Crescendo

Chapter 17

*Trigger warning: mention of suicide present.

Soundtrack for this chapter:
Hallelujah—Leonard Cohen*
In The End—Linkin Park
Lay it on Me—Vance Joy

17

Jules

Everything fell into place. Without intending it, Theo had given me the key to his mind, and unlocking that door allowed everything to make sense. His need to save people. His nightmares. His momentary hesitation when he saw that Katie overdosed. His comment that sometimes people just break.

The second I could catch my breath, I called Dan and told him he had to come get Aiden. Aiden couldn't be there when Theo came back; it wouldn't be good for either of them.

Once I was the only person left in Theo's house, his words wouldn't stop echoing in my head, and each time I felt the full force of pain that they carried. Aiden's shock at Theo's revelation made me wonder if anyone in his family knew what really happened to him. To carry that secret for seven years would be enough to drive anyone to the brink of insanity.

When I couldn't get Theo's pained voice to cease its repetitions in my head, I found my feet pulling me towards his piano, my hands depressing the keys of their own volition. Without a plan in mind, my fingers began pressing out the sad and mournful notes of "Hallelujah."

Less than halfway through the song, I felt Theo's presence behind me. When his hand rested on my shoulder, my fingers lifted from the keys.

"Keep playing." His voice was the contradictory combination of soft and raw; it was almost lost between us.

I set my hands back on the keys as he sat next to me on the bench, his back to the piano. I didn't need to look at him to know his elbows rested on his knees and his head was in his hands.

"Will you sing it?"

I'd sing anything to him. I started the song over, played it as well as my shaking hands could play it, and sang it as well as my shaking voice would allow. When my fingers pressed out the final notes, I found myself turning to him just as he slumped into my side.

"I'm sorry you had to hear that."

"No apologies, Theo." My arms wrapped around him, holding him as close to me as possible.

He pulled out of my hold and stared at me with eyes rimmed in red.

"Is anyone else here?"

I shook my head at him.

"Will you come upstairs with me?"

"Of course."

He stood from the bench and held out his hand. In his room, he stopped at his bed and motioned for me to sit down. I watched him walk over to the picture of him and his two friends from his deployment. He picked it up, then came back over to his bed, sat next to me, and put the frame in my hands.

"Gabe, on the left. Jake on the right. They were in my unit in South Carolina before we were deployed to Afghanistan."

I stared at the picture of young Theo in my hands. I didn't want to say anything; I didn't want to disrupt his process of how he was going to tell me his story.

"I'd wanted to be in the military for as long as I could remember because being in the military meant that I could make a difference, that I could save someone, that I could protect someone. Growing up, every Halloween I dressed up in some sort of life saving job: a firefighter, a doctor, a soldier. When I was finally old enough to enlist, I did. Mom and dad weren't thrilled; they worried all the time that I would get deployed, but that was what I wanted. I wanted to be deployed. I wanted to fight for my country. I didn't enlist to serve my country by sitting around on a US base for my entire commitment."