The Manifestation

The apartment smells like pad kee mao from the cart on Hawthorne, the one that stays open until 2 AM. Garlic and fish sauce and holy basil, three hours cold now but the smell still clings to everything. Cordelia lies on Philip's bed with her head on his chest, the grey Built to Spill t-shirt soft against her cheek, worn so thin his heartbeat pulses through the fabric. There's a small hole near the hem, threads loose and curling. Her blonde hair, long, wavy, sun-lightened at the ends from a summer spent outside, spreads across him, catching the warm light from the desk lamp with its crooked IKEA shade.

Outside, Portland rain taps against the single-pane window. August rain, the kind that surprises everyone because summer's supposed to last until September. It smells like dust being washed off leaves, petrichor mixing with exhaust and wet concrete. Water streams down the glass in uneven rivulets, distorting the street lights below.

Elliott Smith playing on his Audio-Technica turntable, "Between the Bars" crackling through cheap speakers. The record skips slightly on the second verse, a familiar hitch he never bothered fixing. Textbooks are stacked on milk crates serving as a nightstand. A PSU parking permit is stuck to the closet door. An empty Bridgeport IPA bottle sits on the desk next to a yellow highlighter and a dog-eared copy of Public Administration in Crisis Management. The Poäng chair in the corner holds a pile of clean laundry neither of them has folded. The apartment is a studio in Goose Hollow on SW 18th, $850 a month, which is absurd for 400 square feet but it's walking distance to campus.

She traces lazy circles on his stomach with her fingertip. His body is warm beneath hers, rising and falling with each breath. They've been like this for over an hour, not talking, just the record and the rain and his heartbeat against her ear.

"I'm really glad you're here," he says finally. His voice rumbles up through his chest into her ear.

She smiles against him, feeling the cotton against her lips. "Where else would I be?"

"I don't know. Out with actual friends. At a bar." He pauses. "Anywhere that isn't watching it rain with some grad student who has to read fifty pages about FEMA before Monday."

"I like watching it rain with you." She props herself up on one elbow to look at him. His face is soft in the lamplight, dark hair falling across his forehead the way it does when he needs a haircut. His eyes keep moving away from hers, settling on the window, the ceiling, anywhere else. "Hey. You okay?"

He meets her gaze and holds it for a moment. 'Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine.'

He's not fine. They both know he's not fine. The question is whether she's going to let him pretend.

It's in the way he's been quiet all evening, the way his hand keeps finding her hip, her shoulder, her hand. The way he keeps starting sentences and then stopping, the words dying in his throat.

"Philip." She says his full name, not Phil, which is what she usually calls him when she's teasing. "What's going on?"

He closes his eyes. Takes a breath that moves her whole body. "It's August 15th."

She waits. Outside, a car passes on the wet street, tires hissing against asphalt.

"My brother died eight years ago today," he says. "I haven't... I don't really talk about it. With anyone. But I wanted to tell you."

Cordelia sits up fully now, cross-legged on the bed facing him, her hand immediately finding his. Her thumb strokes across his knuckles, an automatic gesture of comfort. "Oh my god, Philip. I'm so sorry."

"His name was Danny." Philip stares at the water-stained ceiling, not at her. "He was ten. I was thirteen."

"You don't have to talk about it if—"

"No, I want to." He squeezes her hand, grounding himself. "I want to tell you."

She nods, waiting. Her own chest is tight now. Whatever he's about to say, she already knows it's going to hurt.

"We were at Wilson Outdoor Pool," he says. "It was summer, middle of August. My mom was working a double shift at Legacy Emanuel... she's a nurse... and I was supposed to watch Danny. That was the deal. I was the older brother. That was my whole job that summer."

A small boy with Philip's dark hair and gap-toothed grin, brown from a summer of swimming.

"He wanted to practice his diving," Philip continues, voice steady but hollow. "He'd just learned how that summer and he was so fucking proud of it. Kept wanting to show me every single dive. 'Phil, watch this! Phil, are you watching?' Over and over."

His jaw tightens.

"But there was this girl. Sarah Yang. She was in my grade at Grant High and she was pretty and she had these teal rubber bands on her braces and she was wearing this pink tankini and her hair was in a French braid and she was talking to me. To me. Thirteen-year-old me who still had acne and no idea how to talk to girls. And Danny kept calling me over to watch his dives and I kept saying 'yeah, nice one, buddy' without actually looking. I just wanted him to shut up so I could keep talking to Sarah."

Cordelia swallows and it catches halfway down. She can see it so clearly it hurts, a ten-year-old boy in shark swim trunks, running on hot concrete, wanting his brother to watch.

"Danny got excited," Philip says, and now his voice is starting to crack. "He wanted to show me a really good one. I remember him calling out, 'Phil, this is gonna be the best one!' And he ran. He wasn't supposed to run on the pool deck... nobody's supposed to run on the pool deck, the lifeguards are always yelling about it... but he ran anyway because he was ten and excited and he wanted his big brother to watch."

Philip's hand is shaking. She holds it tighter.

"If I'd been watching," he says, "I would have stopped him. I would have just said 'Danny, no running!' and he would have stopped. He always listened to me. Three words. That's all it would have taken. Three fucking words."

"Philip—"

"He launched off the springboard wrong. Too much forward momentum from running. The board was aluminum, blue non-slip surface worn white down the center from years of feet. Years of feet. One-meter height. I can still see it. He jumped, started rotating forward for the dive, but his trajectory was off. His forehead caught the front edge of the board on the way down."

Philip's eyes are squeezed shut.

"The sound," he says. "It was like... it wasn't a crack. It was duller than that. Wetter. Bone meeting aluminum. Hollow. It was like that but worse. And then the splash. The water started turning this... this pink color. Then red. Blooming out from where he went in like... like watercolor spreading in water."

She's crying. When did she start crying? Her face is wet, throat burning, and she doesn't remember the moment it started, just that it's happening now and she can't stop.

"The lifeguard dove in," Philip says. "College guy with Ray-Bans and zinc oxide on his nose. He had this whistle he wore on a lanyard but he didn't blow it in time. Just dove in and pulled Danny out. Someone started CPR. Someone else called 911. I ran over but I couldn't... I couldn't do anything. There was so much blood and Danny's eyes were closed and his swim trunks were those blue ones with sharks that used to be mine, too big on him, and I just stood there. Useless."

"Ambulance came. I rode with him to Emanuel. My mom met us there. They did a CT scan. Subdural hematoma. Swelling in the brain. They tried to relieve the pressure but... " He stops. Swallows. "He died two hours later. Room 347. I remember the number. There was a painting of a sailboat on the wall. His hand was cold. Small. I kept holding it thinking if I held it tight enough he'd come back."

"Philip," Cordelia breathes, but she doesn't know what else to say. What words exist for this?

"Everyone told me it wasn't my fault," he says, looking at her now. His eyes are dry but something in them looks drowned anyway. Like he's underwater looking up at her through six feet of chlorinated pool water. "My mom. The therapist she made me see for a year. The school counselor. Everyone said kids don't have impulse control, thirteen-year-olds can't be expected to be perfect guardians, it was an accident, it could have happened to anyone."

He pulls his hand from hers and presses it against his sternum.

"But it wasn't an accident. It was a choice. I chose to look at Sarah Yang instead of my brother. I chose to ignore him calling my name. I chose my stupid hormones over his safety. And he died. He died because I wanted to flirt with a girl I don't even remember having a conversation with. I can't remember a single thing she said to me. But I remember the sound of Danny's head hitting that diving board. I remember the color of the blood in the water. I remember his hand going cold in mine."

Philip's voice breaks completely on the last word.

"I remember being thirteen and killing my little brother."

Cordelia pulls him toward her, wraps her arms around him, cradles the back of his head with one hand while the other spreads across his back. He buries his face in her shoulder and she can feel him shaking, his breath hot against her neck.

"I've got you," she whispers into his hair. "I've got you. It's okay. I've got you."

She holds him tighter. If she could pull it out of him - the guilt, the grief, all eight years of it - she would. If she could take it into her own body where it couldn't hurt him anymore, she would.

She means it. She has no idea what she's asking for.

She closes her eyes and imagines it: his pain flowing out through his skin, through her palms, settling into her chest where she's strong enough to hold it, but then...

It happens.

It starts in her palms where they press against him. A sensation like pins and needles when your foot falls asleep, but sharper. Insistent. Like her nerves are being threaded backwards through her skin. It spreads up her arms, through her elbows, into her shoulders. She can feel Philip's heartbeat where her hand rests on his back but suddenly she can feel MORE than his heartbeat. She can feel weight underneath his skin, mass that shouldn't be there, enormous and heavy and alive, and it's moving toward her hands like iron filings to a magnet.

The apartment disappears.

She's thirteen years old and the sun is so bright it hurts. Wilson Outdoor Pool smells like chlorine and sunscreen and hot concrete. The sound is overwhelming, kids shrieking, splashing, the lifeguard whistle, someone's radio playing Outkast. She's standing near the shallow end where the water is warmest, concrete rough and hot under her bare feet.

Sarah Yang is talking to her, no, not to her, to Philip, she's Philip, and she's laughing about something, her braces flashing, those teal rubber bands bright against the metal. She's saying something about summer reading for English class, something about To Kill a Mockingbird, and she's leaning in and her hair smells like coconut sweet and she's pretty and she's talking to him and his whole body feels electric with the attention.

"Phil! Phil, watch this one!"

Danny's voice cuts through the noise. High and excited. She glances over, just a glance, barely even looking, and sees her little brother standing on the springboard. Blue swim trunks with sharks too big on his skinny frame, hanging low on his hips. His hair sticking up in the back. His whole face lit up with that gap-toothed grin.

"Yeah, buddy, looks great," she hears herself say, already turning back to Sarah.

Sarah is saying something else now, something about their English teacher Mr. Rodriguez, and she's laughing and she has dimples and...

Danny's feet slapping against the diving board. Running. The sound is distinct, quick, excited footsteps on non-slip surface.

She should turn. She should say something. Danny knows he's not supposed to run. She should...

The sound hits her like a fist.

Not a crack. Duller. Wetter. Bone meeting aluminum. The sound her brain will play back for the rest of her life unbidden, biting into an apple, closing a car door, any hollow impact. That sound. Then the splash. Then screaming.

She turns and Danny is in the water and the water is wrong. Pink blooming out from the center like food coloring spreading through milk. Then red. Then so much red.

She's running. Her feet slip on wet concrete and she nearly falls but she doesn't fall, she's running toward the diving board, toward the pool, and the lifeguard is already diving in, college guy, whistle bouncing on his chest, zinc oxide on his nose, and he's pulling Danny out and Danny's eyes are closed and there's blood running from his forehead, running down his face, mixing with pool water and oh god oh god oh god...

"DANNY!"

She's screaming his name. She's at the edge of the pool. The lifeguard is lifting Danny onto the deck and his body is so small, so much smaller than she remembered, when did he get so small? Someone is doing CPR. Someone is calling 911. Sarah Yang is crying. Everyone is crying. And she's just standing there, frozen, useless, watching her baby brother's blood spread across the hot concrete.

I should have been watching. I should have stopped him. Three words. "Danny, no running." That's all it would have taken. Three words and he'd still be alive.

The hospital. Fluorescent lights buzzing. Waiting room chairs that stick to the back of her thighs. Her mother arrives still in scrubs, face white, asking questions she can't answer. The doctor, older man, kind eyes, voice gentle, saying words that don't make sense. Subdural hematoma. Intracranial pressure. They're doing everything they can.

Room 347. Danny on the bed, tubes everywhere, machines beeping. A painting of a sailboat on the wall, blues and whites, completely inappropriate for watching her brother die. His hand is so small in hers. Cold. Getting colder. She squeezes it, trying to put warmth back in, trying to will life back into him through the points of contact, but his hand keeps losing temperature like heat is a thing that can leak out, and it does, she feels it go and this is her fault, this is all her fault.

The flatline. That sound. Long and monotone and final. Her mother collapsing. Her father's hand on her shoulder, heavy, trying to be comforting but she doesn't deserve comfort because she killed him. She killed Danny. Her stupid teenage hormones killed her little brother.

The funeral. The casket so small it looks wrong, like a prop from a play about child death. Closed casket because of the head injury. Danny's best friend Jeremy crying so hard he throws up in the church parking lot. Her mother's face empty, blank, like someone erased her from the inside out. Her father trying to hold it together, failing. Everyone looking at her with pity in their eyes but they don't know. They don't know it was her fault. They don't know she killed him.

The guilt. Oh god, the guilt. It's not metaphorical. It's physical. It lives in her chest like a stone. No, heavier than a stone. Like iron. Like concrete. Every morning it's the first thing she feels when she wakes up. Every night it's the last thing before sleep. It makes it hard to breathe. It makes her ribs ache. It makes food taste like nothing. It makes her mother's attempts at comfort feel like knives. It makes her father's reassurances, "It's not your fault, son", sound like lies. Because it IS her fault. That's the truth. The only truth that matters.

I should have been watching. I should have been watching. If I'd been watching, he'd still be alive. I killed my brother. I killed Danny.

The thought circles, endless, on loop, forever. Eight years of it. Eight years of carrying this stone in her chest. Eight years of Danny's cold hand. Eight years of that sound, bone meeting aluminum. Eight years of wondering what Sarah Yang said to her that was worth more than her brother's life. Eight years of knowing the answer is nothing. Nothing was worth it. And she has to live with that. Forever.

Cordelia gasps.

She’s back in the apartment, rain still falling, but everything is wrong. The record has moved on to ‘Angeles’ now, but the sound is distant, muffled, like it's coming from... underwater. Her hands are still on Philip but the sensation hasn't stopped. It's pouring into her, a flood, a deluge, every memory at once. It's all inside her now, the guilt pressing down on her chest like someone sitting on her sternum, the cold weight of Danny's hand, the sound, that terrible wet sound, the hospital lights, the flatline, the funeral, the endless churn of I should have been watching I should have been watching I should have been watching

And then, threaded through all of it, something else. Something that happened just seconds ago. A moment of lightness. The stone lifting. The pressure releasing. Philip's face shifting from weighted to unburdened. Three seconds, maybe less, where the guilt was gone and he could breathe and he felt light and free and...

The transfer stops.

Cordelia jerks backward, pulling her hands away from Philip like he's burned her. She can't breathe. Her heart, too fast, she can feel it in her throat. The room tilts. She's going to be sick. Pass out. Both. She can still feel it, all of it, sitting inside her chest next to her own heart. Danny's death. Philip's guilt. Except it's not just his anymore. It's hers now too. It's exactly how he described it: iron weight, impossible to lift, pressing down, making it hard to breathe.

Philip is staring at her. His face has gone completely white.

"What..." His voice breaks. "What did you just do?"

"I don't know." Cordelia's hands are shaking. She looks down at them. Her hands. She knows they're hers but they feel wrong now, heavier, like they're remembering something her brain hasn't caught up to yet. Her palms are red where they pressed against him, like she's been holding something hot. "I don't know, I just—"

"You—" Philip stands up from the bed. His movements are jerky, uncoordinated. "What the fuck did you do to me?"

"I don't... Philip, I don't know what happened, I just touched you and the concrete was so hot under my feet and Sarah's hair smelled like coconut and she had dimples and she was talking about To Kill a Mockingbird and Mr. Rodriguez and I just wanted Danny to shut up so I could keep talking to her and—"

She's crying now. Sobbing. She can taste salt and snot and her nose is running.

Philip backs away from her. Actually backs away like she's dangerous.

"You went into my head," he says slowly. His pupils are dilating. She watches it happen, black eating up the brown.

Fuck.

"You... how the fuck do you know any of that? I didn't say what Sarah was talking about. I didn't tell you what I was thinking. What she smelled like." He presses his hands against his temples. "What did you do? What the fuck did you DO?"

"I didn't mean to!" Her voice is high and desperate and she hates how she sounds. "Philip, I swear, I don't understand what happened, I just wanted to help, I just wanted to make you feel better and then—"

"Make me feel better?" He laughs but it's not a laugh, it's something broken. "You... it's gone. Cordelia, it's gone."

She stares at him. "What's gone?"

"The guilt." His voice is rising now. "It's not there anymore. I can remember everything... I can remember the pool and Danny and the funeral and all of it... but I can't FEEL it anymore. It's like... it's like you TOOK it. You stole it. Where is it? What did you do with it?"

She did exactly what she wanted. She took his pain away. She saved him.

It's destroying him.

Cordelia can feel it in her own chest now. The weight. The stone. The endless loop of I should have been watching. She puts her hand over her heart and she can feel it there, heavy and foreign and wrong.

"I think... " Her voice is barely a whisper. "I think it's in me now."

Philip goes completely still.

"What?"

"I can feel it." She's crying harder now. "Philip, I can feel it, your guilt, it's in my chest, I can feel Danny's hand and the sound and the hospital and I can't... I can't make it stop—"

"Get away from me."

The words are quiet but they cut her open.

"Philip, please—"

"Get the fuck away from me." He's backed up against the wall now, arms wrapped around himself. "Don't touch me. Don't... something is really wrong with you. Something is really, really wrong with you and you need to leave. Now."

"I love you," she says. The first time she's said it to him, and it's while he's backing away from her like she's contagious. "Philip, I love you, I didn't mean to hurt you—"

"You didn't hurt me." His voice is shaking. "That's... that's the fucking problem. You made it better. You took... you took away something I've carried for eight years and now it's GONE and I don't know who I am without it. I don't... do you understand? That guilt was Danny. It was all I had left of Danny. And you just... you stole it."

She stole his grief. Took the only thing he had left of his brother and made it hers. She was trying to save him and she committed theft.

She can't breathe. The guilt in her chest is crushing her. Danny's cold hand. The sound. The blood. She can't tell what's hers and what's his anymore.

"I need you to leave," Philip says. "Right now. Get out."

"Philip—"

"GET OUT!"

She grabs her bag, canvas tote from Target with a cheer camp logo screenprinted on the side. Shoves her feet into her beat-up white low-top Converse without untying them, heel crushing the backs. Her hands won't stop shaking. Philip's breathing behind her is fast and panicked. She wants to turn around, wants to apologize again, wants to fix this somehow, but she can't because something is really wrong with her and she just broke everything.

She leaves. The hallway is too bright after the warm lamplight of his apartment. She can hear the rain outside, heavier now, drumming against the building. Her iPhone 4S buzzes in her pocket but she can't look at it. Can't do anything except walk.

Six blocks to her own apartment in the Pearl, the studio her parents help pay for. She doesn't remember the walk. One moment she's in Philip's building and the next she's standing in her bathroom with the light on, staring at herself in the mirror.

Her face is blotchy and wet. CoverGirl LashBlast smudged under her eyes in grey-black streaks. But that's not what makes her stop breathing.

Her eyes look older. Not the skin around them, the eyes themselves. Like someone replaced them with eyes that have been looking at death for eight years.

The guilt churns in her chest. I should have been watching. I should have been watching. I should have been watching.

Not her thought. His thought. Except it is hers now. She can feel Danny's cold hand like she's still holding it. Can see the blood blooming in turquoise water. Can hear that sound, bone meeting aluminum, playing on loop in her head.

Her phone buzzes again. She pulls it out with shaking hands.

Philip: Please don't contact me again. I need space. I'm sorry.

He's apologizing. After everything she did to him, he's the one saying sorry.

She slides down the bathroom wall. Cold tile under her thighs. Back against the tub. Knees to chest. The fluorescent light is too bright but she can't move to turn it off. Can't move at all. Danny's death is playing behind her eyes on loop and Philip's guilt is a stone in her chest and she's broken something fundamental in the world, in herself, in the space between bodies.

Her hands are still shaking. These hands. She stares at them. These hands that touched him and pulled eight years of grief right through his skin and into hers.

Outside, the rain.

Inside, Danny's voice on loop: Phil, watch this one!

The sound.

The blood.

Again.

Again.

Again.