Ember Boys - Gregory Ashe Page 0,1
some blankets. I’ll make some coffee, and we’ll just watch the stars and the coast.”
“We don’t have to talk.”
“We don’t have to.”
“But we can if we want.”
“Yeah,” he said, with the Jim smile that showed all his teeth, all the way back to the molars, the kind of grin he could only pull off because he had those incredible cheekbones.
“Maybe a little later, we’ll have a couple of beers.”
“I thought I was telling this,” Jim said.
“Then tell it.”
“I’ll have a beer. You’ll have a Dr. Pepper.”
I made a face.
“Three more years, my friend,” Jim said with a laugh.
“Kids in Europe drink wine at dinner when they’re twelve.”
“So move to Europe.”
“My parents won’t care. They let me have whatever I want.”
“I’m not your parents.”
“Thank God,” I said before I could stop myself, and Jim did what he usually did: he laughed and blushed all at the same time. His strawberry blond hair was getting shaggy; I barely caught myself from reaching out and tugging on one of the curls that hung over his ears.
“Not much longer,” Jim said. “Keep making progress. You’re doing great; you’re already off the psych meds, right? Now it’s just dealing with the trauma. So just keep doing what you’re doing.”
“I don’t feel like I’m doing great.”
“Don’t be hard on yourself.”
“I’m not; I’m just saying, I don’t—I don’t know what I’m saying.” I swallowed. After I’d run away from Vehpese, I’d tried to start over again with my parents in southern California. Then, when they realized how much I was using, they’d sent me to rehab. In rehab, I’d made the mistake of talking about the worst things that had happened. I talked about Makayla, the girl I’d loved, whom I’d killed with a knife because she’d become something else—one of the monsters. Men and women who looked like people, but who were really nightmares under a tissue of skin. I talked about how I saw her at night, about why eventually swallowing oxy wasn’t helping and I started shooting up. And that had landed me in the San Elredo psych ward with my own scrip of clozapine, although my parents had thrown such a fucking fit that Dr. Rice had weaned me off it almost immediately. “The more I say it didn’t happen, the more it feels like it didn’t happen.”
Jim was pale. “It happened. But maybe it’s better the other way. Maybe it’s better if you just . . . forget.”
“I don’t want to forget. I want to get better, but I don’t want to pretend it’s not real. The monsters. The things we saw.” I took a deep breath. “Show me, please.”
Jim looked around; I counted ten people, but half of them were so doped on quetiapine or clozapine they wouldn’t have noticed if Jim had set off a Roman candle.
“Please.”
“When you get out. They can’t keep you locked down forever; everybody’s going to realize you’re getting better. You’ll be out of here soon.”
“Three months at the soonest.”
“Three months isn’t that long.
I riffled my hair again and leaned back, closing my eyes. Right then I didn’t want to beg. I knew Jim wasn’t making me suffer on purpose, but in the moment, it didn’t matter. My eyes stung, so when I asked again, I kept them closed. Just to be safe.
“I can’t do . . . anything anymore, Jim. What I used to be able to do. Ability or talent or whatever you call it. I can’t. I’m all cut up. I look like a fucking monster, and it was for absolutely fucking nothing because I can’t do it anymore”
“Don’t say that.”
“And I’ve got doctors in my face all day telling me what happened in Wyoming was because of the junk or because I had a schizo break. I dream about—” I almost said him. “I dream about it, though.” I hurried to add, “Not dreams like before. I’m getting better, I am. These are just dreams. But they’re real. I remember everything. And then I wake up and—and they’re making me think I’m crazy.” I squeezed my eyes shut tighter; I could hear my voice thinning. “Please?”
Nothing.
Then, his chair squeaked across the vinyl.
When I opened my eyes, he was waiting for me: the tiniest glint of red in his hair, the eyes like watercolors, a jawline like a fucking X-Acto knife.
“Lean over so nobody else sees.”
Heads together, we bent over his cupped hands. He didn’t close his eyes. He didn’t breathe differently. He didn’t look like he was concentrating. He was just Jim.