What The House Forgot

The Consistency of the Unconscious

During lunch Victor was finally able to interrogate his new friend, though doing so remained drumming up the confidence to interrupt. Rosie had taken a very professional position, treating this brief lunch period as an opportunity to lecture about each and every one of their new classmates. It was a strange lunch room, quite old and remarkably English in construction. The dining hall represented the whole of the building, old and perhaps used as a convent before the students were ushered in. There were long wooden tables stretched across the tile floor, with exposed brick walls framing large and impressive stained glass. It was odd, the relationship between the décor and the food. One would expect something a bit more edible when enjoying such fantastic architecture.
"And there's Wilson, see him there? With the red hair?" Rosie pointed with her fork, still speared with two green beans crossed like skis upon the prongs. Victor gave a wary glance, exhausted from all of these one way introductions. They were sitting alone at the end of a long table, though by the way the rest of the students were avoiding them, this might have been the trend for Rosie Watson. She certainly didn't have to go out of her way to be left alone.
"Cool," Victor muttered with half a smile.
"You don't seem entertained," Rosie complained. "You'll need to know all this! All of these people!"
"Perhaps they could do me the honor of introducing themselves, when the time comes." "All you'll get from them is ridicule. As soon as they find out you're American they'll give you Hell," Rosie promised, finally chomping down on the soggy vegetables and making a gagging motion, perhaps overemphasizing her disgust with the food. Victor, who was used to American school lunches, found it no worse than usual.
"Oh well. I don't want to stay here long, anyway," Victor admitted with a grumble. "I'm running away as soon as I have enough money for airfare."
"How rebellious. What then, huh? You don't seem like the type of kid who could make it in the real world," Rosie pointed out.
"I don't have to. I'll just go to John's house. I'll go back to my old school, with my old friends."
"John. Your friend from back home?" Rosie presumed. Victor nodded mournfully, casting a side eye to the empty space on the bench next to him. He wished it might be filled with a familiar form. This school wouldn't seem half as threatening if he had a friend at his side. Though Rosie, however strange, seemed to be the best alternative.
"It's a weird coincidence, I guess," Rosie offered. "My father's name was John."
"Well it's a popular first name," Victor muttered, trying to keep his heart from leaping into his throat and demanding to know more. John Watson? Could it really be that there would be two in his life? Senior and junior, perhaps? One and two?
"He's gone," Rosie muttered, ducking her head deeper into her lunch tray and beginning a staring contest with her carton of milk. For a moment there was a vulnerability, a quick flash of emptiness behind the heavy eyeliner. Victor felt a stab of regret, wondering just how mindless he had to be when he continually brought up the name of her father.
"I'm sorry, I didn't realize," Victor whispered, suddenly remembering and understanding the scene on the sidewalk. Well of course she'd have an adverse reaction!
"How could you have?" Rosie scoffed. "It's not like it matters, anyway. He died when I was just a kid. I don't remember him at all."
"I guess that helps," Victor muttered. Rosie gave a short shrug, as if she was forced to agree with anything at this moment in time. Perhaps she didn't even hear what he said. Perhaps she just acted robotically, forced to seem compliant just as soon as she bore her deepest secret. For a long while there was silence, and Victor found it difficult to make the attempt at eating. Suddenly his stomach had shut down, restricted by his guilt. He found himself swallowing more statements of remorse than any morsel of food, occasionally offering a glance to his new friend to make sure her eyeliner was not beginning to smear down her face as she began to cry.
"What's America like?" Rosie wondered, perhaps shoving aside her despair in an attempt to begin a more normal conversation. In retrospect, she didn't seem as emotional as Victor would have expected. The subject of her dead father seemed to be a numb pain, perhaps one that she had learned to deal with over time. It was something that could be small talk, the first tidbit of 'getting to know you' conversation that she could use to evoke sympathy. She moved on quite well. Better than Victor, who was hosting a myriad of strange pains within his heart and head. At first they had been psychosomatic, perhaps his empathy overemphasizing itself as he tried to take on Rosie's pains himself. Though at the moment his head suddenly throbbed, feeling as if his forehead had been cut open and his skull dismantled. Victor winced, though pushed it aside. He made a note to ask for an Advil by the time the lunch hour was over.
"America is better than this," Victor admitted quickly. He wasn't sure if he was so certain about that fact, though for the sake of his pride he felt the need to defend his country. No matter how trashy.
"That's a hard sell," Rosie sighed. "I always thought America was covered in garbage and filled with racists."
"It's uh...we'll you're not too far off, I guess. But there are redeemable sections. Redeemable people."
"Are you one of them?"
"I'd like to think so," Victor muttered, his eyebrows crinkling as he tried to sound humble. Rosie merely chuckled, flicking some more of her food around on her plastic plate. As of now it seemed to become an art project, something to play with, not to eat. Victor winced, messaging the front of his skull in an effort to dull the pain that had suddenly erupted. It was a strange, violent feeling. A pain so intense it made his stomach churn, though a pain so sudden that he had to discredit it as a passing phase. Certainly his head was just acting up, a sudden and accidental flare of nerves that couldn't decide for themselves when it was the right time to fire.
"Are you alright?" Rosie wondered, finally noticing Victor's agony as he ducked his head upon the table, shielding his eyes from the light of the stained glass windows as if the colors had anything to do with his pain.
"I'm...I don't know," Victor admitted with a grumble, hitting his forehead audibly against the wooden table. He held his skull within his clenched fingernails. "Do you have an aspirin?"
"I don't, but the nurse might!" She exclaimed, now nearly risen to her feet on the other side of the table. They were drawing attention now; certainly the strange, flailing American was bound to go against the status quo.
"Rosie?" asked an unfamiliar voice from above. A voice that appeared suddenly, almost as soon as Victor had collapsed, as if the stranger's proximity had something to do with his pain. With that single word, that damning octave, the headache intensified. It now felt as if he had been stabbed through the skull, or perhaps shot at point blank range. Victor closed his eyes tight; he didn't feel the need to acknowledge their new visitor and his poor timing.
"Not the time, Sherlock. What is it now?" Rosie snarled. The newcomer huffed, a deep and dissatisfied noise that seemed to erupt from Victor's parted lips as well. It was a strange proximity, a strange voice to hear. It was a very familiar tone of voice, something Victor heard in a dream, or perhaps as a second voice of narration within his head. The boy, wherever he stood, was prompting the hairs on the back of Victor's neck to stand up. Goosebumps erupted upon his skin, the sort that begin to panic as soon as someone invaded his personal space. While Victor doubted this newcomer was so close as to activate this intimate response, it would seem as though Victor's body was reacting prematurely. As if, somehow, it suspected that gap to shrink between them. It was preparing itself for touch.
"Invitation, of course. For this weekend," there was a crumple of paper, as if a pamphlet was begin passed across Victor's ducked and hidden head.
"Thanks, Sherlock." Rosie's voice sounded strained, as if she was much too preoccupied with Victor's situation to give proper attention to this newcomer. This Sherlock. "Can Victor come too?"
"Depends," Sherlock sighed.
"On what?" Rosie snapped.
"On what he looks like under those arms," Sherlock muttered. Victor felt a tap, or perhaps imagined one, so softly against the top of his head. A mere brush of fingers across his freshly cut hair, a touch so soft yet so intimate that his body began to melt along the wooden table. It must have been the brush of a fingernail against a single strand of hair, something so noninvasive that Rosie might not have noticed the contact at all. And yet, in an instant, Victor's pain subsided. His head cleared, as if a fog had been sucked out of his skull, absorbed through the touch of Sherlock. He breathed a heavy breath, repositioning his head in his hands, pulling his embedded fingernails out of his skin and rising slowly into a normal sitting position. By the time Victor recollected himself the visitor was gone. Though, when turning back to observe the crowd, Victor caught a glimpse of an elegant retreating back. A mere shadow, a shape among the crowd, with black curls displayed over the general population with an extra inch or two of proud height. A figure so majestic it nearly stopped his heart. A figure so familiar Victor almost called out in recognition.