“That’s the tree of life,” Lenny’s art teacher had said. I hadn’t realised he was standing right next to me.
“Oh.”
He pointed to something above the tree. “See those snakes over there?”
I looked in the direction he was pointed – two snakes were rising out of the tree, coiled in a double helix.
“Yeah,” I said.
“That represents the human mind. The left snake is the left side of your brain, and the right snake the right side. Both together in harmony create the human. It’s a symbol of duality.”
I stared at the carving.
“There’s an empty space in the middle.”
He was looking at it too.
“That space is for your soul.”
And I had said, “But it’s empty.”
And he had smiled and said, “It’s supposed to be.”
Then Lenny was calling me from somewhere else and I went to him just to get him to stop yelling in a sacred place. When I turned back his art teacher was still looking at the carving.
I’m thinking about it now and I don’t know why. I keep remembering his voice and the way he said it’s supposed to be, and I wonder if he would have maybe told me more if stupid Lenny hadn’t called me away. I remember those snakes, coiled perfectly, tongues out of their mouths, and the smooth, empty space between their bodies, and I touch my stomach, trying to feel that empty space, but it’s not there, all I feel is a solid wall of flesh and under that flesh my blood and bones and my organs and veins and capillaries and nerves and dendrites and synapses and I wonder where all that emptiness goes. I wonder if it even exists.
“Evianna?”
There’s a voice. I turn around and I see Dexter standing in the doorway of the balcony, blinking through the smoke that’s clouding his vision but he doesn’t know it. For a moment I don’t know what to say, should I say yes? or hello or Dexter?
“Yeah?”
He takes a step forward into the balcony. His hand waves in front of his face.
“You’re…you’re smoking.”
I look down at the cigarette in my hand.
“Guess I am.”
I wonder what he’s going to do. He sits down on the chair next to mine, props his feet up on the railing. I just watch, a bit of ash from my cigarette falling onto my thigh. I brush it off.
He doesn’t say anything.
“Did I wake you up?” I ask.
“No,” he says. “I can’t sleep through the night.”
“Oh.” I pause. “Neither can I.”
He turns his head slightly in my direction.
“What happened to you?”
I discard my cigarette. It doesn’t really interest me now.
“What do you mean?”
“You were crying,” he says. “And my sister was – I don’t know, I don’t know what she was doing, but she was helping you. I’ve never heard anyone cry like that before.”
I look away from him, cross my ankles.
“I don’t know what happened.”
I look back at him and he’s nodding like he understands. Then he leans his head back, closes his eyes.
“Your beard is growing back out,” I tell him.
“I know. Lola will make me shave it again next week when she comes over.”
“Why?”
He shrugs. “She thinks I can’t take care of myself.”
There’s silence for a second.
“I like how you talk,” I tell him.
“What do you mean?”
“As if you’ve known me for a long time.”
More silence.
“I didn’t know I talk like that.”
“You do.”
He makes a noise sort of like a chuckle.
“Good to know.”
I like that noise. I think I like him too. I like the way he can’t see me the most. I feel safe like this, safer, safest. It reminds me of some weird experiment I read about long ago – something about a cat and a box, but I can’t remember it because I can’t remember anything right now. But I just feel safe when he can’t see me. He can talk to me and he can hear me. Maybe he likes me too. I don’t know.
We don’t talk much. I get more cigarettes and he has a few. After a while he says that he’s tired, I say that I am too. He offers to sleep on the couch but I say no. We both end up on opposite ends of his bed, in his bedroom. He sleeps with his back to me and I sleep with my back to the floor. I fall asleep staring at the shape his shoulders make, like a bold rock edifice against the setting sun in a desert sky.
*
t w e l v e - 12.00
Start from the beginning
