Nightmares
Some days I want to spit me out, the whole mess of me,
but mostly I am good and quiet.
-- Camille Rankine, Emergency Management
Waking up the next morning felt like a cruel joke. The realization that he’d have to see the day through shoved a hand down his throat and pulled the air out of his lungs. To make it all worse, the girls were huddled up in the kitchen when he walked in, Nadia and Daisy at the counter while the other two cooked. Not exactly present, Theodore didn’t register what they’d been talking about; their voices were distant sounds as he helped himself to a glass of orange juice. They said his name multiple times, drowned out by the fog in his head. He only came back to when Hannah snapped a couple of fingers in front of his face, making him jump, juice spilling over the counter—the glass had overflowed. Glancing around himself, he found all four girls staring back at him.
“Well?” Jessie asked, an expectant look on her face. “How was it?”
“How was what?” His brain was so scrambled that he might as well eat it with toast.
“Last night.”
Two simple words brought everything back. His face burned with the memories, heart sinking to the bottom of his rib cage. The last thing he needed right now was to remember any of what’d happened and repeat last night’s cycle of feeling bad, regretting everything, and crying himself to sleep. He set the carton down on the counter, spilled juice spreading under it.
“Last night,” he repeated, slower now.
Jessie’s eyebrows bounced but he didn’t read what that meant.
“We…” He swallowed; the word alone felt like a punch in the throat. “It was okay.”
His eyes burned.
That comment drew the girls’ eyebrows together, all joy and excitement instantly erased from their faces. He must’ve said the wrong thing.
“It was fun!” he overcorrected, faux enthusiasm in his voice. The world wobbled, hard to see. “We—he—we kissed.” His cheeks burned as those words left him.
Lost in a maze, it didn’t occur to him that he’d practically just come out to the room. Nadia and Jessie stared at him wide-eyed while Hannah and Daisy squinted.
“Was he good?” Nadia asked. Her face trembled underwater.
“Yeah, he was—he was…” His heart punched him hard in the chest, throat closing tight around a lump. “He…” The fern leaf on Laith’s neck, dog tags in his hand—his heart squeezed so hard it physically hurt. His lip trembled. “He’s perfect.”
Nadia pressed both hands to her own chest, a sweet smile on her face. The other three girls didn’t seem as convinced, though.
“Did he say something to you?” Daisy tried, caution in her tone.
“No.”
The vexation in Laith’s voice when he left, the anger he must’ve felt when catching a glimpse of the hickeys, betrayed, disappointed. Breath came in short, something thick in Theodore’s throat.
“I made him really angry.” Those words hurt on the way up, squeezed through the noose around his neck. Tears dripped down his face.
That was it, the breaking point, the crack in the dam. When Jessie wrapped him in a tight hug, he finally crumbled, eyes squeezed shut, a broken sob in his chest. Soon, all the other girls joined the hug and held him, knees buckling. The weight on his shoulders lessened, dropped, dissipated, while a vacuum squeezed his heart dry and his face burned, a wet mess.
By the time every one of his tears had dropped and the tracks down his cheeks had dried out, he was left empty and drained, both emotionally as well as physically. He’d just woken up, but needed another twenty-hour nap. The girls carefully loosened the hug and touched his hair, asking him questions, speaking over each other, but his brain couldn’t make sense of what they said, white noise loud in his ears—he needed to leave. He thanked them very briefly, and forgetting the orange juice he’d spilled everywhere, left for the safety of his own bedroom.
***
Half-conscious only, everything that felt real was of his own making. He sat alone by the fire, the warmth of summer sticky on the skin, lingering despite nightfall, almost unbearable near the flames, but it was safer this way. Behind him sat a three-story tall open mouth, drool dripping down its sharp teeth, breath humid in the back of his neck. Down its throat was total darkness, a long, wet tube, slick and smooth, waiting for him to slip in. He saw the creature’s reflection in the fire, the careful way it breathed so he wouldn’t notice its presence, unaware he had the fire to look into.
Leaves and bushes rustled in the dark, Laith’s arms making a path from the lake. He walked into the clearing with two stones in his hands and threw them into the fire pit, a tradition since his redneck party days. Back then, it was bark, now it’d turned to stones. Emily’s idea, sleeping soundly in her tent, hugging Ryan close to her chest.
Laith took a seat next to Theodore, but on the ground, since the closest trunk was still not as close as he wanted to be, arm brushing his own, vetiver leaves up his nose. One of Laith’s legs was bent at the knee while the other stretched out into the fire pit, the one with the statues on it. His shin was just under the fire, where it curved like a plant, not through the root, so he didn’t get burned. The statues melted a bit, made of marble after all, but Laith didn’t mind; tattoos looked better that way. He said it gave them a backstory, that they grew from it.
“Even the leaf on your neck?” Theodore asked, keeping his voice low so the mouth wouldn’t hear him.
“The leaf is covering up a scar, stitching up a cut. You could put your hand through it.”
“So if it burned, your head would fall off?”
“Well, why would you want that?” Laith’s smile was a beautiful painting.
“You know, it was very smart of you to put it there,” he commented with a shy little flutter in his heart. “You didn’t know the cut would be so deep.”
“Yes, I did. Of course I did. I know what I wanted, but changed my mind halfway through. I can still finish it at any time.”
“Are you going to?”
“One day. Maybe if the redacted behind us lets me do it.”
“That’s a redacted?”
Laith laughed, foot moving under the fire. “You don’t know shit, do you?”
Theodore grinned stupidly, a loose shrug on his shoulders. “You just make me feel like an idiot; you’re so smart.” He meant every word, but Laith already knew that. After all, what didn’t he know? Street smart, Laith was much more in touch with the world than he was, better suited to live in it too, to survive; the kind of person who learned how to do their taxes all by themselves. Theodore would probably have to ask his father.
“Maybe you are one. You don’t even know what you want.”
“No, I know. I want you.”
“You don’t.”
“I do.” He touched Laith on the shoulder, squeezing it.
Under the glow of the fire, flickering with the breeze, he saw how dark Laith’s neck was, infected with hickeys all the way down. No amount of fern leaves could heal that.
“I could suck you off.”
“Shh, listen.” Laith straightened up.
In the tent across from them, Justin sat on Ryan’s crotch, riding him with a gasp, protected from the monsters in the dark.
“Do you hear that?”
His cheeks burned, eyebrows drawn together. “You’re right; I can’t sit on you like that. I’m so scared.”
One of Laith’s hands leaned on the ground, wrist split open like an accordion, bending awkwardly. The other came up to grab Theodore by the shirt, shaking him where he sat, perched on the log like a spoiled little brat. Laith shook him violently, punching him with the strength of it. Despite clasping both hands around Laith’s arm, Theodore didn’t try to stop him.
“Don’t fuck with me.” Laith’s voice was low, vicious.
In terrified silence, Theodore nodded his understanding.
“Ryan’s the only one who can.” Still holding him by the shirtfront, Laith got up on both feet, pulling him up. The collar of his shirt dug into the back of his neck.
“Don’t let go,” Theodore pleaded, stumbling. “I’ll fuck you right now.”
Laith grinned bright, but it was too sharp, too menacing. A hard shove sent Theodore tumbling into the redacted’s mouth, dropped like a fish, too slippery to get back up. When the mouth closed, it took Laith’s arm with it.
He woke up with a gasp, drenched in sweat, heart beating out of his chest. Laith wouldn’t do that, he wouldn’t, never. If anything, Theodore would be the one throwing him in. A deep breath filled his lungs. His room was a blur of warm pastel oranges and cool blues, with very little lighting coming through the window, a soft glow that just barely allowed him any sight; it must be late in the afternoon. So he’d slept the whole day through, great; one less to deal with.
The weeks that followed were spent in a daze-like state, where people talked but he couldn’t hear them, and time passed but he couldn’t feel it. Disinterested in turning his sleep schedule back around, he just existed throughout the night and slept the days away, locked in the solitude of his room with a guitar in his lap and Laith on his mind.
Memories of their encounter looped past his eyes, everything he did wrong punching him in the gut. Turned towards his bed just like he’d done that day, he pictured Laith sitting on it, joint pinched between his fingers, green eyes tracking him. He thought of their closeness, how he’d traced the chain around Laith’s neck with tobacco in his lungs, nose brushing Laith on the face. His eyes closed and memories of the kiss hit him in full, the softness of Laith’s lips on his own, tongue on his skin. He’d never wanted to know how to kiss so bad. It haunted him the most, that the best part of that night had been cut short because he’d been too self-conscious to let Laith guide him through his first real kiss. If he could change anything about it, he would’ve changed that first and extended it indefinitely.
After that, his recollection grew hazy. Only certain details jumped out at him; Laith lying shirtless on his bed, his hands on Laith’s body, his mouth on Laith’s neck. The memories that followed brought him extreme anxiety, legs bouncing under the guitar, regret closing a noose around his throat. If he could erase them completely, he would; his notebook was filled with lyrics to prove it. In fact, he’d never written so much, or at least, it’d been a while.
The girls only saw him at dinnertime now, when he finally got up to take a shower. Usually, dinner had already been served by the time he was dressed and starving, so they ate together and let him do the dishes. Fair was fair. The schedule change made it so they had a lot to tell him when their paths crossed again—things he’d missed, people they’d met—but deep down, he suspected this sudden swarm of attention was due to the breakdown in the kitchen, something he’d been actively trying to repress ever since it’d happened. Snuggled up on the couch for some uninteresting movie, the girls always gave him the middle spot. They hung out until either bedtime or a party.
He never connected with anyone in these parties, but kept going anyway, if only to get drunk and exist in a different head space for a while. The girls always lost him in the beginning but found him again at random intervals, coming back and forth with a boy or two, except for Daisy and Nadia, of course. It was very curious just how poorly they hid it, if they even tried at all; holding hands through the crowd, drinking from each other’s cups. How come it took Laith for him to notice that? God, he really did go through life completely blind.
During one of those movie nights, Jessie stayed up later than the others, telling them she wasn’t tired yet. It was a very obvious ploy that made Theodore wary right on the spot, but he didn’t say anything, watching her.
As expected, when the girls were gone, Jessie turned to him and smiled the kind of smile he didn’t trust, too kind, too comforting. When she opened her mouth, she asked him about that night, what had happened to him. Well, there it was, his worst nightmare. She was tactful though, choosing her words very carefully, trying to keep him calm, but after that breakdown, he just couldn’t talk about it. His memories haunted him mercilessly at all hours of the day, inaccessible through speech, forcing him to blow Jessie off. He didn’t want to talk about it; the fact that he couldn’t didn’t make too much of a difference. She only tried a couple of times, letting him know he could come to her for anything.
That reminded him of Emily, when she’d given him that clementine segment at the camping trip. Was the invitation still on? Now that he’d actually fooled around with her friend, he wondered if she still wanted to hear about it or if it’d only been his age that had mattered.
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