She hung up on me at first, after that brief silence when I told her that I had Lucas over; she was upset but she still ended up spending the rest of that night with me. The next morning, or maybe the next morning—I can’t really recall, it might have been a Tuesday and or it might have been a Wednesday—I got to school late. He was skipping class, a habit that I eventually learned he had, he was sat on the concrete steps at one of the back doors to the school, facing a chain link fence and a line of trees. If someone wandered far enough into that “forest” they would come out on the south side of Chapel Hill Cemetery. Usually, if you wanted to avoid getting caught showing up late you would park in the back, sneak into class through one of the many back doors that were unlocked, then move your car during lunch to the front where everyone else was parked.
He waved, he didn’t call my name—he smiled.
I waved back, then I adjusted my jacket, it was far too cold out to be wearing anything but. “What class are you missing?”
Lucas coughed, kept on smiling as he talked. “Chemistry.”
“To hell with chemistry,” I muttered loud enough for him to hear. I was lying—I really did like chemistry.
“Amen to that.” Putting his head in his hands he grunted, sighed, maybe. His fingers went through his hair, that same soft hair that I put my hands through. “Can’t the week just be over?”
I didn’t ask but I assumed that I had the ability to sit next to him. “That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?” The two of us had a few classes together, though he always sat with all of the other football players. “I enjoyed you coming over.”
Between his mask of fingers I could see that he was looking over at me—he hesitated in his response. “Yeah, that was fun.”
“And maybe—.”
“Maybe we could do something like that again? I wouldn’t mind.”
There was a sort of feeling that I had in my stomach, or maybe it was my head, or maybe, instead, it was between my legs. I couldn’t tell and I don’t think it made any difference. Still, I placed my hands on my thighs, I flexed my stomach, and adjusted how I held my head, looking now straight into the trees. “Yeah, that’d be great.”
He coughed again.
“Do you smoke?” I asked.
Lucas shook his head. “My dad does, in the house. My cough isn’t from that, I think it’s from the weather.”
“Probably.” I fought every voice of my internal monologue to not scoot closer to him, to not desire affection from him, but I believe that no matter what, I was doomed to fail. Distracting myself by staring at the trees, or the leaves, or possibly even the garbage can that sat awaiting the truck seemed like my best chance at a saving grace. He was looking at me—he was looking at me now and I had no idea until I gave one little glance, and instantly I was flustered, overwhelmed. Deeply troubled. I pulled at the sides of my jacket, I coughed, I kicked my feet slightly as I reached out to grab the metal railing that went in tandem with the stairs. His gray eyes—no, his blue eyes, they pierced through mine everytime we made eye contact and they threw me into a torrent of confusion interlaced with worry. Worry and fear. They weren’t gray then, not yet. “I should probably be going to class,” I said, slipping on the stairs that weren’t even wet and landing on my backside. I must have startled him, or I must have made him laugh—I couldn’t tell, I was too bothered by the pain. He helped me up, I took his hand.
“I should get going too, I can only act like I’m pissing for so long.”
That was funny. “You’re funny.” I don’t think I should have said that, it felt out of place. My eyes straightened when I thought about how stupid I sounded. I always sounded stupid, it didn’t matter what I did.
“Sometimes.”
A few steps into our walk back up to the nearby back door. “Amber smokes. Did you know that?” Was I trying to make her sound worse than me?
“I did know that, yeah.” He reached out for the door. “Shit.” It was locked.
“Someone must have locked it.” Now we were stuck outside, and if we went through the front door we would, again, risk getting caught—but maybe the teachers didn’t care, or maybe they wouldn’t even see us. “Mrs. Giodarno doesn’t have a class this time, she always has her windows open.” I took Italian that year.
“Aren’t there screens?”
“A kid cut through one of them when he was trying to sneak out during her fourth period study hall when she went to get something from the teacher’s lounge and they never bothered to fix it.” That was a long sentence, I didn’t even breathe.
“You take italian?”
“Italian II, yeah.”
“French.” He put his hands in the pockets of his varsity jacket. And he was still smiling, still looking down at me. “My mom speaks it. Canada. She’s from Quebec.”
Geography wasn’t my strong suite either. “North?”
“Yeah, Canada’s north.” I made him laugh, quietly of course, but I made him laugh and I wasn’t even trying to. “So I boost you?”
“You what?”
“What side of the school is her classroom on? Ain’t she on the second floor too?” He broke our eye contact, going in the direction of the western side of the building.
“Other side.” I sounded rude.
He spun around on his right foot. “Other side then.” I continued to watch him until he disappeared behind the garbage bin, then I started after him. Why was I just standing there?
“You comin’?”
I rushed, almost tripping over nothing—actually, it was probably the loose asphalt pebbles, all the parking lots needed redone. In my hurry I almost ran into the brick-wall corner of the school as I went around the bend, and while I was still dazed from that potential collision I slammed, head first, into his back. He barely even budged.
“Do you usually show up late?”
“My truck wouldn’t start.”
He took his hands out of his pockets, stared up at her window. I was right, it was open. “I’ll crouch down, you get on my shoulders, and then you can climb in through her window.”
“How are you going to get up? I can’t pull you up.” I didn’t even know if I could pull myself up and onto the window sill let alone heave him up. But I could, at least when I was helped by Amber.
His head slowly turned, his eyes pierced through me yet again. “I’ll find another way, don’t worry about me.” Then his smile melted me. Maybe I could get myself up.
I can’t even imagine how stupid I looked when I was flailing my legs, trying to kick off of the brick so that I could bring myself through the window. And I probably looked even stupider when I was standing on his shoulders, like it was a circus act. Eventually I did get through, eventually I looked out the window as I stood in the slightly warmer school and saw Lucas staring back at me, giving me a thumbs off, then walking off with his breath freezing in the air.
I forgot my backpack in my truck.
My temptation to hit my head against the door to Mrs. Giodarno’s door was unmatched; thankfully, I didn’t. I was stopped just before I did by the ringing of the bell. Almost instantly, like always, the halls were flooded. And I wanted to stay in that room even though I knew she would come in at any moment—the lights were off, the air was still, the sun’s rays came in through the windows, it would have been the perfect place to sit and do nothing.
Of course, I had to find Amber.
At lunch I ended up moving my truck, though it took longer than I thought because, like that morning, it wouldn’t start. Something was wrong with the something—I don’t know anything about cars. It was my dad’s old truck anyways, he would know how to fix it. I returned to the overwhelming scene of the lunchroom, with Amber sitting next to Roger and a few others that I was barely acquainted with yet I sat with them every single day. I can’t even be bothered to remember what we were eating. Oftentimes, I found myself just watching everyone else eat, messing with my food only to then throw it into the trash before I left for my next class.
The topic of discussion was something. It didn’t matter. It never mattered. Barely did I ever chime in, barely did I ever join the conversation to add something that had no value. I wondered if they would even care if I was there—Amber would, I knew that. Since my truck didn’t start in the morning I could have potentially stayed home, slept in, neglected to do my homework.
“Are you and Lucas like a thing or something?”
I looked up at Roger. He wasn’t even looking at me, he was talking to Amber.
She laughed. “Well, kind of.” His question had everyone else sitting on the edges of their seats. “We don’t have a title or anything like that, but we hang out all the time.”
She was lying. I knew she was lying. She hadn’t even done anything with him outside of school—I had, she hadn’t. I never knew her to be a liar. My grip on my fork tightened to a ridiculous amount, I gritted my teeth.
“I thought you were off the cheer team,” another kid said. He was a sophomore, we were juniors at the time, and for some reason we had decided to keep him around. I’ll call him Theodore—that wasn’t his name.
Again she laughed, she fixed her top. “I am, I have been for a long while. That’s not stopping him.”
“Someone said that he only dates girls on the cheer team.” Theo was sitting next to me but I kept myself at a distance.
“He did date Nicole but they’ve been over for a long time.”
“Didn’t she try to hit him with her care?” Let’s call her Sam.
“She sure as hell did, crazy bitch.” No she didn’t. I knew that she didn’t, Lucas told me. He told me when he was over at my house, not her’s. Sure, she repeated gossip, she spread rumors that she didn’t make up, but she never openly told a fib about herself. That wasn’t her.
“That’s not true. She didn’t do that.”
Everyone stared at me. Theo questioned me. “How do you know that?”
My gaze met my plate, I placed my fork down. “He told me.”
“You talk to Lucas?”
“Of course I do.”
She undermined me. “He only talks to Lucas because I introduced them, and plus they don’t get along too well.”
She was wrong again, and I refused to try and defend myself. It didn’t matter, because even if they didn’t know the truth I still knew that I was right and, in the end, it didn’t really matter. I think. If I did I would most likely be discredited.
Again, it didn’t matter, because as I stood next to my truck at the end of the day, doing my best to try and figure out how I would be able to start my truck without having to slam on the hood with both my fists like I always did, I was approached by Lucas. He must have been watching me from afar, maybe under the shelter of the roofed concrete slab that sat directly outside the front of the door. And I bet that he was getting a kick out of watching, seeing me stress out over not being able to get back home when I wanted to. Usually Amber would have been the one to help me out but she had left already, she was going to do something that I didn’t care about. Whatever it was, it didn't concern me, so I didn’t want to think about it.
“Car trouble, again?”
I forgot that I had made a brief mention of it to him. “Oh, yeah.” I leaned up against my half-ajar door, arms crossed, for it to then close on me and I practically fell down like I did on the concrete steps—I caught myself this time, didn’t need his help.
“Is there any way that I can help?” If he was Amber, he wouldn’t have offered. She would have made me force her to. If he was Amber he would have already been gone, but he wasn’t.
Of course there was something for him to help me with. “If you can slam on the hood when I go to start it then that would help.”
He seemed confused—I didn’t blame him at all. It didn’t make sense, why would I need to assault the vehicle in order for it to start? Nonetheless, he did it without even a second thought. Well, he had his initial confused thought, so he did it without even a third thought. Something within me told me that I should make some sort of comment about me being afraid that he would dent the hood, yet I refused.
It started, and thank God it did because if it didn’t then I would be walking home in freezing rain; it wasn’t freezing yet, but I knew it was going to. A few days before it had made the roads slick, I could have sworn I saw someone slip and fall walking outfront my house—it might have even been the mailman coming to our front door.
“That really worked.” Lucas was astonished, perplexed, I infer. “Doesn’t make sense.”
“I don’t blame you.”
“For what?”
I hesitated, even somewhat confused as to what I meant in the first place. “For thinking that.”
“Thinking what?”
What was wrong with me? “Okay, well I probably should get going.” I had found myself getting out of the truck that I had just started, that I was originally about to take out of park, that I was about to rush out of the parking lot with—but now I was standing in front of Lucas, my arms crossed yet again, my eyes stuck on him.
“Why’s Mark in such a hurry?” Something about the way he said that, the way he had put the words in such an odd sequence that genuinely confused me and, contradictingly, enthralled me.
“Because Mark has better things to do.” I uncrossed my arms finally, even though I was more relaxed in the former. “Better yet, because Mark has homework to do.”
“I doubt it.”
Why would he doubt that? He had homework that he had to do, it didn’t make sense for him to think that I didn’t have homework if he definitely did. “I have quite a lot.”
“No, I bet that Mark already got his homework done.” I heard someone call his name, they were trying desperately to get his attention, following the first call with three more—he shifted his feet but he didn’t directly turn his attention to them. He was too preoccupied with something else. “Mark uses his time wisely.”
“Mark has to get going.”
He grabbed my door; he didn’t want me to go. I don’t think he wanted me to go, at least. Maybe that’s what I hoped, and now that hope—that deeply rooted desire that I made attempts to keep within me and to deny any avenue to be properly expressed—was given coal.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
“Why isn’t Amber here to help you with this sort of thing? I’m sure she would if you just asked her.”
“We may have our differences but I know that she will never help me when I need it most.” I was exaggerating, sure, but he didn’t know the difference. He probably couldn’t even sense the tone that I was putting on in my voice.
He sighed, finally redirecting his attention away from me and to the calling voice. “In a minute!” It wasn’t that he was upset, it wasn’t that he was irritated with their constant yelling and shouting, it wasn’t that he wanted them to go somewhere else so that he didn’t have to worry about them anymore and so that he didn’t have to hear them saying his name at the top of their lungs, howling like a madman. He just wanted them to stop for a second. “I guess I’ll be letting Mark go then.”
“Sounds good,” I said. Was I too short with him?
“And what time would Mark want me to show up to his house tonight, unannounced?”
Lucas was inviting himself, he wanted to spend time with me. My dad was going to be home that night, that could have posed an issue—or maybe it wouldn’t, maybe nothing would come of him being over and it would be completely innocent, just how I wanted it to be. Who was I kidding? I was lying to myself, on both ends. That wasn’t something I ever did, and I still don’t do that; I don’t lie to myself, lying to yourself is only a way of being able to convince yourself that something isn’t the way that it is, or it is the way that you don’t want it to be. Either way, I didn’t lie to myself. I told myself the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God in gated heaven.
“That’s for sure.”
“What’s for sure?” I asked.
He didn’t answer me back. I had slipped up, I said something out loud that I was trying to keep within my brain and only within my brain. So it was that my tongue betrayed me, it didn’t have my best interest in mind. My tongue bit me rather than I bit my tongue.
“You can come at six.”
Finally, the person begging for Lucas’s attention interjects the two of us. Kirk Matthews. “You’re coming to practice, right? You’re taking a long time, god damn it.” Kirk looked at me, raised an eyebrow, then brought his attention back to Lucas.
“I won’t be staying for the entire time, I got other stuff to do, but yeah.” Even though he didn’t give me a “goodbye” I assumed that I was not free to go. Our chained connection forged there in the parking lot was now cut, my tires screeching on wet asphalt—I needed to get them changed, I could barely see Lincoln’s head, I could barely pull the penny out everytime I put it in. My hands were red, with my knuckles white and my teeth clenched together needing a wedge and a hammer in order to pry them apart. Wait, I could see the head of Lincoln, I got the trick wrong. My face was probably red too, just like my hands, just like the tomatoes my mom used to grow in her garden when I was little—and that was a reflection of the fire that I felt sitting in the cold front cab of my car, the fire that lingered somewhere within me. Probably between my legs. I bet it was between my legs. Or in my chest.
And, truly, either way it didn’t matter, because he was coming over that night, skipping football (I assumed) so that he could spend time with me. Amber and I hadn’t made official plans, but I still thought that the nicest thing that I could possibly think of and the nicest thing that I could possibly do was to call her and explain to her that any attempt to make plans that night would end up dead in the water. Instantly inert.
“What’re you up to tonight, got something planned?”
“I do, actually. As a matter of fact—.”
“And who are those plans with?”
She knew, she always knew. I don’t blame her for knowing, with the amount of things that I told her and the amount of times I did everything in my little power to bend and stretch the conversation in the direction of Lucas, of my Lucas, that Pandora’s box that she had opened and then handed over to me. But she felt the same way about him, that’s why she would constantly force conversation with him in the hallways, outside in the parking lot when she had the time to, and on those late nights at the end of every individual game. “Lucas, you did so well tonight.” “Lucas, your spiral is great.” “Lucas, how about you drive me home?” And I still ended up being the one that would take her home when the night couldn’t sustain itself any longer.
Eventually, she called it obsession; I called it admiration. And the ghost hunter in her, what she liked to refer to as her “spectral clairvoyance”, called it possession. She couldn’t perform an exorcism, even if she did try on the stray cat we found a month before school started this year. A black one.
I didn’t know what a quarterback was, all I knew was that it was him. Or would it be “he was it”? Does it matter? No, it doesn’t, but I’ll act like it does. No, I’ll act like it doesn’t
It would have been a much better idea to simply hang up the phone. If I did then I wouldn’t have to talk to her anymore that night, but if I didn’t then I would have to give her what she wanted; she would, somehow, force me to admit my attachment to him. I went for the latter.
“That doesn’t matter.” Maybe I was messing with her—I knew that she knew, she knew that I knew, we both knew that Lucas didn’t know. And at the end of the night he didn’t really know, at least that’s what I told myself. At the end of that night he definitely didn’t know, even though I couldn’t keep my eyes off of him, I suggested that he shower at my place before he got back because he said that he felt dirty after practice, and I even offered for him to spend the night since he had gotten so tired when the sun finally set—he didn’t.
“It does matter. I should be able to know these things, you should want to tell me these things.” She heard me sigh through the phone. “You asshole.”
“What did I do?”
“You know what you did, you know exactly what you did. You always know what you do. You’re the one doing these things.”
“No I’m not.”
This time she mocked me with a pseudo-sigh. “Mark, this isn’t an arcade machine—no one’s putting quarters in you, no one’s punching buttons and making you do things against your will. If anything, you’re the one sitting in the stool staring at the screen.”
“You get poetic when you’re angry.” I was right—she always did. She was never going to change, she would constantly be that way, I had just gotten used to it.
“Have fun with Lucas.”
“That’s not who it is.”
She was doing something that night anyway. She had better plans than me. “I wrote a spell an hour ago.”
Gerald Gardner, he founded Wicca. That’s what she aligned herself most with. She didn’t have any books on it, I don’t know where she would have been able to—if anyone in our town figured out that she did the things that she did, that she practiced the things that she practiced, they would have a hunt. They’d grab pitchforks and torches, they’d sweep the streets. I don’t know if I’d defend her, I might just board myself up in my house.
“It’s a choking spell.”
“I didn’t know that you can write your own spells.”
I heard a scoff. “Of course you can, I’ve told you that you can. I’ve written one in front of you.”
“I didn’t know that they were written.”
“Do you even pay attention when I do anything in front of you?”
My fingers were tapping on my desk, the blood in my hands was running warm. I debated whether or not I wanted to lay in my bed and talk, but I remembered that if he was coming over halfway through practice I would have to get everything in my room straightened up first—I had let my dirty clothes pile up in the corner, my bed wasn’t made at all, my pillow case was half off, my desk was covered in papers and things that I couldn’t even remember the origin of. “Yeah.”
“You’re not listening.”
“No, I am.” I set the receiver face down on the desk, wrapped the cord around the leg of my chair so that it wouldn’t slip off. Then I shouted so that, hopefully, she could hear me: “I’m listening.”
I completely bet on the potential for her to keep talking, as if she didn’t—if she fell silent sitting on her own bed, the cord curled around her finger, twirling around the rest of her hand and maybe even her arm, down to her elbow—she would have realized I wasn’t listening. I wasn’t listening, why would I? I had other things to do. And when I finally did pick up the receiver again she was reading her spell out loud.
“Were you casting that on me?”
“I was trying to.” Even though any other person would have been embarrassed being caught red handed—would you call it green handed? The wicked witch, of course.
☠ ☠ ☠
I wonder why I wasn’t named Victor. That would have fit me better, I think. Mark. Mark, that didn’t sound right. Although, I couldn’t do anything about it—I’m not old enough to change my name. Still, everytime I say it out loud I feel as if it doesn’t roll off my tongue.
“It doesn’t feel right.” I said, throwing my hacky sack that I hadn’t touched for over a month into the air, only for it to hit the ceiling and fall back down into my face. Should have caught it.
“What doesn’t feel right?” He asked me. He was laying on the floor, on his back, in a similar fashion to me. I’m glad that I vacuumed before he came over, or else he probably would have gotten his jacket all dirty. He rolled over and onto his side so that he could look at me—I could see him out of the corner of my eye but I didn’t dare meet his gaze. “What doesn’t feel right?”
“My name.” Apparently he had forgotten that we were even on that topic.
“It’s been five minutes since we talked about that.”
That was right. “Oh.”
“But go on.”
I held tight to the hacky sack, debating if I wanted to throw it again. “It should be Victor. That feels right. Mark doesn’t.”
“Why’s that?” He was still looking at me—I couldn’t help but briefly choke on my own spit.
“When I say it out loud I don’t think of myself. I don’t think, ‘I am Mark’.” I threw the ball, it landed at my side. “I think of someone else.”
Finally he looked away, now on his back. “Who does your name sound like then? What are you supposed to be named?”
I thought hard. I didn’t want to tell him the wrong answer, while at the same time I worried that he would think my answer was stupid. I refused to lie to him. He didn’t deserve that. My phone rang.
“Do you want me to get that?” Lucas was already making his attempt to get up off of his back—he was sore from something.
“No, just leave it. Whoever’s calling will give up eventually.”
“Amber?”
“Probably.”
I kept thinking. I hadn’t forgotten about his question, and he hadn’t either.
“So, what is it?”
“Give me a second to think.”
“How does sixty sound?”
I nodded. Didn’t even know if he was looking over at me at first—he was, again.
“That’s twenty passed. Tell me.”
“I still have forty.”
He sighed, rolled to his back for what seemed like the millionth time, stared up at my spinning fan, his eyes slowly trailing over to watch me toss the hacky sack into the air, for it to plummet back and onto my face. I wasn’t bothered by it. I could see him grip a few times at the carpet he was laying on.
“Victor.”
“Victor?”
“Yeah, that sounds right.”
“Alright, Victor.” The tone in his voice made it sound like he was about to get up and leave, but he didn’t. “If you like it then I’ll like it.” He could never be comfortable, he was rolling around on the floor every second he got—every position seemed to be uncomfortable to him. Unnatural. Then again, what even was natural to him? “I think Lance wanted to do something this weekend.” That wasn’t the right position, on his back again. “We’ll see about that though.”
Now I played his part; I rolled over on my side, I looked over at him. “Do you have other plans? Is something stopping you from hanging out with Lance?”
I think he tried to stifle a laugh, putting his right hand over his mouth and his left on his stomach. Or maybe he had to cough and he didn’t want to be uncivilized. No—it was a giggle. “We’ll see.” His eyes slipped over to me. I looked away, almost instantly.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing, nothing at all, Victor.” He said slowly, methodically, looking up and almost out of his skull to awkwardly peer out of the window, upside down. “Time?”
“Time?”
“The time.”
My watch was on the nightstand. “Seven-30.”
“I’ve been here for two hours already?” It wasn’t that he was saying it to me, he wasn’t asking me, he was just saying it. He could have been saying it to God, even. Probably not. Yeah, probably not.
A second call on my phone.
“You should pick it up.”
“I don’t see the need.”
“If it’s Amber—.”
It was. “It is.” I felt bad interrupting him yet I needed to reassure him.
“Alright, it’s Amber. Since it’s Amber, she might need a ride.”
“I’m not her ride for tonight. I have more important things to do.”
“You’re laying in your bed doing nothing.”
“That’s not true.” I pulled the covers up over me, I was done throwing my hacky sack—I tossed it over to him, it landed on his chest. That was my second athletic feat for the day, the first being pulling myself up and into that window. “I have a guest over.”
“I’m just a guest?”
What did he mean by that? Did that term demean him? “You’re not just a guest, but I called you a guest. You’re a…”
“A…?”
“You’re a friend.”
He actually coughed this time. “That’s the title I was looking for.” Though I had trouble telling the majority of the time I knew I was right this time, that was laced with sarcasm.
“Is that the wrong word?”
“Of course it ain’t, I said it was the right word.”
The covers were at my nose now, my voice muffled. “Doesn’t sound like it. Didn’t sound like it.”
“You repeat yourself a lot, don’t you?” The hacky sack was tossed at the door, making a soft punch-like noise.
“Do I?”
“You don’t repeat yourself exactly—what you do is you say almost the exact same sentence, worded slightly differently.”
“You’re smart for a jock. You’re smart for a football player.” I did it again.
“See, right there!” He sat up, partially to crawl over and retrieve the hacky sack and partially to release his excitement. “You did it again. I’ll start pointing it out to you now.”
“Is that a bad thing? I don’t want it to be a bad thing. I’d hate for it to be a bad thing.” He didn’t respond, he was trying to see if I picked up on what I said. I didn’t.
“Not at all—it’s kind of funny. It’s a quirk.”
“I’d think someone like you would be a lot more out of touch with his thoughts.” I meant emotions. I didn’t say “emotions”.
“Are you calling me stupid?”
I froze—I wasn’t trying to call him stupid. Did he really think that I called him stupid?
“I’m joking.” He threw the ball back at me. “I’m smarter than I look, man.”
“That’s what I’m getting at. That’s what I meant. I meant that you’re smarter than you look, yeah. Of course, your grades aren’t any proof of that. Maybe you do that for a reason, you know? You act like you're dumb so that people don’t expect a lot out of you. You act like you're stupid because then people don’t want a lot out of you. You should always try to improve your grades, but I guess that doesn’t matter. What matters is what you’re really like, and the fact that you are yourself when you’re around the people that matter the most to you. I don’t know if I matter that much. I’d like to think that.”
He drew quiet.
“I didn’t mean to make that feel weird, did that make that feel weird?” I kept the covers over myself—maybe I was trying to find some sort of protection from the situation, build a barrier between the two of us after I somehow forgot how to control my tongue. They were up to my nose.
“You read me like a book.”
“Oh.”
“Is it that easy to tell?” He flipped over on his stomach again, making it easier for him to be able to look out the window if he wanted to. Now he didn’t have to crane his neck.
“No, it’s not.”
“But you figured it out.”
I feared that I had hurt him, that he was convinced that I was some sort of shrink that used cards to predict his future, to figure out how his mind worked. That would have been Amber, I didn’t dabble in that sort of thing. “I did, yeah. I did.”
“So, would you dress up as the doctor or the monster?” In between him saying that and what I last said there was a minute of silence.
“Doctor or the monster?”
“Victor Frankenstein. Frankenstein’s monster. You know, like the story?”
Everyone always seemed to think that the monster was the one named Frankenstein—it wasn’t. It was never given a name. It came into existence, it lived, it read some of the most horribly depressing literature in English history, it learned from that, and then it became deeply troubled. If I recall correctly, there was something in that story about a house burning down.
“Well, if I want to be called Victor, I guess I would go as the doctor. But that wouldn’t be as good of a costume, I doubt anyone would instantly recognize it.”
“They’d probably think that you were Doc. From Back to the Future.”
“Yeah. I could tell people I’m him.”
I couldn’t find the clothes, I didn’t have them.