Behind where I sat, a girl was tapping away at her phone, and she stopped to stare at me. I didn't dare look away, as if looking away would make his eyes suddenly less blue, as if looking away would make him disappear entirely, and I would never be able to figure out exactly why I didn't want to look away.
"Well, whatever you guys want to do, the only scripts we have right now are King Lear." The brunette, tugging a bit at her already low-collared top, moved to the corner, where a set of twenty little booklets worn with age were nestled together. She picked them all up, beginning to hand them out to the others.
"Clara, I wanna be Cordelia, is that okay?" The girl that spoke, if I cared much to look at her, was thin, with long blonde hair pouring over her shoulders.
The brunette, Clara, let out a dry laugh, handing her a booklet. "Did you think you'd be anything else, Kylie? You always get lead."
I felt a little bit like a creep. I was studying him still, in the dull light of the school. His long fingers dipped into his pocket, waving his hand to be passed when Clara offered him a booklet, and he pulled two little things out. One was plastic and violet, the other thin and white. A cigarette. He settled the brown end of the cigarette between pale lips, eyes focused on Kylie as she spoke -- and I heard none of it -- and let go, both hands flipping down to his mouth. Vibrant and rich, his eyes flicked down only briefly, watching himself cover his mouth. I could almost hear the faint clicking of the lilac lighter. Returning it to his pocket, his eyes slid shut for just a second, taking in a slow, steady breath.
He pulled the cigarette from his mouth, nestling it between his fingers, and spoke through a thick cloud of creamy white smoke.
"I'm gonna be Lear."
He was smoking inside the school.
Something warm, something unfamiliar, was rolling in my stomach, and I was staring still, gaping, unable to stop watching.
Lord, help me, I prayed, they didn't make a drug to get enough of someone's face, to burn their image in your mind so you never forgot it.
Suddenly, from behind me, "Hey, are you here with them? Are you one of the theatre kids?"
I couldn't help myself; I didn't want to look away, and I couldn't give her an honest answer. My middle finger went up, flipping into the air toward her. I wasn't really afraid anymore.
"Jesus, asshole, it was just a question."
"Vic," Kylie hummed, "you're gonna be Gloucester." A happy-faced and warm-skinned young man nodded vigorously, curly black hair bouncing against his forehead. Then, "So you get to be Sam's right-hand man. And, Mark, you get to be Kent..."
Sam was making his way onto the makeshift stage, and once Kylie and Clara had finished doling out roles, a good portion of the tiny crew followed him. All of them held booklets but him, but they began much the same, reading and acting from the beginning.
He spoke his first line without flinching: "Attend the lords of France and Burgundy, Gloucester."
Then, once Vic spoke his turn, Sam hesitated, letting out another slow puff of smoke, a smug smirk on his lips. He drawled out his words with practiced ease, staring down his companions where they stood in a small group. "Meantime we shall express our darker purpose. Give me the map there. Know that we have divided, in three our kingdom: and 'tis our fast intent to shake all cares and business from our age; Conferring them on younger strengths, while we unburthened crawl toward death. Our son of Cornwall, and you, our no less loving son of Albany, we have this hour a constant will to publish our daughters' several dowers, that future strife may be prevented now."
He began to wander, pacing and speaking between slow puffs. "The princes, France and Burgundy, great rivals in our youngest daughter's love, long in our court have made their amorous sojourn, and here are to be answer'd. Tell me, my daughters -- since now we will divest us both of rule, interest of territory, cares of state -- Which of you shall we say doth love us most?" He shook his cigarette at Clara, Kylie, and the third girl, whom I learned was named Sage, as though it was a pointer. "That we our largest bounty may extend where nature doth with merit challenge. Goneril, our eldest-born, speak first."
Kylie interrupted him, though none of them were fazed at all about the fact he had recited it from memory.
I refuse to ever apologize for thinking that was amazing.
"No, Sam, you can't look at us like that. You have to remember Lear is a complete ass, he thinks everyone ought to bow down to him."
His face fell with an irritated look. "I had no idea that a king who's only after getting his daughter married off is an ass, Kylie."
"Would you relax?" She smoothed one hand through her hair, shaking it loose to lay over her forehead. Then, her eyes searched the room, and stopped. "Hey, you -- freshman."
Oh.
Oh, she was looking at me, and so was Sam. I felt sick again, that heat, a burning fire in my stomach somewhere between fear and awe. He was looking at me.
I wasn't high enough for this.
"M-Me?"
I turned, glancing behind me. The girl was gone, her stuff with her. I hadn't even noticed.
"Is there a mouse in your pocket, sweetheart? Yes, you." Her arms folded over her chest. "How did Sam do, you think?"
Playing stupid sounded like a better idea.
"Which one is Sam?"
He blew a gust of smoke at me, raising his hand a little. "You can be brutal, freshie. I'm used to it."
My face was on fire, flushed with embarrassment, and there was that burn in my stomach. I needed more little tablets, and I wouldn't be so scared if I'd had them, but I couldn't very well down anymore with them right there, with them staring at me, with him staring at me.
"I...thought it was great." The words came slowly, without any thought. "I didn't see a problem with it, you did it entirely without your script...and...I mean, I thought it was kingly. You-- you're kingly, you know, like your mannerisms and the way you play the character and...what she said was...completely unwarranted, it was great, I think you're playing it right, she's just being a bitch." I paused, looking at Kylie. "Sorry."
Sam's arms flew into the air, the cigarette clenched between his grinning teeth, victory written on his face.
"Remind me not to ask little kids questions," she breathed.
"Leave him be, he's just being honest."
And then I didn't exist anymore. They returned to reading their scripts, and I returned to marvelling at Sam, watching the way he paced, how quickly he got into his character, how clearly he knew the lines, how bright his eyes were, how loose his clothes were, how messy his hair was -- and I realized I looked hopeless.
It wasn't until about an hour later that they stopped, taking a break. Sam breathed he was going outside for his next cigarette.
To hell with thought, to hell with logic and common sense and the ferocious raging fire I could feel in my abdomen when he looked at me. Using my knees to shield myself from their sight, I dug out three little tablets, downing them at the next available drinking fountain. I did little more than follow my feet -- they couldn't be wrong, after all, if they desired so strongly to be somewhere that they functioned on their own, against the better judgement of my mind and my shrieking conscience.
They carried me over the thin carpeting, onto more yellowed linoleum, to the glass doors, and then I stopped.
Somehow, this decision felt enormous.
I could see from here the trail of white from his cigarette, though I couldn't see him, cast against the blue sky outside. I had never felt drawn to someone before, but here I was, compelled hopelessly, and why? He was something that felt dark, felt dirty and filthy like Evan and I, like a blemish against the perfection we were expected to be.
I could see the expectations weighing down on him, by the slope of his shoulders and how strong they were, I could see in his eyes the knowledge he was not meeting them. I could see in the way he moved he would never meet them.
Maybe I was just getting high fast, but he was imperfect, and that was the draw of Sam the actor.
I had two options here, behind the glass door of the side exit.
I could open the door, or I could turn.
If I chose to open the door, Sam would see it, and he would know immediately I was there. He could engage in conversation, he could question why I was there, he could ask me things I didn't want to answer. He could call me names and swear at me, or even propose an ounce of kindness.
If I turned, I knew I wouldn't come back the next day for their play practice. I would go home and call Jonny, and tell him the theatre kids really were just jacking off to Shakespeare, and I would never go back. I would never see any of them again.
And suddenly, they weren't options.
My hands shoved at the door.
Sam stood, just off to the right, with one foot against the bricks of the building. He was staring off into space, breathing deeply from his cigarette, but his eyes turned to me. I gave a shiver and a smile, studying him closer now, the high rise of his cheekbones and simplistic purse of his lips.
"Hey."
It was a simple word. It was a simple word laced suddenly with a drawl, an accent, a sound and a twang I hadn’t heard before now.
I knew damn well I shouldn't have gotten so choked up thinking of a response, but damn.
"Hi." Quiet, the door slid shut behind me. Whatever happened from here on out was beyond my control. "I, um, I just wanted to say that...I'm...sorry if I...got her mad at you, or..."
My hopeless words were interrupted by his low chuckle, rough and tired, gravelly and raspy, but happy. He turned, pressing his shoulder into the bricks, and stared at me, taking in another breath on his cigarette. I could hear it clearly now, the gentle twisting of a Southern sort of accent, something that set a flush of heat barrelling through me. "Please, Kylie's always been a bitch. You keep hanging around here, you'll learn that." Then, I could see something cross his face, something like insecurity and flattery. "Did you really think I was that good?"
Yes, I wanted to say, it was fantastic, it was professional, he should be acting for a living.
But I simply shrugged, then again, and again before I realized how dumb I looked. Shrugging was soon to become a new language.
"Yea." I was hugging myself to keep from doing it a fourth time. "I mean...I don't know anything about acting, but...getting into character must be pretty hard...but you do it really well, so..."
There was another one of those laughs, quiet and breathy and, oh, my stomach still felt like it was on fire. "You'll see," he sucked the words in like smoke, then let them out again, with that same accent, "all actors lose their minds for good reasons. That's another thing you'll notice when you stick around here."
When.
It wasn't if with him. It was when.
Hesitant, my words fell apart as I spoke them.
"C-Can I? I like the theatre, I can't...act worth a damn and don't know the first thing about working on a crew...but...I don't exactly...like going home. And you guys seem like fun."
“We have to beg people to come to our shows, we aren’t gonna mind you at all.” I could see his shoulders rise and fall in a shrug. It sounded sad when he said it like that. "Having a groupie'll make us feel better, I think."
This was only getting more difficult by the second, I realized, my face turning shades of embarrassed. I came to the conclusion that if my abdomen felt any warmer, I would have to coach myself through this, step by step.
"My status keeps going down," I laughed, not daring to meet his eyes, "I've gone from...'freshman' to 'groupie' in a matter of minutes."
Slowly, his lips ticked into a smile, casting a gust of smoke out of one side of his lips.
Step one: Introduce self to attractive person.
"Uh...Um, I'd better introduce myself before I become a permanent thorn in everyone's side. I'm Colin."
"Sam." I knew his name, but the way he said it made it sound so perfect. "Samuel Marx. Soon to be the greatest name in the acting world, so hold on to it, you don't wanna forget that." He flicked ash off his cigarette. "You must be desperate hanging out with the Shakespeare nerds."
Step two: Make up a lame-ass excuse for everything that could make me look bad.
"I'm not desperate, per se, I just...don't have a lot of friends."
Holy hell, was I desperate.
"So you're a freak, like us."
Jesus, that sounded nice, too, I marvelled. If anyone else called me a freak, I would have punched them out, but coming from his lips, amid the thick drawl of wherever he was from, it was a compliment.
"Yea. Yea, I guess so."
He chuckled, hand fumbling to pick at the bricks. "Don't look so upset. Your choices are being a freak or being normal, and I see absolutely nothing abnormal about being a freak, so you're just a normal, regular freak." Right. Yea, I followed that. "You'll see. We have fun. Next weekend, we're going to crash a party after the football game 'til someone notices we weren't invited." I hadn't followed it at all.
Nodding, slowly, I was agape, still studying the set of his jaw, the light twinge of a smile at the corner of his mouth.
Step three: Agree, agree, agree.
"That sounds like fun." I had to take a moment to remember parties weren't the same anymore; this was high school. Parents didn't attend parties. Things went wrong. "Are you just gonna party, or pull a prank?"
Shrugging again, Sam was still smiling, breathing out a heavy cloud of white smoke. "Gabe usually has a plan but he hasn't told me what it is. Mark and Vic, they wanna chase some skirts. I just wanna get drunk."
I was not a little kid anymore.
Parties were not birthday cake and hats, movie marathons and hide-and-seek. It was breaking the laws, playing loud music, dancing and kissing and screaming and drinking.
That was a painful reality to face. I didn't want to grow up.
But I smiled anyway. I could pretend this was normal, even though it was setting a flush of fear far different from the flush of attraction I'd been feeling.
"I say let 'em dream, maybe they'll get something."
I took pills I didn't need as recreation. Underage drinking shouldn't have bothered me.
Sam sucked in a heavy sigh, this time not on his cigarette. It seemed somewhere off in the distance, something needed our attention, something that had both of us staring at it.
"If you're gonna be part of our little troupe, you're un-invited to the party too. Which means you can come crash it with us."
Oh, God.
Step four: Agree, agree, agree.
I couldn't just turn down a party invitation, even if it wasn't traditional. Even if it was from a senior I'd only just met.
Against the horror I felt rolling cold in my stomach, creeping up the back of my neck, I grinned. "Awesome." No, my mind shrieked, what was I doing? "Yea, cool, thanks." People were going to be drinking! "Maybe we can take bets on whether or not they hook up with some cheerleaders." The police could be called, my parents could find out, something could go horribly wr--
"The party starts at ten." With a last breath, he shook out the end of his cigarette, dropping it to the ground and crushing it underfoot. "One of the football players' parents are gonna be out of town for the weekend, so our only goal is to trash the place as much as we can. You in?"
"I'm in," I agreed, looking him in the eyes. I wasn't a whole lot shorter than him here, just by a few inches, but I still had to look up.
"Meet us at the little coffeehouse at the end of Brook street. We'll walk from there."
Hands shoving into his pockets, he pushed past me, only looking up through dark lashes once he'd reached the door. "I expect to see you there. Colin."
"Wouldn't miss it for the world."
Step five: Regret everything.
--
"Jonny, what the hell is that?"
Operations had been moved from the basement into Jonny's bedroom. Furniture had filled up the basement, being packed and ready to be moved to Lenny's new apartment. I honestly didn't know Lenny still lived there. I never saw him.
Jonny was standing suddenly, a pale shape amid the lightless gloom of his room. A few vicodin mixed with just a tiny bit of something he said was 'just stronger' didn't help my ability to see him.
"Stop looking," he whimpered.
Sometimes things got heated, and other things got taken off. This time, it was his shirt, for the first time. I discovered two things: The first was a dark tattoo, the roaring head of a lion on his left side. The second, scars. Perfect scars in perfect lines. Just like that, no bravado, no pan or zoom of the movies, simply there.
Silvery, most of them, silvery and pale showed evenly over his side and hip. Two of them were still red.
Sitting up, I dragged one hand through my hair. I wanted to think of something else, I wanted to just leave. Those were particular scars, and the most terrifying sort.
I didn't know what to do, sitting there staring at the corner.
"I said I wouldn't judge you, Colin, can't you do the same for me?"
Jonny cut himself.
I didn't look up; I didn't need to, the image of them burned into my mind, like I had done something wrong.
How could I not know?
"I am," I whispered. "I'm not judging you."
"Yes, you are." His voice was breaking. Necklaces jingling over his chest, he looked back at me, staring. "I'm not crazy."
"Please sit down."
Jonny cut himself.
He took razors to his skin when no one was around. And for what?
The question slipped before I could stop myself, and I could feel my heart in my chest, beating its way up to my throat. Breathing became harder.
Sitting at the other end of the bed, he buried his head in his hands. We passed too many minutes in silence.
Two years, three years, how long had I known him, I wondered? All this time, and I didn't know. I had no idea, and by the looks of them, a lot of them were that old. He'd been doing this all along, and suddenly I felt like the disappointed parent, making the one discovery that they'd done everything wrong.
Except it wasn't my fault. To a degree, I knew that. I knew I had done nothing to make him want to harm himself, but that didn't lessen the guilt that I hadn't noticed. I, the one person who could have noticed, had been ignorant.
To worsen it, I didn't know what to do, still. I knew what I wanted to do, and I knew that wouldn't do a damn thing for Jonny.
"Did you find anything out about the drama club, going to all their meetings this week?"
"That is not the question I asked you," I hissed.
No, I still couldn't look at him.
"Are they really doing anything at their meetings?"
"Jonny, please, I wanna know!"
"Yea, so do I!" He cried, scrubbing his face with his palms.
My voice trembled with the sickness I felt in my stomach. "Please tell me why you...cut yourself."
Turning, I could see him, how he sat just on the edge of the bed. Precariously, perched on the thin ends of the tossed blankets with his elbows on his knees, hands pressed to his lips, he was something like an eagle -- proud, powerful, strongly gripped to his beliefs -- and yet something like a puppy, one that had been beaten for years and knew nothing beyond tucking its tail and crawling. His hands covered his mouth, eyes glazed on the wardrobe.
In this dull lighting, nothing felt like it had colour, and I was panicking. I needed the colour.
With the haze of my mind, I was beginning to panic. I was colourless again, I was a canvas, and still I wanted more. I could hardly think through what we were saying.
"Tell me something about the drama club."
Something.
Just something, anything, that was all he wanted.
I could give him that much.
"They're...defensive," I tried, facing him now. "I...don't think they like people a whole lot."
Unblinking, unfaltering, I found the lion head tattoo on his side staring me down. With its wide, open mouth, it was roaring silent screams at me, all the things my conscience couldn't do. Just leave, Colin, it told me, just leave and go to bed and when you wake up, none of this will have been real. Hallucinations happen to pillheads all the time.
Then I realized I was calling myself a pillhead. That just wasn't me.
"You talking to any of them? Or just watching?"
Tears were spilling over his cheeks. Glimmering and pale in the black and white emptiness of the room, there were thin lines of tears over his cheeks.
The lion's head, made up of thin black lines and heavy detail marks, seemed to take on a disappointed expression. What had I done wrong?
"Just...just one, his name is Sam, but...I only talked to him once, I don't know much."
"Sam?" His voice came out in a cold, breathless sort of rasp. "As in, Sam Marx?"
"I-I think so."
"Kid's a shithead," he tried, in the hope of making conversation. His head sagged back into his hands, and nothing come forth but empty words, all he could think to spew at me. "He moved here freshman year from Louisiana. His dad's a sheriff. No one likes him, he's an asshole."
"He seemed nice."
I couldn't take my eyes off him. Part of me worried for him, part of me wanted to leave him.
And what if he cut once I was gone? Could I even make a difference?
"'Seemed' doesn't mean a damn thing, Marx doesn't make friends."
"Jonny."
He knew.
In his eyes, I could see, he knew I was going to push again.
"Jonny, why...do you..."
He lifted his head again, and yet, he still made no effort to look at me. "Sometimes I hate myself, okay? I get mad, I don't know what to do...this...doing this fixes it. I can't get mad and hurt someone."
"You think you're gonna hurt someone?" He nodded. "You wo--"
"Don't even start." Now, oh, Lord, he was looking at me-- eyes dark and glistening with tears, such a hateful glare in them. "You're gonna try to tell me I won't hurt someone no matter what I think I'll do. I've broken Ronny's arm before."
I couldn't stop him from doing something he wanted to do.
In truth, I didn't have a damn clue what I could do to help him, or if I could. And after all the silence had passed, after all the words I could try to use on him were exhausted and a few more, just a few spare pills he had indiscriminately acquired, I knew I couldn't. My father wouldn't accept him. My mother wouldn't care. The school wouldn't do anything, and Jonny wouldn't take help, and his mother would sooner ignore him. Lenny was too busy with his own life.
Even lions knew pain. Lions, those great beasts romping around the plains of Africa, curious big kittens with wide manes and solemn faces, the apex predator, the only animal in the world I had learned to respect -- lions had problems. They had complications, they got hurt, they got bit, they could get kicked and taken down and swallowed. There was no apex predator. A lion could roar all he wanted, he could proclaim what a king he was and how strong he was, but at the end, he knew pain.
It was the lions that knew pain the closest that became kings.
So after all the silence, after all the pills, Jonny had quietly suggested I go home. He saw to that with a small kiss and an apologetic sigh.
That was that.
--
There will come a time in your life when you know breathlessness. You will stare at yourself in the mirror and study your face -- and know that it isn't really yours -- and your bare skin. You'll see the clouds and gusts of white of your breath against the smudged surface when you breathe out, and see them retract into a wet nothingness when you breathe in. You'll see the red scratch marks over your skin from your own fingernails, from where you felt something crawling under your skin like always, and you'll see the little smears of blood where you've broken the surface. You'll see your ribs are starting to show a little more and your collarbone sticks up, and your baby fat cheeks are gone, and you will look tired, with tiny little pupils in the middle of barely blue eyes, and deep, dark circles below them.
You won't feel an ounce of it.
And you know, almost hyperventilating behind the locked bathroom door, you just lost three hours. Three whole hours, one hundred and eighty minutes, ten thousand and eight hundred seconds of your life -- lost, to nothing. You come home at three o'clock, take a little bit of something new, something you were told to crush and not chew, and you'll lay down and be gone. Suddenly it'll be six o'clock at night, and your little brother starts pounding at the bathroom door, and you know because he's the only thing you know how to hear anymore, but you can't open the door. You can't open the door, because he'll see you and how you are, for who you are, and he'll see the sick shuddering of your abdomen. You know he can already hear you retching back up what little water you drank, and he's back to worrying again, because he's only seven years old and here recently you haven't been in the kitchen when he gets home to talk to him about his day, and he can hear you breathing shallowly, but you won't know how to respond to him if he asks.
There are no life lessons to teach a child and no amount of scriptures that can lessen his fear of you, his big brother, vomiting up half-digested OxyContin. You don't know how to respond if he asks you why you're dizzy again.
You don't know how to respond to anyone. Your parents come home later and later now, and they ask you where your grades went -- you used to be an A-student, and then a B-student and that was okay, but now you're a C-student. All you think to say is classes get harder each year and maybe you're not cut out to be a surgeon like your father wants you to be. Bullshit, they tell you, bullshit and they can see in your eyes something isn't right, but they don't ask, they just tell you you're not trying hard enough and you will be a surgeon. You don't know how to respond to them. You don't know how to respond to your oldest friends when they ask if you wanna hang out. No, you don't wanna hang out, you've made different friends. You don't know how to respond to the teachers when they ask questions. You don't know the material. It's not worth knowing.
You barely know how to respond to yourself.
You just stand in the mirror, locked behind the bathroom door and listening to your brother cry. You hear him crying and begging you to come out, because he's worried about you for throwing up and wants to take care of you like you used to take care of him. He cries out he's going to find you a cup of ginger ale, and you can't react. You keep staring at the tiny pupils staring back at you, the itchy and irritated rashes popping up over your chest, and you look down at the bag on the sink.
Thin white powder stares back at you. Orange flecks dot the inside, but you see little else except a blur. This blur becomes God. This blur is all you learn to see, all the colours bleeding into one, and this little white and orange baggie sealed up tight is the messiah. It is the bringer of your new god.
You look yourself in the face again, and something wells up in you. No, that's not you. That isn't you, and you're proud of that. You whisper in some sort of dialect only you understand, because it sounds right to you, but it's barely English -- you'll whisper, "I am not an addict."
You're not.
But suddenly, you're staring at the bathroom ceiling, not the mirror. Suddenly you're relishing the cold tile floor against your burning skin, suddenly you're marveling at how bright the light is on the ceiling, and you're breathing. That's all you know. You're breathing, in and out, in and out, and you close your eyes.
You can stop any time.
You don't want to, you’re worshipping those blurs.
And you keep at it, "I am not an addict, I am not an addict, I am not an addict..."
I was not an addict.
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