"Silas, Skye dear, don't you two want to sit down?"
I was dragged back to my sobering reality when I heard my mom's voice echo from the kitchen. Skye and I both turned to see her walk out with the lasagna - its biologically hazardous levels of cheesiness contained in a ceramic baking dish that she set in the middle of the dining room table. Jason leaned forward.
"Looks incredible Ann. You know, you two better get over here before I demolish this thing." Jason exclaimed as he smirked towards our direction. "No joke, it's gonna be a blowout."
Skye glanced back towards me, the uneasy air of suspense having been broken by Jason's conceitedness.
"Let's... continue this later, ok?" Skye said, "I wanna eat, and I don't think discussing a dead man over the dinner table is real appetizing."
"Yeah, no." I agreed. "We can go to my bedroom after dinner or something."
Skye froze for a moment.
"Wow, that's forward of you." She snickered.
"I didn't mean it that way." I rubbed the skin on my nose as Skye giggled. "You've been up there, like, a thousand times, don't make it weird." She laughed harder as all the tension between us previously vanished.
"Ok, ok, sorry. It's just fun seeing you get all flustered."
"Yeah, I bet it is."
I walked with Skye across to the dining room, where my dad had sat down at the head of the table, already deep in conversation, while Jason proceeded to cram a giant piece of lasagna into his mouth, strings of cheese leading from his plate to the baking dish.
"Gosh, Ann." Jason said with a mouth dripping with tomato sauce. "What kinda cheese you used in this?"
"Oh, just Mozzarella and some American Cheese."
Fun fact! Did you know American cheese isn't actually legally classified as cheese? The FDA calls it "pasteurized processed American cheese food" because to be called cheese, you have to be at least fifty percent actual cheese (which, I'm sorry, but isn't that an extremely low bar?) Because of that, American cheese is forever relegated from its fellow dairy products as an abhorrent monster, devoid of the holy touch of god, and cursed to be forever called "cheese food." Which, in my eyes, is pretty metal.
We took our seats as my mom continued to hand out slices of scalding lasagna, and as Jason and my dad continued to talk about whatever was on their minds in the moment. Skye and I would once in a while take turns looking over at each other, almost as if we were waiting for the other to say or do something. However, it seemed like we both silently agreed to finish up our food as fast as possible, so we could be away from the adults and discuss middle aged dead men in piece.
After inhaling my third slice of lasagna, which contributed further to the burning of the roof of my mouth, I was all in all finished with dinner. The grownups took their time, conversing between bites, and portioning their food into endless fractions. Skye set down her silverware and butted into their discussion.
"Um, excuse me," She started. "Could me and Silas be excused from the dinner table?"
"Can you and Silas be excused?" Jason chuckled. "Does Silas know about this?"
"Silas knows very much about this." I spoke in third person.
"You two done with your food?" my dad asked.
We glanced towards each other, then back at him, tomato sauce running down both our chins."Uh-huh." Skye murmured.
"Mhm." I agreed.
My dad laughed, "Go ahead, you two."
"It's a shame, really." Jason started as we got up from our seats. "I was just getting to the part where, as a loving dad, I start gushing over what an amazing daughter you are and how I'm so lucky to have you, etcetera etcetera."
"Well, I think it's totally great that I'm getting up just in time to avoid that."
Jason snickered as he threw a disinterested hand towards Skye. We left as Jason began to talk about exactly what he said he'd talk about, and ran up the stairs to my bedroom.
I never really liked having people over to my room. I always felt like it was kind of a spotlight into my internal condition, a way for people to see how I was really doing. The clutter reflected that, all the soda cans, and clothes, and tissues of questionable origin. Skye didn't care though, or maybe it was that I didn't care if she cared, because after years of being close to each other, I already knew what she thought of me.
I collapsed on my office chair as Skye took a seat on the edge of my bed.
"So," I started. "You had that dream again too?"
She nodded. "Uh-huh." She pushed some of my clothes to the side. "That's totally not the reason I came here though. I'm sure it would've been like, a huge bummer if it was."
She stood up and walked towards me, pulled out a stool from under my desk and sat at my side, as she put her arms on my chair's arm rest.
"How've you been doing, Fletch?" She said suddenly. Fletch was her pet name for me - I never really liked it but after a while it just kind of stuck.
"How am I doing?" I parroted. I wondered why she was asking me in the first place. "Um, alright I guess."
"Fine... huh?" She murmured. "Well isn't that just dandy. Because personally Fletch? I feel like I'm about to lose it."
She suddenly got up from her stool and began to pace around my bedroom, rolling her head around in circles.
"Do you, um, wanna talk about it?" I asked her hesitantly.
"We have seven months of school left, dude. Not seven months left in the year. Seven months of school period. Seven more months until adulthood. Seven more months until we're forced into the real world. Seven more months left for us to figure out what we're going to do with our lives. Silas..."
She bounded back towards me and put her hands on my shoulders.
"Are you not absolutely terrified about the future, like I am? Because you should be." I was taken aback. "Skye, there's no way you're having a mid-life crisis when you're seventeen." "Well, I am, is there a problem with that?" She seemed irritated.
"Um, no?"
"So then help me out here!" She finished before taking her hands off me and flopping down with a thump on my bed.
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't yell at you." She muttered with her face in my blankets.
"It's ok, really." I somehow understood where she was coming from. In a way, I felt similar – I don't know how, but it felt like school had somehow conditioned us to get used to going to school. Like, to the point where we couldn't imagine a life without it.
"I guess I understand where you're coming from." I decided on that. "Honestly, I don't even know what I'm doing after high school either."
"Well, duh. You've never known." Ouch. "I thought I knew where I was going - what my path was. But things feel so blurry now. It's like I'm seeing my future through a pair of drunk goggles."
I fell silent, I wasn't sure what to say to that.
Skye began to lazily roll herself up in my bed sheets, making a sort of cocoon for herself. As she laid towards the edge of by bed, her hair poking out like the blunt of a giant human-sized cigar, she glanced upwards towards my bookshelf filled with nerdy theological stuff.
"...You like that stuff, huh?" She started. "...All that spiritual junk?"
"Yeah, I guess." I had taken up theology as a hobby, not because I was some good little Christian boy, but because I liked discovering how different cultures grappled with the idea of eternity, and possibly to try and find answers to my own suffering.
"Hey, Fletch?" Skye murmured.
"Yeah?" I responded.
"Um, could you..." she started anxiously. "Uh, take out that one book, right there – you see, that red one?"
She nodded upwards using her head, due to her arms being encased in a human-made cocoon, towards a book on the fourth shelf that jutted out from the others. It was bright red with an extended print size, and golden stripes that ran along the spine.
"Huh, the Dhammapada...?" That was a famous Buddhist text. "Sure, if you want."
I reached for the book and pulled it out from the shelf.
"Do you want it?" I asked.
"Um... could you read to me?" Her voice had become so small and fragile, as if she had regressed to some inner childlike state.
"Yeah." I sat myself down right next to her, as she rolled herself onto her side to face towards me. She looked miserable; her cheeks puffed up like some sort of hamster. I knew this side of Skye Miller. The Skye Miller that shuts down in times of stress - all mushy and vulnerable, wanting to be comforted by someone.
"Just a random page is fine." She muttered. "I just... want to listen to something." This was her coping mechanism, just like mine was letting my thoughts stew until they drive me mad. I knew how she felt. I opened the book about halfway to a point I had marked with a yellow sticky-note. There were highlights all over the page, made by a younger, slightly happier me years ago. I started at the top of the page.
"We live truly happily enough having no possessions ourselves," I read while straining my voice. "We will feed on joy like the gods of streaming light."
"...Like the gods of streaming light..." Skye mouthed.
I sat with her in silence for a moment. I could smell her perfume, a sweet rosy scent that filled the room and imprinted itself on everything she touched.
"My bed is seriously gonna smell like a flower shop tonight." I thought as I saw her despairing face poking out from her swarth of blankets. It looked like she was thinking about something.
"Would you like me to continue?" I asked.
"Gods, streaming light." She repeated. "Do you remember... the words branded on that dead guy's forehead?"
"Yeah," I recalled. "God doesn't like tattletales."
"What do you think that could've meant?" She asked.
"Um, well, maybe the guy who killed him was some sort of extreme religious nut." I said, "Maybe the dead guy caught him in the act of doing something not-so-good, but then the other guy used god as an excuse and went on to stab him like eight times."
"It's possible..." She muttered. "You know, speaking of extreme religious nuts..." Skye slowly rolled herself across my bed again, letting herself out of her cage of blankets. She got up, almost tripping over a bed sheet that strewn itself across the floor, and sat down again next to me, this time cross-legged on my bed.
"I've got this research project going on for my forensics class." She began, "Where we're supposed to write all about a cult or alternative religious school of our choosing."
She scooted closer to me.
"Guess what I chose."
"Huh?"
"The Children of Reconstructed Consciousness."
I could feel my lazy eye twitch uncomfortably.
"You mean the one that was located, like, twenty miles away from here?" I responded.
"Yeah, out in the woodlands. The one that went missing in the nineties."
I had heard of the Children of Reconstructed Consciousness before (or Corc, as some older rural people liked to call it). The group was infamous to everyone in Southeast Texas, partly due to the decade long search to find them after they somehow disappeared from the face of the Earth.
"It's got to be structured like an essay, with quotes, parenthetical citations, blah blah blah. MLA format. You get it." She waved her hand around as she spoke. "But that's besides the point. I
came here to ask you for help."
Help? I didn't like the word help. It was scary. It meant someone wanted to rely on me for something that I couldn't guarantee the quality of.
"You want my help with a school project?" I answered, "Is... no offense, but is that all you came here for?"
"Not with the essay part, dingus." She turned away, "Although I might need your help with some of the more religious stuff." She muttered under her breath.
"But more than that, I'm going to be driving out to the woodlands tomorrow morning to visit some scenes of the disappearance." She said, "And... I thought you might like to... I dunno... come along?"
I could feel myself freeze up next to her, unable to respond. I wasn't a fan of going places. In fact, I wasn't really a fan of getting out of the house – like, period. That may have contributed to the reason why my skin was whiter than a frail Victorian boy's, but I couldn't bring myself to it. And I didn't know why.
"Fletch."
Skye scooted closer to me, putting her hands on her knees.
"Are you really feeling 'alright?'"
She got even closer to the point where I could see the gloss on her bubblegum lipstick, lit up by the hazy halogen ceiling lamp right above our heads.
"Or are you as broken as I am?"
We both sat there, with our eyes locked onto each other in a nauseous game of who's-going-to-look-away-first. Suddenly, Skye broke her gaze, collapsing forwards into me. I kind of just... held her there, not really knowing what to do.
"Being young sucks. You have freedom, but no freedom." I could feel her muffled voice reverberating against my t-shirt.
"Tell me about it." I said.
"Love, but no real love. Friends, but no real friends. They're all so fake. Except you Silas. You're real."
She buried her head deeper. I put an arm around her, and I could feel as she relaxed every muscle in her body.
Is it dangerous for two broken people to be so close to each other? Do they complement one another, like two halves of a broken plate, or do they just end up causing more damage, like two leaping electrical wires in a puddle of water? I didn't know. But what I did know was that I liked Skye.
I didn't know what it was about her – that confident, almost smug attitude she sometimes carried that I wish I had. Her pink hair, hot and rebellious. Or was it the way she looked at me, curled up in her defensive cocoon of blankets, drowning in her own distress, with a face that made my insides melt like synthetic cheese inside a scathingly hot slice of lasagna. I could just feel my shirt get smudged all around with her bubblegum lipstick, as I discovered something within me that I didn't know I could feel. I wanted to go out and do something with her – to dance with my entrancing broken half some more.
"Hey... I'll go." I finally said.
Skye's face reappeared from the depths of herself. "For real?"
"Yeah." I smiled. "But you're gonna have to wrap me up in a burka and sunglasses. Vampires hate the sunlight."
She leaned back and giggled uncontrollably, her laugh coming out as breathy high-pitched bursts of joy.
"Silly boy." She called me. We locked eyes as she reached her hand out and ruffled my hair.
After that, we sat there for a while, just in the presence of each others company. A broken boy, his life revolving like an unstable electron around the nucleus of a broken girl, both having decided that it's better to be broken together than it is alone.