Mind of a Flying Bird

[This is the first chapter of a novel about grief, based on a runner. It contains themes of death and mental health.]

It was April, the first year without my brother, and I was throwing up in a bed of hyacinths. 

I only knew they were hyacinths because Mom had some planted in our garden back in New York, and for days she talked about how the landscapers put them in lopsided. I didn’t know flowers could be lopsided. That’s what I thought about as I sat there in the dirt, staring dizzy at the flowers, wet and blue and bright. 

They were planted outside a stone library. I was supposed to be inside it, standing in front of a panel of men in suits and telling them how accomplished and promising I was. They were waiting now to decide whether or not to grant me admission to the dazzling, coastal, hyacinth-covered boarding school I’d wanted to attend for as long as I could remember. Instead, I was staring at a little puddle of puke and trying to catch my breath. The sky was falling, wet and blue and bright. Any minute my parents would come looking for me to ask how my interview had gone, and I’d have to tell them I bailed. 

There are many reasons why I ran out of that library, but I’ll tell you the overarching one. The only one that really matters. 

His name was Callum.

***

Nine months after the interview, I was expelled from school. 

I was in my freshman year at St. Kevin’s, an all-boys school in Manhattan named after some old Irish saint. I’d been there since sixth grade, and while it wasn’t the worst place in the world, my time there felt expired. Like spoiled milk. 

It was December third and I hated December thirds. It was raining, and I felt the heaviness of it, like every drop was landing on me all at once. I’d say the end began when my English teacher held me back after class, but that’s not where it really began. It was more like the point where things began to crack under the weight of what was already an inherently bad day. 

My classmates spilled out of the classroom for lunch, but I stared at Mr. Brown’s overflowing desk and waited. Their voices faded down the hall, and the sound of the rain on the window swelled. 

“Mylo, we’ve got to talk about your report,” Mr. Brown said. He tossed it on the desk with a smack, like it was the corpse of his pride as a teacher, and I was the one who had killed it. The corner of it landed curled against his coffee cup, and I saw the bright red D+ circled on top. That was a bad grade. Bad. 

“Did you even read the book?” he asked.

I diverted my attention to my leather shoes. “Mostly.”

“Mylo, this is hardly three pages long. I asked for six. And your content here, it’s…” He scoffed and motioned at the paper. “Well, it’s crappy, that’s what it is.”

He leaned back in his chair and looked me up and down, as if inspecting my uniform for errors, and my humor vanished. Was my tie out of place, my shirt untucked? My stomach was in knots, I knew that much. It had been all day. He was waiting for me to say something, but I didn’t know what. I never did. 

People had very specific expectations of me. The straight-A, straight shot to the Ivy Leagues kind of expectations. I didn’t blame them; that’s just the world I lived in. My mom bought me nice brands, my dad was a partner at a thriving law firm, and I was half Chinese (the other half being a shake-and-bake jumble of European ancestry courtesy of my father, but no one ever seemed to care about that part). The point is, people expected something of me—diligence, at the very least. But Mr. Brown had been my teacher for over three months now. He should’ve known I was not adept at meeting expectations. 

“I see this a lot. Many of the boys who come through here stop caring because they have trust funds or family businesses to fall back on. I don’t know if that’s your case, but believe me, you don’t want to give up on yourself. College is right around the corner.”

“I never said I was giving up,” I muttered.

“I understand your suspension put you behind last month, but you should be caught up. Your grades have been teetering on a steep cliff. I’m afraid this paper might push them off.” 

“Can I do it over, then?”

“I suppose, although I wouldn’t be able to raise your grade to more than a C.” He picked up the report and thumbed through the pages. I wished he’d just hand it to me. “The problem is not this paper, Mylo. It’s your work ethic. You’re a smart kid, but your motivation has plummeted as the semester’s gone by, and now that we’re about to take final exams, I don’t think you’re prepared. I’d like to have a talk with your mother.”

My stomach was the thing plummeting now. “She’s very busy.”

“What about your father?”

“Um...busier.”

Mr. Brown sighed and shifted his weight to his elbows. His expression turned sincere, brows drawn in ever so slightly, but his eyes stayed fixed on my paper. His voice was cautious, as if I’d bite. “Mylo, can I ask you something?”

My toes squirmed. “I guess so.”

“You wanted to be at a different school this year, didn’t you?” 

“Yeah. Howard Merris Academy.”

“And that’s in...Connecticut?”

“Rhode Island.”

He hummed a short tone. “But you didn’t get in?”

“Not yet,” I said, stressing the word to make it clear that I would, in fact, get in. I’d do the stupid interview again, and I’d still have three years at Merris, which was not my original plan, but three years were better than none. “I had an interview last April, but I got sick and I couldn’t do it.”

“They wouldn’t reschedule?”

I shrugged and looked out the window. The panes were foggy, making green shadows of the trees outside. My eyes traced a raindrop as it cut down the glass, revealing a sliver of the stone church across the street. I wished I was out there. My heel tapped the floor. “Can I go now?”

“You know, when I was a senior I wanted to get into Dartmouth more than anything in the world. It wasn’t easy getting that rejection letter, especially with a family legacy to live up to.” His hand smoothed the surface of my report, futilely flattening the corners. “I recall you have a family legacy at Merris?”

I eyed the paper, planning my flight. “And?” 

“Is this about Callum?”

I went cold, and the patter of rain crept down my spine. My lips pursed, tightened by the sound of my brother’s name like it was a sour candy stuck under my tongue. 

“I don’t mean to pry,” Mr. Brown said. “I’m just concerned about your grades. I hope you’ll find it in yourself to do better, if not for your own sake then at least for your brother’s.”

People said that a lot. Even my own father did, sometimes. Do it for Callum, be better for Callum. They knew there was a gaping hole inside of me, and they poked and prodded in there, looking for bits of my brother floating around in the void. As if somehow I could reach inside myself and pull parts of him out, parts that I lacked. But he wasn’t in there. He was nowhere. When a part of you disappears, you change, and sometimes it’s impossible to go back to who you used to be. That’s what people didn’t understand.

I turned and left, not even bothering to take the paper with me.

As far as December thirds go, I’d been doing alright before he brought up Callum. I’d made it most of the morning without letting him infiltrate my thoughts, but now, as I walked to get my lunch from my locker, I felt pulled down. Like the weight that had been hanging over me all day had dropped onto my chest.

The period was halfway over by the time I got to the cafeteria doors. From the hall, I could hear the voices humming within, and smell the garlic that sat heavy in the air. I hovered outside the doors. My friends would be cramped at our usual table, talking about Christmas plans and girls from the school down the street, but my throat felt too thick for conversation. I was sure they would understand. A couple of them, at least, knew what day it was today. 

I slid to the floor in the hallway and unwrapped my sandwich. It was one of the better ones I’d made, with peanut butter, bananas, a drizzle of honey. I took a bite, and my watch glinted off the fluorescent lights overhead. My watch had a black leather band and a silver face, but it was broken, stuck at 12:05, the glass cracked out from the center like a web. I rested my wrist against my knee and stared at it, peanut butter sticking to my teeth, and I chewed slowly until I managed to swallow. I only got down one more bite, then I threw the rest out. 

Once the boys started to leave the cafeteria, I followed them to the front patio for recess. That’s what the administration called it, at least, but there were no kickballs, no green space, not even a stretch of pavement. We spent the fifteen minutes standing idly with our hands in our pockets and our breath making clouds in the cold air. 

It was only sprinkling now, but in an icy, spitting way, so most boys stayed near the door, sheltered in the alcoves of the brick walls. I spotted a few of my friends there, too, but I didn’t go talk to them. I’d known them for years, but things had been different for a while now. In middle school, I would’ve told them anything. Now I just didn’t have anything to say. Especially not today.

I went to the front gate and pressed my face to the iron bars. Water dribbled onto my head from an overhanging maple, and as I peered out at the street, I was dazed with a sense of quiet. Cars glistened wet along the curb, and washed-out footsteps tapped through the rain. It all pulled me outward. The city pulsed with this irresistible current, and once I dipped my toes in, I was always dragged right down. I could feel it already. My arms swinging, my feet slapping against the pavement, taking me away from St. Kevin’s, from December third. I felt like if I willed it hard enough, I could slip right through the bars and disappear. 

“What are you doing, Mylo?” 

The voice belonged to someone I particularly disliked. Jackson and I had been getting on each other's nerves for years now. The summer before seventh grade, Callum and I saw him at the park, and he dumped water down the front of my pants. Callum pushed him down hard. That didn’t do much to repair the rift between us. 

I tried to ignore him, but his dress-shoed footsteps came scuffling up behind me. I kept my eyes on the street. “Nothing,” I said. 

“I wanted to ask you what happened. I heard you got chewed out after English.”

“I didn’t get chewed out,” I said. “Doesn’t matter anyway.”

“Well, hey, we just wanted to make sure you’re all good.”

Jackson leaned against the gate. I looked behind me and realized his friends were watching from the wall, but when I set eyes on them, they turned around and tried to hide their amusement. My own friends weren't paying attention. Thank god. 

“Why wouldn’t I be good?”

“Because you look like you’re about to bolt again, dumbass.” He drew his brows together, feigning an expression of concern. “Listen, someone told me you’re having a rough day, and I know why. It’s Callum’s birthday, right? So I’m looking out for you. We don’t want you to do anything crazy.”

I sucked in a breath and let it go. “I’m not going to run off again if that’s what you’re implying.”

“Oh, that’s cute.” Jackson’s lips lifted into a smile. “I meant we don’t want you to, like, off yourself or shoot up the school or something.”

“Go to hell.”

He laughed again and sent out a hand to pat my shoulder. “Hey, man, I’m just messing with you.”

I don’t know what exactly happened next. What I do know is when things build up for too long, you break apart from the pressure. All the tiny cracks you never got around to mending burst apart into a million little pieces, and those little pieces are a lot harder to glue back together. When your composure shatters, you aren’t thinking about how you’ll mend it; you’re just exploding. You forget everything that’s riding on you being a normal, non-messed-up kid, and you snap. 

I smacked Jackson’s hand away and shoved him. He hit the iron bars with a dull clang but pushed back without hesitation. I staggered to catch my balance, shoes scraping on the stone. My fist curled. I lunged and biffed him right in the mouth. 

Jackson tripped backward with a huff, hands folded over his face. My eyes darted. Everyone was paying attention now, closing in like gamblers in a dogfight, waiting to see how Jackson would retaliate. I didn’t give him the chance. I’d never been a man of my word, so when I said I wouldn’t run away, it didn’t mean a thing. 

I threw open the front gate, and the boys of St. Kevin’s rushed forward, hands reaching out, throats straining with shouts. As I stumbled down the steps to the street, I realized I’d never felt like I belonged here, and I wasn’t sure I ever would. It didn’t matter. Once I started running, nothing did. 

I sprinted a block or so from school before my feet began to ache. I ditched my socks and shoes somewhere under a stretch of scaffolding, and I shed my sports coat too. It didn’t take long to find my flow after that. The sidewalk was jolting without shoes, but I didn’t mind. I liked sensing the ground beneath me, feeling the wind against my ankles. I liked the risk of it. 

I loved to run more than anything else in the world. My breath fell into a rhythm, and the faster I ran, the more things slowed down. Everywhere around me, people and cars moved perpetually, like parts of some grand machine that kept grinding on in spite of everything. They all sped their separate ways, living their separate lives, going about their own December thirds. I was my own machine. My legs propelled me forward, my sides pulsed with pain, my lungs expanded and collapsed like moving gears. I was one machine grinding on with all the others, an insignificant part of some magnificent, meaningless design.

My mind drifted to Montauk as I ran. It always drifted there. I usually tried to shut it out, but today of all days, I let it settle like sediment. 

My body traced up the street toward the nearest avenue, but my mind went racing down that winter beach, towards the distant lighthouse. Callum was beside me. Seabirds cruised overhead, and frigid waves grabbed at our laces, and he was fast, but never quite as fast as me. We ran and ran, never growing tired, never reaching the horizon. We were just howling into the wind, reveling in the wholeness of being together. 

But nobody can run forever.