I dream.

I dream and he’s crying. His tears are cold.

He’s crying because he’s not with me. He’s barefoot and he’s shaved his head. He’s dirty.

No more curls.

I dream that he dreams that he’s ripping the pages out of a beat up text book and turning back time to stick me with bandages instead of scars. But he doesn’t really dream that. His are selfish dreams of loving me.

His dreams are of suicide.

---

I woke up crying and briefly wondered what jostled me from sleep. My eyes were crusty and I couldn’t open them. I could hear someone shifting their feet in the doorway but I kept my back to whoever it was. Something started buzzing against the back of my thigh. I groped around under the covers and figured James was already awake ‘cause I was wrapped up in all of his blankets.

“Yeah?” I rumbled into the phone and tried not to wince at the sharp pain in my tongue and the rawness of my voice.

“Nez?” Teagan asked as though unsure and my heart jerked at his voice. It was full of concern and something I knew wasn’t love but only because it hadn’t had enough time.

“I love it when you say my name,” I said, too tired to smile.

“What? You mean when I say Ebenezer?” he asked with a touch of confusion.

“No. Nez.”

“Yeah?” there was genuine surprise and warmth in his voice. It curled around me and settled into my bones. “What makes you like the nickname Nez so much that you’ve decided to start calling it your real one?” I knew he was teasing but I decided to give him a serious answer.

“The way you say it makes me feel like I’m the only person you’re thinking of. It makes me feel like I’ve got all of your attention and as though I’ve got it for good. I like feeling that. I like being reminded of that feeling every time someone says Nez.”

He was silent for a moment and I wondered if I had gone too far.

“I need to see you,” his reply was unexpected and abrupt. It was filled with desire.

“What?” I must have sounded shocked because he instantly began to stutter and apologize.

“No—not that way! I mean, I feel like we’ve really got something here. I just—I keep imagining; if it’s this good on the phone, how much better will it be in real life? I want—I want to be able to hold your hand again or take you sledding or just see you smile. Maybe all three.”

“Definitely all three,” I laughed and he let out a chuckle.

“I’m glad you’re as into this as me. Whatever this is.”

“Mmm,” I hummed. My stomach grumbled. “Teagan, I’m kinda hungry ‘cause I haven’t eaten breakfast yet. I’ll call you back and we can make plans for tonight—if the weather isn’t terrible anyway.”

A thought hit me.

“Shit! School?”

Teagan just laughed.

“Cancelled again ‘cause the power’s out. I checked this morning.”

“Stalker,” I accused with a smile.

“Only ‘cause you’re worth stalking,” he stated. My heart fluttered a bit and the squeezing sensation in my chest made me feel ridiculous. My stomach grumbled again.

“Need food,” I groaned. He laughed.

“Alright. Call me back soon, okay?”

“Of course, and Teagan?”

“Yes?”

“You make me think I’m falling for you,” I blurted and hung up, embarrassed, before he could reply. I sighed and rubbed my eyes. Without Teagan’s voice, last night came rushing back. I rolled over to get out of bed.

He was standing in the doorway with a face full of cold pain. It was the kind that left cracks in his expression. It split his eyes the same way the tape on his nose split his face.

“You were watching me on Monday, I know you were. Now you won’t even look at me.”

“Please. Go away.”

His hair was red in the edges of my vision.

“I thought—I thought I would be happy. I thought the day you stopped watching me would be the day we could stop hurting each other. I thought that it’d be easy to forget. I thought we could move on. But I can’t. I can’t forget what I did to you. I know I’m in control now. I know I would never hurt someone like that ever again but I hate how it took breaking you to get it. Jesus Ebs, I feel sick inside when someone so much as yells.”

“Please. Stop,” I whispered. He stepped back heavily and covered his eyes with his hand. I knew he was remembering a time he’d heard me plead the same words before.

“I’m sorry. For everything,” his voice was trembling and I saw the way sorrow caught on his adams apple and weighed it down.

“Stop,” I repeated, wishing I could push my fingers in my ears and hum to make him disappear.

“I can’t. I can’t stop loving you.”

My heart hurt so much with those words that I knew I loved him too. I hated myself for it. I hated that I could love the person who broke me.

The hate bled out into my voice.

“Grin, If you love me you’ll fucking stop.”

He hissed as though slapped. The hand covering his eyes jerked to his side and I saw it shaking the way I saw his world shaking. The tremors in his hand grew and spread to the rest of his body and the noises his throat made were filled with more water than air. For a moment I was afraid he was going to drown but then he surfaced and everything about him turned stiff and still.

Stop.

“Okay,” he said and turned away without a glance back. His voice gave me chills and when he stepped into his room across the hall a wooden casket flashed familiar at me from one of the corners.

The image of that casket stuck to the backs of my eyelids and hurt me almost as much as he had. When I closed my eyes I was there again. I was in the dark with him, in the casket across the hall for that stupid school project. Yes, I was where my troubles first began.

I abruptly decided I was going to sleep today away and forced myself into the automatic mode I knew was necessary for me to keep my sanity. Under this spell of numbness Ellen agreed to take me home after I begged for my own bed. When I said goodbye, James gave me a kiss on the cheek that I didn’t feel while Angelique and Pat were nowhere to be seen. Grin didn’t stare out his window as we drove away. I knew because I checked and regretted it. It was hard to see past the tree that scraped against his window but it looked dark, cold and lifeless. It was gaping open and empty. Somehow, someway, I felt like Ellen knew everything was my fault. She dropped me off without a word, the wrinkles around her eyes carved by the same razor he had used as an escape.

Teagan called as I trudged into my parent’s house but I ignored it. When it stopped buzzing I silenced it. Mum tried to intercept me but I brushed past her and went straight to my room, leaving the door closed for good, cold metal lock behind me. I fell into my bed and stumbled my way into a much needed sleep.

---

Voices come in through the walls and we’re waiting for the signal.

It’s hot, dark and my heart is beating fast. We’re inside our tomb-coffin creation of a casket. I’m wrapped in strips of white and he’s in nothing but bands around his wrist and a wrap around his waist. Marie and Shelly, our partners, made them while we were making the coffin. Shelly’s got the hugest crush on Grin and I have to hand it to her. She took advantage of ‘measuring him’ and made the wrap around his waist way too snug. I couldn’t stop laughing when he first put it on. It doesn’t cover much.

“So you ready to strut your stuff?” I tease and can smell a faint trace of his sweating skin. We’re packed in here pretty tight. He doesn’t laugh or take the bait like I thought he would.

“Uh, duh! I don’t have anything to be ashamed of. Seriously. This is going to be the sickest project ever. We’re going to make it into the pages of Blue Ridge history as the makers of the Best Freshman World History project ever!

“Aaaand,” he drags it out, “you said I could have the coffin after so it’s totally worth it.”

His voice is low and a shot of something cool and irritating shoots from my ear to the back of my neck. It tickles and I go to move my head but end up bumping noses with him. He hisses in a breath of the heavy air and suddenly something isn’t right. His breathing is harsh. It comes out in sporadic bursts and suddenly mine’s gotten faster too. I don’t know how we were packed in here so close before without it being awkward. I try to move away but my shifting just makes him grunt.

I flush all over and it’s a foreign feeling.

I don’t know what’s happening. All I know is that I’m suddenly claustrophobic, but it’s not the normal kind. It’s scary in a different way.

There’s a subtle knock on the door. Neither of us moves.

The knock comes again, louder this time. My mind stops blanking and I remember the project. I throw myself out and start to scream and moan while flailing my limbs around jerkily. All the girls, and a few of the boys, in the class scream and then start to titter at my mummy antics.

I know my cheeks are warm and I’m thankful it’s hidden behind my wrappings. Shelly turns on some exotic sounding music.

When Grin emerges and starts to do interpretive dances, dressed in his revealing wrap, ridiculous wig, eyeliner, green eye shadow and his taped on Pharos’ goatee, everyone starts to laugh themselves into oblivion. ‘Best Freshman World History project ever,’ their eyes shout with glee.

As I move to stand next to Shelly and Marie our teacher starts to tell Grin that he needn’t finish his dance. She tells him, ‘that’s quite enough, thank you.’ I watch his eyes but they don’t see me. I frown and the more I think about what just happened, the more it seems to elude me. All I know is that something just changed.

---

“Grin? Grin?” My heart is pounding in the empty house and my fears are confirmed when I see the bathroom door shut, light shining out the bottom. In my haste I start to pound on the door but there is no reply. I tear into my pockets for my cell and dial 911, accidentally dropping it when I hear something move in the bathroom. My fingers scramble along the wood.

“Grin!”

I try the doorknob, expecting it to be locked. It opens despite the slick of my hands and when the bathroom light spills out into the hallway I have to fight the urge to throw up.

Weak in the knees I sink to the floor and pick up my cell with shaking hands.

As he pleads with me to let him die the only words I can produce are the ones that make up his address.

---

“Ebs. God Ebs. I wish I could have been there. I’m so glad you found him,” Pat is crying and angry and full of conflict. He wraps around me tight and his face is moist through my shirt. “Why’d he do it? Why’d the little fucker do it?”

I want to answer but I can’t.

Me.

“Where is everyone else?” I ask and he sighs before pulling away.

“My gramps down in Florida died last night. We didn’t realize because we were all here.”

“I’m sorry. That must be hard,” I say and hate how empty the words are. “Can I go in?”

“Oh, yeah,” his eyes drop to the floor. “Uh, if you’re going to stay with him for a while I’m going to go home for a bit. Call me when you’re leaving.”

“Of course,” I reply. He leaves, shoes silent against the shining tiles and I’m alone with the pain, the fear and the image of him on the tiled bathroom floor. I wish someone else had found him. I wish they wouldn’t have let him stay home instead of going out to eat. If they hadn’t maybe he wouldn’t have done it.

Is it their fault?

Maybe.

No.

He’s lying in his hospital bed, lethargically unconscious. There are bandages all up and down his arms. Looking at him brings heat to the backs of my eyes and a ferocity crashes into me. I’ll do anything to keep him alive. I’ll promise him anything and everything. I’ll promise him he can have more of me, all of me, so long as I never again have to see him bleeding his life away. Maybe my kisses aren’t enough to keep him from death. Maybe he needs more and it terrifies me but his death terrifies me more than the more he needs. God, my brain hurts.

Is it my fault?

Is it?

Each step closer to his bed makes my heart swell painfully in my chest. I stand over him and feel my face twist up in anger. I clench my hands.

“You promised you asshole! You fucking promised me you wouldn’t do this anymore!” I accuse with a harsh rasp, wishing I could strangle him.

My hands won’t unfurl.

His eyes flit from side to side and on impulse I sneak an angry kiss to his mouth. It doesn’t feel rotten and tainted like it usually does. I could kiss him like this forever but my heart pounds with the fear of the promise exchange I know he will accept when he wakes. My body for his life. The deal before, made in the grass on a fall day, it isn’t enough anymore.

Wondering and grasping onto the idea in my desperation, I crawl on top of him, careful not to mess with the IV in his arm. I start touching him the way he always says he wants me to. I squeeze my eyes shut and promise that I’ll do anything to keep him alive, forever and always, until we can die together. I push the thin sheet off of him and reach under his hospital gown with shaking hands.

“Please Grin. Please wake up. If you promise to stay alive I’ll promise to give you whatever you want,” I’m crying into his mouth and his lips are slack against mine. “You can fuck me, Grin. I know you want to. Just wake up, okay?”

I lean back and bite my knuckles. I can feel my pulse, hot on the underside of my jaw. He doesn’t move.

He wakes up three hours later while I’m sleeping in a chair beside his bed. I know because he kisses me awake and it’s perfect until he grabs my hand and wraps it around his erection. His hand covers mine and it forces me to bring him to completion and finally back to life.

“You promised and I heard you,” he says as he kisses away my tears. His words hang heavy in the air the way bodies hang from a noose.

“You promised.”

---

He is inside of me. Taking, taking, taking on top of his brother’s bed. Smearing red on my thighs. Please. Stop.

“I love you. You promised.”

He’s crying and his teeth are clenched and I’m used up like the discarded condom he never bothered to put on. Like the shoes he almost didn’t take off. He kisses me hard but I can’t do anything but live in the pain and numbness creeping over me.

It hurts.

He doesn’t take very long and that hurts too somehow, even though it means an end to the immediate physical anguish. But it’s starting to hurt less as the blackness takes over. He’s looking down at me saying he loves me he loves me and it’s dark the way his lips move over my erection and the way it feels so good but I can’t feel it because the timing of my nerves is all wrong. When he finishes and sees the sheets and looks at me it’s dark the way his eyes are wide with fear and terror and guilt under the rapidly disappearing desire.

“Ebs,” his realization comes out high and thin and he tries to reach me but all I do is stare. His fingers are frightened bumblebees scratching around the bandages on his wrists.

Oh the horror. Oh the abject horror I can see in his eyes. I want to laugh for a split second, broken and insane but then he’s gone and I’m slipping myself into a pair of boxers and shoes. I open the window but can’t get out because the pain is so bad. I open the closet and curl up until the world consists of me and the comforting smell of his brother’s cedar hangars.

---

Dreaming again.

I stand alone in the midst of the piles of refuse and watch the trees burn. The flames leap up and in them I watch him dragging me away from the fireplace into Pat’s room. I see the love and the fear and the insanity bleeding through the air like miasma. His voice haunts me and I want to look around. I want to see where it’s coming from, but I can’t take my eyes from the all-devouring red.

“Christmas trees are such a waste of resources.”

We are perfect for each other. Ebenezer Scrooge and the Grinch. I dream about our deaths. In our past, present and future we die together, always and forever. There is no other way for it to be.

“I mean, it takes how many years to grow a tree?”

The image in the flames changes and he’s kissing the tips of my fingers. He’s saying something about how he’s loved me since he knew love. How his love for me grew and how its roots wrapped around him and sucked him dry.

“And then people chop it down so they can have it in their house for one twelfth of a year.”

He’s carrying an axe in his branches and he’s chopping himself down. Ruddy rivers run from the lines in his trunk.

“Think of the effort it takes to get those trees from here to those people in the city.”

He’s going to die someday. I will too. Together. But I don’t think there’s a city because the sky is all elements and Heaven’s just a myth we believe in so we can feel better about ceasing to exist.

“Think of all the shit those trees see and all the shit they let out when people throw them away after a month of being disconnected from their roots.”

We both know there’s so much bull in the air around New Year’s ‘cause of all the burning. All the things those trees soak up without their roots. All the shit that’s trapped that burns out and into the air we’re all breathing. There’s never a clean slate ‘cause everyone is breathing in the mistakes they’re trying to burn.

He and I are choking on it but he still loves me.

Blood and ashes, I love him even without the roots.

“I’m going to burn like the trees, Ebs. Will you watch?”

He nuzzles my neck and it makes my knees weak. I shake my head and he pulls away, suddenly stiff. Motionless again in the doorway and he’s stiff because he’s dead.

“Stop.”

“Okay.”

The phone rang. My eyes flew open in the dark and I knew what he had done because no call at one o’ clock in the morning is ever anything but heartbreaking.