LEVAN
I spent the night suspended between sleep and consciousness like I do almost every night. But last night, I was more conscious than asleep, and now it's taking the toll on me. I woke up groggy; my mind still rambling under the trees, my limbs numb, floating. Did I accidentally leave my body in the weird state, where normal people seldom go?
Then I feel a lightning strike of a pain near my waist and my reflex gets into action, my hand flies to my flesh as it threatens to fall off me. I barely hold it there but it's no use, I watch it melt down to the ground. It burns so loud, I feel afire.
I shake my head and get on with washing myself as I stand under the shower. My limbs return from Neverland, and they feel so damn young that I almost sprint to school. But not seriously, I just shuffle into my truck, stop by St. Jude middle school as a ritual and ignore Ava as she gets off and tells me that she's going to walk her way back home with Cindy.
But I already know that. She does that on a daily basis so why inform me each day? I feel the annoyed Levan rise to surface and I snap a glare at her. She shuts up and tugs at her bag as she walks toward the building. I take no time, and with screeching tires, I'm off to another day in hell.
A while, I tell myself. Only a tinsy minsy while.
***
"I got it!" says Ten slamming a booklet on my desk as she stumbles into hers. I don't pay attention to the thin bunch of papers immediately. I take my time and absorb her in. It's like she's spilled all over the sky and I'm the stray cloud soaking her up. All up.
Ten is wearing a pink and purple, floral, baggy shirt and very short denim shorts. Her wavy, dark, dark hair is pulled back in a ponytail. She's wearing tiny pink flower earrings and some kind of black thread around her neck. But why am I noticing what she's wearing. I never do it in such detail. Maybe it's what absorbent clouds do? They must.
"You got what?" I say, picking up the booklet and flipping through it. Ten is hopping in her seat with a smile huge enough to serve as a football stadium.
"A role in Melanie's Musical!" she squeals and hops some more. That's when I notice the first page. It's a script. "And not just any role, I'm playing Lucille, the freaking lead!"
"But your mom didn't agree, you never applied-" I start and she shushes me immediately.
"Look, I thought about it and decided that she doesn't have to know. Maybe later, but not right now. It's a big deal for me, you know about my interest in acting. I cannot let crappy lungs keep me from doing things I love!" she says to me, all pinched up brows and serious red cheeks.
While she stands corrected, her mother isn't wrong either.
I think she should tell her mother. But man, no one asked for your crappy opinion, Annoyed Levan says from my side.
"Well, congratulations then," I mutter.
"Thank you," she says tipping her chin up, "I have to pen down a song for the finale where Lucille reveals to everyone what she really wants," she explains, staring off into the distance and moving her hands dramatically in front of herself.
"Wow, that's great. Don't they have it in the script?" I ask her. She looks at me, looking confused herself.
"Well, it was me who suggested that she sing about it so I guess I'm entitled to it," she says, "we discussed all of this over the phone, Melanie and I."
"So, Melanie is a real person?" I ask her. Well I hadn't considered that Melanie could be a person. I just thought it was a name, a brand or something.
Ten scoffs, "Of course, she is," she tells me, "she writes the scripts and all."
But the point here is, that she isn't afraid of how her mother is going to react to her secret rebellion. Personally, I don't think she's going to be okay with it. I think she's going to be furious or nervous. Nervous, like me.
I stare at Ten as she takes her books out and starts to go through the song she's written possibly last night. She looks at me and smiles toothily telling me that she's over the top excited before she returns to writing and even though I want to, I don't peek in.
It feels odd. If I can't show her what I've written so far, how am I entitled to look at what she's writing? Doesn't seem fair. So I keep my eyes on her face. Her bottom lip pulled into her mouth as she write, her hazel eyes seeing colors in full brightness, her dark brown hair around her shoulder like a cave.
I don't have to say it, because the whole universe knows; Tenerife Cohen is the brightest sun, the shiniest star, the most luminous moon, all inside of one human body, made of sparkling skin, neon bones and blood so gold it drips off of her tongue.
But why does looking at her make my blood warm, skin tingle and hair stand every single time? Holy shit, where have I come? What have I become? What have I done?
***
I float alone in my thoughts and I fear drowning. I've forgotten how to swim, I only know how to float and keep myself alive. But is that enough? Just floating? What if there's wave? What if there's a whirlpool? What if my leaking blood invites sharks to feast on me?
The rope starts to burn out. The walls start to crash down.
My head feels light and heavy at the same time. What's wrong with me? Why can't I breathe? Is it because I've seen too much of Ava today? Is it because it's mom's birthday? Is it because I want to run away? Is it because I want to fly? Or maybe...I just want to die.
Maybe that's it. Maybe tonight's the night.
I get to my feet and let the floor under me squeak. I let it squeak for all it wants as I walk over to the windowpane. I grab its sides and pull myself up on the sill. Now, here's the part that gives me all the thrill. I look below me and here's everything that goes in for a good suicide. If there's anything even like a good suicide.
Boy jumps from his room's window at three in the morning, breaks neck and spine on impact, which leads to tragic death on the spot. That's what the news would say. And I tell myself that indeed, jumping is the best way.
So let's say there are sharks below me, swimming in the watery dirt of the Dead House. But at least I'll die outside of it so my father won't have to kick my stinking, dead body out. That would be great for the both of us. He won't have to touch me, I won't have to be touched by him. His dirty hands would never stain me, never again. Not one more time.
I take a deep breath. But not quite, my nose vomits it out immediately, my lungs didn't even get a taste. I frown at the world that lies beyond me, and all the bullshit of it soaks into me like mud mixed with acid. It stings, I won't lie.
I start to sing my death song like I do every other time before I fail.
"Welcome to the planet,
Welcome to existence,
Everyone's here, Everyone's here,
Everybody's watching,"
I sound terrible, I do. So I wince and decide to get on with it already. Who even cares if I sang before I hit the ground? So I take the leap. I leap toward my end. I keep falling for a million years. I keep falling like lost Alice.
And it ends like this; I hit the ground without a sound and look up to see the sky one last time, but I'm still here, gazing at my ceiling. I sigh.
This is mundane. Will these transparent dreams ever stop?
I hear the rustle of my revolutionary pages and realize that I was in the middle again, floating. Maybe that makes sense. But my head is still a mess. It feels as if I've lost control over myself. And no matter how much I try to think about the secrets of the sea, and colors of the snow, my thoughts keep swimming back to the girl who is rebellious, the girl who is headstrong, the girl who knows what she wants.
On the other hand, I don't even know what I'm doing here lying on the floor, with a bunch of papers flying around me and losing myself in what I start as harmless imagination, thoughtless thinking. And my father just came home and brought a bruise for me as a gift. It burnt another hole in me. But that's okay because I'm Levan. I'm not Ten. And Ten, I'll never be, because she's one and only.
So I roll over my iced elbow and write about the girl who doesn't want to limit herself, the girl who breathes in gold, the girl who is spontaneous –no wait, spontaneous is her. The girl who is an adventure of her own, the girl who wants to taste life with every breath she takes, the girl who wants life itself, and she wants it like it's hers to take.
The girl I can't stop thinking about, the girl who gives me air to breathe, the girl who makes me feel enormous; a giant, the girl I don't want to see dead. Because with her gone from the face of earth, gone will be the sun, the moon, the stars, the oceans, the flowers. Left behind would be me, the dark.
I rub my palm on my face. Why has my pen started to shake? Am I experiencing a private earthquake? Is this why the hair on my nape stood on their ends when I looked at Ten today? Because I was afraid? For her...for me?
What's wrong with me? I wonder. I can't stop writing about her. I'm helpless. I'm damned.
Tenerife Cohen; the girl I can't have.
For she's nothing but wishful thinking for me. Ten is gold, and bright, and light. I'm blue, the shadow, the dark. And light doesn't wander in pitch darkness. Some caves are better left undiscovered and craving light forever; bathed in darkness, home to shadows.