Take Me with You

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

“I swear to God I think it would’ve been kinder for her if they’d thrown her in jail. At least then she’d get out after a while. But when nobody punishes you, you have to do it yourself, and there’s no release date on that. We’re always harder on ourselves than any governing body could ever get away with being.

It’s one thing to know the right path and another thing to take it.

But it’s funny how you can take something that turns out to be fatal and classify it as not worth fixing.

Hard not to wonder what a little guy like that makes of the world. When he won’t ever say. “I didn’t drink the way some of the people

Henry looked up to August, completely unguarded, the boy’s face like

a door thrown open to invite visitors into his house. He smiled a tiny smile that August could only characterize as excruciating. The look in his eyes reminded August of the last day the boys spent home. The way their father instructed them to steer clear of him. So they wouldn’t unfairly burden him with looks like this one.

August smiled, against odds, and quickly loo...

Maybe the school was the problem, August thought. Maybe everybody wants a science lesson if they’re sitting in the middle of one of the greatest geothermal wonders of the world. Maybe we’ve removed all the relevance from the information we teach kids so they have no idea why they should care. Maybe it’s not the kids’ fault. Maybe we made the first mistake.

“I been sober thirty-six. Thirty-six years. I’m not saying I know it all. In one way, we’ve all just got the time since we got up this morning. But I’ve seen a lot of people walk a lot of roads. Some not so happy. And it makes them what they are. So if you run around putting a pillow under people to cushion their

fall . . . well, I’m just not sure it’s quite the favor we think it is.”

“How can I explain this? It’s like everybody lives every day knowing something terrible could happen. That this could be the day they get ‘the call.’ You know the one I mean. That dreadful call regretting to inform you that the worst has happened. I mean, we don’t think about it every day. But if we thought about it, we’d know it could happen. But it seems like this weird quirk of human nature that we don’t think it ever will. It never did before, so we figure it won’t. Someone else will get the call. Someone who isn’t us. But then you get the call. And it seems so real that you could again. Maybe even that you will again.”

“No, I didn’t mean that. I need to do something about me. Somehow get

the part of me that’s proud of him to be almost as big as the part of me that’s terrified for him. And maybe somehow accent the first part and deal with the rest on my own.”