2: Crazy Boys Surf Couches

[lb_lee]

Ch. 2: Crazy Boys Surf Couches

Summary: Plans gets made, couches get surfed... and the family find out.
Series: Crazy Boys
Word Count: 6000
Notes: Winner of this month’s fan poll! The quotes from the CIA’s “KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation Manual” of July 1963 comes from Eberhardt Press’s 2016 zine verbatim reproduction, called Interrorgation: The CIA’s Secret Manual On Coercive Questioning. The original manual was declassified in January 1997 under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the Baltimore Sun, and is in the public domain.

Content warnings (contain SPOILERS!)

Grim after-effects of strangulation and sexual violence, but none shown on-screen, homophobia, hallucinations, walking corpse syndrome, and a heterosexual meltdown.

Junior Year: Rogan

It’s my first night at D’s beige box, he’s playing Halo, and I ask if I can use his shower.

“Sure. Use whatever’s there.” Then, chagrined, “I only have the one towel.”

“It’s fine.” I had zero towel… well, besides the ones I was sleeping in… until now.

He has just cheap 2-in-1 and soap, but I don’t care. For the first time in however long, I am having a hot shower, undisturbed, and getting truly clean. It feels amazing. (I’m lucky; I will quickly learn that the hot water doesn’t always work.) If D interrupts at all, it’s just to call something along the lines of, “don’t drown in there.”

Finally, when the hot water begins to dim, I finish. I change into sweatpants and a sweatshirt to sleep in and come out, brushing my hair and feeling a lot better. D’s towel smells of him, but it doesn’t bother me the way Mom’s scent does, or Jeff’s and Bro’s Axe body spray. D just smells… safe. Besides, you smell a lot of sweat in marching band; we’re used to it.

At bedtime, D has another, “shit, I didn’t plan for this” moment: his apartment has no heat, and he has only the one blanket and pillow. His consternation at being a “bad host” makes me laugh, since I’m the one imposing on him. He doesn’t have to be a host!

“It’s fine, it’s fine, I’m an expert at this!” I improvise a pillow out of my backpack and drape my scrappy leather jacket over me. “Ta-da!”

D gives me an offended look. “You gotta quit trying to BS me; you’re really bad at it.”

I roll my eyes and sigh melodramatically.

“I mean it, that’s my rule: you want to stay here, no BSing. It’s just embarrassing for both of us.”

In the end, we compromise: I agree to his rule and take the blanket, while he keeps the pillow. “I’ve got sheets,” he says, “it’ll be fine.”

But of course, it isn’t—which, had he bothered to ask, I could’ve told him. Later that night, I wake up to him coming out of the bathroom, hands tucked in his armpits, shivering in undershirt and boxer shorts.

“Cold?” I ask, as though it’s not obvious.

The look he gives me is miserable, guilty, one totally at odds with his usual confident horndog persona. “I don’t want to sleep with you.”

“I know.” I sit up, hold out the blanket, but he waves it off.

“No, no, that’s for you, I told you.”

“I’m in sweats. I have a jacket. I told you, I’ve done this before.”

But D is steadfast. His Texas boy gallantry won’t let him take a blanket from a girl or a guest. Normally his chivalry is oddly touching; now it’s just annoying.

“Look,” I say, “you quit this BS now. We’re on the same page here: we don’t want to have sex, it’s cold, there’s only one blanket. Get over here.” And when he just hovers and squirms: “You want to shiver all night? It sucks. I’ve done it.”

He gives me this ginger look. “I have a bed…?”

“No,” I say firmly. “I don’t do beds.”

That, of all things, seems to reassure him. Maybe it’s weird enough that he believes my sincerity. We remove the couch’s back cushions, and he joins me, bringing the pillow. He’s not a big guy, for a football player, but it’s still tight enough that we can’t avoid touching each other.

It’s also warm enough that he sighs with relief.

“See? I’m a genius.” I tuck myself under his chin as though I do this all the time. He doesn’t have much choice but to put an arm over me. “You can thank me later.”

He’s stiff and silent for a while, then says, “we can never tell anyone we did this.”

I roll my eyes. “Your rep’s safe with me.”

We go to sleep. It’s weirdly easy, for me, at least. I’ve known D almost three years, and for whatever reason, he makes me feel at ease, even in these close quarters. His scent is familiar, harmless. And it’s nice to be warm.

My body’s been trained to wake up early without an alarm (a skill I will retain through my adulthood), so I wake up first. There’s no shock or panic; I’m warm and comfortable, and my nose tells me before I even open my eyes that I’m not with Jeff. I can feel morning wood against my leg but it causes me no panic.

I check my watch. Right on schedule. I poke D in the arm. “Hey, you. Wake up.”

He makes a whiny protest noise, starts to burrow deeper into the warmth, then realizes where he is and with who. He leaps off the couch.

“Good morning,” I say dryly.

He speeds into the bathroom, swearing under his breath. Not a morning person, it seems. Guessing he’ll be in there for a while, questioning all his life choices, I take the opportunity to jump into my school clothes.

Normally I’m the bug-eyed, twitching Chihuahua, while D is the smooth, (supposedly) shameless one, but he’s squirrelly all through breakfast, giving me weird looks over the cheap cereal, which we eat at a crummy nightstand or folding table, sitting on two folding chairs. Me, I find myself strangely calm.

“All good?” I ask.

“I still don’t want to have sex with you,” he says in this baffled, horrified voice, like this is a character defect he’s just discovered in himself.

I squint at him. “…yes…?”

“I just slept with you!” he blurts. “And I still don’t want to have sex with you!”

I chew. “Uh huh.”

“You don’t think that’s weird?”

“I have a boyfriend,” I say. “I wouldn’t have sex with you anyway.”

He flails his hands around. “But—agh—”

“If you’re going to be weird about this, I’ll go back to sleeping outside.”

It’s a dirty trick, but it does help douse his heterosexual meltdown. “No, no, I’m cool!” He’s so obviously not cool. “Just… you don’t want to have sex with me?”

I laugh. “No.”

He seems to wrestle with something. “But… you like guys.”

I shrug. “Enh. It’s a living.”

That seems to throw further cold water on him. “Are you… uh…”

I raise an eyebrow at him, chew like a camel, and wait to see if he’ll have the guts to ask. I know I’m torturing him a little, and I shouldn’t find it funny, but I do.

He doesn’t ask. He just looks away and makes this face. D, social wizard, clearly has no idea how to handle this situation.

“Next time,” I say, “you keep the blanket. I don’t want to deal with you if you’re going to act like this.”

“No, no, look, I’m sorry, just—”

“Come on, is this seriously the first time this has happened to you?”

“Yes!” he says, smacking the table.

I stop chewing. He sighs.

“You’re a girl, right? You have boobs! But—” he moves his hand in-between us, “nothing. None of that.”

I shrug.

“It’s weird!”

“Do you want to have sex, just to get it over with?” I don’t relish the prospect, but he can’t be worse than Jeff.

But he says, “no!” so passionately and with such horror that I completely believe him. “I didn’t bring you here for that, I told you. You’re my friend.”

I take pity on him. “Yeah. We’re friends. So we don’t have to do that stuff, okay? It… doesn’t have to be like that.”

Saying it feels like untying a knot in me. It doesn’t have to be like this.

I say, “I’m sorry I made you feel weird.”

He looks at me, sees I’m sincere. He nods a couple times, like he’s thinking it through.

“I won’t do it again,” I say. “I just didn’t want you to be cold, that’s all.”

“Nah, nah, it’s—” he sighs. “It’s not you. We’re cool.”

I eye him suspiciously. “You sure?”

He sounds more certain this time. “Yeah. We’re cool.”

And we go back to eating.

In the morning, he drives us to school. I tell him to let me out a safe distance away (if people see me getting out of his incredibly conspicuous red muscle car at Ass O’Clock, they will talk) and he agrees, letting me off at the hike and bike trail. As he drives off, he calls, “see you tonight,” and waves out the window. I wave back at him, feeling happier and more hopeful than I have in a while.

When I enter, D and I see each other, do that sorta reverse-nod, nonverbal hi, and then go our separate ways. Mission fucking accomplished. I don’t know about him, but I feel like a fucking spy.

…

The next time I’m on D’s couch, he tries to offer me the blanket, and I refuse.

“You got super weird about this last time. No way.”

“No, no, I’m cool this time,” he says, “I got it.”

I just wrap my dilapidated leather jacket tighter around me. I don’t have my boots on, but I’m otherwise fully, warmly dressed. I’ll likely still be cold (I’m always cold) but I’m the one who’s used to it, and I’m the one who doesn’t have to drive and work tomorrow. I don’t care if I am violating the unspoken rules of Southern hospitality and Texenia; I got my period and feel gross and cranky. (Also, if I get blood on his blanket, the manly freak-outs will never end.)

He sighs. “Share?”

I squint at him suspiciously, turtle into my jacket. “I dunno, are you going to be weird about it again?”

“No.”

I look at him hard. He makes no extravagant promises or gestures.

“Get the pillow,” I say.

As we squish onto the couch, I can’t resist saying, “No sex. I’m on the rag.”

“Aw, man… why you gotta be like that?” But it makes us laugh and helps break the tension, the weird pressure that we’re hormonal teenagers who should be tempted, at least.

Freshman Year: Anna

It was game day, and D, us, our best friend Audrey, and Section Leader were running late for inspection. We didn’t even have our uniforms on yet! So we dove into the percussion room, pulling the coveralls up over our clothes (I know, it’s hot, but if you don’t, you can’t strip down when packing up later), then grabbing and fumbling for our jackets. We started pulling them on and then D stopped in mid-pull and stared at my chest.

“Huh,” he said. “Anna’s got big boobs.”

“D!” Audrey cried.

“Thank you, Captain Obvious!” Section Leader retorted.

D pounced on it. “Oh, so you’d already noticed!”

“Shut up, D!” We all cried. Those are becoming our most common words.

Audrey and Section Leader dashed from the percussion room pretty fast. I was having trouble with those blasted buttons, so was alone with D for a few seconds.

“You know I’m just joking you, right?” he said. “I’m not going to rape you or anything like that.”

I answered truthfully. “Nah. You’re just being you, on a testosterone high.”

He grinned. “Good. Cuz even though you’ve got big boobs, I don’t think of you that way.”

He smacked me on the back and waltzed out. I wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or insulted.

Junior Year: Rogan

I must have a nightmare because I wake up panicked, panting. Unfamiliar place, something’s wrong, need to check the locks, need to—

D pats me, mumbles at me to go back to sleep. Then, blearily, “wait. Bathroom?” I’m the one squished into the back of the couch; I can’t get out without climbing over him or the back.

The stupid mundanity of it cuts through the panic haze. “No, no,” I say, going still. “Just bad dreams.”

“Mm.” He pets my hair, still half-asleep, pulls me close, tells me everything’s okay, hush, and I still somehow believe him, so I do. My heart stops pounding, the terror ebbs, I nuzzle into his neck and he lets me and I go back to sleep. And in the morning, when I wake up and do have to scramble for the bathroom, he doesn’t freak out about why I need it first.

It’s weird, not to have to hide my inconvenient biological realities from someone. He clearly isn’t totally sanguine, though: at breakfast, over cereal, he says, “I like girls, you know.”

“No!” I feign surprise. “Really?”

He sounds a little defensive. “I just don’t want you getting the wrong idea. Because we don’t—you know.”

Oh my god, really? “Are you seriously worried I’ll think you’re gay for not wanting to have sex with me?”

He flinches. “Don’t say that. I don’t call you that.”

It’s true, he doesn’t. “Well, okay, first of all, just because you like girls doesn’t mean you have to like every single one.” Especially me. I wouldn’t fuck me. “Also, I know gay people. It’s not a big deal.”

“You do?” He sounds more curious than I expect. “Who?”

“A couple of my neighbors,” I say, picking my words carefully so as to neither lie nor say anything too weird. Imaginary friends are kind of like neighbors, right?

“Yeah? What’re they like?”

I try to think what to say. “They’re like Mom and Dad’s age. They’ve been together for ages, I think.”

“And they’re not—like—”

I blink at him.

“You know…”

I really don’t. “You’re going to have to spell this out for me.”

He clearly doesn’t want to, but he does: “Pedophiles.”

“What? No! Don’t be a jerk! They’re nice people!” The nicest in my life, til D came along. “Why would even think that? You don’t know them!”

He’s silent, fidgeting with his sleeves. There’s something in his face that worries me, and suddenly I’m not indignant anymore.

“Did… something happen?” I ask.

He just says, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

I think. I breathe. “You know my grampa?”

“The one who’s dying?”

“Yeah. He did stuff to my mom and uncle. And he was married and everything. Some people, I think… it’s not about being gay or not. I think some people just hurt people.”

He says nothing, doesn’t look at me. He feels far away. I want to hug him or something, but I’m not sure he wants me to.

“Well,” he says finally, “you’re not gay, so it’s okay.”

Something in me sinks.

“Right?”

I don’t know how to answer him. If someone doesn’t like gay people, it’s a pretty safe bet they won’t like me, but the one thing he’s asked of me is not to BS him, so I go, “well, I’ll never do anything to a kid, ever. They can’t fight back; they’re little. It’s mean.”

He nods. “Yeah. But gay people, man… you can never be quite sure. I’m just letting you know, ‘cause no BS: if you’re gay, you’re on your own. Okay?”

Gulp. But this feels important, so I say, “You said no BS, so I’m telling you: I don’t know what I am. I just don’t like anyone that way, or having sex.”

He squints at me hard for a second, and I guess I pass. “That’s cool. Good enough for me.”

He smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. There are still demons behind them.

…

We settle into our new routine. D picks me up after work, and I spend the night on his couch. It goes pretty okay, until one Friday evening, when I pack my bag and head for the front door, only to find Dad waiting for me.

“Where are you going?” he asks. His arms are crossed, his face pleasant-looking in the way that means he’s angry.

I say, “outside.”

He’s not fooled. “Who are you staying with?”

When I try to dissemble, he cuts me off. “Don’t give me that. You never take the car and you’re never waiting for the school bus in the morning.” Bro, you little snitch. “You’re staying with someone and I want to know who.”

I say nothing. My heart starts pounding behind my ribs. D will be here soon and if I’m not there, he’ll surely leave me behind, but better a cold night outside than Dad catching him. Thank fuck the pick-up spot is at the end of the street, out of sight; that’s why I chose it, why I haven’t written down D’s phone number, why I haven’t told anyone what I’m doing. Dad can’t guess, and he won’t find out…

…unless I tell him.

“Is it Jeff?”

I say nothing.

“What have you been telling them?”

“Nothing,” I say, because I’m fucking stupid.

“I don’t believe you,” he says and takes me gently by the hair. His expression is mild, disappointed, and I start to shake. “You tell anyone, and I’ll give you to Mom. They’ll never find you.”

I don't resist. I don’t cry, whimper, or speak. I stare into space like he isn’t there. I’m not a person, I tell myself. I’m an object, a monster of meat and madness, so I can’t be hurt. I’m not a person. I’m not a person.

“You’re lucky you have me,” Dad says, and punishes me.

The CIA’s KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation Manual, July 1963

from Part IX (the Coercive Counterintelligence Interrogation of Resistant Sources), Section F: Threats and Fear (pg. 90-91) and Section H: Pain (pg. 93-94)

[M]ost people underestimate their capacity to withstand pain. […] [T]he man whose childhood familiarized him with pain may dread it less, and react less, than one whose distress is heightened by fear of the unknown. The individual remains the determinant. […]

If an interrogatee is caused to suffer pain rather late in the interrogation process and after other tactics have failed, he is almost certain to conclude that the interrogator is becoming desperate. He may then decide that if he can just hold out against this final assault, he will win the struggle and his freedom. And he is likely to be right.

Friday, Junior Year: Rogan

Dad finishes punishing me, and he lets me stagger out with my bag without following me, but I know this is a trick. Dad is surely watching from the window and the neighbors are primed to snitch: I’m a troubled child, someone they gotta keep track of. Whichever route I take up the street will tell him something I don’t want him to know, so I plunge through the neighbor’s yard, into the creekbed—my normal sleep-outside route—and once I’m out of sight, I turn and forge through bramble and limestone in the dark till I’m out of the snitch zone. No one follows me, and once I’m only visible to neighbors who don’t know my family or care, I climb over a fence, cut through their yard—no dog, thankfully—and return to the empty road.

I’m late, so late, limping, messy, breath rasping in my throat. D won’t be there. Surely he’s gone.

But when I make it to the corner, there’s his muscle car, idling at the corner.

I can’t hide how I’m moving, what I look like. I just hurry, yank open the door, hurl myself in.

“Go,” I rasp in my ruined voice. “They know.”

D’s eyes go wide, and he hits the gas like the devil himself is after us.

“What happened?” he demands to know.

God, my throat hurts. Talking was a mistake, but we need a new plan, before any and everything else, especially if I’m losing my voice. “Need to change pick-up stop. Outside neighborhood, maybe.” Ugh, it’s getting worse. “Sorry I’m late.”

“Who did this to you?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

He brakes hard, stops the car just outside the neighborhood. I feel a surge of panic (he’s going to tell me to get out, he’s done, this is too much), but instead he yanks off his seat belt, leans over, and hug me.

I just sit there, unable to understand. “It’s okay,” I say through my ruined throat.

He starts rocking me.

“I’m okay,” I insist, and tears start streaming down my cheeks. I cling to him and he holds me in silence for a while.

“Stay with me for the weekend,” he says.

“But—” But Grampa’s not dead yet, I need to stay close til he does, if I don’t, they’ll punish me—

My voice gives out.

“Don’t go back there,” D insists. “They’ll kill you.”

I don’t have it in me to resist. I nod, and he takes me home to his apartment. When his right hand isn’t changing gears, he’s holding my hand.

“Is there anything you need?” he asks.

I shake my head. If the seats allowed, I’d lean against him, but I can’t.

When we reach D’s place, I immediately storm for the shower, determined to scrub off the punishment. I run the water hot as I can stand. My sweatpants and sweatshirt are stocked under the bathroom sink with the tampons, but I realize with frustration that my bandanna is still in my school locker. Stupid, stupid! I’ll have to bee-line for my locker in Monday morning, grab it, correct my idiotic oversight.

When I come out, curled in on myself with pain and shame, D’s on the couch, not even pretending to fool around with video games, just waiting for me. He looks worried.

“Hey.”

I wave a little, point to my throat, kinda make a shrugging motion like, what can you do?

“Was that over me?”

I make a “meh” gesture, rasp, “you’re safe. I didn’t tell them.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about.” When D is really upset, he doesn’t fidget; he gets still and stormy.

I shrug, sit down next to him, lean into him so I can rest my head on his shoulder. He leans into me, body language softening.

“You were late. You’re never late; it’s always me. I worried something happened.”

If talking didn’t hurt so much, I’d try to reassure him. As it is, I say nothing.

“I was worried you wouldn’t come up. You need a doctor? We could go to the ER…”

I shake my head vehemently. That would absolutely count as telling; we wouldn’t be able to hide the cost from the family. Even if the hospital does something, the only way it’ll work is if they manage to immediately, completely remove me from everyone in the family, and I just can’t see that happening. Anything less will just get me bag’n’dumped. And the thought of being touched, examined by strangers…

D’s okay, though. It’s like my brain counts him differently.

His hands are clasped in his lap, still. He’s letting me touch him, but being careful not to touch me, now. I guess in the car, he was so worried, he forgot.

“Do you want me to go? You can be alone if you want.”

I shake my head and pull him down to lie on the couch with me, and I cling to him, too hurt and exhausted for shame. He seems relieved to hold me, to have something he can do.

…

I wake up in the night, convinced we’ve been followed. This time, D can’t soothe me; I have to get up, have to check the locks, have to make sure they can’t get in and hurt him, and everything’s locked, of course it is, but that doesn’t help. I have to search the apartment, because they’re coming, they’re here, I can feel them—

D stays on the couch. “Come back,” he says. His voice is soft and muzzy. “It’s okay.”

I rock in place, twisting my hair, wringing my hands. I am so ashamed to be seen like this.

He beckons me over. This time, I come.

It’s warm with him, under the blanket. My shaking, aching body starts to relax. He holds me, pets my hair.

“Sorry,” I say in my ruined voice.

“Sshh.”

And I’m able to relax back into sleep, lulled by the rhythm of his breathing.

…

The bruises are bad, come morning, and I have nothing with which to hide them. I look despairingly at my reflection in the bathroom mirror: ugly, ugly, ugly. If people see me like this in D’s company, they may well blame him.

“Hey.” He’s in the doorway.

Even though he already knows, I cover my throat with my hand, trying to hide the marks. Suddenly I understand why girls wear makeup. I don’t have any, though, and the only thing I can think of is to tie a sock around my neck, which would only draw more attention.

“Hold on, I’ve got something.” D disappears.

Curious, I follow his path. He’s gone into his room, a place I never go, and he’s digging for something. I see a mattress on the floor, clothes everywhere. He doesn’t seem to have a dresser or anywhere to put them.

“Got it!” He comes up with an elastic terrycloth sweatband, the kind with stripes. “Don’t worry, it’s clean. See if it works.”

I head back into the bathroom, pull it down over my neck. It’s too loose, so he goes to find a safety pin and then cinches the sweatband tight, his hands gentle and the ghost of his breath warm on the back of my neck. Even after everything I’ve been through, it feels… special.

“I think your hair will cover this,” he says. “Too tight? Too loose?”

I give him the okay sign.

“Cool. Hold still so I don’t poke you.”

I could do this myself with the bathroom mirror, but I don’t protest. There’s something intimate about this. It’s a little embarrassing, but I like the way he feels, how he’s being gentle with me.

“Ow!” He must’ve jabbed himself. “There, got it. Check it out.”

I look in the bathroom mirror. The bruises are covered now, hidden by his sweatband. I touch it and smile. It almost looks like a purposeful fashion statement now, like I belong somewhere, with someone. I don’t look like a beaten girlfriend.

I maybe look like D’s girlfriend, but no help for that.

“All good?” D asks.

I strike a silly triumphant pose.

“Cool.” He smiles.

I’ve mostly lost my voice, but there’s no way to pantomime this. “Need to do stuff today?”

I still sound terrible, and his smile dims. “Well, if you’re staying the weekend, we’ll need groceries.”

I whip out my wallet: I’ll help!

“Cool! And…” he sighs. “We gotta hit the laundromat.”

I put on an overdone expression of triumphant excitement: I’ll get to do laundry as I feel obliged to do!

“Yeah, yeah, don’t get excited.” Pause. “You don’t have to do chores—”

I get up in his face.

“Okay, okay, fine. Jeez.”

So we go grocery shopping together. We split the bill, and he doesn’t argue. He does with the laundry, though: “you’ve got, like, one thing in here. Forget it.” I make a sulky face but don’t have a lot of quarters, so fine, he wins. I still help sort and fold everything, though, and D watches me with this bemused look and says thank you.

Jeff has never once said thank you.

Afterward, as D’s putting on his seat belt and twisting to adjust the stuff in the back, he asks, “okay, anything else we need while we’re out here?”

There’s no avoiding this. “Drugstore,” I rasp.

“You need painkillers? I got some at home…”

“Pregnancy test.”

He freezes, and for a moment, his expression is unguarded and heartbreaking.

“Don’t be like that,” I croak.

He pulls himself together. “Okay.”

When we arrive, I say, “You can stay here if you want.”

“Do you want me to?”

My shoulders sag. I shake my head.

So we go and buy the pregnancy test together. At the register, he wordlessly hands me some cash, paying for half of it. There’s no pretending we don’t look like the unhappy couple. I’m tired and numb; D’s stormy, glaring like he’s daring them to make something of it.

They don’t.

I won’t be able use the stupid test til a couple weeks have passed, and I can’t take it to the family’s house. When I ask, D says, “put it in the bathroom somewhere.”

I do, and it burns a hole in my peripheral vision every time I’m near it.

…

Sunday night, in D’s bathroom, I see the dead boy in the mirror. Goddammit.

“What?” I hiss at it. At least my voice is recovering. “What do you want?”

It just looks at me.

“Go away!” I hiss. “I’m fine!”

It doesn’t, and I’m not.

“Anna?” D. “All good?”

My impulse is to lie, say I’m fine, but I promised not to BS him. The mirror is flat, the kind bolted to the wall; I can’t throw a towel over it. I avert my eyes, finish my business.

My hands are covered in blood. Sticky.

Stop it. This isn’t real. I’m not supposed to see this shit anymore.

Something’s pushing inside my head and when I open my mouth, blood drools out. I clap my blood-sticky hands over my mouth.

“You’re dying,” says the dead boy in the mirror. “You’re still dying.”

I’d tell it to go away but I’m terrified to open my mouth.

Knocking at the door. “Hey. You good?”

I can’t let him see me like this. I can’t lie to him. “No.” More blood, something squishy and fleshy. Oh god, it’s everywhere.

“Can I come in?”

“You shouldn’t. Don’t. Just… just give me a second.” Blood and tar and horrors fall from my mouth like I’m a cursed princess in a story.

Pause. “I really need to go.”

God son of a bitch fucking damn it, it’s his damn bathroom. I get up, wobbly. Everything feels crooked, like when I first came out of the operating room, and I have to carefully keep my balance as I open the door to leave.

D’s standing out there. “I lied,” he says. “I just said that so you’d let me in.”

Even in the state I’m in, I can’t help but laugh a little. “Door wasn’t locked.”

“I don’t bust in. What’s up?”

“I’m—I’m seeing things that aren’t true. It… it happens sometimes.” Something moves in the mirror. I don’t look at it, or my hands. I stay focused on him, ignore what’s coming out of my mouth, falling onto my collar. “It’ll go away soon.”

“Okay.” He sounds concerned, but he doesn’t slam the door in my face or call me crazy. “What do you see?”

“I don’t want to tell you that.”

“Okay. Bad stuff?”

“Yeah. Bad stuff.”

“Want me to sit with you til it goes away?”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’d be good.”

We go to the couch, me wobbly. None of the wall angles seem to quite be ninety degrees, but at least the hallucinations aren’t getting worse.

We sit down. D puts his arm around me.

“Sometimes if I cry,” I say, “it goes away faster.”

“That’s cool, go ahead.”

I hide my face in my hands and cry silently, and he stays. Even with my eyes shut, I feel the walls shifting back to where they should be.

“Sorry,” I wheeze.

“It’s okay. I’d way rather you cry than see horrible stuff.”

He’s being so calm and practical. It helps anchor me.

Eventually I calm. When I peek, my hands are clean. The walls are straight. Nothing’s coming out of my mouth. I don’t trust the mirror, but it’s okay, only the bathroom has one. I sigh with relief. “Okay, that seems to have done it. All good.”

He lets me go. “That happen a lot?”

“It only started recently. I don’t know why.”

“Stress? If letting it out helps…”

“Maybe. That makes some sense… are you weirded out?”

“It’s cool,” he says, “I already knew you’re weird.”

I snorted. “Seriously.”

“Man, if I were sleeping outside as long as you, I’d be swinging from the chandelier. Long as we can deal with it, I’m cool, and crying seems pretty easy. Not like you need to throw the one ring down Mordor or anything.”

“Yeah. Okay.” His calmness is infectious, enough for me to even joke, “take two crying breaks and call me in the morning?”

He smiles like a game show host. “That’s a-right.”

And it’s okay. We’re okay.

…

D’s putting his cell phone down on the floor by the couch as an alarm, “so I don’t have to rely on your freaky Jedi mind tricks. How do you do that?”

I wiggle my fingers and do a goofy voice. “Psychic powers, ooooh!” In my normal voice, since he asked I not BS him, “I dunno. Just taught myself.”

“Girl, you’re crazy.”

“And you’d never have me any other way,” I sing.

He lies down and we snuggle in. It’s become this unspoken agreement that we’ll sleep together, chat ourselves to sleep. There’s a sort of comforting familiarity about it now.

“Jedi mind tricks,” I scoff. “Says the guy who make anyone get along with him.”

“That’s easy,” he says. “I just see what they want and become it. Anyone could do it.”

“I can’t,” I point out.

“Almost anyone,” he amends.

A sick thought occurs to me. “You aren’t… doing this cuz it’s what I want, are you? Don’t do that with me, okay?”

“What? No!” And he sounds honestly horrified. “No. You… it’s like you’re quiet. Everyone else, they’re all beaming out me, me, me, want, want, want all the time, but you’re just quiet.”

“Huh. Really?”

“Yeah.”

I think it over. “I think you’re the one with psychic powers, D.”

“Hey!” But he’s laughing.

I do the voice again. “Maybe we both have psychic powers, ooooh!”

He play-punches me in the shoulder.

“I’m the ghost of Anna past and future, ooooh!” I continue. “I’ve been dead this entire time, that’s why I’m so quiet!”

He stops laughing. “Hey. Don’t say stuff like that.”

I quit the voice. “Sorry. Sometimes I feel dead, you know? Like some part of me never got up again.”

Pause. “You change sometimes.”

“Huh?”

“Like, sometimes you seem happy and fine and sometimes you’re… not.”

“I’m a moody angsty teenager.”

“I don’t know if that’s it.” But he lets it go.

“Maybe I have a split personality and I’m gonna go all Jekyll-and-Hyde on you.”

“Nah. You’re all good.” Of that, he sounds confident. “Hey. Is what we’re doing a relationship?”

I shrug, make an “I dunno” noise. “Do you want it to be?”

The answer is immediate: “No.”

“Good. Me either.” I don’t fit into D’s normal social life. I’d be a liability for him. He’d be awkward to fit into my life too, my “real” life. We both have images to maintain, and those images have no room for this.

We go to sleep.

…

I wake up and he’s crying, chest heaving, heartbreak sobs, sunk-Titanic sobs. I can’t tell if he’s awake or doing it in his sleep.

“Hey,” I say, “wake up, it’s okay.”

He jerks. He wakes. He’s shaking, cold with sweat.

“Bad dreams? You okay?”

He burrows under the blankets, clings to me, shakes. I pet him, make soothing sounds, tell him everything’s okay now, I’m here. I try to act like I would if it was Sneak who had the nightmare.

His shaking slows, stops. His body relaxes. I feel the tears on my shirtfront.

“Bad one?” I ask.

He sniffs. “Yeah.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Okay.” I keep petting him. “This okay? I can stop.”

“No. It’s okay.” He sighs. “Keep doing that.”

So I do, till we both fall asleep. I might be a rotting corpse inside, but at least he still finds me comforting.

Comments

[quailfence]

This was really good, thank you for sharing. D seems like such an amazing friend and person in general

[lb_lee]

HE WAS AND MAY HE BE BLESSED IN ALL HIS ENDEAVORS