Idon’t know what to say. Luke apparently doesn’t either. The silence descends again. I keep my eyes fixed on his feet, which stay at a standstill for the longest time. Then they move. Stand up and shuffle away. I bite down hard on the inside of my mouth. Harder and harder, until my eyes fill with salt water and I can taste blood, but the pain I feel comes from my stomach. A tortured twist that I want to push on until it goes away. I keep my head down, watch the empty space on the floor.
I scrunch my eyes shut and when I force them open, Luke’s feet have reappeared, facing me, just inches away. I catch a breath, keep it trapped in my windpipe. He crouches, and, very slowly, like a rock sailing through space, his fist glides towards me, manoeuvres its way past the blonde curtain, and hovers in mid-air, just above my knees, right under my nose.
U OK? It’s written on the back of his hand in big black letters.
It’s possible I began this sprint before the starting pistol sounded.
My head snaps up and my eyes land on his impossibly adorable frown, his hundred-watt smile turned upside down. I want to coo like you do when you see pictures of baby bunnies snuggling fluffy kittens. Instead, I nod, my dropped jaw flopping around.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’
‘No.’ I don’t shout, but I want to. His apology is beyond unnecessary. I hate that he’s feeling guilty for trying to help. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’ I consider elaborating but then bail, decide he’s probably consumed enough craziness for one day.
There will always be an excuse.
I’m not sure exactly what he saw. I study his face, try to figure it out. I don’t remember what I did, how bad it got. That happens sometimes; panic attacks have a tendency to suck away moments of my memory. I run a mental check. My throat isn’t grainy like it gets when vocal tics put in an appearance, so hopefully I didn’t make any starving-zombie sounds. My shoulders ache, which means there was probably some intense jerking around.
The good news is there’s no drool on my shirt, so at the very least I remembered to swallow. Sarcastic high fives. It gets hard to look at him, and my chin starts to dip again.
‘I’m so embarrassed.’ I don’t know what else to say. I wish he would fill the room with words so I don’t have to.
‘You’ve got nothing to be embarrassed about.’
Okay. I wish he would fill the room with words that are true.
‘I really wish you hadn’t seen that. I didn’t want you to see me all freaking out, looking like I’m being electrocuted or something.’ I sniff, scrub stray tears off my cheeks with the sleeve of my sweater. I’m tragic, an unkempt gravestone – I’m what a sorrowful Shakespeare sonnet would look like in human form.
‘You’ve been trying to keep this a secret?’ Luke asks carefully, testing his weight on my mind with only the tips of his toes.
‘No. Maybe. I mean . . . yes. I did. I have. I was . . .’ Everything seems so complicated, like a Rubik’s cube with twenty-six sides. No matter how much my mind turns over, my explanations won’t make any sense. It’s too much; there are too many facets.
‘What if . . .’ Luke sits back down in his chair. ‘What if I told you I’ve seen this happen to you before?’
He’s joking, being ironic. I can’t figure out how exactly, but there’s a punchline coming.
‘I’d tell you it was a case of mistaken identity.’ Knuckle meets teeth, and I start to chew, because although what he just told me is improbable, he’s looking kind of serious.
‘I have a confession to make,’ he says, hissing a note through his teeth like he’s just been nipped under the arm.
Is this the irony? Is he about to fess up to being the serial killer/stalker/maniacal clown with a cleaver my mind wanted me to believe he was? He must see the look of horror wash over my face, note my features being pulled into a Munch-esque composition.
‘Wait.’ Luke chokes out a nervous laugh. ‘That sounded a lot less creepy inside my head. Let me explain. Remember the day I moved in?’ he asks, shifting to the edge of his seat.
That day. That day was a Monday, a doctor’s-appointment day. I remember labelled boxes, his boxes. I remember the blackbird bouncing on my windowsill. I remember the stack of books that left me feeling out of sorts.
‘I saw you having a hard time getting across the grass to your car.’ He whispers it, like he’s telling me secrets.
‘You saw that?’
He turns a slight shade of pink, rubs the back of his neck, and stares out of the kitchen window.
‘I wasn’t spying.’ For a moment he looks ten years younger. ‘I was hoping to get your attention. You see, I thought we were flirting.’
‘Hang on a second.’ I’m confused. It’s like being introduced to Advanced Calculus all over again. ‘You mistook an anxiety attack for flirting? How?’ Trying to figure out which part of my harpooned-squid impression could be considered anything other than tragic.
‘No. It was before that, by the window. When you waved at me.’
Maybe he gets high. I wonder if he sparked up before he came over here. A bong for breakfast. If that’s the case, he needs to leave. I’m afraid of all common-sense inhibitors.
‘I never waved at you.’
‘Yes, you did.’
‘No. I didn’t.’
‘You did. I was carrying a box to my bedroom. You knocked on the window and then waved at me.’
The memory crashes into me like a runaway train, almost knocking me off my feet. That damn blackbird.
‘You remember,’ Luke says. He must see the recognition flash across my face. Smiling, all smug, he sits back in his chair, folds his arms across his chest. Oh, breaking this to him is going to be sweeter than cherry pie.
‘Um, sorry to burst your bubble there, Romeo, but I wasn’t waving at you,’ I tell him.
‘Yes . . . you were.’ But he’s not so sure any more. ‘Weren’t you?’
I shake my head.
‘Then who?’
A wicked smile pulls at my lips. Luke smiles too. ‘I was having a bad day, and there was this bird bobbing around on my windowsill outside. I knocked on the glass to scare it away—’
‘You were waving at a bird?’
‘Exactly,’ I say, working hard to stifle a giggle. He laughs and my knees go a good kind of weak.
‘Well, this is awkward. Again.’
‘Is that why you came over to introduce yourself?’ Anxiety is a million miles away as I flop back down on to my chair. Elbows planted on the table, chin resting in my hands. It’s like we’re old friends having a good gossip. He leans on the table too, folds his arms in front of him, wincing and groaning, before falling forwards and burying his face in them.
‘Yes. Of course it is. There you were, this cute girl waving at me. There was no way I was going to just ignore you.’ His words are muffled.
We’re both laughing. This moment right here, this is the best normal moment I’ve had in the past four years. I want to put it in a box and keep it for ever.
‘Hey.’ He turns his head to look at me. The light pouring into the kitchen catches his eyes and makes them flash bright green. My heart squeezes. ‘Are you afraid of going outside?’ All good things must come to an end. But I guess rarity is what makes a perfect moment perfect.
My turn to fold my arms, fall forwards, and bury my face.
The word yes is so small and simple. I can say it in four different languages – including French. After mastering Mom when I was a baby, yes was the second thing I learnt how to say. But right now, I’ve forgotten how, and all I can do is nod.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says.
‘What for?’
‘I don’t know. I mean, I’ve watched you go through that twice now. It looks painful and exhausting. It’s not nice to see someone suffer so much, you know?’
The general populace is compassionate. Maybe that’s not quite the bullshit statement I first thought it was. I turn my face to look at him. He throws a soft smile my way; I catch it and smile back.
‘You don’t like being touched?’
I shake my head. Pick at a scab on my wrist.
‘But you’re okay if your mom touches you?’ There is no accusation in his tone. At all. His curiosity is just taking a gentle stroll around the mysterious workings of my mind, but guilt gurgles in my stomach anyway. It sounds awful, like I’ve concluded he’s going to hurt me or something.
‘It’s not you. It’s about feeling safe,’ I tell him. Hives and concentrated patches of heat are blistering on my body. ‘I mean, I guess it’s about you a little bit . . . or anyone I don’t know. It’s confusing . . . complicated.’ It’s like trying to talk underwater; nothing coming out of my mouth sounds like it should. ‘We’re still working on figuring it out.’
‘Norah.’ Luke’s hands go up. ‘It’s okay. Am I grilling you too much?’
‘No. It’s just, my head works so fast sometimes. I want to explain it, but most of the time I don’t understand it.’
‘You’re shaking a little,’ he says, looking at my hands. I retract them, pull them back up into my sweater sleeves, and tuck them underneath my knees. ‘I know this is tough to talk about, but will you let me know if there’s anything else you’re afraid of? I don’t want to scare you again.’ His voice is so soft, you’d think he was reading me a bedtime story. I consider offering him a list then remember he has a life to get back to.
‘Everything,’ I confess in a whisper. ‘I’m afraid of everything.’
He looks so loaded with sympathy there’s a real danger of him joining me for a dip in my ice-cold pool of depression.
‘You know what scares me?’ he says, sitting up suddenly. Something in the air shifts. His voice is light. It makes the sombre fog scatter.
‘What?’
‘Spiders. Not the small ones.’ He doesn’t quite beat his pulsing pectorals. ‘The big ones. Anything equal to or more than the span of an Oreo.’ He shudders. ‘I can’t handle them.’
This guy makes me smile so easily. I have to wonder if his cologne is mixed with laughing gas.
We sit at the table until nine-thirty. Talking nonsense about movies and music. He likes horror, like me, and if anybody asks, he listens to all the latest bands, but secretly, his heart belongs to jazz. He talks about musicians I’ve never even heard of and does a pretty convincing playing-the-saxophone impression. He prefers comics to books, and when he graduates from high school he wants to study fine art.
It’s weird. I know he goes out, has friends, throws banging parties and the whole school shows up, but his mouth moves at lightning speed, like he hasn’t spoken to a single soul in more than a million years.
‘I gotta go,’ he says, glancing at the retro Casio on his wrist. ‘Need to drop my phone at the store before school starts, see if they can fix it. I might not be able to text for a while. Just so you know. I don’t want you to think I’m ignoring you.’
I wasn’t thinking that – not until he said it, anyway. Doubt sneaks up behind me like some horny dude at a disco, its arm snaking around my waist, wrapping me in its cruel embrace.
I wonder if I’m ever going to see him again. The last hour and a half rolls through my head; everything I’ve said, done, is highlighted. I’m looking for anything that might have put him off coming over again. All of it, I conclude. Doubt hugs me tighter.
‘We’ll chat soon, though,’ Luke tells me. But all I can focus on is the lack of a specific date. When is soon? My mind is pushing the idea that soon is never. Is his phone even broken? My heart splinters, but I refuse to let the anguish creep into my face. I stand up, swallow down all the feelings. They taste like ash and scratch like nails.
‘Catch you later,’ he says, signing off with a half-wave.
‘Bye,’ I tell him. And with that, he leaves.
I’m joined in the kitchen a few moments later by Mom. She’s carrying a tray of scrawny, scrunched-up seedlings. They’re exhausted, like the world was too much for their fragile little frames so they went to sleep instead. I can relate.
‘I like him,’ Mom says, squirting the plant graveyard with some of her ‘special mixture’. I’m not sure what she puts in it, but it gives her dying flowers a new lease of life. For another week, anyway.
I wonder if it would be safe for me to use in the shower.
I don’t respond to her Luke comment. I’m too busy pondering whether or not I’m going to see him again.
‘Are you okay?’ she asks.
‘I’m fine,’ I reply, fixing a plastic smile on my face. ‘I’m going to go and read for a bit.’
I skip to my bedroom and turn into a troll the minute I close the door. My shoulders slump forward and my steps get heavy. I thump down on to my mattress, grab my laptop instead of a book. I’m not really sure why, but I scan through my search history and click on one of the kissing videos. Instead of the cute couple wearing matching sweaters and strolling through an auburn wilderness, I see me and Luke. There are none of my issues stacked up between us, stopping him from clasping my hand.
I spend the rest of the afternoon reading Plath and wondering if Mom will let me paint my bedroom black.