nanowrimo excerpt

Chapter 8

“Evie?” His voice is warm but unsure, travelling up ahead of him to chart the territory—a brave scout. Under the covers of my bed, I cannot hear his footsteps, even a muffled version, but I imagine them. Tentatively bringing his big feet towards my closed door.

I bring my covers closer around me as a shell. I have no protection but this warm, dark cocoon. Tight fingers clutch my one reality to me, holding the blanket over my head. He knocks.

“Evie?” Rogue says again, “Can I come in?” I never imagined his voice that soft. I must have imagined every smirk I ever saw on his face because they could not have come from the same boy. Too many extremes.

“Please, Evie,” he says, quieter than before. I imagine him outside my bedroom, a hand against the door to measure any disturbance inside. There is none, only stillness and the evaporation of tears from my pillow. There’s almost no trace already. I smile at that, cheek muscles turning for no one’s benefit into to nearly suffocating blanket.

“Are you in there?” Why he asks, I don’t know. He knows I’m here. The girls saw me come up. After which time I closed the door quietly and slid down it, shaking the frame with my sobs. They told him. Unless I fashioned a rope out of my sheets and descended out the window, I am here. I’m not the rope tying type.

What does he want? I’m so tired I can’t think of an answer to this question. It seems too easy. There must be something he’s looking for. Something he will never find with me.

I draw the covers from my face to say, “Come in.” I don’t quite know why but I can’t stand the image of him standing outside the door. It would be better if he’d leave, down the stairs and out the door, taking all this sadness with him, but he won’t for now.  And if he won’t leave and I won’t have him waiting on the other end of my closed door, he must come in.

I sit up slowly, careful not to rush my head, as I can’t stand the idea of him sitting awkwardly on the edge of my bed as I am in my cocoon. My cocoon, however wonderful and warm, is not something he should see.

Blinking, I adjust my position and observe him in my room. He doesn’t fit here but he tries. My pale green walls are at odds with his dark clothing, eyes and hair. He smiles and I forget that he doesn’t belong. That smile belongs on toothpaste commercials and the sides of buses. It belongs pressed against me, infusing its magical drug into my body. My eyes open wider to accommodate it but you can’t take his smile in all at once. My toes curl in on themselves until I smile back. I can’t control it. His mouth has taken control of mine, forcing me to mirror his glee. I don’t know whether to feel elated or manipulated. I choose neither, letting the smile sink deeper into me.

“Are you okay?” His voice gently brushes the hair out of my eyes. He bothered to ask this question, despite my mimicking smile. He takes a seat on the chair by my window. Too far away, his smile loses hold on mine. It slips off my mouth like Jell-O thrown at a wall. I’m left with nothing but a sticky residue and an echo but my face remembers the motions.

He stares at me some more and I can’t excuse his rudeness until I realize he asked me a question.

“Yes,” I say, only louder than a whisper. “I’m alright.” It’s almost the truth.

“Good.” It would appear that he doesn’t know what to say next. Did he come into this room with a mission of ascertaining my ‘okay-ness’? If so, he can leave now. I’ve given him the answer he wanted. My obligation is fulfilled.

I'll be the first to admit that we don’t have a connection--verbally at least. It’s not enough for us to be in the same room and automatically have some banter going on, a simple exchange of words to ease ourselves into comfort. We have no cushiness, no clouds in the room to ease this silence. I wish I had it that easy.

All we have is physical. Strings binding us. It’s not enough to have us in this room, trapped in quiet, we also have to want each other. To want this to work too much. Too much for safety. I’m not even sure if I’m alone in this feeling. I want to like him, to be around him, for us to mesh and move, revolving around each other like it’s that simple. Like gravity is with us, not against us. I want to smile automatically on my own, not because he somehow charmed it out of me.

“How are you?” I say casually, taking a step towards cushy clouds. I’m opening the window and hoping they’ll be here in seconds, slipping us into the conversation that I crave. I’m waiting.

He pauses before responding, “I’m good.” I try not to be distracted by the grammar but a second is spent on puzzling.

“Good?”

“Good.”

I like you, my mind mumbles, my mouth following along but making no sound. I wonder for a second if maybe he can hear me, my thoughts zipping through this calm air into his. Would that make this situation easier or stranger? Probably the latter, despite my wishes. If you can hear me, give me a sign, I say to no one, waiting from him to look up and blink or keep staring around my room. I can’t decide what I want.

When his disposition doesn’t change, I take up his occupation, staring around my room like I am the outsider. I see my clothes in a pile on my desk. I notice that I never changed my calendar from September. I see the socks scattered around in different places, under his chair, in the corners. I see the jewellery on the windowsill—I haven’t worn any of it in weeks. The closet door is a crack open, stuck on one of my favourite shoes. My dresser drawers aren’t closed either which means Jac hasn’t been in here for a while. She tidies every so often and I only notice because I can’t find anything as quickly.

Since I can see no use in getting up to hide any of this from Rogue, I stay where I am, wrapping the flower patterned sheets around my cross legged frame. Eventually, his eyes have taken in all they can and he finds me again, trapping me in these blankets.

“I like your calendar,” he says, gesturing to the wall. He noticed that, too.

“Thanks.” My response to compliments is automatic. I no longer stop to wonder if that was actually a compliment to me but accept it and say thanks. “Ash gave it to me.”

He nods. “It seems like her.” How does he know what seems like her? How many hours has he spent knowing her? Listening to her quiet observations? Watching her careful kindness. I’m exhausted with thinking about it.

My jealousy absorbs me. I’m not conscious of the silence or my failure to respond to his latest comment. My cheeks are overwhelmed with the redness and my whole body is too warm for comfort. I pull the duvet tighter around me regardless.

He reaches for something on my desk and then freezes momentarily. Finger closing curiously around my picture frame, he takes it in. He doesn’t comment other than to tilt his head. It’s back on my desk in an instant.

He knows me too well. I would be touched but it’s not fair. It’s not fair that he has a window—my sisters—into this simple version of me that is out there. All I want is some reciprocation. A crack of light to be shed on the boy who I am so attracted to that I will let him sit in my room on my chair as I am wrapped in my blankets. Despite our lack of conversation, I sense a radiant comfort that I hadn’t realized. This isn’t normal.

“Tell me something about you,” I say frankly, asking, for once, what I actually want.

“I never know what to say when someone asks that. What do you want to know?”

I settle for the basic to start. “Favourite colour?”

I think he’s about to laugh but he doesn’t. Nothing but surprises from Rogue. He seems to seriously consider the question and then says, “Orange.”

“Orange,” I repeat, surprised at the answer.

“Anything else?” He seems amused but he didn’t laugh. I feel like he’s humouring me for a second, laughing with the crazy girl so she won’t stab you sort of thing, but I choose to believe he’s enjoying this.

“Where do you live?” Am I bordering on invasive? He isn’t bothered.

“A townhouse complex on 24^th Ave,” he says, pointing in the general direction, “It’s called insert cool, witty, pathetic, cheesy, lame townhouse complex name here.”

I try to picture the place but can’t bring it up in my mind. I can imagine it, though. Regulation houses, all either mimicking or mirroring each other. A garage under each house. Front doors that no one uses, instead favouring the automatic garage opener entrance with zero neighbour contact.

He seems to know my next question. He answers before my prompt. “I live with my mom and stepdad.”

“Do you—” I stop myself after two words. My next question is too invasive, I know it right away. I don’t want him to be uncomfortable around me and, after only two questions, I’m tired of being the interrogator.

“What?” he pounces, not letting my words slip under the carpet as I’d hoped. He won’t forget them. He’s leaning forward in his chair.

“Never mind,” I say, not because I want him to force the question out of me but because I want him to forget it. There are easier things than forgetting.

He sits back in the chair; I guess not wanting to freak me out with his intensity.

“You can ask me, if you want,” he says, less forceful than before. “You can ask me anything.”

I knew that. Of course I knew I could ask him anything. I have speech on my side, plenty of nouns and adjectives to convey what I’m curious about. The problem is not that I can’t ask, it’s that I don’t want to. I’m not one to step over that fragile line of what’s socially acceptable. I stop myself at the questions with answers I wouldn’t open up with.

“Okay,” I say but don’t start voicing my question again. Maybe someday but I’m not spending more breath on it today.

“Now it’s awkward,” he jokes. I can feel that easy banter. He brought the clouds of cushiness in with three words. I’m impressed and I want to fall back into them. I crack a smile.