All the While Ebook

August
Chapter One
Maura
I wasn’t always promiscuous.
In fact, I never slept around until my twin, Adrian, disappeared from my life.
Before that, I cared too much about upholding the values our parents raised us with to ever have a slew of one-night stands. But when he stopped playing by the rules, I figured why shouldn’t I?
And that’s how it started.
The drinking, the sex, the painful loneliness that eats pieces of my heart and gnaws at my soul. Even when I’m surrounded by my rowing team or hanging with my best friends, Emma, Lila, and Mia, I’m so alone it hurts to breathe in too deep.
Like if I do, I’ll shatter the façade I’m trying so hard to keep up.
So, I drink.
Wine. Vodka. Tequila.
Anything to numb my body from absorbing the shock of Adrian’s loss.
Anything to numb my mind from processing that he’s gone, from addressing the anger I’m harboring over his death.
Because the truth is, I’m furious at my twin for leaving me behind.
But how can you stay angry at a dead person when the rest of his world placed him on a pedestal?
My mom can’t mention his name without tears welling in the corners of her eyes. My dad prefers to pretend that everything is fine.
And so I’m utterly alone.
Alone in my thoughts, alone in my grief, and definitely alone in my anger which, some days, threatens to consume me.
To embrace the numbing detachment I’ve come to rely on, I need to drink.
I need to inhale the calming sweetness of Marlboro Menthol Golds like no athlete before me ever has.
I need to have lots of deliciously mind-numbing sex with random men.
In the mornings that follow, I wash their scent off of my skin and pretend the night before never happened. And if I’m really lucky, I can hardly remember the night at all.
The only thing I don’t touch, never have, never will, is drugs.
Because as much as I miss my brother, I’m furious with him for taking his own life. Sure, he didn’t intend to at the time. But isn’t an overdose just as selfish as suicide?
I keep my head down and my grades up. I attend rowing practices on time, dig into each and every catch, my hair tucked into one of Adrian’s old baseball caps, my sunglasses hiding the void in my eyes. And even though everyone knows something is wrong, something is off, no one can figure out what it is.
Until Zack, Adrian’s best friend, intervenes.
I just don’t know it yet.
…..
“Are you awake?” Mia’s whisper cuts through the silence of her childhood bedroom. She’s sitting up, her elbow propped against the pillows resting in front of her headboard.
“Who?” Lila asks sleepily.
“Any of you?” Mia whispers.
“Why are you whispering? We’re all obviously awake.” Emma’s voice booms. She sits up in bed next to Mia. I can just make out her shadowy silhouette from my spot on the air mattress at the foot of the bed. “Right, Maura?”
“I am now,” I answer.
“Do you think it’s a good idea?” Mia asks.
“What?” Lila sits up next to me. The mattress dips dangerously low on my side as she shifts her weight. She runs her fingers through her golden waves lazily. “Is what a good idea?”
“Going to Rome?” Mia’s voice is still a whisper.
“Yes!” We all exclaim in unison. Lila flops back down next to me and the air mattress lurches under my shoulder blades.
“It’s going to be great, Mia, you’ll see,” Emma says reassuringly. “This semester, it’s going to be epic. We’re all going on such exciting adventures!” Her voice is alive with the anticipation of the future, of the unknown. An awkward silence settles as my best friends acknowledge that I’m not going on an adventure.
I’m not going anywhere.
“And you’re going to win Dad Vail this year!” Emma tries, overcompensating with her enthusiasm.
“Yeah, it will be great.”
“Seriously, Maura,” Lila picks up where Emma leaves off, “the pact … it’s about pushing past our comfort zones, erasing some of those boundaries that have been restricting us. It’s about having fun and letting go, for one semester. You can do that from anywhere.” Her voice holds a note of a challenge that irritates me.
Stupid college pact. We all agreed earlier today, while eating pizza and drinking sangria at one of Mia’s favorite New York restaurants, that we would live it up this semester. Be wild, be courageous, be brave, try new things, blah, blah, blah. And it makes sense. It really does … if you’re Mia, Emma, or Lila.
They’re going on real adventures, leaving McShain University behind. They’re starting new chapters with new people in new places. Tomorrow morning Mia flies to Rome, Italy to study abroad. Emma is heading to Washington, D.C. for an internship on Capitol Hill. And Lila, who keeps joking about the killer tan she’s going to sport and the hot guys she’s going to meet, is participating in a medical internship through Astor University in California. They’re all going on adventures, already pushing past their comfort zones, moving the invisible lines that demarcate their self-imposed boundaries.
But I’m not.
Nope. Not me.
I’m heading back to our campus at McShain University, still in Philadelphia, back to rowing. I’m not being wild, or courageous, or brave. Unless you count hitting up my old neighborhood to slum it with some of the guys, like Hector, who I know still kick it there.
Sighing heavily, I turn so Lila won’t detect the tears brimming in my eyes. I’m going to be lost without these girls. Even at my worst, things seem manageable when they’re around to keep me in check. But now, with all of them gone and wrapped up in the excitement of their new lives, I really will be on my own. Completely alone.
“Sure,” I say into the silence, trying to sound confident.
No one buys it.
Mia turns on her reading lamp and the light bathes half her face in a warm glow. “Trust me, Maura, if I can get on a plane to Rome tomorrow morning, you can have an incredible semester and an even better start to the season.”
“I know.”
Because this is what I always wanted, isn’t it?
This year, this season, is the culmination of everything I’ve worked for: endless hours of practice in the freezing rain, summer camps, two-a-days, torn hands coated with blisters the size of grapes, stress fractures layering my ribs. All of it was for this season so McShain University’s women’s rowing would be the best, number one, team in the United States.
It’s what we always dreamed about. Adrian and me. He rowed for LaFarge University, also in Philadelphia. Being near him is one of the reasons I chose to attend McShain. That, and the full-ride scholarship. Still, being close to Adrian was an important determining factor. I mean, we’re twins; we’ve practically been joined at the hip since before we were born. It’s funny, really, people always think twins have some sort of special connection or bond. I never thought about it before or gave the idea much merit. Except now that he’s gone, it’s as if half of me is missing. We spent our whole lives growing together, and I don’t want to move forward on my own. Alone.
Now that he’s gone, I don’t know how to keep holding on to half a dream.
Moments of silence tick by, and I hear Emma’s soft snore. Lila snorts next to me, and Mia chuckles. Keeping my eyes closed, I feign sleep as they continue to talk about their semesters in new places.
Listening to their chatter, nerves spike in my bloodstream.
When did we grow into adults?
When did everything change?
Any why am I always being left behind?