Colin had always been good at pretending things didn't exist.
If he didn't want to see it, it wasn't there. If he didn't want to hear it, it wasn't happening. If he didn't want it to be a problem, it wasn't.
Until it stared him in the face, looming like a monster, looming over him like the beast it was. Until it returned to him like a train, full-force, angry, ignored, violent as ever and prepared for vengeance.
Until he couldn't pretend anymore.
He could ignore anything, until anything was looking him directly in the face and he didn't recognize her or her dark hair, until she was giving him a sad sympathetic expression he could only recognize as fake. He didn't recognize the cream walls, the taupe tile floors, the smoke-stained drooping ceilings, or the glass window that had been covered up with tissue paper and masking tape. Fluorescent lights illuminated his ignorance.
Maybe in some other world, he could have been a handsome young man. At twenty-two years, his square jaw had a dark dusting of scruff, and his lips seemed stuck in an eternal pout, while his eyes had something just behind them, something the woman in the room couldn't quite figure out, something like pain, something like a haunting, something like duty and responsibility and shame.
His file had been promising as well.
In this world, though, his starved and sickened body was wracked with bruises, cuts, scrapes. A black eye, a split lip, the dark underneath his eyes praying for sleep. In this world, things weren't kind to him.
Inside the manila folder, the woman had been given a few bare papers, with what little information they had on him. No high school diploma, no college education, one younger brother and two living parents. A little index card, splotched with blood, scuffed with dirt, smeared and wrinkled with age, had been shoved into a Ziploc bag, a heavy label marked 'evidence' at the top, and paperclipped to the inside of the folder.
"Colin," she tried slowly, her voice smooth and soft like she was speaking to a child. His eyes drew up to her, glistening close to tears, and she could see the shades of blue appearing in his irises. "Hi. Hey, are you here? Can you hear me?" He nodded. "Good morning. You can call me Diana. Is it okay if I call you Colin?"
Underneath the table, where his hands were clasped together at his knees, his palms pressed harder against one another. His only response was a nod. What else would she call him?
The woman paused, watching him for a long moment. He did little more than stare back, pursing and rolling his lips to keep back whatever emotions threatened him. Finally, in the silence, she shifted her silk blouse around her slight frame, and cleared her throat. She looked hardly old enough for this job. Manicured nails plucked away the paperclip, and she passed the index card in its world-proof baggie to him.
COLIN G. PELLEY.
3206 MAIN ST & BONLOU RD. APPMNT 11B.
IF LOST, RETURN TO SENDER.
"Is this your handwriting, Colin?"
It was a joke.
An innocent, humorous little joke, and a knock on his hallucinations, and here it had saved him. Wedged into his wallet, it was all he had to his name now.
When he spoke, finally, his voice came as a careful, low drawl, broken only by the lilt of insecurity and child-like fear.
"It's Sam's."
And she was silent. Peering over her rimless glasses, in the bright lights of the otherwise empty room, she scanned his face, the hapless mess of his dark hair, the sad state of his body. It all made sense, here with the doctor's report in front of her, the measures and balances inside him, and her mouth itched to tell him what it said. Butterflies developed in her stomach for fear of saying it.
She dared not question his statement, instead leaving him to stare hopelessly at the index card.
"Do you know where we are, Colin?" Silence. Absolute silence, and he looked up at her, his brow knitting in a deeply concerned way. "Do...you know what day it is?"
"It was Tuesday when I left," was all he could offer, quieter now, returning to the index card. "I was...in the Bronx."
"Well, the good news is you're still in New York state," she hummed, sitting up straight, hands fumbling with her blouse again. His file had already said he lived in the Bronx, and it wasn't hard to find patients originating from there. "Brooklyn, but, that's not far from the Bronx. Two hours, maybe, with traffic. And...it's Thursday, it's about eight at night right now."
He gave her no verbal response.
No matter, she thought, she could handle unresponsive patients.
"The doctors in the hospital said they questioned you when you were admitted. Do you remember that?"
Colin shook his head. He remembered a rush, he remembered the nurses scrambling, doctors drawing blood and quiet whispers. Then he remembered waking up, and a short drive to the rehab center, where the whole world felt like it was upside down, and he wanted nothing more than to put his head on the table and sleep again. And here he was.
Lacquered and crimson, her shining nails clicked at the staple in the top of the file. He could see a little piece come off, a tiny fleck of red from the edge of her index finger, sticking to the staple, and suddenly he felt dizzy.
"Colin?"
"I'm here," he mumbled, looking up again.
She looked concerned. Her brow furrowed, she gave him a pseudo-imploring expression, the kind that counselors practiced, and her lips rolled together nervously. "Do you remember what the doctors told you?"
What had they told him?
Looking off slightly to one side, he shook his head again, something sick rolling in his stomach. A doctor's orders. Something they'd said. Something about him, which meant there was something wrong with him, and by her expression, the file didn't put it nicely.
She took in a deep breath, crossing her legs under the table.
"When you went in," she said slowly, choosing her words like they were a chess game, "they took a blood sample from you. That's how they found the OxyContin. They...also noticed you had an extremely low T-cell count. Do you know what those are?" He answered; no. "Well...they did another test, a...more specific test, and your T-cells...when you get..." The counselor sighed. "Your T-cells are a kind of white blood cell, and when you get an infection, your white blood cells attack the infection."
"So I have an infection?"
An infection wasn’t awful.
She hesitated. "Yes. B-but it's...T-cells specifically are targeted by...one type of infection, and it uses the cells to multiply, and it kills the white blood cells until they can't defend your body anymore..."
"I...don't know what you're trying to say," he drawled.
"Colin, your T-cells are low because they tested you for HIV."
Oh.
She sat back, more than an ounce of finality in her pout. "You don't have AIDS just yet, but you're HIV positive. It looks like you've had it for...years."
It sounded familiar. Disease, something about everyone could get it, and STDs, HIV, AIDS, all these acronyms and words that flooded his head, three-letter words that weren't really words at all. Anyone could get it, he could remember a teacher slurring in a lecture somewhere back in high school, anyone could get it but everyone thought only gay men could get it. If he tried, he could have remembered he'd ignored the rest of the lecture to write a furious letter begging the question as to why an obese man drinking soda was teaching a health class. Anyone could get it. He could get it.
He was staring at her, mouth agape.
Was she lying? Or maybe she was just trying to get his attention, to shock him into thought, thinking maybe she could wake him up if she stunned him with a lie.
But there was a seriousness in her face that made his heart sink, his ears ring, his jaw fall loose, his eyes begin to burn. There was something in the way she said it that made his heart believe.
Anyone could get it, but now, he was just another stereotype.
--
I wasn't always a problem.
Actually, until I was seven, I was my parent's only child. I was their favourite. My mother showed all her friends my pictures, my soccer trophies, my sadly coloured drawings and doodles in the thick crayons of children's nature. My father would read scriptures to me, he would take me to work with him when he could, and he had a sort of regality about him I'd always worshipped. I learned later the line between regality and arrogance.
In my home, we'd had our traditions. We had Sunday night football, "grandma" Thursdays, and pizza Fridays for putting up with Grandma's cooking the night before, we went for ice cream on my birthday, every first of the month we would prepare a Swedish recipe from my mom's mom, anyone who came over could only stay for two hours, homework was to be done in my room by myself, and holidays when my father would have parties with his haughty accountant friends, I was to be downstairs in a suit, my hair gelled back, for a total of ten minutes for introductions and catching up, then it was back to my room until Mom had drank enough to make her head hurt and the guests be evicted. It was all normal for me.
Then Evan showed up.
No-- sorry, that sounds horrible-- he didn't just show up. I knew he was on his way, I'd known for nine months before he came along. In the last few months, I heard my teacher talk about how music was good for babies, and I'd catch my mom on the couch, napping, and I'd sneak a music player beside her, an old mix of classical music inside it. I'd slide the headphones over her stomach and let it play, quietly, until she woke up and irritably took them off.
She was always irritable when she was pregnant, because she couldn't drink.
Then Evan showed up.
I remember I cried for about an hour after she went into labour, because I didn't understand privacy and I wanted to be the first to get to hold my baby brother.
Evan came out just fine. The nurses said he snored, but nothing extraordinary. I then got in trouble for telling them not to call my brother "ordinary." I said he would be something more than ordinary.
Before they brought him home, I learned how to change diapers. I guess I blame my parents' neglect of him on my own eagerness to take care of my brother. I never saw anything wrong with it.
His first night home, Mom drank about a half a bottle of wine on her own. It was gone before morning.
I ended up quitting soccer to be around more often. Our traditions fell short of frequent.
It was always strange to me, how, after Evan was born, my parents changed. My mom seemed to nearly disappear, only coming out of her room to cook once in a while, or to go to one of our holiday parties, or leave for work. My father was too consumed by his math to read scriptures to Evan, or, most days, talk to him. They never existed in the same part of the house beyond then. So, I began to spend most of my time upstairs, talking to Evan through the bars of his wooden baby-prison, telling him stories.
My father would persistently chastise me that Evan was just a baby, he didn't understand lavish tales of pirates and dragons, princesses and suits of armour, but I could see -- I could see his blue eyes light up when I'd tell him stories.
--
Age 8
Doctors' offices had a particular smell to them. Hospitals were one thing, and sure, hospitals smelled so clean they were filthy, but general practitioners were worse. Like the smell of fear and plug-in room scenters, and half-rotted toys and magazines.
I had insisted that I went along with my parents to Evan's check up. He was almost a year old, but I wasn't allowed to go in the room.
Sitting out in the waiting room, on dusty green and brown carpet freckled with indiscriminate stains, my fingers had become occupied with a toy that seemed to never cease to be entertaining. It was a mess of wires and wooden beads, attached to a wooden block. The pieces of paint chipped off it and onto the table below.
"What are you doing?"
Someone was talking to me. Her voice was soft, quiet, maybe even frustrated.
In the bright lights, I looked up. She looked ready to cry, but her pale face had puckered into an angry sort of expression, framed with broad reddish-orange curls. There was a poison in her grey eyes.
"I'm gonna win," I answered simply. I recognized her from school, from the classroom next to mine.
"You can't win those," she retorted quickly, fingers tangling in her skirt. "You're just pushing beads around colourful wires."
"I can too." As if to prove my point, I pushed a line of wooden pieces to the other side of the contraption. "Sit down, you can try."
There was a magazine rolled up in her hand. "I don't want to. You're not getting anything cool done."
"What do you think I should do then? I like this."
She didn't answer. Instead, she moved around the table, sitting beside me. Her thin face, still worried and upset, only worsened. "I'm Teresa."
"I’m Colin."
"You've got pretty eyes, Colin." We stared at one another for a moment. "Why are you here?"
"My brother's getting a check-up. He's a year old." Then, "What about you?" I continued to push around the beads.
"My sister's sick."
That was how I met Teresa. I met her at recess the next day, the day after that, and the day after that, and I never questioned much what she meant by the fact that her sister was sick. I didn't need to, because within a few months, my family and I found ourselves at a funeral, me sitting in the front with Teresa to hold her hand, and a lovely teen girl just as fair as Teresa sleeping soundly in the casket.
--
Age 10
"Bubby read."
"It's getting late, Evan."
He was supposed to be in bed. Actually, he wasn't supposed to even be outside of the house, but they never came in to check. Long Island summers were warm, even at night, and I saw nothing wrong, if I kept hold of him, of sneaking out onto the balcony of my room and laying there with him. If it weren't for their visits, I don't know that the neighbours would have ever known about Evan. He rarely left the upstairs.
This year, though, he'd started preschool. He'd started preschool, and he was starting to write big, backward letters in messy crayon, and his baby-blonde hair was beginning to turn as dark as mine.
"Not late," he pouted, folding his hands under his arms. "Stars! Bubby, stars, not late."
The stone balcony was cold against my back, but from where I lay, I offered him a confused expression. He would never know stars, I realized, because yes those were stars, but some were satellites and some were airplanes and some were helicopters. Most weren't stars. The orange glow of the city marred that. "It's nine o'clock, Evan, the stars are out when it gets dark. That's what happens."
"Not late."
Slowly, I sat up, letting out a groan.
"Evan, you need go to bed."
"Bubby read?"
"Yes, I'll read." I stood up, holding my hands out to help him stand. Instead, like a monkey, he grappled to my arms, pulling until I picked him up. "What story do you want?"
With one free hand, I managed to slide open the glass door into the chill of the house, bare feet nearly silent against the wooden floorboards. I left the door open behind him, carrying Evan from my room to his just across the hall. The light at the bottom of the stairs, into the living room, was still on.
"Cinderella!"
"We don't have that one anymore, remember? Daddy threw it out."
More specifically, he had told us it was 'for little girls and faggots, and I have two boys who will not be fags.' That had been the first time I'd heard him say that.
"I want Cinderella," he pouted, pudgy lips turning down in a pout as I sat him on his own bed, equipped with dark brown blankets and one cartoon pillow of an astronaut helmet.
"We don't have it."
I shut his bedroom door, moving to the compendium of cardboard and colourful books. No dresses in sight, no princesses or queens or magic.
"How about the Jungle Book?" I tried, receiving no response. "Or...or, um, Treasure Island?"
“Cinderella.”
“We don’t have Cinderella, Evan.”
“I want Cinderella!”
I took in a deep, rickety sigh, looking up to him. “It’s not here.”
“Cinderella,” he repeated, “Cinderella, Cinderella, Cinderella, Cinderella, Cinderella, Ci--”
“Fine! Evan, fine, I will recite Cinderella for you!”
Silence.
His little lips spread into a smile, struggling to pull his legs up to sit with them crossed. I let out a loud huff of air, moving over to his bed to sit with him on it. "You have to lay down."
"Why?"
"Because if I tell you a story and you don't lay down, you won't fall asleep."
"Not tired."
"Evan."
I stared him down, my eyes narrowing progressively on his until he let out the same exaggerated huff and crawled to the top of his bed. The blanket coarse like my own, I pulled it back for him, laying it over him once he'd situated himself.
"Do you want me to tuck you in?" Answered by a nod, a mischievous thought popped into my head, and I started to tuck him in, nearly tucking in half of the blanket along with it.
"Bubby," he whined, "can't move!"
Under the blanket, Evan began to wiggle, letting out little peals of laughter until he figured out how to get his arms out. He patted his hands on the bed beside him, and, grinning, I laid down beside him.
Then I paused.
"How did Cinderella start?"
Evan's expression of mild amusement and struggle with the tight blanket changed to one of incredulousness. He looked as if I'd broken his favourite toy.
"I'm kidding," I laughed, hands on my stomach. In the darkness, the only real decoration he'd been allowed showed, lines and splotches of glow-in-the-dark stars lit up on his ceiling. "I remember, I do. Alright, let's see...Once upon a time, there was a princess named Cinderella--"
Downstairs, a door was slammed, and we both flinched.
"Um...Cinderella...had a Mommy and a Daddy who loved her very much. But...th-there was an accident, and Cinderella's Mommy passed away."
"Heaven?"
I nodded. "She went to Heaven, yup." As if waiting for a second door to slam, we were both quiet, but the silence egged me on. "And...because Cinderella's Daddy was a king, he had to get married again, but he married a lady who had two very spoiled little girls of her own. They...they were really mean to Cinderella and they teased her and gave her all their chores. Cinderella's Daddy had n--"
There it was, the second door slam.
Rolling my lips, I took in a breath, and shut my eyes. My teeth begged to grind together.
"Cinderella's Daddy had no idea they were so mean to her. And...there was going to be a dance, a big, fancy gala with a lot of pretty suits and dresses." Another pause, but it was silent. Total silence, but Evan's eyes were still on me, I could feel them, and I let out another trembling gasp.
They would be fighting any minute.
"Cinderella got an invitation from the prince hosting the dance, b-but her sisters didn't. They were very jea--"
Our mother was screaming. It wasn't a pained or scared sort of screaming, but rather a scream we were used to hearing, one of rage and irritation and alcohol.
Butterflies erupted into my stomach.
"Th-they were jealous of Cinderella--" Our father was screaming back. Evan's hand wrapped around the loose end of my shirt. "--b-but she spent h-hours upon hours of...of time, making th-this beautiful dr-dress for the gala."
"Mommy's crying," Evan whispered, wincing at the sound of shattering glass.
"Shhh." Damn it, I thought, he didn't deserve this. He was three. "Shut your eyes, Evan, okay, I want you to imagine this part of the story."
My voice was shaking.
"C-Cinderella...finished her dress, but...her sisters g-got so mad about it they...took her dress and ruined it, th-they tore it all up, and..."
"Bubby?"
"Are your eyes shut? Keep them shut." Another crash. They were throwing bottles again, screaming all the while. "C-Cinderella's f-f-fairy godmother heard her crying...a-about her dress, and...her f-fairy godmother...built her...a magic dress, with...glass shoes, so Cinderella could go to the gala."
"Bubby," he whimpered again.
My teeth bit down on my lip, solidly, and I could taste blood trickle into my mouth. Eyes clenched shut, I could feel heat just behind them. "Evan?" I tried after a moment.
He hesitated. "I'm scared."
"I know, Evan."
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