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I meant to drink, but I didn’t mean to get drunk. And most of the time I say that–especially as of late–it’s the truth.
This year was far from what I was expecting out of college. Before long I had a lot more to look forward to than I thought possible–more than just a hand-me-down dream and an empty room. I’ve got my sisters. I’ve got friends. I’ve got genuine motivation–not just some apathetic excuse of potential branded into my skin. A growing part of me really wants to succeed. On the ice, and in my classes, and in my future. And with this newfound aspiration, came the expectation of not getting absolutely wasted at every party I go to.
So this time–this time was supposed to be like that. Simple. Light. Mostly sober. But then Zero got up on the coffee table, emptied bottle of beer in his hands, all weepy-eyed, and it was like an approaching airstrike.
“Man, I love you guys,” He announced to our team. He tried to take another sip from his bottle and then cordially tossed it on the couch when nothing but the stale air fell on his tongue. “This year has been fuckin’ awesome guys. I know we still got like a couple months left, but this year was awesome. Can’t believe I gotta leave you all behind to collect my rookie card. That shit’s bouta’ be fuckin’ awesome!”
Colie threw a bottle cap at his head and a couple of the guys booed him off the table, and Zero gave them a princess wave as he stumbled onto the carpeted floor.
Barbie and Cauler snickered at him from beside me, giving our captain their own two cents, but I couldn’t hear them. Zero’s drunken stupor, no matter how drunken, was a flashbang of a reminder. And his words, expected of a senior, weren’t supposed to hit me like they did. Nobody else seemed to react. Nobody else was frozen to the floor. But I looked at the guys in front of me, spread across the room as I was leaning against the wall, and all I could think about was how I was going to lose this all in a couple months.
And suddenly my plan to drink turned into a plan to get drunk.
Dorian made the first–vital–mistake, blindly placing his solo cup next to the foosball table. I lifted it from the tabletop and drained the rest of whatever fruit-vodka concoction was left before leaving in search of something stronger to fill it with. From that point it was a game of locating who brought the cheapest bottles with the least supervision.
And I must’ve found something cheap, because that’s about as much as I can remember.
Now, I’m laying on the couch, slowly blinking up at Barbie’s towering form leaning over me from behind the armrest.
“Morning, sleeping beauty,” he says. I scrub a hand over my face and try to make out his features around the throbbing headache the sconce above his head is giving me. He looks better than I know I must. His hair is styled and his collar is neat and there is zero evidence he spent the night self-inducing a coma. He looks like he’s been awake for hours.
“That’s because I have been,” he responds to my not-so-inside thought, clapping me on the shoulder just so I can hit him back.
“Hours is a bit of a stretch.”
Cauler appears from behind him and positions himself so his head is blocking the light. “How you feeling?”
“Just peachy,” I mutter. He smiles with the corner of his mouth and I close my eyes. “What time is it?”
“Almost 10. Coach bumped our 11 o'clock ice session to noon. Something wrong with his car, apparently. Barbie thinks he’s just got that parental-hangover radar and was feeling gracious.”
Sitting up takes a valiant effort. I glance around the room, and the night before starts to replay. Colie facetiming his girlfriend on the recliner half the night. Dorian and one of our centremen Dylan tearing one of the knee hockey nets mid-skirmish. Drinking. Zero’s speech. A little more drinking.
This time around it’s not just freshmen left around the room. Kovy is curled up on the other couch. Colie’s still on the recliner, snoring away with his phone in his hand. A couple of the others are sitting on the floor looking to be in the same state of wake as me.
Thinking about last night makes me nauseous, but not because of the hangover. I can’t stop replaying Zero’s speech in my head. And while I’m really not as apathetic as I try to exude, I don’t understand why I’m so emotional over a few slurred words. I scrub a hand over my face again and attempt to shake it off.
Cauler offers a hand for me to stand up off the couch and I take it. The three of us make our way to the stairs, skirting around discarded hoodies and socks and sleeping limbs. It’s like a dance getting to the door, one I’ve become so familiar with, and it’s almost enough to make me angry. I suppose irritation is not a new hangover symptom.
I pause in the doorway to look around at the room, the dim light filtering through the dust. Someone’s phone alarm goes off quietly. Barbie gives a light press to my shoulder, and it takes so much out of me to move forward and leave the room behind.
For the fourth time since he’s started speaking to the team, Zero bounces the little ball at an angle on the ground to catch the rebound from the wall, and I have to restrain myself from intercepting it to lob it at the side of his head. Each time the sound of it bouncing hits my ears I have to take what is probably twelve seconds to relearn how to understand what sentences sound like rather than the harsh pulse of rubber against concrete. I know Zero is not at all aware of what it’s doing to me. Honestly, he likely isn’t even aware he’s throwing the ball at all. But my thoughts have been cloudy all week since that night at the hockey house and all I want to do is walk straight out of the training room and out the double doors to the freezing cold of the winter air where my fingers would freeze. At least there, in the blistered skin, I would have something tangible to show.
“Terzo?”
I look up from the ground to Dorian beside me, and then the room. The team has all started to file out, kicking off dryland training for the day. I ignore Dorian’s curious stare and follow them out.
Practice goes how it always does; Barbie sighs in relief next to me when we skip over the jump rope drill. Our defenseman Finn knocks one of the mini pylons and Zero calls him Whale. Kovy slaps Cauler on the back when he gets the fastest ladder sprint time. By the end, everyone has sweat through their quick-dry shirts and practically collapsed onto their backpacks. It’s exactly the same, a routine I find comfort in the familiarity of. The repetition gives me time to clear my head, lower the volume of my thoughts. Focus on nothing but the push and pull of the athletics regimen.
But it’s over as quick as it started, and as I’m untying my running shoes one of the boys barks out a laugh at something Dorian said, and everything’s back to how it was before. I shove my earbuds in to try and muffle some of the sound. The bench underneath me is–almost imperceptibly–impacted by someone sitting down on the other end, and I can feel it vibrate through my entire body, limb by limb. I take it as my queue to leave, nodding to Dorian on the way out after he gives me another one of his looks–a feeble attempt to make sure he doesn’t feel compelled to check up on me later.
I know he said not to keep this stuff bottled up. That he’s here to listen. But the truth is, there’s nothing to bottle. Nothing happened. This whole week has been the same as it always has, and yet I can’t shake this unplaceable, offset mood. Every weird look from the boys makes me want to peel my skin off. Usually, I get like this because something is palpably wrong. Like my professor pulling me aside about a test I bombed. Or my mom going in for another precarious surgery. Hell, a couple months ago Cauler ignored me when I asked him something in the dining hall, and I had Nova on speed dial with consolatory photos of baby otters–just to find out later he thought I was talking to Barbie beside him.
So I’m not gonna burden Dorian with my immaterial complaints, not when he’s got his own, material complaints to sort through. Confiding in him to help solve my issue of nothing won’t help anything, anyways. In all honesty, I'd probably just end up confusing myself and making everything harder than it needs to be. I just need to stop stressing over the nonexistent and shake this.
It’ll blow over on its own. It always does.
It doesn’t blow over anytime soon. The next day, there’s the same, desolate cloud over my head. And the next. And the next. Subsequently, it’s not just Dorian who notices, but it’s Barbie, and it’s Cauler. I ended up sleeping in Delilah’s room the next two nights just to avoid being asked questions. Which backfires, because Delilah knows I only ever sleep in her room if something’s wrong. And nothing’s wrong, which is what I tell her.
But there’s this anxiety-induced nausea that hounds me at the thought of sitting with my friends, and so I end up skipping mealtimes in the cafeteria, leaving me to stop at the campus coffee shops for any sort of substance during the hours nobody normal is having a meal. I ignore every text that comes through my phone. I stop at the library after my public speaking class to cram for a bio quiz the next day and end up falling asleep in the cubicle with my textbook still closed. Not even endless social media scrolling is enough to distract me from this impending dread.
I’ve come to the conclusion that dread conveys most accurately what this feels like. Like something’s tailing me and there’s nothing to shake it. And isolating myself is apparently the easiest solution, guaranteeing that whatever I’m dreading is affecting me alone.
But Dorian, ever-so gallant Dorian, finds me on my way to my afternoon lab.
“Where you been? I didn’t see you at the dorm last night. Or the night before.” He steps beside me and matches my pace as I cut across the long stretch of grass outside my building. “You good?”
“I’m fine,” I say, trying my best to keep my voice sounding normal. “Delilah was having some issues with Jade or something. Asked me to stay a bit.”
“Damn, that’s rough.” Dorian shakes his head sympathetically. “She’s okay?”
I sigh and take my pace up slightly. “Yeah, you know her. It’ll be fine.”
Dorian hums in agreement. He doesn’t say anything for a minute and I don’t encourage that to change. Just as we round the corner to the hallway where my class is he says quietly, “You sure you’re good? Because it doesn’t really look like it lately.”
I open my mouth to respond within one moment and snap it shut within the next. I don’t know what I’m angry about. But the thought of sharing with Dorian makes me feel… not weak, exactly, but something akin. I look at Dorian and imagining his response makes me feel… afraid. Afraid of him seeming disappointed, afraid of him seeming glad, afraid of him seeing. What exactly he would even be seeing, I couldn’t tell you.
“I don’t really care what it looks like to you. I’m fine, Dorian,” I say evenly, and Dorian stops walking. I feel like a coward. I feel like a fraud.
I walk through the door to my class without as much as a glance back. I feel like a martyr.
After meeting with Dorian, it became pretty clear I wasn’t particularly inclined to be around any of the boys at the moment. So when I arrive at my dorm later that day in the middle of Dorian’s advanced physics class hoping to steal a moment, it’s a bit surprising to find it not empty. Cauler is sitting on my bed, propped against the wall with his laptop. He looks up when I enter, glasses pitched low on his nose. He pushes them up. I drop my bag against the wall and try not to look as awkward as I feel.
“Hey,” he says. He opens his mouth like he’s going to say more and then closes it resolutely.
“Hi,” I respond, walking to my closet and rifling through my t-shirts. I can’t remember if I needed anything from it, but it gives my hands something to do, and an excuse not to look at Cauler. His fingers haven’t started up typing again, and so I know he’s watching me.
“Terzo,” Cauler says lowly. I slide a wide bunch of hangers along the rack and pretend not to hear him.
Much to my dismay–and expectation–Cauler doesn’t give up on the first attempt. “Terzo,” he says louder.
I turn around. “What?” I say, and it comes out snappier than I intended.
Cauler’s eyebrows raise and I feel my ears heat up. “What’s wrong?” he says, more a statement than a question.
I shrug. “Nothing.”
“Oh yeah?” Cauler huffs out a bitter sort of laugh. “That why you’ve been sleeping at Delilah’s?”
I turn back to the closet so I don’t have to keep looking at him. “Dorian snores. Not my fault I wanted some peace.”
“You’ve been sleeping here the whole year no problem. I know he didn’t just gain some nasal dysfunction.”
I shrug again, trying my best to convey that we can put a pin in this conversation. Cauler carries on.
“Not to mention Dorian said you were just there for Lilah.”
Dorian sure knows how to flap his fucking gums. I take a heavy breath, and it comes out a sigh. At some point I stopped rifling through my shirts and my hands hang limply at my sides.
“Mick?” Cauler says, and the softness in which he does makes me turn around. Cauler tilts his head. “You gonna tell me what’s going on?”
I stay facing him but tilt my head to the side, looking at Dorian’s star chart next to his bed, running a hand through my hair and dragging it over the back of my neck. I want to tell him what’s going on. But the words that form in my throat end up scraping along the backs of my teeth and escape uselessly as air rather than explanations. I want to know what’s going on.
Cauler closes his laptop and pushes it to the side. “C’mere,” he says, nodding to the space beside him.
I know what this is. It’s him attempting to coax me into comfort, giving me security to speak, allowing me time for some well-needed introspection. He does this when I have bad days. And it works. I can admit it. I end up telling him what’s been eating at me, and he ends up holding my hand and offering what he can to help, and it works, and I feel better by sundown.
But this time, it almost feels like a trap. Like the second I sit down I’m throwing something away. Like offering him honesty will only tighten the noose I’ve been tying this last week on my own.
But I can’t leave like this, not when he’s waiting for an answer, so I resort to the easiest solution.
I walk over to the bed and kneel on the mattress, planting myself in the space he offered me, and kiss him hard enough that he doesn’t have the scope to dwell on my non-answer. He’s surprised at first, hand hovering above the mattress, but then his palm comes up to hold the back of my neck. I fold my arms over his shoulders, straddling his legs and pulling myself into his lap. The feeling of his lips, of his hands, of the warmth of his skin–it’s suffocating. Kissing him was supposed to distract myself from this ache, and instead it’s pulling it into focus; taunting me. But I know it’s at least distracting Cauler, so I let myself fall deeper into the kiss, trying hard as all hell to forget about everything but him. I shove at his shoulder and he tips back under my hands, repositioning so that I’m bracketing his body on the mattress, never once detaching our lips. I slowly pull my hand down his neck, scratching my nails along his skin and hooking my finger under the collar of his shirt. He makes a little sound into my mouth, sighing past my lips. His own hands creep along my waistband, brushing over my hips, and I can’t help but feel like I’m breaking a rule. Like the soft scale of his hands on my skin is rooted in some temporary limelight. Some hoax I’ve cordially misplaced.
And just like that, dread.
I pull back from him and he blinks up at me, glancing distractedly from my eyes to my bitten lips. I can feel his fingers tap a rhythm on my hip.
I clear my throat. “Class starts in 10,” I tell him, detaching myself to sit on the edge of the bed and open the drawer of my nightstand.
“Your next class starts in 40 minutes,” Cauler corrects with a glance at Dorian's clock, and I can hear the confusion in his voice.
I pull my charging cable from the drawer and shove it in the pocket of my hoodie. Drag the back of my sleeve over my mouth. “Right, yeah. But I was gonna meet up with Celeste and Nathaniel before. Get some feedback on my assignment.” It’s a shitty excuse, but Cauler doesn’t object, so I walk to pick up my backpack off the floor.
And then I slip out the door, and just… let it close behind me. It shuts with a click.
I stop in place, outside the door, and push my palm over my mouth. Listen to the pathetically shallow breath that sinks through my teeth and gets caught in my throat. I picture Cauler letting himself into Dorian and I’s room after his morning class, going out of his way to catch me and talk to me. Going out of his way to try and help me even when he had no idea what it might entail. Then I picture what Cauler would look like now, sitting on my bed, staring at the closed door between us, unanswered. And I hate it.
And then I hate myself for hating it. I hate myself for caring at all. I hate the powerlessness. I hate the ache in my chest that’s urging me to open the door and let Cauler hold onto me. Let him listen to me. Let him see me, past the bone and the blood and the burden. I hate that he’s here at all, waiting for me, like I’m something to wait for.
I dig my fingers into my cheekbone and I hate I hate I hate–and then I shove it all past my throat, past the beating pulse, battering against my skin, and I walk away.
Coincidentally, Celeste and Nathaniel are actually residing in the library when I enter. Celeste is standing over some girl with green hair I don’t recognize sitting at one of the tables, and Nathaniel is sitting right on top of it fiddling with a coin, his boots planted on an empty chair beside them. He sees me when I walk through the door and raises his hand in greeting before cupping it over his mouth and hollering “Jamie!” across the silent floor. Just about everyone in all corners of the library turn their head and Celeste pushes her hand overtop his mouth with a scowl, blushing furiously. I pull my hood over my head and make a beeline past them to the study cubicles at the far end, but Nathaniel hops off the table and abandons Celeste and her friend to fall casually into step beside me.
“Fancy seeing you here. Don’t tell me you’re all academic all of the sudden,” he says, leaning forward and slapping a hand to his chest in faux distress.
I roll my eyes. “It’s the library.”
Nathaniel laughs. “Yeah, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen you here of your own volition. Where’s the gaggle of hockey guys?”
I stop in front of a cubicle. “Who’s that girl sitting with Celeste?” I ask, throwing my backpack into the chair.
Nathaniel glances back at them and grins. “Oh, that’s Ari. She’s in the dorm down the hall from Celeste’s. Celeste says she caught a whiff of gay vibes or something so she’s attempting to seduce her or something. I wasn’t really paying attention. She’s got sick hair though.”
I hum in acknowledgement, slipping my books from my backpack onto the table and sitting myself at the desk, leaving Nathaniel spinning behind me.
After a minute of me silently pretending to sort through a notebook I hear Nathaniel pull a chair from the cubicle on the right, and a second later feel the thick heels of his boots land on the edge of my seat. “You okay?” He asks, voice soft behind the hem of my hood, and I still.
An image flits by of him and I sitting on the curb outside the campus clinic, my fingers twisted in the sleeves of my hoodie and his twisted over the back of his bent head. If there’s anyone to talk to about whatever this is, it’s Nathaniel.
“I…” my mouth opens and closes uselessly. “I don’t know.”
I remain frozen in my seat, and the slow bustle of the library fills the silence between the two of us. I force away the ebb of regret at saying anything at all and wait for a response.
“What feels different?” He asks slowly. I feel bad for making him sit here and piece together my monotonous answers, but I know he wouldn’t have asked if he didn’t truly care.
The question is intentional. As time has gone on and I’ve been accepting help, my bad days have become less and less as a result of my general existence, and more recently have some sort of vague catalyst. Nathaniel realized this pretty early and uses it frequently to help me sort through things in my head.
“What feels different?” is easily translated to “What feels wrong?”, and for the first time in days I feel like something tangible is in reach.
I push a palm into my eye. “I don’t know,” I say instead, but a festering part of me knows entirely, and a mirrored part of Nathaniel can see it all too well.
“Did someone say something fucked up? ‘Cause you know I can beat their ass,” Nathaniel offers dryly, and I push a finger into the corner of my mouth before a smile can form.
“You’re a shit liar,” I say to make him smile instead. I don’t even have to look at him to see it, but when he speaks I know it’s there–a small, sincere thing.
“Maybe,” he concedes. “But so are you.”
What feels different?
I know what the answer is. Sitting here, in the fossilizing plastic of a library chair, I realize I might have known it this whole time. I just didn’t have the desire to acknowledge it–to face it point-blank.
I take a deep breath in through my nose and imagine the air twisting through my lungs until they pop.
What feels wrong?
“It’s my friends, I think.” Saying it out loud is not nearly as simple as it felt in my head. The words fall past my lips like stones and they sink to the floor like anchors. I immediately regret them. It’s you it’s you it’s you it’s always just you.
Except this time it really feels like it’s not in my head. And it’s impossible to try and figure out why. Impossible to try and navigate this chasm widening with each waking moment, each exhausting breath.
“Damn,” Nathaniel sighs. “Am I actually gonna have to beat someone up? Because I wasn’t for real before, but…”
“Ha, ha,” I deadpan. The weight of his boots on my chair disappears a second before I hear them hit the ground.
Nathaniel is quiet, and I realize he’s waiting for me to make the next move. I know that this is a prime opportunity to truly share what I’ve been feeling. I know he’ll take it well, that he’ll listen and he’ll support me. The words appear behind my lips effortlessly.
Effortlessly.
It’s all effortless. I had noticed this in the past, but never was it as sharpened as it is right now with my hood over my head.
Speaking to my friends lately is effortless. Saying yes is effortless. Effortless because there is nothing keeping me from doing so. It’s effortless the way I attach myself to them, effortless like gravity, like moons orbiting a planet, except–never has anything been allowed of me without effort. Not hockey. Not grades. Not family. Especially not friends. I’ve never done anything as effortlessly as I do care for Dorian and Barbie and the team, for Nathaniel and Celeste, for Cauler. Nothing has ever seemed as effortless as leaning on these people. Sitting here with Nathaniel, one of the only people who understands me, it’s effortless the way I wind up to spill my guts without fear. Six months ago I wouldn’t have dared to even whisper any of this to an empty room. Now, I almost didn’t hesitate. And it was fucking effortless.
And I know within that split second between then and now, like the snap of a rubber ball on concrete, Nathaniel has been shelved amongst all the rest of them.
I take another breath before speaking around the bile ghosting my teeth.
“No, I just… It’s just hard being around them recently. Anxiety, or whatever.”
I say almost accidentally. Like it was instinct to use as few words as possible. And in a way, it was. I glance up at the clock mounted on the wall behind Nathaniel's back and ignore the way his entire attention is on me in my peripheral.
“Class starts soon,” I say shortly, pushing my chair away and pulling forward my open backpack.
Nathaniel turns to look at the time and blows his fringe out of his eyes. “Guess we better hop to it then, Mr. Academia,” he says, voice returning to exactly how it was on the walk over, accepting my resolution without missing a beat. He stands from his chair and stretches his arms above his head dramatically.
Across the library, Ari has since left, and has been replaced with Tasha. Nathaniel spots them at the same time I do and starts drifting over almost unconsciously while I pack my things away. “You’ll walk with us?” He asks me, taking a few steps backwards.
“Yeah,” I nod, and Nathaniel nods back before turning around again and leaving me at the cubicle. I stand around until he’s close enough to be distracted by Tasha before making my way to the back of the library and slipping out the fire exit door, there and then not.
The rest of the day I spend at Delilah’s desk, watching youtube on my laptop with my phone sitting face-down across the room. Nathaniel texted me when the lecture was starting, a simple ‘c u next class?’ and I opened it without responding. Except I forgot Dorian shares an English class with Celeste, so much to my luck, the boys caught wind of me skipping my classes and disappearing again. I abandoned my phone after the first ‘?’ from Cauler and it’s been periodically going off ever since. Delilah, who arrived a half-hour after I did, is glaring daggers at me from the foot of her bed.
“Can you pick up your phone please?” she grumbles over the top of her own laptop.
I take out an earbud and pretend I didn’t hear her. “What?”
“Pick up your phone.”
“Why?” I ask monotonously.
Delilah slaps her laptop closed. “Because it’s annoying as fuck. And because your friends are trying to contact you and you’re being a giant asshole about it and ignoring them and you need to drop whatever it is that’s messing with you,” she says. “Pick up the damn phone.”
“It’s not that easy.”
Delilah gets up and picks up my phone from the stand. She throws it at me. “Pick up the damn phone!”
I move out of the way just as it hits the floor and bounces against the legs of her swivel chair, gaping up at her. “The hell is wrong with you?”
“The hell is wrong with you?” She barks, and the severity of which she says it cuts like a knife. Her hands are planted firmly on her hips. “I’m done, Mickey. No more sleeping here. Either go talk to the boys and figure your shit out, or start bringing a pillow to the rink. Your choice.”
The silence following her words sings. I stare at her for a moment, wearing my bravest mask of stoicism, and she stares right back unwavering. Dead serious.
I don’t think she’s been truly upset with me like this since we were kids and I accidentally dropped her stuffed horse outside the car window. Looking at her now I can see the same gloss in her eyes. Like the only thing stopping her from saying something worse is the sheer knowledge she’d remember it every time she looked in the mirror and saw my face too. I had cried in my carseat the last time I was subjected to this surface of her. But right now it’s the most real I’ve felt all week.
I scoop up my phone from the floor and my bag from the floor and shuffle out the door without another word or glance to my sister. The hall is exceptionally silent save for the roaring in my ears and Delilah’s call to me through her doorway: “And stop telling your friends I’ve got girlfriend trouble, you fucking douchebag!”
I start walking without any intention behind it. Campus has shifted to a warm air that makes my hands sweat in my pockets. The lake is no longer ice but not yet warm enough to swim and fully enjoy it. I end up at the dock overlooking it and when I sit down on the edge my feet just brush the surface of the water, higher now with the melting of the snow.
Just last week Barbie, Dorian, Cauler and I were sitting here wasting an afternoon away listening to Dorian explain his Astronomy presentation to us while Barbie turned his unfinished worksheet into a little paper boat. Cauler was wearing a new Bruins beanie I got him and left his hand on my ankle the whole time.
I take a deep breath in and picture that day. I imagine what it would look like if the three of them were here right now and wonder why it’s so much more bitter to consider it than it was then.
What feels different?
I wasn’t fully aware of the time moving in that moment. It was just the four of us sitting on the dock, the same way we did at the start of the year, and I could paint a picture of the moment and slide it in my pocket to keep. There were no deadlines, no reminders. I could just exist and pretend like existing was that simple.
But I think when I got back to my room the feeling was gone. The high had dimmed. It was almost tranquil watching my friends walk in the opposite direction.
And that decline is so much more familiar than anything I’ve ever felt before.
The realization sends a tremor all the way to my fingertips. I shove my hands under my thighs and the plastic of the doc pushes grainy imprints into my palms.
I feel like I’m always waiting for the shoe to drop. Waiting to come back to the dorm with all my stuff packed up and ready to be shipped out, the boys sitting and watching in dismissal. Every time something goes right it must then go wrong. And for too long my friends have been going right. They’ve posed as exactly what frightens me wrapped in a little bow. It’s annoying how easily I let it get like this. It’s irritating that nobody has scraped the newspaper off the windowpane to let anyone glimpse what’s prowling in the backyard.
In the sixth grade I had a friend named Spencer. Well, not a friend. He was my best friend. Ever. We were in the same class for the last four consecutive years and had matching Teen Titans pencil cases. Nobody ever played with me at the playground but Spencer. When I left to billet for the first time at the start of the school year he gave me a lego set and a hug and that was the very last time I’d seen him. Two years later in Columbus I sat with three kids named Cindy, Kingston, and Aaron at lunch for the semester and they threw me a surprise party the night before I left to the next team. In Atlanta for the next season it was Logan and Kyle. In Pittsburgh it was Peyton. In Richmond it was Marcus and Alistair and Swaara and Austin. In Syracuse it was Lucas.
Having friends has never been something I took as anything other than means to an end. Creating a close group has never been an option for me. Not when I’m only ever spending less than a year in a place at a time. There really was never a point in becoming attached to people when there was 100% certainty you were never going to see them again come fall. I spent so long ignoring the ticking time bomb that by the time it went off I was watching the smoke billow from the next state over.
Nobody had ever learned my favourite colour or the names of my sisters. I was Mickey James iii, son of a hockey legend who sat in the last row of all his classes–except biology, where I sat second-to-last. The only person who ever saw beyond that was Nova, but the promise of sanctity was fruitless when sanctity remains across time zones. It’s been almost a decade since I was able to look in someone's very eyes with my own and actually feel anything about it at all.
And now there’s a team of guys who could fondly recall the names of each of my sisters. There’s two boys who know my favourite colour in English, Spanish, and Italian. And there’s a pair of dark eyes that look into mine every single day like they didn't just the day before–choosing to do it over and over again like we have all the time in the world to do so, like there is no hurricane of dread clouding his every waking thought.
“Knock knock.”
I turn my head to Dorian’s voice at the end of the dock. Him and Barbie and Cauler walk staggered from the grass, all with their hands in their pockets and heads bowed considerately. The sun has fully set since I sat down and the fleeting sky paints their faces in grey. “Do I still have to announce my presence if we’re outside?” He asks with a smile.
“Definitely. It gives people a head start to get away,” Barbie says. Dorian shoves him in the shoulder and the three of them stop halfway down the dock. I turn back to the lake without a word and the water ripples with something underneath. It remains quiet for a minute and I can tell they’re waiting for me to give them something to work with. But the sight of them all huddled together looking at me makes me so irrationally angry I can’t even offer a quip at Dorian’s expense.
For a second I’m curious how they even thought to find me here–but of course they did. I’ve only been coming here since September when I hope to sort through my thoughts. The good and the bad and the worse. And the very fact that they so obviously knew where to find me on the opposite end of campus makes me stand up.
I can see Cauler’s shoulders relax as I silently make my way over to them but the three of them are stock-still as I brush right past. Eyes forward like they’re not even there.
I walk without any forethought of where I’m going, but Delilah’s barb of sleeping at the rink is probably my best bet. All I can think about is getting away from them. This last week is an accumulation of these last months that are an accumulation of the last 7 years of my life and it’s sudden as a landslide. All my anger and sadness and expectations materialized in the shape of three college boys in snapbacks blocking my predetermined path.
“Mickey?” Cauler says to my back, voice clipped. Tired. Aren’t we all.
I keep my pace. Dorian calls my name too. “Can you please talk to us, dude?” He says.
“Mickey,” Cauler says again. I’m almost far enough away they’ll give up.
“Hey,” Dorian says from behind me, and a hand lightly grabs at my forearm, and the sky is too dark and the shore is too quiet and my head is too full and Dorian’s fingers are so mercifully warm on my skin.
I tear my arm from his grip and spin around and Dorian staggers a step back. “Why do you care?” I spit. All three of them go still simultaneously. “Why do any of you care what the hell happens to me? Why are you here?”
Barbie looks to Cauler and then Dorian and then Cauler and then back to me. Dorian opens his mouth and then closes it. Cauler still doesn’t move.
Dorian shakes his head side to side like he’s confused. “Why wouldn’t we care?”
“Because-” I pull my sleeves over my hands. “Because pretty soon I’ll be leaving Hartland and none of this will matter,” I remind them. “You won’t be doing this anymore. I don’t understand how you’re all so committed to wasting so much time.”
A crow calls from the tree above the water. Barbie hikes up his shoulders in defence and laughs in surprise. “You’re the only one insinuating that in a month none of this will matter,” he says.
“Because it won’t.” I scoff a laugh and press my palms over my eyes. “That’s how the world works.” I push my palms so hard into my sockets it feels like they’re bruising. “That’s- that’s how my world works, and I’m fucking sick of you all pretending you care. Like in three months I won’t be across the fucking country and you guys won’t forget all about me the second nothing’s forcing you to remember in the first place.”
All three of them speak at the same time. Barbie says “Come on-” and Dorian says “What are you talking-” and Cauler says “Why the hell do you thi-” and I throw my hands down. Cut them all short.
“Because I’ve spent my entire fucking life doing this over and over again and I’m not stupid enough to think it’ll be any different all of a sudden.” I say (I spew it, harshly, loudly, like a yell without the volume, like a scream without the heart, the only truth I’ve heard just as sharply as I’ve felt) it to the lake instead of their faces and am grateful for the decision after every syllable escapes my lips. I can’t stop my words. I don’t know if I want to, this once.
An almost imperceptible drop of rain hits the bridge of my nose and I watch the little embossments appear in the surface of the lake. I hope it rains buckets. I hope it’s too dense to see. I hope everything gets washed away and erased from this place and I hope it’s honest. Another drop hits my cheek and I brush it away.
Finally–fucking finally–Cauler moves. He takes a small step forward and then another. In almost slow motion he skirts around Dorian and Barbie, who remain where they are with their hands limp by their sides. They were all so eager to talk to me before, yet now they have nothing to say.
He stops a foot away from me and one of his hands reaches up to take mine. I don’t even notice my nails digging into my palms until he gently pries it open. “I can’t do it again,” I whisper, my head down, looking at where his fingers wrap around my own. It’s a fractured, improperly organized piece of truth, and still I know he understands.
All I’ve been looking for was a way to avoid. A way to escape. To not have to look at him or touch him and feel like it’s right. But then Cauler pulls me towards him, and falling into his chest is the rightest thing I can remember to do.
His arms wrap around my shoulders and my hands are holding onto his jacket and I start to cry. I know without even having to think about it that I’ve never cried in front of them like this. Dorian and Barbie have caught the aftermath once or twice. I’ve probably shed a tear around Cauler before. But never–never–have they seen this. I know that because I could count on one hand the people who have seen this. And I had grand plans to keep it that way until I was dead. My shoulders wrack and my eyes stream and I can hear the muffled murmur of my sobs. I had plans to keep this until I was dead.
“I can’t do it again,” I rasp into the collar of Cauler’s jacket between cries. His arms hold me even tighter and I let them keep me there, upright, as one cracked mosaic still attempts to look whole.
And so I cry, and cry, and cry–and consider that this must be nowhere near what it feels like to be dead.
They put a bench at the top of the dock a couple weeks ago. I’ve never sat on it, instead opting to sit at the bottom where I can dangle my feet off the edge and see the water without any obstruction. I know it would fit three average humans, four small ones. And I know that because the four of us ended up walking over and miraculously sitting on it shoulder to shoulder like sardines (and I’m not going to pretend I’m the same proportions as the other three, but I’m still average human-sized, thank you). The rain doesn't turn to buckets. It remains the slightest sort, an uneven spattering that keeps me awake and keeps the others visible.
“In elementary school I got bit by a dog,” Barbie starts from beside me. The four of us have been sitting quietly, the wind drying the tear tracks down on my cheeks. Listening even though nobody was talking yet.
“It was bad. I was at the park with a friend and some guy had this giant, white dog off-leash and I put out my hand to pet it and it just bit right into my fingers.” He flexes his hand on his leg. “It bled for so long. I’ve still never seen anything bleed that much. My mom took me to the hospital and I got a stitch in three fingers.
One of the nurses tried to distract me by telling me about her own dog. She had a golden retriever, and she was the nicest dog in the world. She said that she would never have bit me and she was sorry somebody else’s dog did. Not too sure why the hell she thought I wanted to hear about a dog at that moment.”
Cauler huffs a laugh on my left. Barbie clears his throat. “I was scared of dogs for a while. Didn’t want to go near any. Even the stupid tiny ones,” he says with a shake of his head. “But then when I was 14 my tía got a dog and I figured there was no point in being scared if it was hers. Some sort of shepherd.
And it was fun for the first few months. But then one day she brought him over and set him down on the couch next to me while I was watching TV and he bit me on the arm. I didn’t even do anything.”
Dorian inhales sharply from his other side. Barbie continues. “I’ve hated dogs since. And I guess lots of people do, but not many people hate them because they’ve been screwed over twice.” He shrugs and it picks up my shoulder. “And I still know that most dogs are nice. I mean, they’ve gotta be if so many people like ‘em. But that doesn’t stop me from hating them anyways. ‘Cause for me, they haven’t been nice.”
Cauler hums in acknowledgment. Barbie’s words circulate. And he said it to the four of us, a sincere break, but I know he was just offering the words to me.
“I’m sorry you got bit by a dog,” I sniffle.
“I’m sorry you did too,” he says quietly.
There’s an amused screech from across the lake. It travels along the water and is followed by a bubble of laughter. It crosses the trees and the bare branches sway.
“It’s not Barbie’s fault he ran into some shitty dogs. And it’s not your fault that you ran into some shitty people. Some shitty circumstances.” Cauler tells me.
“It’s not fair that you have to carry this,” he trails off. Only when I turn to look at him does he continue. “But it's also not fair that you put us in a box without asking.”
I glance from one eye to the other and he tilts his head calmly. Someone else might interpret his words as harsh. As insensitive. I know they’re neither. And he knows I would know that. Because he knows me.
“None of us know what’s going to happen, Mickey,” Dorian says. “But I do know that none of us have any intention of just graduating and ghosting one another.”
“You guys have heard too much,” Barbie says, elbowing me in the side. I laugh once through my nose.
“And you don’t have to… You don’t have to believe it,” Dorian says quietly. “You just should know that the rest of us do.”
It’s not what I was expecting to hear, and that’s what makes it so much more relieving. Because that small alteration of verity is acknowledgment that telling me what I’m supposed to hear wouldn’t do anything. It’s acknowledgment that I won’t be able to fix this part of myself right away–and somebody understands that for what it is, no matter how tight it’s wrapped around my throat.
"We're gonna be here for you whether you believe it or not," Cauler asserts. "We're all gonna be there for each other. But it'll only work if we can let ourselves lean on each other. Let ourselves talk. Even if it's difficult." Cauler puts his hand palm-up on my thigh in invitation. "Especially if it's difficult."
I take his hand and wrap my fingers around his and feel it like it’s real and see it like I can. "Okay," I say, even though it's difficult.
And then Barbie puts his hand palm-up on my other thigh and the four of us all break into laughter, and the chorus of it fills that gap in my chest I’ve been mispronouncing in their absence, and I know what it really was–their absence.
I can tell this moment won’t last forever. These few words only give so much. That I could wake up tomorrow and hate them all over again. But in that case, it would be the first time I’d seen it coming and not just turned and ran. I’d look dread in the eye and let it look back.
I slap my hand onto Barbie’s too and Dorian grabs his other hand and the four of us sit there looking out at the lake, linked at the wrists, silent until someone walks around us to walk down the dock and does a double-take at the sight and we all laugh again, together. Nobody lets go.
The bite of my skin starts to warm under their hands, and I know we’ll find somewhere else to go after this, somewhere where I can feel this warmth amongst all my flesh, and still I'll cradle that imprint in my palms.