:: chapter four ::

February was turning out to be a complete lost cause. Winter had never agreed with me, especially New York winters, but for some reason this winter was a lot worse than usual. Even though we had the heat cranked up in the apartment when Jessica, Mark or I were home I felt frozen, and an intense chill had settled in my bones and joints. It was painful, but no more than I was already used to. More than anything else it was annoying, mostly because it made walking and moving about somewhat difficult. As a direct result my wheelchair was seeing more use than it had in some time.

There was one bright spot in all of this, though. Isobel. We’d taken to spending a good deal of time together – we met for lunch a few times a week, and we alternated evenings at one another’s apartments. I had succeeded in getting her addicted to watching Doctor Who, and had lent her my copies of the first and second series DVDs. In turn, she had turned my casual liking of Supernatural into something of an obsession. Jessica was addicted to it, and the two of us occasionally watched it together, but other than that I had never really been all that interested in it. Isobel had appealed to my intellectual side by showing me that there was far more to the show than hunting down what lurked in the darkness. I’d always had a fascination with urban legends, and Supernatural was full of them.

“Taylor! Get the fuck up!”

I yanked my pillow out from under my head and slammed it down on my face. All this week certain people had dragged me out of bed far earlier than I really should have been up, which had me running on adrenaline a lot of the time, and I had finally cracked. There was absolutely no way I was getting out of bed until I was good and ready, and that didn’t look as it if would be happening anytime within the next few hours.

“Matthew, did I just hear you swear?”

I snickered as I heard my mother reprimand my brother. Calling him by his first name was just one of the ways that my twin could be yanked down a few pegs, but it happened to be the most effective. Particularly if it was Mom doing the naming.

I lifted my pillow off of my face as I heard my bedroom door open, and smiled a little when I saw my mother stepping through the doorway. She returned my smile and came to sit down on the edge of my bed.

“I hear you’ve got a new friend,” she said idly as I sat up and pushed my hair out of my face.

“Mark opened his big mouth, did he?” I grumbled.

“Don’t talk about your brother like that,” she scolded. “And no, he didn’t. It was Jessica, if you must know.”

“Same difference. They both have big mouths.”

“Jordan,” she said sharply, and I fell silent. She seemed to study me for a little while. “You’re looking much better than you did the last time I saw you,” she said.

“Define ‘better’.”

“Happier, then. You look a lot happier.” She grinned mischievously. “Might that new friend of yours have something to do with it?”

“Who, Isobel?”

“Oh, so she does have a name.”

“‘Course she has a name.” Here I shrugged. “Dr. Hewitt started me on medication again at the end of November,” I said. “That’s probably why – Schuyler said the same thing a few weeks ago. I’ve got an appointment to see him on the fifteenth of March to see if I need to keep taking it.” The significance of that date wasn’t lost on me – Mark and I would be turning twenty-four the day before.

“I wish you didn’t feel you needed to take it on top of everything else,” Mom said softly.

“I don’t think any of us want a repeat of what happened a couple of years ago. So it’s better this way, at least until the weather warms up.”

“You have a point,” Mom said, seeming to concede. She reached over and patted my left hand. “When you’re ready, come out into the kitchen. I want to talk to you.” She gave me a smile before standing up and leaving my room. As she closed the door behind her, I pushed the left sleeve of my shirt up around my elbow and ran my right thumb over the two long scars that had a home on the underside of my left wrist.

Mom was sitting at the kitchen table when I emerged from my room about half an hour later, carrying two of my pill bottles in my right hand. She had what looked like Jessica’s favourite mug in front of her, and set in the place opposite was my own mug – the latter had been a present from Jessica the Christmas after I’d started college, and was dark blue with World’s Best Photographer on one side in bright yellow. The other side was home to the image of an old-fashioned camera. As far as I could tell, apart from my mother and I the apartment was deserted.

“So where’s everyone else?” I asked as I sat down at the table. As soon as I was settled I began counting out my medication.

“Well, Jess has class today, and Mark has a meeting with Isaac and Zac – they’ll be leaving on tour to promote the album this weekend. Your dad went with Mark.”

“Oh, okay.” I swallowed each of my pills with a mouthful of steaming hot coffee, inhaling sharply through my nose as the liquid scorched my throat. “What was it that you wanted to talk to me about?”

For some time, there was no answer forthcoming, so I continued to drink my coffee, sipping it more carefully than I had previously.

“I worry about you sometimes.”

I paused mid-sip and raised my gaze to look at my mother. She was studying me, blue eyes identical to my own currently focused on my left wrist. I drew my hand closer to the edge of the table in response.

“If you want to worry about someone, worry about Mark,” I said. “The way he’s going, he’ll work himself into an early grave. The other two will as well if they aren’t careful. They’re being somewhat neurotic over the whole thing.”

“Well, this album is important to them,” Mom reminded me. “Possibly more so than Middle Of Nowhere, This Time Around and Underneath combined.”

“As if I needed reminding of the fact,” I muttered. “Tenth anniversary and all that.”

“Exactly. So cut them a little slack, okay?”

“Yeah, all right.” I kept quiet for a little while. “So why do you worry about me, anyway?”

“Because you’re sick, maybe?” Mom asked, arching one eyebrow as she spoke.

I snorted quietly. “I’ve been sick since the end of 1999,” I reminded her. “I don’t need any sort of reminder.” I put my mug down on the table and reached across to place my hands atop my mother’s. “I’m fine, Mom. Really, I am. I feel better than I have in a long time. Even despite Mark dragging me out of bed at some unholy hour every morning for the last week.”

“And what do you call an unholy hour?” Mom asked. There was a slight undercurrent of mischief in her tone.

“Anytime before eleven,” I replied. “I’m barely coherent before that. At least, not without a lot of caffeine in my system.” I took my hands off of my mother’s and tapped the rim of my mug. “I think Isobel has a lot to do with how I’ve been feeling lately.”

“Ah, I see.” From the way Mom said this, I could tell that this was what she had been wanting to talk to me about. “And what makes Isobel so special?”

“It’s just…well, most girls are usually only interested in me because of what I am – Mark Hanson’s twin brother. They don’t give a damn that I’m more than that. They don’t care that I’m my own person, and that even though Mark and I are identical twins I’m mostly completely different to him.”

“And I assume Isobel’s different.”

I nodded. “The complete opposite. She knows that Mark is famous, but for some reason she just doesn’t care.” I drained the remainder of my coffee and set my mug back down on the table. “She doesn’t see me as just Mark’s twin – she sees me. She sees me for who I am. Well, she hasn’t seen the real me yet,” I amended, “because I haven’t figured out the right way to tell her, but I’ve shown her enough. She’s seen the part of me that I show most people once I decide that I can trust them.”

“But you don’t completely trust her yet.”

“Not with everything, no. I mean, there’s no doubt in my mind that she wouldn’t plaster it all over the Web, but I just…” My voice faltered, and I let the sentence trail away into nothingness.

“You don’t know how she would react.”

I nodded. “To either.” I rubbed my thumb along the underside of my wrist again. It was an unconscious movement, mostly – I often didn’t realise I was doing it.

“Well, there’s only one way you’ll find out. And that’s to tell her.”

I snapped my gaze up to meet my mother’s. “Tell her?” I asked. “But you said-”

“I never said that you shouldn’t tell anyone, Taylor,” she chided gently. “I only said that you should be cautious about who you chose to share it with.”

“Yeah, because everybody wants to hear about how Mark Hanson’s freak of a brother tried to kill himself at Christmas,” I muttered, not even bothering to keep the sarcasm out of my tone.

“You aren’t a freak,” Mom said. “Far from it. And the sooner that you realise that, the better.” She leaned forward slightly. “Be honest with me here – how does she make you feel?”

“She…” I bit down on my bottom lip, thinking. “She makes me happy. And to be honest, I can’t remember the last time I felt that way.”

“Do you like her?”

“Somehow, I don’t think I should be discussing my love life with my mother.”

“Humour me, please.”

I drew in a deep breath. “Yeah,” I admitted at last. “I do like her. A lot.”

“Then that’s all I need to know.” She gathered our mugs into her hands and stood up. “How about you go and hop in the shower? I’ll take you out to lunch once you’re done.”

“Sounds good to me.” I stood up and stretched. “I need to get out anyway. I’m starting to get some serious cabin fever.” And with those words I wandered into the bathroom, closing the door behind me.

“Tell me something that hardly anybody outside your family knows about you.”

My gaze slid sideways toward Isobel. She was sitting on the floor with her back against the coffee table. For the last ten minutes she had been working my hair into a series of thin braids, a box of what looked like the rubber bands that Isaac had once worn on his braces at her side. The braids were much like the rat-tail Mark had had when he was younger. I was lying on my back on her and Schuyler’s living room couch, relishing in the feeling of my hair being played with. We had just finished watching a particularly exciting episode of Doctor Who from my series two DVDs, our usual Thursday night fare being on a month’s hiatus.

“Anything?” I asked, my tone measured.

“Anything.”

“Okay then.” I was quiet as I thought it over. “There are a few things, actually. A few of my friends know about a couple of them, and so does my doctor. The other thing, though…it’s just my doctor who knows. I’ve never even told Schuyler. So I hope you feel special.”

“Well, come on then. Spill.” I stuck my tongue out at her briefly. “Oh, that’s mature. How old are you again?”

“Hush you.” I shifted my gaze to the ceiling. “Do you remember I told you that I got sick halfway through my very first year of college?”

“Yeah.” I glanced back at Isobel to see that she had furrowed her brow in seeming concentration. “Schuyler said something about that the night of the concert, actually. She told me that you’ve been sick for seven years.”

“It’d be about that long, yeah.” I tried to think of the best way to tell her. “Have you ever heard of something called chronic fatigue syndrome?”

“Very vaguely.”

“How do I explain this…” I sat myself up and started to stare at the framed painting that was hung on the wall next to the front door. “Okay, well, it’s a lot like having the flu, except without all the sneezing and coughing. The major difference between CFS and the flu is that if you have the flu, then you only feel like shit for one week, maybe two.” I swallowed hard. “If you’ve got CFS, then that’s how you feel every day.”

“And you have it.”

It wasn’t a question, just a very matter-of-fact statement. “Yeah,” I said, nodding. “I first got sick just before Christmas 1999, but it wasn’t until August the next year that I found out why I was so damn sick. Entirely aside from the fact that I didn’t get a chance to see a doctor until then, because as soon as I finished my freshman year of college I went straight on tour with my brothers, there’s a very lengthy elimination process when it comes to making a formal diagnosis. My doctor had to rule out every other possibility first.”

“I’ll bet it was a relief when you finally knew what you had.”

I let out a bark of laughter. “You really have no idea. I knew that there was something seriously wrong with me, but I could never put my finger on what it was exactly. Most people were very adamant that it was all in my head. And when my doctor told me that he had a name for it…it was like this incredible weight had been lifted off my shoulders.” I rubbed my left thumb over the back of my right hand. “My tutors and the professors at college were fantastic about it all – they made an incredible amount of allowances for me so that I could study for my degree and still rest when I needed it. I’m grateful to them for that. Even now it doesn’t really interfere with my life that much, mostly because I freelance. I decide my own hours, and if I need to take a few days off then I’m able to. I really don’t think I’d be able to work otherwise.”

“That explains why you use a wheelchair sometimes.” Isobel nodded toward the kitchen. “Schuyler showed me a photo of you and Mark from the last Australian tour.”

“It’s definitely a huge help. Sometimes I’m too exhausted or in too much pain to even move, let alone get up and walk. At least with my wheelchair, I’m not stuck in bed all the time.” I glanced down at Isobel. “That’s the one from the Enmore Theatre, right?” I asked, and she nodded. I let out a quiet chuckle. “Those few weeks Down Under were an absolute disaster. It was the first time that the four of us had left the US for a tour by ourselves – usually when there’s a tour happening our whole family tags along, which means my mom is able to keep an eye on me. She knows my limits almost better than I do. But everyone decided that my brothers were old enough to look after themselves and so could handle going on tour without having our parents along for the ride.”

“And let me guess,” Isobel said. “They made you tag along too.”

I nodded. “Right in one. I’d just graduated from college, so I was exhausted and quite looking forward to crashing out for a few months at home, but they decided I had to come along for the ride. And, well…” Here I shrugged a little. “I just never got over the jet lag. I remember very little about that tour because of it. I still wish Mom at least had come with us, because then she would have been able to stop those idiots from dragging me to every single bar that was within a mile radius of whatever hotel it was that we were staying in.”

Isobel let out a snort of laughter. “So I take it that you don’t get along with them.”

“Oh, Mark and I get along well enough. Zac and Isaac, not so much. It was a lot different when we were younger, but these days…” I shrugged. “Mark and I have to get along, anyway. It would make sharing an apartment very uncomfortable if we didn’t.”

“That’s true.” Isobel studied me for a little while. “So apart from the wheelchair, how do you manage it?”

“I have an assistance dog – her name’s Ratchet. I also take medication.” I got up and went over to the front door of the apartment, where I’d left my messenger bag earlier in the evening. A quick dig around unearthed the three pill bottles I’d brought with me, and I went back to the couch. “Most of the time I’m on these two,” I continued, and held the two pill bottles in question out so Isobel could see them. “Elavil for chronic pain and dysthymia, and Lexapro for anxiety. One in the morning with breakfast, the other at night before I go to bed.”

“Damn,” Isobel said softly.

“Yeah.” I set the pill bottles down on the coffee table. “This one, though…” I held the third pill bottle a little gingerly, as if it was going to explode if I shook it. My eyes drifted shut as I tried to figure out how to tell Isobel what she needed to know. “Can you promise me something?”

“Of course.”

“What I’m going to tell you, it can’t leave this apartment. I’m not kidding when I said only one other person outside of my family knows about it.” I opened my eyes and looked straight at Isobel. “Do I have your word that it’ll stay between us?”

Isobel nodded. “I swear it. I value our friendship far too much to tell anyone else.”

“Thank you.” Here I pushed the left sleeve of my shirt up around my elbow and turned my hand palm up so that Isobel could see the underside of my wrist. “Do you see these scars?”

“Y-yeah,” Isobel replied, her voice shaking a little.

“I got them on Christmas Day 2004. It’s the only time I’ve ever deliberately cut myself.”

Isobel covered her mouth with a hand. “Please tell me you didn’t.”

I nodded once. “I tried to kill myself that day. And, well…I very nearly succeeded.”

“Is it okay if I ask why?”

“Yeah, it’s okay.” I shook my sleeve back down where it belonged. “I’ve had dysthymia since I was almost sixteen – it’s a type of mild depression that hangs around for a fucking long time. And for some reason that nobody could work out, it tended to get worse when winter rolled around. My doctor and I both figured that as long as I kept up with my medication and got plenty of sunlight whenever I could, there wasn’t much point to adding any other meds to what I was already taking.”

“Except that there was.”

“Yeah.” I rubbed the back of my neck with my left hand. “That Christmas, we’d all gathered back at home. Being at home with my family usually brought my mood up considerably, but that year was different. I’d hit my lowest point, basically – being sick was wearing on me physically and mentally to the point that I just wanted it to be over and done with.” I looked down at my feet. “So while my dad was carving up the turkey I went up to my parents’ bathroom and stole one of Dad’s razors, then I sneaked down into the garage and found one of the ropes that had been used to tie the Christmas tree to the roof of Isaac’s truck a few days earlier. I tied a hangman’s knot in one end, tied the other end to one of the beams in the roof of the garage, slit my wrist, and…” I trailed off and swallowed hard.

“And you tried to hang yourself,” Isobel finished quietly, and I nodded.

“Mark found me. I lost consciousness just as he managed to cut me down.” I toyed with a few stray threads on the hem of my shirt. “I was involuntarily committed for thirty-four days – three to make sure I wasn’t going to try and kill myself again, and a further thirty-one while I started taking another antidepressant. Turned out the reason I get more depressed in winter is because I have seasonal affective disorder on top of the dysthymia.”

“Bloody hell,” Isobel breathed.

“Yep.” I managed a small smile. “The last few winters my doctor’s added a third medication called Wellbutrin to what I already take year-round, and I stay on it until the middle of March. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to make it through winter without being so heavily medicated, because I don’t like it much, but it’s keeping me alive.”

“I never realised,” Isobel said softly. She looked at me. “Is that why you live with Mark?”

“It’s part of the reason. Both he and Jess keep me safe, because I don’t trust myself to. Neither of them keeps a razor in the bathroom at home, and we keep all knives and scissors locked away – I have to ask either Mark or Jess for the pantry key if I want to cut something up for dinner. I try not to own anything that I could potentially cut or hang myself with unless it’s an absolute necessity. All three of us know that if I go off my meds for any reason there’s a good chance I’ll try again, and none of us want that to happen.”

“So you’ve never told anyone else up until now?” she asked, and I shook my head. “Why not?”

“Because I’m never sure how anyone will react to the fact that I tried to take my own life,” I replied quietly. “One of my greatest fears is that if I do tell someone, they’ll hate me for it. Most people I’ve talked to see suicide as the coward’s way out, so I don’t dare tell them.” I felt my hands beginning to shake. “I-I’m not a coward. I was just incredibly desperate for a way out, and that was mine.”

“I don’t think you’re a coward.” She put her hands on my knees. “But I really think you should have told someone about this earlier. Keeping it all bottled up inside can’t have been easy.”

“It hasn’t been,” I admitted. I rubbed my wrist through my sleeve. “My scars are most of the reason why I don’t wear a watch. Keeping them covered with my shirtsleeve is enough – if I kept them hidden under a watch strap I’d be able to ignore them.”

“You could wear it on your right wrist.”

I shook my head. “I’m right-handed. If I wore a watch on that wrist, I wouldn’t be able to write properly. It’d get in the way all the time.” I met Isobel’s gaze. “You don’t hate me, do you?”

“Of course not,” she assured me, before studyng me for a little while. “Promise me that you’ll at least tell Schuyler. If I know her as well as I should by now, she won’t judge you.”

“I will,” I promised. “I just need to figure out the right way to do it.”

“Just tell her the same way that you told me. Only you should probably make her swear not to go spreading it all over Hanson.net.”

“She wouldn’t do something like that. Besides, I don’t think she even goes on there anymore. She’s told me a few times that most Hanson fans annoy the absolute shit out of her, so the less she has to do with them the better. And that means steering well clear of certain websites. Even I won’t touch Hanson.net with a ten foot pole.” Isobel snickered at this. “I’m serious. I deal with the fans enough at concerts. I’ve got no desire whatsoever to deal with them online.”

We were both quiet for a little while. Isobel broke the silence that had settled over us like a blanket not long after the clock on the living room wall ticked over to ten-thirty.

“Why don’t you stay here tonight?” she asked. “You look all done in, and I don’t feel right making you head home this late. I don’t mind, and I know Schuyler won’t either. I can make you up a bed out here – the couch folds out. It’s not the most comfortable bed in the world, but at least you won’t be sleeping on the floor.”

“You’re absolutely sure?” She nodded. “I suppose it can’t hurt. I don’t have anything I can change into, though. And I can’t really sleep in what I’m wearing.” I glanced down at what I wore – jeans, long-sleeved shirt with a T-shirt over the top, and socks. My beat-up Airwalk sneakers, which I knew had the laces stitched into place in at least one spot so that I couldn’t remove them, sat next to the front door with my messenger bag.

Isobel frowned, before getting to her feet. “Stand up and lift up your shirt for me.” I eyed her suspiciously but did as I was told. “My God you’re skinny,” she murmured as she crouched down in front of me. “I think Jack left some clothes here the last time he stayed here,” she said, straightening up. “The two of you would be about the same size. I’ll go grab them from my room.”

“Is there somewhere I can leave my medication?” I asked.

“Next to the kettle in the kitchen. They should be all right there.” She gave me a smile and disappeared into her room.

I had just taken my evening medication when Isobel emerged from her bedroom. She tossed a pair of cargo pants at me. “Bathroom’s just through there,” she informed me as I caught them, nodding back toward a narrow hallway. “I’ll make up the couch while you’re changing.”

I nodded my thanks and went through to the bathroom, shutting the door behind me. As I changed out of my jeans and into my borrowed cargo pants and shucked my T-shirt, I took a quick look around the small, narrow room. The walls above the wall tiles were painted a pale purple, the ceiling, cupboards, shelves and other fixtures were cream, and the tiles on the floor and walls were dark purple. A cream bathmat covered the floor, and a light purple lampshade hid the lightbulb on the ceiling. I hid a small smile – evidently someone in this apartment loved the colour purple.

“Nice bathroom,” I said as I re-entered the living room, crossing over to my bag so I could stow my jeans and shirt away.

“Yeah, it’s nice enough,” Isobel replied. She was sitting on the folded-out couch, and was putting a pillowcase on a pillow as she spoke. “I think Schuyler picked this apartment based on the paint job in there alone. Purple’s not my favourite colour, but it’s only the one room so it doesn’t bother me so much.” She gave the pillow a couple of good hard shakes. “But anyway, couch’s made up, so whenever you’re ready…”

I gave Isobel a tired smile. “Thanks Bel,” I said, and she gave me a smile of her own. “I…I guess I’ll see you in the morning, then.”

Isobel nodded. “I will warn you – I get up pretty early, because I have to be at work by eight-thirty. So you know, if you hear someone rattling around in the kitchen at some ungodly hour, it’s probably me. I’ll wake you about an hour before I leave so you’ve got time to get yourself ready to go.”

Just before Isobel headed off to bed, I found myself on the receiving end of a tight hug. “I’m glad you’re still here, Taylor,” she whispered, and kissed me on the cheek. “Good night.”

“‘Night, Bel.”