. If only you had any idea what you’ve done. I’m done crying over you. I’m done wondering where you are. Every day I’ve obsessively checked newspapers, looking for news that you’ve been hurt. I’ve checked casualty lists, terrified that you were killed over there. I’ve done everything I can.
    I hope you find some way to live with yourself. But don’t expect me to forgive you.
    Alex
    Oh, Alex. I didn’t. I don’t. How could I expect her to forgive me, when I couldn’t forgive myself? I didn’t fucking deserve forgiveness. I broke her heart. I killed Roberts, and broke his parents. When I went to see them this summer, I couldn’t tell them the truth. I told them what a great friend he was, about all the good times we had together. I told them all the funny stories. I shared a beer with his dad, and we cried together. But I didn’t tell them the truth. I didn’t tell them that it was my fault their son was dead.

    My life is all planned out (Alex)
    As always, JFK airport was crowded beyond belief. Standing just outside security, I waited for Carrie, feeling alternately excited to see her and suspicious of her motives. Why suspicious? Because three days before, I had let slip in a conversation with my mom that I was seeing Dylan.
    “Dylan? Isn’t he the boy who came to visit you? The one who went off and joined the Army of all things?”
    “Yes, mom. He was injured in Afghanistan, and he’s going to Columbia now.”
    That was followed by a long, uncomfortable pause. Then she said, “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
    “Yes,” I replied, simply. I wasn’t going to get in a drawn-out argument about Dylan. We’d had enough of those over the last three years.
    “I just think you need to focus on your school work, Alexandra. Not on boys. Especially that one. He hurt you, honey. And your grades suffered because of it.”
    My grades suffered because of it. Of course that’s what she cared about. I got a B last spring in my Comparative Religions course. It was the first B I’d had, well… ever. You would think I had murdered someone for all the conflict it caused at home. When my parents saw my final grades, they grounded me. I’m nineteen years old, and was home from college, and my parents somehow thought it was appropriate to ground me. Can we say overcontrolling?
    But then, that’s who they are.
    I managed to bring the conversation with Mom to a graceful end, but the next day I got a text from Carrie.
    Coming into New York Saturday! Can we get together?
    I should have seen that one coming a mile away. For one thing, Carrie was in graduate school, and just as dependent on the dole from Dad as I was. Where did she get the money to fly from Houston to New York on a last-minute trip? Dad. Which meant she’d been sent on a mission to spy on me and find out how serious I was about Dylan.
    If they had any idea I was planning to sleep with him tonight, they’d go into full scale red-alert. I had a wild thought I should tell Carrie, just to provoke a reaction.
    And there she was, coming off the plane, carrying a sizable carry-on. As always, she looked runway-model perfect. Long brown hair like mine, but always better cut and styled just so. Instead of the casual clothes you might expect on an airplane, she was wearing a chic flowered dress that probably cost upwards of two grand, and fantastic black leather ankle-high boots with three-inch heels. To say I was occasionally jealous of my sister Carrie would be like saying that the ocean is an oversized pond. When I was around her, I felt inadequate, a little sister who could never live up to her big sister’s accomplishments, beauty or charisma.
    She smiled and waved enthusiastically when she saw me. I returned